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A crash of thunder sounds, and you can’t help it - you flinch hard. As a kid on your own on the island, when you were still just Jade, you hated the sound. It was so shocking every time, alone as you were. Storms made your tower sway, and as a kid, the motion made you sick, half-convinced that your globe of a room would crash to the ground even though you knew better. You’d race down the staircases and hide among your Grandpa’s things or in the room where his body stood, and you’d wait it out with Bec.
Bec hated thunderstorms just as you did. When your Grandpa was alive, and even a few times after his death, Bec fled the island - or at least, the area where you lived - out of fear of the sound, just like any dog hiding under its owner’s bed from a thunderstorm. But it only took those few times before he’d accompany you to your little hideaway down among Grandpa’s things, where he’d curl around you like a fluffy blanket, and you’d twist your fingers into his fluffy white fur and wait it out. It was the type of fear you should’ve outgrown, but even in your late twenties now, you’ve never been granted the chance.
Your home, Grandpa, and Bec are gone - you are Bec, innate fear of thunderstorms included, and you’re not even the only one who is, for all that you’ve struck out and claimed a name and identity of your own, because you’re not Jade either and haven’t been since you died at the tender age of thirteen. (Jade isn’t even Jade anymore, not really. Not since she died the same day you did, becoming both you and Bec in the process, but she chose to cling to that old identity. She’s Jade only as much as you are, which is not at all.) It’s been that way for years, and now, instead of putting your hands over your ears and darting downstairs, you grimace, wrinkle your nose, and flatten your dog ears to your head. The fear-turned-innate-phobia is manageable now but still a challenge to handle, especially on days that just haven’t gone your way as it is, this one littered with an uncomfortable fixation on who you are. Fitting, you suppose, that you should be drawn back to your childhood like this on a day that’s already uncomfortably introspective - or at least, Rose would say so.
Your old coping mechanisms have gone the way of the dinosaurs and the Earth they lived on, but luckily, you’ve got new ones - better ones, even if the old ones are tinted with some twisted, firelight-shaded nostalgia. Your girlfriend knows what they are as well as you do, and she understands your facial expressions, your moods, and what you can and can’t tolerate even better.
“Jazz?” Rose asks, calling you by a name that still sometimes feels as strange, new, and thrilling as the day you chose it for yourself.
“It’s the storm, isn’t it?” She asks.
A rhetorical question, judging by the way she’s already setting down her current projects - a Cthulhu doll and a book that she’d been switching off between when motivation ran dry for each, giving you the space you’d requested, but you nod anyway. She has a coordinated plan in mind, as ever, as she’s often explained to you in comically unnecessary detail. She takes your hand in yours as she starts talking, but you’re less focused on the words than the sound. Other times, you’d delight in her nonsense and call her out, but today, you just don’t have it in you. That’s okay, though. You know she knows, and you know it’s nothing she hasn’t told you, and you know she’ll repeat it all again when the storms - both inward and out - pass, and you’re ready to listen.
For now, she leads you up to your shared room, a low animal whine escaping you as another bout of thunder crashes. She turns on the holographic-display music player you built as a housewarming gift to the two of you as you sit down on the bed and curl up there, winding your sprite-tail around you like a dog does and not-so-patiently waiting - your fingers curling into the sheets in sync with another roll of thunder - until Rose removes her overly-fancy house slippers and lays with you. She has her phone in her hand and begins reading with one hand occupied while the other gently takes yours. For once, she’s relatively quiet as the storm rages outside. You curl up with her comfortably to wait it out, your free hand moving from the sheet to her dress, curling lightly into the fabric as you lean on her, shut your eyes, and let yourself sink into the distraction of her presence, the music playing, and the intermittent commentary of her soft voice.
There’ll be time for her to quip about your baser instincts winning out later when you can look back and giggle with her at the silliness of an immortal Creator scared of thunder. But for now, you hold her hand tight, shut your eyes, flatten your ears, and do your best to let the music drown out the sounds of the storm, and your mind remains here and now, safely away from the uncomfortable fixation on who you once were.