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"Pray, young Sinclair, what business dost thou hath at this late hour?" Don Quixote asks, cocking her head slightly. She holds her mug in her lap with both hands.
Sinclair hesitates for a moment. "Uh, well, I could ask you the same thing." He pauses for another moment, wondering if he should bring up the fact that apparently Don Quixote had been spotted by the other Sinners wandering around the bus at odd hours of the night semi-frequently. "How come you're up so late?"
Don Quixote smiles. "Verily, I hath found myself with a craving for some hot chocolatey milk!" She beamed, putting emphasis on the words hot chocolatey milk. "Forsooth, the noble Fixer the lady Grass Maiden hath stated that hot chocolatey milk is the perfect remedy for the terrors of the night!"
"Uh..."terrors of the night"?"
Her expression drops, realizing what she just let slip. "Ah...uh..." She looks at the mug of hot chocolate in her lap, still steaming hot. “Truthfully, young Sinclair, I hath recently found myself plagued by these…” She furrows her eyebrows, looking uncharacteristically troubled. “...nightmares.” The word comes out softly from her lips, almost apprehensively. Her grip on her mug tightens slightly.
Nightmares. Sinclair is intimately familiar with them. The sounds of nails scratching against floorboards, the grotesque Christmas “decorations”, and that fucking whistle still reverberate throughout the recesses of his consciousness. He is a little shocked to hear that Don Quixote—easily the most chipper of all the Sinners—experiences night terrors. Come to think of it, actually, he doesn’t know much, if anything, about her inner world. Even when compared to the rest of the Sinners, she has one of the most elusive pasts among them. Sinclair finds this realization of his to be…. slightly unsettling, for some odd reason.
“Ah, worry not, young Sinclair. Terrible as they may be, such night palsies are no match for this fine elixir recommended by none other than the illustrious Grass Maiden herself.” She may have picked up on Sinclair’s shift in mood, it was hard to tell with her, but she nevertheless tries to remedy Sinclair’s perceived worries about her. “Even still, if these… odious episodes are not yet vanquished by the hot chocolatey milk, they shalt be no match for myself and my valiant Rocinante.” Sinclair, not certain how her running shoes will help her fend off her nightmares, can’t help but notice the ever-so-slight waver in her voice when she says that.
“I guess I’m just a little surprised to hear that you have nightmares, to be honest…”
“Even noble Fixers are ailed by such night terrors! That is why the Grass Maiden recommends hot chocolatey milk to cure them.” She takes a sip from her mug. “Art thou also plagued by this ailment, young Sinclair?”
He looks down at his feet. “...Yeah. I am.”
Don Quixote lowers her mug into her lap, gazing into her hot chocolate. Despite her efforts to mask it, it was undeniable that something was weighing on her mind. Sinclair looks down at his feet, not entirely sure how to broach the subject. He feels Don Quixote nudge him slightly, so he looks up at her.
She was holding her hot chocolate out to him.
“Huh?”
“Prithee, take this hot chocolatey milk.”
He blinked. “Uh, but isn’t that supposed to be… yours?
She ignores Sinclair and pushes the mug toward him. .
“But—”
“No buts! Prithee, take it from me.”
Sinclair, defeated, lets Don Quixote place the mug in his hands. But before she does, she takes another sip from it.
“Why did you sip it again if—”
“We shall partake in imbibing the hot chocolatey milk together, young Sinclair! ‘Tis our hot chocolatey milk, now.”
Sinclair blinked again. “Huh? Wh—” His face went hot when her words finally registered. “Y-You want us to… share it? Like… drink from the same mug?”
Now it was her turn to look confused. “Of course. Thou hast stated that thou art plagued by nightmares, didst thou not? Wherefore art thou confused? Prithee, have a sip. And have a seat.” She scooches over, and pats the empty space next to her.
Sinclair looks at the drink she placed in his hands, and then glances at the spot she opened up for him. There was little point in continuing to resist her, it might hurt her feelings if he rejected her offer. Besides, both of those things sounded pretty good right now, and really… it was quite a touching gesture. And it wasn’t just him that needed some comforting right now, either. So, with no other choice, Sinclair sits down next to Don Quixote with the mug of hot chocolate. He hesitates, wondering why she didn’t just offer to make another cup, but quickly chalks it up to being a product of her eccentric way of thinking.
And it’s…good. Really good. Soft, creamy hot chocolate with hints of vanilla and the gooeyness of tiny melted marshmallows. Sinclair didn’t know what he was expecting, but he’s honestly a little surprised at how good it is.
“Delicious, is it not?” Don Quixote asks, eyes twinkling.
“...Yeah. It’s good. Really good, actually.” Sinclair replies, placing the mug in the small space between them so she can have another sip. Don Quixote takes it, then places it back in its spot after sipping it. Sinclair repeats the action, unsure of how to fill the silence now hanging in the room. After taking her sip, Don Quixote sighs and looks down at her shoes.
“...Um, do you… Want to talk about it, Don Quixote?” Sinclair says. He doesn’t take a sip of hot chocolate, instead nudging the mug slightly toward her.
“...Well…” She shifts her feet a little. “As I hath stated… I am ailed by night terrors.” She glances at the mug of hot chocolate, but doesn’t touch it. “I know not of why such visions plague me, nor do I recall any such incident that may hath inspired such maladies…” She trails off, staring down at her shoes. She opens her mouth to say something, but closes it before any words come out, then stares at the hot chocolate for a moment before taking a sip. She places it in the empty space between them, nudging the mug toward Sinclair, and then looks down at her shoes again. “I see…visions… of a place unfamiliar to myself. And some horrible tragedy hath taken place, yet I cannot recall what tragedy that is…” Don Quixote speaks slowly, like she’s struggling to string her thoughts together. She sheepishly rubs her left arm. It was extremely rare to see her look so vulnerable—Sinclair thinks he can count all the times he’s seen her in such a state on one hand.
“Yeah. I… I get it.” Sinclair says, tapping his fingers on the bus seat. “When I was a kid, I had a lot of weird nightmares that were hard to explain. I, uh… I still have them now sometimes. But most of my nightmares are…” About nails, viscera, warped hatred and the twisted mingling of flesh and metal. His words hang empty in the air, but they both know how that sentence ends. He looks down at the ground.
Silence fills the empty space for a few moments, as each Sinner struggles to figure out what to say next. Don Quixote, always one to rise to the occasion, speaks.
“If I may speak candidly, young Sinclair, witnessing the horrors that took place at thine former residence, I felt as if I… hath bore witness to such an event in my past… yet still, I nary recall any tragedies comparable to the monstrous acts we came upon in Calw. The villains of Nagel und Hammer appear in mine nightmares as well, on occasion.”
“I…”
Sinclair didn’t know what to say in response to her. It never occurred to him that anyone else cared about what happened in Calw—his own personal little hell, created just for him by Kromer. Especially not Don Quixote of all people, who was so steeped in her own delusions that anything from the outside world had a snowball’s chance in hell at penetrating the wall of fantasy that she’d constructed. If anything, he expected her to file it away in her head as some kind of horrific fairytale. Don Quixote awkwardly takes a sip of hot chocolate. Unable to bear the silence, Sinclair speaks.
“...I…I still have nightmares about them. Kromer. Even though she’s…” Dead. Bisected by none other than Max fucking Demian himself. Sinclair grits his teeth, feeling his stomach tighten at the memory. He hates how his skin crawls at the thought of her, even after all this time.
Don Quixote wordlessly nudges the mug toward Sinclair, seeming unsure of what to say to help him—another rare state for her to be in. Sinclair picks up the mug and has a sip. The warmth of the hot chocolate spreads through his body, providing temporary relief from the memory of Kromer and her Inquisitors. After a moment, Don Quixote takes her turn sipping the hot chocolate and perks up.
“Dost thou know what else helps soothe night palsies?”
“No, I don’t… What else helps?” He was eager to move on from the current subject.
Don Quixote points straight up in the air.
Sinclair blinks. “Uh…the roof?”
Don Quixote beams. “The sky! And the thousandfold stars contained within its grasp!”
The sky. Of course. Sinclair mentally kicks himself.
“And though we cannot see it, for the roof of the Mephistopheles obscures it…” Don Quixote lowers her hand, her voice softening. “The white moon…is often of great comfort to me, whenever I find myself troubled.” She picks up the mug of hot chocolate and sips it. The volume of her voice was low, not quite at the level of a whisper, but Sinclair feels like she just shared something secret with him, something to be protected and held closely.
“So, whenever thee feeleth as though thou art overcome with nightmares and ill feelings… thou wouldst do well in remembering that the stars and the moon are watching over thee. Or, perhaps, thou hast a white moon of thy own?”
Sinclair shifted, slightly uncomfortable. Was… was Demian his white moon? Demian was… something of a tough subject on his own, stirring up enigmatic feelings within Sinclair that clearly aren’t like the sickening violation he feels writhing in between his organs when he thinks of Kromer—a comparison that seems almost silly, even, because Demian is nothing even approaching Kromer’s monstrosity but when he thinks of him…he feels something vulnerable, uncomfortable, and growing in intensity that sits inside his core alongside Kromer’s wriggling maggots. Something unfamiliar, yet familiar, yet—
“I…Demian…He…”
And for some damnable reason, the words tumble out by themselves.
“Demian was the only one who would talk to me at school besides Kromer—I mean, other people talked to me too, but they were the only ones who would really talk to me and the first day I ever saw him he—-he looked at me and smiled. And—it was a real smile too, and it was so warm, like something…just something about it was different like it was only me and him and he would talk to me about these…these weird things that I didn’t understand, these things that scared me sometimes but with him it felt…it felt fine. It felt s…safe. But… but he…”
“He… He never stopped Kromer, never intervened or told me to stay away from her or told her off or anything, even though I know he knew what she was planning. All he did was keep saying these weird, cryptic things and…and he didn’t even do anything to stop my family from being killed, even after Kromer killed all of them in front of me he just—just stood there, in front of me, saying all this weird bullshit and then…and then after disappearing for years, and wishing he would come back and help me, give me advice or anything he swoops in and he…he kills Kromer! It…it should have been me!”
Hot tears welled up in Sinclair’s eyes. “I should have killed her! I should have fucking killed her! And Demian took that away from me, and I still see him in my dreams begging him to please, please could he just help me and tell me what I’m supposed to fucking do…Just…” His voice cracked into a sob, hot tears spilling over his reddened cheeks, feeling both burning humiliation at what he just put Don Quixote through and years of pent-up grief and sorrow. “I…I don’t want to be weak anymore, I know we got the Bough already and…” Sinclair’s voice trails off, taking in a shuddering breath and using his sleeves to wipe at his tears. He doesn’t look at Don Quixote. He doesn’t want to see whatever face she’s making right now.
He feels a light tap on his shoulder. “Sinclair,” Don Quixote’s voice is gentle and low. “Drink. I implore thee.” Sinclair keeps his gaze fixed downward, still not able to look Don Quixote in the eye but he sees her push the mug of still warm hot chocolate toward him. From the looks of it, there’s about one sip left.
He hesitates. “Please,” she says.
Hands trembling, he picks up the mug. He stares into the bottom of the mug, feeling guilty for robbing Don Quixote of the last sip of her hot chocolate. She wouldn’t have even had to share it with him if he weren’t so weak. “Don Quixote, I…”
“Sinclair. I beg of thee. Drink. It will nourish your wounded soul.”
He takes a deep breath, and tilts the mug toward his mouth. The sweetness of the hot chocolate seeps into his soul, and for a moment he thinks maybe it will all be okay.