Shadows And Light・A.H.・

Safety

There had once been a time when Aaron was convinced he could know who Tor was. He had analyzed, profiled, and prodded her with a foolhardy determination to turn the question marks around her into periods. Yet every piece of information he gleaned from her carefully constructed façade generated more mysteries until he no longer knew what questions to ask next. All he knew when he looked down at the woman sleeping in his arms was that someone had done everything in their power to destroy her.

Thank God they had failed.

It did not take a profiler to recognize the signs of a stolen childhood. Tor lived in fear of people abandoning her, so she tried to get them to reject her early on to make it hurt less. She turned her relationships with others into defense mechanisms, setting them up to either protect her or take the fall. She was convinced she was wicked, unlovable, and pathetic when anyone lucky enough to know her knew she was the opposite. Most of all, she was terrified of being hurt again.

All of that was unacceptable to Aaron. He had meant it when he said he would spend the rest of their lives convincing her that she was loved and safe. He could not imagine a higher honor.

Tor stirred, her face twisting in discomfort as yet another bad dream threatened to wake her. He pressed a kiss to her crown and hummed, the vibrations in his chest soothing her until she softened in his arms. He watched her with a worried frown as she drifted off, careful to not disturb her rest. His arm might have gone numb hours ago, but he would be damned if a little pins-and-needles was the cause of him disturbing her first good night's sleep in over a week.

It had taken him over an hour to calm Tor down. The aftershocks of her "decompression" had continued to rip through her despite her best efforts to hide them from him. Her hands shook when he handed her a granola bar from his go-bag, and she had barely taken two bites before blanching and setting it aside. Her heartbeat was erratic, and her breathing was shallow. If he hadn't known for a fact that she had survived worse panic attacks before, he would have taken her to the hospital. Instead, he had coaxed her into drinking some water, dug his sweatshirt out of his bag, and carefully wrapped her in it as she took her first deep breath of the afternoon.

The sweatshirt was a ratty thing from his days at George Washington Law, but it was a good luck charm of sorts. He had never gone on a case without it. Years of wear and tear had stretched it to the point of being loose on him, let alone on Tor. The sleeves went far past her hands, and when she pulled the hood up to cover her face it hung over her eyes. Knowing she was wearing something of his made Aaron's heart skip several beats, and he had promptly kissed her forehead despite her protests that she looked "gross."

Aaron had no intention of ever missing out on an opportunity to kiss Tor, no matter how "gross" she thought she looked.

"I love you," he had murmured as she melted into him, letting him take the weight of her exhaustion.

"I'm sorry," she had replied, signing it just in case he could not hear her.

He did not want to put her through another argument, so he let it slide. He was determined that one of these days she was going to respond to his declarations with a simple, "I know."

After she had nibbled on a few more centimeters of the granola bar and he had gotten changed out of his tear-stained shirt, they had found a local TV channel playing classic movies. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was slated for the top of the hour, and they settled down to watch it. He had wrapped an arm around her shoulder, but she held back from leaning on him until "Toot Sweet" started playing.

She was asleep by "Hushabye Mountain."

Mary Poppins followed after Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but Aaron was not paying any attention to it, even if Julie Andrews was an international treasure. He was too consumed with watching Tor. Every time she stirred he soothed her, and every time she shifted in his arms, he mentally prepared himself for her to wake from a nightmare. He knew he could not protect her from the monsters in her mind, but he was not going to leave her to fight them alone either. She had fended for herself enough.