Rating: Pg-13
Pairing: Eliot + Team
Prompt/Prompter: Mental institution
Notes: Really dark, somewhat depressing, and with mental health warnings.


Damage Not Undone


They visit him whenever they're not on the job and when they're doing a job in town and the orderlies say he's having a good day.

Sometimes those days are like the old times. They bring their cases, he's staying in the best institution they could find and have become huge benefactors which means they can visit him whenever they want and have a private room when they come. They sit around, Hardison gives the briefing, Parker perches as close to him as she can without touching him, Sophie talks about marks and things they've done, the retellings dramatic. Nate stands at the edges of the group, trying to behave like business as usual but not quite able to get there.

And on good days He responds, he meets their eyes and nods and smiles and talks about how it's a very distinctive x or how there's still something wrong with Parker.

On good days her tactless rebuttal that there's something wrong with him too causes him to smile.

And they've gotten good at not noticing the constant tremor in his hands (permanent nerve damage) and the way he limps (shattered knee caps, right leg broken in four places, left in seven, 'just too much damage to heal all the way'.) and they have all gotten very good at never touching him.

(They remember when they first rescued him. They remember the blood and cuts and the evidence of damage of a kind they couldn't begin to understand much less undo. They remember when he woke up and Sophie's hand on his shoulder made him cringe and his eyes go wide with fear. They try not to remember that it had been eight months in hell that did this to him and they should have, somehow, found him sooner).

On good days they believe the nurses when they tell them that he's getting better. They smile bitterly when they are told that "Mark" went through an unbelievable trauma but the fact he's still alive, that he has good days, is a sign he's a fighter. The nurses even tell them that he's having more good days than bad now and maybe one day he'll be able to go with them when they leave.

They hold onto the memories of the good days now, because when they come in to see him laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, sedated and restrained because he got lost in a memory and almost hurt someone (or worse, they remember, tried to take 'the easy option', a euphemism used by hitters for committing suicide to escape torture…)

Those are the days they know that the doctors are right.

Sometimes there is simply too much damage for wounds to fully heal.