The Long Way Home

Chapter Twenty Three: Where The Heart is

I need
A lullaby
A kiss goodnight
Angel sweet
Love of my life
Oh, I need this

Natalie Merchant – My Skin

They were tangled up in bed together, Cass's clean white sheets draped over their naked bodies as they lay entwined with one another. Her kisses were soft and endearing as Cass's fingertips caressed John's rugged cheeks. It was impossible for her to say how much she loved this man. John was so vitally important to her being. He was like the sunshine after a long and stormy night and Cass couldn't help but think it was time to air all of her secrets. What had happened in Afghanistan played a large part of who she was now, he deserved to know after her reaction to the events surrounding their time with the Genii.

"I need to tell you something" Cass muttered into the nape of John's neck, her lips ghosting along the curve of his throat. "Something about me."

"That sounds ominous." John murmured against Cass's hairline as his fingertips doodled patterns along the trail of her spine.

"I need to tell you why I was freaking out so badlyback in the Genii bunker." Cass told him, tucking her head underneath his chin.

John's fingers combed through her straight, damp hair as he held her close. He had known the instant the group had stepped underground that she had become unsettled and alarmed. Her fear had been horrendous, he could feel it coming off Cass in waves as they progressed into the deeper levels. He had thought it was due to their hostage situation. She may have spent four years in Afghanistan but nothing prepared you for being captured. Sometimes he forgot she wasn't a soldier, the kinsman-ship he felt to her was different from what he was used to when they were wearing their professional masks.

"A year before I met you in Afghanistan my convoy was attacked." her lips brushed against his chest as she spoke, her fingers tracing over the writing etched into his dogtags trying to distance herself from the memories. "We were captured and held in an underground cave for three days before..."

She trailed off unsure how to phrase the next part of her story. John picked up on her indecision as it wavered in the mental space in between them. His mouth went dry at the prospects, he knew the kind of interrogation the rebels used in that country. Women weren't viewed as equals there, their role in society was underneath men. He had kissed the rare scars he had found upon her flesh.

The one on her collarbone, that curved white line that streaked across her temple hidden by her hair, the one that reminded him of the butt of a gun. He had never asked, he had thought they were events from her childhood. Now he suspected they were more.

"Tell me." he mumbled into her hair, his thumb smoothing over the ridges of the rounded white scar at her temple. "I want to know everything."

"I can't tell you that." Cass said quietly, closing her eyes as she breathed in the essence of her shelter.

"What did they do to you?" he whispered again.

"They drowned me." she conceded, her forehead coming to rest upon his firm chest. "I couldn't tell you how many times but it seemed like it went on forever until it stopped."

Dunking, it explained the lack of physical ailments from her time in captivity. The insurgents would have wanted something more from her and it would have been a shame to them to ruin her before they had had their fun. It made him sick to his stomach to imagine her in such a hideous position. He couldn't get the images out of his mind.

Cass with her hands bound behind her back, the rope knotting her wrists together at the base of her spine. The insurgents hands were tangled in her dark hair shoving her head under the surface of the stagnant water. It flooded her nostrils and mouth as they held her bucking, fighting. She couldn't breath, God she could feel the water slipping down her throat as she tried to splutter and gasp into the icy cold liquid. There was no relief from the chilling depths. She was suffocating, she could feel her chest seizing up against the invasion as she jerked and twisted frantically against her restraints. The darkness twinging at the edges of her vision. They say your life flashed before your eyes but there was nothing but the sting of water against her sensitive eyeballs as she stared into the endless abyss.

Torture like that only halted for one of two reasons that John knew of, the interrogators had gotten the information they wanted or the prisoner...

"You died." he stated in a voice devoid of all emotion.

It left him empty and numb to consider that possibility. His soul mate lying broken and lifeless was becoming one of his own worst nightmares. He couldn't stand it, the idea of her leaving him made his throat constrict as a pained growl emitted from low in his throat. It was a noise of remorse, of hurt and anger for the plight she'd survived.

Survived...

"Briefly." Cass answered, her palm coming to rest just over the place where his heart beat underneath the tips of her fingers. "And then they brought me back again and started over."

"Live to drown another day." She had cracked to Luke as she struggled to keep warm against the freezing cold sensation that had invaded her body.

She hadn't been able to get the heat back into her bones after that, not even when Luke had tucked her trembling form against his body, nestled into the recesses of his flak jacket. Her wet clothing clung to her upper body and she knew without a doubt that they were going to die here.

"We need a plan." Luke muttered, tipping his head back so it came to rest on the rock behind him.

Cass rubbed her hands up and down her arms underneath the protection of the jacket. She remembered the hungry eyes of the insurgent who had dragged her back to their prison, the trail of his hand across her wet shoulder blades before he shoved her forward back into the cage so her weak knees buckled and she lost her balance.

"I think I have one..."

"There are two reasons I'm telling you this." Cass murmured, her lips caressing the sensitive spot just over his heart. "Our lives are dangerous and you need to know that I will do anything necessary to come back, to survive and the second reason..."

Cass closed her eyes tightly against the ache that was building in her throat. The idea of losing John terrified her. Terror was something she associated with a physical attack, feeling like this on an emotional level was something she was completely inexperienced in.

"Your shaking." John uttered as he gathered her even closer against his muscular form.

"If you want to leave I understand." she whispered, her breath tickling across his chest.

"Why would you think that?" he asked her, his warm hands rubbing up and down the curve of Cass's soft, naked back. "Why do you think I would want to leave you after you've shared something like that?"

"It's happened before." Cass confessed unwillingly.

John's brow furrowed for a second before he managed to fit all the missing pieces from their previous conversations into place.

"The Heart Doctor." John remembered.

She had been engaged to a Cardiologist before they had met. She had told him that being away all of the time had put a strain on their relationship, now he realized the real reason that lay behind the breakdown of her engagement.

Cass nodded her agreement. John bent his head capturing her stunning sapphire gaze with his before he placed a butterfly kiss upon her forehead, her closed eyelids, the tip of her nose and finally her lips.

"I'm not going anywhere." John said into the corner of her mouth before gathering up the sheets in his fists and tucking them around Cass's slender frame.

"You always have a way of making me feel safe." Cass murmured as her head came to rest upon his firm chest, her arm wrapping around his waist and snuggling even closer. "You feel like home."

For John home was exactly where the heart is.