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You first heard a scream, violent, torn from a throat that seemed so distant. Before your eyes had even opened, that horrible sound permeated your dormitory, ringing in your ears and echoing in the halls of the Bureau. For a second, you could have sworn it was just part of that awful dream.
But that was not the case. You were sitting upright in bed, with the blankets bent from the sudden motion of rising, permeated with a cold sweat. Either that or a tear passed through your cheek, like a slash leaving a line of fresh blood.
Before your senses could truly awaken like how your emotions had, an oh-so-familiar voice came from the doorway. Even in your daze from the horrible dream, you could recognize your Adjutant's voice, and face, as she rushed in.
- “Chief! Chief Y/N!” - Nightingale spoke more like a worried parent than a subordinate reporting a crisis. At least that made that weight on your stomach lighten a little.
- “Is…something the matter?” - you blinked twice, still getting accustomed to the light of your office turned on by the visitor.
It was a bit of a dumb question, since you knew exactly what happened. You could have given such a detailed description, that Hecate might be able to draw a realistic image from it from instruction alone.
Your poor attempt at a response is only made more shaky by the twitch in your shoulders, the sweat glistening your brow and that depth in your eyes that had been there since you awoke during the BR-002 crisis being even more obvious than usual.
- “It’s…it was a nightmare, Chief, you were having a nightmare” - she explains, in a more hushed tone.
- “Did I scream so loud as to wake you up from your room? I’m sorry”
- “No, no. Well, sort of, but I was on watch anyway, just making sure”
On watch for what?
As if reading your mind, she answers.
- “The Schorl unit from Paradeisos that…watches over you ran some scans upon noticing a decrease in your daily performance coming from a probable sleep disturbance. It asked me to keep an eye out just in case”
- “That damned triangle” - you were typically a very cool-headed woman, but the overbearing machine made you want to toss it at walls - “Nightingale, you don’t have to disrupt your sleep for the sake of mine just because that thing…”
- “I would have done it regardless. I’m worried about you, Chief, and just want you to be okay”
She approaches carefully, reaching for your chair to sit down next to the bed.
- “You don’t have to trust me with this, and I’ll leave if you prefer, but I want you to know that me and the Sinners and staff, are here for you. The shackles turn you into a receptor of the Mania from the Sinners, their stability comes at some cost. So, we all just want to help, however we can, because you remember all their names, tastes and birthdays”
She slowly reaches for your hand to give you time to pull away, but you don’t. She gently puts her palm over your knuckles, squeezing ever so slightly.
- “You don’t have to bear your struggles all by yourself. Anyone would crumble under that pressure, but you keep going”
- “I’m not special” - you mutter - “I’m just…ordinary”
- “You’re an ordinary person facing the extraordinary, and that makes you extraordinary in of itself. Please, Chief. I want to help, however I can”
You take a deep breath. An image crosses behind your eyes, of a memory that has been wracking your brain since you first set foot outside of the Memory Reconstruction Tank. Since what’s basically your birth. And of course, like a baby duckling, you imprinted on the first person you saw.
- “I had a nightmare about…Her. I’ve had several recently. Not sure why”
- “Her?” - the Adjutant is cautious in her questioning, her eyes revealing a train of thought trying to discern which woman the Chief could possibly be talking about. The candidates formed a list too long to conceive in seconds.
- “R” - you manage to mutter, separating your gaze from that of Nightingale - “Suspect R”
Nightingale leans back on the chair, letting the admission sink in and processing a response. She’d be lying if she said the image of the shapeshifter Sinner had crossed her mind as of late. It was like she had vanished from the face of the Earth.
- “I…understand, Chief” - she didn’t, but she empathized nonetheless - “We have not found her yet and she hasn’t shown her face since the Bureau riot. I suppose that’s the problem, right?”
You nod.
- “I keep thinking that she has to be somewhere. Be someone. That something has to tie back to her. A motivation, a secret, a purpose”
The Sinner’s face crosses your mind like a flash of light. Despite the time since you saw her, in that illusion within the Square Black Ring, you can recall her features, perfectly. And of course, her borrowed features, too.
The image of Suspect R morphs. Instead of an illusion, she now resembled a mirror. Sporting your face, with that liquid traveling down your eyes like tears. Or her eyes?
You hadn’t even noticed you had begun shaking again until the Adjutant squeezes your hand harder, you gasp for air, the façade of the memory of the Nightmare broken like glass.
- “I can’t stop thinking about it. About her. I-I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why this keeps biting at me”
Your voice becomes rougher and shakier, your breaths faster. Such pain follows the path of least resistance like a river carving through land.
- “I don’t even know her name, damn it! Or why she chose to attack the Bureau! Am I just supposed to sleep knowing she’s out there, at large?!”
Something salty and watery reaches your mouth. The Adjutant watches silently.
- “What if she has replaced someone I care about?! What if one day I go to visit Hella, or OwO, or Hecate, or Zoya, or anyone else in the Bureau and their faces melt away to reveal…Her”
You mutter the pronoun with a fear as deep and dark as a hellish gash in the earth, sputtering flames and brimstone. Your lips tremble even more.
- “What if she replaces Wynn, or…or you?” - you turn to look desperately at her eyes, like indeed her face could have those glowing light-blue eyes - “Somedays I’m afraid I’ll look in the mirror and only see…”
- “Chief” - You hadn’t noticed how much your head was spinning until she called out to you - “You are spiraling. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you relive it. Please, take deep breaths. Need me to help you?”
You meditate for a second, dizzy still, before nodding slowly so as to not worsen it.
- “Okay, inhale…yes, like that” - she held out her other hand with all fingers raised, lowering each at a pace of around a second long - “Yes, now breathe out”
You release. You cannot feel your lungs, as if the air simply disappeared and reappeared from within your throat, but you keep at it.
- “Once again” - she gently runs a thumb over your palm, while you two repeat the breathing exercise, until the shaking has subsided.
It took a short while, but that poison deep in your chest has loosened its grip on your body.
- “Feel ready to continue, Chief?” - she speaks, with the patience of a thousand saints. You wonder how this woman can put up with you for so long - “Or, do you prefer to breathe some more”
- “I…it’s fine. I can continue” - you speak at a low whisper.
- “Good, now I need you to think of an item, anything at all, and describe it to me. Color, shape, texture, feel…”
Your eyes meet hers, so clear and focused on you, that you could probably see yourself reflected on them should you get any closer.
- “This is…panic attack treatment?” - you knew several mental healthcare strategies as part of your position. You must have ran this through with Rahu over 10 times when she needed it.
She nods, and you don’t argue any further, just laying your back on the wall behind your bed.
- “Can I describe the shackles?”
- “Let’s not. Try to keep the shackles and everything work related out of mind for now, in fact. Focus on the now, Y/N, for me”
This is the first time she has addressed you by first name alone. You sometimes forget what that sounds like, always so caught up in your role, in being the MBCC Chief, you don’t know if you are something else, if they could replace you with a flower pot and everything be the same.
The horrible dream rears its ugly head once more. Or maybe it is a memory. The dark of night makes both hard to differentiate. Your face, with an expression you would never put on, in clothes that are not yours, your voice, mixed with another, and your eyes, bluer than sky and sea. Bluer than anything in the world. The blue that has taunted you, since you awoke, to be the Chief, and not Y/N.
Is that woman the same? Role over name, with an appearance so fluid it almost doesn’t matter…the thought threatens to swallow you whole.
But you don’t let it. You return to the present, to the only time you’ve ever had, just when Nightingale approaches, to try and get your attention.
When the distance shuts, you see her eyes anew, and the reflection they hold. You blink and so does the reflection.
- “Chief, you might be dissociating. Please, hold on a little longer, we are almost done”
- “I’m fine” - you answer on the spot to kill the dread lingering in the air - “Um, Hecate’s notebook, no, not the notebook, a drawing she made of me. She made it during a therapy session, the…uh, second Sunday of May this year maybe? She never writes the dates but I’m pretty sure”
- “What does it look like?” - Nightingale bends forward slightly, listening even though she knows exactly what drawing you’re talking about; she sees it every day hung in your office.
- “Well, it’s me, yeah, with a smile. It’s a portrait, she uses very bright and warm colors around, which makes a contrast with the clothes I tend to wear. It’s like…the dawn”
A girl haunted by nightmares, drawing a loved one as the dawn that ends bad dreams. The meaning isn’t lost in either of you, and for a second, the idea of a flower pot meaning that much to anyone sounds ridiculous.
- “I don’t touch the paper a lot, but when I feel down or overwhelmed, I trace that smile with my index finger, and I feel my face follow. It’s a little ritual. Honestly, we should look into opening an art club of sorts, or getting some of the more artsy Sinners’ projects out there. Maybe if we catch Lisa on a good day…”
- “Y/N” - Nightingale listens to your ramble with a smile not unlike the one in your portrait - “You did it”
Only now do you realize. You stopped shaking and trembling. You feel like your heart has started beating again, and like your lungs are again connected. You even feel the shackles, that red thread connecting you to so many, each and all, here and beyond, found and those yet lost, like a sixth sense.
- “Chief, permission to…”
Her question is answered as you lean in to give her a hug.
- “Thank you, Nightingale, I’m glad you are here. Please get some sleep too”
The adjutant smiles as she returns the embrace, letting go after a little while, before rising, putting the chair back on your desk, and reaching for the light switch as she prepares to leave.
- “Good night, Chief. Sweet dreams”
- “You too”
As the dark falls, you tuck yourself in. Keeping your mind a white space, it’s not long until sleep finds you once more, like the embrace shared between confidants just now. Only one thought does cross though, a sentence, or a promise, to yourself, or to whomever.
- “Not today, or tomorrow. But one day”