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Ticking, ticking, the fucking ticking that won’t stop, a reminder of your endless torment branded on your body. The same walls, as red as your lover’s blood ran when he was killed before your eyes. The same wires deep in your paper-thin skin, pink as Her exaggeratedly glittery lipstick. There is nothing else, there was never anything else, there never will be anything else, and you’d better forget anything else lest you break even more than you already have. You desperately want to hold on to the faces of your loved ones, but you have to let go. Anything else is just too painful.
But your stupid pan won’t let you rest so easily. Even during your rare and brief bouts of sleep, the only respite you get, you often dream. And sometimes, some part of you believes it’s real, and waking up is fresh agony. It’s the first few sweeps of horror all over again, all the hope you lost back in your heart, all the sermons you forgot on the tip of your split tongue, and your life ripped away again. It’s enough to make you forsake your only break from the rest because the odds are worse than not that it’ll make you feel worse. Physical pain and exhaustion are worth not feeling the rawness of your mind when you jerk awake from yet another dream, your pan promising you relief only to rip it away.
This time, you dreamed of sunlight. Strange, given that even the world Signless helped you believe in never had that. Warm and gentle, like a blanket of heat over your icy skin, and more - safe. Free, night or day. There was no lingering danger, no Her, no rebellion, nothing. Just you, in a place you could be safe and happy. But of course, your pan wouldn’t stop at merely taunting you with a vision of an alien world you could barely imagine because your loved ones were all there too.
Sign and his warmth and cloak around your shoulders, calloused hands in yours. Dis and her wildness, strong sweeping hugs that could crack your ribs, and you’d gladly let her now, her laughter that could pull you from the worst of yourself. Rosa and her constant care, the broad strength that your limbs - thin, fragile sticks that you’re made of - could collapse against, the feeling that everything would be alright. You heard them cry joyous tears. You heard them laugh. You felt them purr and wrap you in their arms, and you thought you were out, thought you were free, thought it was over. It was fucking perfect. You thought you had a new life ahead of you, where you could live eternally with your loved ones and never experience this pain again.
The only thing to spoil the perfection was your timer. Tick, tick, tick through everything, driving you mad, eternally there, inescapable, water dripping on your forehead. Anxiety, anger, and impatience made manifest, never to end, your own personal eternity. Some part of you just fucking hates it, even though timers are meant to be something good. It followed you into sleep, it followed you into wakefulness, taunting, endlessly fucking taunting you with the happiness you’ll never have, a soulmate you’ll never live to meet. Billions upon billions of sweeps that you fucking hope you won’t live to see.
It taunted you while you dreamed, for all that your joy swept it away, and now it follows you into wakefulness. Ticking, ticking, infernal fucking ticking. A constant that will never leave you. Pain, endless burning, energy being wrenched out of you by the wires, exhaustion, Her taunts every time you break - and there’s nothing you can do. It’s as endless and ceaseless as the ticking, with no hope of ending. You can’t even die, the Condesce won’t allow you to, and She takes joy in your suffering.
You want to die. You wish you’d been executed like Signless was. You can’t die, but you’re desperate to. You hate what you’ve been made into, what your mind has become under these endless sweeps of torment. The longer you spend here, strung up in your own personal hell, the more you break. The less you care about what the Condesce is using you for. The more you forget what you were fighting for. The pain is endless, and the desire to die even more so. You fucking scream into the dark room, incapable of words. Your eyes flash, and you pour energy into the wires embedded into your skin, knowing nothing will come of it but not letting it out is so much worse. You want to die, and there’s nothing you can do.
And then you jerk upright, still screaming, energy pouring off you. You have no idea where you are or what’s happening. There are tears in your eyes, and you’re sparking hard, shaking violently - you can’t calm the fuck down. You scream until your voice goes hoarse, forcing you to stop and gasp and blink, actually look where you are - and the walls in front of you aren’t the same. They’re not red but rather dark green, with buttery sunlight streaming in through the blinds on a window, giving you pause.
Enough pause that your sparking halts enough for you to actually hear a voice break into your confused panic.
“Psii?”
That voice is far too familiar not to jolt you out of your train of thought. You think you’d recognize that voice anywhere - no matter how much time passes or what happens, you’ll know the voices of your partners anywhere.
“…Sign?” You rasp out, throat fucked up from all the screaming you just did.
“I’m right here,” he answers, and you feel him shift on the bed.
“Can I touch you?” He asks, and you nod stiffly.
You don’t look away from staring straight ahead, scared you’re going to spark again, still shaking - and you stay that way until you feel a hand on your shoulder, and he carefully pulls you sideways into a hug. You finally close your eyes and relax, winding both arms around him.
“Do you know where you are?” He asks, worried as you’re used to - this isn’t the first time you’ve woken up freaking out and unsure what’s going on, but it is the first since you were revived in this world.
“Think so,” you mumble.
You’re not so sure, but the uncertainty isn’t distressing you, so you decide not to worry about it. You know you’re safe and not on the ship, and you don’t need more than that.
He holds you somewhat tightly, which always tends to help you - it’s fiercely grounding to be held, to feel safe. He purrs, soft and even, and that soothes you further. The feeling of someone purring is calming right down to your instincts, forcing tension from your body. For now, you’re quiet - you’ve done this routine before, with either of you needing comfort. Long experience has taught you that talking is no help for the first few minutes and that you must wait to calm down before you can take shit on without making it worse.
He makes familiar, quiet shoosh sounds, gently papping your face and shoulders, and the tension continues to ease. Even in an unfamiliar room, it’s an incredibly familiar feeling. One that helps a lot, even at the worst of times. It shouldn’t be comforting to remember those days on the run when you or he would be fucking panicking, clinging to each other for comfort even though you were pitch quite a bit of the time, fearing imminent death. But somehow, it almost is - because you’ve always been there for each other because it feels fucking good to have some form of routine.
He slowly winds his fingers through your hair, which finally drags a hesitant purr out of you, and you know you’re settling down a bit.
“Daymares?” He asks, seemingly out of habit given that it’s not night, and you nod again.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He adds, and you hesitate.
“In a bit?” You offer - you do, for all that you don’t want to confront this shit, but not yet.
Even talking about the basic details sounds like too fucking much for you right now. You need a minute before you feel ready.
He nods and keeps toying with your hair, one arm still wrapped around you, and slowly starts purring again. It’s the same thing he used to do when you or Disciple felt like shit on the run, and it never entirely failed - now included because you slowly stop shaking. However, thinking of Dis gives you an idea for a momentary distraction. Taking the focus off your feelings for a minute will help you settle down.
“Where are Dis and Rosa?” You ask quietly.
“They went out with their descendants and a couple others of our age group last night and haven’t yet come home,” he answers.
Then he hums and briefly moves his hand from your hair to fumble with his new palmhusk.
“Dis says they’re out still. Apparently, Rosa is really enjoying being out in the sun with her. She invited us to join them,” he comments before setting his phone down and returning to playing with your hair.
“That sounds nice, but not now,” you offer, and he nods, purring softly.
A long, peaceful moment passes, and then he sighs softly.
“So…about that daymare…”
You sigh and bury your face a little deeper into his shoulder. Some part of you doesn’t want to talk about it. You just want to move on. You just want to live your new life without dealing with the pain of your past. But you know that’s not as easy as it sounds, especially after the sheer amount of time you spent in that hell.
“Yeah…” you mumble.
“Do you want to talk about what it was about, Psii? I haven’t heard you scream like that in… I’m not even sure I ever have, and that’s worrying. We’ve been through a lot, and I know you haven’t spoken much about what happened after…we parted ways, but it seems like it’s really affecting you. And I want to know what’s going on, if you feel up to talking about it - though I admit, I just assumed this was about your experiences after that, and I shouldn’t be so certain that it’s true,” he rambles softly, only briefly hesitating - in itself a victory.
The sweet, calm, rambling, and compassionate sermons don’t come as quickly to him as they once did, his endless patience rocked by the agony of his execution. He died raging, screaming at the world that put him there, and you know that on some level, he feels the Condesce won merely by making him - even so briefly, even while in the agony of death - hate Alternia instead of loving it in his last breath. You disagree but understand that it troubles him, that even that moment’s pure hatred makes his compassion harder to reach for, and it hurts to know that even his brief fall took so much from him.
“No, you’re right. It is about that, but I didn’t want to talk about it. I…wanted to move on. To not think about it, not talk about it. But that’s not going to help; I know it won’t,” you admit quietly, not wanting to bring up your musings.
“Psii…you don’t have to talk about it if you’re not ready to. Please, don’t say anything you don’t feel ready to say, darling,” he murmurs.
You have to stop and consider it for a moment.
“I only want to explain the whole thing once, at least right now. Can we wait for Dis and Rosa?” You ask, hating the way your voice trembles on the question.
“Of course, my dear. I understand it’s difficult… it’s only been a few nights since we came back, and none of us are having an easy time with this. Just the other night, I was breaking down on you for almost the same reason. I’m not going to push you,” Signless assures, hugging you a little tighter.
“I’m fine telling you what the daymare was about, though… I’m just not sure I can give you the whole story right now,” you mutter, knowing you’ll feel like shit if you stay silent.
“Then please tell me whatever you feel ready to,” he hums, still toying with your hair.
You take another deep breath and stay silent for a moment, thinking about how to put together what you want to say. It’s not an easy subject to talk about, and one you’ve been ignoring at that.
“I…you know I was the Condesce’s battery for a while,” you begin, and he nods without interrupting.
“It lasted a long time. A very, very long time. I don’t know exactly how long, but long enough that my mind, my memories started to…slip,” you murmur, and feel Signless tense at the word slip.
“Both of those came back when I did. But on the ship, I dreamed sometimes. I dreamed of things like this, of waking up with you again - and I’d fall the fuck apart when I woke up. Of all the things that happened on that ship…that might have been the worst,” you mutter, knowing you’re entirely too biased at the moment to really claim your dreams were the worst thing - but that doesn’t matter much.
Signless still doesn’t interrupt, but when you peer at his face out of the corner of one bi-colored eye, he looks a tad confused. That is understandable, given that this seems to have zero relation to the daymare you just had. You take another deep breath and then keep talking.
“I dreamed that I woke up on that ship again. That this was all…just another dream. That this was all fake, there was nothing but that fucking ship-” you break off, it’s too much.
You can’t talk about it. Not yet, not properly. So you just shake your head and hug him, and he hugs you back just as tightly.
“I’m here for you, Psii. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. We all are. You’re safe, and you’re never going to have to deal with that again,” he murmurs, and you nod.
Quietly, you let yourself cry into his shoulder, and he returns to gently shooshing you.
But you feel better despite your tears - because you know he’s right. No matter what, he and Disciple and Dolorosa will be there. They aren’t leaving. Not all is lost; you will heal. The only way things could get better, aside from the healing you know will slowly come, is if your timer stopped ticking. But you figure that’s too much to hope for and brush the thought aside.