Work Text:
Nothing woke Cargo up faster than the sound of her partner having a nightmare.
Mostly because Berserkers were hardly quiet creatures. There was only so far Echidna could lower her voice, and she had to be awake for that; the sound of her nighttime distress was a series of snarls and growls, shuffling as she squirmed and prepared for a fight that wasn’t coming. Her scarred eye held shut, the burned crevices around it scrunching over her eyelids.
Cargo’s heart ached in her chest, bleeding like the drug ports that used to litter Echidna’s skin. The circles of dense pink tissue remained in their place, an icebergian hint of the damage that lay beneath. Echidna had never given her a full story or explanation of what it was like to be changed from Muton to Berserker— only a grim start, before stopping herself and changing the subject.
Was— one— three … th— thirteen, she’d said, stumbling over the English words for numbers she had never been good with. Was thirteen.
By the time they’d met, Echidna had already suffered her mutation for as long as she’d been alive prior to it. Cargo dreaded to think what the hell the Elders had been doing to her in that interim, that even the vaguely mad curiosity of Dr. Vahlen had been so much of an upgrade that Echidna had been unusually docile during her captivity.
(Unique to her, mind— every other Berserker, every other Muton frankly, hadn’t developed the same trust in Vahlen as Echidna had. Though, extenuating circumstances facilitated that, as Vahlen herself put it.)
Cargo carefully set her hands on Echidna’s chest. “Echi,” she said softly. “Wake up, my love.”
No change at first. Between bestial sounds, Echidna breathed hard, open-mouthed. Her saliva seeped into the sheets beneath the pillow.
Knowing what would come next, Cargo put in the necessary force to rock Echidna’s weight on the mattress, and called her name again, just a bit louder. “Echi—”
Echidna’s eye snapped open, her fist pounded onto the bed next to Cargo’s side and she raised herself on her knuckles.
Cargo lay perfectly still, swallowing the startle that came with having the giant alien she was sleeping with move so suddenly. This had happened before, she knew Echidna wouldn’t hurt her. Human instinct was an inconvenience to be quieted as she let Echidna wake up properly and recognize her surroundings.
It was the dark that helped, Cargo knew. To be blanketed in the black meant being unattended, unseen, unchanged. The rhythm of Echidna’s breath shifted, first only softening, then slowing to a normal pace. Her head turned to examine the room’s shadows before dropping down towards Cargo’s, her heated breath venting against Cargo’s skin and tasting like last night’s dinner.
“It’s okay,” Cargo assured her, cupping the fanged extremities on either side of Echidna’s face. “You’re home, and you’re safe.”
Echidna let her next breath out in a sigh, collapsing her weight to her elbows and burying her head against Cargo’s chest. Cargo held her, best that she could, while Echidna’s arms slid around her.
“Frustrating,” Echidna mumbled. “Don’t need crap right now.”
“I know, love.” Cargo stroked the plating on Echidna’s back. “It’ll pass.”
What she knew of Echidna’s past came out of hints from her present. The way she was more agitated in bright, artificial light; the bluer, the worse off. When half the lights went out for a month in HQ’s research labs, Echidna had been at her calmest. And, in spite of otherwise getting along with Bond, there was always an initial apprehension to her presence. Maybe it was her smell; when Bond covered her natural scent in whatever suited her disguise for the impending mission, Echidna eased up quicker, sometimes even skipped the anxiety entirely.
Was thirteen. Honestly, from those details alone, Cargo could somewhat imagine what happened… if only she knew what Muton children looked like.
She pressed a kiss to the smooth plating on the top of Echidna’s head. Echidna rumbled, adjusted herself as not to squish Cargo. Cargo still doubled as both pillow and teddy bear, but with only the mass of Echidna’s head and shoulder to burden her. The rest of her lay parallel to Echidna’s side.
“Do you need me to distract you?” Cargo asked. “I can stay up for a little while.”
Echidna grunted to the negative. “No. Am …”
A grumble of frustration followed. Cargo waited until Echidna could voice her thought.
“It’s stupid. Stupid fear.” Echidna huffed. “Am not weak little kid anymore. Don’t need brain saying otherwise.”
“My brain does that, too. It’s the stress,” Cargo replied. “Having a lot on your mind makes it go to stupid places.”
“Doesn’t help.”
“You know I always will, if you start having another nightmare.”
Echidna looked up at her. After a moment, a calmer, softer noise rumbled from her throat, as she nuzzled against her.
“I know,” she said. “We’re home. We’re safe.”
Echidna lowered her cuddling arm, gathering Cargo’s and caressing the underside with her thumb.
This loving, muscular angel had been thirteen when something truly horrible happened to her. Cargo had cracked under lesser weight. She’d been sixteen, and then twenty-three.
“Let’s spend some time with the camp kids tomorrow morning, okay? We can take them fishing,” Cargo suggested. “It’ll be nice to get you off the battlefield and out of the strategy room, I think.”
Echidna agreed.
Cargo relaxed, and watched over her partner until her gentle eye fell shut.