Author's Note: I know its been a while. I haven't forgot my characters or lost my passion for Covert Affairs in the least. Time is simply not as easy to come by these days for writing. More updates to come as soon as possible. Don't worry friends, I have not forgot you all. Please leave reviews as you read. Not only for me, but for all your favorite fanfiction writers. We writers need the support.

Chapter Twelve

"Building Bridges"

As the weeks passed, Annie and Auggie began to get into a sort of routine. Annie continued to make excruciatingly slow improvements with regaining her strength and trying to live life in complete silence. She was easily frustrated when she had to sleep in the afternoon because she grew tired much more quickly than she had ever done before. Each morning, she and Auggie ate breakfast together, as they worked on their modified version of sign language. Auggie had mastered fingerspelling pretty well, but everything else was still a struggle for him.

Annie had finally begun talking to Auggie more frequently about a month after leaving the hospital. Watching his suffering had been her undoing. He had been very patient with her, only mentioning her not talking the one time, but she knew she was being unfair to him. He had taken off work all this time and simply lived in the silence Annie's presence provided for him. He did odd jobs for Joan, she knew, but for the most part he stayed with her. He helped her with her daily exercises, finally able to work out a system for doing so with basically only a few touches between them to communicate. They also practiced sign language for hours a day, however they did this separately instead of together because Annie's skills was far more advanced than Auggie's. They did practice side by side though, each engrossed in their own skill levels.

Auggie still grew frustrated with how slow his progress was with the whole task. He worked with a tutor three times a week at the School for the Deaf, but he was still struggling to gain mastery over the basics. However, Annie and Auggie were figuring out how to make it work for them. For Auggie's part, he always made sure he was close to Annie if he needed to sign something to her. It was often inconvenient to always have to take the time to find her in a room, but it was necessary. On the flip side, if Annie wanted to sign to Auggie something that she couldn't say, she would go over and tap his hand. Then he would hold his hands out for her to sign into. It usually took a few tries for the message to go through, but in truth it was getting better for both of them. Auggie would sign to Annie and she would verbalize about half the time now, but always signed to him as well.

Annie was patient with him. She understood that he was struggling to learn even rudimentary signs, but the fact that he was trying meant the world to her. They were now rarely very far from one another. They would each warn the other if they were leaving the room for a long period of time or if on the rare occasion Auggie left the apartment. They still used their phones or email to communicate longer messages, but they used this much less frequently than before they began learning sign language.

Now Auggie felt a new connection with Annie that he had never had before. Feeling her hands under his, communicating effortlessly with him was amazing. The smoothness of her hands under his, the stream of the words that flowed from her hands into his seemed almost natural for her. Even if he didn't always understand what she said, the level of intimacy between them in these moments were special to him. At times he had to have her repeat things, but at least "again" was a sign he knew (and used often). He was glad to not have to constantly have a piece of technology between them. He was struggling to learn sign language, but she showed him new things every day and each day they seemed to be able to communicate just a little better.

Auggie had been wanting to ask Annie an important question for quite some time now. That evening, as they sat on the couch together, he finally mustered the courage to do so.

He placed his hand on her shoulder, their usual signal that he had something to ask her.

"I have a question," he signed to her, signing each word instead of abbreviating the sentence as American Sign Language grammar would have done. His tutor had thought it would be best for him use English syntax and focus on learning signs for words instead of trying to learn the whole ASL grammatical structure.

"Yes?" She signed against his open hands

He sat for a moment, unsure if he knew all of the signs for the question he wanted to ask. He knew he didn't know most of the words, but he would just have to do the best he could.

"Annie," he began using the name sign for her she had taught him the week before. "Will you learn Braille?" he asked, fingerspelling the last word since he didn't know the sign for Braille yet.

Annie sat for a few moments thinking about his question, she sat so long, he signed it again, unsure if she had seen him the first time.

Annie felt in awe of him. She was already amazed by his determination to improve their communication by taking on the incredible challenge of learning sign language, now he was asking her if he could open up his world to her as she had opened hers to him. She felt honor that he wanted her to learn.

"Of course," Annie said aloud, surprising Auggie as he'd expected her to sign to him.

"Are you sure?" he signed to her.

"Yes," she again spoke to him unable to contain her excitement. She had always been mesmerized by his hands as she watched them scroll across the Braille files he was given or along the Braille display as he read the text from his computer, but she had not had the time to learn Braille nor had she presumed it would be as easy for her as most language came to her. Braille wasn't a language, it was a way of expressing English. From her understanding, less than 10 percent of blind adults used Braille now; it was a staggering statistic to her and one she had heard Auggie speak about numerous times.

For the first time in what seemed like months, Annie saw a genuine smile on Auggie's face. She was glad to see him happy, if just for a few moments. She brought their heads together and touched his forehead to her own in one of their favorite positions. Holding each other this way had been a way for them to connect when she was so lost and confused by everything in the hospital. No words or gestures had been needed then, they had just needed to be with each other. She hadn't had the strength then to barely look up at him, but knowing he was there had got her through what turned out to be the hardest challenge of her life. She was only just now, a month and a half later, beginning to get the sense that things could be okay again.

"We should add Braille lessons into our day," Auggie signed incorrectly, but Annie got to message.

"Great!" Annie exclaimed a bit louder than she would have if she could have heard herself.

Auggie was glad to hear the enthusiasm in her voice, he knew it was genuine. Her voice now never showed any falseness to it. His guess was that since she couldn't hear it, it was harder for her to fake emotions as people often did. It was purely what she was feeling and right now, she truly seemed excited about the possibility of being able to communicate with him through Braille. He had to admit that his reasons for wanting her to learn were a bit selfish. He just didn't want to feel inadequate to communicate with her all the time. With sign language, he constantly felt like she was having to communicate slower with him, dumbing things down into smaller terms or signs for him to understand. He didn't want that to be the only way they could communicate. Asking her to consistently speak when he knew she wasn't comfortable with it was something he avoided. He appreciated anytime he heard her voice now, but didn't depend on it. And he certainly didn't want to constantly have a piece of machinery between them.

If they both knew Braille fluently, they could actually write one another notes, leave the grocery list on the counter and they could both read it. Using Braille wouldn't necessarily help with their everyday conversations, but it would help in other ways. He also was glad it was something he already knew. He could teach her something instead of being the constant student between them. While she was learning sign language as well, it was obvious that they were on completely different playing fields.

Annie and Auggie almost immediately incorporated Braille lessons into their daily routine. Annie was surprised at first at how simple the concept seemed for Braille, but after learning the first twenty six letters of the alphabet and trying to learn grade 2 Braille, she began to struggle significantly. The cells for words, prefixes, suffixes, and other parts of words began blurring together as she tried to master it. There didn't seem to be a pattern to the way Braille cells were made as they represented things in grade 2. In grade 1 she had quickly picked up on the pattern and been able to memorize the cells that way. After the first two weeks, she still only had the first twenty six letters of the alphabet mastered.

Auggie was surprised at how much he enjoyed teaching her "his" language. He had never tried to teach someone Braille before-mainly because no one had ever expressed an interest in learning, but now, he found that he almost relished in thinking about each day's lesson. He tried to come up with little games for them to do, had daily word challenges for Annie to complete, and made a matching activity for her to try each day using objects around their apartment.

"You are improving," Auggie signed to her at the end of their 10th lesson. She was getting faster at reading grade 1, even though grade 2 was still difficult for her.

"I'm still not very fast," Annie verbalized to him from across the breakfast bar. It was now habit for him to sign to her and her to verbalize most of the answers, even though she also signed the answers whether they were close enough for him to feel them or not. They both found it beneficial for him if she signed as much to him as she could. So if at all possible, she signed into his hands. This way he was able to learn signs he didn't know and practice his receptive skills that otherwise he wasn't able to practice since she was the only deaf person he knew. At times this made conversations stop completely if he didn't know a sign she used and she took a break from their conversation to explain it, but neither of them minded these pauses.

"That's okay, you're learning. That's what matters to me. No one has ever wanted to learn this for me," Auggie signed to her the best he could, he still often grew frustrated with using sign language. He was never positive his messages were clear or that he was doing signs correctly. She corrected him often, but he still felt uncertain much of the time.

"You're learning my language; it's only fair that I learn yours, I know it has been difficult for you. You should know you're doing a very good job with signing. I know you aren't always sure if you are signing correctly. I'll tell you when you aren't though," Annie told him quietly. She was getting better about being able to control the volume she spoke with.

"I need someone else to practice with," Auggie told her after a moment of trying to remember how to sign practice.

"We don't know many people who know sign language," Annie both signed and voiced to him as they sat on the couch. It was easier for them to communicate if they were near each other. Their phones were also always near them as well. They had both found that if they couldn't be in touching range of each other that they both at least wanted their phones next to them so they could communicate with each other in that way.

Even as the communication bridge was being gaped, Auggie worried that he would never truly be good enough with sign language to be enough for her. It frustrated him that he couldn't see her as she needed him to. Of course, she would never tell him this, but he knew it would be so much easier for her to just be able to sign across to the room to him that she was going to take a nap instead of having to walk around the apartment wherever he was to tell him. It was at least easier that she would talk to him some. But still he knew this was challenging for her.

One evening after she had gone to bed, Auggie had a thought. He wasn't sure it would work, but he thought it was worth a try anyway. After sending the email, he felt hopeful that might finally have a viable solution for them.