Be Warned: Descriptions of Torture, though not in detail
Steam rose from the mug between his hands. The earthy smells of coffee and sawdust mingled with the lingering smoke and grounded her for the moment.
He had materialized from the basement door just beyond the kitchen, his jeans lightly dusted with sawdust. She hadn't heard him, missed his footsteps on the stairs and the flick of the light switch he always turned off when emerging from his place of peace. Lost in the moment at the fireplace, she had simply been caught completely off her guard.
Almost an hour had passed since he'd made coffee, stoked the fire, and sat down next to her on the couch, waiting.
Quiet.
Just…there.
It was what she had come for, after all. The simple calmness of his presence. He simply existed and that was what she sought when she walked through his door. A stolen moment of peace, just to get her through one night in the storm.
At some point, she knew, he'd ask why she'd come, though. Sitting in silence all night wasn't going to cut it. Gibbs carried a look of knowing, telling her she wouldn't have to say much. But, she could tell him some things. Hard things. She wanted to.
She could, without giving too much away.
"I haven't slept since we arrested Hakim."
Nervous energy flowed through fingers that fidgeted with the corner of the blanket draped around her. She'd started shaking when she finally realized she'd heard him yell 'Lieutenant'. Like a light had been switched on, she could see clearly again. Hear the popping of the embers. Smell the sawdust and smoke.
The gun had fallen away and her body had begun to tremble.
A gun, it turned out, she hadn't even held. Though, she would have put her right hand on The Good Book it had been emptied into the shadowed figure. Into him. She shook the thought from her mind.
The weight of it had been as real as any of the other details in her memory. The coolness of the metal. The kick of the recoil with each shot fired. And yet, it had never been there. She was afraid she really was losing her mind.
"All those years thinking Masahun was dead, only to find him sitting next to me. Here. Not in some dark, horrid, underground sand pit. But right here in DC."
She inhaled sharply.
"I mean…its brought everything back, Gibbs. So many details…they just...explode...in front of me every time I close my eyes. And it's so real. All over again."
Boiling inside, she felt the acid in her stomach churn, the burn reaching the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, pulled in another shaky breath.
She felt the solid weight of him next to her, almost close enough to lean into, to hold her up. It took all her self-control not to reach for his hand, an anchor against the hell she was walking through.
She spoke of things she hadn't put words to in nearly a decade. Of The Monster's early games, the simple days of fists and feet, and hands tied behind their backs. Those were to soften them up, loosen resolves and lips.
Then they were moved to arms tied high and whips, car batteries and bugs inside a confinement box. They were kept in the dark, kept in blinding light, electrocuted and nearly drowned. Inhuman things were done to her. Things that would make a garden variety rapist at Rikers blush.
She was proud of her men, she told Gibbs; even after the worst had been done to them, not a single piece of their intelligence had been given up during their captivity.
Not even after King was dead and she thought she'd never feel anything as hollow and black as losing one of her men.
Masahun came up with his favorite game after that. He had failed to break her men. But he figured he had come up with the perfect plan to break her - just her - using her men against her.
One by one, he threatened to pick them off. King was already dead. Anshimi and Hale were brought before her, bloodied and thin and terrified. Masahun told her to 'pick one' and moved the barrel of his pistol from one to the other.
The exhaustion and terror and anger had made stopping her tears impossible. Masahun had laughed, sadistic pleasure in her weakness as a woman. 'Tell me what I want to know, infidel, and I'll send them home alive' he'd lied. She'd known he wouldn't.
She also knew she couldn't break. As commanding officer, it was her duty to maintain the integrity of their mission, to hold it together in the face of the worst their captors could inflict upon them.
But they were her men. It was her duty to protect them. To sacrifice herself for them. If she could just get Masahun focus on her...leave them alone...without giving away their intelligence.
The impossibility of her situation, the cries of her men, and her own fear - she had to figure out how to save them.
"Hale just kept saying 'it's ok'. "It's ok, Sloane, it's ok." All I wanted him to do was shut up. I couldn't...I couldn't think. I couldn't…make a... nine months…I just ..."
Tears came like snow melt from high mountains in Spring, landed in small explosions on the trembling palms of her outstretched hands. She held them there, a pleading gesture; why couldn't shut his mouth?
"I... need him to be quiet...to stop for just a second so I can...think of a way out of this. I can get us out of this. Just be quiet for a minute."
She spoke as if he knelt before her, her mind's eye fixed on a far-away place. The smell of the fireplace drifted away, replaced by an acrid scent she couldn't name but would always remember.
She smelled burning metal and urine, the dry Afghan sand and gunpowder and blood.
"Hale…"
Her upper body flinched, the muscles of her face and hands clenching. A whisper escaped through lips she couldn't feel moving.
"No. I didn't choose him. I just...be quiet Hale."
Sloane felt her own heartbeat stop, held her breath, pleaded for the memory to be scrambled; she begged her subconscious to replay the real way it all went down. To show Masahun's bullet exploding the back of her own head, her own body falling to the ground in a lifeless mass.
The fire's glow faded from her periphery and she felt herself fall forward. Gibbs caught her, his hands on her shoulders, pulled her into his chest. He smoothed the sweat-soaked hair from her face, wiped away the wetness, kissed her forehead. She felt him holding her, the arms that built boats in the basement and chased killers in the dark trying to pull up out of the dark.
Stick with me...