Chapter Text
Grace’s importance dawns on her on a normal Wednesday, during a normal meeting, amongst borderline boring people. It dawns with her eyes immediately registering his absence, it dawns with the urgency that realization elicits inside of her. It dawns with her restlessness through the whole meeting, her brain barely understanding what they’re talking about. She turns to her right more than once, startled each time she finds the chair next to hers empty. She looks at her notes later and wonders if someone else took them.
She seeks him out immediately after the meeting, initially with an email, then with a text message. They both go unanswered for the five minutes she gives each of them, the seed of panic inside her growing with each passing second. Reluctantly, she resorts to asking around, feigns nonchalance as she goes from Ilyukhina to DuBois (and, simultaneously, Shapiro) to some less important scientists. Eventually, she finds him asleep in his lab. (Should’ve been the first place she looked.) He’s snoring with his head in his arms, plastic goggles still on. The amount of relief she feels is absurd.
She taps her knuckles against the plastic wall, watches him stir and wake. “Oh!” he exclaims with wide eyes as he sees her, yawns. “I was working on this— what day is it?”
She tells him, expressionless, gives him the time and a debrief of the meeting he’d missed as well. He cringes apologetically, promises to keep better track of time in the future before she leaves.
“Why didn’t you send someone else to find me? I thought you were super busy with work?” he asks in another meeting later that day, curious eyes fixed on her. She doesn’t think she knows the answer herself either, resorts to a shrug.
“You are the leading scientist in astrophage. Your disappearance, however brief, was… worrying. It could’ve been a matter that would’ve hindered the project.”
He chuckles, grins. “I didn’t know I was that important.”
Grace’s importance to her dawns on her with these words. It dawns with the realization that his importance isn’t based on his role in the Project, not really, nor is it based on his coma-resistant gene. It dawns on her with a rising dread in her stomach, with running thoughts sprouting in her mind, with something so gruesome and feral she can only describe it as fear.
That night is when the dreams begin.
Or— not dreams. Nightmares, nightly and relentless, pulling her under as soon as she falls asleep, refusing to let her go until the worst is over. She wakes up from them screaming, shaking, whimpering, soaked in sweat. She wakes to her blanket thrown to the side, her pillow nowhere to be seen. She wakes up terrified, disoriented, confused, then immediately relieved, grateful for the soundproofed walls of her personal cabin.
It’s not like she hasn’t had nightmares before; these are just. Different.
They’re varying in length, in severity, in content, but there are two things that never change, sharp stepping stones in a raging river. It takes her four nights before she’s sure of them, before she starts dreading the next time she falls asleep. The stepping stones are: 1) Ryland Grace is always taken away from her in one way or another (death, most often), and 2) It’s always her fault.
In one of them, he gets so close to her that the media starts to paint them out as more than just co-workers, words like second-in-command and sex buddies and secret marriage floating around. In this one, Ryland Grace is sweet and persistent. In this one, she doesn’t fight back when he says Let them talk, they’ll tire themselves out. In this one, he says it softly, eyes locked with hers, delicate hands caressing her face. In this one, she commits crimes the press call inhumane and atrocious. In this one, people are angry and cruel and want to stop her. In this one, they don’t come after her — they come after him.
This one ends with her cradling his blood-soaked body, with her futile tries to stop the incessant bleeding of his gunshot wound.
From this one, she wakes with tears. After this one, she spends the following day trying to scrub out inexistent blood from under her fingernails.
In another one, she’s Orpheus and he’s Eurydice, trailing after her like he always is. In this one, her body’s not under her control, taking step after step even when her knees threaten to give out from under her. In this one, Grace makes no sound, there’s not even the smallest trace of footsteps. In this one, amidst the uncertainty in her mind and the ache in her feet, she gets faux memories of shared meals and beautiful melodies and eyes full of understanding, full of grace. Flashbacks if a love so earth-shattering it’s able to defy death itself, even if only for a small while.
In this one, her body betrays her. In this one, she knows the ending, wills it to not turn around don’t do it don’t do it don’t please please but it won’t listen, needs the confirmation, needs to see his smile and his eyes.
In this one, the first, last, and only look she gets of him is one of despair, of disbelief and terror. Their fingertips barely have the time to brush against each other, the shortest touch possible before he’s pulled away and swallowed by the ground. In this one, she falls to her knees and buries her fingers into the rapidly freezing soil, tries to dig him out until the ground has turned to ice and her fingers are covered in dirt and blood.
From this one, she wakes cold, has to put on an extra sweater to chase away the chills of the Underworld. After this one, she can’t look Grace in the eyes for a week.
In a third one, they grow old together, painfully domestic. In this one, they make coffee and breakfast for each other. In this one, Grace takes her to natural history museums and she takes him to plain historical ones, both more than happy to indulge and listen while the other rambles about their interests. In this one, they wake in the same bed, warm sunlight dappling over their graying hair. In this one, they live in a small town surrounded by mountains, in a house with creaky floorboards, a sound she starts to associate with home. In this one, they go grocery shopping and sunset watching together, no words needed because they know each other that well. In this one, Grace leads her to the town square, some indie band performing live. In this one, Grace invites her to dance and she accepts, so they showcase their love to the whole neighborhood, surrounded by drunk cheers and admiring eyes.
In this one, they don’t fight until they do, some mundane thing escalating more than it should until they’re shouting at each other, throats hoarse.
In this one, he falls in the middle of her sentence, body collapsing, crumpling into her open arms. In this one, his heart gives out and when the doctor asks why all she can think is the last words he heard me say were so cruel.
From this one, she wakes grieving for something she’ll never experience. After this one, she shudders when she sees Grace and he’s so young.
A fourth one, a short one. All she remembers from it is Grace’s lifeless body under her, a knife stabbed into his throat. The deed is done by her; an instinctual knowledge bubbling up from somewhere inside her, one that makes her chest heave, makes her bend over and gasp for breath. From this one, she wakes suddenly, can’t breathe. After this one, she expects Grace to act different, as if her conjured crime would be visible on her face. When he doesn’t, her stomach turns itself over with guilt she can’t explain.
And finally, possibly the worst one: she wakes up in a graveyard. In this one, she looks around at the gorgeously designed church, at the open meadows around her, at the pink, yellow, white flowers littering the tall green grass. In this one, she approaches the rows and rows of gravestones, each one beautiful and unique, runs her hand over the tops of them. The stone is cool and smooth under her touch, someone’s taken good care of them.
In this one, it’s sunny, nearly blindingly so, yet she can smell humidity in the air. In this one, she doesn’t recognize the names carved onto the stones until she’s three rows in and there’s one that reads Voigt. She freezes, unease rising in her. In this one, Dimitri Komorov appears two rows later, then Dr. Lamai after one and a half rows, Leclerc one row from that. Lokken half a row later and then, after that one, she recognizes all of the names, engineers and scientists and politicians, potential astronauts whose faces spurt to her mind as soon as she reads their names. It’s off-putting, her ability to summon them so clearly; she hadn’t thought herself so familiar, so close with them.
In this one, the realization dawns on her like a storm, gradually and slowly: these are all people who’ve died by her choices, her actions. It seems so obvious, once she realizes it. It shakes her to her core.
In this one, she spends an unknown amount of time charting these crimes of hers, stone after stone after stone, someone’s mother daughter sister brother father son, families and friends and enemies and partners, lifelong relationships broken with a snap of her fingers, a wave of her hand. In this one, her guilt consumes her entire being until it’s all she is, a soulless creature with nothing else to define her.
In this one, she keeps going until she arrives at the tomb of her father. A pause, as she stares at it, the ground in front of it flowerless. In this one, the next grave is her mother’s, the third one her sister’s. In this one, her grip on the stone tightens, nausea making itself known. She doesn’t know how she manages to stay upright.
In this one, she struggles to walk past the graves of people she’d once considered family. In this one, she stumbles forward nonetheless, prays that the next tomb belongs to someone anonymous, someone insignificant.
In this one, the next grave belongs to Ryland Grace.
The ground beneath her feet tilts, a dizzying bout of vertigo she has to close her eyes against. In this one, the next time she opens them, the graveyard is full of fog. Ryland Grace is standing in the middle of it, a few steps away from her. He’s slightly transparent, a ghost.
“Look at what you’ve done,” he says, but the voice comes from somewhere above them, distant.
“I didn’t—,” she starts, voice weak, then stops. What does she want to say — I didn’t mean it? I didn’t do it on purpose? I didn’t want to, I didn’t know? All lies, in some way or another. She falls to her knees, body folding over itself amongst the wet grass and the gravestones.
“Look at what you’ve done,” he repeats, stoic, unaffected by her reaction. She does, eyes around at the graves and then at her hands, suddenly covered in blood, jarring red against a background of green. In this one, she starts shaking uncontrollably, buries her face in her bloody hands. In this one, she pleads for something he won’t grant her: forgiveness.
“Please,” she begs, trembling. “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.” In this one, he doesn’t respond to her delirious rambling, only stands there, a cruel figure she can see even when she closes her eyes.
From this one, she wakes with two words on her lips, struggles to force herself back to reality. After this one, a gravestone appears in her head every time she looks at someone.
There are more. There are dozens more, a new one each time she grants herself an adequate amount of rest, sometimes one as soon as she closes her eyes. They’re unlike anything she’s seen before, clear and vivid, she can never tell them apart from reality like she usually can. She gets flashes of knowledge, isn’t sure if they come from reality or dreams. Grace says They have cheeseburgers in the mess hall today, can you believe it, and she chuckles, hums They’re your favorite, right? The sentence feels wrong as soon as it leaves her mouth, Grace stares at her with a look she’s only seen at night. How do you know that, he asks, suspicious, and she remembers fast food dates in the middle of the night, remembers being young and working on group projects together, remembers celebrating their— their relationship, whatever it’d been. Remembers beer bottles clinking against each other with a cheerful To us!, remembers stumbling to the car and blasting loud music, drunken giggles as she accelerates, too fast—
She blinks, remembers a bright light and a loud honk, screeching tires and terrified screams, glass shards in her arm. Remembers turning to the side, remembers Grace’s motionless body amongst the red and blue and black, remembers the wound in his lulling head and the slackness in his limbs that won’t move no matter how she screams his name.
Stratt! Grace shouts, snaps her back to reality. Sorry, she responds, shakes her head, chases away the piercing sirens of an ambulance too late for him, says something about work, tells him to go have dinner, I’ll be there soon. He leaves reluctantly, and they don’t talk about it again.
One time, she enters the lab to check up on the scientists’ progress. They’re burning something, and the orange flames and the smell of smoke take her back to—
An oven, left on during the grocery trip she takes. She presses a gentle kiss to the side of his sleeping head before she leaves and, when she comes back, the whole building is on fire. A charred body wheeled out by men in red uniforms, barely recognizable but she’ll always recognize him, even when he’s burned to ashes. Someone brushes past her and she stumbles, simultaneously in two universes, carbon monoxide still in her lungs. Grace notices her and comes over, starts chatting idly. She pretends her stoic expression and short responses are because of her professionalism and not because of the hungry flames behind her eyelids and the ghost of a scalding heat licking at her skin.
After the third time this happens (the wind outside, crashing waves, a sinking ship, freezing water seeping into her bones, his hands slipping from hers—) she ends up in her bathroom, hands gripping the side of her sink, trembling. She looks at herself in the mirror, finds dull eyes and a tight jaw, finds—
nothing that would indicate towards the slow unraveling of her composure. It sparks the smallest of disappointments inside her. She crushes it instantly, extinguishes the flame before it has the time to escalate into something bigger.
Get yourself together, she scowls at herself, teeth flashing. This is bound to harm the project at some point. You have to get it under control.
Yes, she inhales through her nose, agrees with herself as she washes her face, cleans it of something that had never been there. Yes. I have to get this under control.
She hasn’t slept in four days.
This had not been her plan.
Sure, she’d considered going completely without sleep all together, but even she was aware of the detrimental effects sleep deprivation had on one’s decision-making, her most important asset. So, she’d settled on bi-hourly alarms, barely frequent enough to wake her up before another dream had had the time to creep in. And then they did, and she’d set the alarms to ring every one hour and the dreams had still caught up to her and then she’d just given up.
(It’s the only solution she’d come up with after trying sleeping pills and getting stuck on a battlefield where she could do nothing but watch him slowly bleed out of a flesh wound. She wakes gasping, grasping for something, anything to ground herself with. She lands on her phone, cracks her bleary eyes open against its invasive white light and sees a clock that’s way too late and seven missed calls.
She throws her phone to the other side of the room. It flies along the floor, skidding, and hits the wall with a soft thud. When she manages to drag her heavy limbs weighted with yet another layer of grief out of bed to check on it, it doesn’t even have a crack.)
So. No sleep it was. It hadn’t been hard, the first few days, especially with her tolerance for all-nighters. The increased amount of caffeine and short walks when the emails and documents had gotten too monotonous had helped, had relieved the tightness of her scalp and the shaking of her hands at least a little.
But now, on the fourth day, every hour, every minute, every second she tried to stay awake was a battle against her body. A battle that she was, as much as she didn’t want to admit it, actively losing.
She’d skipped lunch, had hoped the hunger pains would help with her alertness and while they do, a tiny bit, they also contribute to the swaying under her feet, her sense of balance threatening to betray her with every step she takes. She worries her teeth over the inside of her mouth until there’s a wound. She sticks her tongue to it, revels in the bright sting of pain, granting her five more minutes of clarity.
It brings her back to the meeting she’s in, back to Grace’s figure next to her, back to the wearying drone of the talker and the constant sound of fingers against keyboards.
She blinks forcefully, looks down at her hands, not red, blinks again, focuses on her notes. When she compares them to Grace’s with a quick glance, they don’t seem to be missing anything. She thanks her fingers silently, continues taking notes, has a sip of her coffee. She’s not sure she can get through another night, should she just go to sleep, blood on her hands, or maybe she could spend the night out on deck, would the cold be biting enough to keep her awake or would that just make it worse, would—
A weight on her knee, she only realizes she’d been bouncing it once it stills.
When she looks at him, Grace takes his hand off and flashes her a sheepish smile, mouths ‘sorry’. She shakes her head in response, ‘it’s okay’, turns back to her tablet.
Somehow, she makes it through the meeting without nodding off. As people file away from the room in various groups, she considers going to her cabin and taking a nap, rejects the thought immediately. Grace eyes her, so she starts to gather up her things, stands up—
The room actually sways. For a dizzying second, she’s blinded and disoriented, feels like a newborn animal learning how to walk. For a dizzying second, she’s in a meadow full of fog and gravestones. The pounding in her head drowns out all noise, get it together, she tries to take a step forward—
—
When she opens her eyes again, she locks them with Grace’s. Her knee aches and her head feels like someone’s trying to hammer a nail into it. Grace’s eyes are wide-blown and worried, she has just enough time to wonder why before she remembers, before she realizes that she’s on the floor, back against the wall.
“Oh, thank God,” Grace exhales, then, “Whoa!” when she tries to stand up. He pushes her down with one hand on her shoulder. She goes easily, too exhausted to protest.
“How long was I out?” she asks, looks around. They’re still in the meeting room, her things on the table. Thankfully, there’s no one else around.
“Oh, like, 46 seconds,” Grace answers in mock indifference, hands her a cup of water from somewhere. She takes it gladly, sips it in uncomfortable silence. “Do you… need to go to Medical or something? Fainting like that— you went down so suddenly.”
Even more uncomfortable silence. She shakes her head. “No, I just…,” an inhale, as she braces herself for the admission. “I just need to sleep.”
“Oh,” Grace says again, furrows his eyebrows. “Have you not been? Sleeping?”
And she’s so tired, her tongue almost slips, she almost opens herself up to him except her eyes catch on bright bright red on her hands, blink it away, and she says: “I’ll be fine.” She stands up despite his protests. To her relief, she doesn’t fall over again.
Grace stands up with her, stammers as she gathers her things. “You— Stratt? Are you—”
“I’ll be fine,” she interrupts, then proceeds to stumble with the first step she takes. Grace is there immediately, one hand on her back, the other on her arm. She scowls at him, shakes him off. “Please, Dr. Grace. I’m perfectly capable of handling this myself.”
He raises his eyebrows, she furrows hers in response. Something akin to humiliation rises in her but she pushes it back, chops it up.
“It’s okay if you need hel-,” he starts, and the hot ball of discomfort in her comes back full-force, reassembles itself, adds to her lightheadedness.
“Would you mind your own fucking business for once?” she growls, words coming out sharp, more hostile than she’d intended. It’s partly due to sleep deprivation, sure, but also because anger’s the thing that’s bound to drive everyone away, more than weakness or apathy, something learned from experience.
Ryland Grace is not driven away.
Ryland Grace, the stubborn, hotheaded person that he, behind all the layers of humbleness and insecurity and gentleness, still is, fights back, responds to her weak flicker with roaring flames.
“No, Stratt, I won’t!” he shouts, gesticulating wildly. The movement, combined with his voice, does nothing to help the pain in her head. “I was fudging worried! I was— I was scared, you know? You scared me!”
“No,” she shakes her head, backs away with slow, careful steps. “No, you—,” can’t be scared for me, can’t care about me that much, can’t make me important to you—, “shouldn’t worry. I’ll be okay.” Keep your walls up, what waits for him behind them are soldiers striving to assassinate him, she’s the horse to his Trojans. She imagines it, tiny hims allowing the wooden horse she is past his gates only to be hurt by whatever misfortunes she’s destined to bring with her.
She might be a bit delirious. She definitely needs a fucking nap.
“Well, you clearly won’t,” Grace says when she stumbles again. “Was this your last meeting for the day?”
“Yes, I will,” she ignores his question, must be annoying him at this point, let him become frustrated and leave.
“I asked, was this your last meeting for the day?” he repeats. His voice is strained, she doesn’t have the courage to meet his eyes. Don’t let him in but she’s past exhausted now, can’t do anything but succumb to his never-ending will.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he exhales, comes closer. “Okay, how about this? You go to your room and get some darn sleep—”
Disasters and blood and death and blood blood blood—
“Whoa, Stratt! Stratt?”
She’s shaking, she realizes, tenses her entire body to make it stop. She needs to sleep, Grace looks more and more concerned by the moment, has only seen her perfectly composed, never a mess like this. Maybe now he’ll finally see me as a person, she thinks and hates the thought immediately.
“Is there… something preventing you from sleeping?” Grace asks slowly, carefully. She’s finally able to put a name to the discomfort inside her, it tastes sour and disgusting. It’s shame.
“Would… would I help? If I stayed with you while you slept?” he continues, seems to have taken her silence as a yes. His bold proposition wakes her up momentarily, makes her blink with surprise. She’d thought him timid and cowardly with these things, but then again, he did seem exceptionally comfortable with her. Hm.
She plays with his idea for a moment. It’s enough to make him (apparently) regret it, enough to make him stutter and stammer again. “I didn’t mean— Was that a bit, would it be a bit creepy? You don’t have to accept, of course, I just thought I’d offer because it’s helped me in the past but it might just unsettle you and— well. I’ll just. Shut up now.”
She loses track of what he’s saying two sentences in, blinks at him blankly. He groans to himself, gestures at her. “Just— Is there any way I can help?”
Yes, a thought, be less you in every way imaginable, make yourself unimportant to me, turn back time and change it so that I never fall for your silly allure and infinite fascination towards everything.
“Yes,” she says aloud, gives up on trying to drive him away. He’ll find his way back regardless. “I suppose we could try what you proposed.”
So they do. He helps her back to her room with one hand on her back, only takes it off when they pass other people. There are only a few, thankfully — it’s late enough for most of the crew to be in bed already. Still, she’s grateful for this small attempt to preserve her honor.
Once they’re in the privacy of her cabin, he leaves her alone to take a shower while he goes to fetch some of his things. She’s already changed into pajamas when he returns with a notebook and his laptop. He finds her blow-drying her hair, quietly takes over for her. It’s calming, the low thrum and the warmth making her drowsy. She leans back instinctively, closes her eyes. Grace chuckles against her scalp before ruffling her hair one last time.
“Done,” he says, slightly triumphant. She’s half-asleep already, only has enough strength to respond with a low hum. He guides her to her bed, drags a chair over and sits down. “I’ll be working or something, while you fall asleep?”
Please don’t leave, she wants to say, but what comes out is only another hum. She does her best to convey her message through it but is ultimately unable to, so he only takes it as an affirmative, whispers “Okay.”
She closes her eyes, expects sleep to come easily but-
flashbacks, images she can’t describe because they’re barely images, more like vague flashes of pure terror and grief, whole body tensing, doing everything to keep itself from falling into the violent currents of her dreams again.
“—ineffective. What has proved itself useful, on the other hand, have been—,” Grace’s voice, cutting through the rising panic in her chest. His hand slides into hers, he rubs the back of her hand with a thumb. It slows the thumping of her heart, eases the panic in her brain. She exhales, inhales, matches her breathing to the movement of his finger. Grace’s voice thrums into the back of her head, fuzzy and comfortable.
This time, when the darkness comes up to claim her in steady, undulating waves, she gives in to it easily.
She wakes slowly. She wakes slowly, rested and peaceful with the knowledge of it being a meeting-less day. She wakes with a safe presence next to her, with a warm hand in hers, with the sound of gentle snoring. She wakes, basks in the calm of it all.
Then her body goes and ruins it, useless anxiety spreading through her limbs. She shakes, braces for overwhelming memories of things that have never happened, braces for flashbacks of— of—
There’s nothing, she knows there’ll be nothing, yet she still tenses, all the relaxation gathered from the night seeping out of her.
Suddenly, the hand in hers stirs. The motion pauses her spiral, reminds her to breathe again. She watches in real time as Ryland Grace wakes, yawning and stretching. She sees his temporary confusion, sees the moment he remembers and realizes, pushes away the bud of shame threatening to break loose, chops it up.
“Wh— Oh,” Grace looks at her, then at their intertwined hands, then at his laptop on the floor. “I must’ve fallen asleep here last night. I guess the boring emails got to me.”
He folds over to pick his laptop up, drops her hand in the process. She doesn’t let herself feel disappointed, chases the feeling away by standing up and heading towards her closet, picking out a shirt and a sweater.
“Well, how’d you sleep?” he asks from behind her.
“Good,” she answers, doesn’t elaborate.
“Great! I’m glad I could be of help,” his tone is cheerful, she doesn’t know how he summons it at — a glance at her clock — eight in the morning.
“I’ll um. I’ll go now?” Grace continues when she doesn’t respond. She inhales, turns around to look at him. His glasses are askew, his hair is disheveled, he looks like him, so much that it makes her chest ache, blocking anything she tries to say. He grins, awkward. “I’ll try to make sure no one sees me?”
“If they do, just tell them I made you come in early for a meeting,” she answers, forces herself to be pragmatic, to ignore whatever her body’s trying to tell her. You didn’t do that last night, her brain whispers, but she silences it. “I... Apologize for the trouble.”
“Oh!” Grace exclaims, fingers around the door handle already. “Oh, it’s no problem! I— well, anytime, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she repeats quietly, watches him leave, a smile flashed at her before his face disappears behind the door.
As soon as she’s left alone, her mind start to run.
Apprehension, doubt, all the things his presence had blocked out. What if this was the wrong thing, and she’s unable to get rid of the thought no matter how hard she tries.
It’s okay, a pathetic attempt to convince herself it’s the truth, it won’t happen again.
She goes to sleep that night, after repeating all the steps from last night as closely as she could. She wakes to her own screams.
She considers asking someone else, tries making a potential list of candidates, and comes up with zero names.
She sits on the edge of her bed two days after Grace had stayed over, finds herself unable to fall asleep, spends the next day in a sleep-deprived haze. Her surrender happens slowly and throughout the day, with unfocused eyes, decisions she suddenly doesn’t know how to make, and meetings she has to pinch her leg to stay awake in.
It’s ironic, as she gives up and tracks down Grace at the end of the day, finds him with one eye in a microscope and a strand of Twizzlers behind his ear in the lab. The only thing that’ll rid me of his ghost is the real him.
“Stratt!” he exclaims once he notices her, eyes lighting up, as if seeing her is some sort of grand thing he’d been looking forward to.
“Bring your pillow and blanket this time,” she answers, keeps her expression as neutral as she can. “I have an extra mattress. Sleeping in a chair won’t do your back or your neck any good.”
He hides his surprise badly, nearly knocks something over, catches himself just in time. She can almost see the gears running in his head before he nods. “Okay. Okay, I’ll see you at— ten?”
That night, when he enters her room, it’s in his pajamas, a white pillow tucked under his arm. His shirt says All the best science jokes Argon and his pants have little puppies on them. She raises her eyebrows at them, watches his face flush.
They’re cute! He protests against her unsaid teases, pouts. He looks like the puppies on his pants like this. She wants to ruffle his hair, shoos him inside instead, closing the door behind her.
“I hope this isn’t an inconvenience,” she says, voice strained. To expose herself to anyone, to him especially, it’s—
Necessary, she assures herself, presses her back against her door to ground herself. Unless if you want to die from sleep deprivation.
“Oh, not at all!” Grace replies, unaware of her distress. He’s already settling down, placing his pillow on the mattress next to her bed. “I told you, didn’t I?” he continues, turning to look at her, eyes full of kindness no one has granted her in a long time. “Anytime. I’m not that good at sleeping alone anyways.”
“I see,” she mumbles, having nothing else to say. “If there’s... Any way to increase your comfort during the upcoming nights, feel free to tell me. I’ll do my best to accommodate you.”
“Oh, of course,” he replies, not at all surprised at her implication of this becoming routine. Had assumed it, probably. The thought makes her stomach roil. “This is fine though, I think. I’ll tell you if anything comes up.”
“Yes,” she answers, pushes herself off the door and towards her bed, struggling to look at him. Her last nightmare in flashes: a sunset, a cliff, a swelling in her heart, her hands possessed by something crueler, a shove, palms against his chest, little pebbles skidding down down down, panic in his eyes, a hand reaching out but she doesn’t grab it, watches as he—
“I’ll just. Lie down here?” he asks, drags her back down to Earth. She blinks a few times, eyes finding him automatically. His face doesn’t hold betrayal, doesn’t hold hurt or distress or anger because he doesn’t know, this Grace has been spared from her poison heart. So far, at least.
“Yes,” she chokes out, swallows, slips under her own covers as well. He’s alive, she tells herself, repeats it to convince herself, to make the ghost in the corners of her eyes disappear. He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.
He’s alive when he lies down on the mattress, slowly and carefully. He’s alive when her body starts preparing for its nightly torture again, when he slips his hand into hers, the familiar movement of his thumb loosening the tension in her limbs. He’s alive when her thoughts start fading into the black oblivion of sleep, he’s alive when she succumbs to it. He’s alive.
She sleeps, and doesn’t dream.