Chapter 19: What hides deep beneath

Each shedding of layers became more difficult than the last. Yet, the Lindorm continued, until he was just a bloodied formless mass on the floor after he had shed nine skins and his bride had taken off nine snow white nightshirts.

Yet, there was still another nightshirt yet to be taken off.

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"If she had really loved you... She wouldn't have left. Not when you needed her the most."

"What do you know about such kind of love? You are just trying to save yourself."

Laura rested her head on her cuffed hands, sighing loudly as she considered her past and her choices. "No, I'm not. I happen to know how it is when bad things happen and people leave you on your own."

Norman turned to her, deadly knife in his hand, studying her under the faint light coming from the upper window, "You're lying to me."

"I'm not. Please, please... listen to me." Laura closed her eyes and decided to take the chance, opening a door in her mind that she had locked a long time ago, thrown away the key and had refused to even mutter out loud for years. "My brother."

The hideous man stopped, the kitchen knife that he had used to gut three people right at her eye level, just a few feet away from her.

"I loved … my brother. He was... schizophrenic. He had always been. He was seven years older than me and despite his problems... I've loved him."

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We could heard the snippets of the conversation happening in the main hall, so we approached with caution not willing to put Laura in jeopardy. Gibbs motioned to Ziva to go around and look for another angle for a shot.

We took position on the exits of the room.

"Do you have a visual?" Gibbs whispered in his radio, not willing to be heard by the couple talking in the other room just beyond the door.

"Negative." Ziva said as she climbed to the second floor of the garage, towards the offices, eager to get a better view for her shot.

Gibbs took a chance and opened the door to the main hall and crawled throw the small opening, letting only a small ray of light escape the room. He took position at the back behind an old Ford, from where he could hear and see clearly both Laura and Norman.

Tony and I entered the room and hid behind another car to the left, taking quick glances of them talking just a few steps away from us.

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"My brother, he had... good and bad moments. More bad than good. My memories of him are marked by long absences... the times he had to be institutionalized because he was... aggressive towards my parents. But never to me. Never to me. I was his princess." Laura's voice took a dreamy quality, as she remembered a long gone past when her belief in a fairer world was still intact, "He would sing to me. He had a beautiful voice."

Laura sagged against the pipe she was handcuffed, crying quietly as she slowly narrated her past to the killer who she believed would end her life.

"He hated my parents." She sniffed and wiped her nose on her hand, ignoring the mess she made on her make up. "He hated that they sent him away from me. That they sent him to that awful place where he was kept as an animal."

Norman sighed, went to the work table after a chair and brought it closer to where Laura was cuffed. He sat down on it and started to play with the knife in his hands, staring at it with fascination as he questioned her further.

"What happened to him?"

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My heart clenched as the veil from my eyes was finally lifted, the pieces of the puzzle finally fit and the whole picture made sense in bright Technicolor before my mind. I felt Tony's gaze on me and I blushed deeply as I was reminded of how I treated her, how hurtful I had been towards her and how she had reacted.

She was right, people always have reasons that justify their reactions towards things, but knowing their reasons might not be what we expected them to be.

It was no wonder that she was so skittish.