sweet nothings (stris)

to all things housed in her silence (pt. 2)

Chapter Text

The problems don't start until later.

She sees Wendy diligently, discussing every minute detail that she remembers from when she was taken, and, slowly but surely, the weight of it falls off her shoulders. Her anger and anxiety come out in the ring with Tan and Luca, at dinner with Deacon and Hondo, and in the quiet moments at her apartment with Street. The TV drones on quietly but instead she focuses on the soft feel of his hand in her hair until she drifts off. Waking up sometime later, with a kink in her neck, she kisses Street until his eyes open and murmurs that they should go to bed. When she's cleared to go back into the field, it feels like she's finally going back to where she's meant to be.

And then, one day in the middle of a case, her adrenaline is pumping and a gun fires and she's left putting pressure on a dying man's gushing wound. She thinks nothing of it in the moment, too focused on staunching the hot, red liquid with anything she can get her hands on. Even after EMTs arrive and cart him away, it doesn't register. There's a suspect to be caught, so a quick wipe of her hands on her pants is all she can do before she's running to his last known location.

She sees the shadow of red on her hands once they get back to Betty fifteen minutes later. There's dried blood under her nails and in the cracks of her hand. It makes her feel numb, her brain flashing back to yellow grass and the men's dead eyes staring back up at her. A chill runs up her spine and sticks there after the image has dissolved. Silently, she takes her seat in the van and holds her gun so no one sees her hands shake.

The water runs pale pink against the sink at HQ and burns hot on her skin long after her hands are clean.

Lying in bed that night, with Street snoring softly beside her, her eyes won't close. Her anxiety rises as she thinks of living that moment in the shed again and again for the next five hours. She gives up all together, instead grabbing a glass of water and putting her headphones in to listen to a podcast. Street curls around her sometime in the night and it makes her smile. The weight of his arm across her waist helps calm her down, and she reminds herself to keep her breathing even so he doesn't wake up.

She manages to drift off two hours before their alarms blare them awake. A quick shower helps her wake up, followed by a cup of coffee and breakfast that's made better by the fact that she wasn't the one to cook it. Street asks her if she's okay when she finishes, noticing that she's quieter than usual and she nods and says she's fine.

"Okay," he says, leaving it and pressing a kiss on her head before going to take his own shower, "I'm always here to talk if you want."

-x-

Her weariness grows with each passing day. She blames her exhaustion on long cases and nights spent with her family, though she's gotten concerningly good at knowing the difference between 2 am tired and 3 am tired. Tan asks her if it's a good idea to be in the ring, noticing bruises on her knuckles from so much time at the bag, but she snaps at him that she's fine, and slides under the rope onto the soft mat. Her hands and wrists ache when she gets home that night. She ices them until they're numb. Sleep still evades her.

The memory starts to haunt her during the day, too, whenever she isn't otherwise occupied. It's the feeling of a phantom hand ghosting over her, and the team calling her name twice because the first time all she can hear is a gun going off. She takes to picking up extra shifts in the armory to combat it. When Street and the team ask her what's wrong, she brushes them off, lies and tells them that she's saving for a gift for her cousin, and they don't push.

Her work in the field is as sharp as ever, and she tells herself that she has everything under control.

An appointment with Wendy gets her a renewed prescription for sleeping pills and an assignment to journal often to ease her stress. She only uses one of them.