Chapter 82: Testimony
"It's been a really long time since we could have a girl chat like this," Allie sighed as the door closed behind the guys. "I love Dash, but I can't talk to him like I can with you. All of you," she added, although her eyes stayed on Shana, her first friend here at Joe base.
"I'll say. I love Wayne, but damn, he can be dense as a brick sometimes!" Courtney rolled her eyes, prompting a laugh from the others as they stretched themselves out on the padded mats, making themselves comfortable. Allie picked up the large picnic basket she'd hidden behind a chair and opened it, bringing out assorted sandwiches and bags of high-calorie goodies; potato chips, chocolates, lots of junk. Once everyone (even Cam) had a bag of chips, a sandwich, and a couple of chocolates from a bag of assorted candy, she sighed. "All right, let's get down to business. When are we going to have Cam's wedding?"
"I'd prefer to wait until after the trial," Cam said quietly. "Just to get that cleared and out of the way. I know after we get married we can go on a honeymoon—even though technically we've already been on one—but Alex said there will be a few weeks in between Kennedy's trial and Yu's trial, and I'd like to take that time to relax before…" she stopped; she didn't have to say anything else. The hardest part wasn't going to be Kennedy's trial, it would be Leo Yu, and all the people he'd sent to the upstate New York cabin to rape an innocent girl. And they could all see that having some down time between the two trials would be a good thing for Cam's state of mind.
"I'll second that." Shana waved a hand, then licked chocolate from her fingers. "Now, I say that Cam should wear whatever's most comfortable. If she wants to wear her tribal leathers, she should be able to."
Courtney rolled her eyes. "That's so unromantic. The guys never get to see us dressed up, it's uniforms all the time. Cam, wouldn't you like to splurge, just once, on a dress that'll make Charlie's tongue hit the floor and his eyes roll into his head?"
Cam threw her head back and laughed, and everybody laughed with her. Amusement, tempered by happiness that she could laugh again; while they had all been worried about Shana, there had been no shortage of worry about Cam too. Not just what she'd gone through, but everyone knew that Doc was very, very worried indeed about her scarring and her loss of mobility, and her emotional recovery. "That's a charming picture. I have to admit that, just once, I'd like to wear something nice, something pretty." There was real wistfulness in her voice. "But even if you put peacock feathers on a sparrow it doesn't change the fact that the sparrow's still a sparrow and no amount of pretty packaging on the outside will change that. I've tried to be happy with who I am, not what I wanted to be, because, let's face it, I'm not pretty. I never will be. And now…after this…with the scars…I should just be content with the fact that I'm even still alive and that Charlie still loves me at all." She took a deep breath even as the other sobered, thinking about the fact that one shoulder was higher than the other because of her skin warping from the scars. "And there's very little out there that will hide how ugly I am."
"You're not ugly!" Shana snapped angrily. "God help you if Charlie ever hears you say that, Cam, because you're not and he knows you're not and there's not a single one of us who thinks so. You are one of the bravest and most beautiful people I have ever met, and you know what, just because you can't see that doesn't mean we can't show it to you. Girls, what do you say, when she gets a little better, we take her out shopping?" she held up ha and to stop Cam' s words. "You don't have to buy anything if you don't want to, but Courtney knows some—okay, a lot!—of really good dress shops and dress makers and hairdressers, and I'm sure that between all of them we could most certainly find something you like that will cover your scars but still make you beautiful."
"Absolutely," Courtney piped up firmly. "There's no shortage of people willing to help. You're active-duty military who went through something terrible in a combat situation and now you're trying to get married but you want to look good—seriously, there won't be a dry eye in any dress shop or beauty shop when I get done, and they'll turn themselves inside out trying to help you."
"Don't make any decisions now, Cam. Try to keep an open mind. If, after you see the best that the New York dress shops and beauty salons can do, you decide you'd still rather wear traditional Iroquois clothing in a traditional ceremony, well, that's your choice. Just give us a chance to show you what is possible before you close that door." Shana couldn't quite keep the pleading out of her voice.
Cam nodded finally, reluctantly. "I'm not pretty. Never have and never will be. But I'll give your way a try."
"You won't be disappointed!" Courtney got up from where she sat. "I'm going to do some checking on the Net, see if some of the best designers and stylists are going to be in New York anytime this month, and see what we have to do to get an appointment." She gave then a sweetly malicious smile. "I'm sure many of them will be more than happy to hear from the great Courtney Krieger." She grinned and disappeared out the workout room door.
"The 'great Courtney Krieger'?" Cam started after the blond tank jockey, looking bemused.
"Courtney used to be a famous runway model for many of the great fashion houses. As much as she hated that life and says she never wants to go back, she sure can talk about clothes and shoes and makeup and hair with the best of them. But if she says she can do it, Cam, she can. Don't doubt her."
"And speaking of doubt," Alex piped up from where she sat polishing off her roast beef sandwich, "Abbie needs to start trial prep with Shana and Cam this week, so the sooner you can get your testimonies and statements written, the better." She tuned to Shana. "You should probably show up in dress uniform. You'll look impressive right next to an impressive military record. Any medals you have that can be worn…openly…should be worn too."
"And Cam?" Shana asked. "She doesn't have a dress uniform—she was in training when Hawk met her and I think in the shuffle we may not have had the rest of her things sent up yet from Fort Benning. And right now her skin's too tender to wear the heavy fatigues for any length of time."
"She'll just have to wear regular clothes. I will admit I'm a little worried, because it'll look like she's not on duty, but it simply can't be helped."
"If it will help I will wear the fatigues," Cam said immediately. "If I wear a light shirt underneath it, they shouldn't rub too much."
"No." Shana disagreed. "Anything that makes you uncomfortable should be avoided right now, you don't need to stress your body out any further. I'll check the regs and see what's permitted." She actually had something different in mind, but she had to talk to General Hawk about it first. "I'm going to go do that now. I'll bring you the written testimony later. When do you need it?"
"Well…Abbie actually wanted me to bring both of you by her office tomorrow afternoon to go over the process of a trial with you both, so can you have it ready by tomorrow morning? Abbie really needed it a lot earlier than this but she understood neither of you were in any condition to try and deal with it."
"I'll have mine ready," Shana said immediately. "I'll do mine tonight. Cam, if you head back to your quarters now and take a nap I'll stop in as soon as I finish mine and help write yours." She saw the surprised look on everyone's faces and snorted. "Someone's going to have to write hers for her, she can't write with that arm." The right shoulder was the higher one, giving her the look of someone afflicted with scoliosis, and that shoulder was pulled farther back than the other one.
It was apparently something no one had thought of except Shana herself, and Allie looked stunned—and saddened. But she pulled herself together quickly. "Yes. Let's. Oh…Alex, Abbie's office is wheelchair accessible, isn't it? It'll take some of the strain off Cam if we can take her to the office in a chair so she won't have to exert herself walking so far." She ignored Cam's faint protests that she was perfectly all right and overrode her. "We can fit a folding wheelchair in the back of the Hummer and drop Shana, Cam, and you off at the courthouse, then we're going to go shopping for wedding presents. Just give us a call when you're done and we can come and get you."
"The perfect solution," Shana nodded. "All right. Cam, back to your quarters for a nap. I'll be by in a little bit. I need to check the rulebooks on uniform for you and then I'll write my testimony and come help you with yours." And when Shana got that command tone in her voice no one would gainsay her.
"General Hawk?"
Clayton looked up at the sound of the familiar voice and smiled as he sat back from his paperwork. "Still officially on vacation, but feel free to come on in," he said to Shana, and Shana promptly came in and scooted a hip up on the end of the desk that he usually kept clear for her. It was an old ritual, and something that felt familiar. "What's on your mind?"
Shana told him what Alex had told them about Abbie needing to prepare for trial. "So we're going to be off-base for most of tomorrow, all of us girls. They want to go shopping for Cam and Charlie's wedding presents, so the plan is to drop us off at the federal courthouse downtown, then come pick us up when we're done with Ms. Carmichael."
"Sounds good to me." Clayton nodded approbation, then said causally, "But you have something else on your mind."
"Alex said Abbie told us we should wear our dress uniforms for the trial. Cam's going to need a dress uniform—in all the fuss and the stuff that happened this summer we never did get the remainder of her things sent up from Fort Benning. I was thinking that communications specialist Mainframe's been seeing from Fort Hamilton might be about Cam's size and have one she could borrow, but Cam really should have a set of her own—"
"I'll call Fort Benning to have her things sent up. It might take a little while, so if Mainframe's friend is amenable to letting her borrow a set of Class B's, she'll be able to wear a dress uniform. Which would be easier on her still-healing skin than the heavy fatigues." His eyes acquired a mischievous twinkle. "Cam and Courtney are both, as you know, up for recognition—Courtney for promotion to Specialist, and I was planning on a Soldier's Medal for Cam. I think that new medal would look nice and impressive against those dress blues, give a civilian jury the right impression of her value to the US Army. I think I could arrange to do that before the trial starts." Clayton's eyes twinkled. "I think that solves your dilemma?"
"It…does." Shana's head was still spinning at the rapidity with which Clayton had made that leap of logic.
"Then consider it done. Go work on your testimony so you can get that done and help Cam with hers." Clayton made shooing motions toward the door. "Now go on, I have a mountain of paperwork to catch up on."
…I do solemnly affirm that the foregoing is a true and concise statement of the events outlined in this document, which same are the affairs laid before the court for its consideration, so help me God.
Shana placed the period at the end of the sentence with exacting care, looked over the document once more, and nodded to herself. She'd had to walk a fine line between being descriptive enough to give everyone reading it a clear picture of what had happened to her, yet not make it graphic enough to sicken people.
There was one person who needed to read it that would be sick anyway, but that couldn't be helped. "Snake Eyes?" she said quietly, and at the sound of her voice, he left off puttering around the far end of the room where he was folding clothes and rearranging his drawers the way he liked it. It had felt strange, being in a new room after having spent her entire assignment at Joe base in her old one, but one look at the larger bed and a look at the two pillows side by side at the head of the bed had overcome the strangeness; she loved the idea of waking up next to him every morning, of him not having to sneak out of her quarters early in the morning to be back in his by wake-up at five-thirty.
"I'm going to go help Cam write her testimony, but while I'm doing that, I thought you might like to read mine. I know you know some of what happened through our bond," and that was something that she was still trying to digest, that they'd grown so close he could now be with her spiritually even when they couldn't be together physically, "…and I know Doc let you look at my medical file, but you haven't heard the whole story from me. We promised no more secrets, so…" She held out the sheaf of paper to him.
He took it carefully, as if it were fragile, then lifted his hands and signed to her, deliberate series of letters.
She frowned. "I don't understand."
We promised no more secrets. I know about your classified training, and your medical and your testimony; you didn't even know my name. So. He signed again.
"Seriously?" Shana blinked. "I…couldn't start calling you that. I think of you as Snake Eyes."
He leaned over, kissed her forehead as he sat down on the bed with the papers. You can call me whatever you like. And…while you all are working on wedding arrangements, I'll be taking your last name, O'Hara. I'll go along with whatever else you decide, but on that point I'm firm. I'll be Mr. O'Hara.
"Seriously?" She said again, and when he nodded, she started to laugh. "Oh…oh, won't that be one in the eye of my Mom and Siobhan!" She was still chuckling as she headed for the door. "All right. Let me go help Cam with hers." She deliberately didn't mention that she was positive he'd need the privacy while he read it. And she also didn't see the need to mention that she'd be in the room next door—Cam and Charlie had the room right next to theirs, after all.
Snake Eyes sat down slowly on the bed as the door closed softly behind Shana. He never even noticed her leaving, lost as he was in her narrative. Now he understood why his first impressions of her captivity had been of darkness, of a heavy lassitude and weight on her limbs, interspersed with brief moments of lucid consciousness and blinding agony. For the first time he understood that Sandra, the bitch they'd first met in Amsterdam, had thought that he'd been her lover, had taken her spite out on Shana because she believed that Shana had stolen Snake Eyes from her. He read Shana's account of how she'd clarified that particular point, and felt his lips curve in a vindictive smile, imagining the look on the bitch's face when she found out about that particular piece of information.
And then the smile was wiped out, replaced by horror and anguish as he read how Sandra had gotten her revenge. In his mind's eye he could see Shana's body wracked with shudders from the drugs, saw her fighting the withdrawal for long enough to kill Sandra and try to escape. And he too felt the sickening pit in the bottom of his stomach open up as he read how she'd failed to escape, the brutal beating she'd taken from the guards for her attempt, and how she'd found herself chained down on the cargo ship.
She'd tried to fight, tried to resist; and although he was proud at her spirit, her fight, her refusal to give up, he could also see where her actions had made things harder for herself. But he kept reading, read about her wild joy when she'd seen Cam, felt her relief when they'd been sold together, her relief when they woke in the same place, although different cells. He felt her sick terror as she struggled to keep Cam alive after the disastrous dose of barbital drugs, and then struggled to keep down his dinner as he read of their treatment at the island, the few dazed memories Shana had of their brief escape, their time in the tidal cave, and their eventual recapture. And then, his heart in his stomach, he read Shana's account of what she'd been forced to do to Cam, that she'd been forced to hurt Cam to keep her alive because the barbed wire whip would have killed the younger woman. And here he read Shana's reflection that the worst scarring on Cam's back, the starting point for the keloid scars and the place where the scar tissue had pulled the tightest and deformed the shoulder, had been the place where the barbed wire had literally skinned Cam's back.
He finished reading, carefully laid the papers back on the desk, then lay back in the bed their new bed, big enough for both of them comfortably now—and switched off the light. In the darkness, he let tears stream unchecked and unashamed, down his cheeks. That his Shana should have gone through such unspeakable cruelty; that she'd had to watch her best friend go through so much too, and that both women had come through with their hearts, minds, and humor intact…he loved her for it, loved both of them, knew in his heart that while Shana seemed to have adopted Cam as a sort of surrogate sister, he too would have no problem considering Can his sister as well. She and Shana were two of the bravest, most beautiful women in the world.
And then his thoughts turned to Kennedy, and his fists clenched so hard his nails cut into his palms. He never even noticed, remembering Kennedy as he'd seen the son of a bitch on the island that afternoon. Impeccable white suit, unruffled, calm, the very image of evil masked by smiling banality. And…for some reason Snake Eyes felt like he'd seen the man before. He couldn't remember where, try as he might…but it didn't matter where he'd seen the man before, the only thing that mattered was that at some point, Snake Eyes was going to meet him again, and on that day only one of them was going to walk away alive.
And it sure wasn't going to be Kennedy.