enter sandman || jesse
It didn’t seem right for a son of the god of dreams to be unable to sleep.
Before the visions started Jesse might have even gone so far to claim it impossible, had he been more inclined to any sure statements of that sort. Despite anything he may or may not have thought before, nothing would change the fact that it was now almost four in the morning and he had yet to sleep a wink. Stress and exhaustion have never provided a good balance. He had dealt with the former a fair deal in his short seventeen years, but the latter was an entirely new experience, one he could do without– it was only serving to amplify the already present stress beyond a level he was used to dealing with. The steadily increasing anxiety only made it more difficult to sleep, and by this point the only sleep he could get was an hour at a time, at most.
Chase was starting to worry. After their last discussion Jesse had started to be more cautious, more quiet during his worst nights. For the first few days he had tried faking sleep to placate his brother but closing his eyes just made the visions worse, and he ended up giving up on that charade within the week. Chase has noticed him getting paler, noticed the shadows beneath his eyes, noticed when he stops speaking as much and barely leaves his cabin– they all have, he knows, but at least most people just pretend not to see. He isn’t mad at Chase, of course. He can’t be mad at Chase. He just wishes he wouldn’t worry so much. There’s nothing to worry about. There can’t be anything to worry about.
Some nights are worse than others. Some nights he can hear his parents’ voices clear in his mind, calling out his name, calling for him to help them, save them– his real name, the name he hears in his dreams, the name he’s only given to one other person. Some nights he can barely do anything but shiver. Frozen in place. He can’t take his eyes off the visions, the visions that won’t stop following him, won’t leave him alone. He hears his parents speaking to him, he catches glimpses of them in the corner of his eye, but he never responds. He won’t respond. They aren’t real, they aren’t here, they aren’t alive. Koda asked him about the extra blankets on his bed a few mornings ago. To keep the monsters out, he had laughed. She laughed too. She didn’t believe him.
It was when the visions, hallucinations, ghosts– he doesn’t know, he just wants them to stop– started worsening that he really started to panic. He was seeing things everywhere now, from the arena well lit broad daylight to the walls of his cabin painted black by night. One day after spending time with Viv he went to bed lighthearted, falling asleep after barely ten minutes struggle with himself. He woke up an hour later, drowning. The salt water burned his throat, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe– seconds later, it was gone. He avoided Viv for a week.
Occasionally he’d get a night off, where he managed to scrape together a few hours of sleep at a time. It was these nights, when he could finally hear himself think, that Amber came to mind. Everything had steadily worsened after they broke up, the stress, the hallucinations, the constant fear that pressed against his throat and made it hard to breathe. He didn't mean to kiss Rebecca. That wasn't a lie. It was as though he had to, like something had hooked under his skin and pulled him forward- it sounded crazy, even to him, but hearing your dead parents speak to you is hardly a mark of sanity anyway. He was going crazy. That was the only explanation. He was going crazy, and Amber should be left out of it. He loves her– he loves her so much– so if not seeing her, avoiding her, means she’ll be left alone, she won’t have to deal with what he’s dealing with, deal with him, then that’s exactly what he’ll do.
One week. One week, he decided, one more week, and then he would tell someone. He’d tell Koda, or Viv, or he’d tell Chase how everything was getting worse instead of better. They would think he was crazy, and maybe he was, but at least then they would know. At least then someone would know. He may have tried to put his past behind him, may have tried to pretend nothing before camp mattered, but these past few weeks had dredged up a lot of memories he’d rather forget and his old habits started to slip back in with them. Jesse may be quiet, Jesse may be able to deal with things by himself, but he wasn’t always Jesse, and he was struggling to be Jesse right now. Jesse likes to keep to himself, Jesse doesn’t like to bother anyone, but part of him still answered to Christian, part of him still is Christian– and all Christian Teague needs is a friend.