There was a time that this story was wishful thinking for the second half of season 2… now it's very much AU. I hope you'll enjoy reading it anyway.

Recovering

Part 1

It takes a long time before she is somewhat calm again. Minutes, hours perhaps, or any other measure of time. Such measures have no meaning to her. All she has ever known is endlessness between four walls. The nothingness did end, eventually, but the events which have taken place since then are vague and at least as terrible.

There were screams and screeching noises, too bright lights and a crash, combined with pain and confusion. In the middle of the chaos and fear was a man who called her a name which is meaningless to her, who said so many things which she still doesn't understand. The intensity in his eyes scared her almost as much as the way he just wouldn't let go of her.

He wouldn't leave her alone when they were outside, but he appeared here as well. It seems strange for him to follow her to a place of which she doesn't know herself what it is exactly. She thinks she might be in the hospital, but how can the comfortable bed in the large room possible be the same place as the small cell underground where she has been for as long as she can remember?

Yet, he was here. He was yelling outside her room, his voice standing out among the noise of more people than she had ever heard before. The man had been there during the night as well, kissing her. She has never been kissed, but she doesn't think that the panic caused by sudden lips pushing insistingly against her own is what kissing is supposed to be like.

He had disappeared at her screams, but he returned this afternoon to fuss over a damaged cup which looked to her like more trouble than it was worth. There was little room to consider that though when he forced her to hold the item of fragile porcelain, only leaving her alone again after yet more panic caused her to smash the cup against the very walls of the building which had held her captive for so long.

He has been gone for quite some time now and she finally isn't terrified any longer, but she still doesn't have a clue why he was so intend for her to hold that particular, stupid cup in the first place.

She wishes that she knew how she got hurt and why she is in such a large room all on her own. She wants to know why that man won't leave her alone.

She doubts whether she'll get any answers. There is no one who has actually talked to her, no one but him, and he doesn't make any sense. There are few things she knows of the world outside the small room which has been her only reality for as long as she can remember, but she is certain that there is no such thing as the magic which he keeps talking of.

He might be mad, but she has always been told that she is and she has never held such bizarre notions as the man who appears wherever she goes. She has always felt numb, empty, and for as far as she can tell the man is anything but. If anything, it looks like he thinks and feels too much.

Her thoughts are focused on the mysterious man so much that the sudden noise from outside initially doesn't register. But when it repeats itself, again and again with somewhat regular intervals, she becomes gradually aware of it.

Tensing at the disturbed silence, she pulls the blanket tighter around for comfort of a kind it can't provide. She is all alone, in a world which is completely unfamiliar to her, and she has never learned to fend for herself. She hasn't been taught to react properly to danger, or to decide whether situations are threatening or not to begin with.

All she knows is that she is defenseless and that there is someone - or something - in the hallway outside her room. Straining her ears, she dismisses the possibility of the sounds being caused by a nurse or another staff member. She has watched them all day, for a lack of anything better to do, and knows that they don't linger there.

Curiosity gets the better of her, probably hugely encouraged by her desire to do something now that she is out of the locked room where she has been forced to spend so much time. She has no idea whether she'll have to get back there, so now that she is still somewhat free she might as well take advantage of the previously unknown luxury of finding out what is beyond the doorstep.

She gets up as quietly as she can, surprised by the way her legs hold her weight easily. She expected herself to be weak after being confined to a single, small room for as long as she had, but she finds herself much stronger than she anticipated. It's almost as if she has actually walked - lived - instead of being locked up.

Her feet are bare and although the floor is cold, she is glad for the lack of shoes. She can be more quiet this way, and she isn't used to wear anything on her feet anyway.

She crosses the room with surprisingly confident steps in mere seconds, but there is no time to consider how that ease of movement might be possible. The sound which roused her grows stronger when she gets closer to its source and she's anxious to find out what is causing it, who or what is just outside her view.

She doesn't see anything which she hasn't seen earlier that day when she reaches the glass doors which separates her new room from the hallway; whatever she has heard must be further along. Intuitively holding her breath, she pokes her head around the door, looking in both directions.

She abruptly withdraws her head only a second later, quickly retreating to the relative safety of the room. It shouldn't surprise her, not after what has happened so far, but she is taken aback by finding him sitting at the end of the hallway.

She leans back against the wall, trying to calm her by now raging breath, expecting him to rush towards her and do something else to upset her. She has been quiet so far and she doesn't think he has spotted her, but that man can do things with fire and light, and she doesn't trust him in the slightest.

The sound continues, louder than ever before. Now that she is closer to it and is reasonably sure that it's caused by a person, it's a lot easier to recognize. Someone is crying and as strange as it seems, the man who never stops being near her – never stops scaring her – is the one who is doing so.

It's the only explanation that he is the one who is making these sounds, but it doesn't make any sense to her. Still, she has to know for certain, if only so she'll never have to doubt her observations when she is back in the nothingness of her room in the basement.

She dares another soundless and very brief peek, just to make sure. She finds him exactly where he was before. By now knowing what she's looking for, his slumped, trembling shoulders are difficult to miss, just like the way his face is covered by his hands, even with the current distance which safely separates them.

He hardly looks like the demanding, intimidating man he was so far. That's probably the only reason that she doesn't flee the very room to find a place where he can't come near her again.

She lingers on the threshold instead, only her head poking into the hallway as she keeps her gaze on the man. She is conflicted, for the first time struggling to make up her mind regarding him. She was afraid of him before, but now that he is sitting there like that, his shuddering sobs still not ceasing, he doesn't look that scary at all.

If anything, he looks utterly lost. If there's something she's familiar with, it's the feeling of being all alone in the world, of having nothing to live for. In a way, he looks now like she has so often felt herself.

She remembers his cup, how sad he was when she smashed it against the wall, almost like his heart broke along with that damaged and seemingly useless piece of china. It seems a bit silly to react like this because of a broken cup, but she has been locked up all this time so what does she know?

She eyes the shards on the floor, lying exactly where they have been since the moment that the impact of her blow broke them away from one another. As guilt overwhelms her, so does an idea.

Much as the notion of actually approaching him would have terrified her until a moment ago, it doesn't seem all that bad now to at least give the remains of the cup back to him. That way, he won't have to come to her room again to get them himself - somehow, she knows he wants them back - and she might have the chance to apologize. He should have left when she asked him to, but destroying his cup was not the solution to make him leave - not the right one, at least.

She quietly picks up the shards, making sure to collect all of them. When she has, she returns to the threshold and peeks to the other side of the hallway, reassured to find two nurses at the station. If anything goes wrong, she'll call out for them.

Taking a deep breath, she leaves the relative safety of the room and heads for the man on the uncomfortable looking hospital chair, his head still buried in his hands. She tries to be strong and calm... to be brave. It is important for a reason she can't explain.

He doesn't look up as she approaches him, clearly not hearing her. She definitely hears him though, the sound of his sadness upsetting her in a way that takes her aback. It's not just that he is a stranger whose emotions shouldn't upset her this much; he's a stranger who has scared her with everything he has said and done. In the quietness of the dark and mostly deserted hospital, it's however almost as if his sadness is her own.

Sitting there like that, all but curled up into himself, he is much smaller than she remembers. He seemed so tall and strong when they were on the road in the forest, so imposing when he approached her in the very bed she just left. But now... now he looks like a man who is defeated by his own despair.

"I wanted to give you this."

Keeping the distance between them as large as practically possible, she shows him the pieces of broken china in her hands. Whether he's tall or not, in that moment she feels tiny indeed.

His head snaps up and she extends her arms more fully to bring the shards to his attention, hoping that she hasn't just made a horrible mistake. He doesn't even glance at the remains of his cup though, only stares at her in that deeply unnerving way of his.

His eyes are the same whirlpools of emotion as before, their intensity almost tangible. But she is somewhat prepared for that now and she stands her ground, looking straight back at him.

Long seconds pass in which they simply stare at one another. He makes no attempt to approach her, maintaining the distance between them, which allows her to relax slightly.

It's like she truly sees him for the first time only now. It's doubtlessly helped by the tears which are still dripping down his cheeks, but it's so much more than that. In the first somewhat calm moment they share, he hardly seems like the madman she took him for earlier.

Indeed, there is something desperate about him, but it doesn't appear to be as threatening as before at all. Similarly, the haunted look on his face that she was only partly aware of before is so much more obvious to her now. Whatever drove this man to act the way he did in their earlier meetings, she can see now that there was no malevolent intend behind it.

Encouraged, she steps slightly closer to him, aiming to hand him the shards. She dare not presume what he might want to do with them, but it was earlier obvious that the cup means very much to him.

"I'm sorry," she says timidly, lowering her gaze to the shards in her palms with the hope that he will follow her.

"There's no need to apologize. None whatsoever. I should be the one to..."

His voice is hoarse, lacking all his earlier certainty. For the first time she genuinely wonders why he is reacting like this. No matter how much the cup meant to him, it seems a bit much for him to break down like this due to the broken china.

"You already did," she says, only now fully recalling his muttered apology and the look of complete horror on his face when he regarded the remains of the cup. "I can't fix it, but maybe you can..."

She isn't sure how to continue that sentence, whether the magic he keeps talking about would provide a solution. That notion would be a ridiculous one. It is, because there's no such things as magic. And yet, he did something to her shoulder, something to make the pain go away, in a way that shouldn't be possible.

No longer afraid to do so, she closes the last distance between them, holding her hands up in front of him to give the shards to him. Instead of taking them, he turns away from her, muttering something unintelligible, the lump in his throat almost audible.

"I can throw them away if you don't want them..."

She attempts to find out what she should say and do to make this better, to figure out what he wants, but he only cringes at her words.

Yet more confused, she can only stand there, her eyes fixed on his back. He is scaring her again, but in a way which couldn't differ more from what he did before.

For whatever reason, he is hurt and she can't stand the sight of it. She wants him to feel better, wants to help him feel better, but she doesn't have a clue how she might achieve that.

His shoulders are shaking, the same sounds as before escaping him. He is crying right in front of her and that too seems impossible, for he seemed so certain and strong before. This way, he is just as small as she has always felt.

"You... you should go," he says, not turning around to face her and his voice barely audible. "Go back to your room. I promise you that I won't bother you again. I won't come back for you, unless you ask me to. You... you won't have to see again. You won't see me again. You have my word. When... if you would like me to visit I'd be more than happy to meet you again, but I guarantee that it won't happen if you don't want me to s..."

His voice breaks as he leans as far away from her as he can without actually getting up. She spots his cane, lying forgotten on the floor beneath his chair, just out of his reach. But it's more than the unavailability of something to lean on that is holding him back; it's like his body is simply failing him.

"Please, just go."

Before, these words were the last she expected from him. Before, she would for once have done nothing rather than do exactly as he says. Before, she was oblivious to the sadness which is consuming him, the despair which haunts him.

He places a gloved hand against the wall to steady himself, his fist clenched yet trembling as he is struggling to compose himself and loses the battle. He sniffles noisily, making a gesture with his still free hand to wipe the tears away from his face.

At the sight of it, she knows for once exactly what to do.