Trigger warning: this chapter includes severe PTSD and reliving of traumatic injury.
Note: Lisbon's advice is literally how I survived my breakup last year and helped my nightmares go away so
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It had been three weeks since the FBI rescued Ronnie and Cho from Shiralai Arlov. Maybe it was the physical damage beginning to heal, her body no longer needing to work so hard in her sleep, or maybe it was some kind of delayed trauma response, but it was three whole weeks after her rescue that the nightmares started.
Maybe it was the phone call they'd gotten from Lisbon, informing them that they'd made no headway on tracking down the Russian oil baron.
Everything had been going so well. She'd been so encouraged by her progress, glad to see her injuries looking a little better every day, happy to feel more energy every morning, eager to cozy up in bed every night with a couple episodes of a hospital drama that made Cho roll his eyes and scoff every five minutes.
Instead of maintaining that upward trajectory, she found herself wide awake on a random Tuesday night, crying into her pillow like the world was ending. She should have known. Nothing ever happened in a linear progression.
The nightmare had hit her a few hours after they'd gone to bed for the night, Arlov's face looming over her, smiling sickly, laughing at her like her freedom was a joke. For a few terrible, trapped moments, she thought she'd invented her own rescue—dreaming of going home and being with her friends again, just to wake up and find herself under the blade of his knife once again.
Arlov's face disappeared when she started to panic.
When she woke up, heart pounding like she'd run a marathon, she lay still for a few seconds to make sense of what she'd seen. The nightmare replayed over and over in her head, leaving a worsening feeling of dread each time.
Her eyes drifted to the door. Not that she could see it in the pitch back bedroom, but she would have seen if it was open. The light from the kitchen would have shone through the crack. It didn't seem like Cho had heard her distress from the living room, which meant hopefully he wouldn't hear her when she rolled over and cried.
the MENTALIST
Ronnie Masters scared people.
Cho often forgot that her quiet, strong presence tended to be quite imposing in unfamiliar company, but when he went into the bedroom the next morning to find some clothes, he was abruptly reminded.
She was already awake, standing in front of the window, arms folded over her chest.
With her back to him, he noted that she wore the same white short-shorts and tank top that she'd been wearing during the last case that they'd thought might be Red John. He remembered thinking it was too scant to be wandering around the halls of a hotel without attracting unwanted attention, and there she was, standing in front of the open window, fully visible.
He couldn't help but notice her diminished stature. Her shoulders, once capped with enviable deltoids, now came to points. Her spine protruded in a knobby trail down her back. The muscle of her arms and legs seemed smaller and more defined, but in the starvation kind of way rather than the toning kind of way.
It had taken a week of torture and three weeks of recovery for him to realize that somehow, hidden behind the occasional meal they ate together and all of the movie snacks, she wasn't actually eating.
"Masters." He tugged a t-shirt from his drawer and tried to ignore the way his stomach knotted with worry when he noticed the deep hollow of her collarbone. "You good?"
She barely responded, a slight "Mm" reaching his ears.
Since her back was turned anyway, he went ahead and pulled off his pajama shirt, sliding into the t-shirt. His bruises were gone, the fractures mostly healed, and he was going stir crazy being stuck in the apartment for two weeks. He needed to run to the store, go to the gym, find a new book or two to keep him occupied.
His plan had been to take her with him and maybe let her take a steam while he worked out, but with the concerning set of her shoulders and chin, he doubted she would be very excited about that idea.
She needed to start eating again, and then she needed to ask her doctors about starting some physical therapy.
Stepping into a pair of joggers, he took a minute to go into the bathroom and brush his teeth. When he came back, she still stood exactly where he'd left her. Everything about her body language was wrong.
"Masters." Cho sat on the bed to put his socks on. "I have to run some errands. You coming or staying?"
No response.
He got to his feet. "There's oatmeal in the kitchen. I'll bring back burgers or something."
the MENTALIST
Knives sliced across her flesh. Blood splattered her toes on its way to the floor. The blades flashed, over and over again.
She felt the beads drip over her knees, leaving trails of crimson in their wake. His face, his sneer, his terrible eyes pouncing at her like a wolf on a lamb—slicing, slashing, sawing at flesh.
Ronnie woke up with blood under her fingernails. She could smell it when she lifted her hand to lift the sweat-plastered hair off her face. When she rubbed her fingers together in the dark, they moved slickly.
Heart still pounding in anguish from the nightmare, Ronnie rolled over in bed to reach for the lamp and immediately felt the piercing sting on the backs of her legs. Gasping at the electrifying pain, her movements stopped with a lurch.
For a moment, she just lay on her stomach, breathing into her pillow. The nightmare must have sucked her in, her hands clawing to protect herself from the knives that had cut her, but only managing to re-injure herself.
Under her shorts, she felt the blood running over the curves of her legs.
The sheets.
Cho's new sheets.
Ronnie reached for the light again, that time managing to switch it on. After her eyes adjusted, she saw the generous amount of red that covered her fingers and smeared the base of the lamp.
She must have severely scratched herself.
When she tried to push herself up, her hamstrings began to spasm, and the blood ran more heavily.
Cho's freaking brand new sheets.
I'm going to bleed through the sheets and stain his mattress and he's going to think I *bled* on his bed.
She had to get up. She had to get up and yank the sheets off the bed before any of the blood seeped through.
Getting off the bed and remaining standing turned out to actually be harder than she'd anticipated. Once her feet were planted and her weight was settling, the pain started pulsing. Up and down her muscle fiber, pinching her lower back, spasming through her calves, until she fell to one knee.
She was supposed to be more healed than that.
Cho had said the muscle lacerations were knitting.
Ronnie stared down at her hands again, at the clumps of blood and tissue beneath her nails. How had she scratched so hard in her sleep and not woken up?
Had her brain really convinced itself she was back in captivity? That Cho's bedroom was the dream?
It took her ten minutes to get the sheet off the bed, and another thirty to crawl the three yards to the bathroom.
Once inside, there was no lifting herself enough to reach the light switch. Every time she so much as lifted her head, blood washed downward and her vision swam. The dizziness took over for a second. The tiles cold under her knees, Cho's shorts sticking to the backs of her legs and sliding around her skin wetly. She put her hand down to steady herself and thought the floor had gone out from under her.
Ronnie fell in a heap. The impact of her head on the tile jarred her teeth but otherwise she didn't feel it. The room spun. Wetness tickled her thighs and through the confusion she wondered for a few appalled seconds if she'd peed herself.
The scent of dirty shoes and bleach was the last thing she processed before everything faded to black.
After waking up abruptly to the sound of heavy thudding, Cho blearily rolled off the couch and shuffled to the bedroom door, pushing it open with a finger. In the dim light of the lamp he registered a wad of sheets on the floor and the bed empty.
Confused and suddenly wide awake, he looked first towards the bathroom. The light was off and the door was open, so he turned and went to check the kitchen.
Nobody in the kitchen.
Back in the bedroom, Cho knelt and looked under the bed, then in the closet. His thoughts scrambled through a range of possibilities; maybe she'd woken up from a nightmare and needed to hide somewhere she considered safe; maybe she'd gone for a walk, but why at three in the morning?
Finally his mind turned to the possibility that Arlov had tracked her down. He turned to bolt back to the couch and call Lisbon, but instantly tripped and fell in the bathroom doorway.
Someone gasped.
Cho's eyes traveled through the dim light and found that he'd tripped over a pair of legs. "Masters, what the hell?" Relief struck him hard and he got to his knees, sliding his hand up the wall and turning on the bathroom light.
Ronnie, coming to consciousness, laying on her stomach on a floor smeared with dried blood. Her legs were crimson, the lower regions crusted over with dried blood and the upper region slick with fresh that oozed from her lacerations as she moved.
Her hands were crimson, slowly searching for purchase on the floor. "Cho." She mumbled, eyes closed. "Tell me I didn't pee myself."
Leaning over her, his hand on her back, he pulled up the soaked hem of her shorts to see the cuts better. "Don't move." All of her stitches were ripped out. All of the lacerations were gouged deeper and wider. "Masters, what did you do?"
"Tell me I didn't piss myself." She whined, completely misunderstanding his tone.
"You didn't. You mutilated yourself." He grabbed towels—all the towels he could reach, even the dirty ones—and pressed them down into the cuts. One of them was bleeding like a faucet and he couldn't stop the voice in his head the told him she'd reached an artery.
Her legs twitched and jerked under the pressure, but she didn't say a word. He saw her fold her arms under her chin, saw the tears streaming from her closed eyes, but she didn't make a sound.
"We have to go back in," Cho muttered. "You need new stitches. What the hell did you do, Ronnie?"
A few seconds ticked past in silence.
When he thought she wouldn't answer, she wiped her face on her arms and took in a breath. "I thought he was cutting."
His jaw clenched tight. Hands stained red, he tied clean towels around her legs and got to his feet. "I'm texting Lisbon and Minelli, and we're going to the ER."
the MENTALIST
The doctor wasn't surprised by the situation. After cleaning and stitching her legs back up, reassuring Cho that she hadn't done any damage to her arteries, he gave Ronnie a prescription for sleep medication and informed her that the nightmares were usually the hardest part.
He was surprised, however, when they had to come in two other nights in the same week. The second time, she'd ripped out her new stitches all over again, but the third time—she'd clawed deep gouges over the burns on her stomach.
"You're taking the pills?" The doctor questioned the third time, glancing over her chart with a doubtful expression.
"I watch her take them." Cho answered. He didn't look like he'd been having any more restful sleep than she had. "She sleeps a good four hours with them, but after that..."
Ronnie lay on the hospital bed with red-rimmed eyes and gaunt cheeks, thoroughly wrecked by her night terrors. When she lifted her hand to palm away a fresh round of tears, the doctor frowned deeply and took her arm.
He examined one arm, then the other.
"We put socks on my hands tonight," Ronnie explained. "Tied them on with bandages so I wouldn't hurt myself, but I managed to get them off in my sleep."
There were angry, bleeding, bite marks on both wrists.
The doctor's eyes looked to Cho.
Cho's expression was tight; his gaze didn't lift from her hands as he said, "She thought she was chained up again."
Realization entered the doctor's eyes and he let her arms go. "Alright." He got to his feet and looked through her chart quickly. "You're metabolizing your sleeping pills faster than I prescribed you for. There's nothing wrong with that —it also explains why you're losing weight so quickly. If you'll come with me, Agent Cho, I'll adjust her records and get you some discharge papers."
They left Ronnie alone with her new bandages. The scrapes from that night's incident hadn't needed stitches, but they were thickly packed with bandages and wrapped with gauze.
She'd have to sleep with a steak knife to get through those wraps.
Exhaustion struck her as she got comfortable. Maybe if she fell asleep in the hospital they could catch her before she mutilated herself again. Breathing deeply, she let her muscles relax. A few minutes couldn't hurt.
But every time she closed her eyes, his face returned to her. The cruelty in his eyes, the sadism in his smile; if only he knew he still held her prisoner.
If only he knew he'd won.
"Your doctor just asked if you're a danger to me." Cho muttered, striding back into the room and jarring her from dozing off.
Ronnie blinked slowly at him, flummoxed. "Do I endanger you?"
Her partner carried his usual blank expression. "If you're a danger to me in my sleep."
His meaning dawned on her. "He thinks we're sleeping together."
"You are *not* sleeping together."
The exasperated voice sounded from behind Cho, who turned to reveal Lisbon in the doorway. She looked utterly defeated. "You're not, are you? God, Cho, think of the paperwork. Damn it, I will have to transfer one of you —"
"We're not sleeping together." Ronnie interrupted her, mortified. The woman was her role model, and this was not a conversation she wanted to have. "In fact, we're barely even sleeping."
Liston gasped at her in total misery. "Please tell me—"
"The emphasis was on the together." Cho deadpanned. "Not sleeping, and not together. Can we drop it now? What are you doing here?"
"Yeah, boss, you didn't have to come."
"I haven't gone home yet." Lisbon explained, setting her purse on a chair. "It was a good excuse to get me out of the office, anyway. Cho, would you give us a minute?"
When they were alone, Lisbon gave her a side-eye that was as much a signature as was Cho's ice cold expression.
Too tired to entertain the highly amusing notion that she and Cho might have started some kind of affair while she was ripped to shreds, Ronnie closed her eyes. "He sleeps on the couch, I swear."
"Listen to me carefully, Masters." Lisbon sat down next to the bed. "No matter where he sleeps, he sleeps *on the couch*."
Ronnie's eyes snapped open at the insinuation. "Are you completely ignoring the fact that 'not together' means *not together?*"
Lisbon smiled and folded her hands over her lap. "I'm really sorry, Ronnie." For a minute she just took in the visible fatigue in the young woman's face. "I know this is challenging."
Challenging was a word for it. Ronnie felt like she was going crazy. She couldn't sleep without being transported back to that stall and waking up newly injured. She might as well have been back in that stall for all the pain it caused her to dream about it.
Arlov's knife or her own fingernails—either way, she was sliced up all over again.
The frustration mixed with everything else until she couldn't trust herself to look up without bursting into tears. Staring at her hands, Ronnie gave a little shrug. "It will be okay. As soon as I can get past this, it will be ok."
"The Bureau will mandate counseling. I can talk to Minelli and get it started sooner rather than later if you like." Lisbon offered softly.
Nothing about that sounded appealing, but anything had to be better than going to hell every time she closed her eyes. "I'll think about it. Thank you."
Nodding, Lisbon stood and gave Ronnie's hand a gentle squeeze. "I've been in a similar place. If you want my advice, change up your environment. Sleep with the tv on, turn on some music, sleep in a different spot on the bed or the floor, use some essential oils or scent diffusers to make the room smell different—give your brain something else to pay attention to. Distraction helps sometimes."
The advice finally got a smile out of the young woman. "I'll try that. Thanks." The ideas gave her hope. She'd done similar things before in other situations. Sleeping with a TV show on had helped her in the past, and she didn't know why she hadn't thought of it the past few nights.
Lisbon smiled back and collected her things. "I'm going home. Text me tomorrow, alright? Let me know you got out of here okay."
When Cho returned, Ronnie looked in better spirits than she had when he left. As he helped her sit up, she sighed deeply. "I've decided I like hospitals."
Utterly disgusted by this opinion, her partner grunted. "Why's that?"
"You're waited on, hand and foot, by people who's job it is to make sure you're okay, you have no responsibilities, and it's a lot safer than any apartment or hotel I've ever rented. Excluding yours, of course, but that doesn't count as mine." Ronnie sank into the wheelchair he pulled up for her.
"You're out of your mind."
"Yes, Cho, that's why we're here."
the MENTALIST
Ronnie went through the mental checklist. Night number four, ten pm. Daily antibiotics, check.
Injuries securely wrapped with a million layers of gauze, check.
Hands wrapped with socks and gauze, check.
TV on, playing Scooby Doo cartoons with trippy music and emphatic voices, check.
Lavender-scented wall diffuser, check.
Extra strong dose of sleeping pills on an empty stomach, check.
She turned the light off with sock-mitten hands and scooted down in Cho's bed. Her waist and legs were wrapped so tightly she almost had to rip them off while fully lucid.
As she turned her back to the TV so she could hear it but not see it, Ronnie closed her eyes and focused on searching for the scent of lavender.
Exhaustion sat on her like a heavy blanket. It had been almost a week since she'd slept through the night. Before too long, she felt the medication start working in her chest, slowing her heart beat and pulling her under.
Arlov's face, the snap of his taser, her own screams in her ears.
Ronnie came back to consciousness with a jolt.
The rush of adrenaline was enough to hold off the medication and leave her staring at the wall with tears in her eyes.
I'll never sleep again.* Her throat tightened with emotion. *I'm so tired. Just let me sleep, please.* The tears dripped across her face, over the bridge of her nose and brow bone, splattering the pillow beneath her temple.
Her sock hands covered her face as sobs wracked her frame.
Please, god, let me sleep.*
The bedroom door swung open. "Screw this." Cho's voice muttered, and Ronnie's lungs stopped gasping for air.
She lifted her hands from her face and twisted to look just as Cho came around the bed, lifted the covers on the empty side, and slid in underneath. "What are you doing?"
He heard the tears in her voice. Saying nothing until he'd tucked himself in and arranged himself on his pillow, Cho glanced at the cartoon on the tv and then faced her seriously. "There's no reason to give you another opportunity to hurt yourself."
Ronnie wiped her face on her hand socks. "No, just to hurt you."
"You won't." Cho returned flatly. "When it starts, it'll wake me up; then I'll wake you up, and we'll go back to sleep. Okay?"
For a few seconds, she just stared at him through the inconsistent flashes of light from the screen, blinking away the last few remaining tears.
He would stay with her all night.
She wouldn't wake up to Arlov, she would wake up to her partner.
Arlov wouldn't be there, Cho would.
"Thank you." Her voice was a whisper, barely audible.
Cho grunted and rolled over. "It's worth a shot, anyway."
Note: I will edit the formatting soon. Sorry for all the *asterisks*.