There is a paper flower on his dashboard.
He is falling, he feels it acutely – not the freefall of space, but a real fall, a sucking spiral. He is falling and from the corner of his eye he can see it is blue, and he knows he is falling to Earth. He knows what will happen next.
There is no sound in his dream; just like in space, he thinks, and flashes of green sting his eyes momentarily. Across indefinable distance there is a dark figure. Firing green lasers, he thinks ironically. It is too comical to be real.
Like the paper flower on his dashboard.
There's light below him, or above him, he doesn't know because he's been in space too long, but the blood is rushing to his head and the lights around him are descending into the blue.
The dark figure is still facing him.
Kill me, he thinks. Kill me.
But it's only a dream and the figure turns away, and then suddenly the light below him is gone, and he stretches out for it – physically, mentally, his machine seems to move itself and it stretches out too, metal fingers grasping nothing, and life explodes around him and he's thrown violently away. A small apocalypse of light erupts from the screen in front of him. He's falling faster now, the blue planet is beneath him but his vision is turning red.
On his dashboard, the paper flower turns black and curls into nothing.
He comes awake quickly, but without the strength to sit up, so he simply lays still, breathing hard. He forces his eyes shut, and when he opens them again the burning flower is gone.
He wants to moan; he wants to turn over and curl up and hate himself because they are dead and he is not. He tries to move, instead feels something soft brushing against his forehead. She is sitting upright, looking over him, her curls falling down to his face.
He wants to apologize.
She says something, but she knows he doesn't hear her right then, so rather she just holds him. Sometimes he wakes up sobbing, she knows - sometimes he will wake up screaming, or even reaching for something. When he does wake up he is in a different place, and a different time. So she does the only thing she can; she holds him, until she knows the afterimages have faded. When she knows he can return to sleep not as a soldier, but as who he is. Because that is what they do for each other.
He is a soldier, and she is a peacemaker.
They keep together by holding on.
end.