Work Text:
"...Your Grace?"
Wriothesley jolted fully awake then, into the cold, iron-scented darkness of the Fortress. His hands ached as he unclenched them from the tangled bedcovers, his jaw tight and the taste of blood sour in his mouth from a bitten lip. Sweat matted his hair to his forehead as he shoved the fringe out of his eyes.
How long he'd managed to sleep before the night terrors caught him, he didn't know; all hours were the same down here, beneath the weight of the sea water and above the tilted cap screwed over the depths of Primordial disaster. Had he woken anyone? His throat was horribly dry, from thirst only he hoped; he feared it was from screaming, though.
Again the knock, small and muffled, down the twisting stair and barely to be heard above his panting breaths. "Your Grace, may I come in?"
It was Sigewinne, of course. Always Sigewinne, at the rightest and the wrongest moments. With any luck, she wouldn't have a health drink with her.
Wriothesley staggered upright out of the bed, lurching dizzily up with a hand to the wall, grabbing his coat from the bedpost to bundle around him against the ever-present chill of the Fortress. The floor was icy beneath his bare feet, and he winced, fumbling for his slippers wherever he had thrown them. His knees ached from the cold, stiff and unsteady beneath him - but if he took the time to manage his braces and boots, Sigewinne might decide to shoot in the door latch.
This was fixable. He could fix this. He would turn on the light, he would put a record on, he'd find some tea and drive away the shadows. He would remind himself over and over again, until he made his body and mind believe it: that he was the Duke of Meropide and not a ragged waif anymore, to need a hug and a head pat to chase away nightmares. All this he told himself, his legs shaky as he climbed down the stairs.
True to expectation it was the little Melusine outside his doorstep, as he pushed one door open a crack; her face was folded in worry, hands tucked together in front of her, the nighttime lights of the Fortress crosshatching her form. The fluffy white dressing gown wrapping her made her look like a lost duckling, although a particularly severe-looking one.
"Your Grace, one of the guards mentioned you seemed - distressed."
Blast. So he had been screaming.
"I'm all right, Sigewinne." His voice was hoarse in his ears. "I - need to go back to sleep, that's all."
"You were crying out." Sigewinne swayed back and forth where she stood, the frills of her gown flaring out. "That doesn't seem all right, sir."
The cut inside his lip stung as he licked it. "Please don't trouble yourself - "
Her calculating gaze swept up and down his form, face pensive. "Are you ill? You don't seem ill, but your heartbeat is abnormally fast and I can see you're exhibiting other panic symptoms - "
No matter how slowly he tried to breathe, he couldn't seem to fool her. She knew; she had always known. But this was his battle to fight, and an old familiar one. "I said I'm fine. Go back to the infirmary, Sigewinne."
"If you want me to get someone else - one of the guards - " Sigewinne stepped forward, trying to squeeze through the half-open door. She put out a hand to touch his, soothing and soft on the back of his scarred knuckles.
"Leave me alone!"
The words burst out of his throat before he knew he'd said them, startling back with a force that dissolved the last of his careful facade of calm. He was trembling in every limb, his knees threatening to give way underneath him. Distantly, he recognized that this was going to take more than tea and a song to fix; he hadn't had an episode like this for a long time, had thought he was past that...
Miserably, he watched as Sigewinne slipped through and shut the door behind her, stopping just short of where he stood leaning against the office wall.
"I won't touch you, Your Grace, but I want you to breathe with me, all right?"
To sink down to the floor now would be too much of a match with all the rest of the memories now tearing at him - the kind of thing a scared child would do, hungry and longing for a comfort that he now loathed the very thought of. He clenched his teeth and willed himself to stay upright as he followed Sigewinne's exaggerated breaths.
Sigewinne's voice was quietly even. "I'm going to open and close my hands, can you open and close yours too?"
He could. He did.
"You don't have to be alone or ashamed when these things happen," Sigewinne murmured. "Anyone can have nightmares, or be afraid. There's nothing shameful about it. It's part of being human. Your minds are as complicated as your bodies, and I don't understand all of your feelings and thoughts... but just like your bodies have scars that take time to heal, your minds are the same, and there's no more weakness about it than it's weak to take to bed when you're ill..."
He didn't remember the last time he'd let himself go to bed with an illness, either. Maybe Sigewinne needed a new metaphor. But listening to her steady voice and clenching and unclenching his fists had helped slow the racing of his heartbeat, and ease the clutch of panic around his ribs, till he could breathe without the sick taut feeling filling him. The round-walled office had begun to seem real around him once more, all brass and gold and echoes, the thrumming of the Fortress's machinery never quite beyond hearing. Slowly, Wriothesley straightened up, pushing his shoulders back.
"I think - I think I'll make myself some tea," he said, stiffly, around the lump in his throat. "Do you want some, too?"
"Of course!" said Sigewinne, her voice brightening up. "I think that would be perfect, Your Grace."
-
White tea with Bulle fruit, steeped as long as the little hourglass told, with two lumps of sugar, for him; Sigewinne wanted four lumps, and salt as well, but there was no accounting for Melusine tastes after all. The light flickered warm on the tabletop between them and on the desk the record had almost finished its scratchy song - a hollow mimic no doubt of the musician who had once composed it. Wriothesley sighed, and found himself yawning, feet up on the settee and knees beginning to unstiffen and lose their ache.
He was safe. He wasn't alone anymore, or helpless. Whatever darkness awaited him in his dreams, they were dreams and nothing more, and he would survive them as he had survived everything else before. It would take more than this to undo him, and more than this to get past his little caretaker, too.
And in the morning there would be more matters to tend to, and his Fortress to handle, and new inmates to welcome and old ones to counsel, and more contraband to search and papers to process - so he had better finish the tea soon, and get back to sleep, so that he would be ready to do his best in justice and in mercy both.