Chapter Nine: In Full Transparency

"Greg."

Although her tone was soft, he twitched in surprise when her voice broke the quiet between them.

"Sara," he replied at once, almost guiltily.

He had been struggling to hush an unwanted internal dialogue, and now that his focus was elsewhere the roar of the storm was a relief. He took a slow breath.

"I worry about you…out there alone."

There was a pang in Greg's chest at her quiet admission. Who could blame her after the stunts he'd pulled lately? He was worried about needing to find help on his own, too. He squeezed her hand and craned his neck to kiss her forehead.

"I know, but let's just wait the rain out and see what happens. Maybe the storm is blocking radio and cellular signals. And, there's always the chance somebody heard our distress calls and help is already on the way."

"Why wouldn't they respond to let us know and get an exact location?"

Greg shrugged. "I don't know."

She lifted his hand to her lips, held it there and kissed his knuckles gently. "When you go…"

"I'll be okay. It's not that far, and both of my legs work fine."

At the lighthearted jab, Sara smacked his arm.

"No offense," he added with a smile. "I'll be careful. I'll take it slow, be smart, and send help when I find it."

She nodded against his shoulder. He sounded confident but when she closed her eyes, her mind wandered. She pictured him falling again, or losing track of the path. Not only would his life be in danger, there would be no one coming for her. She would need to be prepared to travel on her own after a certain amount of time, and hope she found him along the way.

The rain drummed against the roof and wind whipped the sides of the tent, flapping them against the frame. A storm raged both outside the tent and inside Greg's mind, but the space between was near perfection. Sara's soft lips just barely touched his hand and her breath tickled the side of his neck. He finally felt safe. His eyelids grew heavy and his body begged for rest. The slight relief from pain settled in further as the medication took hold, and the soft mattress lulled him toward sleep.

"She can't give you what you need."

It was Whitney again, but this time she sounded different. The voice was more real as if Sara should have heard as well, but she didn't react. He lifted his head to look for the source even though he knew it had to originate in his mind.

His heart skipped a beat when he saw her there. She sat on the cooler, legs crossed casually and a strange smile on her face. She was wearing the clothes he last remembered on her, torn and bloodied from the car wreck. She held an all-too familiar blade in her hand.

"But you know I can."

Greg let his head fall to the pillow and dragged in a deep, shaky breath. His chest tingled at the site of several straight scars of varying length. This was not the time to completely lose it again. Willing the apparition to go away, he closed his eyes and gripped Sara's hand tightly.

"I've watched you two when you're alone. Gentle touching, empty words, and only the tamest of games. So…dull. Where is the fun? Where's the risk?"

He fought the strong urge to pull the covers over his head like a child hiding from a monster in the closet.

Sara felt him tense then watched as he raised his head briefly before letting it drop back to the pillow. His grip on her hand tightened. She sensed something near panic emanating from him as his breaths quickened, so she tried to distract him by whispering softly into his ear.

"I don't know what you're going through but I'm right here with you. You're okay. Just breathe."

He tried to focus on her words but Whitney's voice rose in volume.

"Tell me that you trust her, Greggy. Tell me you trust her to bring you to the brink of death and back again."

It required the entirety of Greg's self-control to keep his eyes closed. If he didn't indulge her, maybe she would go away. Experience nagged that she was someone he should never let out of his sight, but that rule didn't apply to hallucinations. Right?

"So you're ignoring me? That's fine. Good luck, because even when you can't see or hear me, I'm still nearby. Why do you think they never found a body?"

"Leave me alone."

Greg was unaware he had spoken aloud. His words caused Sara to freeze. Was he talking to her?

After a period of silence from Whitney's apparition he opened his eyes to find the space she had occupied now empty. He exhaled in relief and looked to Sara, who was watching him cautiously.

No, this wasn't the time to lose it again, but it was obvious he wasn't in control of when that happened. And no, Sara did not need more to worry about. But she deserved the truth. He owed her that much.

She deserves to know the person she trusts with her life is a certifiable nutcase.

He swallowed nervously. "We uh, we need to talk."

Caught off guard, Sara wordlessly nodded.

"You're going to be angry, and you have every right because I didn't say something sooner."

Greg paused and tried to formulate an intelligible account of what he'd experienced lately, and why he hadn't said anything so far, but it was an unachievable feat. He shifted to his side to meet her eyes.

"I've been…seeing things, hearing things that aren't real."

"Flashbacks?" she asked, although in her heart she knew it would not be that simple.

"More like hallucinations." Greg wrinkled his nose at the word. "I've had plenty of flashbacks, and they've always been memories. Most of the things recently…never happened."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Remember that case where the perp was still on the scene and shoved me over the banister?"

"How could I forget?"

"That day was the first time that something like this happened."

That had been weeks ago. Sara swallowed her frustration. "What happened?"

"I woke up to get some water and I heard her voice."

"Whose voice?"

He gave her a look that said everything she needed to know. "I was wide awake. It wasn't a dream."

"What did she say?"

"'Did I say you could have that?'"

"About the water?"

He shrugged.

"And when I found you in the hallway," she began.

"That was—I can't make any sense of it. I forgot my key in the apartment. I knocked, but somebody else answered. I thought I was on the wrong floor, but that wasn't it. I couldn't bring myself to knock again."

"That's why you asked me if anyone was inside. Who answered the door?"

"A man."

"A stranger?"

"I'm almost positive I knew who he was."

"Almost?"

"It was Dominic Schultz."

"Dominic Sch—Wait, the suicide we worked?"

Lately he'd been uncertain of everything, but Greg nodded once before continuing. "There've been more. Mostly auditory, but…"

Sara was searching his deep brown eyes when he looked down toward the cooler. She followed his gaze but there was nothing there. Their hands were still clasped together, but she withdrew one of hers to gently turn his head. "What is it?"

Worry had etched across her features and there was more than a hint of fear. Greg was starting to wish that he hadn't come clean—not yet, anyway. Not until they made it somewhere safe; somewhere issues could be addressed instead of simply laid out in the open.

His voice was growing hoarser the more he used it, and he cleared his throat. "A minute ago, I uh, I saw her sitting over there."

"Whitney Adams?" Sara followed his small gesture to the cooler, which of course was still just that: a cooler. She looked back to him and saw the shame in his features.

When he went on his tone was bleak. "Sara, those things that happened to me…What if this is some kind of delayed side effect?"

Whitney had been especially fond of torture that involved oxygen deprivation. Under her control, Greg had repeatedly been strangled, drowned, and forced to inhale both carbon dioxide and chloroform. Professionals involved in his healthcare following his rescue said he was lucky to have avoided brain damage.

The words followed them to this day, usually distantly and quite easy to evade. Now, they sprung to the front of Sara's thoughts with Greg's hypothesis.

Propping herself up on an elbow, she took a deep breath. She tried not to become upset, knowing it would accomplish nothing at this point. Watching him take shallow, strained breaths filled her with concern and frustration; concern that he was suffering, and frustration that their current position might have been avoided.

"If it is, we'll deal with it," she stated firmly. "It changes nothing with you and me."

More time passed without words, but the tent was far from silent with the storm still raging around them.

Finally she couldn't resist asking the obvious question. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? I've asked you so many times what was going on."

Greg nodded. "I know. I thought I could handle it. I—I guess I thought it would go away, and I didn't want to worry you over nothing."

"And you thought that camping in a foreign country, in the middle of nowhere, would what? Help speed it along? Since when do things like this go away on their own?"

"Not my most brilliant decision to date," he admitted wryly. "I had no idea something like this would happen. Everyone was pressuring me to take time off. Even if they didn't know everything that was going on, they were right. What if something happened on the job? What if I flipped out on a suspect, or while processing a scene? It's a vacation, Sara. I really thought I could do this. Returning to nature; visiting family and old friends. It's familiar. This is supposed to be easy."

The tremor in his voice broke down any irritation Sara felt. She was accustomed to being the most stubborn half of her past relationships, but Greg was giving her a run for her money. She said nothing as her mind processed and digested both his words and the connotations behind them. Hindsight is 20/20 after all, and having made her own share of bad calls in the past, she could understand why he made this one.

Both of them should be at the hospital receiving treatment, but Greg should have been hospitalized even before falling from a rocky ledge in the wilderness and injuring himself. He should have been admitted after his run-in with the suspect at that scene with Nick. If his hallucinations started later that day, it was clear to Sara that something about the incident must have triggered them.

What if this, whatever this was, couldn't be corrected or reversed? The very idea of Greg Sanders not recovering from what the world threw at him seemed inconceivable. Had he bounced back so many times, with a broken body and against all odds, only to become a permanent prisoner of his own mind?

She shuddered involuntarily. Greg reached an arm around her back, pulling her against him. She resisted at first, feeling she might break him, but he was persistent and finally he was allowed to tuck her against his chest, her head just under his chin. She carefully laid a hand on his side, drawing lightly with fingertips across his flesh. Instantly, goosebumps arose under her fingers and he inhaled sharply.

"I am so, so sorry," he murmured into her hair after several minutes.

"Shh," she hushed gently. "I get it, I do. Just…why don't you trust me? I need you to know that you can tell me anything."

Sara hadn't done anything to lose his trust. He trusted her. He trusted her more than almost anyone else, except for maybe his mother. Mind heavy with guilt, Greg only nodded. If not for him, she would be unharmed right now. Less than a year had passed since their last traumatic experience and he had literally booked them tickets to their next.

His somber aura did not go unnoticed. Sara changed the subject to get him talking again. "Is the ibuprofen doing anything for you?"

Another nod. It was doing something, but not a whole lot. As long as he kept his thoughts focused elsewhere, the sharp pinching sensation within his chest was bearable. "You?"

She nodded. Abruptly and overwhelmingly tired, he allowed his eyelids to drift closed. It was likely the concussion he'd received in his fall that was causing the drowsiness, but he welcomed it. With Sara safe in his arms and the rain pounding a persistent rhythm against the tent's roof, sleep seemed a good option.

Sensing a change in his breathing, Sara tensed and shook his arm. "Greg?

His eyes cracked open and he groaned. She pulled away, snatching a flashlight from a pocket in the wall of the tent before switching it on and shining it at him. She caught his chin when he tried to turn away from the offending light.

"I have to make sure it's safe to let you sleep," she told him. "Hold still."

He stopped resisting, but winced at the flash of pain ignited by the bright light. After checking each of his eyes, Sara was satisfied that his pupils were reacting to the light much more appropriately than when she first found him. Returning the flashlight to its place, she rested back into his arms.

"Worried I might take the easy way out?" Greg asked tiredly. He caught himself and didn't finish the thought aloud ('—and die in my sleep'). It was meant as a joke but neither of them laughed.

"I won't let that happen," Sara told him. She followed the assertion up with a kiss to his lips, lingering momentarily before cuddling against his chest again. Closing her eyes, she focused on the rise and fall of his chest and his heart beat against her.

"Sara?" he whispered.

"Greg?"

"Remember earlier when you called me 'Dr. Sanders?'"

"Yeah."

"Could you do that more often?"

Sara chuckled lightly. "Shut up and get some rest."

A/N: Not a lot happened in this chapter. Dialogue, angst, and a dollop of fluff. Consider it the calm before the storm (even though it's literally storming in the story). More action coming soon. Please review ❤