Prompt: Braeden has night terrors and Derek finally finds out why she prefers to sleep alone.
She has always preferred to sleep alone, in pajamas that allowed her skin to breathe and her limbs to sink into the stitching of the fabric. One pillow and two blankets, it was the same each night she slid under the covers to dream about the day's events. Today, she turned six and couldn't wait to see how many dreams being this age could get her so she went to bed with a smile on her face eager to return to dreamland.
Hours later, she woke without her permission.
The air was frigid and damp. Freezing, much colder than she remembered her house to be this time of year. She could almost see her breath in white puffs of icy smoke as she exhaled through her nostrils and rolled out of the twin bed, leaving the warmth of her two blankets behind. Pulling her tiny, silk robe tighter around her body she slipped her feet into worn bunny slippers with the left ears missing and continued toward the sound.
Peeking around the corner, there was nothing there. She looked to her left and then her right.
Nothing.
Then she heard it again.
It sounded like it was coming from the room at the end of the hall. Taking tentative steps, she tried to steady her weight on her toes but the baseboards groaned under her feet. Stopping in her tracks instantly, she could hear her heartbeat in her ears and feel the temperature of her blood rise.
"Don't move, don't move." she told herself. But when she heard the sound again a moment later, she just had to know what it was.
Continuing slowly down the hall, she passed three more doors she knew the sound couldn't be coming from. The bathroom didn't have monsters and the coat closet with the wobbly knob only had enough room for her new board games and her best friend Charlie, the stuffed rabbit, who says he likes it better in there. Not enough space for him and the bogey man, he said.
She speaks bunny, she was listening.
Her Nana's bedroom, had an open door policy because she sometimes forgot who and where she was and Braeden's mom had to remind her in the middle of the night. Mama said she has Alzheimer's, but the little girl with tiny glasses and an even smaller voice just calls it Forget Me brain.
But Nana Johnson is wrapped up snuggly in that hideous afghan that smells like moth balls and her paisley sleep bonnet, with her head poking out, snoring like a bear. No different than every other night since she came to live with them.
No, this noise was shaking the wall every time it rang through the air. How could anybody sleep through that?
But Mama is sleeping. Nana is sleeping and Bailey, he's a baby and they sleep a ton, which his big sister found out recently every time she wanted to play with him.
Brandon's away at college and Thanksgiving isn't for another month, Braeden knows because she's checking off the days until he comes home and she can show him the rock collection she started.
Boom! Boom. Boom!
She hears it again and moves slower down the hall toward the last door, dead center.
As she neared the door, Braeden took a deep breath and hoped that it wasn't a monster. She checked under the bed before she went to sleep but she never thought to check other rooms in the house.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
She reached out her tiny hand and put it on the copper knob. This was it. Braeden was about meet her very first monster, she was sure of it.
She would have to tell Brandon all about she defeated it when he came home.
The wooden door made a slight creaking sound as she pushed it open slowly, peeking her head inside. It was too dark to see anything.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
This time,Braeden felt the vibration of the noise through the floorboards and pulled her robe tighter bunching it in her fists. It was cold in here too. Cold and dark and something just moved.
What was it?
Shuffling toward the bed in the guest room, the sound was getting louder and the closer Braeden got the more she had to curl her toes to keep her slippers on. The hardwood baseboards were vibrating thoroughly now. Braeden squinted in hopes that she could see what was making the noise.
Squinting, the picture finally came into perfect view.
"Ahhhhhh!" Braeden gasped, covering her eyes with both hands. She let her robe fall open and the cold air made her shiver.
Her dad, was hovered over someone who looked a lot like Aunt Kassie, making animal noises without clothes on.
Braeden gasps again at the realization that it is, in fact, her mother's sister and her father doing stuff "only mommies and daddies who love each other do."
She wants to ask them what they're doing but she's scared of the answer. She's frozen in place,hand over her mouth as a squeaking noise comes out.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
That sound… that woke her from her sleep was the wooden headboard of the guest bed banging against the wall that Braeden's mom helped paint in sheer yellow paint. Braeden could see it even in the dark blue hue of the darkness surrounding her. Being chipped away with every thrust of her father's hips.
Boom! Boom! Boom! And then they're kissing and someone rolls over.
She can't look away. She can't understand. She needs to move, get out before they know she's there. The door is four feet away and a breeze from the hallway is creeping its way in but still she can't move. Her feet are frozen just like the image of the two people in front of her.
They roll again and Braeden is glad she has her hand covering her mouth otherwise she knew her birthday cake dinner would make a reappearance. She shakes her head in disbelief and backs away further into the shadows, never breaking her line of sight.
One step. The door is three feet away
Two steps. The door is two feet away.
Three steps and Breaden's hand flies from her mouth.
"Ouch!" She stepped on a shoe that was bigger than her whole foot.
"Oh,no."
Her eyes bulged and she tried to cover her mouth in time again but it was too late, she had been spotted.
One second of eye contact with her father and a quiet gasp from her favorite aunt later and Braeden was running. Fast. The wind created by her robe rippling through the air could strike hypothermia into anyone behind her but she didn't care.
He was angry. He was yelling. He was chasing after her.
The sound of his bare feet ponding against the hardwood floors sound like imminent death. It usually is for people who run from him.
Braeden can hear the footsteps getting closer and her feet won't take her any faster. She pleads with them to move, keep moving, don't stop now, just get to the bedroom when he trips. He's down. He's yelling and he knows which room is hers.
But Braeden keeps running,almost a blur as she moves, never noticing her left foot now sounds like her father's against the floor. She lost a slipper.
Rest in peace little shoe, Braeden thinks as she just barely sprints into her room and pivots to shut the door. A burly hand lodges itself in between the frame and she can't push it away. She tries. He's just stronger.
She lets go and runs toward her twin bed in the corner. He's faster too and in a second, Braeden is picked up and thrown some ten feet across the room onto the mattress.
Braeden squeezes her eyes shut as she stops bouncing because he's yelling at her. She doesn't answer. She doesn't want to see him like this. Naked and on top of her like he was Aunt Kassie.
"Don't say a worrd." "yaa hear me girl?" He slurred, hot breath bearing down on Braeden's frozen flesh. It's the worst contrast in human history, the feeling of being both terrified and repulsed in equal measure. He's too close.
"Girllya hearme!" He hisses in her face as she turns away from him.
"Notta worrd!"
"I-I'll killya Isweeearr!" He leaned in closer, spitting as he continued to yell at his daughter.
"Yaa hear me girrl?" He repeats getting louder and louder.
But she doesn't' hear anything as she starts to cry because this isn't fun daddy who pushes her on the swings and plays tea party with her and Charlie on Tuesdays. No. This is sick daddy. He gets this way after he drinks the dark apple juice from the special bottle in the kitchen cabinet. Brandon let her try some once and age remembered that it tasted like pure pain. It hurt just like daddy's strong hands around her throat.
She's trying to tell sick daddy that she can't breathe but he just keeps yelling.
"Anwer me! Answerr-mee!"
"Aseerme!"
The words are stuck somewhere in her throat like the rest of the air she needs to breathe. She's struggling against her father's massive frame, kicking her legs and pelting his chest with tiny punches that he just shakes off. Nothing is working. Why are his hands so heavy? What did I do to deserve this? Why is everyone still sleeping? Why is everyone still dreaming?
"D-Da-aa-dy" she strangles, losing her breath. "sstop."
He tightens his hold on her throat and the room is starting to blur. It's not cold anymore as the heat from his hands disappears from her skin. For a moment she thinks it's over, that he heard her request and came to his senses. That maybe fun daddy has replaced sick daddy once again.
The thick,callused,open palm of Micael's hand flying at top speed toward her face the next second told her that she was wrong.
"Noo! Please! Nooo!" Braeden screamed as she jackknifed in bed. "No! Please don't!"
She kicked off the blankets and shouted again in a shriek. "Noo!"
With her eyes screwed shut and sweat peppering her brow, she fought against the air. Punching wildly.
A left hook here, a jab there. An uppercut that meet its target. A direct blow to something very hard.
"Braeden! Braeden!"
"No! No! No!" she repeated, her punches turning to swats.
"Braeden! Wake up!"
She cried out incessantly through ragged breaths."Please! Plea-
"Braaaee-deennn!"
Someone has their hands around her shoulders, shaking the dream out of her as she thrashes on the mattress.
"Open your eyes! Braeden!" another shake. "Open your eyes!"
Big brown orbs peel open instantly and dart around the darkness waiting for the room to focus.
Where is she? Who's talking?
"Hey, hey, hey. You're okay." said a soothing voice in the still of the night. "You're ok."
A hand reached out and rubbed her back. She knew this hand.
"Just breathe." said the familiar voice as it continued to rub circles into her back.
Braeden tried her hardest to catch all the air in the room into her lungs but it was hard. Every intake felt like a internal sauna, a chemical burn, dark apple juice.
Pure pain.
"Braeden, I need you to breathe." The hands came to rest on her thighs easily. "Breathe with me."
Clicking on a small lamp Braeden didn't know was there, the hands were finally connected to a face as Derek came into perfect view. His contracting bare chest and concerned green eyes overtaking the nature of his calm demeanor.
"In." He said coming to sit with his legs around her from behind. "Come on."
Braeden relaxed considerably at the feel of his proximity but her lungs didn't get the message so quickly.
"And out." Derek instructed softly, his own breathing slowing down.
He wrapped his arms around Braeden's and whispered in her ear.
"In. And. Out."
"In. And. Out."
"In. And. Out."
He began to rock their bodies back and forth.
"In and…"
"Good girl. That's it. You're safe."
Braeden finally took her first normal breath after ten minutes and twelve seconds. Her skin wasn't scorching anymore but her heart was the heaviest it had ever been. It made her tired for a different reason.
Slowly rocking, Derek released her arms and pushed the damp hair plastered to her sweaty face behind her ear. Kissing the back of her head gently, he intwined their fingers, wrapped her up again and waited.
Derek waited for her blood curdling screams to stop haunting him. He waited for Braeden's pulse to stop jumping irregularly. He heard an airplane pass overhead, the buzz of the broken furnace down the hall, the tick of the alarm clock next to their bed. He listened to the ruffle the sheets made as she ran her foot up his leg. He waited.
He did it for Braeden. He did it because she needed his silence more than his solicited advice, and she required the stillness of this moment for her survival above any explanation of who Michael was and what he must have done.
He waited,until the stream of her tears became a trickle then fell in droplets onto the dark hairs of his arm. Each time, he would use their fingers to carefully wipe them away from her cheeks,together. Every heave became a hushed sob as Braeden began to come back to him.
But a part of him knew that she would never be the same. Each time he watched her scream a name that wasn't his at the top of her lungs in her sleep, when she woke up, he knew she would be different. Something would be broken inside, tarnished and rusted,hidden away a little deeper out of reach from anyone who attempts to repair the pieces. Derek could see it, in her weak smile after the first night and then the fifth, the twelfth. This was night number thirty six and she didn't smile anymore.
Derek didn't try to reach in and pull the monsters from the shadows, slaughter them one by one, and lay them at her feet anymore. He waited.
On nights like tonight Derek was helpless to watch as the silence swallowed her whole. On nights like tonight, he just prayed it would spit her back out with brighter eyes and lighter memories so that he could remind her that she was alive.
He never mentioned that tonight was the first night she gave her nightmares a piece of both of them. Braeden had never hit him before but the fact that the force behind it almost knocked him on his ass is what truly took a part of his soul. She was fighting for her life in her sleep. So what happened in reality that gave her dreams like that?
After a while,she spoke softly in voice that didn't sound like hers. "I had a another nightmare didn't I?"
"Yeah. You did."
Braeden sighed and turned in his arms. She peeked up at him and Derek regarded her warmly. His eyes were asking a thousand questions though his lips never parted. He wanted to know, she knew he did but Derek understood the concept of time and that for each person the comfort level differed. He never pushed her to talk, was one of the things she loved about him.
Braeden opened her mouth to speak and closed it again.
"I-I-ne-"
"Stop. You don't have to tell me."
Braeden looked down at her hand and the diamond ring on her finger. "I do."
"Hey, look at me." Derek whispered. He scooped up her hand and kissed the ring. "It can wait."
"No,it can't." Braeden slipped her hand out of his reach and came to sit crossed legged in front of him.
"We're a lot alike, the two of us." she started slowly and Derek smiled at her. "You're not the only one with family drama Derek and if I'm going to protect ours…"
She laid a hand onto her flat stomach and Derek instantly locked his gaze on their tiny miracle. He beamed and covered her hand with his, rubbing his thumb back and forth.
"You need to know everything." she revealed. Braeden took his hand from her belly and held it under her chin. She kissed his knuckles.
"It's time I told you about my father, Michael, and why my mother killed him in front of me. The night of my sixth birthday."