❝it was a nightmare. it’s all right, you’re safe now.❞ ( from lys! )
& RE : prompt / @echobled.
IT’S EQUAL PARTS DISAPPOINTMENT AND RELIEF : her chest aches with a pain she can’t even begin to put into words as his voice reaches her, the gaze of her nightmares sifting away until there’s nothing left ... but it’s bittersweet, the embrace of Phoenix’s memory fading against the reassuring hands of their hero that rest on her shoulders. She’s still catching her breath from having jerked awake, the soft rocking of the carriage reminiscent of the time they’d traveled together, strangers opposite of one-another on their way to Gridania. Her hands still rest on his side from where she’d begun to pull away, perhaps not shockingly — she is certain the gesture had been meant in comfort, but she doesn’t know what to do with it, when those other than her brother attempt to show her compassion : affection, even.
“ — it’s not,” she starts to speak, but her voice is hoarse, parched from thirst as their long night traveling stretches on. She’s quiet, grasping for an excuse she can’t find. It wasn’t a nightmare, she wants to correct, it was a memory. But thinking on it chokes her up, makes her hands tremble in a way that finally brings them back to her side. She pushes away from him, situates completely opposite from him in the carriage once more.
“I’m fine.” The tragedy in it, she supposes, is that fear is not what settles in her heart : but rather grief. She had mistaken him for someone he was not. It isn’t the first time her grandfather’s image had haunted her dreams, but she oft avoided making a fool of herself. “I apologize for—“ Her jaw sets, unwilling to acknowledge she’d reached for him when she’d started awake. “No. Forget it.”