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When Paul wakes, it's daylight, and he can't entirely believe he slept.
His hand still throbs, irrational aftershocks of the pain inflicted by that awful box. He wonders how long it will take for his mind to catch on that the harm was never physical—or if he'll spend the rest of his life feeling an ache that isn't there.
Remembered visions burn at the edges of sanity. Sand. Fire. Death. Bad enough on their own, but all the worse for the alarming certainty that these are different from his other dreams. Not just possibility. These truths are a trap, and if there is a way to avoid them, Paul can't see the path.
That goddamn box. These things weren't in his head before he faced the Reverend Mother's test. Other dreams, yes. But these visions are different. Something new and vicious has awakened inside him, emanating through his body like a poison. He feels terrifying and unwelcome awareness—sees himself as though through a stained and twisted mirror—and his stomach lurches at what these visions, tangled and cryptic as they are, suggest he is capable of.
But as he tries to parse them in the light of day, his search for clues crumbles away, details scattering on a silent wind. He still remembers the desert. The fire. The thrum of world-shattering power beneath his skin. The bodies piled high and burning. A jagged pulse of mourning something lost.
Something he destroyed with his own hands.
Paul has never known a sadness like this. He chokes back a sob, his chest hollowed out and raw. Fear claws at his heart, and he burns—to deny that his actions will bring about this future—to refuse the sharp and monstrous power that will set everything he loves ablaze.
The only thing coaxing him out of this nest of despair is the knowledge that Gurney Halleck will be waiting. Paul is already late for weapons practice, and Gurney must be worried. That worry will translate into gruffness and rebuke, but Paul will take the censure without complaint. He can already see the conversation unfolding in his mind. He can picture Gurney's furrowed brow, the way his mouth will twist down at one corner, the flash of dark eyes scanning for harm. Paul can practically hear the deep, stern tones of Gurney's voice.
There aren't many who can get away with scolding the ducal heir. Even Duncan Idaho takes a more deferential tone when matters are serious enough to warrant censure. But Gurney?
Paul would let Gurney Halleck do a great many things he would brook from no one else.
Today, the thought of seeing Gurney—speaking to him—pretending everything is normal while Paul basks in the reassurance of the old soldier's presence… He craves this with all his shaken and battered heart. Even the inconvenient fascination that's been growing inside him for months—an unacknowledged strangeness that Gurney must have noticed, and that Paul almost wishes he would reprove, if only to put Paul out of his misery—can't quell the way he needs Gurney's sturdy support in the wake of last night's revelations.
And in the wake of pain more excruciating than anything he's ever felt.
So Paul grudgingly rises from bed and dresses for the day, donning the crisp black lines of the military uniform that has only recently begun to feel like it belongs to him. Not the stiff and starched ceremonial dress, but a more forgiving arrangement of fabric that cuts a nearly identical form while allowing better ease of movement. He will inevitably shed the outer jacket in the course of exertion and combat, but he needs this today. Not a body shield, but a more ephemeral sort of armor to help him navigate the halls with head held high.
Of course, he never had any real hope of fooling Gurney into a normal weapons practice. Gurney, already on high alert thanks to Paul's tardiness, takes one look at him and tenses with protective anger.
It's impressive, in its way. Paul steps into the room wearing his best blank expression—a finely honed air that's a nearly flawless union of both Leto and Jessica's teachings. The haughty expression has served him well for years, a projection he perfected at a young age. There can be no obvious outward sign of anything amiss.
In spite of this facade, Gurney takes one halting step forward and asks, "What happened, my lord?" His voice rumbles with quiet, dangerous fury.
Instead of trying to deflect or carry on the charade, Paul freezes where he stands. Just inside the open training hall door, his feet hold him rooted in place while an icy sensation spreads through his chest. He stares helplessly at Gurney. And the longer he stares, the more his controlled expression cracks and crumbles to dust.
He's showing too much. He's showing Gurney everything: the shadows of unimaginable pain; the wounded betrayal at his mother's part in the ordeal; the terror of the monster he feels lurking beneath his own skin. And he can't seem to stop.
Gurney drags in a sharp breath and sets down the blade he's holding. Metal clicks against the table, soft and yet too loud in the intolerable silence. For several seconds, Gurney's piercing attention holds motionless, and Paul finds himself shaking like a scared child. Never mind his eighteen years and his endless training. His eyes burn hot and his jaw clenches. He's never felt so exposed.
He wonders if Gurney can see the ugliness inside him—the pain Paul will one day cause—the hollow new emptiness in his belly.
Then Gurney is moving, and Paul has the sudden desperate thought: If anyone can leech out this poison, it will be Gurney Halleck. A purposeful stride rounds the table and carries Gurney toward him. In the blink of an eye, Gurney has the door shut—protecting Paul in this small, vital way—and puts his hands on Paul's shoulders, tugging until they stand eye to eye.
"Tell me," Gurney says.
Paul holds his ground for a single breath. Then he crumples forward, burying his face in the crook of Gurney's shoulder and folding himself against the man's broad chest. Gurney's only two options are to stand there like a startled fish or wrap Paul in a surprised embrace.
The hug is comforting when it inevitably comes, and Paul shudders in Gurney's arms, breath shaky as he drags in air.
He knows he's scaring Gurney. He can feel it in the set of powerful muscles, the racing of Gurney's heart. Even the tightness of the embrace seems thoughtless and instinctive, and Paul experiences a twinge of guilt at how good it feels. Gurney rarely touches him outside the necessities of combat training. He used to, but he's grown cautious in the past few months—a fact that made yesterday's gruff lecture about the Harkonnens, and the waiting dangers of Arrakis, all the more frightening. Paul didn't know how to react to those strong hands framing his face, the intensity in Gurney's eyes.
For Gurney to be holding him like this is… good. And Paul finds himself confessing every detail from his violent visions. His fears of what he might do on Arrakis to bring these portents to life. His utter terror that he will harm his family, that he will be the ruin of House Atreides. All of these truths he breathes into the bunched fabric of Gurney's shirt, clinging to his friend and teacher with all the strength he can muster.
He doesn't mention the cause of the visions. The pain in his right hand. The coded and convoluted plans of the Bene Gesserit. Maybe he should. Maybe it would make his fears more credible.
But it would also put Gurney in a dangerous position. Paul, of all people, knows how viciously the Bene Gesserit will protect their secrets. Their power. His own mother was prepared to let him die last night.
Gurney stays quiet until Paul has finished, the panicky rush of explanation fading to exhausted silence. Then, without pushing him away, Gurney murmurs in a low rumble, "I shouldn't have taken such a harsh tone with you yesterday. I meant to scare you, but I should have been more circumspect. Of course your dreams were troubled."
Paul tenses as though for a fight. "They're not just dreams, Gurney."
"Of course they are," Gurney continues in the same placating tone, and Paul squashes down a sensation in his chest that could be a laugh or a sob, because of course Gurney doesn't believe him. Gurney wasn't there, in that library, to hear the things the old woman said. He doesn't know the things admitted by the Lady Jessica in the aftermath of that damnable box, or her surprise at Paul's survival.
And Paul can't tell him. It isn't safe.
They're going into danger enough on Arrakis; he won't open Gurney up to attack from behind just when they need to focus on forward-facing threats.
Anger and despair goad Paul into pushing Gurney away, though he can't bring himself to let go his tight grip in the gray shirtfront. "You're not listening to me. No one listens to me!" He wasn't so certain of himself when he tried to warn Duncan Idaho, god, only yesterday. But he knows the shape of things now. "You can't just… declare I'm not dangerous, and make it so by stubbornness."
"My lord," Gurney starts, and it's obvious from his hesitant expression that he's about to offer more empty reassurances.
"No," Paul snarls. New panic snaps along his spine, a trapped-animal fear that sparks his nerves and pushes him to agonizing alertness. He lets go of Gurney, shoving himself back and away with such speed he almost trips. "You're not taking me seriously! I'm going to hurt people, Gurney!"
"You don't know that," Gurney protests. "Whatever you saw, you're not some monster of nightmares. You're a good man."
"Good men can become monsters," Paul whispers, trembling all over with the potential truth of the words. "You have no idea what I'm capable of."
Gurney is still watching him with kindness. Gurney still doesn't see, and more than anything Paul needs him to see. He can't have Gurney's guard down around him, trusting him, when Paul carries a destiny so broken and ugly inside himself. He can't have Gurney close enough to get hurt.
He can't watch Gurney end up in the wasteful pile of death that feels more inevitable by the second.
"My lord," Gurney says again, and the taut line of his shoulders signals that he recognizes the shift in energy. It's obvious he intends to step forward across the narrow space Paul has put between them.
Paul realizes, in a single instant of terror and protest and wild refusal, that there is only one way to make Gurney understand.
"Kneel," he says, channeling the Voice with more ease than he has ever managed during his mother's lessons. He drills his gaze into Gurney and speaks the word with perfect, echoing, dangerous pitch—a hundred murmuring voices—and watches with a wrench of guilty horror as Gurney drops to the floor.
It happens with the speed of automatic reflex, Gurney's expression a clouded blank as he falls obediently to his knees.
In the seconds that follow, clarity returns and Gurney's eyes widen with genuine fear. He raises his head to look at Paul, and it's clear he doesn't understand what's just happened—has never seen this particular trick of the Bene Gesserit—but he recognizes that Paul has done this to him.
He registers the deliberate show of power, even as he fails to comprehend it.
Inevitably, Gurney moves to push himself up from the floor.
Fighting past a surge of nausea, a knot of denial tightening his throat, Paul intones, "Stay down," in the same susurrous amalgam of Voice.
Gurney falls to his knees even harder than before.
***
It's with horror that Gurney raises his head, sluggish delay in the effort it takes him to catch his balance and plant both palms on the ground. There's always been some air of witchery around Paul Atreides, an aroma of Lady Jessica's Bene Gesserit capabilities, but Gurney has never seen either Paul or Jessica do anything like this. To be at the mercy of whatever this is—whatever Paul is doing to him—makes Gurney feel more helpless than he has in decades.
But his incredulous stare finds no coldness. No cruelty. Instead, Gurney finds Paul looking worse than the first moment he dropped his bland facade to show the wounded spirit beneath. He looks wrecked and tormented, watching Gurney with a shaken expression. His narrow shoulders tremble.
Gurney should be angry. He should rage at the bewildering violation of being manipulated and forced to his knees. But he finds it impossible to hold on to the necessary fury.
He can't rise from the floor, despite trying with all his might, but his foolish old heart aches to smooth the anguish from Paul's face anyway. To hold him again until they're both calm. Hold him longer still, if Gurney is more honest. Gurney wants to scrub this awful moment from both their memories, and start this conversation again. He would give more credence to Paul's dreams—find better ways to reassure him that Paul is not the harbinger he seems to fear.
Paul breathes a soft, stifled whimper. A single step is enough for his back to collide with the door, and then his hand is on the latch, the door creaking open. Before Gurney can protest, Paul bolts from the room.
Gurney curses in every language he knows, but he can't move to follow. No matter how frantically his mind rails at his stillness, his limbs refuse to obey him. It's only once he is truly alone in the room that the debilitating fog of Paul's command lifts, and Gurney at last manages to stand on shaky legs. By then there's no trace of Paul in the corridor beyond the training hall.
Paul is far too quick to be glimpsed in retreat. He will be long gone, with no sign to show his path.
But Gurney knows Paul better than most. There are only so many places the young master might flee in a moment of profound upset. Not back to his quarters—he won't want to be in an enclosed space, let alone somewhere anyone would think to look for him. And not the grounds outside the palace—that would make him easy to find, alerting the notice of every palace guard between the training hall and open air.
Somewhere within the palace checkpoints, then. The old stonework hides any number of haunts and perches, and Gurney knows them all. He knows which ones Paul favors. And rather than wait to gather his thoughts, to process his own perfectly reasonable panic, Gurney sets immediately about his search.
By the time he finds the right hideaway—a secretive little sliver of a balcony, barely fit for sitting on—he's replayed the awful moment a dozen times in his head. An edge of trepidation and hurt accompany the memory, but he's found an undeniable certainty like an ember in his chest:
Paul wasn't trying to do him harm. Exactly the opposite, Gurney understands with painful confidence. Paul was trying, desperate and clumsy, to push him away. To scare him. Paul is convinced that nearness to him will put Gurney in the line of fire, and panic can make a man do foolish things.
This reasoning doesn't erase the sting of betrayal. Gurney carries a sullen ache alongside the ember—but it isn't anywhere near enough to let him sustain the fear he should probably be feeling. His life already belongs to Paul Atreides. How could Gurney forsake his young master now, when Paul needs him more than ever?
Beneath a heavy sky, Paul sits on the bare stone of his little balcony, tucked into a sharp corner where squat rooftops intersect. Sturdy walls stand to either side of the flat jut of masonry, gray and black clouds looming thunderously above. Layered stonework slants inward on three sides, making this a perilous place to sit in the event of rain.
Today is dry enough, despite the storm clouds. Even on Caladan, where the winds and waters are plentiful, they'll have some warning in the event of a deluge.
Paul surely spots Gurney stooping through the low door frame—barely more than a large window—and emerging onto the ledge. There's no way he's distracted enough to miss such obvious movement in his peripheral vision; Gurney taught him better instincts than that. But he doesn't so much as twitch to acknowledge the intrusion, and his silence is disconcerting.
Gurney sits on the stone balcony beside Paul, noting the tension in Paul's posture, the stiffness of narrow shoulders beneath the dark uniform jacket. The little ledge is so small that he can feel Paul's body heat along his side, but everywhere else is gusty chill. Gurney's own jacket doesn't feel up to the challenge of these surroundings. It's a wonder Paul isn't shivering from prolonged cold.
A quick glance confirms what Gurney already knows: Paul made an excellent strategic choice in his retreat. Outdoors and open, with a clear view of the long hill below—and yet the formation of rooftops and walls obscures the small perch from prying eyes. Someone would have to be standing on the most precise patch of hill to see this place, and even then, they would need the aid of technology to spot a person sitting here.
Silence lingers for a long time, disjointed in the space between them. It's worse than the occasional patches of awkwardness Gurney has found himself avoiding in recent months. Graceless as he may feel navigating those moments—avoiding what feels like uneven terrain—pretending poorly that nothing has changed… This is something else entirely.
He still wants to reach for Paul. There's something unfair in the fact that even now, Gurney can't seem to quell his protective instincts.
"You see now?" Paul rasps. He's broken the silence, but he continues staring straight ahead, as though he can't bear to look at Gurney. "How easily I can make you do what I want? How easily I could hurt you?"
"I see no such thing." Gurney measures his words with infinite care. "A man capable of hurting me as you fear would not be trying so hard to protect me."
"What if you're wrong? What if I really am a monster? Or… what if I will be?" Paul's voice, weak to begin with, breaks on the final words. He drops to a near whisper as he continues haltingly, "You have to be careful of me, Gurney. You know there are things I… want… from you."
"I have no idea what—"
Gurney doesn't even get to finish the feeble lie. Paul moves too quickly, turning toward him, taking Gurney's face between his hands.
Kissing him, hard and fast and fierce.
It's over too quickly for Gurney to react. His heart races as he blinks and finds Paul's eyes tightly closed, a tortured expression written across delicate features. Paul's hands still frame Gurney's face, his mouth close enough for Gurney to feel uneven breath ghosting his skin.
"My lord…" Gurney says, and then falters. He doesn't have the first clue how to answer this crisis. A guilty lurch hits him in the stomach, too much like heat. Ruthlessly, he squashes down any part of him that threatens to take pleasure in what is clearly an act of desperation.
He aches for his young charge—for the muted but undeniable pain making Paul's hands shake—and he wonders at the stubborn intensity of Paul's fear.
Paul's eyes are still squeezed shut when he says, "Don't pretend you didn't know."
Gurney clenches his hands against stone. It takes every scrap of willpower to not reach for Paul. No touch can possibly fix this, and if he tries, he will only make things worse.
When Gurney doesn't answer or renew the ill-considered denial, Paul drops his hands and scoots as far away as the tiny balcony will allow—which is only about a foot of additional space, all told, and yet even this small distance makes Gurney's chest constrict. Paul's eyes flutter open a second later, and he watches Gurney with a shattered look, mouth pressed into a thin and trembling line.
"You see?" Paul swallows, and Gurney tracks the bob of his throat. "I could… It would be so easy, Gurney. I could command you, and you could do nothing to stop me. If I ever hurt you like that…"
"You won't," Gurney growls, fighting the urge to slide closer and give Paul a shake. The words come out low and rough, a vow that rumbles with truth.
"You can't know that!"
"I can." Gurney injects a calm he doesn't feel into the words. "I know you, Paul Atreides." Even as he says Paul's name, his pulse speeds at the impropriety of it. My lord. Young master. Never Paul. Gurney has never before taken such liberties, and he can't entirely believe the thing he's just done.
The shock of it hits them both, and he sees the instant it knocks Paul out of spiraling panic. Paul still looks incredulous and broken, but he is also watching Gurney differently now. His eyes are sharper. Unflinching. He wears a hesitant edge of something that might be hope.
It's not that Paul believes him. Gurney can tell that clearly enough. It's that Paul desperately wants to believe, and is finally willing to listen.
Carefully—agonizingly aware of how deliberately he is stepping out of line, regardless of the phantom sensation of Paul's mouth still tingling on his lips—Gurney eases closer. Paul watches him approach, wary but unprotesting.
Gurney forces his jaw to unclench and draws a deep, slow breath. Raises one hand to curl along Paul's jaw. He doesn't get any nearer than this. He is not going to compound the strangeness between them by kissing Paul again—that's a disaster he will have to defuse another time. This moment is about damage control. Emergency triage.
Gurney won't be able to fix anything between them if he can't save Paul from the tailspin making him question his very soul.
There are no odes or ballads for a situation like this. No memorized stanzas to guide Gurney towards the right thing to say. His usual arsenal of quips and quotations can't help him. There is only his heart, and the certainty lodged there beside more calamitous emotion: If Paul were a monster, Gurney would not adore his young master so far beyond the bounds of propriety and duty. He couldn't.
Gurney Halleck has known too many monsters for one human lifetime.
"Do you trust me?" he asks, softer than he's ever spoken to Paul before.
"With my life," comes the answer, instant and without hesitation. Paul's eyes are wide open and disconcertingly intense. He is barely breathing.
Gurney inhales slowly and lets his thumb ghost across a sharp cheekbone. "Then trust my judgment. Trust that I see you clearly. You're a good man. And if there are horrors in store for this family, they won't be your doing. We will find a way to meet them and survive."
I promise, he wants to add, but holds his tongue. He's too aware of the danger they're walking into on Arrakis, the unavoidable trap of making their home on a planet that has been an enemy stronghold for the better part of a century. He won't lie for the sake of soothing Paul's rattled confidence.
Thankfully, he can see his words hitting their mark. Not because they're especially eloquent—Gurney's never had the knack for eloquence on his own, it's why he borrows the words of others—but because Paul has enough faith in him to believe the offered reassurances.
They fall into a strange limbo of quiet—such total stillness that Gurney startles when Paul whispers, "Say it again." Small and pleading.
Gurney's brow furrows. "Say what again?"
Paul's lips are parted, and he licks them nervously. It makes Gurney realize he's still touching Paul's cheek, a point of contact too intimate to be harmless, too forward to be appropriate. He should drop his hand. He should not remain frozen here, gawping as he tries to decipher Paul's request.
"My name," Paul whispers. "Say my name."
A jolt moves through Gurney, and he jerks his hand away. But he doesn't break from Paul's intent gaze, and despite the demands of ceremony and rank, he hears himself answer.
"Paul," he says, and watches dark eyes flutter shut.
Quick as a heartbeat, Paul is staring at him again. Present and whole in a way he wasn't when he first walked into the training room. The effect is striking, and suddenly the chill of the air means nothing next to the warm flood of relief rushing through Gurney's chest.
"Thank you, Gurney." It's not a dismissal.
Paul faces forward once more, resting against the stonework to survey the distant horizon. Gurney settles more comfortably beside him, maintaining his vigil and praying he can keep Paul Atreides safe.