It’s not supposed to, Mace has long supposed. The price you pay for saving lives, for taking them. Dedicate yourself to a country, to a cause, and we’ll give you a sense of patriotism! Of pride!
And nightmares. Blood under your fingernails, between your teeth, blooming red red red across a white shirt, a black jacket.
Hands around your throat. Bruises on your skin.
Gun against your forehead. Shoved under your chin.
Are you prepared to give your all for the benefit of your country?
Do as you’re told.
The lives you save and the lives you take and the lives you lose and each one stays with you so that as lonely as you are, you’re not alone. Never alone. Always in the company of ghosts.
Maybe that’s why they call you spooks.
And sleep doesn’t come easy.
How does the saying go? No rest for the wicked. Is that what you are?
Must be, because rest is as evasive as a clever target, slipping through her fingers like sand. Mace used to spend the evening hours on the mats, taking it out on a recruit or a bag until the exhaustion quieted the ghosts and she could tumble into bed and spend a few hours in oblivion.
She still tries, but it’s harder lately, when her ghosts are closer.
When one of them is still alive.
Sleep doesn’t come easy, but when it comes, it comes cruel. Bad dreams. Nightmares. Gun under her chin, fists and knees and elbows bruising. Hands that had once caressed now choking, striking—
Do as you’re told.
—Pulling a trigger.
Mace wakes disoriented and cold, a sob or a scream in her throat and her first instinct to fight off an enemy that isn’t even there.
The bed beside her shifts, warmth and soft skin in the dark. Fingertips against her cheek, not as soft as the rest; a callus on the trigger finger that ghosts down her neck.
“You were dreaming.” A drowsy voice, accent thick in the vestiges of sleep. “You were having a bad dream.”
Mace laughs. Or sobs. “Yeah.”
“…Do you want a drink?”
A laugh this time, for sure. Mace blinks up at the ceiling though tears she doesn’t want to shed.
“Fuck yes.”
But when the bed shifts she reaches out, snatching in the dark to catch hold of a bare wrist.
“No. Just.”
She words stick in her throat. She’s never been good at this, at asking.
Always such a tough guy.
But the words aren’t needed, as the bed dips again and an arm settles over her. The hand comes back to her cheek, more tentative. Neither of them is good at this. Disasters, both of them. Chaos waiting to implode, a promise of mutual destruction.
“I’m here.” A quiet whisper, as tentative as the touch. Mace feels the words whispered against her shoulder. “You’re safe, Mace.”
Safe. Hard to believe there’s any such thing, for either them. But somehow here they are, against all odds and in spite of bad beginnings.
“Yeah.” Mace nods, whispers into the dark. “Yeah, I know.”
Sleep doesn’t come easy. Trust doesn’t come easy. Love, or whatever this thing is, definitely hasn’t come easy.
But they are here. Together and safe.
“Just stay with me?”
And she hears the words, feels them whispered into her skin again, sweet, and soft…
