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24 wakes to the sounds of tears and angered whispering. He blinks in the dim half-light and listens to the quiet cries below.
“Shut up , you’re gonna wake the trainers!” 23 hisses.
“You’re fine, 67, just go back to sleep. Quit acting like a baby,” 25 says, muffled, still inside his pod.
24 sighs and swings down from his pod, landing on the floor between two beds. 67 is sitting up in his bed, holding his knees to his chest and crying.
“What is it?” 24 asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. 23 scoffs.
“67 had a dream, and he’s loud about it,” he says. 24 frowns.
“I’ll handle it. Go back to sleep, we have training first thing in the morning.”
23 rolls his eyes, but slides his bed back into his pod without complaint, leaving 24 standing in front of 67’s bed. 67 is still crying, but he’s quieted down enough that 24 can hear his ragged breathing. 67’s only been with their squad three months now, so it makes sense that the others haven’t quite warmed up to him yet, but their apathy towards 67 still irks 24. Just because 67 was reassigned to their squad doesn’t mean he’s trying to take 27’s place.
“Bad dream?” 24 asks, and 67 peers up at him with tear-filled eyes. His blond curls are in disarray from sleep, and he has tear tracks on his cheeks.
“Y-yeah,” he says, and 24 sits on the bunk next to him.
“Wanna talk about it?” 24 asks. 67 is quiet for a long time.
“My… my squad. I dreamed about losing my squad.”
24 grimaces. 67 has never talked about that day in the training center, and considering they lost 27 in the same accident, 24 wasn’t exactly dying to bring it up.
“I’m sorry,” 24 says, not knowing what else to say and hating himself for it.
67 sniffs.
“They… when the turret malfunctioned… they were right in front. 68’s head exploded… 70, he saw what was happening, and he shoved me down and fell on top of me. I didn’t know he was dead until I felt the blood seep into my clothes, and by then I was too scared to move,” 67 says, voice barely a whisper. 24 slowly puts an arm around 67’s shoulders, and the smaller boy leans into it.
“I’m sorry, 67. I saw 27 die, and I have nightmares about it, too,” he admits. 67 gapes at him.
“You? But you’re so… so strong!”
24 shugs.
“I don’t think being strong has anything to do with it. The way I see it, we all have our own reasons to have nightmares, and there’s nothing shameful about it.”
67’s brows furrow, and he doesn’t speak for a moment.
“I’m sorry for waking you up.”
24 shakes his head.
“I’m your squad leader, it’s what I’m here for.”
67 looks away.
“I’m not your squadmate, though.”
24 frowns.
“Don’t be silly, of course you are! Why would you say something like that?”
67 bites his lip, and he remains silent. 24 sighs and rubs a hand down his face. 67 likely just doesn’t want to stir anything up, so he’s covering for someone. That right there already shows loyalty to the squad, but he doubts 67 would see it that way. 24 decides to take a shot in the dark.
“It’s 23, isn’t it?”
67’s head whips around.
“How did you know?!”
24 gives his brother a grin.
“Lucky guess. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
“No, I don’t want him to get in trouble because of me, that’ll only make it worse,” 67 says quickly. 24 sees his point.
“Hmm, alright, we’ll hold a squad meeting then, and I’ll talk to everyone about it. We won’t frame it as getting in trouble, just that we’re all getting on the same page.” 24 tells him, and 67 seems to mull it over for a moment.
“Alright.”
24 stays with his arm around his younger brother, sensing he still has something he needs to say.
“What was he like?”
“Who?”
“27. What was he like? You all miss him a lot, so he must have been pretty special.”
24 smiles to try and keep from tearing up.
“Yeah, he was. He was the squad jokester. One time, he hid a trainer’s comm link in the vents. It rang for weeks and weeks before they were able to find it.”
67’s eyes are wide.
“But he could have gotten decommissioned for that!”
24’s smile feels a little more genuine on his face now.
“But he didn’t. They never caught him.”
67 has a small smile on his face, too.
“That’s pretty impressive. I’m sorry I never got to meet him,” he says. 24 holds him closer.
“I am too, kih’vod, I am too. What… what was your squad like?”
“ My squad? Why?” he asks, as if it’s preposterous that 24 could care about people he never met and never will.
“Because they’re important to you.”
“ Oh . They were- they were good. 70 was our leader. He was a little like you, but a bit more serious. He made sure we were top of our unit in the simulations, and he was so proud of us. 69 was the brains, he read everything he could and even stole a datapad from the longnecks once when he got bored. He got caught, but they believed him that he didn’t know how it got in his bunk because of how compliant he was otherwise. 68 was quiet. He didn’t like to talk a lot, and 66 did most of the talking for him. They were kar’vode. 66 was our strategist. He was pretty rash, and he butted heads with 69 a lot, but they still cared for each other, y’know?”
24 nods.
“Like me and 23, yeah.”
67 sighs.
“That’s about it. They were… I miss them, so much ,” he says, voice cracking at the end, and 24 leans over and bumps their foreheads together in a kov’nyn. 67’s breath hitches, but he doesn’t pull back. 24 rarely shares kov’nyne with anyone, and he’s never shared one with 67, but the kid seems to soak it in like a plant does the sun, so 24 feels like he did the right thing. After a moment, he pulls back.
“Did it help to talk about them?”
“Y-yeah. Thank you, ori’vod,” he says, and that’s the first time he’s called 24 that. Something warm swells in his chest, and he does his best not to pull his younger brother back into a kov’nyn.
“If you ever need to talk, just let me know, alright?”
67 nods. 24 goes to get up, but 67 shoots an arm out and loosely grabs him by the wrist.
“Can you… stay? Just until I fall asleep?” he asks, and his voice is thin and watery again. 24 sits back down on the bed.
“Of course, vod’ika.”
24 crawls under the covers next to his brother and allows the kid to latch onto him like a limpet on one of the platform pylons. He runs a hand through 67’s hair, and the boy practically melts, all the tension draining from his small form.
67 soon drifts off and 24 follows not long after, both warmed to the core by the presence of each other.