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The jolt that forces Franziska awake is a familiar one, a sudden sting in her shoulder that runs deep beneath her scar, sends a biting shiver through her body. Pain burns under her skin from a wound that never properly healed and the strain of the meaning it carries, brought back to the front of her mind in the most agonizing way: a nightmare.
Three years and still it digs its talons into her. It’s a monster born of a murder she didn’t witness, a memory that isn’t hers corrupted into her mind’s perfect method of torturing itself. The dream is the same as it always is, a near-accurate replication of the DL-6 incident that Franziska can only blame herself for. After learning of her father’s crimes she drowned herself in that case file and every shred of evidence until what felt like thousands of pages of legal jargon and black ink were all she could see when she closed her eyes; a harrowing portrait of her father’s guilt.
The dream comes to her roughly once a month, barely more than nuisance when she’s alone. It’s far easier then, as haunting as it is, because nobody’s there to see how heavily it still weighs her down or how pathetically she fails in every attempt to cope with a suffering that isn’t really hers. If only she were alone tonight; her little monthly rendezvous with fate has finally coincided with a night she’s staying over at Maya’s. They’ve been together just over a year now, long enough to convince Franziska to let her guard down, but not to keep her from spiraling as she realizes what a fool she’ll make of herself if Maya sees her in such a fragile state.
With shaking hands she pulls the blanket up to her neck, holding to it desperately for a sense of stability that never comes. Her heart thuds frantically in her chest as she debates what to do. Does she run? Pray Maya’s a deep enough sleeper and try to sneak out of the apartment without alerting her? No, she’d still have to explain her absence in the morning.
So she stays. She can fight away the panic until she falls back asleep, but what of the next time this happens? It’s inevitable that this hell will find her again, tear her apart night after night until she can no longer keep it hidden.
The decision isn’t hers in the end, as some of her movement wakes Maya, who stirs and mutters a muffled “Y’there, ‘Ziska?” into the sheets.
Franziska stays still–as still as she can when it feels like her entire body is caving in on itself. She shrinks into the mattress and holds her breath, any possible answer never making it past her tongue.
Maya shifts again. Onto her side, Franziska hopes. Falling back asleep. Seconds pass and nothing happens, letting an unearned relief flood her until it’s cruelly stripped away by the quiet click of the bedside lamp on Maya’s left, bathing the room in its faded yellow glow.
It’s now that Franziska becomes acutely aware of her tears, shamefully hot against her skin. She wipes them away as quickly and as stealthily as she can, though a glance toward Maya, her expression rife with concern, proves her efforts weren’t as effective as she hoped.
“Are you okay?” Maya asks.
Franziska doesn’t know how to admit that she isn’t; that she hasn’t been for years. She always guarded her pain so closely when she was younger–to pretend she was stronger than she really was, to keep her father from getting angry–and still she bottles so much of it up no matter how sweetly Maya assures her she can bear her soul without being afraid.
But maybe those gentle promises are finally starting to take root, or–more likely–her mind’s addled by the hour of the night and the tiredness aching through her, because she can’t will herself to overthink it any more than that. “No, I’m not,” she admits, truthful. “I had a nightmare.”
Her voice is cracking and vulnerable, a far cry from the bravado with which she usually commands her life. She sounds barely ten again, small and weak when she came to Miles’ room with a bad dream. They weren’t as heavy back then. There were no guns or elevators, just monsters with snarled teeth growling beneath her bed and thumping around in her closet. What she wouldn’t give to return to the days when that was all that scared her.
“Oh.” Maya rubs her eyes and sits up, leaning against the headboard, her brows furrowed with worry. “Want me to get you some water? Something to eat?”
“No, I’m fine.” It’s a gracious offer, but anything that kind will only make her feel like more of a burden than she already does.
One of Maya’s hands comes to rest on her arm, rubbing it gently through the blanket. It’s comforting but not intrusive, as though she’s asking for permission to do more for her. “I’ll listen if you wanna talk about it,” she offers. “Or we can cuddle, or we don’t have to do any of that.”
There’s a radiant hope in Maya’s eyes dimmed only by how late it is, a hope that she will talk about it. Though Franziska’s still too afraid to ask for it out loud, she rests her hand on top of Maya’s and invites her in.
Franziska rolls onto her side and Maya joins her from behind, slipping one arm beneath her and wrapping the other around. Her embrace is warm and solacing, the mere feeling enough to comfort her plenty. If it weren’t for that rabid dream still eating at her thoughts, she thinks she could fall asleep instantly like this.
“I often dream of the DL-6 incident,” she whispers. The details are not ones she indulges often. Miles does not know of it at all, and though she’s mentioned it in therapy before, it’s never been more than those seven words. Maya, however, she thinks she might be able to share the whole truth with. “It’s recurring. I’ve had it at least once a month since my father’s trial.”
“What an awful dream to keep having…” Maya’s words are a careful breath against her neck, urging her on through a sympathy Franziska hasn’t known in years.
“I only knew the event through photographs and testimony at first.” She’s surprised by how naturally it flows from her, how freeing it feels. “When I came to America it got worse. I saw the hallway and the elevator and…”
“It felt real, didn’t it?” Maya’s arms tighten around her, their comfort dull and unnoticed against the way her skin shivers.
It was far more manageable before then, nothing more than approximation. She put up walls by convincing herself the nightmare was inaccurate, that the only truths in that terrible fantasy were the order of events from the reports she read. Seeing the scene of the crime brought it to life. The next night, the buttons for the elevator were there, paint scratched off the top arrow. There was a leather couch just across the hallway and a potted fern beside it. Franziska knew it was correct then, no longer the incomplete estimation she hid behind.
“It did,” she says. “I’ve tried to get used to it. I suppose that in a way, I have.” She calms herself after it’s occurred, goes to work the next day as though nothing happened. “But the nightmare won’t go away. I don’t know if it ever will.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maya says, and though condolences can do nothing for Franziska, she still holds tightly to them, sinking further in her girlfriend’s grasp. “Dream or not, no one should have to witness that.”
Witness.
And there’s the crux of it, the piece that’s kept her from sharing this with anyone before. She was so certain about telling Maya just a moment ago, but now the thought of judgment is a heavy noose around her neck. “That’s… I–” She stammers, words failing. Fully prepared to renege on deciding to talk about it, she keeps going only because one of Maya’s hands finds hers, lacing their fingers together with a gentle squeeze. It gives Franziska the slightest boost of strength, enough to force the words out.
“I don’t witness it. I’m always the one holding the gun.”
A near-accurate replication of the DL-6 incident. That’s always one of two changes, her standing exactly where her father did with the sting of cold metal burning her through her glove. To admit that feels criminal somehow, just as wicked as him. Regret floods her lungs as soon as the words leave her tongue and without breath, Franziska squeezes her eyes shut, knowing Maya’s about to pull away and tell her to leave, too horrified by the admission to hold onto her a moment longer.
But she doesn’t.
Maya pulls her closer and whispers, “It’s not real. You know you wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s not even Gregory Edgeworth, it’s–” She feels like she’s choking–drowning–as every vivid detail of it returns to her. The elevator sliding open, grabbing the gun off the floor, pointing it at– “It’s Miles.”
The second change.
Maya says she knows she wouldn’t pull the trigger, but wouldn’t she? Franziska had already been set down this path her father chose for her with no reservations. She inherited his need for perfection, his piercing frustration with failure. Who’s to say she hasn’t taken more from him? If her record had grown from five years to forty, she too may have been incapable of holding back when faced with the opportunity to make someone repent for a perceived slight.
She can’t even be certain she isn’t still heading that way. Surely her father once thought himself good and just too, much as she does. Life feels safe now, but can she trust it knowing the person he raised her to be? His influence will always possess her in some form; his legacy will always be carried as a phantom bullet in her shoulder. That nightmare is nothing short of destiny. There is no escape from it. There is no escape from him.
Franziska’s falling apart. Tears threaten her eyes and attempting to hold them back only makes them burn ragged lines into her skin once more, down her cheeks to stain Maya’s pillow. Her body heaves with every unsteady, incomplete breath and she crumbles, caught in what feels like a race to self-destruction with the future her dreams prophesy.
Maya’s saying something, but the words are incomprehensible through the rise and fall of Franziska’s panic. All she can make out is Maya’s reassuring tone, a sonorous contrast to how desperately her own tears make her tremble and shatter into a million pieces, held together only by the way her girlfriend clings to her.
It’s an eternity like that, long past when the shaking subsides and her tears and breathing grow quiet. The fear is still there but no longer debilitating; that feeling is now reserved for the wave of shame that courses through her with the realization that she just showed all the worst parts of herself to someone that deserves so much better.
“I’m sorry,” she chokes out. She tries to pull away, but Maya won’t let her.
“You aren’t a burden, Franziska.”
And she falls apart again, not in a panic attack, but because she didn’t know how much she needed to hear those words until right now.
“Flip over to face me,” Maya directs, and she obliges. An affectionate hand resting in her hair pulls her into Maya’s chest, and for comfort–she’s too overwhelmed to debate whether or not she deserves it–she wraps her arms around her girlfriend.
“I’ve never cried about it before,” Franziska confesses. The only tears she allows are the ones she cannot control as she sleeps, and even those are hastily wiped away after she wakes up and go unacknowledged once they’re gone. “I haven’t told anyone either. I worry they’ll think I’m going to be just like him.”
“You aren’t a bad person for having a nightmare. I think it’s the opposite. Your dad wouldn’t be upset if he had a dream like that.” Maya’s right, he wouldn’t. That man felt no guilt for anything he did while Franziska feels it for mere hypotheticals. Such an obstinate difference might be something to take pride in when she has the energy for it. “And I promise I’m not the only one that feels that way.”
Miles would too, wouldn’t he? She’s never told him how the outcome of the DL-6 trial affected her; it’s just never felt like her pain to have. Miles is the one who lost his father, but that argument means nothing against his nagging that she can already hear in the back of her mind, the kind “You lost your father too, Franziska. You’re allowed to hurt.” It’s foolish she’d shove it off knowing how understanding he’d be. He won’t think any less of her for this, he never does.
And Maya doesn’t either. She’s so good and lovely and unafraid of all Franziska’s been through, a beacon of hope in the dim few years she’s had. There’s never an ounce of judgment in her tone, only the careful promise that Franziska will never have to go through a night like this again, that things will be alright.
And Franziska finally believes her.
The fatigue of such an awful thing catches up to her rapidly, as does the relief of knowing the fears she’s harbored these past few years were unwarranted. Maya wasn’t scared of her, Miles won’t be, and though she knows this isn’t the last time she’ll have to convince herself of that, tonight was enough of a start.
Her tears slowly subside as she yawns into Maya’s chest, settling further in her arms. “Tired?” Maya whispers.
“Very.”
“Good. Get some sleep, I’ll be right here.”
But that reassurance is one Franziska doesn’t need, because even as Maya pulls an arm away, she knows it’ll only be for a second. Only to turn the lamp off.