Chapter Nineteen

They told me you were no good
I know you'll take care of all my needs
You're the same kind of bad as me
-Tom Waits, Bad as Me

As time passed and I grew more confident in my skills, I also felt more confident about my role within the Joker's crew. I started getting to know the boys, and quickly realized that he hadn't been exaggerating when he said that most of them were batshit insane. I was sure he had plenty of perfectly sane recruits living in their own homes, on call whenever he needed them, but I rarely saw them, definitely not enough to get to know them. There were a lot of guys, though, who just didn't seem to have anywhere else to go, and these were the ones I had the time to study. Of these, all of them had problems, and some were much worse than others.

Timmy and/or Tommy walked with a limp and had a dissociative identity disorder. Two personalities lived inside of the head of the beat-up kid—Tommy was the brave one, the one who would actually talk to you, while Timmy was the wounded, cowardly animal that would show up protectively when Tommy got picked on, the one who would snarl fearfully and spit poison at others until left alone. Dissociative identity disorders were extremely rare, and the therapist in me was utterly fascinated, though I managed to avoid staring most of the time.

Jake had mild obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifested largely in the way his gun was handled. He wouldn't use other guns, he was constantly cleaning and re-cleaning his, and no one else was allowed to touch it or he'd go into panicked rages.

Javier, the henchman who'd spoken out for me on the day of the Stephen incident, suffered from bipolar disorder (and was decidedly not open to drugs). Chaz was a paranoid schizophrenic who heard voices constantly, except for when J was around. Frank was bulimic and dealt with frequent panic attacks when we weren't out on jobs (which, ironically, was when he was at his steadiest). I believed Roger was autistic, though I couldn't really pin it down—I suspected a form of Aspergers, since he showed very little interest in anything but bombs and wouldn't talk to anyone but our charismatic leader.

At first, these men were wary of me. They were reluctant to be seen talking to me—the Joker hadn't been exaggerating when he said he was a jealous man, and if he caught a guy so much as looking at me, that guy was risking his temper, depending on his mood at the time. So, I started working on them when he was gone.

It took a while, but considering the fact that I was still "in training" and therefore rarely included in their jobs, I had time on my hands. It helped, I think, that I had somewhat reluctantly shouldered a domestic role—believe me, I was aware that this put me directly in danger of being dismissed as "the little woman," kept around to cook and make up beds and wash dishes, but after being confronted with what felt like the dozenth hissing roach in a day and seeing that these guys' idea of cooking dinner was either to opt for McDonalds or to throw a hunk of ground beef in a pot and hope for the best, I decided to clean first and tackle gender bias later. However, I wasn't going to do it alone.

After asking the Joker's permission (he was busy scribbling furiously on a train schedule and just grunted in response, which I took as an affirmative), I raided one of the many nooks in the apartment that contained a wad of cash and took several of the guys on a shopping excursion—J still didn't like me to leave the place on my own. I got a boatload of cleaning materials and a lot of food and brought it all back home. I bullied them into helping me carry everything upstairs, and then I bullied them into helping me clean. For a while, the air was thick with roach poison, lemon pledge, and relentless bitching from the guys who apparently liked living in six inches of filth, but when the dust cleared (quite literally)… well, it was still a condemned apartment, but at least it was cleaner, and at least I didn't feel like I was going to get salmonella just from stepping into the kitchen.

Inevitably, once the living conditions improved, so did the henchmen's attitudes. Several were borderline cheerful now and most of them would talk politely to me. I even got Javier to start helping me practice fighting when the Joker was gone—I had to be careful not to trigger a manic state, since he was relentlessly unfair at that point, but compared to the Joker, his mood swings were a piece of cake.

Things were coming right along with the henchmen. I got along with them; they (for the most part) got along with me (or ignored me, but that was definitely an improvement on trying to assault me whenever the boss wasn't around). However, I had to learn fairly quickly not to get attached.

I was gradually working my way through the kitchen, giving it a more thorough cleaning than the whirlwind job earlier, and I was finishing the last cabinet one day when I heard a commotion making its way down the hallway outside the door. I looked up right as the boys burst in.

The Joker was at the lead, a look of exaggerated disappointment on his face as he shook his head. The rest of the guys were behind him, all clamoring to be heard over the others. J strode a few paces in my direction before stopping and whirling around, halting the rest of the guys in their tracks.

"I've told ya once," he said, his voice treble, embellished for effect. "Don't make me tell you again." He raised his eyebrows, smacking his lips resignedly as every single man raised his voice again—my brow furrowed in confusion as I looked from one face to another, trying to piece together the problem and failing in the face of the clamor. "Ee-nough," he called finally, after letting them go on for a minute.

A dead, eerie silence fell.

The Joker blinked slowly, parted his lips, and asked, "Where is he?"

Everything was still for a moment, and then the small group shuffled around, pushing Frank to the forefront. There were tear-tracks down his face, saliva dripping down his chin. The Joker eyed him impassively.

"Fuh-rank," he said lowly, turning the word somehow into a caress as he reached out with a gloved hand and patted the man on the side of the head. His voice rose in pitch, curious and innocuous as he asked, "You know the rules."

"I didn't know," gasped Frank, hyperventilating. "I didn't know. I swear. I swear."

The Joker stared at him, looking, for all intents and purposes, like a disappointed father whose son has just promised that he has no idea how the weed got into his sock drawer. He cocked his head, clicked his tongue, and then lunged forward and grabbed Frank by the collar, dragging him forward me.

"'Scuse me, doll," he said as they struggled past me towards the oven. I made no reply, simply turned to watch, wide-eyed, at the unfolding events. A month ago, I would have been shrieking and struggling to stop whatever was about to happen. Now, I was just fascinated. Oh, there was a tiny feeling of horror in the pit of my stomach (I liked Frank, after all, and I didn't want to see anything bad happen to him) but living with the Joker had a desensitizing effect overall.

J dragged Frank to the oven, which he pulled open with one smooth jerk. I realized what was about to happen and should have hidden my eyes, but I was far too curious.

Almost lovingly, the Joker J fitted Frank's head between the oven door and the oven, and then slowly, methodically, started to slam the door on Frank's head, pulled the door back, and slammed it again, over… and over… and over. His movements sped up, grew in intensity, and even though Frank stopped screaming after the third or fourth slam, the Joker kept going, moving so fast that his arms practically blurred. He had started out chuckling softly, but as he went on, the laughter grew to frenzied heights, genuine howls of absolutely pure mirth, sounding over and over and over again.

Finally, it was over, and I realized that I was the only one still standing there—the other men had slipped out of the door, unable or unwilling to keep watching the gore. I realized that my adrenaline was pumping fast, and I let out a trembling breath, crossing my arms tightly to anchor myself to earth and leaning back against the counter, trying to contain my shaking.

J straightened up, letting go of Frank's collar and the door simultaneously. There were flecks of blood in his hair and on his face, and he reached up with a gloved hand to clean it off, only to realize that the glove was covered with blood as well. Rolling his eyes impatiently, he stripped away the gloves, threw them on the counter, and smoothed his hair back from his face. He then turned his attention to me.

"Uh, ya know," he said, licking his lips rapidly, "you didn't need to stick… around for that."

I focused on his face, ignoring the soggy mess that used to be Frank, and then looked straight ahead again. I heard him give a low chuckle, a menacing sound, different in pitch from the hysterical giggles that made up his normal laughter. He then stalked over to me, stepping right in front of me, his now-bare hands dropping low, inching up under my shirt to rest on my hips. I couldn't help it; I shivered involuntarily at the feel of his rough skin and looked up at him briefly.

He lowered his head, his lids dropping drowsily over his eyes as he observed me. I knew that the whole thing was a manipulation—the bedroom eyes, the skin-on-skin touching, his proximity—but I couldn't summon up the disgust I needed to in order to push him away.

"Ya know," he said softly, leaning in closer, a clump of his matted hair falling past his ear to frame our faces, shutting us off from the rest of the world, "you just keep surprising me, Harley. Most people, they, uh, they would've freeeeaked. Not you."

I knew he was just flattering me. I knew he was saying it all for the purpose of keeping me under control—but I wanted so desperately to believe that he meant it that I allowed myself to think it could be true. And really, who knows? It could have been. One thing about the Joker is that you can never say for certain what he's thinking, what his intentions are. I raised my eyes to his again, unwillingly. It was just in time to catch a smile.

"I didn't think it was possible," he murmured, dropping his head a little further, his lips just barely brushing mine as he spoke. "But, ya know… you really are the girl for me."

And, just like that, my tension evaporated and I laughed, as he must have known I would. It was suddenly too easy to ignore the body just a couple of feet to my right as I threw my arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

He tolerated it for a few seconds before pulling back. I didn't mind; his moods were incredibly shifty and I knew that often he simply had no desire for physical contact. I suspected it made him somewhat uncomfortable, especially in just day-to-day life, but would never voice that thought aloud.

I nuzzled into his chest, hoping he'd allow me to stay for a moment, and he didn't push me away, absently patting me on the back as though lost in thought. I realized that this was a prime opportunity to ask him for a favor I'd been meaning to mention. It had been three weeks since Pam vanished, and I felt the need to do something, acknowledge it somehow.

"J?"

"Mm."

"Can I go out?"

He was still for a second, and then leaned back, away from my embrace, looking down on me inscrutably. "Out where?" he purred, sounding deceptively calm.

My eyes skittered evasively to the side. I immediately resolved to tread carefully; that tone didn't spell good news. "I, um, there's a project I'm sort of planning."

I should have read his silence better and should not have taken my eyes off him for a second. Maybe then I could have anticipated the hand that came for me with cobra-like speed, whipping up to lock around my jaw, forcing my head up. I followed the cue and met his eyes right away, unwilling to show any signs of defiance after what I'd just seen him do, and in them I saw a hard little glint of suspicion. He stared at me for a second, searching, then, very patiently, he said, "Project?"

I squashed a little angry voice in my head that suggested he thought I was going to the cops, that after all this time he thought I'd betray him, and instead hastened to clarify. "Pam's been missing for three weeks now. There's this forest that she really liked that they were going to tear down, and she was really upset about it…"

His eyes glazed over. I was losing him. I hastened to get to the good part: "And I was thinking about maybe blowing up some of their equipment or stealing a cement truck or, I don't know, something in honorarium. I wanted to drive out today to sort of scope it out, get some ideas."

His face changed then, just a little bit, but I thought that this new expression was somewhat better than the cold suspicion of earlier. He seemed almost amused, but I began to second-guess that assessment when he just continued to stare at me.

Finally, though, abruptly, he let go of my jaw, and I felt the ache in the bones where his fingers had been digging in, reached up and rubbed softly at the red marks that had surely formed. "Hey, doesn't matter to me," he said. "Take a coupla the boys with you, though. Wouldn't want the policccee catchin' up with you."

"Of course not," I said, positively glowing with excitement. I popped up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek before spinning away, heading for the door.

He caught my wrist before I got away and jerked me back roughly. "Hey," he said harshly, and I looked up at him, wondering what I'd done to piss him off.

He fished in his pocket, pulled out a rusty potato peeler, frowned at it, shoved it back in, and dug out another knife—small, sheathed in black. "Here," he said, pressing it into my hand. "Any of the boys looks funny at you… you cut his eyeballs out."

I stared blankly at him for a second, and then, when I realized that I was not in trouble and what he said registered with me, I broke out into a grin. "You are a sweetheart," I told him, ignoring the slightly puzzled furrow to his brow—I guess that endearment was a new one to him—and I turned away. This time, he let me go.

I chose Javier and Chaz to go with me—Javier because I trusted him as much as I could trust any of the men who worked for the Joker, despite his condition, and Chaz because I was in no mood to cut out any eyeballs and I didn't think I needed to worry about him looking funny at me. They both grumbled a little, but I'd been around for a few weeks and many of the henchmen (at least the ones who lived with us) had realized by now that it was easier to just give me my way than to argue. They eventually shut up and got into the car.

I think I'd earned a certain level of respect among the men , or at least a degree of willing tolerance—I was a girl, after all, but I'd managed to last this long with the Joker. In most cases, the fact that I was female would probably just be cause for more scorn, but with J, things were a little different—he didn't really discriminate much between male and female when he was in a murderous mood. I think it impressed them that I had henceforth managed to escape a show of any real brutality.

We took my car, and I drove. I was in high spirits—this was my first real outing since I'd left Arkham to join J, and I realized as I drove that I had been feeling a bit suffocated. I kept an eye out for anyone I might know, but the city was huge and I was confident that I could stay anonymous.

It was cloudy, wet, and miserable out, and as we passed a bank sign displaying the date, I realized that Halloween was the very next day. The steady decrease in temperature hadn't escaped my notice, but I had sort of lost track of the days. I was surprised now to realize how much time had flown past.

Much like my most recent visit to those woods, this one did not go as planned.

I drove up expecting to see heavy machinery and operators blocking the entrance. I saw the trucks and equipment, but I realized as I drew closer that there were no people nearby.

I frowned as I peered through the windshield. "Javier, what day is it?"

"October thirtieth."

"That's the date, I mean—is it Saturday?"

"Um—no, Wednesday. Why?"

"That's what I thought," I mumbled as I pulled over. Javier looked alarmed.

"What are we doing? I thought you said this was a drive-by sort of thing, that you just wanted to check the place out."

I gestured through the windshield towards the work site. "That look like early afternoon on a Wednesday to you?"

He squinted through the windshield and then looked defensively at me. "Maybe they're taking lunch."

"All of them? At the same time? At two o'clock in the afternoon?"

"Maybe the project got shut down."

I stared for another second, then muttered, "Maybe it did." Without further ceremony, I reached for my seatbelt, and Javier's eyes followed me, widening as I unbuckled.

"What are you doing?"

I glanced at him as Chaz emitted a soft whimper from the backseat. "Going to investigate." He moved, presumably to stop me, but I darted fast out of the car before he could do anything. Once out, I ducked my head back in. "Nobody said you had to come."

"You're going to go prowl around a construction site in broad daylight?"

"Of course not," I said, giving him a playfully offended glare, and I waited for him to relax before saying, "I'm going into the woods."

"What?"

I shut the door abruptly, muffling his protests, then waved through the windshield and turned, jogging off to the barrier blocking off the road. By the time I reached it, Javier and Chaz were struggling out of the car to follow. I probably should have felt bad for giving them the catch-22 (they could accompany me into the forest of doom or risk telling J that his girl had been eaten alive by plants), but I didn't. They were just being ridiculous. I had no qualms about going into the territory—I'd done worse in the past month.

I wriggled over the barrier and approached the tree line, which was much reduced since the last time I'd been here. Still, there was a considerable amount of forest left, and it loomed high up above me, admittedly looking rather forbidding—the black trees had lost most of their leaves in the cold, and the remaining ones were a damp brown, hardly communicating welcome. Javier and Chaz, drawing closer, were cursing, but I wasn't afraid—Pam had loved this forest; that was enough to convince me I'd be all right (natural ineptitude for plants notwithstanding). Before the guys could catch up and try to talk me out of the idea, I plunged into the woods.

I heard them muttering more curses as they followed, and it struck me that perhaps this wasn't exactly a sane course of action to take. So, what, the usual construction workers take a day off so you decide the answer must be in the forest? The thought amused me, and I chuckled even as I wrestled my way towards several thorny, whiplike branches that seemed determined to catch and hold my black jacket in place. In truth, I wasn't expecting to find anything. It just seemed an apt action at that very moment—the workers were gone, so, for Pam's dear, defiant sake, I would slip into the forest one last time.

Still hadn't ruled out blowing up their equipment, though.

What I didn't anticipate, though, was breaking out of the woods onto a trail Pam and I had often used to wind our way into the very heart of the woods and seeing a redheaded woman sitting on a decaying bench off to the side.

Holy shit, it's Pam.

No, that's stupid, it's just some other woman with red hair—

Shit, that is Pam.

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head hard, thinking yep, you've finally really lost it, your delusions have given way to straight-up visual hallucinations, but when I opened my eyes, she was still there, and she was staring at me, but she didn't speak or otherwise move. It was… eerie.

I twisted around to Javier, who had just managed to fight his way out from the trees. "Quick reality check, Jav—there's a woman sitting on that bench, right?"

He glanced over and started back a step, which was all the answer I needed. I nodded. "Red hair? Sexy?"

"Um…"

I turned around. Pam had risen, suddenly on her guard at Javier's arrival, and Chaz stumbling out from the woods whimpering a second later didn't seem to help anything. I put a hand behind me, gesturing for them to stay, and then took a few steps forward, towards her.

"Pam?"

She stared at me, but couldn't seem to stop glancing at the two men behind me. "Red," I said gently, trying to control my suddenly-racing heart, "is that really you?"

"Harley," Javier said in warning.

"Shh, I know what I'm doing," I said impatiently.

"Harley."

It was Pam that had spoken, and I found myself almost tearful at the sound of her voice. It had been far too long; far too much had transpired since our parting at the airport—for her as well as me, I was sure—but the normalcy of that voice, the confidence with which she spoke my name… it almost killed me.

"Yeah," I said softly. There was silence as we regarded one another, both with a certain amount of wonder. She looked… older, somehow. Not aged or craggy, just… there was a palpable difference in her face, evidence of some great change. I noticed, too, that her skin looked strange. Pam exemplified the wry saying "I don't tan, I burn" and her skin had always been rosy pale, totally typical for people with hair of her color, but now it looked… olive-toned, which gave her appearance a sort of etherealness that it never had before.

"Pam," I said, aware that the silence was stretching too far, worries multiplying in my mind as I realized how strange this whole thing was, "where have you been?"

"Who are they?" she asked sharply, jerking her chin at my escort. I turned my head to see that the guys were both looking borderline hostile—Javier's fists were clenched and Chaz was rubbing his nose furiously.

"Guys, settle down," I told them, turning again back to Pam. "They're with me. It's okay."

"I don't know them."

I stared at her, the therapist's mind making several quick analyses that all pointed to trauma. After a second, without taking my eyes off of her, I said, "Guys, can you give us a second?"

"Absolutely not," Javier said adamantly.

Pam's stare sharpened into a glare, and I whirled around quickly, but Javier was already talking again. "You think we're going to waltz off into fucking Grimm's Fairy Tales and leave you here to get killed and eaten by this crazy lady? The Joker would fry us alive."

"This crazy lady just so happens to be my best friend—" I began.

"So it's true?" Pam interrupted, and I couldn't help but wryly note that she sounded more like herself than ever.

"—and there is no way she would ever hurt me," I continued.

"I'm sorry, but the Joker?"

"I've known her a lot longer than I've known you guys, and while, believe me, I know you have incentive to make sure I'm okay, hers is better."

"What, better than the fear of being fed your own intestines?" Javier asked sarcastically.

I heard footsteps crunching through the dead leaves behind me, saw Javier tense and take a quick step forward, and then Pam grabbed my elbow and turned me to face her. "Tell me you're not bullying Joker henchmen, because I'm not sure I can deal with the implications of what's going on if you are," she said flatly in the familiar big sister tone I loved to hate.

It was the bossy tone that did it. I twisted in her grasp and threw my arms around her. "I knew it was you," I crooned into her ear as she slowly hugged me back—she was obviously uncomfortable, but again, trauma. Baby steps. Anyway, I was no stranger to non-reciprocated embraces of late.

When I finally came away, I found that my cheeks were wet in the frigid air. Momentarily dismissing Javier and Chaz—I doubted they were going to cooperate with me, anyway—I looked her earnestly in the eyes and said, "I talked to the police. They said you were dead. They said—they said Woodrue killed you."

Her eyes, which had softened just a little as a result of the hug, hardened to flint again. "Woodrue," she said, very clearly, "tried."

I stared at her for a second, and then took her hands, glancing sharply over my shoulder at the guys before leading her to the bench and sitting with her. "Tell me," I said.

She did. She told me everything, stopping and starting again frequently in the beginning as she tried to get her bearings, but her voice gathered strength as she went along. She told me about Woodrue's increasingly erratic behavior, his irrational outbursts in front of their colleagues as she tried to both manage him and conduct the business that had brought them to Egypt in the first place.

By the time she reached the point in the story where Woodrue made sexual advances on her outside of her hotel room towards the end of their trip, her voice had turned so icy cold that even I felt a little uneasy. Her swift rejection of him, accompanied by a slap that she said felt necessary and that she hoped would knock some sense into him, was met with angry laughter, and then he was jabbing something sharp into her neck.

She'd shoved him away, and the way he turned and left immediately without fighting her further drove home the fact that whatever he'd injected her with was not going to have positive effects. Already feeling cold in her toes and fingertips, she managed to get her hotel door open, and she rushed straight to her luggage. "I was keeping the prototype of the anti-toxin I've been working on in my room," she explained levelly, looking straight into my eyes. "With the way Woodrue had been behaving, I didn't trust it at the lab; I thought he might get hold of it and destroy it, or worse, take it and take credit for it. It was untested, of course, and I had no idea what he'd put in me, but I knew it was my only chance at surviving. So I took it."

Already starting to black out, she'd managed to administer an injection of the antitoxin with shaking hands, getting a syringe full into her bloodstream before dropping flat on the bed. She came to an hour later. The rest of the antitoxin had spilled out over the carpet, gone forever, but what she'd managed to get into her body had saved her.

"More than that, when I woke up," she said, "I felt fine. Better than fine. And my mind was so… so clear. I knew that any accusation I had against him wouldn't hold up in court—even if I got the bloodwork done immediately, he could easily say that I'd poisoned myself in order to effectively test the antitoxin and simply decided to lie about him to clear the way for my career. He'd get off easy, I'd be vilified and blacklisted, and worst of all, some day, he'd do it to some other girl unfortunate enough to be stationed beneath him. So I took some towels from the bathroom, found a knife I'd been using for food, and cut… here." She held her arm, pushed up her jacket, and traced a slim finger down her inner forearm, along a long, fresh pink scar.

"I got blood everywhere. Probably splashed a pint of it all over the hotel room before tying a tourniquet, wrapping the injury, and leaving. Oddly enough, I felt… completely fine, like I hadn't just bled all over the place. I only took my cash and a jacket to cover my arms, took a cab to the next town, and rented a room in a hostel and lay low for a while until I crossed paths with a businessman from Gotham with a private plane. I got him to take me home. And… here I am."

I stared at her for a long, silent moment, sensing that there was more to the story than just Oh, some rich guy from Gotham was nice enough to take a total stranger with no money home, but something about her demeanor made me feel reluctant to push the issue. She met my eyes again, shook her hair away, and said, "He was nice enough to offer me a place to stay for the time being, but Gotham got so loud that I had to come out here, where, lo and behold…" Her voice dropped a little bit, sending a chill down my spine, and I remembered that I still didn't know why the workers outside of the woods were missing.

Before I could ask, though, she went on. "I mean, imagine it. I got home to find out that Woodrue went missing—as did, might I add, my best friend, whose coworkers seemed convinced was abducted by the Joker despite the fact that the police seem relatively convinced she was in fact murdered by the Joker, that they just hadn't searched the right dumpster in the Narrows yet. I also found out that the common factor in both those theories, by the way, happened to have escaped from the insane asylum while I was gone."

"Um," I said. "Abducted is a strong word. So is insane."

She stared at me, shook her head, and said, "I'm never leaving Gotham again."

"Oh, come on," I said with a touch of exasperation. "It's not that bad."

"Not that bad?" she demanded, eyes flashing, and pointed sharply at me. "Harley, look at you!"

Oops. I'd forgotten about the evidence of bite marks on my neck, the bruises forming on my jaw and the little cuts on my face and throat from our knife fights, but as soon as she pointed them out, I felt them again, aching almost pleasantly in the cold air. I breathed a silent prayer of thanks that I was wearing a jacket that covered up my mutilated arm and that my clothes covered any number of cuts and bruises from the sparring sessions.

"It's not what it looks like."

Her lip hitched in a snarl. "You fell down the stairs?"

I stared at her, brows shooting down thunderously. She wants to be judgy, fine. I gestured at my face, my clear eyes and straight nose. "You see any black eyes, Red? Any split lips or missing teeth? He doesn't beat me up."

"So those marks appeared out of nowhere, then," she remarked sarcastically.

I looked intently at her, unblinking, and pushed my hair back from my neck, making the shape of the bruises a bit more evident. "You want details about these marks, is that it?"

She looked stunned for a second, but comprehension swiftly dawned in her eyes and she gave a little huff, looking away from me into the woods. After a second of brooding silence wherein I steadily watched her and she steadily watched the trees, she said abruptly, "You know, I've had girlfriends that dated assholes before, but I think you win the award this time, dear."

I shook my head sulkily, finally glancing away from her. "You don't even know him."

"Oh, so I should get to know the psychopathic murdering terrorist before placing judgment on him? How very politically correct of you."

"It's done," I said sharply, vaguely disturbed by the poison in her tone, which I'd never heard before—at least, not directed at me. She shot me a glance, and, clearly picking up on my discomfort, softened.

"I… I just don't understand," she said, shoulders relaxing minutely as she released a long sigh. "I leave and everything's normal. I come back… and it's all gone to hell. What happened?"

I touched her hand gently. "It's always been like this, Red," I said softly. "You know that as well as I do. We just… we had constructs that helped us cope, but those have been taken away. You think I don't see that you've been traumatized?" She shot me a swift look and I offered her a small, inoffensive smile. "You can take the shrink out of the asylum," I quipped, trying to make light of it. She didn't smile.

"Seriously, Pam," I said, letting the smile drop. "You're flinching from the touch, you haven't quit glancing and glaring at the guys since we got here, and you're in the middle of a condemned forest in late October instead of at home trying to readjust to normalcy. Are you really sure that whatever happened to you over there is any less serious than what happened to me?"

She glanced at the guys again, brows knitting together in a sort of frustrated bemusement, and suddenly, she leaned in close, her hair brushing my face as she hissed into my ear. "I don't know what's wrong with me," she confessed, all in a rush. "I'm the same person but it's all so different. Everything's different, it's like it's all rotted in a month, but it's the same and… I just don't know what to do."

I put my hands on her shoulders, and she leaned back a little to look at me, looking severely disturbed. "It's like I said," I told her clearly. "It's always been that way. We just had to get knocked in the head to see that. Literally and figuratively," I teased, but her frown just deepened.

"I have no idea how to cope with it all," she confessed, voice low.

The starkness of the reversal was not lost on me. Pam had always been the counselor, the voice of reason, but here she was, sounding more lost than I'd ever heard her—and for once, I felt equipped to help.

I reached forward, pulling her into my arms and hugging her as tightly as I could. "It's okay," I murmured. "I'll help you get through this. I promise."