This chapter needed to be added but I am not all that pleased with it. It's part of the rehabillitation process, but was hard for me to write.

Disclaimer: I do not own Auggie. Wish that I did, but alas I do not. I just own my ideas of how he got on with his life after he was injured. I do own a sixty-five pound Boxer who wants to be a lapdog.

Chapter Twelve – A Brief Homecoming

As Marissa placed his hand on the door to his loft, Auggie felt profoundly sad. There were a lot of memories on the other side of that door. His hands were trembling slightly as he inserted the key in the lock. As he slid the heavy door open and took a step inside, his hand automatically reached for the light switch to the right side of the doorway. Even though it did him no good, he flipped the switch for Marissa who'd just entered behind him.

"How ya doin', Auggie?" Marissa lightly touched his arm.

He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I'll be okay once I get my bearings. I've been gone from here for what—eight, ten months. And I sublet the loft for a six month term before I left. I bet nothing's where I remember leaving it," Auggie lamented as he turned right to find his couch, hands sweeping low for the furniture. "Damn," he hissed as his right shin hit a low table. He felt the contours of the offending piece of furniture, then moved a few inches to the left and continued his search for the sofa. He finally located it and sank down onto its soft leather with a frustrated sigh.

"I didn't necessarily mean physically. Sometimes clients get sort of emotional when they come back home."

"Outside of being a bit nervous, I think I'm good," Auggie said. He was nervous. Nervous that his tenant had turned his apartment around and he'd not know where anything was. Once inside, the memories were not that strong; and he hoped that he'd make new ones here again. Except for Natasha the women he'd bedded here had been just flings; nothing to lead to lasting memories. Even the memories of Tash were not as painful as he'd thought.

"Okay then, tell me what you remember about the layout of you apartment."

For the next twenty minutes Auggie described what he remembered about where things had been located in his home. As he described where he thought he'd left things in kitchen cabinets, he heard Marissa open the doors.

"Your memory is remarkable," Marissa said as she sat beside him. "Apparently your tenant left everything, except for the living room furniture, where you had it. Do you want to help me rearrange the furniture to the way you had it? Or do you want to learn this layout?"

"Does it matter? I'm going to be banging into the furniture anyway for a bit," he complained sullenly.

"Yes, it could matter. If you were familiar with the layout before, it will be easier to relearn how to get around in here now; and less likely to bang your shins and toes on your furniture." She stood and said, "Let's move some furniture."

Fifteen minutes later Auggie's living room furniture was back where he recalled it to be the last time he'd lived here. He took Marissa's suggestion to get new end tables and coffee table with solid bases and rounded corners and filed it away in his mind for later action.

For the next half-an-hour, Auggie simply walked through his apartment – refreshing his memory as to where things were. Even though he knew that it would still be a few weeks before he'd be back here permanently, he had a comfortable feeling as he re-familiarized himself with his home. He did know that in a few days he'd be back here with Jane to help him fine tune his surroundings for his safety and comfort. He was almost looking forward to that now.

Once they were on the sidewalk in front of his apartment door, Marissa had Auggie take her arm as they walked the street that ran in front of his building. As they passed a storefront Marissa had Auggie tell her, either from memory or from the information he gleaned from his senses, what each was. The storefront directly to the right of his building's main door was an antique store, next was empty but had once held a gently used clothing store. The local café had been easy to tell. It had taken them a little over fifteen minutes to circle the block and return to the van.

Tomorrow they'd be back and locate the laundry, a grocery, his bank, and the pharmacy. After Jane had taken him to the laundry and grocery in Reston, he'd made up his mind to use a laundry service for his clothes and linens, and to find a grocery that delivered. He hadn't minded doing his wash in the machines at the center, but it was quite another to now do it in a public laundry. Doing his wash in his own apartment would be fine, but trudging off with it in tow to the public laundry was now quite another matter. There was no room in his apartment for even a stackable washer and dryer and he wasn't about to move. He liked his bachelor pad just the way it was.

Jane had also taken him to the local grocery store to get the ingredients for the meal he was to prepare in his cooking lesson. The sounds and smells of the chain grocery had quite overwhelmed him. Trying to locate an item on the shelf by feel and smell had been frustrating and embarrassing. He'd never liked grocery shopping, and, unless he absolutely had to, he was not going to do that again. He made that perfectly clear to both Jane and Marissa; they'd done the 'tsk tsk' thing and he could just picture them shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at him.

Now back in the van and on their way to CIA headquarters, a new case of nerves was visiting Auggie. Even after a long few days of soul searching and discussions with the social worker and the psychiatrist, he still wasn't completely sure that he'd made the right decision to come back to the CIA to work. Would the people accept him now? Could they – would they – still have confidence in his abilities? He was willing to give the new position a chance. At least he could use his computer skills for the greater good.

After going through the security gate, Marissa parked the van in one of the 'Visitors' parking slots. When Auggie did not immediately reach for the door handle to open the vehicle's door, Marissa patted his arm and asked, "Are you ready for this? I know that it's got to be scary on so many levels for you. I know that we have an appointment with Ms Campbell in a few minutes, but I can call her and postpone it. We don't have to do this today."

"And just how would you know what I'm feeling here?" he asked gruffly. His mind was reeling with a whole host of emotions from a bit of giddiness to abject fear.

"Don't exactly. Just know how I'd feel about going back to a place where I was well-known and now coming back as a different person. I'd be nervous about how they'd treat me now. Would they patronize me? Ignore me? Accept me? Those kinds of fears," Marissa said with empathy.

"You would?"

"Oh, hells yeah."

"Then, I guess I'm as ready for this as I'll ever be," he said without admitting to his internal dialog. He located the door handle and opened the door.

A few moments later, Auggie was making his way up the walkway to the entry to CIA Headquarters – to the right past the raised logo, up the three steps to the plaza, across it and up three more steps to the main entry door. Once inside he veered slightly to the left toward the security guard's station. Passes received and turnstile negotiated, Auggie headed off toward where he remembered the elevators to be. On the ride over from his apartment, he'd told Marissa that he thought that he could navigate from the car park area up and to Joan's office. He'd walked it so many times in the past that he thought that he could do it with his eyes closed. She'd said that she'd let him try but would be two paces behind to offer direction if he needed it. So far, he'd been pretty close to where he needed to end up when he'd stopped. The little bit of successes had calmed the case of nerves that had steadily grown since he'd left his apartment earlier.

He rounded the last turn in the path to the public entry into Joan's offices. Cane sweeping before him he made the last few steps to the recessed doorway. He knew he was close when his cane found the flag stand. He veered off his course of shorelining the wall, and located the recessed door by the change in echo to his right.

"This should be Joan's office," he said with a hint of questioning in his tone.

"The plaque on the wall reads 'Domestic Protection Division'. If that's where we need to be it is," Marissa stated. "You don't know how pleased I am with your skills this afternoon."

"After banging my shins in my own place this morning I was wondering if I had any skills," he joked uneasily. He pressed the button on the new watch that Jane had helped him order a few weeks back. Its mechanical voice told the time. '1:25 PM' it stated. "Shall we?" he asked as he gestured toward the door.

A few seconds later they were seated in Joan's outer office. Auggie had been warmly, if awkwardly, greeted by Joan's assistant, and told that Joan hadn't come back from an unexpected briefing yet.

Ten minutes later, Joan rushed into her office. "Sorry, Auggie, you know how things can get around here at times. Ms McClew, I apologize for keeping you waiting."

"It's okay, Joan," Auggie responded. "Saving the world has to take priority." As curious as he was about what had kept Joan from being on time for him, he knew better than to ask. He knew what his security level had been, but he did wonder at what level he'd be trusted with once he returned in a few weeks.

"I don't have the time that I'd like to help you orient Auggie to his new surroundings. But I can take you to Auggie's new office and let the two of you figure out what the critical areas are that he'll need to know first." Joan sounded rushed. "Marissa, I'm sure that we will not get high marks for Auggie's new work area. It is far from ideal for him, but sometime soon we will be moving to a new area where it will be just perfect for him."

"I'm sure I'll adapt, Joan. I'm just happy to be back."

"I know," Joan said as she patted Auggie on the shoulder. "We're pleased to have you back. Shall we get the tour started?"

Moments later the trio was on the catwalk overlooking the bullpen area of the DPD. Then they descended the stairs and crossed between the rows of desk to the glass doors opposite Joan's office but one level below.

As the doors opened and Marissa stepped inside, she exclaimed, "I can see what you mean, Ms Campbell. Step carefully Auggie, there's cables running across the floor in here."

Auggie slid his foot forward searching for the first cable. He remembered the small office with its racks of computers and other kinds of electronic monitoring devices. He was hoping that he'd be somewhere else, but wasn't surprised to find that he'd be located here.

"The guys took some time to reorganize things a bit, but this is the best we could do with what we had to work with," Joan said apologetically.

"It's okay, Joan. I'll get used to it," Auggie replied. "Where's my area?"

Marissa placed his hand on the back of a chair. "This table has the refreshable Braille display under the keyboard so I'm assuming that this is it."

Auggie sat and began to explore the work surface before him: at the back of the table and to his left was a tower computer, to the right of that a large flat screen monitor and to the right of the keyboard a set of high-end headphones.

"It's all set up and ready for you when you're able to come back. Stu just got it all hooked up and the special software installed yesterday."

"It's an interesting set up," Stu piped up from his work area behind Auggie. "It wasn't as complicated to set up as I'd first thought when I looked at it just after it all arrived."

From the doorway someone called for Joan.

"I'll leave the two of you to do what it is you need to do," Joan said as she exited the room.

For the next two hours Marissa and Auggie located and mapped out routes to the break room, restrooms, and the various other areas that Auggie would need to know how to get to and around in. Auggie had walked the routes to and from different primary locations a dozen times before he felt comfortable in his ability to maneuver in the maze of corridors.

When he and Marissa left that day, he had a comfortable feeling. His memory of the building had made the orientation session easier than he had feared. Everyone that he'd known before he'd left had greeted him warmly. Some of the uneasiness he'd felt about coming back had been alleviated.

Reviews feed the muse, but I don't expect her to be fed with this chapter. Therefore, it's a good thing that the next chapter is nearly ready to post. I may yet post it this week, but by next Monday for sure.