Author's Note
Some Scarlett/Snake Eyes fluff. Reward fic for CrystalofEllinon for defending some people on tumblr... I forgot every last detail. It's been a while because this took me forever and a half to write.
And it probably shows. Sorry. I hope it's readable.
Dreams
Scarlett woke up with a gasp and for a moment that seemed to stretch forever, the nightmare refused to fade. She stared straight ahead of her at the inside of Snake Eye's cabin: wooden walls, wooden floor, wooden ceiling. Their bags in one corner, a reserve of purified water in another, right next to a set of shelves filled with dishes and other essentials, and not much else. She could feel Snake Eyes' body around her, spooning her. She had even felt him tense when she'd waken up and could feel even now that his hold on her was not as loose as when he slept.
And yet she didn't dare turn and face him, because even though the rational part of her knew this was in fact Snake Eyes, a small part of her brain still clung to the fear her nightmare had somehow been real, and that the person holding her was just Sean, having to pretend he was Snake Eyes at all time, even when there didn't seem to be anyone watching. Just in case.
She violently shuddered. The dream had not gone quite as far as making her spend a night with Sean, although she suspected it had been heading that way. She'd waken up as the two of them were having to dance together and act in love at some function to keep up the charade, and Tommy, who had been blissfully absent to that point, had suddenly jumped out of nowhere with a bunch of Cobra Vipers and had started accusing her of betraying Snake Eyes.
The accusation had stung all the more that she had agreed with it. It had been the final straw to make her wake up.
Still unable to force herself to face her lover, regardless of how angry her own foolishness was making her, she got up and walked to the shelves, where she got a glass that she filled from one of their bottles of purified water. Further irritating her with herself, her hands were shaking enough to cause her to spill a bit. She drank the water in angry gulps and forced herself to turn around and look at Snake Eyes.
Her relief was as strong as it was ridiculous. Snake Eyes – the real article – was sitting up on the side of the bed, fully awake and looking at her. She walked back to the bed and sat next to him, turning slightly to be able to see his hands. The moon was bright enough tonight that they didn't even need to light a candle to talk.
He turned a bit too until they were nearly facing each other, and signed to ask her whether she was alright.
She sighed. "I'll be fine, but that one was nasty. You died. Again," she added, giving him a dirty look. Her having ridiculous dreams concerning him was unfortunately far from unusual.
His shoulder shook slightly as he chuckled silently. He signed an apology and asked whether his death had been suitably heroic.
She rolled her eyes. He always made light of her dreams, she assumed in an effort to rob them of their lingering power and to help her dismiss them from her mind.
"You were a suicide bomber," she said, shaking her head. "We were fighting Serpentor and I can't even remember why, but you decided to take him out by exploding next to him."
Snake Eyes made a face and gave her two thumbs down. She chuckled.
"I know, right?" She lost her smile. "No goodbyes or nothing," she said. "And that's not even the worst part."
The ninja cocked his head in interrogation.
"Hawk decided that he didn't want Cobra to know you were dead, and conveniently, Sean was disfigured in the same battle. Hawk ordered him to take your place, to take your name. And he ordered everyone else, myself included, to play along."
Snake Eyes' hands remained still for a moment as his face closed. She couldn't blame him, the idea was disgusting. He recovered remarkably fast and signed to ask whether that was when he'd come out of the woodwork to explain he'd been cured from Death By Explosion by some crazy hermit with an herbal remedy.
She snorted. Other than the cause of death, that had been the merciful ending of her previous ridiculous dream, the week before. "It's not funny," she said, trying to sound stern.
Snake Eyes huffed in disagreement and signed that a nightmare's only power was to trick our conscious self into thinking that its ridiculous lies deserved to be taken seriously.
Scarlett raised an eyebrow. That was a… what did Sean call them? Storm Shadow-ism. Yes. Even translated into sign language, that was a Storm Shadow-ism if she had ever heard one. Her own nightmare was driven clear out of her mind as she put the pieces of this mini mystery together. Snake Eyes hardly ever discussed his own nightmares. She knew he had them now and again but he always shrugged them off and at most, he'd joke about them.
"First tour or second tour?" she asked.
He cocked his head briefly, then caught on to her meaning and chuckled silently before making the sign for Tommy followed smoothly by the sign for talking. Tommy-Talk, a translation he'd come up with for Storm Shadow-ism.
He then put two fingers up to indicate it had been in their second tour. He didn't elaborate on what nightmares he'd been having. They didn't deserve the spotlight.
"Don't you know how much I hate it when Tommy's right?" she asked with a smirk.
He snorted and pulled her into a hug. She allowed it and they lied back down in each other's arms, using some practiced teamwork to pull the blankets back up over themselves without letting go of each other.
They were asleep again in minutes, and for the rest of the night at least, no further nightmare dared to bother them.
Fin
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