3 Month Leave | the MENTALIST

MONTH 1 : pt III

⚠️ Trigger warning: this chapter includes severe PTSD and reliving of traumatic injury.
ℹ️ Note: Lisbon's advice is literally how I survived my breakup last year and helped my nightmares go away so 🤷🏻‍♀️

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Update: edited.

It had been three weeks since the FBI rescued Ronnie and Cho from Shiralai Arlov. Maybe it was the physical damage beginning to heal, her body no longer needing to work so hard in her sleep, or maybe it was some kind of delayed trauma response, but it was three whole weeks after her rescue that the nightmares started.

Maybe it was the phone call they'd gotten from Lisbon, informing them that they'd made no headway on tracking down the Russian oil baron.

Everything had been going so well. She'd been so encouraged by her progress, glad to see her injuries looking a little better every day, happy to feel more energy every morning, eager to cozy up in bed every night with a couple episodes of a hospital drama that made Cho roll his eyes and scoff every five minutes.

Instead of maintaining that upward trajectory, she found herself wide awake on a random Tuesday night, crying into her pillow like the world was ending. She should have known. Nothing ever happened in a linear progression.

The nightmare had hit her a few hours after they'd gone to bed for the night, Arlov's face looming over her, smiling sickly, laughing at her like her freedom was a joke. For a few terrible, trapped moments, she thought she'd invented her own rescue—dreaming of going home and being with her friends again, just to wake up and find herself under the blade of his knife once again.

Arlov's face disappeared when she started to panic.

When she woke up, heart pounding like she'd run a marathon, she lay still for a few seconds to make sense of what she'd seen. The nightmare replayed over and over in her head, leaving a worsening feeling of dread each time.

Her eyes drifted to the door. Not that she could see it in the pitch back bedroom, but she would have seen if it was open. The light from the kitchen would have shone through the crack. It didn't seem like Cho had heard her distress from the living room, which meant hopefully he wouldn't hear her when she rolled over and cried.

the MENTALIST

Ronnie Masters scared people.

Cho often forgot that her quiet, strong presence tended to be quite imposing in unfamiliar company, but when he went into the bedroom the next morning to find some clothes, he was abruptly reminded.

She was already awake, standing in front of the window, arms folded over her chest.

With her back to him, he noted that she wore the same white short-shorts and tank top that she'd been wearing during the last case that they'd thought might be Red John. He remembered thinking it was too scant to be wandering around the halls of a hotel without attracting unwanted attention, and there she was, standing in front of the open window, fully visible.

He couldn't help but notice her diminished stature. Her shoulders, once capped with enviable deltoids, now came to points. Her spine protruded in a knobby trail down her back. The muscle of her arms and legs seemed smaller and more defined, but in the starvation kind of way rather than the toning kind of way.

It had taken a week of torture and three weeks of recovery for him to realize that somehow, hidden behind the occasional meal they ate together and all of the movie snacks, she wasn't actually eating.

"Masters." He tugged a t-shirt from his drawer and tried to ignore the way his stomach knotted with worry when he noticed the deep hollow of her collarbone. "You good?"