Trevor
I don’t know why I’m here. Talking to Dax isn’t going to suddenly make my nightmares go away. But the man didn’t open up to me until we found out Ripper was alive, and when he did…the talk we had while waiting for Ry, West, and Graham to breach Faruk’s compound showed me a side of Dax I never thought I’d ever see.
He deserves the same from me.
Second Sight’s offices are in one of Boston’s older buildings, and the elevator has a maximum capacity of four people. Or so it says on the permit. I don’t believe it. My heart rate skyrockets. I’ve lost all ability to handle tight spaces, and there are already two people in here with me.
I barely make it to the sixth floor without hyperventilating, and when I stumble out into the hall, my hands are shaking.
Fuck. I’m an assassin. Trained to always be prepared. Always steady. And now, I can’t even ride six floors in an elevator.
Walking into Second Sight helps steady me. This is my home. And it shouldn’t have taken nearly dying for me to realize that.
“Welcome back, Trevor,” Marjorie says as I shut the door behind me. “Are you here for the entire day?”
“No. He’s not,” Dax says from the little kitchenette twenty feet away. “Keep him off the calendar for the rest of the week.”
Marjorie offers me an understanding smile, and I head for the coffee machine where Dax has a mug waiting for me. “Shouldn’t that be my choice?” I ask as I pour myself a cup.
“Nope.” Dax turns and heads for his office, but stops after a couple of steps, stress lines around his mouth deepening. “I should have asked. Do you…want to be outside? Or…?”
“Your office is fine.” Anything to avoid that damn elevator again. I’m taking the stairs from now on.
When he’s in the office, Dax doesn’t use his cane. We all know not to move shit, and he’s memorized the location of every wall, every corner, every door. His fingers trail along the side of his desk, and he sets his coffee down before he reaches for the arm of his chair and then drops down with a grimace.
“You okay?” I ask as I shut the door.
“Slipped on a wet patch of leaves last night. Nothin’ serious. And we’re not here to talk about me.”
Despite knowing he can’t see, it feels like he’s staring right at me, and I take a long sip of coffee. This was a mistake.
“Trev.”
The single word makes me sit up straighter, and I clear my throat as I set the mug on the corner of his desk. I’m afraid I’ll spill it if I don’t.
“It was three days.” My voice carries too much of the shame that’s held me in its grip since that first night when I couldn’t tell Dani what I’d been through down in the bowels of The Crypt.
“Yeah. So?”
“We’ve both had SERE training that lasted longer than that.”
Dax takes another sip of coffee and leans back in his chair. “SERE training wasn’t real, Trev. No matter how hellacious it was, we all knew it wasn’t real. The Crypt was real.”
“The American does not look so good.”
I swallow hard as I stare out Dax’s office window. Sun bounces off a building a few streets over, and the brightness of it takes me back to that frigid cell, the guards slamming their billy clubs against the bars.
“What’d they do?” Dax’s voice is rougher now. He doesn’t want to hear this. And I don’t want to remember.
All of a sudden, I’m choking, fighting not to drown as one of Ochoa’s men waterboards me not long after they dragged me off that damn plane.
“You wanted water, si?”
A warm hand grips my wrist, hard. “Trevor! Look at me. Now.” Dax stands over me. I didn’t hear him get up. See him move. But his fingers digging into my forearm help bring me back. “Take a deep breath for me, man.”
There’s no ignoring Dax when he goes full Special Forces. He might be blind now, forced out of the army by his time in Hell, but he’ll always be a soldier. So I try, wheezing a little at first, then managing a deeper breath, then another.
“Sorry,” I manage.
“Fuck that. You don’t have to apologize for somethin’ you can’t control.” Once he’s back in his chair, he swivels it to stare out the window and sighs. “You know why we chose this office building? This floor?”
“What?” The sudden shift in the conversation confuses me, and I reach for my coffee, needing the jolt of caffeine to steady me.
“Me and Ford. When we started Second Sight, we worked out of Ford’s apartment for a month. But the two of us stuck in a studio for eight hours a day?” He chuckles, his back still to me. “We almost killed each other a couple of times.”
He falls silent for a moment, and I don’t want to hear the voices of my captors again in my memories, so I ask, “Why this building?”
“Because of the sun. This office, right here. This…view.” Dax takes off his glasses and sets them on the desk behind him.
“A blind man chose this office because of the view?”
He turns to me, emotion written all over his face. Pain. Fear. Fifteen months of memories he’ll never be rid of. “Yep. I needed to feel the sun. Every day I could.” His eyes, forever a cloudy blue, shine just a little as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “It was a little over a year after Ry got me out of there.” With a shake of his head, he spins his chair again and presses his hand to the glass. “Have I ever told you what I…see?”
“No.”
“Light. Dark. If a color is really bright, I can sometimes pick it up. Evianna has this red dress…” The corner of his mouth turns up slightly. “In Hell, it was dark. All the fucking time. They tacked blankets over the bars. Blindfolded us whenever they took us out of the cells. Hoods over our heads if they wanted to waterboard us or throw us down in the pit.”
His voice turns rough, and now both of his hands are on the window. “It was night when Ry pulled me out of there. And I was mostly out of it for the flight to the hospital in Germany. They wouldn’t let me outside for two weeks. Surgery on my leg, then my eyes. But there was a window we passed every time they took me for another X-ray. I annoyed the shit out of the orderly. Made him stop every fuckin’ time so I could put my hand on the glass and feel the sun. That’s why I picked this office. Why I walk almost everywhere, even in winter. Because I need to be outside every single day I can.”
This time, the silence doesn’t send me back to the same dark place. All I can think about is how Dax came back from fifteen months of torture, darkness, and despair, and now…he’s strong enough to share his pain with me.
“It was never dark in The Crypt,” I say quietly. “The lights…were so strong, they hurt.”
Dax swivels around, picks up his coffee, and settles back in his chair. Maybe…I can tell him the rest. And maybe…I’ll find a little bit more of myself when I do.