Warning: Contains some spoilers for Zen's route. MC's named Minako, because I hate reading "MC" instead of proper names.
Disclaimer: Cheritz owns Mystic Messenger and my arse.
He wakes up in the middle of the night, soaked to the bone. His arm reaches out numbly, out of an instinct he didn't know he had and—
She's not there.
In a second he's up, scrambling to his feet and out of the bedroom. The tiles are cold beneath his bare feet but he doesn't care, can't stop to slip some shoes on because she's not here, she's not here, where is she?
"Minako?"
He can hear the water running and a sliver of light escaping the bathroom and he's onto the door in less time than he would've wanted, had he known. She looks up at him, her face a mixture of surprise and embarrassment and she quickly covers it with a hand towel but he cannot forget the terror in her eyes.
"What's wrong?" he practically growls. "What's happening?"
"I'm sorry," her voice comes out muffled and his eyes are roaming the small bathroom for any signs of distress. "Did I wake you?"
"Did you—" he sighs, softer. "I woke up because you weren't there."
It's stupid, he knows. He hasn't had the time to adjust to her presence in his home or his bed, but he already can't bear to imagine her absence from either. Already he can feel the beginnings of a headache creeping into his temple and he longs to go back to sleep, but he's already too wired for that and the darkness brings no comfort.
Her hands have carefully folded the towel and she grips the porcelain sink with a vice. It's then that Zen first notices she's shaking.
"What happened?"
His voice is hard, perhaps unnecessarily so, but there are things that are hard to change and he had to learn, much too soon, to mask fear with anger. It's how he survived, before, and it's why she still stands in front of him, dressed in one of his shirts, barefoot, hair pulled into a messy braid. The sight of her should thrill him, but it only reminds him how close he was to losing her and he has to curl his fingers into a fist to keep from digging without remorse into her arms to prove she's real.
She is real. Has to be.
"I'm sorry," she apologises again. "I-I don't know what got into me, but I could feel his hands on my neck and his breath on my cheek and—,"
The way she looks at him, with her own fingers digging painfully into her neck and her big, wet eyes glistening, breaks Zen's heart anew.
"I had to get out of there."
He doesn't know what to say, so he takes a hesitant step closer and pushes her hair out of her face, trying to hide his grimace when she jumps a little at the contact. It's only been half a day and he can still see him, too. He can still see his pale skin and pale hair, the mask on his face and dark tattoos. His long fingers gripping Minako's face, like two pale spiders bruising her collarbones and the curve of her neck, the promise of death sitting prettily on them. He hates him and for a moment there, he can only see red.
Zen blinks, pushing his anger way below.
She is safe now, she is here.
"Let's get you back to bed," he says, so softly. "Please."
A gentle but steady hand comes and guides her back to his bedroom, leaving no room for refusal. The room is dark and cold and he wonders if it was so before he woke up or if this rift between them is what causes it. In the dark he can imagine the stranger coming back for her, slender fingers and eyes so beautiful, and hard. And sad.
His breath hitches as the thought of losing her almost makes him go insane.
"Do you think we're safe?" Her voice is soft, small, scared. Zen looks at her from the foot of the bed and she is so beautiful, so kind and so caring, he feels his heart slipping between his fingers.
"He can't hurt you here," he whispers, drawing closer. "Not with me. Never again."
In his nightmares, she is not safe. In that dream he had arrived a moment too late, found her bleeding and broken and gone. He closes his eyes and wraps his arms around her tiny frame, sighing. Of course he knows what would have happened if he hadn't arrived. She knows it, too. It's why he wakes up drenched in sweat and screaming for her, and it's why he finds her in the bathroom, sick to her stomach with dread.
If it had been for Seven, or V...
"Zen?"
This is not a dream, this is not a dream.
"Go back to sleep."
You're here, you're here.
And this is not a dream.