AN: I haven't forgotten about this story, I'm still committed to finishing it. Thanks to everyone still sticking with me!
XXXXXX
In the midst of nearly incomprehensible terror, Nell sat bolt upright in bed and fumbled for her weapon and the light next to her bed. She managed to switch the light on while grabbing her gun, and did a quick search of the room.
It was empty.
As expected.
The inherent safety of the empty room did absolutely nothing to quell the panic that had arisen in her from the nightmare she'd experienced. She pressed both hands to her face and tried to calm her breathing, even as she knew she wouldn't be falling back to sleep anytime soon. There was no way.
She might have started crying if she thought it'd make her feel any better.
Deciding the best course of action was to distract herself with something – anything – else, she got out of bed and left her room. The hallway was mostly dark, illuminated dimly in the small surrounding area by the light spilling into the hallway from her room. Great plan, she thought. Ease memories of a horrific nightmare by stumbling around this creepy, labyrinthine, possibly haunted house in the near pitch dark.
No, it wasn't haunted.
Too bad it was easier to believe that when the sun was up.
She glanced up and down the hall. It was dark and silent no matter which direction she looked. She shut her eyes to listen for anything out of the ordinary and was greeted only by silence. She guessed it was sometime in the middle of the night. Sam and Eric had both been up when she went to bed (she'd drifted off to the sounds of them arguing – Sam had found some of the back passageways and was trying to convince Eric to join him in exploring them). She wondered if they'd ever gone, and if so, had they returned or were they still roaming around lost in the house somewhere?
Kensi and Deeks had actually turned in at a reasonable time, but that was only because Deeks wanted to be 'well-rested' for the séance he planned later that night. (When he'd invited Callen along, the older man had just laughed and walked away, so Deeks had taken it as a 'maybe'.)
She stood near the balcony railing for a few moments before catching movement to her right which caused her heart to thunder in her ears until she realized it was curtains fluttering on the opposite side of the landing. (Or did a ghost move the curtains? said a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Deeks.) It had to be a draft, but she hadn't felt any air when the curtains moved…
She had two options: go back to her quiet room and face down her nightmare alone or continue her ill-advised attempt at exploration. Both options were so appealing…
All the bedroom doors she could see were shut except her own, and none had light coming from under their doors except Granger's on the other side of the landing. Well, she wasn't going to go looking to him for comfort, that was for sure.
Since Eric's door was also shut, she assumed he'd come back and gone to bed. She debated waking him; he wouldn't turn her away. He'd have no problem trying to talk her down from her dream (nightmare), but she just wasn't comfortable telling him about it. It was too…awful. It wasn't fair to burden him with her issues when he was already on edge.
Or maybe her 'reasons' were excuses because she simply didn't want to talk to him in the first place.
She wanted to talk to someone else.
Her eyes moved over to Callen's room and she tried to tell herself that his closed door was a sign. She absolutely should not go over there and knock.
She sighed in annoyance at herself. Why did she think the things she did, why did she feel the way she felt? It was one of the worst ideas she'd ever had, it could go wrong in so many ways. And yet it didn't matter, because a person couldn't 'logic' their way out of emotions. She was never going to be able to talk herself out of the way she felt.
But that didn't mean she ever had to act on it, right?
She had to stop doing this; she had to stop wanting Callen to help her when she should be helping herself. And she resolved to start that moment.
She didn't need anyone's help to get over a silly nightmare – no, dream. She was an intelligent adult who possessed more than enough faculties to talk herself down from an understandable reaction to a dream that had caused her distress.
Except just thinking about said dream caused her heart to beat faster as she struggled to breathe.
She debated going downstairs to do some more research into their 'case', but as she looked over the railing, down the staircase that descended into the inky depths below, no amount of telling herself that she could simply go downstairs (switching the lights on and banishing the darkness) would convince her to do it. Nor could she stomach going back to her room – the thought of shutting the door, turning the light off and trying to go back to sleep made her feel physically ill.
Besides, she was shaking too badly.
She took a dozen steps down the hallway, coming to a hesitant stop outside the next closed door. What are you doing, you just said you would be fine alone! And yet…she wasn't fine. This didn't have anything to do with him, but rather the simple need to talk to a friend. (Yes, that was it, that made sense.)
Still, was it acceptable to wake him? Probably not, since this wasn't any kind of emergency…but if he was awake already, that was completely different, right?
For a few long minutes, she stood there, listening quietly for any sound that would give her permission to enter. She was creative – she could come up with an excuse if only the faintest hint was given to her. Murmured voices or a muffled thud or even excessive creaking – she'd take anything as a pretense to enter his room. She could lie and say the sounds had woken her up and she wanted to check with someone to make sure everything was fine.
Except there was nothing, literally nothing, except the silent house. Come on, she begged of (curiously enough) the house itself, I can't even get some rattling pipes or the scratching of a tree on an outside window or a distant howl of wind?! The mansion had not been this preternaturally silent in the 2 days they'd already spent there. It was like it was deliberately ignoring her wishes in an attempt at making her suffer.
Without realizing what she was doing (though she fully knew why she was doing it), she leaned against the bedroom door and pressed her ear against it. In the movies it always worked to help people hear sounds within another room…or should she go find a glass? A quick glance back at the staircase nixed that idea quickly.
Far be it from helping, she actually thought she heard even worse this way, as the door muffled all sound against her left ear. She shut her eyes to help focus and tried not to breathe, thoughts of curtains moving for no reason lingering at the back of her mind. It was useless, though – she'd have to either knock or abandon her plan. She pushed herself away from the door and had started to turn when –
"Can I help you?" A voice said from behind her, near her right ear, and three things happened at once: she bit back a scream, instinctively surged forward to get away – though there was nowhere to go with the door in front of her – and the only rational part of her brain still working caused her to throw her right elbow back in an effort at self-defense.
Callen was faster than she was and blocked her efforts, pinning her against the door, entire length of his body pressed against hers.
"Nell," he said calmly, in as reassuring a tone as she'd ever heard from him. He leaned against her, waiting for every part of her mind to recognize him, and they were both aware of the similarities to the night before.
"Callen," she said flatly, a side effect of trying to get her breathing under control. She pressed the left side of her face into the cool door in front of her, seeking some kind of stability. "You're trying to kill me, right?" (Or was that the house?)
"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you heard me."
"How could I hear you?" she complained. "You're the quietest person I know."
"You were turning toward me," he pointed out.
"I was reconsidering my ill-advised plan," she admitted, slightly embarrassed.
He took a step back, but only enough to pull her away from the door so she was now leaning against him instead. He put his arms over her shoulders, no doubt able to feel the tension slowly leave her.
"Let's rewind to my earlier question," he said, and she could practically hear his smile. "How can I help you…at one in the morning?"
She sighed almost inaudibly and reluctantly turned around so she could face him, causing him to drop his hold on her. He looked concerned and she once again wondered if this was her best course of action. The last thing she wanted was to seem weak in front of him. And it wasn't like she had an actual problem. (After all the things they'd lived through, a nightmare definitely didn't count.)
"I…" she trailed off, shrugging. Her shoulders slumped as she leaned back into the door. She chose the worst possible timing, since it happened to coincide with the exact moment Callen twisted the doorknob and her support was gone in an instant.
She stumbled back, scrambling to grab hold of him, though she needn't have bothered since he already had his free hand around her arm and abruptly pulled her forward again, saving her from an ungraceful fall that would have likely drawn more than one of their sleeping friends in what would have been an uncanny (and terrible) replay of the night before.
She let out a sigh of relief, realized she was holding the front of his shirt in a death grip and very carefully released him. He let go of her and she took a step away, then another. More space was better, she thought rationally, even as every irrational part of her urged her to step back towards his warmth – to get as close to him as possible.
He'd flipped the lights on and shut the bedroom door behind him. He was now leaning against it, watching her appraisingly. Well, he hadn't kicked her out. That was a good sign. Then again, she had pretty much just walked (well, fallen) into his room uninvited.
"So…you're awake," she settled for stating the obvious in a mildly disapproving tone, "and wandering the house at one in the morning."
Of freaking course he was.
"As are you," he pointed out.
"At least I'm not going around scaring people," she shot back, trying to make a joke of it despite her acute embarrassment at how she'd reacted to his unexpected appearance. She swore she wasn't normally this jumpy. It was the house, it had to be. It left her questioning herself, and her sanity, at every single turn.
His eyes darkened at her words. "First of all, it was the furthest intention from my mind to scare you – like I said, I thought you heard me walking over." He appeared genuinely distressed at that fact, since her reaction had been one of fear and not humor. "Secondly, you stopped fighting when you recognized me. I have no doubt if I'd been someone else, you would have put your training to good use."
Like usual, he'd somehow read her mind. More than her reaction, she'd been annoyed at how poorly she'd fought back. Maybe she could still blame the horrible dream she'd had and how much it had shaken her. (And it was all the more brutal because it was based on a reality she had actually experienced more than once in the past few years.)
"Why were you outside my room?" he asked.
She didn't want to tell him and yet she did want to. She couldn't and she also had to. It was a strange dichotomy, feelings pulling her in opposite ways – what would he think? What would he do? And in the end, it didn't matter because she had to share it with someone…no, not someone (not anyone), him.
When she didn't answer, he continued the questions. "Is something wrong? Are you okay?" There was growing alarm in his voice, and she was relieved – not at his tone but at the mere fact of his concern, that tangible proof that he cared. (She couldn't say when that had started happening. Maybe there was no 'starting'; maybe it had always been there.)
Was she okay? She stared at the floor beneath her stocking-clad feet, absently bending her toes. She thought she was okay, and a big part of that had to do with his presence, but part of her still doubted… "I don't know," she answered honestly, risking a glance up at him. The very sight of him caused her shoulders to relax, made her want to step forward and touch him.
But she didn't.
He straightened, instantly more alert at the potential of a threat in the vicinity of which he'd been unaware. "You don't know?"
"It's fine. I'll be fine," she said to try and calm him – it hadn't been her intention to come here and upset him. It wasn't his fault that he was the only calm she could find right then. Maybe switching topics would serve to distract both of them. "Where were you? What were you doing?"
He carefully studied her. "There's this saying about a pot. And a kettle? I can't quite recall."
She couldn't help smiling at that, weak though it was.
"What's going on?" he repeated, when she continued to stand five feet away from him without moving.
She debated whether it was worth telling him…but had she ever really considered not doing so? She'd pretty much made up her mind the second she glanced at his door and started searching for any excuse she could to open it and see him.
Something solid hit the back of her legs and she realized she'd backed up far enough to hit the end of his bed. She put her arms behind her to lean against it. "I had a dream." It was the most innocuous description she could come up with, though she didn't know why she bothered. She was going to tell him; it was inevitable.
He said nothing, just continued to watch her as his eyes silently asked every question he didn't say out loud.
She felt tears pricking at her eyes, unused to that kind of worry from anyone, least of all… Look, the fact was she was quite adept at dealing with her own problems and she tried not to drag anyone else into them, ever. She kept her issues to herself – she'd long ago mastered the art of talking to Eric all day long without ever saying anything of consequence. It was rare that she revealed anything truly personal about herself, and it took a monumental amount of effort to share even a minor problem with Kensi when the two of them spent time together alone.
So when she had the opportunity to actually talk about something that was deeply troubling her, it was harder than she thought it'd be. (And even with that knowledge, she knew she wasn't the most guarded person in the room.)
Maybe sensing she needed to compose her thoughts, Callen moved to the side of the bed. He perched on the edge of the mattress, watching her with an intensity that would have taken her breath away if she'd been inclined to let it go.
"You don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to," he said, slowly. He knew better than most about keeping things locked away; things a person didn't want to share. "But I would like it if you did."
She didn't realize she'd clenched her hands into fists again until she felt sharp stabs of pain in both of her palms and glanced down to see her nails digging into them. The memories assaulted her, bleeding together with real life experiences. She couldn't tell where the nightmare ended and the memories began; that was the real problem.
She'd always been prone to nightmares, but she'd learned to dismiss them as the troubled imaginings of an unconscious mind. Tonight, when the dream blended into real life experiences, she could no longer shove it away into a distant corner of her mind to forget about…like she'd been doing for years.
"I was…" she trailed off, rubbing her hand over her face, irrationally feeling as if saying it out loud would make her weaker somehow.
"Nell."
She looked up, taking in his serious expression in the dimly lit room, and trying to feel as safe as her mind told her she was. With him. She took another deep breath and let it out in a hurried rush: "Iwasmurdered."
It only took him a beat to place the necessary spaces in that short sentence and a look crossed his face that she found immensely distressing. She had never wanted to cause him pain, and it made her feel even worse that he'd feel it on her behalf. It was like she'd caused it.
She was already leaning on the foot of the bed so she eased back onto it, sitting and clasping her hands behind her back. She looked down at her feet again, wondering how to fix what she'd done, how she could convince him she'd been joking or trick him into thinking she was in a much better place than she actually was.
"Nell," she heard him say, but she hadn't come up with a plan yet, so she refused to turn and look at him.
She felt the bed shift and knew he was moving closer. She had a fleeting thought of standing up and walking across the room to put distance between them, but she couldn't.
He must have taken her stillness as invitation (or acceptance) and put his arms around her, resting his chin on top of her head. She should tell him that his comfort wasn't necessary, though it really kind of was. (She kept her mouth shut.)
She reached up to take hold of the arms that surrounded her and bit back saying something that would come off as childish or weak. Something along the lines of Please never let go of me.
"What happened?" he asked, when it finally became clear she wasn't going to speak again unless he asked.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, not sure she wanted to talk about it, but knowing she had to.
"It was a dream I've never had before," she began, and that in itself was rare. Most of her nightmares were repetitive and recurred like clockwork after suffering a stressful day at work (which usually involved the possibility of one of her team members – most often him – not coming back, a fact which she wouldn't share right then).
He said nothing, and she took the opportunity to appreciate the feel of him behind her, quiet breath on the back of her neck (he'd turned his face down into the top of her head instead of looking straight ahead). He'd always been strong, and for someone who prided herself on being able to stand on her own, she felt a bit ashamed for wondering if she could take some of his strength, just for a little bit. (If he'd be fine sharing it with her.)
"I was in bed in my room here, at the hotel. The door opened and I thought it was –" she held back the word you, not wanting him to feel guilty over the imaginings of her own mind. No part of what she'd dreamed was his fault. "I thought it was one of our team, but they didn't speak and I could hear them breathing loudly and I knew something was wrong."
His arms tightened imperceptibly around her and it was as if she could feel the sense of comfort he was trying to broadcast to her as loudly as he could without words.
"I went to reach for the lamp at the side of the bed, but before I could reach it, the…person, was in bed with me, and I couldn't react. I tried to roll away and grab my gun, but…" whoever it was had been on top of her and –
"You didn't win," he said finally.
Once she'd started, it was like she couldn't stop. "I couldn't move, I couldn't get away. He had his hands around my throat and he – he was choking me. He strangled me. I couldn't throw him off, I couldn't fight him. I could only lie there and let it happen. I was crying and trying to beg him for mercy and then I felt myself losing consciousness and…that was it. I knew I was dead and everything went black. That's when I woke up." She'd had a number of bad dreams; she'd even been murdered in them before (a quick gunshot or push down the stairs that woke her instantly). But never, never had she experienced the kind of death she had tonight.
"Nell," he began, as she wrenched herself forward and off the bed.
"I died. He killed me."
This time, he said nothing.
She felt like she should be screaming by this point, so when her next words were a whisper, it surprised her. "He murdered me," she met his eyes with a certain haunted look he'd seen before. She hadn't needed to imagine it, or dream it. She knew firsthand what it felt like to have someone try to strangle her to death.
And so did he.
That was the real horror of it – her nightmare wasn't imagined. It was a memory.
"I can't…" she absently pulled at the collar of her shirt, even though it wasn't tight. "Anything near my neck, it bothers me. Ever since…" She shut her eyes.
Since the first time she'd nearly died at a suspect's hands.
"It's usually not so bad," she told him, "but it's like his hands are on me, even now. I couldn't stay in bed and…feel that. I just couldn't. And that's why I was outside your door in the middle of the night."
"I wish you'd never had to live that," he told her, softly.
She reached a hand up to her neck, tentatively brushing the skin there and shivering. "I can still feel it. Sometimes I think it'll never go away."
He was silent for a minute, giving her an assessing look. "Do you trust me?"
"Yes," she said, without hesitation.
"Then switch the lights off and come here."
She slowly complied, expecting the room to get completely dark, but she hadn't realized the light in the connecting bathroom was on, which lit up the room well enough for her to make it to the bed without tripping or fumbling around in the dark.
He motioned for her to get in the opposite side of the bed. The side she'd slept in last night.
"Are you going to perform some kind of weird meditation thing on me? Because I saw you talking to Deeks earlier about –"
"I wouldn't be cruel enough to subject anyone to his methods of 'spiritual healing'. Lie down."
She did as he asked, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. He moved closer so he was facing her, lying on his right side. They were almost – but not quite – touching.
"I'm going to touch you now," he said, which struck her as so ridiculous that she started laughing.
"You need to work on your seduction techniques. I mean there's mediocre and then there's just sad."
"Not funny," he said, trying to sound stern, but she could hear the laughter in his voice.
Her own mirth vanished a second later when he put his left hand on her neck. Though the pressure was so light as to be nearly undetectable (he was holding his arm up and wasn't even letting the weight of his hand rest on her), she still felt it with the force of her nightmare. He might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water on her for the reaction he got – she stopped breathing.
"Who am I?" he asked.
"I hope you realize we're getting into a really weird realm here," she said, words tight with annoyance.
"Just answer the question."
"What are you doing?" she managed to ask, though it sounded as if he were actually strangling her for how weak the words were.
"Who am I?" he repeated. When she didn't say anything, he added, "It's not a trick question."
"Callen?" she answered, and surprisingly found that saying his name aloud caused her tension to ease somewhat.
"That sounded like a question, but I'll take it."
She sighed. "I know who you are."
In response, he relaxed his arm a bit, allowing the weight of his hand to touch her neck. She instantly tensed up again. "Would I ever hurt you?"
"I know what you're doing," she said, finally getting it, as every instinct in her body screamed at her to push his hand off and get out of bed. He wasn't holding her there, so she had no idea how, or why, she was allowing it.
"Nell," he breathed, voice calm, "would I ever hurt you?"
"No."
This time he actually pressed down; it was nowhere close to dangerous or anything that would cut off her air. She pressed against her own skin harder when she was taking a shower, for god sakes, but she couldn't stop her reaction, instinctively grabbing his hand with both of hers.
He waited for her to pull his hand away, insanely impressed when she made a concerted effort to relax and not do so. Her breathing had become quite unnatural and much more rapid, though. He knew it was taking a lot for her to remain next to him.
"You're okay," he reminded her, sensing she needed the vocal reassurance. When she loosened her grip on his hand, he started tracing absent patterns over her skin, gratified when the simple touch relaxed her further.
He'd been unsure about going any further, but she'd tolerated it far better than he'd hoped, so he pressed down with his hand. He was still in no danger of hurting her, but if anyone else had been doing it to her, it would have been the beginning of a warning.
She dug her nails into his hand and her look was nearly one of betrayal. Yet she didn't ask him to stop or try to escape. He hoped that was because she understood what they were doing and not because she was reverting back to allowing the fear to control her.
Her eyes flashed at him. "I don't like it," she bit out.
"Few would," he told her. "You don't have to like it. You also don't have to live in fear of it."
She said nothing.
He leaned closer to her. "Nell, you can still breathe."
She hadn't been aware she'd stopped. She inhaled sharply – he was right, her breathing wasn't hindered in the slightest. The pressure was uncomfortable but not because it hurt – because of her nightmare and the experiences she'd had before that. But she was okay, wasn't she? Maybe he was right; maybe this was something she could eventually get over.
He eased up on the pressure, but left his hand resting on her neck, not feather-light like in the beginning, just the steady, constant weight of his hand. They stayed like that for a few minutes until she turned to face him, so his hand rested on the side of her neck instead of the front. It was marginally better.
"If it didn't matter, I wouldn't have done this," he told her. "But when you're in the field, you can't freeze up or panic if someone tries to grab you that way. Your main focus has to be on getting away, and to do that you need to keep a level head. If you freeze or panic, it's over. You control your reaction – the reaction shouldn't control you."
"I know," she whispered, as he ran his thumb under the line of her chin, and then pulled away. She felt the loss keenly – she didn't miss the touch on her neck, she just missed the connection to him. It was the kind of thing she could get too easily used to.
"Feel any better?" he asked.
"I always feel better with you," she admitted, which maybe wasn't the best thing to say, but she wasn't thinking clearly amidst her newfound exhaustion. They'd had a long day and she hadn't gotten much sleep the night prior, and the nightmare itself had taken a toll on her. "I think I'm going to sleep here," she mumbled, into the pillow.
"So long as you don't mind the very real possibility that Deeks is going to wake me up in two hours to participate in his ridiculous séance."
"I'm sure you can scare him off," she said, mind already drifting. "You don't mind if I stay, right?"
She thought she heard him say she could stay with him forever, but she was half-asleep, so maybe she dreamed it.
Either way, she wasn't leaving.
XXXXXX
