02.08.08

Auggie spent the next 3 days completely isolated. He was surprised that whoever was running the place had allowed him to opt out of every single activity, but he appreciated the autonomy they were giving him. He'd made use of his time by sleeping, of course, but also by starting a workout regimen. It was basically two solid months since the explosion, and Auggie had never since puberty gone so long without a workout.

Sweating felt good, it felt normal. Auggie worked himself through his paces during a morning and an evening workout conducted alone in his bedroom, and lasting for over an hour. Pushups, sit-ups, planks, and a variety of calisthenics were leaving him sore at the end of each day, but subtly improving his mood.

He'd even gotten Seth (his name had been Seth, not Sean) to set his iPod to shuffle, and he'd said a silent prayer of thanks to Whomever Might Be Listening that he'd opted to bring his old iPod, the Classic with the little dial, to Iraq. Had he brought his Touch, he'd be S.O.L. right now, as touch screens were entirely out of the question for the moment. For now, all he had to do was click the play/pause button. Sure, it was a little jarring to skip from Mingus to the Black Eyed Peas to the Beach Boys to Soundgarden all in a single workout, but it was still better than the silence he'd gotten used to.

Auggie was just finishing up his evening routine when he suddenly got that eerie "being watched" feeling. He yanked out his earbuds and turned to face his doorway, listening intently.

"No shit," said her voice from the entrance, slowly drawing out the vowels in both words. "Special Forces, huh? I should've guessed. You sons of bitches are always the toughest nuts to crack."

Feeling naked both figuratively and literally, Auggie quickly reached for the t-shirt he'd discarded on the small loveseat against the far wall of his room. Happily, he found it on the first sweep - he'd gotten better at remembering where he'd set things.

"Don't you knock?" he asked angrily as he pulled his shirt over his head.

"Yeah, I do actually," she responded. "I knocked for a solid 30 seconds. Apparently your blind man super-hearing powers haven't kicked in yet. Or maybe it was that million-decibel music that was drowning it out. You going for the full Helen Keller experience or something?"

There was that grin in her voice again. Auggie decided to brush off her calling him a "blind man," which made him sick to his stomach, and tried to ignore her presence while he wrapped the cord of his earbuds around his iPod and stowed it in his nightstand drawer.

"Wait." He was suddenly curious. "How'd you know I was Special Forces?"

"The tattoo," she replied simply.

Oh. Right. He hadn't seen it in so long he'd forgotten it was there.

"When's the last time you ate?" she questioned, this time with no mischief or sarcasm in her voice.

"Couple hours ago," Auggie replied casually, hoping she couldn't hear the way his stomach protested at talk of food. The granola bar cache was getting seriously low.

"Uh, no. I'm not talking about that stash of squirrel food you've got in the closet. When's the last time you had a meal?"

"Dunno. Since the first day here? Since you put me on involuntary hunger strike?" Auggie moved tentatively toward his en suite bathroom, hoping she'd get the point and realize he wanted some privacy to shower.

But she never seemed to get his points. Instead, she laughed. "Oh, so this is my fault?"

"Well, since I can't get to the main dining room on my own, and you've apparently expressly forbidden Seth from sneaking me grub, yeah - I'd say it's your fault." Of course he'd asked Seth to get him food. And of course she had told him where the dining room was and given him a cane with which to get there...

"So the idea is what? To subsist on granola rations for the next week and a half? With the kind of workouts I've heard you doing in here, that is ill-advised, soldier."

Auggie reached into the bathroom and grabbed a hand towel to mop up the sweat on his face. She was right - it was getting harder to do his workouts on so few calories. But he continually reminded himself that he'd lived through worse deprivation during his SERE training, not to mention a couple ops with the CIA that had gone sideways.

"Ah, that's right," she said after a moment. "You're a Snake Eater. You've probably gone longer than this without food, and under harsher circumstances."

Auggie looked sharply towards her, surprised that she'd basically read his mind, nevermind used a rare, in-crowd nickname for Special Forces.

"Lemme guess - Fort Bragg?"

Auggie tilted his head and exhaled through his nose, "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"Oh, soldier, you never lose that Fort Bragg swag," she chuckled.

Auggie couldn't help himself - he laughed out loud. She had once again surprised him with an expression he hadn't heard in a long time. This girl was annoying, for sure. But she was also becoming...interesting.

"C'mon," she commanded abruptly, and Auggie raised his eyebrows. "You're the most stubborn trainee I've had in ages, but I can't just let you starve. They'll have my job."

When Auggie didn't make a move - honestly, he wasn't sure what to do - he heard her tennis shoes chirp across the room's tile floor until she was right in front of him.

"I know you don't want to do any 'blind man' stuff," she said quietly. Her tone was softer than he'd yet heard it, and he was surprised that for the second time in as many minutes she'd again gotten inside his head. She also smelled, well, kind of delicious, something he hadn't been close enough to her yet to notice. Perfume, for sure, but one he'd never encountered before. Kinda spicy, almost. He tried not to consider what he smelled like right now, immediately post-workout. She continued gently, "But you're gonna have to at least get sighted guide down before you leave this place."

A look of confusion passed over Auggie's face. "Here," she instructed, as he felt what he assumed was her hand graze the back of his left hand. "I'm offering you a lead. If you want it, you're gonna trail your left hand up my right arm and grab just above my elbow, the way you'd hold a soda can."

"If I want it?" Auggie asked with a snort. "Thought this was mandatory for your job security."

He was half-heartedly attempting a joke, but her reply came back quick and sharp: "You always have a choice. Don't you ever let anybody push or pull you somewhere you don't wanna go. You're blind, not incompetent."

Auggie was caught off-guard by the fierceness in her voice. Too caught off-guard to comment on her once again calling him blind, in fact. He decided to shut up and take her lead. (Damn, he was really freaking hungry). He trailed his hand up the smooth skin of her forearm until he arrived at that spot just above her elbow. It was surprisingly intimate, and Auggie blushed as he unintentionally found himself wondering what Mel looked like.

Mel cut into his imaginings. "Okay, now you and I are just gonna walk natural as can be. You'll follow a half-step behind me and get all the information you need to know about the terrain from the way I move through it."

Auggie nodded assent and they crossed the room to his door. At the door, Mel stopped. "Narrow passage," she explained, and gently slid his hand down her arm until he clasped her wrist. She then moved her arm to cross behind her back and Auggie instinctively moved his body into a position directly behind her. "Quick learner," she noted approvingly, and they were suddenly in the long, echoey hallway. They moved easily back into the normal sighted guide position, and proceeded down the hall.

At the end of the hall, which was further from his room than Auggie had been since he'd arrived, Mel came to a stop. This time, Auggie anticipated the door, and went into the narrow passage technique with her wordlessly. Mel instructed him to grab the door as he passed through, which he did. Another pause followed, just through the door, at the top of what Auggie assumed was the staircase. He could feel a draft coming up, and he could smell the faint aroma of food from the kitchen below. "Stairs?" he asked.

"You got it," Mel answered. "Just follow me down, easy peasy. I'll pause at the end so you'll know we're at the bottom."

When they'd made their way down the stairs, it occurred to Auggie that he didn't have any idea what time it was. It definitely didn't sound like a mealtime, as it was much too quiet. Mel stopped and put a hand on his chest. "Wait here," she said. Before she walked away, she brought his hand to touch the plane of a wall, helping to orient him in space.

He heard doors swing open and Mel's voice ring out in enthusiastic Spanish, with an ease that could only be produced by a native tongue. Even more interesting, Auggie thought. For some reason he'd been envisioning her as a redhead, but now his mental image morphed as he visualized chocolate brown eyes, caramel-colored skin, and soft dark hair. Whoa. He caught himself. What the hell, Auggie? This was neither the time nor the place. And she was definitely not the girl. Hell, he was definitely not the guy. Not right now. He blamed it on the stress and deprivation of the last two months, and the six months prior, and physically shook his head to dispel the intrusive thoughts.

Mel came back out of the kitchen (Auggie had gathered it was the kitchen from the sounds and smells escaping it) carrying what sounded like a tray. "Hold up a sec," she called to him as he heard her footsteps cross the room and exit a door at the far side. She returned a minute later and they resumed sighted guide going in the direction she had just come from. They passed through a pair of double doors, into what Auggie guessed was the center's entryway. Then they turned and descended two shallow steps and Auggie suddenly found himself walking on carpet for the first time in a long time.

She led them ten more paces forward, and then grabbed his hand and placed it on the back of an upholstered chair. Auggie sat down, vaguely alarmed by the heat that was suddenly hitting his face and the exposed skin of his arms and legs. Either he was sitting in front of an oven or a fireplace. Auggie guessed the latter, as he heard the crackle of wood burning. He heard Mel drag what he assumed was a matching chair up beside his and looked toward her with one eyebrow raised.

Mel explained. "So, this isn't exactly the best place to eat dinner when you're just learning how to do it blind, because there isn't a table. Also, we're not really supposed to eat in here. But I've never been much of a rule-follower. I'm gonna place this tray on your lap, and I'll put your drink on the floor right by your left ankle." He accepted the tray and noted the location of his drink. "We're in the living room. There's a fireplace about 6 feet in front of you. I just figured you'd appreciate the atmosphere here better than the dining room."

"You've got good instincts," Auggie acknowledged. "Um," he probed, "what am I about to put in my mouth?"

Her laugh rang out clear in the large room. "Sorry in advance - strictly institutional grade here. But Guillermo does the best possible job with what he's given." Auggie again noted the natural flow of the Spanish vowels and consonants of the man's name over her tongue, and tried not to get too distracted by the sexy Latina image that kept threatening to crowd into his mind. He'd always had a thing for brunettes, to say nothing of accents.

She continued, slowly and carefully, back in instructor mode: "You got roasted potatoes and peppers at your 9, some kind of marinated chicken breast at your 3, and steamed broccoli at your 12."

To Auggie, who'd been subsisting on granola bars for three days, it sounded heavenly, institutional-grade or not. He ate his entire meal in under two minutes while they sat in comfortable silence.

"You're such a hardhead," she finally commented as Auggie polished off the last of his broccoli.

"What?" he mumbled around the oversized bite, confused.

"I can't believe you haven't eaten in 3 days," she explained in a scolding voice.

"I ate," he remarked simply.

She grunted derisively. "Take your tray?" she offered. "Or were you planning to lick it first?"

"Har," he replied, handing her the tray and hearing her place it on the floor under his chair. He reached down and grabbed his drink, a cold soda in a can, and popped the top. Oh, wow. This was definitely not a soda. Auggie grinned hugely as he sniffed at the opening. "Miller?" he inquired.

"You're good," she laughed.

"I'm a good Midwestern boy," he corrected and took a long swig.

"Really now?" Mel sounded surprised, and Auggie guessed more than just his Special Forces status had been kept from the VISOR staff.

"Yep. Just across the lake. Glencoe."

"Of course," she remarked, and he heard her open a beer for herself.

Her words were harmless enough, but he caught the snarky undercurrent. It wasn't like he hadn't heard it before. But he'd stopped being bothered years ago by other people's assumptions about where he came from. By the time Auggie had left Glencoe for Palo Alto, his hometown had long since been immortalized in films like Risky Business, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Sixteen Candles. It was the go-to locale for a certain brand of affluent, lily-white, yuppified Americana. People assumed people from Glencoe didn't have problems. People were wrong.

Hoping to deflect, Auggie asked, "Where you from?"

"Detroit, baby, born and raised." There was obvious pride in her voice, and he smiled at it.

"Motor City. I'll cheers to that," he said as he raised his can, briefly remembering a certain '67 Chevy Corvette in storage at his parents' place.

But the full stomach, half a beer, and warmth of the fire had relaxed him a little too much. As their cans met mid-air, he lost his grip on his own, and it fell to the carpet with a slosh and a thud.

"Oh, shit," he muttered as he clumsily reached for where he thought the can had landed. His hand felt Mel's shoe, but then his arm brushed something he didn't understand. It was hard. And plastic maybe? And metal, too. Weird, thought Auggie. Curiously and unselfconsciously, he allowed both his hands to explore the object. He traveled up until he touched fabric, which bemused him even more.

"Watch it, Anderson. I'm a good Catholic girl. Go any higher, and I'll have to drag you to confession with me," Mel said in a teasing tone.

Auggie looked up toward her voice with a furrowed brow, now just totally flummoxed.

"That's my leg," she explained matter-of-factly. Auggie's eyes grew wide with understanding. "Got another one just like it," she continued, as she placed Auggie's right hand on another object identical to the one Auggie's left hand was currently resting on.

"Prosthetics."