Chapter 21: Rescue

After she had reduced him to a bloody pulp, with deep gashes torn through his fragile baby like skin, she carefully bathed his formless and bloody body in the sweet milk she had ordered brought to the room before wrapping him in the nine nightshirts she had taken off during their duel of minds.

Exhausted of her terrible efforts, but happy that she had followed the instructions of the old hag without missing a bit, she fell asleep with the now clean body of the Lindorm in her arms.

NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS

Norman stood up and went to the work bench, resting his open hands over the polished wood where several knives he had used in his killing spree were carefully organized in order of size.

"Do you think there is any hope for a creature like me?"

"You're not a creature, Norman. You are a man. You are a man in dire need of help, you need medicines and doctors and nurses watching over you twenty four seven. We can arrange that."

"Could you love someone like me?"

"I don't think that I can."

He growled angrily so she was very fast to explain.

"Norman, listen to me. It's not you. It's never you. It's me. I'm broken, Norman. Something inside me... snapped a long time ago and I can't open up to someone like that anymore. Even if I wanted, I can't. Schizophrenia is a genetic disease and I carry the genes. I might still lose... lose my mind in a couple of years ahead. I can't subject someone to the same torment I went through with my brother. And love is not a switch that one clicks on and off. What I'm saying is... given time... someone could love you like that. The real you, not your appearance or what they think you should be."

Norman turned to her, mad at her dismissing him, "I don't have time! I'm dying!"

"I'm sorry... I'm really sorry, Norman."

"Why can't you love me too?"

"I'm sorry, I can't."

"Why?"

"Because..." Laura sagged against the cuffs, staring sadly at the floor as she admitted in a low voice, hard to hear from our hiding place, "I'm in love with someone else. But we're never meant to be."

Oops, that's new. I hunched forward eager to hear what she could possibly be talking about, and each word she said brought a chill to my heart as well as a deep conviction that I should make things right, because it was now or never.

"It's someone... I've met... during the course of our investigation of your crimes. Funny thing is... He despises me. But then, I was a real bitch to him because I was terrified of... being vulnerable again. I had committed the mistake of sleeping with someone I've worked with before, an instructor at the Academy and... he bragged about it to everyone we knew later on. I was so humiliated and hurt that I've promised myself that I would never let anyone get close to me again. Ever. I hate being vulnerable and he represented everything I've ever wanted in a man and I hated him for rubbing in my face that someone like him could actually exist after the hell I had been through. I couldn't let him get close enough to hurt me. The doubt and uncertainty and everything that comes with it... it's madness, Norman."

Norman took two huge hunting knives from the table, turning to her with them in his hands.

"Then you are suffering just as I am."

Laura gulped, her gaze fixed on the knives pointed to the floor, their blades shining in the faint light of the garage.

"Living is pain, Norman. That's a rule of life. As long as you are alive, something will hurt. You can't escape from that."

Norman started walking towards where she was kneeling on the floor.

"Then I'll end your suffering."

Laura finally let the fear crawl in her voice, shaking as she stared at him terrified.

"Norman, please don't do this."

Norman was almost placid, certain that he was doing a good thing, "I'll stop your pain."

"Norman, please."

"Norman."

"Norman!"

NCIS NCIS NCIS

A shot rang in the garage, followed by three others which soon made us jump out of our hiding places and rush to where Laura and Norman had been. Gibbs had given the signal and Ziva took the shot, dropping him to the floor before we rained his body with our bullets just before he brought the knife down on Laura.

Laura's scream filled the room as we revealed ourselves, hitting my nerves as I immediately rushed to her side and found her twisting against the cuffs, staring at the dead man with horror and pain.

She was sobbing and crying, her whole body shaking in her terror, her eyes moving from Norman to her cuffed wrists as she tried in vain to free herself in order to get close to him.

"Take these off of me, take these off of me." She muttered between sobs, her eyes never wavering from the dead man.

"Relax, I've got you." I took the keys and worked fast on her cuffs and as soon as she was free. She tried to go to Norman, but I stopped her, grabbing her in my arms and feeling her shivering violently as the events of the last few hours took their toll. She finally relented and hugged me, hiding her face on the curve of my neck as she cried.

Gibbs went to check on Norman, finding a small gray eye blinking tiredly at him in the middle of horrifying tumors and a grotesque disfigured face. The malformed lips moved and Gibbs had difficulty to understand at first what he had said so he knelt by the man, after ensuring that both knives were away from his grasp.

Finally he figured out and nodded, "You're welcome."

Norman almost smiled at Gibbs and finally stopped breathing, dying in that cold floor thanks to bullets instead of the horrifying cancer which had stolen his future.

I still held Laura in my arms, feeling her shaking as she tried to articulate sentences, "He... he... was... going to..."

I looked up at Tony and Ziva who had approached us both to check on us and I lightly kissed her curls as I tightened my grip around her body, which was still trembling violently, "I know. I know." I said, one hand caressing her hair as she sobbed in my arms.

"I kept talking ... and talking and I was praying... that you would..."

"I know... you did good. You were buying time. We've heard everything." I've felt her tense up at my words and she immediately tried to get out of my arms, putting some distance between us but I squeezed her and just gave her enough space so I could look into her tear stained face.

"You've... heard ... everything?" She asked terrified, looking at me with those huge green eyes.

I studied her eyes, seeing her fear of rejection, the pain for being an outcast, the shame for her family's past and her absolute terror that one day she would be reduced to the same fate her brother had, being forever institutionalized due to a merciless disease which would render her a prisoner in her own mind.

"Yeah, we... I've heard everything."

One of my hands went to her cheek and as I looked into her eyes, I saw the layers of her protective walls slowly crumbling at my feet as she sobbed her terror in my arms.

"You weren't... su...su... supposed to ... hear that." She said between hiccups, her green eyes searching my face but finding only understanding.

She wiggled, trying to free herself but I wasn't about to let her go. Not after what I had heard and I finally could understand and I see her who she really was, without the masks and layers of her protective barriers she had carefully cultivated during the last god knows how many years.

"You're wrong. Maybe I was."