the Light
Chapter 2 (Pt 2)
"Why wasn't I told, Sir?"
A small sigh escaped the older man's lips. Pulling himself up slowly on his hands, he stood up and walked around his desk, coming face to face with his subordinate.
"I was afraid," he said simply, earning a small frown of incredulity from the other man. "The doctor informed us that healing you physically would be nothing in comparison with healing you mentally," he continued.
"You were..." A.J. trailed off, as the memory of one hospital visit came to his mind: the young aviator, deathly pale and thin, thrashing about on the bed, lost in the throes of a fever-induced nightmare. "I didn't think you
could handle it," he admitted softly, looking directly at the younger man.
The deep blue eyes darkened in response, and Harm looked away in a failed attempt to mask the pain that flashed in them.
"You didn't TRUST me enough to handle it," he said dully, while somewhere in the back of his mind a small voice wondered: "Would you trust yourself?" Nodding slightly in response to his own thoughts, he admitted in a voice that was barely above a whisper, "And you were probably right not to..."
He fell silent; eyes fixed on the polished tips of his black shoes.
A.J. was stumped. The sheer magnitude of the defeat that echoed in the younger man's voice struck him more than the quiet reproach that came before it. A.J. heard it before from some of the former P.O.W.s in the
VA hospitals that he visited years ago. That same defeat of men broken in captivity.
What have they done to you, my boy?
Following a sudden and uncharacteristic impulse to show care, the old sailor placed his hand on the younger man's shoulder, squeezing it lightly, when he felt the latter start at his touch. He waited patiently until Harm raised his head to look at him.
"Are you sure you want to go through with this now?" he asked softly.
A look of raw unadulterated pain flashed briefly in the clouded blue eyes, and for a moment Harm faltered, his mind reeling at the prospect of coming face to face with his former torturer. He took a deep steadying breath,
forcing his apprehension deeper under the surface, and said in a quiet yet firm voice: "I have to, Sir. ... I have to."