This might be one of my favorite chapters so far. Can't wait to hear what you guys think. Slow burn finally beginning to burn in celebration of the fact that I just passed my big test! Please enjoy the angst :(
Content warning: torture, non-explicit implication of SA
She felt his rage in every touch. Every press of the taser nodes, every pass of the torch, every stroke of the knife. Through clenched eyelids or tear-blurred vision, Ronnie could see the fury in the hard lines of his face, the grief in the low tug of his lips.
The pain he inflicted on her represented the pain he felt within.
Someone had killed his son, and he was a grieving father.
His attempts to crush her oscillated in motive between revenge for his child's death and punishment for her betrayal. It wasn't until he started torturing her with a knife that Ronnie realized he wasn't attempting something so simple as breaking her spirit.
Her tears brought him no joy, her cries yielded no pleasure, her screams meant nothing to him. Arlov didn't care if she cried.
He wanted to break her psyche. He wanted her mind to shatter into a million pieces until she no longer existed as the Ronnie Masters that her friends knew.
She knew better how to keep herself together. Granted, she'd never been formally tortured, but she was no stranger to pain. Being caught in explosions and crossfire had never warranted anesthetic or painkillers in Carla's eyes, and until she'd joined the CBI, any misery she'd endured, she'd endured alone.
Ronnie let herself scream.
As Arlov leaned over her, cutting thin lines into the skin of her back, she didn't fight the screams of pain that came reflexively. They helped. The outbursts were cathartic and distracting, making it easier to endure the pain. She'd learned long ago that screaming released stress.
Pain of the body was easily endurable.
Stress of the mind was destructive.
Ronnie's only goal as she lay trapped under Arlov's knife was to protect her mind above all else. So she screamed.
And while she screamed, she sank into her thoughts and fell away from the world, deep into hiding. Retreating into a paracosm was a skill she'd taught herself after she'd been shot for the first time. And then, after she'd been abused by one of her mother's boyfriends for the first time, she'd forced herself to practice it until it was perfect.
Arlov never knew the difference. He bathed in her screams as he sliced into her skin, and when he grew bored of watching little trickles of blood dribble down her back, he moved on to her legs.
If she was so proud of being built like a man, then she could suffer the loss of her strength as he cleaved through muscle fiber.
It was almost time to collect Cho. What a sight she would be to behold before he let her recover and moved on to the torture of her dearest friend.
Ronnie Masters would break at his hand, and she would never turn from him again.
The CBI owed him.
Her life for his son's.
He would own her soul before the week was done.
the MENTALIST
Cho sank down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and rubbed a hand over his eyes. Carla Masters had been a waste of time.
She didn't care that Arlov had her daughter hostage, and she didn't care to share any locations that he might be holding her at.
He was running out of leads.
Jane and Lisbon had gone back to the Mojave to deal with the Carnelian case, Rigsby was in the interview room talking to Lee Skelling, one of the suspects, and Van Pelt was his designated baby sitter.
She sat in the chair across from him and gave him a sweet smile, her hands hugging her own mug of coffee.
Cho noted absently that her hands were larger than Ronnie's. Her shoulders were broader, too, despite her comparative lack of muscle.
He discarded the thoughts abruptly. What use was it to let everything remind him of her when he would surely be getting her back safe and sound any minute?
She would hate him comparing her to Van Pelt.
"You like her, don't you?"
Grace's gentle, soothing tone pulled him out of his mental tornado. His eyes tracked her face for a long moment, searching for a different context than the one he knew she was referring to.
Cho leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh, smoothing one hand down his rumpled tie. Ronnie liked that tie. She liked that shirt.
Wasn't she teasing him about how good he looked in it?
Damn, if he was still wearing it when he got her back, she'd never let him hear the end of it. He must stink.
"You're asking if I have romantic inclinations toward my partner?" He questioned flatly, squinting at the redhead through tired eyes.
Four days had passed since Ronnie had been taken. Four days since he'd slept or changed or showered. The more he thought about it, the more he caught wind of the musty, sweaty smell of his clothes. He was stale. He needed to go home.
A blush tinged Grace's cheeks at his bluntness, but she didn't back down. "I am, yes."
The whole team had been making similar suggestions for weeks. They saw his behavior towards her, they saw her behavior towards him, their unmissable dependence on each other—the conclusion was a natural one to draw. But it wasn't right. It wasn't time. He needed time.
"Grace." Cho gave the sweet young agent a patient smile. "I know you're being a friend here—"
"Don't patronize me, Cho, just answer the question."
He lifted a hand calmingly. "I wasn't trying to. Okay?" He hadn't been trying to, but he had been trying to skirt his way around the subject. Did he have romantic inclinations towards his partner?
He didn't want to think about it.
He didn't know.
He didn't want to.
"Ronnie is seven years younger than me."
"She's not a child, Cho. Seven years isn't that much once you're at least twenty."
Sweet Grace wouldn't dare be caught implying that a seven year difference between a legal adult and a minor was acceptable. He grinned a little at her clarification.
"No, she's not a child. But she is my friend. I think..." he trailed off for a moment and stared into the depths of his peanut-butter colored coffee. "I think she's my best friend. I haven't had one of those since I was a kid."
Grace leaned her chin into her hands intently. "The best relationships start as friendships."
But he would suffer if their friendship ended as a relationship. Cho shook his head ever so slightly. "It would never be the same if it turned into something like that."
"It could work. You don't know."
"Masters is a very unique circumstance. Her background, her past, her experiences...none of it lends to knowing how to be in an adult relationship." Cho said carefully.
Van Pelt leaned back in surprise. "What is that supposed to mean?"
He chose his next words carefully. "It means that even if I did like her, I wouldn't allow myself to be her first long term romantic relationship."
Grace's eyes narrowed suspiciously. She almost looked offended on Ronnie's behalf, but seemed like she didn't quite know if she should be or not. "Why?"
"The first one is the one that you learn from and make stupid mistakes in and the one that you leave behind to do better with the next one. I'm not willing to give up what I have with my partner for such an uncertain chance at something else." He took a moment to consider the words that he refused to say out loud. Deep down, in the soft recesses of his heart that he kept under reinforced lock and key, he knew exactly one truth amidst his uncertainty: he refused to be her first long term romantic relationship, because if he was going to have her romantically, he was damn sure he was going to be her last.
"That's exactly what she said." Grace said suddenly, surprise on her face.
Cho blinked at her curiously. "When did she say that?"
Tears watered in Van Pelt's eyes. "The day he took her. She was on the couch, still feeling sick and she was cornering me about my date, so to get her off my back I cornered her too." The redhead laughed awkwardly. "She tried to change the subject by telling me that Pike kissed her, but ultimately she said that she wouldn't date you because if she lost you, she wouldn't be able to handle it."
Cho's brain exploded a little bit.
First of all, the news that Ronnie felt the same protective reservation of their current relationship set him at ease. At least that much was safe and secure, not for him to worry about. There had been a few moments that had given him a little panic, like when he'd complimented her dress the night of the Moro mission, or the times that he'd touched her when they'd pretended to be married—he'd seen a softness in her eyes when she looked at him that had terrified him to his soul.
But at least she bore enough wisdom to tread carefully with their friendship.
Secondly, however, Grace's first bit of information had his hands tightening around his coffee mug, biceps clenching enough to feel the seams of his shirt sleeves dig into his skin. "She told you about what he did during the mission?" He tried to seem unbothered despite the fact that he'd wanted to wring that Texan's pathetic neck for forcing himself on a girl who had only ever known men to force themselves on her.
Grace gave a little laugh. "Oh, no. Rigsby told me about that. She told me about him kissing her before he went back to Houston."
Confusion crossed Cho's face an instant before he blanked it out. "He kissed her again?"
"She didn't tell you?"
"I'm not her girlfriend, Van Pelt, we don't sit around and talk about boys." He responded flatly.
Grace gave a little laugh. "He kissed her again when the mission was over. She seemed pleased about it. She said she was worried she was defective."
Defective? She may have the social graces of a piranha, but Ronnie Masters was certainly not defective. "What does that mean?"
The younger woman shrugged one shoulder. "You know. Every guy who looks at her tells her how much he hates the way she looks. She gets called Arnold and guard dog and butch. She may handle it brilliantly, but it gets into your head. Apart from her own team, Pike was the only guy who told her how beautiful she was."
That's what he was worried about. One nice guy was going to say all the right things and she would be so damaged from all the abuse that she'd fall right into some idiot's arms without ever realizing he didn't deserve her until it was too late. Cho scrubbed his hand over his face again.
"She's not defective." He grumbled. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life."
Grace hummed in agreement. "You know this and I know this, but Pike's the one who made her believe it."
He couldn't help but scowl at the smug smile she gave him.
the MENTALIST
Cho couldn't put it off any longer. His clothes were stale with dried sweat and layers of old deodorant, the grease was beginning to accumulate in his hair, and he was getting tired of the dirty looks he'd been receiving for brushing his teeth in the kitchen sink.
He needed to go home and shower.
When Lisbon returned that night from arresting the President and CEO of Carnelian Inc. for murdering his own colleagues, she ordered him to go home and get some sleep. She'd promised that she'd call and wake him up if anything occurred concerning Ronnie, and insisted that she'd suspend him if he didn't go voluntarily.
So he got in his car and left.
Ten minutes down the road and he realized that he'd missed both exits to get to his apartment, and five minutes later he realized that the building he'd just parked in front of was the hotel that Ronnie had been living in for weeks.
The moments ticked by in pensive silence as he stared at the gleaming sign outside of his windshield that boasted five star accommodations.
Why hadn't he gone home?
Why hadn't he returned to the safety of his own apartment, to shower in his own shower, and eat his own food?
Cho snatched her extra key card out of his glove compartment, grabbed the grocery bag from four days ago, and got out of his car before he could convince himself to leave.
After scrubbing himself raw in the shower and stepping into a pair of clean gym clothes that she'd washed for him one of the times that they'd gone to the gym and stopped by her room instead of his apartment to clean up on their way into work, Cho leaned over the counter and brushed his teeth.
The smell of her sandalwood soap and matching shampoo emanated from his skin and hair. His eyes coasted over her skincare and makeup products, wishing he hadn't said anything about her makeup that day.
She thought she was defective?
Cho put away his toothbrush and washed his face.
Ronnie Masters glowed in his eyes.
She always had, from the day he'd found her.
He had never cared enough about a case to visit a victim or a suspect in the hospital, attend all of their court hearings, or visit their state granted apartment to offer his best version of companionship.
She had been remarkable from the very beginning and he hadn't been able to get her out of his mind.
Years later, she was his best friend, and he'd let her think she was defective?
Cho wandered out of the bathroom and let his gaze sweep the room. Neatly organized, well kept, and thoroughly checked daily for surveillance devices, the room had little pieces of Ronnie everywhere.
Her Bluetooth speaker sat on the windowsill, where she played eighties pop music almost every morning as she got ready for work. The gym magazines on the coffee table that she pretended she bought for the articles but he suspected she was more appreciative of the male physiques featured within.
She would never admit it, and would often counter his joking accusations with deflecting, flirty compliments about his own stature.
The protein powders neatly lined up on the counter near her shaker bottles, the copy of her favorite book on the nightstand by her side of the bed.
Cho paused and ran his hand over the cover of the book for a second, feeling the wear of the years on the soft linen. He'd placed the grocery bag on the nightstand before his shower, so he carefully unpacked it. She'd asked for Gatorade and a microwaveable heating pad.
He took the six-pack of her favorite Gatorade flavor and stuck it in the fridge between cartons of fruit that had probably been perfectly fresh four days ago, but at that moment were looking slightly bruised.
He'd also bought her peppermint tea, because it's what she always wanted when she had a headache. Peppermint tea and dark chocolate.
She probably had a beast of a headache now. Cho's gut tightened fearfully at the thought, but he tucked the carton of tea and sleeve of dark chocolate into a cabinet.
Lastly, he returned to the bag and retrieved the last item. He'd wanted so badly to see her face when she found it; the bright red, cartoon lobster shaped microwaveable heating pad that came in a package labeled Menstruation Crustacean.
She would have laughed like it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. She would have beat him over the head with it and acted appalled at his audacity to walk into Walmart and buy a menstruation crustacean heating pad like a boyfriend on an errand, and then she would act like it was too ridiculous to use. He'd bet he would find it in her go bag every time they had to pack for a mission, and in her nightstand drawer every night that she was home for bed, but she would pretend she never used it to stave off his ego.
Cho stared at the silly little embroidered smiley face on the lobster and felt his face redden with emotion. She would have loved the stupid thing, even though he'd bought it to tease her. He set the heating pad in its package on her pillow, where she would be sure to see it as soon as he got her back.
He slept on the other side of the bed, the one that she left empty or otherwise allowed him to crash when they had to pair up for overnight cases. As soon as his head hit the pillow, the smell of her consumed his senses.
He pulled the blankets over himself and turned off the light, anxiety clawing at his chest. She was all around him, but Ronnie was still gone.
end of episode seventeen
How do we feel??
The little guy who inspired part of this chapter: