Chapter 36
A week passed before Chase realized something dangerous had started happening.
Life had begun to feel almost normal.
Not fully normal. Not the kind of normal he remembered in fragments or the kind of normal that existed before memory loss and grief split everything open.
But a quieter version of it. A tentative version.
The kind that arrived slowly and carefully, the kind that left you wondering when the bottom was going to fall out from under you again.
Routine had settled over the house without either of them meaning for it to.
Aria went back to Memorial full time, leaving every morning in dark scrubs with damp hair and coffee she never quite had enough time to finish.
Some mornings she looked exhausted before the day had even started, shoulders tight with the weight of responsibilities she never seemed willing to set down.
Other mornings she looked softer, lighter somehow, especially after nights where they accidentally slipped into old versions of themselves without realizing it.
Like when she absentmindedly fixed his collar before leaving.
Or reminded him to take his medication while searching frantically for her keys.
Or leaned against the kitchen counter while drinking coffee and complaining about Memorial politics like he had never stopped being the person she vented to.
The first time she kissed the side of his head absentmindedly before walking out the door, they had both frozen.
Completely frozen.
Her hand had immediately flown to her mouth, horror moving over her face like she had crossed some invisible line neither of them had talked about yet.
"Oh my God," she had muttered immediately. "I am so sorry. Muscle memory."
But Chase, Chase had spent the entire rest of the morning thinking about it.
Because for one second, it had felt natural.
It had felt right.
He had started running again too.
Not because anybody told him to.
Because his body demanded movement.
At first it had only been short distances around the neighborhood, the kind that left his lungs burning embarrassingly fast. Years of trauma, inconsistent health, poor sleep, and rebuilding after injuries had changed him more than he liked admitting.
The man who used to captain a football team and survive military training hated how quickly exhaustion found him now.
But every morning, before sunrise, he still got up to run, pushing his body to its physical limit.
Push ups, sit ups and the weights Parker had dragged over one evening after making an unnecessarily dramatic speech about "getting his brother back to terrifying again."
Some mornings the physical exertion quieted the noise in his head. Other mornings it woke memories he wasn't ready for.
Like the way cold air sometimes reminded him of mountain mornings overseas.
Or the way sweat dripping into his eyes occasionally made his chest tighten unexpectedly because suddenly he was somewhere else entirely. Running or carrying weight while hearing the gunfire in the distance.
Then it vanished again before he could hold onto it.
Naomi said memory worked like that, that memories were nonlinear.
Messy because trauma lived differently in the brain.
He was trying.
God, he was trying.
The remote engineering work had been harder. Not technically.
Emotionally.
He sat at the kitchen table most days after Aria left, laptop open, spreadsheets glaring back at him while conference calls dragged on far longer than necessary. Will had built a stable career. Safe. Predictable. Good money.
And Chase hated it. Not because he wasn't good at it. He was very good at it.
Too good, honestly.
The work came naturally enough to make him uncomfortable.
But every day he found himself staring out the window wondering why none of it felt meaningful. Why it all felt...
Temporary, a life built to survive instead of a life built to live. He missed movement and he missed his purpose. Missed people and he missed something he could not quite name.
And increasingly day by day he missed Aria.
Not just physically, he missed talking to her, laughing with her and making dinner together.
Learning the shape of her day and the stupid little domestic moments that had somehow started mattering more than he expected.
Sometimes he caught himself waiting for the sound of her car pulling into the driveway.
Which felt pathetic and clingy, he was not willing to ask for more than she offered freely because for now she had to set the pace for them both... a pace he would follow blindly and without question.
The morning of his next therapy session came with bad weather.
Gray skies stretched low overhead, threatening rain and storm. Chase stood in the kitchen while coffee brewed, staring absently out the window while rubbing sleep from his eyes.
Aria moved around him in practiced morning chaos, distracted and halfway late already.
"You have therapy at ten," she reminded him while digging through her bag. "Don't skip breakfast."
"Yes, boss."
"That feels like sarcasm and I don't have time for that right now."
He glanced toward her.
She looked tired.
Really tired.
The kind of tired she pretended to never experience.
Without thinking, he grabbed the protein bar sitting near the fruit bowl and tossed it gently toward her.
She caught it automatically.
Brows lifting.
"You forgot breakfast," he said simply.
Something softened in her face for half a second.
Then she sighed. "...I hate how observant you are."
"That feels like a compliment... or at least I am taking it as one."
"It wasn't." she glared at him as she spoke, but when she turned her back to him, he watched as her mouth twitched up in the corner, a half smile.
Then she grabbed her keys.
"I'll be home around six if Memorial doesn't decide to personally ruin my life."
He nodded.
"Drive safe."
The words came naturally now, slipping out with an ease that still caught him off guard sometimes.
Somewhere over the past week, small habits had begun quietly finding their way back to him, not through force or effort, but instinct.
Telling her goodbye every morning. Reminding her to eat when she got too busy and inevitably forgot.
Picking up after the trail of destruction she left behind while rushing to get ready for work, like a tiny tornado had swept through the kitchen and bathroom before racing out the front door in scrubs and wet hair.
Strange how these big things and small things, had started feeling familiar again.
Familiar enough that he realized, with a quiet sort of surprise, that he didn't mind them at all.
In fact, some part of him had begun looking forward to them.
Her hand paused briefly on the door.
Like she noticed too.
Then quietly she said, "You too."
And then she was gone, leaving behind silence and the faint lingering scent of lavender shampoo drifting through the kitchen soft and familiar.
The house always felt quieter after she left, emptier somehow, and lately he had started noticing how quickly he missed her presence.
God, he was in trouble. Somewhere between shared dinners, quiet mornings, and all the small domestic things neither of them seemed able to stop doing, he had started falling in love with his wife all over again.
Naomi's office was once again warm and inviting when he entered.
Warm amber light spilled softly from two standing lamps tucked into opposite corners of the room, casting long shadows that softened everything they touched.
Rain tapped quietly against the wide windows overlooking the trees outside.
Somewhere in the room, hidden speakers played instrumental music so low it barely registered unless he sat perfectly still.
Piano maybe. Something soft enough to fill silence without being a distraction.
The room smelled faintly of cedarwood and vanilla, it was not overwhelming but just noticeable enough that he had caught himself associating it with a sense of calm before realizing how manipulative that also felt.
Of course a therapist's office smelled calming.
The bookshelves lining one wall looked used rather than decorative, stacked with clinical texts beside novels, framed photographs, old journals, and small things that made the room feel human.
A trailing plant spilled lazily over the edge of one shelf.
Another sat near the window, thriving in a way that suggested somebody actually remembered to water it, nurture it, and prune it.
Nothing about the room felt accidental.
Not the oversized chairs positioned slightly angled instead of confrontationally across from each other. Not the thick woven blanket folded neatly over the armrest if somebody needed grounding. Not even the tissue box sitting just close enough to reach without making it obvious why it was there.
The whole office felt built around one quiet message:
You are safe enough to fall apart here.
Which honestly made Chase suspicious.
Because safety had become something he no longer trusted.
He shifted slightly in the chair, forearms resting against his knees while Naomi reviewed something in the notebook balanced carefully in her lap. Outside, rainwater streaked softly down the windows, blurring the world beyond the glass until everything looked distant and quiet.
The office itself sat in a renovated historic building downtown, older than the hospital, older than most of the town.
He had noticed the creaking hardwood floors when he came in and the old staircase leading up to the second floor where Naomi practiced.
Even the waiting room downstairs had felt less clinical than expected, warm rugs, coffee nobody probably drank, books people pretended to read while avoiding eye contact.
Still, therapy felt weird.
He hated how comfortable the office tried to make him.
Naomi finally looked up from her notes and offered him the same steady expression she always wore. Calm without feeling fake. Professional without being cold.
"How has this week been?" she asked.
Chase sighed immediately, leaning back slightly. "That feels like a loaded question."
The corner of her mouth twitched faintly. "Why?"
"Because if I say 'fine,' you're gonna tell me I'm emotionally avoiding."
"And if you say terrible?" she joked, while writing something down.
"You'll ask why."
"Gosh you know... that is unfortunately how therapy works."
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "I still think y'all are scam artists."
That almost made her smile.
"Well," she said calmly, setting her notebook aside, "you came back voluntarily, so that feels promising."
He hated that she had a point.
Because, against his better judgment, therapy was working.
Something was happening inside him, something quiet but undeniable.
The week had not been perfect, far from it, but he could feel subtle shifts taking place since using her exercises, pieces of himself moving into place where there had once only been empty space and confusion.
The memories still came unpredictably, but they no longer hit with quite the same overwhelming force.
Instead of crashing into him all at once, they surfaced through strange, ordinary things.
Sensory things. Smells. Habits. Emotional reactions that arrived long before explanation ever followed.
The towel warmer glowing softly in the bathroom after a hard day. The faint scent of Aria's shampoo lingering in the kitchen long after she left for work. Coffee brewed stronger than necessary because apparently he used to complain when it tasted weak.
And then there was the Alfredo. God, the Alfredo.
That realization still sat heavy in his chest in a way he had not quite figured out how to untangle.
The idea that some buried part of him had been reaching for Aria long before he knew her name, before he knew himself, felt equal parts comforting and devastating.
Somewhere in the middle of all that confusion and forgetting, some instinctive part of him had still been trying to find his way back to her.
Naomi watched him carefully for another second.
"You seem more regulated," she said.
He frowned immediately. "That sounds suspiciously therapeutic of you doc."
"It means you seem more settled."
He shrugged. "I've been running again."
Her brows lifted slightly. "Really?"
"Don't sound surprised."
"I'm not surprised," she said evenly. "I'm encouraged."
That made him roll his eyes.
"What?" she asked, her tone neutral.
"Therapist words."
She ignored that. "How's work?"
His expression shifted instantly.
Like he had accidentally bitten into something sour.
Naomi noticed.
Of course she noticed.
"You hate it," she said.
He blinked. "That obvious?"
"Yes."
He leaned back in the chair, exhaling slowly. "I mean... I can do it." A pause. "I'm good at it."
Another pause. "I just hate it."
The honesty in his words surprised even him, because it was true the engineering work felt empty.
He rubbed absently at the back of his neck.
"It feels like a job somebody would do if they liked being lazy." A humorless laugh slipped out. "And maybe that somebody was me."
Naomi stayed quiet. Listening and waiting for him to share more, to explain the way therapists often did until you accidentally said something important.
"I think me as Will built something stable," he admitted. "But I don't know if Chase wants it."
The sentence felt strange leaving his mouth because it was like he was still learning how to separate versions of himself.
Naomi nodded thoughtfully.
"Trauma survivors often build lives around safety," she said carefully. "But survival and fulfillment are not always the same thing."
Something about those words hit him harder than expected because lately he had started realizing how little the life in New Zealand actually felt like his.
Naomi studied him quietly for another second before she turned towards the small side table beside her.
"Okay," she said gently. "Today I want to try something different."
Immediately suspicion hit him. "What kind of different?"
"The annoying therapeutic kind."
He sighed.
"It might be uncomfortable." she added.
"Love that for me."
Her expression remained infuriatingly calm.
"You've started recovering memories through association," she explained. "Your brain seems to be responding to emotional and sensory triggers."
He nodded slowly.
"The routines," she continued. "Smells. Places. Emotional safety."
She folded her hands loosely.
"Your nervous system seems to finally believe it can survive remembering."
Naomi studied him quietly for another second before reaching toward the small side table beside her. When she pulled a stack of black and white cards into her lap, Chase immediately frowned.
"Oh, absolutely not."
One of her brows lifted slightly. "What?"
He pointed vaguely toward the cards like they personally offended him. "They tried this stuff in New Zealand. It never worked. Total waste of time."
A pause.
Then, because he could not help himself:
"Spooky blobs ain't gonna fix my brain."
To Naomi's credit, she did not even look mildly offended by that.
Instead, she settled back calmly into her chair, fingers resting loosely against the edge of the cards while rain continued tapping softly against the windows behind her.
"I'm aware they were unsuccessful before," she said evenly. "But you were also in a very different state psychologically at that point."
Chase leaned back deeper into the chair, still eyeing the cards suspiciously.
"That sounds like therapist code for 'trust me.'"
"It's therapist code for 'your nervous system was severely dysregulated.'"
Well. That sounded less fake than he expected.
Naomi continued before he could make another smartass comment.
"When you were in New Zealand, you were isolated from almost every meaningful emotional anchor connected to your identity.
Your home wasn't there. Your routines weren't there.
Aria wasn't there. You were surviving inside an entirely constructed life without any of the sensory or emotional connections tied to who you originally were. "
Something about hearing it phrased that way sat strangely in his chest.
Constructed life, a life built around survival instead of memory.
Naomi shifted slightly in her chair, her tone remaining calm and clinical without ever sounding cold.
"But now your environment is different," she continued. "Your memories are already surfacing more freely because your brain is reconnecting sensory and emotional pathways associated with safety, familiarity, and identity. That matters more than most people realize."
He frowned slightly, listening despite himself.
"The towel warmer," she said. "The routines with Aria. The food. The smells. The house itself. Your brain is responding to emotionally significant associations because, for the first time in years, your nervous system no longer believes it's in immediate danger."
Naomi held up one of the cards loosely between her fingers.
"These aren't magic," she clarified. "I'm not trying to hypnotize you into recovering memories."
"That's reassuring."
Her mouth twitched faintly.
"What I'm trying to do is create controlled emotional access points."
His brows pulled together slightly.
"Meaning?"
"Right now your memories are surfacing sporadically," she explained. "A smell triggers something. A sound triggers something. A phrase, a room, a routine. You're reacting to memory retrieval instead of participating in it."
That actually made sense.
Annoyingly enough.
Naomi gestured lightly toward the cards.
"These may give us a way to intentionally access those pathways while you're regulated and grounded instead of waiting for memories to ambush you unexpectedly."
The room grew quieter around him after that.
Rain against glass.
Soft piano somewhere in the background.
The faint scent of cedar and vanilla lingering in the air.
Chase looked down at the inkblots again, still skeptical, but less dismissive now.
"You really think spooky blobs are gonna unlock my traumatic memories?"
Naomi's expression remained infuriatingly calm.
"I think your brain is finally safe enough to start opening doors it previously kept locked."
And somehow, that sentence unsettled him more than the cards did.
Naomi slid the first card across the small table between them with the kind of calm patience Chase had already learned meant she was not going to let him out of this.
The black ink spread strangely across the paper, symmetrical but chaotic, dark edges bleeding into one another in a way that felt intentionally unsettling.
Chase stared at it for a long moment.
Nothing happened at first.
Just shapes.
Just paper.
Then something shifted in his mind, it was like a thread somewhere deep in his mind had been quietly tugged.
His brows pulled together.
"...Hands," he said finally.
Naomi's voice stayed gentle. "Okay, that's good, keep going what are these hands doing?"
He leaned forward slightly. "Hands kneading dough."
And suddenly, the room around him softened a little almost like it blurred around the edges.
The cedar smell of Naomi's office faded beneath something warmer.
The smells of flour and butter filled his nostrils while the sound of coffee brewing wrapped around him.
The memory arrived slow and golden, wrapped in sunlight.
He was small again, eight maybe and he was a skinny kind with his knees scraped up from climbing things he was not supposed to climb.
Standing barefoot in his grandmother's kitchen while morning sunlight spilled through faded yellow curtains over the sink. The linoleum floor stuck slightly beneath his feet from years of wear, and somewhere in the house an old box fan hummed against summer heat.
His grandmother stood at the counter in one of her faded floral house dresses, sleeves rolled up while she worked biscuit dough between flour covered hands. She smelled like vanilla and cigarettes. She smoked when no one was around because if asked she would swear she had quit years ago.
"You gon' help," she said without looking at him, hands working flour into the dough, "or you gon' stand there sneakin' bites of my biscuit butter like some kinda little criminal?"
Young Chase grinned immediately, completely unapologetic. "I'm quality testin'."
She snorted softly. "Boy, please. We all know what butter tastes like."
"I'm makin' sure it still tastes right," he argued, stealing another pad anyway.
She finally looked over at him then, shaking her head slowly. "Mmhm. That what we callin' stealin' now?"
"I don't know grandma what does pa call it when he does it?"
She laughed then, the sound warm and rough around the edges, the kind of laugh that settled into a room and made everything feel softer.
He had forgotten that laugh, forgotten the softness in her voice when she talked to him.
Because nobody else really softened around him much back then.
Not after his grandfather died, not after his mama got hooked on the bottle.
She reached over and pressed flour against the tip of his nose.
"There," she said with quiet satisfaction. "Now you look like you earned that butter."
He remembered laughing and running away only to come back to take a fresh biscuit later.
Remembered her pretending not to notice, the memory settled warmly into his chest before slowly fading to black.
Naomi's office came back into focus around him.
His throat tightened unexpectedly.
"My grandma," he said quietly. "We were making biscuits."
Naomi nodded slowly.
"What did that memory feel like?"
Safe, the word hit immediately. Like before things got hard. Before people started leaving. Before disappointment became normal.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw.
"She loved me," he said quietly, sounding vaguely surprised by the realization.
Naomi made no comment she just nodded once and gently slid the second card toward him.
This one hit faster, the shape spread outward in delicate curves before becoming something soft something familiar.
His chest tightened. "...Butterfly."
Suddenly, summer wrapped around him in warmth and sunlight, the air thick with heat while water moved lazily against the wooden dock beneath him.
The smell of sunscreen mixed with lake water and damp wood, familiar enough to ache somewhere deep inside him.
God, it was the lake. He had been eighteen, maybe nineteen, still broad from football and carrying the kind of careless invincibility young men accidentally mistook for permanence, back when life still felt full of promise and losing things had not yet taught him fear.
Aria sat cross legged near the edge of the dock, one of her textbooks balanced in her lap while pretending she was studying instead of listening to every word coming out of his mouth.
The breeze kept catching loose strands of her hair, blowing them across her face while she absently tucked them behind her ear without ever looking up.
Chase tossed another pebble into the lake and watched it skip twice before sinking.
"You know," he said, leaning back against his elbows dramatically, "I really don't like bein' ignored."
"Mhm," she hummed absentmindedly, eyes still on the page.
His mouth twitched.
"You know what happens when you ignore me?"
That finally earned him half a glance.
"No," she said flatly. "But I'm sure you're gonna tell me."
"I could be a bad boyfriend and push you in the water... or I could just start taking my clothes off and do stuff to get your attention."
Her eyes narrowed immediately.
"Chase."
"What?" he asked innocently, already grinning.
"You're distractin' me."
"No," he said, pointing toward her textbook, "that thing is distractin' you. I was here first."
She sighed like he was exhausting her, but the corner of her mouth twitched anyway.
"I have an exam."
"And I have emotional and physical needs."
"You're ridiculous."
"You love me for it."
That finally made her look up properly.
Really look at him.
Sunlight caught in her hair. Wind moved softly around them. And there it was, that expression she always got when she was trying very hard not to smile at him.
"Unfortunately," she muttered.
"That was mean and I don't like you when you are mean to me."
"You interrupted me six times."
"Seven," he corrected proudly. "I'm committed to you even when you are neglecting me."
Sunlight caught the tiny gold flecks in her eyes when she rolled them at him. She looked so young. and so happy.
"How unfortunate for me," she muttered, as a butterfly landed against her shoulder.
He remembered instinctively reaching toward her, brushing it away gently.
She laughed softly.
"You know," she said, squinting at him through sunlight, "for somebody so annoying, you're weirdly protective."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
Her expression softened then. Really softened.
She sighed and leaned back to kiss him, and when she was done she whispered against his lips.
"You always make me feel safe... thank you."
The memory faded there and as he came back to himself in the therapist office he realised that the memory while perfect had hurt him because he remembered now the way she used to look at him like he hung the moon and like she trusted him with every fragile part of herself.
"She smiled more before," he said quietly.
Naomi tilted her head slightly. "Who did?"
"Aria." His throat shifted. "She used to smile more."
Naomi gave him another moment before quietly placing the third card down.
This one felt wrong immediately.
The second Chase looked down at the inkblot, discomfort settled low and heavy in his chest before he even understood why. Something about the shape pulled at him in a way that felt sharp around the edges, familiar but unpleasant, like brushing against an old bruise you forgot was still tender.
His expression shifted as he stared at it longer.
"It looks..." He frowned slightly, jaw tightening without realizing it. "Like somebody yellin'."
The memory came hard and fast after that.
Old kitchen lights flickered overhead, casting everything in that washed out yellow glow that somehow always made the house feel creepier than it was.
The refrigerator hummed loudly in the background, the sound mixing with cabinet doors slamming harder than necessary.
Cold leftovers sat untouched on the stove from a dinner nobody had really eaten together.
He was sixteen.
Caught in that awful space between being too old to cry about things and still too young not to be hurt by them.
His mother stood near the sink, shoulders tight with exhaustion, one hand braced against the counter while the other shoved dishes around harder than needed.
Life had worn her down by then. Bills, work, death and disappointment.
The kind of things people survived and hardened from afterwards and at that time Chase always seemed to end up standing in the path of whatever anger she had nowhere else to put.
"You're just like your father," she snapped suddenly.
The sentence landed harder than yelling ever did because it wasn't just anger. It was disappointment mixed with condemnation.
The kind that made you feel like you had already failed at becoming somebody worth loving.
Young Chase stood frozen near the kitchen table, jaw clenched painfully tight while his hands curled into fists at his sides.
"I ain't even doin' anything," he muttered quietly, the words small even to his own ears.
"That's exactly the problem."
Her voice cracked through the room sharp enough to sting.
"You never do anything... just like your useless father."
He remembered the feelings of never being good enough for her and how she could destroy him with a look.
He could remember the constant exhausting need to somehow become easier to love. Better behaved. Better at sports. Better grades. Better son. Better everything.
Enough, he just wanted to be enough for her. To hear her say she loved him or that she was proud of him. It did not take him long to learn that making her happy was impossible.
He now remembered why football mattered so much. Why he stayed late after practice even when he was exhausted. Why he volunteered for extra drills and weight sessions and anything else that kept him away from home.
The coaches yelled too, sure.
But somehow it hurt less.
At least with football, if somebody was disappointed in you, there were rules for fixing it. Work harder. Run faster. Get stronger. Take the hit and get back up.
Home had never worked like that. At home, the rules changed depending on the day.
And eventually, he learned how to survive it the only way he knew how, by swallowing hurt until it turned quiet, until silence became easier than hoping somebody might finally say he was enough exactly as he was.
Aria was that person for him... she saw him when even his "friends" thought they knew him best.
Football had however been a great excuse to cover for his bruises and busted lip.
The office returned quickly this time.
His shoulders had tightened.
Hands clenched.
"My mom."
The words came flatter now.
"She wasn't..." He exhaled slowly. "She never really loved me." He paused to take a deep breath then added. "She made everything feel conditional."
Naomi nodded carefully. "That sounds painful and we will definitely touch on that more in the future because it sounds like there is a lot to unpack there."
He shrugged automatically, already in defense mode out of habit. "Was what it was."
Her expression shifted slightly, like she knew that was not the whole truth but she let it go.
Lifting the deck once more she pulled out the fourth card.
The second the card landed in front of him, everything inside Chase seemed to stop.
At first, he did not understand why. It happened too quickly, too instinctively for logic to catch up.
One second he was sitting in Naomi's office, warm lamplight softening the edges of the room while rain tapped gently against the windows, and the next his chest had gone tight in a way that felt wrong. .. so very wrong.
His breathing changed before his mind did.
Sharp.
Shallow.
Uneven.
Because he knew that shape.
Not the card itself.
The pattern.
Dark splatter stretched across pale space in a way his body recognized before his brain ever could, something ugly and familiar clawing up from somewhere he had spent years unknowingly trying to outrun.
His face drained of color so quickly it felt like somebody had reached inside him and pulled all the warmth out at once.
Naomi noticed instantly. "Chase?"
Her voice sounded farther away than it should have.
Because he was already gone.
The cold hit first.
Not the kind that sat against your skin for a while before sinking in. The kind that lived inside your bones, relentless and damp and impossible to escape. The kind that turned time into something unbearable because every minute lasted too long when you were freezing.
His wrists burned so badly they no longer felt fully attached to him.
They had long since crossed the threshold of pain into something stranger, something numb and raw at the same time.
Metal restraints cut into the swollen skin while holding his arms upward at an angle no body was meant to endure for that long.
Every slight shift of movement pulled agony through his shoulders hard enough to make his vision blur.
At some point, his body had stopped shaking from exhaustion because it no longer had enough energy left and hung limply.
Concrete sat beneath his dangling feet.
Wet.
Filthy.
Uneven.
The room smelled like rust, mildew and blood. Sweat lingered in the air too, old and sour, mixing with smoke drifting in from somewhere nearby.
He could not tell what day it was.
Could not remember the last time he had slept willingly.
He had to stay awake and aware... on guard constantly or at least as long as his body would allow.
Time no longer existed there in ways that made sense.
Hours bled into days, days into something shapeless and endless until survival narrowed into one impossible task:
Make it through the next minute.
Then the next.
Then the next.
Across the room sat another man.
Or what remained of one.
Chained like him.
Broken like him.
Bruises swallowed most of his face, swelling one eye shut completely while dried blood crusted around split skin. Burns crawled angry and raised across his chest and arms in patterns made by a man so sick he took the time to draw on the flesh he was destroying for shits and giggles.
At first, the man had spoken.
Begged.
Asked questions.
Prayed out loud in a language Chase had not understood.
He had cried too.
The kind of crying grown men only did when pain stripped away dignity and left behind pure fear.
But eventually... something changed.
Because people could only beg so long before hope stopped existing and broke.
Now he mostly screamed.
Or at least he had screamed.
At some point, even that had changed.
The sounds coming out of him no longer sounded human. They were raw and broken, shredded apart by dehydration and a swollen throat.
Men stood nearby speaking casually in a language he could vaguely understand, their laughter low and easy in ways that felt impossible against the violence happening around them.
Hot metal rods glowed orange near a barrel fire while one man smoked a cigarette like this was no different than any ordinary workday.
Like torture had become their pastime. Like suffering had become so common it barely deserved attention anymore.
The worst part had never been not knowing when pain was coming.
The worst part was knowing it would.
Always.
Without fail.
The man across the room would eventually lose consciousness, body slumping uselessly against restraints. And every single time they would toss cold dirty water on him again and again until he woke up.
Then they would return to their fun.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Chase had stopped watching eventually.
He could not survive watching.
Not mentally.
Not emotionally.
Not physically.
There came a point where witnessing somebody else's suffering while trapped inside your own became its own kind of torture. So instead, he looked away whenever he could. Focused on the floor. The walls. The cracks in concrete. Anything that let him stop hearing screams for even a second.
That was when he looked down and saw beneath his dangling feet, dark splatter spread unevenly across the concrete in patterns.
Blood.
His blood.
The realization hit him all over again, even years later.
He remembered now.
The way blood dripped slowly when torn skin reopened every time exhaustion forced too much weight against the restraints. The way chains rubbed flesh raw until movement became unbearable. The way pain stopped feeling sharp after long enough and simply became part of the atmosphere.
Like breathing.
Like cold.
Like fear.
Time stopped mattering there.
Pain stopped mattering eventually too.
At some point, suffering stopped being something happening to him and simply became existence.
But the worst part...
God, the worst part...
Had not even been the pain.
It had been the uncertainty.
Nobody was coming.
Nobody knew where he was.
Nobody knew he was alive.
And somewhere, impossibly far away, Aria probably thought he was dead.
The thought hurt worse than anything else.
Because he had promised her.
Standing in their kitchen before deployment, forehead pressed against hers while she cried quietly against his chest, he had promised.
I'll come home.
He had promised.
And somewhere out there, she was grieving a man who had failed to keep his word.
"Wakey, wakey asshole."
The voice came from somewhere nearby.
Mocking.
Amused.
Cold water slammed hard across his face.
Violent.
Blinding.
Wake up.
Not done yet.
Suffer longer.
"Chase."
Naomi's voice cut through the memory like something solid breaking through fog.
Steady.
Grounded.
Closer now.
"You're here with me."
His breathing came ragged and uneven as reality slowly forced its way back in around him. Rain tapped softly against the office windows. Lamplight pooled warmly across the hardwood floors. Bookshelves stood quietly along the walls.
No chains.
No concrete.
No screaming.
Just Naomi.
Watching carefully.
Not panicked.
Present.
"You're safe," she said gently, her voice steady enough for him to hold onto. "Look at me."
For the first time, Chase remembered enough to understand what surviving had actually cost him and what kind of truly horrible things had stolen his past from him.