Clay convinces himself that everything will be fine once he gets to go home.
It is true that things get better there, to some extent. The familiar surroundings are soothing. It's nice to not have to worry about inadvertently attacking nurses while half-asleep. He doesn't miss the harsh lighting, the smell of illness and disinfectant.
But somewhere deep down, he let himself believe he'd go home and immediately return to being the same guy who left for the mission to rescue Ashli Mayers, and that's definitely not how it ends up playing out.
For one thing, he has a hell of a time sleeping, and being back in his own bed doesn't help as much as he hoped it would. He struggles to relax enough to drift off, and when he does sleep, he has nightmares. Mostly, he dreams he's back there, back at the mercy of the bastard brigade, except that it's worse because he's not the only captive.
Sonny is there too. Or Trent. Or Brock. The whole team.
His grandparents. Davis. Mandy. Emma and Mikey. Naima. Hell, even Stella shows up at one point.
What happened to him was bad. He can admit that, at least to himself. Being forced instead to watch it happen to everyone he cares about? Yeah, that's worse. A lot worse.
Clay doesn't wake up from the nightmares the way people do on TV. He doesn't jolt straight up, gasping. That might be better than what actually happens, which is that he wakes up absolutely terrified and completely unable to move. He feels like he's trapped, locked inside his own body, powerless to fight back against … something. He doesn't even know what.
When that finally subsides, when he can move enough to roll himself over, he always gets hit with a powerful jolt of adrenaline that leaves his hands shaking, leaves him unable to even consider going back to bed for a long time afterward.
His team picks up pretty quickly on the whole 'not sleeping' situation. It would be hard not to, given that they're kind of smothering him a little bit.
Jason has been the most reasonable and hands-off about the whole thing. Clay is pretty sure the others have each received at least one Spenser is a grown-ass adult, stop hovering speech from Hayes, which Clay appreciates, but which can only go so far given that he actually does still need some help.
He's healing, but it turns out that starving for eight days and then getting pneumonia leaves you pretty weak. Between that and the broken arm and fingers, Clay is not really up to doing a lot of basic everyday stuff like preparing food or washing dishes. Hell, he struggles opening pill bottles.
As a result, he hasn't yet actually been left alone in his apartment. The guys take turns staying with him, Sonny and Brock the most. He tries, not always successfully, to be patient with their hovering. A few times when he gets really frustrated, he's tempted to start speaking French at them just to freak them out, but resists the urge because that would be cruel.
He's still not exactly clear on everything that went down when they found him and during the first five days afterward, but whatever it was, it obviously left his team pretty shaken.
Not talking about it is part of every Navy SEAL's favorite coping strategy, avoidance, which they all cling to for a while. Clay doesn't really discuss what happened to him. His teammates attempt to hide the guilt complexes they obviously still have despite his attempts to convince them it wasn't their fault.
It's Sonny, of all people, who eventually convinces Clay to start talking.
The morning after a particularly bad night, when Clay is so tired that he feels like his head is going to float off his body, Sonny drops into the chair across from him and states, "You ain't been sleepin'."
Clay looks at the floor. "Yeah, not really," he says after a while.
"Wanna talk about it?" Sonny sounds a little awkward, as he always does when discussing anything feelings-adjacent, but also utterly sincere.
Clay opens his mouth to say 'not really,' but what comes out instead is, "There was this one big dude. I never caught his name, so I just thought of him as Fuckface."
Sonny laughs a little, a startled-sounding snicker. The return smile it draws from Clay feels good, even though it tugs at healing cuts on his face.
"Anyway," he continues, "he'd come into the room where they were keeping me, while I was asleep or unconscious or whatever."
Sonny has gone very still, listening.
Clay runs his fingertips over the grooves on the lid of the pill bottle in front of him. "The rest of the time there was kind of a routine to it, you know? They'd come and get me, drag me out to the room where the fun happened, and I'd zone out by the time they got me there. But this … I didn't get time to prepare for it. I'd just wake up and he'd be there. And man, he hated me a lot."
Sonny leans forward a little. His calm, direct gaze gives Clay the courage to continue.
"I guess I learned that being asleep was dangerous, and waking up was probably not gonna be fun. Especially if there was somebody else around when I did."
Sonny sighs. "Jesus, Clay. That sucks." There's no pity in his voice; he's just stating a fact. Clay loves him a little for that.
"Yeah," he agrees. "On the flip side, it was also probably the only reason I made it out. He left the door unlocked behind him, and I took his knife away and cut his goddamn throat with it."
"You know," Sonny drawls, "I was just thinkin' how much I needed to meet that ol' boy. Glad to hear you already took care of it."
It's the first time Clay has even so much as described his escape to one of his teammates. He was debriefed, of course; his superiors needed to know everything that happened, everything he might have said, every piece of information he might have given up. I have no idea what all I said, but it was all in French and none of them spoke French was obviously not the answer they were looking for, but they did eventually seem to accept that it was the only one he had.
Exhausted to near delirium, Clay manages to nap for a while that afternoon. He wakes to learn that the healthy members of Bravo have been spun up to join Alpha for a mission. As a result, Sonny has been replaced by Brock, whose arm is still healing.
Brock brings Cerberus, which means, shitty night aside, the day automatically isn't a total loss.
Clay has always enjoyed the company of Bravo's resident hair missile. That feeling is amplified now. Having Cerb in his space doesn't freak him out the way people tend to, and there's no pressure to act okay. With the dog, he can just be.
That night, after the inevitable nightmare-panic cycle happens, Clay hears a soft thump in the living room, the ticking of claws on flooring, and then a gentle whine at his bedroom door.
As soon as Clay opens up, Cerberus trots cheerfully inside, hops up on the bed, and lies down on his belly. He stares up with hopeful puppy eyes, tail thumping gently.
Out in the living room, Brock is, by all appearances, sound asleep on the couch. Clay sighs and closes the door.
It takes a while to get situated. Brock always makes it look so easy, even in small spaces, but Clay isn't accustomed to sharing sleeping quarters with a large dog - especially not while injured. He finally manages to find a reasonably comfortable position and lies still, staring at the ceiling, running his fingers through the dog's soft fur.
His heartbeat slows. Eventually, he falls asleep.
When he wakes, groggy and sweaty, there's sunlight spilling across his face, golden against his closed eyelids. His eyes feel like they're glued shut. Cerberus is sprawled across his shoulder and upper chest, muzzle nestled up under his chin. Clay is pretty sure there's dog hair in his mouth.
It's the best he's slept in ages.
Clay scratches behind Cerb's ear, listens as the lazy tail-thumping begins, and smiles without opening his eyes.
It's not a miracle, not a cure, but it is a start.
He goes to therapy. It's miserable, and he hates it, and it doesn't help - until, slowly, it does.
He talks, in fits and starts. He tells Ray about the kid he couldn't bring himself to kill; tells Jason about learning he was going to be sold, about knowing what that meant.
Cerberus stays with him off and on, sometimes even when Brock doesn't. Before going to sleep over at his girlfriend's place, Brock will drop Cerb off, claiming Clay is doing him a favor by keeping the dog from interrupting at, ah, inconvenient moments.
Clay still has nightmares sometimes, but the dog helps, and Clay learns coping mechanisms to ease the resulting panic even when Cerberus isn't there.
He has good days. He has bad days. Gradually, more and more, the good ones outnumber the bad.
One morning he wakes up, sees bright blue sky through the window, and realizes he slept straight through the night and didn't dream at all.
Up next, in the epilogue: After Clay rejoins Bravo, a mission goes sideways. Everybody tries to stay calm. (Some more successfully than others.)