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He remembers this place.
He’s been here before.
Maybe not in real life, but he tends to frequent it in his dreams.
The snow. The wind. He can barely see.
His feet sink into the deep drifts and he stumbles.
It is very much a dream, but his brain swears that he can feel the cold.
He looks down to see splotches of red dripping onto white and his hand goes to his bleeding side.
He was always bleeding in this dream. Always there.
Perhaps this did really happen once, all those years ago. Perhaps this was a memory trying to break through the cloud of amnestics that blurred gaps into his earlier years.
The amnestics that she’d force onto him, over and over, until they no longer had any effect.
He tries crying out for someone to help him, but there’s no sound.
He can barely see anything at this point other than the white. His feet feel like they’re sinking in tar.
He calls out again, this time for her.
And that was always the fatal mistake.
His feet sink deeper, and he can no longer move. He struggles.
And then he can hear her voice.
He hasn’t heard it for years. Decades.
But it’s still there in his mind, sharp as ever.
“Really, are you going to cry about this? Pathetic! I’ve always known you were pathetic!” she spat. “This is your fault! If you weren’t always so weak, this would have never happened!”
He can’t speak. His voice is gone.
He sinks deeper.
“This is pathetic! You are pathetic!” she repeats. “You will never be anything!”
He sinks deeper.
He’s no longer in snow, it’s just white. And it snakes around him like vines.
It wraps higher and higher, until finally it reaches his throat.
And it’s choking him.
He can see her then. Leering down at him. And he feels tiny.
Her cold blue eyes are full of disgust and disappointment. A look he still can’t scrub from his memories.
And she speaks.
And her voice drips venom.
“You are nothing, Simon.”
The vines finally drag him down.
-
Simon Glass wakes with a start. He doesn’t sit, but he props himself up with his elbows, watching the heavy rise and fall of his chest.
He shuts his eyes.
It was only a dream.
He glances at the window of his bedroom. That dull orange light from the street-lamps in the apartment parking lot spilling across his bedsheets.
His vision was blurry without glasses, but he can tell by that eerie howling of the wind that it was snowing. He sits up to close the blinds and lays back down on his side, staring at the wall beside him.
Go to sleep, he tells himself.
It was only a dream.
The bed shifts behind him and Simon feels an arm snake around his shoulder, a warm, gentle hand coming to rest just below his ribs.
“You alright?” comes the sleepy voice of Jack Bright, his thumb gently rubbing a circle against Simon’s chest.
“Yeah,” Glass replies, his voice equally groggy. “Just a dream. Go back to sleep.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
Glass sighs. He hates when Jack decides to play this card. He’s heard it enough to know exactly what the following response would be.
“No. Not really.”
“Therapist doesn’t want to talk about his own feelings?” Jack teases with a yawn.
Aaaand there it was.
“Jack, it was just a dream.”
There’s a long pause, Simon still staring ahead at the wall, trying to will himself to lose consciousness. Bright speaks up again, his voice was soft and lacking that usually sarcastic edge.
“Was it about her again?”
“They’re always about her.”
“Simon, she can’t hurt you anymore,” Jack whispers, pulling himself closer against Glass. “She’s gone.”
“Yes, and I am well aware of that,” Simon replies, letting himself relax into Jack’s arms. “But I can’t get rid of her. And I tell myself that she’s gone. Over and over, I do. But she’s still there – like a disease. I can still hear her. That disgust and anger because I didn't fit her perfect cookie cutter mold that she wanted me to become…” he trails off, still staring a hole into the wall. “And sometimes, I’m scared that maybe I will.”
“Will what?”
“Be what she wanted,” Simon says, his voice barely audible. “Be like her.”
Jack sits up, pulling on Simon’s shoulder so that he flipped on his other side to face him.
“Simon, listen to me,” Jack begins. “You are nothing like your mother.”
“But what if I am? Somewhere, deep in there, Jack. My childhood has so many holes in it, I don’t know what she put in there. I’m just– I’m scared, that what if all it takes is somebody saying a couple of words and suddenly I– I just become–”
Jack can’t stop himself from laughing a little. “What? That you’ve been brainwashed into becoming a Chaos Insurgency sleeper agent?”
“Stranger things have happened in this line of work.”
“Yes, they have, but that,” Jack laughs. “That is flat out ridiculous.”
Simon can’t help but roll his eyes. “I tell you my deepest, darkest fears and you laugh.”
“Yeah, ‘cause they’re stupid,” Jack snorts. “What? I’m not the psychiatrist in this relationship.”
“Clearly,” Simon replies.
“Simon, I can guarantee that you aren’t one of them – that you aren’t like her,” Jack says. “You can’t fake this. You can’t fake what you are.”
“And what am I?”
“Good.”
“Jack, the world is not split between good and evil, you of all people know that.”
“Yes, I do. Which is what makes it all the more telling.”
Simon says nothing.
“Simon, you are good. And that’s something that’s getting really fucking rare in this world – practically unheard of in the Foundation. And here you are, laying awake at night, worrying because you think you’re going to spontaneously wake up one day and be a terrorist?”
Glass exhales through his nose in a half-amused laugh.
“See? Sounds pretty dumb when you hear somebody else say it.”
“I suppose…”
“Simon, you became the exact opposite of what she wanted.”
“I work for the Foundation, that is quite literally the opposite of what she wanted…”
“Not just in the literal sense, Simon,” Jack sighs. “She wanted you – she tried to make you into someone cold. Someone with no morals and no free-will. She wanted to break you until you became exactly what she wanted. But you got away–”
“I was taken away, Jack, there’s a difference–”
“You were just a fucking kid, Simon!” Jack exclaims. “You had every single reason to close yourself off after that. To grow up bitter and indifferent. To not stay here. But you didn’t. You became a psychiatrist for fuck’s sake. You see the good in the world – in people who honestly didn’t even think there was anything good in them. And people say you’re too soft because of that, too gentle, too whatever – and you see it as a weakness. But Simon, let me tell you that it’s a whole hell of a lot easier to be bitter and cold. That this isn’t your weakness, it is your strength. You are the head of the fucking psychology department! You think the O5 decided that because they think you’re weak? Because they’re concerned that you’re secretly a puppet for the fucking Chaos Insurgency? Simon, you aren’t weak. You aren’t bad. And you sure as fucking hell are not like your mother.”
Simon closes his eyes, and he can feel the hot tears slip down his cheeks.
Jack gives a half-laugh.
“Christ, maybe I should have been a psychiatrist,” he remarks, thumbing a tear from Simon’s cheek.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Simon attempts to laugh, wiping his face with the back of his hand and taking in a hitched breath.
“...Thank you, Jack,” Simon speaks up again after a moment, his voice is quiet, but full of sincerity.
Bright lays back down with a soft hum. He doesn’t say anything, but he pulls Simon in and presses a gentle kiss to the side of his forehead.
They stay like that for a while, tangled together in silence. The amulet tucked beneath Jack’s t-shirt creating a soft, almost ethereal red glow.
Simon finds himself almost drifting back to sleep until Jack snickers again.
“What?”
“I just still can’t get over the fact that you were worried that someone would say a few magic words and you’d go all Chaos-Insurgency Bucky Barnes on us.”
“I’d go all what?”
“Bucky Barnes? You know, Captain America? Metal arm?”
“Jack, I have no idea who that is.”
“How the hell do you not know who that is?”
“Jack, it’s too early for this,” Simon replies, half asleep. “We can fight about superheroes in the morning…”
“Whatever,” Jack whispers. “Just saying, you’re a dork, Simon.”
“You’re the one comparing someone to a comic book character but I’m the dork. Alright.”
Jack nudges Simon with his shoulder.
“Okay, now you’re just being mean,” he teases.
Simon only gives a tired laugh as he nestles himself closer in Jack’s arms. Jack pulls him tighter, pressing another soft kiss to his forehead.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” Jack replies softly, “dork.”
-
Outside, the wind still rattled the windows and the snow fell harder. Simon closes his eyes, feeling the gentle rise and fall of Jack’s chest, feeling the fingers lightly tangled in his hair.
His mind is not on the snow, or the cold, or the memories of his past. He’s there.
The storm rages outside.
But Simon’s dreams are warm.