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Jaing woke in a cold sweat, his heart thudding in his chest and fear caught high enough in his throat to choke. The dark bedroom was a cavernous space full of threats and shadows; he breathed as quietly as he could for long minutes before the room finally resolved into safe, familiar shapes. Safe enough at least, enough to creep out of his bed, across the room to the door which slid open for him silently.
He wandered to the kitchen, taking soft padding steps and breathing softly, hyperaware of the sounds of the house around him: quiet, sleeping. For a moment it slid, bright and cold, watching for a slender pale ghost over his shoulder, and Jaing put his hand on the wall which was real and solid, plaster, dark and warm with the water pipes running through it. He swallowed and felt his throat work, saliva pooling in his mouth after. Kyrimorut resolved, and he kept walking, one hand on the wall, stepping heel-to-toe so he wouldn't make a sound.
In the kitchen he shut all the doors and turned on all the lights. He could watch every door's reflection in the shining metal backing behind the stovetop. It settled him, seeing everything without seeing the dark and shadowed hallways beyond. A little, at least.
The sturdy heft of the cast-iron saucepan as he lifted it out of the cupboard was comforting too, in its own way.
He took cocoa powder from the cabinet too, and milk from the conservator, and poured it into the saucepan and stirred it as it heated slowly. Besany had seemed happy about the cocoa powder, said it reminded her of being a kid. There was no nostalgia tied to it for Jaing, but he liked that it was pointless and indulgent: essentially empty calories, just because it tasted good. He breathed the warm, chocolate-scented steam rising from the saucepan, shutting his eyes against the heat.
He forgot to watch the reflections of the doors, but it was just Mereel, opening one of them slow, not so quiet it didn't make noise, and Jaing swallowed and breathed out and tried not to let the way his heart was beating rabbit-fast show on his face when he checked over his shoulder that it was just Mereel.
"Turn off the lights, would you?" He kept his tone casual, voice pitched low. Mereel did wordlessly, and the only light for a moment was the hot red glow of the coil. Mereel came and stood next to Jaing, a silent comfort that made the dark feel safe, a hiding place for him and nothing else. Jaing reached up and felt for the light switch, and the dim yellow glow that threw itself over the stovetop did little enough to drive back the dark. It felt intimate. Mereel was close enough that Jaing could feel the heat of him, radiating.
"What woke you?"
"Nightmares," Jaing said, and Mereel snorted.
"Isn't it always?"
"Sometimes it's Mird," Jaing pointed out. He turned off the stove and went and got a mug out of the cupboard.
"None for me?"
"I only made enough for one, and I hate pouring out half-cups." His fingers slid over the handle of the saucepan and he slid away as he lifted it and poured out the steaming drink. He said, "We can share."
Mereel touched Jaing's shoulder, from far away. The hot chocolate swirled in and around on itself in the mug.
Mereel said, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"It wasn't bad," Jaing said. "It wasn't one of the bad ones. Just a nightmare."
Mereel's hand moved onto the back of Jaing's neck and he stifled a shiver. "It was about Kal," he said. Shame curled in his gut; Mereel was so close to him that he couldn't push it away. He felt it rise into his chest. He felt it, and said, "It was about crawling through the trench."
He didn't need to see Mereel's face to sense his incredulity.
Jaing slid.
"I don't want to talk about this," he lied, or maybe he didn't say it out loud. Static hissed at the back of his throat. He swallowed to try and clear the feeling but it stuck, wisping around in his head and making him feel impossible things, like the nightmares made him see impossible things, like crawling through a trench filled with the rotting corpses of disemboweled clones while Kal looked at him and said, "Keep going, ad'ika. I'm sorry, but it's for the best."
"Jaing," Mereel said.
"Don't." Jaing took a sip of his cocoa. He didn't taste it, just got the sticky aftertaste. He took another sip. It helped.
"Jaing," Mereel said again.
"It doesn't mean anything," Jaing said. "It was just another nightmare. It's just my fucked-up traumatized brain trying to make sense of something completely different that happened to me a long time ago. That's all it is. That's all."
Mereel moved one of his fingers back and forth through the hairs at Jaing's nape. He asked, "Vod'ika, will you tell me the truth?"
"I guess I’d better," Jaing said. He gave Mereel the mug and while he drank said, "I have nightmares about Kal very often."
He swallowed hard. The static was rising.
"It doesn't matter," he said past the static, "That he loved us. That he cared. That he wanted to protect us. That he did his best. Last night I dreamed about getting pinned down by droids in the Outer Rim. The night before that I dreamed about Kal teaching us how to resist interrogation. The night before that it was Kal again."
"Ng'ika," Mereel said, in a sorry sort of way.
"I know," Jaing said. "But I can't shake it. It doesn't matter that what he came from a place of caring or a sense of responsibility for my personal well-being. He still gets lumped in with every other fucked-up painful thing anyone's ever done to me." He made a fist and pressed his knuckles down on the stove between the heating coils, leaned his weight down into it until it hurt.
“Okay,” Mereel said, pushing on Jaing’s shoulders until he turned and let Mereel put their foreheads together, Mereel’s hands linking around the back of Jaing’s neck. “Okay,” Mereel said again, soft between them.
“I’m going crazy,” Jaing rasped. His breath shuddered out of him.
“Yeah,” Mereel said. “You’re bonkers. Off your rocker. Unhinged. Losing it. Psychotic.”
Jaing dropped his head and shoved his face into Mereel’s neck. “Fuck you,” he mumbled. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”
He could feel Mereel smiling against his hair.
“I hate you,” Jaing mumbled.
“Vod’ika,” Mereel said softly, rocking them back and forth a little, a hand smoothing up the back of Jaing’s neck. “Go to bed.”
“No,” Jaing said, pushing his face harder into Mereel’s neck.
“Okay,” Mereel murmured. “Let’s go,” and Jaing let himself be led out of the kitchen, through the dark warm halls. Mereel guided Jaing through his pitch-black room to his bed and curled up with him. Mereel faced out, to the room and the door and the things waiting to come through it, and Jaing gave up pretending to be brave and hid in the warm space between Mereel’s shoulder blades. It was like being kids again, but somehow it almost was worse—almost—because none of the things Jaing was afraid of were real anymore. Everything was okay and he was so scared. He couldn’t get it out of him, it was a disease, it was a rot, it was a tumor. It was a virus, it was corruption in the code, the hardware was fine but the software was glitching, and he couldn't get inside himself to clear it out, just had to ride out every false positive it sent down the line. Peacetime was going to kill him. Peacetime was going to eat him alive.
Mereel fell asleep after a while. Jaing did as well, some time after, and dreamed about horrible, harmless things.
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End