It took months for her to regain any sort of strength. Months of embarrassing setbacks, of needing to ask for help, of continuing to struggle with simple tasks like feeding herself or getting up to go to the bathroom. Crunch stepped in whenever she asked or whenever he thought she needed assistance, and never complained once. Their bond grew as time passed.
Caroline learned not to let the details bother her. Not to focus on the whos and wheres and whys and hows. All her questions could eventually be answered. She’d always been the type of person who needed every bit of information in order to make a decision, whether it involved handling a case or voting on legislation or even deciding what to order for dinner. But she let that part of her go.
She was starting to understand why there were more followers than leaders. Why people would go with the flow and not question the reasons why. It was easier to trust when you didn’t have the luxury to think about the drawbacks.
She didn’t talk much, but Crunch did. He’d regale her with stories of growing up in Columbia Heights, an area of Washington that Caroline knew well but never spent much time in. He’d make her laugh or keep it serious depending on how he felt she was doing. He’d push her, but never too hard. She was continually strapped of energy but he’d help her walk around the basement day after day in an effort to regain her stamina.
She slept almost all the time aside from that. Partly from fatigue and partly from what had to be depression. Crunch never asked her about The Fed and she didn’t volunteer information. Best to forget everything that had happened. There were times when she was so blinded by pain that she’d almost forget the reasons behind it. It was easier to clear her mind, try not to think about anything relating to her old life. She’d left that part of her behind and moved on to something else.
Jones and Gabe went to that horrible place night after night, coming home in the wee morning hours. They hadn’t decided when they would quit; there was too much heat to do it without waiting until closer to the holiday season. Gabe hadn’t asked her about the trip or the rebellion again, mumbling something about how she needed to get into better shape first. Caroline wanted to get the fuck out of Washington and get some goddamn answers. That meant eating better, building muscle, and making herself moderately presentable.
It was September before she had the ability to start recapturing her previous form. Six arduous months of anger and pain. She thought she’d be happier about reaching a turning point, but she wasn’t. Every step forward was another reminder that she was starting miles behind the life she used to have.
Her fingers had healed. Maybe that wasn’t the most appropriate word. They were almost as crooked as her nose. She could move them just fine but they ached at inopportune times and didn’t lay flat when she placed her palms against a hard surface. Her stomach bore no ill effects from the knife wound, though the scar remained.
She kept rubbing her wrists in the useless hope that she could make those wounds disappear. They seemed like the sort of thing that she could force into nonexistence. Put some healing lotion on them and forget about it. The rope burn. The handcuff scars. The number tattooed on her forearm. Unnerving remnants of her captivity.
The slightly raised welts on her back brushed against her shirt with the tiniest movement. She hated to look at them. She’d catch glimpses as she got out of the shower. Buckle marks and deep red scratches that might have faded with proper treatment lingered as a permanent reminder that she’d been whipped both literally and figuratively.
Caroline didn’t have a choice when it came to her face. Or most of her body. Her time at The Fed and weeks of fever had strapped her not only of energy but of muscle mass and weight. She was skinny for the first time in her life. Too skinny. And generally unhealthy. That would have to change.
But today was a big day. Her first day upstairs. She finally had enough chutzpah and strength to climb the basement stairs into the living room. She and Crunch would be taking it easy – watching TV, reading, and doing whatever they could to keep themselves occupied, since she wasn’t quite ready to start her training. And she’d been promised an upstairs bedroom. Caroline had protested at first. Crunch had been there longer. He deserved whatever space was up there. But he disagreed, saying he’d enjoy having some privacy in the basement. Then he laughed and she knew he was being sincere.
She’d have to take steps to protect herself. Wouldn’t spend much time near the windows, wouldn’t answer the door, wouldn’t step out into the backyard. The blinds and curtains were always shut, in keeping with the other houses on the block. She wouldn’t be throwing them open to greet the day. Wouldn’t sit in the sun relaxing. Wouldn’t do anything to let the neighbors know there was a mysterious woman in the house.
But to have privacy again. The thought was almost enough to make her giddy. To get rid of that hospital bed and be able to curl up with a book or anything else and just exist. She was desperate to regain the sense that she had something that belonged only to her.
At Gabe’s insistence, there was a lock on the inside of the bedroom door. And a nightlight inside. Caroline had already decided to leave the lamp on the nightstand lit whenever she slept. Even if she wanted to be alone, darkness was a step she wasn’t willing to take.
The prospect of moving on to a new and different part of her recovery was enough to get her up those stairs, ever so slowly. Crunch gave her a short tour. There wasn’t much to the house. Three small bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Pretty standard for a home of its age.
He grinned at her when they settled onto the couch in the living room. “Feels pretty good, huh?”
It was amazing how something as simple as climbing a flight of stairs could be so empowering. “Yeah,” she said. “You come up here much?”
“Not really. I fix our meals here and stuff but I’m much more comfortable downstairs.”
She didn’t want to tell him that she’d already picked up on that. “Why is that?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. It’s not my house but downstairs feels like it’s mine. My parents’ apartment was tiny and the spaces I rented in D.C. before I moved here were nothing special.” He let out a little laugh. “Even tucked next to the laundry room, my place is fucking huge.”
She’d seen his bedroom. It was pretty damn small. Yet another reminder that perspective was everything. “Now the entire basement is yours.”
He patted her shoulder. “You’ve done good so far. Gonna keep improving. It’s better for you to be up here.”
She’d have to wait and see about that last part. “Every day is a winding road,” she said.
“I kept all the books I read to you,” he said. “If you’d like to put them in your room.”
She only remembered bits and pieces of The Order of the Phoenix. “How many are there?” she asked.
Crunch’s expression brightened. He enjoyed literature. “Oh, I breezed through Harry Potter once I started. I read you the first four and was in the middle of the fifth when you woke up but we’ve got copies of all of them.” He laughed. “And I read to you from The Decameron. Jesus Christ, that was boring as fuck but Gabe said he read somewhere that you liked it.”
Caroline bit her lip. She remembered dreaming about a piano playing. Now she realized it had been much, much more. “I do,” she whispered, praying that he would switch topics.
Crunch leaned back on the couch. “You know, I’ve done almost all the talking since we’ve been hanging out together. You feel comfortable changing that?”
No. But it was easier to lie than to walk away from him. He seemed so excited about the idea. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “I guess so,” she said.
“Good, because I’ve got loads of questions for you that I’ve been dying to ask.” He mimed unrolling a scroll of paper, and she couldn’t help but smile.
“Fire away,” she said. “Clearly this has been on your mind for a while.”
He cleared his throat. “I think nicknames can reveal a lot about a person. Both the ones people give them and the ones they give to others.” Crunch cocked his head at Caroline, holding out a pretend microphone. “Do you have any?”
It didn’t matter that he was being glib. That he was trying to keep her in a good mood. His words triggered something inside her that she’d been suppressing for months. Pain had given her something to focus on, something to distract her. Something to keep her from thinking about the past. When she’d been struggling to move around she had shed no tears, only throwing around a few curse words. His innocuous question broke the dam. Caroline closed her eyes tightly, hearing Jack’s voice in the back of her mind.
“Nicknames are a big step. Do you have any?”
She tried not to think about anyone else. Caroline blinked and smiled at Crunch, shrugging her shoulders. She had to focus on anything other than the past. Clear her mind. Keep it a blank slate. “Nope,” she said. “I’m pretty boring.”
Crunch smiled back at her. “I guess I’m stuck with just plain Caroline.”
“Guess you are, unless you can think of something a little more snappy.” Her attempts to channel her thoughts into safe directions failed, and her tone didn’t sound nearly as light as she hoped it would. She had to get out of that room as quickly as possible, even if it hurt Crunch’s feelings. Caroline kept the smile on her face. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
His smile turned to an expression of concern. “Sure.”
She lurched toward the bathroom the best she could, in no condition to move swiftly. She shut the door behind her, locking it.
“Christine’s husband Tom calls me ‘Punky.’”
She grabbed a hand towel hanging on a rack and pressed it to her lips, stifling a sob. She turned the overhead vent on for good measure, trying not to hyperventilate.
“You call Representative Sullivan ‘Chrissy’?”
“She’s one of my best friends but I don’t know how I get away with it. She would smack the hell out of anyone else who called her that, except her husband.”
Caroline practically stuffed the towel into her mouth, leaning against the door and sinking to the floor, willing herself to calm down.
“It would be my honor to give you away, sunshine.”
No. She had to stop thinking about them. Thinking about Jack and Chrissy and Tom was bad enough. She couldn’t-
“Don’t tell them anything, Ellie. Understand?”
Not The Fed. She needed to pretend that place didn’t exist. Forget everything that happened there. Everything she’d lost. Everyone-
“Katie. Don’t call me anything else. And call her Jen. Genevieve sounds so pretentious.”
She couldn’t stop them. She tried but they kept coming. She’d bat them back and they swelled forward no matter what she did.
“You called me Monty before. Did you notice that?”
Caroline cried out, telling herself to stop, but nothing worked. All the memories she’d spent months trying to quash were suddenly knocking around inside her mind, and the stuff she was anxious to remember floated away. She started rocking back and forth on the tile. Not Jack. She didn’t want to think about him. Or about anyone else precious to her.
“Be good, Feef. You’re my favorite munchkin.”
“I love you, my Mo Mo.”
She hated herself. Hated that she didn’t have the strength to forget, hated that she was such a goddamn weakling, hated that she’d singlehandedly annihilated so many lives with her blind stupidity. She’d tried so hard to let go of that guilt and it now roared at her with a vengeance. Served her right considering everything she’d done. Caroline jerked at her hair, hard enough that she yelped in surprised pain. The towel dropped to the floor. She heard a soft knock at the door.
“You okay in there?” Crunch asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, thankful she kept her voice steady. “Just another minute.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to regain control. She must have been in there longer than she thought if Crunch had come to check on her. She stood up shakily and looked in the mirror, seeing that same, almost unrecognizable reflection gazing wearily back at her. A mess of puckered skin, scabs, and scars with a busted up face to boot. Caroline put her head in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You’ll never know how sorry I am. I never meant to hurt any of you.” She ran the water for a moment, letting it trickle through her fingers, using it to scrub the tear streaks from her cheeks. She put the towel back on the rack and opened the door.
Crunch looked worried. “You sure you’re okay?”
She’d never be okay. Not with the ghosts of the past dogging her every step. She had to do a better job of trying to leave them behind. Caroline shook her head up and down, knowing he wasn’t buying her fake enthusiasm. Not when it was so obvious that she’d been crying. “Fantastic. Want to watch a movie?”
* * * * *
They were sitting on the couch watching The Legend of Billie Jean. A movie featuring two of her favorite Slaters, Helen and Christian. Just the sort of distraction she needed. Totally anti-establishment while being totally fluffy at the same time.
“Have you seen this before?” Caroline asked.
Crunch smiled at her. “No. But I’ve heard of it. I appreciate the classics.”
Caroline tried to think. Simple things like backwards math took more time than she cared to admit. “This movie came out before you were born, didn’t it?”
“Yup.” His smile got a little more obnoxious. “Don’t get all upset or anything, but you’re the oldest person in this house by far.”
Her early September birthday had passed with nary a mention. Just the way she wanted it. “I’m only fourteen years older than you. And you’re still a baby.”
He chortled. “Hardly. I am the youngest one here, though. Don’t forget it.”
Caroline tugged at her uneven hair and looked at the TV. Helen Slater’s character had just cut her hair. “See, that’s what I need. A nice aggressive haircut.”
Crunch looked remorseful. “I feel pretty guilty about that appalling cut you have now. I couldn’t get the tangles out, no matter how hard I tried.” He looked back at the TV. “You really want your hair styled like that?”
“Why not?” Caroline asked. “New life, new hair. I need to bleach it too.”
“You’re going blond?”
She and Gabe had agreed to it. “They have more fun. So I’ve been told.”
He eyed her thoughtfully. “I can make it work, if you trust me.”
“Now you’re a hairstylist, too?”
“No. But I can try.”
She knew he’d do his best with a high quality eighties movie to guide him. “I trust you.”
“It’ll be easier when you’re alert and awake.”
“And sitting upright in a chair?”
Crunch laughed. “You don’t want to be prone in a bed when I hack at your head?”
“No,” Caroline said. “I’d prefer not.”
“Do you want me to get out Pat Benatar’s Greatest Hits to inspire you while I do my work?”
Caroline gave him a sly look. “Invincible” was one of her favorite motivational songs. “You have seen this movie before. Dirty liar.”
“Honey, if we weren’t liars and thieves you wouldn’t be here.”
Didn’t she know it. “Does this mean we can watch more Christian Slater movies?”
“I’ve got Gleaming the Cube cued up and ready to go,” he said. “I know all the great movies for disaffected youth. I was once one myself.”
She laughed. She could get through this. She just had to keep from thinking about anything too substantive. “Weren’t we all.”
* * * * *
Movies and popcorn weren’t enough to distract her, no matter how hard Caroline tried. That night the dreams started. Or nightmares, more appropriately. It didn’t take much after that. The wind blowing a certain way. The expression on Crunch’s face when he told a joke. A phrase or a word used by Jonesie or Gabe.
She dreaded the night. Bad things happened at night. Not only because of the never-ending darkness, even though she always left the lamp on…but because of what she saw when she fell asleep. She was trapped – caught between the nightmares that made her scream and the memories that made her weep. Tormented and bombarded with both, neither was an agreeable alternative. The memories that comforted her at the Fed now shook her awake with pangs of guilt so deep she thought they would cut her open.
“Where’s Katie?”
“She’s dead. How many times are you going to make me say it?”
She’d find herself screaming out in the middle of the darkness for Bob or Ellen or Jen or Katie. Or Jack. Every nightmare snapped one of the few rubber bands holding her together. There was one in particular that stalked her night after night, and it always ended with a gunshot echoing in her head.
“I’m so sorry, Jenny. Please forgive me.”
“You’re not the one who’ll need forgiveness. I love you. I could never hate you. Ever. I’ll hug Katie for you.”
She’d killed one of her best friends. It didn’t matter that someone else had pulled the trigger. How could that be forgiven? Jen’s words didn’t matter, sweet though they sounded. Caroline knew the truth. So many people had suffered because of her. Because she’d done too much, or too little. It didn’t matter anymore. She learned not to sleep. Or to sleep as lightly as possible.
Being awake was oftentimes as bad as drifting off. Nothing could save her from the images in her mind. Of what had happened in the woods or at The Fed or before she’d made all the terrible decisions that left her with an unknown and unhappy future.
“Those are mine! They belong to me!”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be with your children soon enough. I think we’ve had enough fun for today, though. Don’t you?”
Fucking Murdock. And those fucking guards. She wanted to forget their voices, and forced herself to focus on whatever she could. The repetitious exercises she did to gain strength. How many pushups she could do without stopping. How many steps she’d taken on the treadmill that morning. She’d repeat them in her head as she lay in bed, counting them silently before she’d lose track and have to start over again. Sometimes it would work and she would drift off into a dreamless sleep, but most of the time it failed. She kept trying.
The day that Crunch evened out her hair and bleached it blond, she bit her lip the entire time. He had to have noticed; he squeezed her shoulder after he was finished and left her in the bathroom alone. She looked in the mirror once he was gone, studying that same crooked nose, that drastically altered appearance. With short blond hair and broken bones, she could take on an entirely new persona. One she didn’t necessarily like.
She lingered in there for close to an hour before coming out and agreeing to a head shot. It took three requests from Crunch before she broke down and smiled. An empty smile. The kind she’d throw out when she was at some sort of political function she dreaded, or speaking to a colleague who was making it clear that she wasn’t worth his time. She might have been able to force a smile before, but now that she knew what she looked like, really looked like, she had no desire to act happy about it.
During the day she and Crunch built a routine. Weight training in the morning, light cardio in the afternoon. They did it all in the workout room in the basement, careful not to wake Jonesie and Gabe before they had to go to work.
Caroline came to relish it. She could focus on her technique, her breathing, and her form, carefully avoiding anything too intellectually or emotionally demanding. Going through the motions and improving herself physically while pushing her identity further and further away from the surface. Soon she would no longer exist. Caroline Gerard would be gone and the strange blond haired woman she saw in the mirror every morning would be there to take her place.
Or so she hoped.