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You wake up screaming.
Alone, in your room of living flesh, you scream.
The others are down the hall, bundled together in a warm nest. Lying on top of eachother with nothing to fear. Holding eachother, touching eachother, sleeping together, fearlessly.
They regularly ask for you to join, and you always say no.
This is why you are alone, you tell yourself between fast breaths that never seem to bring in enough oxygen. You are all that is wrong with you.
Whatever nightmare that tugged you from your pitiful sleep is beginning to fade from your memory, yet its effects still linger.
You bury your head in you hands, curl up into a ball, sitting up in your excuse for a bed.
Small, warm, slips of light coming in from the window tell you it's closing in on morning, when you crack open a tear filled eye.
No matter what you tell your brain, it can't seem to relax your muscles. You feel like a prey animal who's lost sight of its hunter. Your hands and feed twitch in tandem with your heaving chest.
A sheen of sweat on your dirty skin makes you deathly aware of the cold outside. The inside of your body is too hot. You feel like you are about to boil.
You begin to cough, to hack and to cry. The tears have long since breached your eyes and are clearing paths through the dried blood on your cheeks.
Not your blood.
Your stomach is contracting now, disgusted by actions you can't even recall. (Don't even want to recall.) Did you even eat before you went to sleep? You hope the answer is yes. It burns more on an empty stomach.
In a stumbling haze, you push yourself out of your room and into the hallway. The tears in your eyes make you half blind, so you start running. Better to be moving than to be thinking, you always tell yourself.
You let out another screech as you feel arms wrap around your middle. It nearly knocks you over. You've been caught, you think, and you are about to die. So, like the dying beast you are, you begin to flail. You don't know if your hitting your mark. You don't care.
The arms don't let up. You can tell your captor is trying to speak to you by the vibrations beside your half severed (what??) ear, but you can't hear them.
You scream again.
Seconds more of struggling, and they pull you to the ground. Your mindless pleas for help turn slowly back into desperate sobs. You are speaking, but you can't make any of it out. You're begging.
You're moved into a position where you are lying against the person's chest. They begin to stroke your hair with gentleness that only serves to make you cry more. Finally, you stop thrashing.
Still, this person is talking to you, so gently, so caring. Now you seem to be crying more because... why? Why are they being to nice to you? What have you ever done to deserve such kindness? You don't deserve any of this, you monster. You feel soft kisses press against your scalp.
Minutes pass, and your terror now is passing. Still you sob, and still you twitch, but it's lesser now. You can even make out some of the speech still being muttered to you.
"...to be alright."
"I am... for you..."
"Not going to..."
"It's OK."
You swallow.
Your mouth is full of blood. This time, it is yours.
You look up.
"A bad night, is it?" Ion asks you with more concern than you have ever earned in your life
Yet, you nod.
His arms wrap around you, and you feel safe this time.
It nearly scares you as much as your nightmare, this strange feeling of safety.
"I get those too," He smiles at you, and you cry again. He wipes the tear away.
"I don't like being broken," You croak.
"Whole people see no problems with the world," Ion says. "They have no desire to change anything. But us - those broken... we have that desire. We know the world is wrong. And we will fix it.
"We will fix eachother."
You bite your lip, and let him carry you into his nest. There, you - as much as you hate to admit it - feel a little more whole.