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It’s a familiarity that my eyes drift open to the darkness of our bedroom, my mind slowly coming to focus as I felt the light thrashing of his body next to mine, for what must be the umpteenth time. A quick turn of my head to the side only confirmed what I knew.
Julian, still within the depths of sleep, but with a pained expression of his shut eyes and his dry lips parted, whispering in quiet agony, “No… No…”
He still gets nightmares frequently.
It reminds me of the first time back in Mazelinka’s house, when sleep did not come to me and allowed me to witness him emerging from the throes of a night terror, to which I beckoned him to come into my arms in my attempt to ease him back into slumber. But the sight had become more commonplace ever since that fateful night of the Masquerade – the night that had changed our lives as we thwarted The Devil’s dire scheme to merge the realms of ours and the Arcanas.
However, although it had sparred Julian from wrongful judgment and allowed him a chance of renewal at life, the pain that he had to face that night had stuck with him like a sore thumb. It was always the same – if everyone had still hated him for all of the wrongs he had committed, if everyone had blamed him for being so weak and foolish to had not stopped the plague entirely in the first place, if everyone had blamed the almost destruction of our worlds on him and solely him.
Those thoughts disturbed him in those moments where he dwelled deep into the dark waters of his mind and haunted him painfully in the realms of his sleeping psyche.
Whatever trace of sleep that was left in me started to disappear as I turned over to him, my hands seeking purchase of his face. He still did not wake up, his body still jerking and his head constantly turning side-to-side abruptly, his eyes still screwed shut and tears rimming at the seams as his dry voice cracked, “No… Stop… I’m sorry… Please…”
”Julian…” I called to him quietly, my hands rubbing his cheeks softly, feeling the layer of cold sweat on his pale skin. “Julian, my love… Wake up… I’m here… Come back to me…”
Experience has shown me that the quiet and pacifying approach to this was the best way to ensure that Julian doesn't falter in the aftermath. This hadn’t been the way the first time it happened since he and I finally started sharing a bed. I had sat up and shook him in a surge of panic and worry, almost shouting at him to wake up. It was a frightening thing to see my beloved be so engulfed in the pains of nightmares that it had almost made me want to tear up, which I did when he woke up, both of us clinging to each other and breathing hard and comforting each other through the heaviness of sleepy and sad minds. It took time for me to learn that my reactions have an effect on the state of his freshly-woken mentality, judging from the mornings after when it would linger and he would almost isolate himself and retreat from me, giving the reason that he felt terrible for troubling me with his nightmares and saddening me with such dark thoughts.
“It’s so ridiculous…” Julian muttered in a mix of disgust and shame, his good eye looking away from where I was kneeling in front of him at the foot of the armchair he was seated. “I know it’s not true… None of it is… But yet… Why does it still burden me?... Why does it make me burden you?...”
I rose and took his face in my hands, getting him to look at me right in the eye as I touched my forehead to his.
“You are not burdening me, my dear,” I told him reassuringly, running my fingers through his auburn locks and tracing my thumb lightly on the fabric of his eyepatch. “Do not keep your pains to yourself. I am here. I will always be here.”
“My love… Wake up… Julian… I’m here…”
Whatever power I must have in the realm of dreams in his mind must be strong enough for him to take hold and follow me back to the realm of the awake, because after a few seconds, his eyes snapped open, at the same time he sucked in a sharp intake of breath in a gasp. Even in the darkness, I could see his grey eyes – the red of his plague-stricken eye almost glowing – darting around manically, familiarising the sight of our bedroom before it landed upon me.
“D… Darling?...” he croaked, lips quivering as he almost called to me even though I was right in front of him.
“Yes, Julian,” I answered soothingly, my fingers running through his messy auburn waves and wipe the tears that were threatening to stream down his pale cheeks.
Feeling my ministrations helped a lot, and I continued to do so while peppering soft kisses to anywhere my lips could touch; his forehead, his brow, his eyelids, his cheeks and even the tip of his nose. I continued so until his breathing was slowly returning to a more acceptable normal pace. His eyes had been staring deeply at me – almost to make sure that what he was seeing was indeed a reality and not another phantom in the induced state of night terrors – until he closed them again, now looking a slight bit at ease.
No words were said between us. When it had been fresh, I remember whispering lovely nothings and soft reassurances to him, telling him over and over again It’s just a nightmare or It’s not real or It’s not your fault or I love you always. But now, the words do not come into play, not because it was useless, but because it was upon Julian’s request that I need not comfort him in soothing words for he knows them to be true, and he kept it to heart that everything is genuine, so he shouldn’t rely on more words just to make sure that it’s real.
(A strange request from a strange man. Nonetheless, I followed, although I will admit I do sometimes find myself still doing it at times.)
After what seemed like a few minutes, I moved to lay on my side facing him, my hands placed on his bare back and beckoning him to turn to me. He did so without question, as he always would, and he promptly buried his face into the crook of my neck, inhaling the scent of skin there as I did the same and sniffed his hair while wrapping my arms around him, holding him tight to me.
“I’m… sorry…” he whispered, his hot breath fanning my neck. “For waking you up again, darling…”
I shushed him, fingers tangling themselves in his hair once more. “Julian, we’ve talked about this... It’s okay... I’m here... It’s okay...”
I felt him smile then, and his arms wrapped around my waist, hugging himself to me almost as tightly as I did. He planted a soft kiss, and in a voice that signified the return to slumber, he whispered, “Thank you… I love you so much…”
“I love you too,” I answered surely, planting a kiss to the top of his head before I too felt sleep slipping back into me. And as it did, I thought to myself of how, while it would seem his night terrors would not leave the depths of his mind anytime soon, I would not waver. He need not worry, for when I guide him out of the fog of nightmares and internal pain and back to me, comfort and reassurance will always find him steadfastly.