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celine started awake, her breaths coming out hard and heavy. she blinked rapidly to get an image of her surroundings. the room was pitch black, and she was in her bed. it must be the middle of the night. across the room, sloane's bed was empty and perfectly-made. she'd be in the basement testing out a new hypothesis tonight. celine had attempted persuading her to blow up things in daylight, and get the ideal eight hours of sleep for once, but sloane's pleading expression was enough to make her crumble.
now, she wished she had spent more time convincing her girlfriend. the nightmare began to replay in her mind, as it would for hours unless she was able to fall asleep again. she needed someone, anyone, to be here with her.
ever since she was a child, celine had been able to remember her dreams vividly after waking up. as a ten-year-old, it was fun to relive her visits to candyland. but now, feeling thatcher townsend shove her against a wall, saying he would have stamped out all of the bad blood in her, and this time, listing all the things he would have done to her—
"no," celine said to herself aloud. she was shaking now, unable to hold still. "stop, please, stop, just stop." she didn't even know who she was talking to.
i'm gonna die, she thought. it was an absurd notion, but the feeling of her biological father's hands on her shoulders induced the nauseated feeling she usually got before she threw up.
get to the bathroom. celine couldn't move. she was sitting up in her bed, frozen, and she couldn't move. her mind flashed to michael, and she wrapped her arms around her stomach. i'm horrible. she was horrible for feeling this much about a dream when he'd gone through the real thing for years.
she barely registered the door opening, and the shadow of sloane's figure in the doorway. her blonde-haired girlfriend was holding something that possessed the shape of goggles.
"celine," she said, her mind probably going a mile a minute. "you're awake. the average number of breaths you are taking per minute is 26. that's above the average number of breaths per minute for an adult. you're awake and you're hyperventilating."
celine didn't say anything as sloane rushed over to her bed, dropped the goggles on the floor, and climbed in next to her. warm arms wrapped around celine's middle, and the knot in her gut loosened ever so slightly.
"celine. i'm making physical contact with you on about—" she blew out a breath. "i'm here."
someone's here. sloane's here. "sloane," celine croaked, burying her face in the crook of her girlfriend's neck. tears spilled from her eyes, dampening the sleeve. "sloane."
sloane didn't say anything. celine knew it must have been taking her effort to not blurt out a comforting statistic. "i love you."
"i love you too," sloane responded immediately. "you've only professed your love to me when you were in distress one other time, which was 0.09% of the times since we first got together." she cleared her throat. "it's okay if you don't wanna tell me though."
celine shuddered. "it was him. he was in my dream."
"by him, i'm assuming you mean your father." celine nodded slightly. "what did he—what did he say?"
she doesn't know what he said to me that day, celine realized. sloane only knew that celine had analyzed thatcher's facial structure to learn that he was her biological father.
"you know that i wasn't actually kidnapped—i just got mad and left the house in a mess." celine's voice was muffled, but sloane seemed to have heard her just fine.
"yes. my observations led me to the conclusion that the…expression of anger was likely rooted back to your father."
"you're right." this was the difficult part. "thatcher…he came to see me that day."
sloane's whole body tensed, but she didn't say a word.
"it was after he realized that i knew about him being my father. it was like he'd expected me to run to him upon the revelation." celine considered how the meaning behind her words would appear to sloane. "i'd already known about the things he did to michael."
the girl shuddered, as if relieving a memory of michael that celine wasn't privy to.
"so he told me…he told me that my father—my step-father, i suppose—ruined me. that he'd let me run wild, instead of succumbing to my 'potential'. and he also said that if he had a chance, he would have stamped the bad blood out of me when i was just a girl, just how he did for michael." those last words came out in a rush. "the dream was about if i hadn't yelled at him to leave me alone, if he'd kept talking and the things he'd say."
the bedroom was quiet, until sloane tightened her arms around celine. "i'll never let him touch you again," she said fierce and a little too loud, shattering the silence. "he's horrible, and evil, and abhorrent." she paused again. "i saw him hit michael."
i saw him hit michael. celine had known michael for almost all of her life, and even she'd never seen the height of thatcher's temper, only the aftermath. she didn't ask when sloane would have seen it; the answer was obvious. instead, she blurted out, "am i selfish for not being able to sleep at night when all thatcher did was threaten me, yet michael is able to go on with his life as if he's never felt the blows?"
celine lifted her face from sloane's shoulder as sloane jerked backwards. "michael feels," she insisted, her eyes wide. "even if he doesn't show it. but you're not selfish, celine. you are allowed to feel scared and angry and upset about being told those things."
their eyes met. "do you really believe that?" celine asked. she knew sloane, and she knew what so many people had said to her throughout her life.
sloane pressed her lips into a line. "yes. i do." and celine believed her.
sloane leaned over and pressed a small kiss to celine's forehead. "do you want to sleep?" she asked.
"only if you're here," celine said in reply.
sloane nodded, making herself comfortable on celine's bed. celine lied down next to her, placing an arm over her girlfriend's waist. the statistician tucked her head into celine's side, and it only took about thirty seconds before she was snoring.
celine smiled to herself. i'm allowed to feel scared and angry and upset, she thought, but i also have to acknowledge that i'm lucky. lucky to not have been raised by thatcher, lucky to be living with her friends in denver, but most of all, lucky to have the girl that was sloane.