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“I'm sorry.”
Bright, tired eyes of his companion open slowly and stare at him calmly as the other man shifts his body into a semi upright position next to the wall of their cell. A man so unknown to him that they had forced him to hurt or forced him to watch them hurt the man when he couldn't make a decision about their weapon offerings fast enough.
“I know, it is something that you have said many times during our stay here. Given what our current situation is though and how we got here, I don't think that we have any other choice, but to comply with their demands. Or at least you don't.”
Frowning he nodded slightly knowing that much was at least true as he moved his left hand towards his upper right arm, gently fingering one of the older harm scars that lined the skin of his arm knowing that the other man was correct. He feels the keen gaze of the other man follow the path that his fingers make over the old scars on his right arm and then up towards his face, catching his eyes.
“If we survive this and someone rescues us from this place, I'd like to know the story behind those marks of yours. And also hear about you of course.”
Sighing he looks away, towards the door listening to the sounds that he could hear beyond it and shakes his head softly. Their captors would be coming to visit them soon and undo the injury care that he tried to do for the other man.
“There's no story to them. I'm no one important. Not anymore at least. If there is a rescue, then I think that you would be the only one truly rescued from here. This is a fitting place for someone like me to die in.”
“Surely someone -”
“No. There is no one who will care to worry for my worthless hide. Rank is important where I'm from and without that you become nothing. One of the Forgotten. Outcast, dead in their eyes. You, I'm sure will have a chance at least.”
“But -”
“No.”
They tense as the door of the cell opens and their captors stride confidently into the wide room. Numbly he looks down at their hands to see what they have brought with them now and notes that in one strange shaped hand is a some kind of blaster gun while in another hand is something resembling a whip with sharpened ends.
They offer both items to him and he blinks slowly as one of them speaks roughly in Standard English. How they had learned, he still wasn't sure nor was he sure that he wanted to know.
“What do you choose?”
His hand apparently on autopilot reaches for the offered whip and he hears a rattling gasp behind him at the move. At the perceived sign of betrayal. In front of him alien eyes gleam with smug amusement and he squeezes his eyes shut.
“I'm sorry.”
He turns to face the man, who had turned away from him to present his back while his arms have moved to protect his neck as well as his head and cracks the whip, its sharpened ends arc through the air towards his back.
He comes again with a start and heart hammering, staring for a long moment up at the darkened ceiling above him as he breathes in and out heavily, relishing the softness of the bed mattress under his back after the four weeks spent in hands of strange hostile aliens that had tormented both him and his new comrade in arms before they had finally been rescued from the place where he truly felt that he had fallen from grace. Sitting up slowly, he rests his hands on top of the blankets before glancing at the man, his new partner sleeping calmly beside him in the other bed.
He doesn't look at the old scars on his arms, because he knows that if he did then he'd find himself down in the kitchen, hunting for a knife to make new injuries and scars alongside the old ones. Though he doesn't want to be questioned by his partner or anyone else if they see him going to or leaving the infirmary. He doesn't want to tarnish their new made opinions of himself just yet.
Good he hadn't woken him up this time, which meant it hadn't been one of the nightmares that sometimes left him shouting in his sleep. That sometimes left him screaming to her, in hopes that she would come and take him away.
Sometimes the nightmares were different. Sometimes they were of not being rescued and of himself being forced to watch as the other man died of his injuries.
In the end she hadn't, neither had any of the comrades that he had formerly been friends with, instead it had been other people, friends with the other man, who had mounted a mission against the aliens and rescued both of them despite his attempts of insisting that he should be left behind and that he would only slow them down. They had seen through his words and took him with them anyways, the other man smiling at him.
“I'm sorry, but there is no “we” anymore. No more “us” anymore. I love you truly, but I can't stay here anymore. I don't want to be with you anymore.”
They had accepted him even knowing his past and gave him a new life among them whereas he had lost everything with his former one for crimes that he didn't remember committing despite the evidence that had been leveled against him.
A hand touches his left arm on one of the old scars, making a soft sound of surprise he looks over to see his partner standing in front of him looking concerned as sleep fled from his eyes.
“Are you alright?”
“Nightmares.”
He shrugs slightly and looks down towards an uninteresting spot on the floor, looking anywhere but at the man now touching his arm only to be surprised by receiving a gentle hug from him as a hand gently rubbed his back slowly. Only his lady had ever hugged him and after she had left him, he didn't expect to be touched or hugged by anyone ever again.
“It's alright. We aren't there with those things anymore. The nightmares will fade away with time.”
He wants to believe him really he does, because he isn't so sure that they will. While most of his nightmares did, but so often others that he were gone with time, would return to exact their vengeance on his tired mind.