Chương 50: (Rewritten) Ch. 49 – Long Night

Ch. 49 - Long Night"Ever been so tired you can't sleep? Fucking sucks." – Firefighter, the morning after a night of beating down the flames

"What?"

"Well, something was nagging me the entire time, like I'd forgotten it. The, uh, break just didn't entirely make sense to me. I just, you know, am not the type. I'd never experienced one, not even at my worst, and it…came out of nowhere and I was trying to find a reasonable explanation."

"Hmm?" Leah raised her eyebrows at me.

"Remember something?"

"Yeah. Tynea warned me during my creation that there'd be a large shift in my hormonal levels, emotional being, et cetera. And I think that matters a lot here. As Aden, my reactions to your plight wouldn't have escalated into an actual loss of…orientation, I guess. I would've kept my cool like a doctor handles triage. I think the hormones made the panic much worse than it should've been and I wasn't prepared because I haven't had time to get used to my new body."

"Ah." Leah's mouth hung open, lost in thought. Despite myself, I had to fight the urge to nudge her chin.

"Leah." I smoothed out her frown-of-epic-thinkingness with a finger. She twitched, and blinked at me like an owl.

"Huh?"

"I wasn't the only one who went through a harrowing experience, yet we've mostly talked about me. How are you? Why do you think you, uh, crashed like that?" Leah blew up her cheeks, before she noisily expelled the air through her nose, her exhaust washing over my face, making me blink. She, in turn, blinked and winced.

"Sorry. That was rude." I chuckled, and wiped my face down with the sleeve of my bathrobe.

"Don't worry. I'd have complained if it'd gotten disgusting."

"Urgh." She turned away, embarrassed. I decided to distract her by taking her hand, and pulling her over to the wall, next to the staircase where we'd still be able to see out the wrecked doorway. I made us a pair of extremely messy silk pillows, tattered bird's nests more than anything, to sit on. Once we were seated comfortably side-by-side, Leah picked up the conversation again.

"Right. So, first of all. Even though flashbacks are horrible and I wouldn't wish them on my worst enemy, and even though it's unsettling that I've had one after all this time, I'm familiar with them. They're not scary to me. They're a familiar devil I know how to manage. Out here? It's almost like coming home." She pondered her words a little, before speaking further.

"Having a flashback is very much like being a different person for a bit. But I know the warning signs, and I won't ignore them again. The shaking hands, the flashes of anxiety and misplaced guilt." She looked at me, quite seriously.

"That means I can warn you when I feel an episode coming."

"Okay?" I shifted.

"That's good, but what do I do when that happens?"

"Talk to me, try to get me to answer. Be patient, having an episode is like having five times the load on your mind. It takes much longer for questions to penetrate, and even longer to answer."

"So, I just make sure you're safe, comfortable, and mostly let you ride it out while I talk to you?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know why you ignored the warning signs this time?" Leah sighed with a wry expression.

"I mistook them. I thought the shaking hands was just, you know, coming down from our adventure. And the emotional flashes… they'd fit our situation just fine, too. I wasn't on guard since I'd thought I was done with them." I glanced up and let that play through my mind. Then I got a strong urge to hug Leah, which I did. I crawled into her lap and straddled her legs, put my chin on her shoulder, and held on. Leah's arms circled my own and she buried her nose beneath my ear, squeezing me even tighter.

As her warm breath brushed past my throat, stress escaped me with a sigh, and tension I didn't even realize I had flowed out of the muscles between my shoulder blades. After a little while, I continued, "Leah, why do you think you had a flashback in the first place?" Leah groaned a little, but replied anyway, "My own worst hangup. Do you remember when I told you I had a little sister, once?" I sat up, and studied her face. Exhaustion writ large. She was a bit stiff.

This wasn't a topic Leah really wanted to talk about, but she'd decided it was necessary anyway.

"Sure, you said that you lost her to a tumor."

"Yes. Yeah, and back then, well, I thought it was my fault. That I should've noticed it, that I wasn't a good big sister. That I'd broken my promise to protect her. That I could've saved her if only I'd seen it coming." Leah looked away, off in her memories. I could almost see the bags under her eyes grow. Oh, we really needed food, didn't we? Like, really. With everything going on, I didn't feel hungry in the slightest. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author.

Report it. Still. Starving wasn't helping either of us.

"Tynea, can you give us two food things please? Something to take the edge off of our, uh, malnutrition, I guess it is at this point." Absolutely. How about a smoothie?

"Sounds good?" Here you go. Purchased: 1 pts x 4; Nutri Pack Total cost: 4 Remaining points: 637 Two boxes popped into existence next to us, in the classic boring non-white cheap plastic look. They clattered quietly against the floor, drawing Leah's attention. One had her name on it, the other my own. Huh. Oh! Right, Tynea had mentioned that I needed a variety of minerals and stuff, to catch up to the effects of the chrysalis. Made sense that my food would be a little different from Leahs.

Leah looked at me questioningly, and I smiled at her and sent the receipt in answer.

"Oh, nice! I'm famished." She happily picked up her box, handed me mine, and then we opened them to find fist-sized squeeze-packs of juice in there. I picked one out, and turned to lean my back against Leah's chest. Our heads were almost even with me sitting on her lap, so I was careful to place her face in the same antennae-free zone my own enjoyed. She curled her free arm around me again, letting me feel at home and so very welcome.

My tail got in the way though, so I lifted my hips a little and let it curve naturally along my butt, so that it lay in front of us on the floor. It was really amazingly long, like, twice my legs and then some.

"Huh. Tynea, did my tail get longer? I could swear my tail got longer." Yes. Your body is adjusting to your activity by increasing your blood production, which your spine is responsible for. More spine, more blood, more stored oxygen. And more resilience against blood loss, of course.

"I see." I didn't mind—I actually liked it. Fluffy noodle. Leah giggled when I wiggled the tip around. The Nutri Pack came with a little straw poking out at the top, folded over sideways. Pulling on it triggered a seal, and a rushing wave of incredibly tasty fragrance assaulted my antennae like a storm front, which reacted with a myologic sneeze, almost smacking myself in the face.

"Whoa…" The intense duality of scent and taste overwhelmed me a little, made my head spin. Leah giggled at me going all crosseyed. I looked at her and grinned at the way her face was wobbling. I tried to boop her nose, but I missed and poked her cheek instead. Oops. Leah snorted and blew the aromatic haze away from my sensilla until I stopped being drunk, and then opened her own pack carefully so I wouldn't drown in another cloud of Juicy. I think I might love this girl.

I followed suit, enjoying the mixture of a mild acidic tang, energizing sweetness, and the filling savouriness of a double serving. We remained quiet like that, just enjoying the moment as the juice tended to us. Eventually, of course, the unresolved made itself felt again. Leah laid her head back against the wall and picked up the verbal string we'd let slip.

"I spent years recovering from that shame and grief. Learned that I wasn't responsible, couldn't have been. The necessary procedures would've been priced beyond the ability of any orphanage to pay, way beyond their willingness to consider it if they could.

"But the damage was done. I kept having flashbacks until I was almost sixteen years old. By that time, I'd already proven myself a capable caretaker, and the flashbacks were restricted to moments alone. Moments where my subconscious knew I had no support and rang the alarm bells in a weird, twisted way.

"That was the last two, maybe three years of that, though. Come sixteen, I stopped having them at all. I guess… I guess I got a little lazy after a while, with working through things? Or maybe that's unfair to myself. Maybe this break would've happened no matter what, given our circumstances. The terrible stress I survived over the last, uh, eleven days now, I think.

"Anyway, I am reliant on you. That makes me more aware of your condition than is appropriate, considering my past. Then, my own muffler hurt you and I didn't even notice. Not until you reacted… which I think you can appreciate the problematic parallels." I nodded, smoothing my palm along her hugging arm to share more contact. She kept talking,"That was the trigger. The fighting sure isn't something to take lightly either, but I was chosen to be a Vanguard. I'm as suited to it as you are. At least, I think so?"

I recalled Tynea's words on that topic, of the careful profiling, how aware the Protectors were of who should, or rather, shouldn't be one.

"Uh, there is a lot more to that selection than whether you can make yourself fight. But Vanguards are, to my understanding, more go-getting than not.

""Right. But the last few days were a confluence of atrocious circumstances. It knocked me for a loop." A thoughtful pause.

"I guess I don't know how I'll stand up to more fighting until I try, but I feel quite settled right now. Which is really weird, but such is the mind." Leah snorted wryly.

"Toss me in the blender, and since I'm familiar with the pain, I'll come out stable. What the fuck." I glanced askance at her.

"Your brain slapped you in the face with everything that's wrong, so you couldn't miss it.

'Here, have a familiar problem to the problem so you can solve the problem.'" Leah chortled.

"That…sounds about right." After a moment of thinking, I continued.

"Well. That's that. I could tell you about my childhood, I guess. But I think that should wait until we're out of the conflict zone. I worry that it might do something to you with those flashbacks, since we'd be talking about children."

"Mmm. That's probably not unreasonable."

"Yeah. Um…points? We made a lot, and we need to use them." Leah squeezed me around the middle.

"Tomorrow. Let's do that tomorrow, when we've had some rest."

"Alright." I stretched out my arms and legs and tail, yawned, watched my antennae shiver like a pair of fluffy feather dusters in response, let Leah scratch me lightly behind the base of them with a giggle, and got up. Propping my feet against hers, I reached for her hands with both of mine, and levered her up into a standing position.

I took a few moments to attach lines of silk to multiple spots around the walls, and we spent the next ten minutes weaving them together into a single rope which I glued with supporting lines along the ceiling, all the way to the cocoon. The storm added a lot of noise to the vibrations in the air, but I figured direct touches would still be distinct enough.

We settled down inside the cocoon and, in a reversal of our previous positions, Leah tucked my head under her chin, and hugged me against her chest, after opening her Sleeve enough for my cheek to rest against her soft silken top. My tail of fluffiness cushioned me in other places, and slowly, I relaxed enough to drift off, long before Leah did.