Ch 11. A/N: Let's check back in with the girls, shall we? (Just a warning, there's the slightest bit of gore in this one, so if that's not your cup of tea, you'll be able to tell when it's coming.)
A shout startled Spencer awake. Before she quite knew what she was doing, she was reaching for a gun in a holster that she wasn't wearing. Her sudden movement caused Ashley to stir where she was resting on Spencer's lap.
Wait.
How had Ashley Davies ended up in her lap?
Once she caught sight of her surroundings, recognizing her own White House living room in the dim light of the muted television, Spencer realized that she, Chelsea, Kyla and Ashley must have fallen asleep during their Christmas Movie marathon. The root menu for Elf was playing on a silent loop.
"What's going on?" Ashley asked lazily without opening her eyes, snuggling further into Spencer's lap, which only made Spencer get suddenly a hundred degrees warmer.
A frustrated whimper drew Spencer's attention back to what had woken her up in the first place. Over in one of the recliners, Chelsea was thrashing around in her sleep, her fists clutching the blanket, eyes screwed tightly shut. "No!" Chelsea shouted, this time loudly enough to make Kyla stir in her position on the floor and encouraging Ashley to sit up and see what was wrong.
Recognizing that her best friend was caught in one of her infrequent nightmares, Spencer gently shifted Ashley off of her and moved to where Chelsea was sleeping.
"Is she okay?" Kyla asked, "Should we wake her up? I heard somewhere that was bad…"
Spencer didn't bother to reply. Chelsea needed to be woken up – the disorientation of waking was certain to be much easier to handle than whatever was plaguing her nightmares tonight. She reached down and griped Chelsea's clammy shoulders and gave her a firm shake.
"Chelsea," she said in her best officer's voice, "You need to wake up." In the past she'd found that Chelsea responded better to the commands of an authority figure when she was caught up in a nightmare – it made her responses more automatic and required her to think less. It was for the best.
Spencer sensed Kyla and Ashley move to stand behind her as she tried again, shaking Chelsea more firmly. "Corporal Lewis, wake up!"
Chelsea's eyes popped open in a flash and her entire body tensed up, ready for a fight, trying to resist the firm grip that Spencer used to keep her in place. There were beads of sweat collecting on her brow and her eyes rolled around, trying to separate the reality around her from the terror of her dream.
"Look at me," Spencer commanded gently, "What do you see around you?"
Chelsea finally met her steady gaze and struggled to keep her breathing under control. "A living room? Our apartment?"
Spencer nodded. "And what do you hear?"
Chelsea hesitated, closing her eyes a second to listen. "Nothing, just the buzzing of the television."
"That's right, and who's here with you?"
Her breathing was slowing now, and Spencer could feel her body relax. "You. Ashley. Kyla."
Spencer relaxed her grip and rubbed her friend's shoulders soothingly. "You good?"
"Yeah," Chelsea replied, only sounding half sure of herself, "I'm good."
Spencer stood back to give her some breathing room, and Chelsea rose from the recliner on shaky limbs.
"Bad dream?" Kyla asked hesitantly, as if she realized how much of an understatement that was.
Chelsea ran the back of her hand across her forehead, not really looking at any of them. "You could say that," she responded somewhat sheepishly, obviously embarrassed to have awoken from an incredibly personal moment to see them all staring at her. She caught Spencer's gaze, "I was back by Shaylah… that supply train…"
Spencer nodded her understanding. She fished into her pocked and pulled out her phone, quickly typing in the number she knew by heart. "Call him," she suggested, passing the phone to her friend.
Chelsea shook her head, but her hands betrayed her need as she accepted the phone. "It's late, I'm sure he's asleep…"
"He'd want you to call him Chelsea. He'll blame me if you don't, and you don't want me to get in trouble with the big man, do you?" She offered her friend a small smile and she was pleased to see it was returned.
"Okay," Chelsea agreed, taping the button that put the call through and making a silent retreat to her room. She shut the door securely behind her. The lack of resistance Chelsea offered to Spencer's suggestion confirmed her fears that Chelsea had just awoken from one of her worst nightmares yet.
"What was that?" Kyla asked, looking back and forth between Chelsea's closed door and Spencer.
Spencer shrugged, flopping back down onto the couch. A quick glance at the clock by the television revealed that it was nearly half passed three in the morning. "Nightmare."
Ashley sat back down next to her, and Kyla hesitantly planted herself back down in her spot on the carpet.
"What happened with the supply train by Shaylah?" Kyla pressed further. While Spencer was pleased to see that Kyla was concerned for her bodyguard and friend, she was unsure of how much Chelsea would want her to share.
She felt Ashley inch the slightest bit closer to her, offering her silent support at her hesitation.
"I can only tell you what I know, which isn't all that much because Chelsea doesn't like to talk about it." She figured that was a fair enough introduction. The truth was that Chelsea had told her all about the gory details, but it was better if she censored things a little for the Davies.
"You know that Chelsea and I served in the same squad over in Afghanistan?" Ashley and Kyla nodded. They both knew vague details of Chelsea and Spencer's military history. "Chelsea was one of my fire squad leaders. We were assigned to provide an escort for a supply train bringing food and medical supplies to an Army base camp not too far outside of Kabul. Chelsea's squad was forward, guarding the front of the train, mine was at the back."
Spencer took a breath, hesitant to bring the memory of that day into her thoughts, but seeing the looks of interest from the Davies, she pressed on. In some ways it seemed only fair – she and Chelsea knew so much about their lives, while they knew so little about the Marines in return.
"The tank at the front of the train hit an IED – a kind of landmine. The armor on the tank was shoddy, the whole thing just blew to pieces, killing everyone inside in an instant. There was a lot of shrapnel – and Chelsea's squad was just behind the explosion – out of the range of the physical blast, but not of the debris. A sheet of metal came flying out of nowhere, went straight through the windshield of the jeep Chelsea was in. She was in the passenger seat, the thing missed her by inches, but the driver next to her, a PFC by the name of Henries, he… he wasn't so lucky."
The girls were silent, hanging on to her every word. It was Ashley that broke the silence, asked the question. "What happened to him?"
Spencer had hoped to avoid the gory details, but they had asked, and part of Spencer needed to tell them. Americans wondered why Marines were coming home with PTSD, and fiscal conservatives accused them of wasting government resources on disability leave and rehabilitation. It just made her so mad sometimes. People who hadn't been through what she and Chelsea had been through, people who had never fought in combat - they could never truly understand what a soldier carried with them home from war.
Spencer found that she didn't really want to keep quiet, not when her best friend had to relive the trauma night after night just for making sure people back home could sleep soundly and safely in their beds.
She finished the story.
"Partial decapitation. The edge of the sheet caught him right in the mouth. Severed everything from his bottom jaw up from the rest of his body. Cut right through the seat too, killed one of the guys sitting in the back. Chelsea had to reach across him to grab the wheel, to make sure the Jeep didn't drive right into the burning remains of the tank, or hit another mine."
"Oh my god," Kyla whispered, looking a little green.
"That's so fucked up," Ashley agreed, looking quickly over to Chelsea's door. "Right next to her?"
Spencer nodded, "Like you sitting next to me." That was a scary thought, but like so many others, Spencer rushed to bury it. There was no way she would ever let anything happen to Ashley, not on her watch. Especially not now, when she was beginning to mean so much more to her than just a military duty.
They all took a moment to digest the story. Spencer was somewhat comforted to hear the soft mumblings of Chelsea's voice through her door. It was good that she was talking to someone who could help her.
"Who's the big man?" Ashley asked, drawing Spencer's attention back to her soft brown eyes.
"What?"
"The big man, the one who you said would be mad if she didn't call. He a general or something?"
Spencer laughed, "No nothing like that. The big man, as he likes to call himself, is my father." Ashley raised an eyebrow, prompting Spencer to continue. "He's a social worker – a counselor. He specializes in traumatic event counseling. He's been keeping an eye on us since we were deployed. He helps us keep everything straight and healthy up here," she tapped her forehead somewhat comically, trying to lighten the mood somewhat.
"Is she going to be okay?" Kyla asked, her concern evident in her voice.
Spencer frowned a little. "I think so. She's getting there. She's not alone, you know? We're all getting there. It's just going to take time."
Kyla evidently found this to be an acceptable answer. She stood and stretched, wrapping the blanket tightly around herself. "I think maybe then it's time for me and Ash to go back to our own place. It's late."
She started to make her way toward the door, pausing when she noticed that Ashley was not following.
"You coming?" she asked, her hand on the door knob.
"In a minute," Ashley promised.
"Is that what Afghanistan was really like?" Ashley asked when Kyla had closed the door behind her, turning sideways on the couch so look at Spencer fully. Spencer felt the weight behind her gaze.
"Sometimes," Spencer affirmed. She didn't like that Ashley seemed pained by the answer. She did want to fill her mind with terrible thoughts, but she would not lie to her either.
"How did you live like that – never knowing if one wrong step was going to blow your head off?"
Spencer shrugged. "I'm not really sure. When you are there, you just sort of deal with it. You dig out this little space in your mind where you bury all of the terrible, awful stuff and… and you figure you'll deal with it later when you have the luxury of sorting it all out."
"How are you still you, after living like that?" Ashley asked, disbelief evident in her voice.
"I am me because of all that," Spencer corrected. "I'm not the same girl I was when I left home after high school. The experience is part of who I am, good and bad. And besides, if I hadn't been there, I would have never found my way here." She had to fight to keep her face straight after she realized what she had said.
She had just barely figured out how she felt and here she was practically shouting her feelings to the rooftops.
The two girls stared at one another, neither quite knowing how to follow that. Spencer braced herself for what she fully expected to be a taunt about her sappiness.
But what she actually got surprised her.
"Are you glad you're here?" Ashley asked sounding vulnerable. Before she let Spencer answer, she hurried on, "Because I am. I know I give you a lot of crap sometimes, and especially back when we first met, but I am thankful for what you do. For your service… and for always having my back."
All Spencer could do was smile. "There's no place else I'd rather be."
"My hand is going to fall off," Ashley groaned, trying to shake out the offending appendage as she made her way out of White-Gravenor Hall and into the brisk autumn afternoon.
"I think you'll survive," Carlin replied from where she walked beside her, hands stuffed into the pockets of her navy blue pea coat, shoulders raised to brace against the cold.
"You know what you lack Carlin? Empathy. While you were over there playing Angry Birds on your phone, having a grand old time, I was filling three blue books with useless facts about troubadours and minstrels. When the hell was that lecture anyway?"
Seriously, the question had come out of left field. The reason why Ashley had let her essay go on for so long was because she figured if she wrote enough words, some of them had to be right. Fake it 'til you make it - it seemed to work for Christine anyway.
"It was back in October." Carlin replied, "I seem to remember you drooling on your laptop. And I was reading security briefings – this is my work phone." As was usually the case when they were in public, Carlin was only half paying attention to her. Her eyes were carefully sweeping the quad, watching for threats.
There were definitely more people around campus than usual. Ashley always thought that finals week made Georgetown feel twice as big when all of the people who generally skipped class were compelled to come in and sit for their exams. She swore she'd never laid eyes on half of the people who had just showed up to take her medieval European music final.
"You were reading security briefings for three hours? Who writes those things, Tolstoy?"
The marine shrugged, thinking it over. "Lots of War. Little bit of Peace. Good number of Russians…"
Ashley laughed. "Anything I should be worried about?"
Spencer hesitated, "Maybe… but let me take care of the worrying – it's sort of my job. I won't let anything happen to you."
Ashley caught her eye and smiled. "I know."
Carlin smiled back, almost shyly, head tilted ever so slightly to the side. It was an unexpected gesture, and it made the cool morning feel just the slightest bit warmer. When Carlin looked at her like that, Ashley could almost pretend that maybe Spencer…
Her train of thought was abruptly cut off by a flash of green that caught her eye over Carlin's left shoulder.
She'd seen that hijab before. In fact she'd been pretty up close and personal with it and its owner. "Nadia?"
Carlin frowned, not following her sudden change of focus, but Ashley didn't have time to explain.
"Nadia!" She shouted this time, taking off at a sprint across the quad to try and catch the girl before she lost sight of her. She felt Carlin following close on her heels, not letting her out of arm's reach.
The girl in question paused upon hearing her name, turning to try to see who was hailing her. When she caught sight of Ashley running her way, Nadia moved to turn away as if she hadn't seen her, but by that point Ashley had already grabbed a gentle hold of her shoulder.
"Nadia!" She wheezed, wincing at how over-excited and out-of-breath she sounded. Ashley Davies wasn't supposed to chase down ex-flames across the quad – it didn't quite fit with her image. She tried again, forcing herself to slow her breathing, and settled for what she thought was a decently sultry "Hey."
"Oh. Ashley. Hi." Nadia turned back to face her with more than a hint of resignation. If Ashley had been paying attention, she could have better prepared herself for the conversation that was to follow. But of course, as always, she found herself distracted by Nadia.
The girl was stunning – a 10.0 on the Richter scale. Flawless coffee complexion, striking hazel eyes, and God, there was just something about the way the delicate skin of her neck disappeared beneath her headscarf that made it impossible for Ashley to look away. Sexy incarnate.
"Can we talk for a minute?" Over to the side, Carlin (who wasn't the least bit out of breath from their mini-marathon across the quad, damn her) was eying Nadia's bodyguard. The big burly man was glaring back at her from what was easily two meters of altitude.
Nadia shrugged, carefully avoiding Ashley's eyes. "It would seem that we are talking now." Cute. But Ashley got the distinct impression that this time around, the girl wasn't just playing hard to get.
"It's weird that I haven't seen you around campus," Ashley began. "…Or maybe not, since you never returned any of my messages." And there had been a lot of them, more than Ashley's dignity could bear to stand the thought of. Enough that she had attempted to bury her feelings by jumping right back into a faceless sea of one night stands once she had processed the obvious rejection.
Nadia bit her lip and crossed her arms across her chest defensively. "That would be because I've been avoiding you Ashley."
"And that's what I was hoping to talk to you about." Ashley flashed her signature Davies grin. She wasn't going to let her get off that easy.
For all her attempts at standoffishness, apparently Nadia was not yet immune to the Davies charm. She hesitated, but finally nodded. She turned over to her bodyguard. "Mohammed, can you give us a second?"
The big man cut away from his glaring contest with Carlin long enough to give the ambassador's daughter a curt response in Arabic.
Nadia sighed, responding to him in English. "We're going to be a plain sight – just talking."
Mohammed huffed, but stalked a few meters away to lean against a tree and continue his glare-fest with Carlin. Carlin, for her part, looked the slightest bit triumphant about her superior position until Ashley told her, "You too Sarge."
"Ms. Davies, I don't think…"
Ashley cut her off, pleading ever so slightly with her eyes. "Please give me a little slack here Carlin." After a pause, the Marine nodded before casually moving to stand a comfortable distance away from Nadia's bodyguard. Ashley didn't miss how she rested her right hand on her hip in just the right way so that the Saudi bodyguard could clearly see the holster beneath her jacket.
As much as Ashley would have enjoyed watching the rest of David and Goliath's pissing contest, she needed some answers.
"So. You've been avoiding me since that night." They both knew what night she was talking about. It was a night that, aside from the unfortunate ending in her mother's office and subsequent radio silence from Nadia, Ashley considered one of the best of her life.
Nadia still didn't meet her questioning gaze. "I'd rather not think about that night Ashley." That hurt more than Ashley was willing to admit even to herself. She pressed on anyway.
"Well I can't help thinking about it," Ashley replied. She summoned up her courage. "It meant a lot to me."
Nadia closed her eyes for a moment, taking a breath. "Well it was a mistake for me."
Ashley felt like the wind was knocked out of her. She hadn't quite been prepared for that.
"That's not what you said – before, during or after." She was trying to hard sound like she didn't care, like she had when her mother had questioned her about their relationship that night.
It wasn't was working.
Ashley tried for another tactic: honesty. "I thought… I thought we shared a lot with each other."
And they had. After meeting at a State dinner, and later bumping into one another again during the first week of classes, Ashley had felt like she had really connected with the Saudi Arabian freshman. Aside from the obvious physical attraction and subsequent thrill of the chase, Ashley had been drawn to Nadia because the two of them had much more in common than she ever would have imagined.
They shared a love of history and music, and they had both experienced the harsh demands of life as daughters of prominent conservative politicians, hiding who they really were. Above all, and somewhat in spite of herself, Ashley had found herself drawn to the Saudi's quiet beauty and poise.
Nadia did not respond, electing instead to shuffle the books in her arms.
Ashley pressed on. "I don't understand. You said… you made me feel…Is this about your family?" That was her most likely theory at least, and if it was true, at least it would hurt a little less. "Because I understand what you're afraid of, I really do – you've met my mother- but I thought that maybe we had something worth the risk."
"This is about me Ashley. I… I'm not that kind of person. I strayed from my path. My family doesn't know and has nothing to do with this. I'm lucky Mohammed is so loyal, that he talked to me about his concerns first, rather than to my father." Nadia's calm exterior was breaking down word by word and Ashley could almost see the terror buried beneath.
"See, I would argue that it's about us Nadia." She reached out and barely grazed the soft skin of her cheek with the back of her knuckles. She felt Nadia lean the slightest bit into her touch before she took a lurching step back.
"Having sex doesn't mean that two people are connected." Nadia replied, dodging the issue (and Ashley's gaze) once again.
"It wasn't just the sex to me Nadia – I mean that was great – but it was the other stuff too…"God, Ashley wished that she could just say what she meant, what she was feeling, but it wasn't coming out right.
Ashley knew that she hadn't loved Nadia (whatever 'love' meant), but she had liked her - a lot. She was one of the few nice girls Ashley had ever been with, and no one else had understood about hiding herself like Nadia had. She's trusted Nadia was parts of herself that she usually kept closed off and tightly guarded.
"I didn't like the person I was when I was with you – I was out of control." Nadia was hugging her books against herself even more tightly than before, as if they could serve as a barrier between herself and Ashley.
"You said that you liked that about me – that you didn't have to pretend with me." Ashley was starting to get defensive now. She could see where this was going, and she didn't like it.
"I was misguided. I'm sorry, but I was just using you Ashley." Nadia didn't look like she was enjoying what she was saying, but she was saying it none the less. So much for the nice girls.
Ashley nodded, slowly, deliberately, letting it sink in.
"Using me."
She felt her nails biting into her palms as her hands curled into defensive fists.
"I was your little experiment."
She didn't realize how much her voice had risen. If she could have looked away from Nadia's wavering face, she might have noticed that the people walking past them were starting to slow to see what was going on – to gaze upon the burning wreckage that was Ashley's heart.
"I… I regret that your feelings…" Nadia seemed to recognize that this wasn't going to get her anywhere. She sighed heavily - defeated, resigned.
"I'm just… I'm not like you Ashley."
Why was this always happening to her?
Ashley refused to allow her burning eyes to let out anything but glare. "Well I think that you are lying to yourself."
Nadia swallowed thickly, nodding perhaps subconsciously. "Isn't it easier than lying to the world?"
There it was.
Ashley had to wonder if she was just some sort of magnet for people who only pretended to care.
"Well good luck with that Nadia. Really." Ashley turned on her heel, started walking and didn't look back. She didn't know where she was going, and she really didn't give a damn. People had the good sense to get the hell out of her way.
She didn't even notice that she was about to walk into oncoming traffic until a hand caught hold of the back of her hoodie and jerked her to a stop seconds before a truck barreled across the crosswalk she had just entered.
"What the hell is wrong with you! Didn't you hear me calling you?" Carlin exclaimed, gesturing to the glaring red 'Don't Walk' signal on the other side of the crossing. Her angry concern lasted only as long as it took her to notice the tears streaming down Ashley's face.
The marine's expression softened. She reached up to tuck one of Ashley's wild curls behind her ear before moving to wipe away a tear. "Do you want to talk about…?"
Ashley brushed her hand away cutting, off her question. "No. I don't."
Carlin backed away palms up in surrender, looking somewhat sheepish. "Okay." She turned around to press the button for the signal and the two of them waited for the traffic to stop in silence.
All Ashley wanted to do was to move, to run, but the damn signal wouldn't turn.
After a few moments, she whirled around and somewhat assailed the button herself, pressing it far harder and a few dozen times more than was necessary.
When she finally stilled, she felt Carlin moved to stand closer to her, brushing her shoulder to shoulder.
"You want me to go back there and kick her ass?"
Ashley let out a burst of air she hadn't realized she was holding in. She didn't trust herself to respond, but she did lean over and rest her suddenly weary head against Carlin's shoulder.
They stayed like that until the signal finally turned.
A/N: As always, thanks for reading and for your encouragement.