Even if that meant that sometimes, I let myself down, like by not thinking to buy pain meds.
I looked around my little apartment and checked the time, opening up the Creche Thiel calendar and skimming the days to come.I could, I realized, stay here overnight if I wanted: the next meeting was mid-day tomorrow, so as long as I was back early enough to walk the kids to school, that would be fine.I could sleep here: the bedding was new; the door locked.I could watch as much media as I wanted.
But I knew what would be waiting for me if I tried to sleep here, and I didn't feel like battling those demons, not in my current state.
I flicked the lights off, giving the room one long look.It was lit only by the dim glow from the courtyard outside, or whatever managed to make it through the cloudy polymer anyway.When I'd been in the den, there was nothing I wanted more than security.And here it was: I'd paid for this place from now until when we were scheduled to leave Sozamia for Xitera.This was mine.No one could take it, no one could touch it.
And yet, looking over this little sliver of space down in Radiant Ward, all I felt was an aching hollowness in my chest while my mind still buzzed with a thousand abayan words, each jostling for attention at the edge of my mind.And the one that kept coming to me, an echo rebounding again and again, waselathe.
By myself.
On my own.
A single person.
But my traitorous, wounded mind could only stubbornly translate it to:alone.
I turned and locked the door behind me, threading my way through the dwindling crowds and the tunnels connecting all of Sozamia Station so that I could return to Verdant Ward and our creche suite, where I could at least be alone while I was surrounded by other people.
That, too, was familiar at least.
Chapter2
Sweet Dreams Aren't Made of These
When we'd left Thenat-2 and headed out of the Thenat Cluster – good fucking riddance, honestly – and toward Basilla and Sozamia in the Phine system, I'd been maybe about as well as anyone had the right to expect – which was to say that I'd been kind of fucked up.I wasn't alright, but I was back on the creche ship and at least that was familiar, even if I knew that everything that had happened on it had been a lie.
I had my bunk, although I didn't bother unpacking for the week and change it would take us to get to the Phine system, and I had an understanding with Araxis – and, more importantly, I had an understanding with myself.
Araxis and I were taking a break.We were pausing so that we could figure things out, so thatIcould figure things out.A little bit of space would do us good, I thought; that's what I kept telling myself anyway, torn between wanting to be with him all of the time and wanting to see if I could understand myselfwithouthim, especially because I’d been feeling so… confused after everything that had happened in the past month.So I settled in each night in my own bed, layered up in sweaters and blankets and determined to get a good night's sleep.
I needed that.I needed to put myself back in order.I needed space to remember who I was and where my edges were and to stop letting myself bleed into creche life, to stop being siphoned off into what Araxis needed and, more importantly, what Ithoughthe needed.So it was with a sense of purpose and a new dedication to my own self-sufficiency and growth as a person or whatever that I settled in on the creche ship intending to take care of myself, and to do a good job of it too.
And yet –
I didn't sleep.Icouldn't.I tossed.I turned.I shivered, alone in the dark andsocold.And when I closed my eyes, the sounds I heard weren't just the sounds from a decade ago, back on Seraphim: it wasn't the coughing of other children, the grind of the air filtration system, the rustling of itchy blankets, the drone of the loudspeaker outside.Now, I heard new sounds: the crunch of my nose, breaking; the low growl from Grigor Spade's throat; the rustling of a crest; the creaking of my larynx; the wheezing of my own chest.
If I did manage to fall asleep, it wasn't for long: inevitably, I woke up, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs that it felt like it might break free.I'd shoot up from bed, vision spotting against the dim lights of the cabin, suddenly unable to breathe.I would claw at my own throat and huddle in a pool of my blankets, shoved into a corner of the bunk while tears streaked down my face.
I made it through a few nights on my own before, after one particularly nasty episode in which I hadswornI could taste blood and had actually turned on all the lights to find where I was bleeding, I gave up and went next door.
"This doesn't mean anything," I'd told Araxis who had, despite the impossible hour, been awake.The lights had been glowing softly in his room, its familiar panels of fabric warm and inviting, its lived-in softness like a gentle hand beckoning me inside."I just need to hear someone else breathing next to me or my mind fills in the silence with all sorts of shit I'd rather it didn't."
He had looked at me, his eyes black and endless, and then Araxis had nodded."Of course," he murmured.I'd noticed that the screen on his desk was glowing – he was working, although he'd told me that I wouldn't start, not really, until we reached Sozamia – and when I'd dropped on to his bed, Araxis had carefully gone back to his workstation to continue whatever it was I'd interrupted.
His bed had still been pulled down, double-wide, so I shoved myself to the back – my usual place – and arranged his pillows all around me.I built a little nest and then I let myself fall away, drifting gently to the sound of his body's shifting weight, the haptic feedback of his digital keyboard, the quiet whisper of his breathing.
When I woke in the morning, I felt a bit more human again, a bit more whole.Less like I'd spent the night running from ghosts I could never escape.
Araxis had already been gone.The only evidence that he'd come to bed was the rumpled blanket beside me and the lingering warmth I could feel when I buried myself there, deep among sheets that still smelled like his skin.
I gave up the pretense of sleeping in my room after the next two nights followed suit.And that was all well and good – fuck, if Ihadto sleep next to him in order to keep the nightmares at bay, I would, even if it posed a serious challenge to my resolve to keep things professional.Given that behaving professionally in my previous line of work involved fucking people, trying to be professional bynotfucking Araxis seemed particularly cruel.
We travelled to our temporary home in Verdant Ward after leaving the ship at Basilla, where it would be in space dock for at least two months to undergo repairs and alterations.Because the suite we'd rented was intended for a creche, it was more like a floor of an apartment building with a maze of common spaces than a single residential unit.So when Araxis had come back from making another trip to the ship, he'd found me in our bedroom, holding the plant he'd sent over from the ship in one hand and looking bewildered.
There wassomuch space.This bedroom was larger than his rooms had been at the Tournament.The bed was massive: it was big enough that we'd never need to worry about touching accidentally, except that it sloped gently inwards, the softest possible nest for us to bed down in together.The room had a sitting area and a small dining table, a closet bigger than his room on the ship, an entire hygiene suite with a full bath,pluswindows that overlooked a park down below.A meeting room was attached, the sliding door currently pulled back so that I could see that space too.
It was absurd.And Araxis had looked at me, standing wide-eyed in this ridiculous room fit for a space prince and his consort, and plucked the plant from my hand, setting it on a little shelf near one of the windows."I'm sorry you don't have your own room here," he said, peering out one of the windows and looking at the scene beyond."It is as I said – if we are to play the part, you will need to be here, with me.I would suggest you could sleep elsewhere but…"
