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She is not afraid to ask him, at first. By the time she realises she should be, he has already agreed.
It’s not like she is doing it for attention. She has nightmares, she is not lying about that. She has always had – about that night mum and dad disappeared forever – but she is having more of them, now.
“Mylo and Claggor, and Vander and—and Vi—they… They don’t let me sleep,” she sniffles, and she knows he believes her. Be it from the look on his face or what he says later, about letting ghosts of the past burn and fade, something that she doesn’t fully understand yet.
He knows a lot about those ghosts, it seems. He tells her often – what to do with them and what not to. She tries to follow the advice, but mainly she just likes how he talks to her. His voice is low and calm, and it does not sound annoyed, or like he’s making fun of her, not even a little.
He doesn’t know everything though. He doesn’t know the first thing about hugging, for example.
When she firsts climbs into his bed, she has to nudge his arm with her head before he moves at all. And still he doesn’t seem to understand what that’s for. He shifts away, not towards, and then lies like a log until she lifts his arm a little more and simply slides under it. For a moment, she is worried she has gone too far, that the shockingly nice (but terrifying) stranger is going to get mad at her for it. But she has to try, because she isn’t sure she can fall asleep after a nightmare without that. She is so used to Vi’s embraces…
But Vi left her. “Left—me—” she hiccups on another night, awfully sad, but in that happy he lets her be next to him while she’s crying. It is better than being alone. She could not stand it, being alone.
“She’s dead,” he reminds her, then for a second watches her carefully. She thinks – no, she hopes, he is worrying it might upset her further. Though as she later discovers, she is bold, she never gets quite so bold as to ask him directly whether he does worry. Maybe it’s because she is scared to find out nobody ever does.
For some reason, it does not sadden her more. No, it’s helping. She is not sure why, but Vi haunts her less whenever she remembers she is dead and cannot go back to her, even if she wanted to.
“She’s dead,” she repeats after him, in a whisper. “She’ll never come back for me.” It never fails to lull her to sleep, that little routine: his words, her refrain, someone’s breathing by her side, the weight of an arm around her.
For the first month or so, she pleads for it. Says she is sorry when she wakes him up (though she really isn’t – cause it is only then that he will talk to calm her down), puts his arm over herself. She feels stupid whenever she has to do so; like she is a problem to someone once again. But he never says so. And even Vi would, sometimes, groan about how she ruined her dream by waking her or something like that.
He doesn’t.
She likes that about him very much.
As time passes, she sees that he starts expecting her, too. When the floor creaks as she enters, his scary eye seems to follow her. And when she approaches the bed, there’s already room for her on it.
He does learn how to hug her, overtime. It’s not surprising – he says it himself, whenever she messes something up in the day, “There’s nothing you cannot learn, overtime.” Practices what he preaches, it seems. When he does, it is never a normal hug. It’s stronger, reminding her of Vi or even Vander. Which is odd because she knows he is not as strong. But it’s like he is putting all of his strength into holding her.
It feels a little like restraints, if you think about it.
She doesn’t mind. She thinks it feels grounding, most of all. It makes her stop shivering, chases the ghosts away. It is always about the ghosts. Even if they are both too sleepy to talk, she knows it is about them. Everything is.
It is a shock to her when she once wakes up in the night – and she is already with him, yet something woke her up. Not her own ghost, it turns out.
He is the one trembling, then. Or rather – he freezes, the hand over her waist suddenly lacking, lifted to his neck. He is looking around wide-eyed, and she swallows a breath, not sure he is aware of her yet. She stares at his bad eye as its pupil expands. His nails slide down his collar, checking for something frantically.
Then he blinks, and the red eye’s pupil constricts again. The other does too, lashes falling over it while he puts his hand on his face. In shame, she guesses, recognising the gesture as similar to her own.
Except she never massages the base of nose with it, like he does, as if he is chasing away a headache – and not what they both know happened just now.
Only a while later does he look at her. And even then, it is still with that expression of tiredness and displeasure that she hates seeing. So she says “Sorry,” to him, wanting it to go away.
“What are you sorry for, my child?” It is the first time he calls her that, and it comes out so naturally, like he has always thought that.
She didn’t know she could be someone’s, once again. She had thought it was all lost when everyone left her. It makes her want to cry. She swallows down a few tears (because she shouldn’t grizzle, Mylo laughs at her for it in her dreams), tells him she doesn’t know.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for. I apologise for waking you up, however.” His tone is calm and smooth once more, and his hand lands on her hair, stroking it. She closes her eyes. “I suppose it is high time you knew you are not the only one here who struggles to sleep through their past.” He tells her that night what his ghosts are; then falls asleep gripping her tight as she cuddles up to him.
Time doesn’t kill their habit, though it tries. It never kills the nightmares, either. It is a lie, what they say about it healing the wounds. Silco has a sententia on that too. “It does not heal them, but it lets you learn to close them.” She has been trying to do that, but she never quite succeeds. But it’s not like he did fully, either.
So, when she shuffles into his room at night in her violet slippers that clatter from the metal she had put on their top, neither of them acknowledges that she might be too old for this. That it might be weird, now.
For them it isn’t.
When has anything been not-weird about us, anywhoo?
He is a murderer who almost never raises her voice at her, and she… Well, she wouldn’t even have a name if it wasn’t for him suggesting that Jinx suits her, since she had already been reacting only to that.
So maybe they are weird, who the fuck cares. His arm weighs her down, always snaking around her when she slides under the covers, ghostly laughs ringing in her head. It’s heavy and it helps her; and she knows it helps him, too. It doesn’t make the ghosts go away (she has found nothing ever does), but it does let them sleep.