Written for the Psychological!AU competition at HPFC.
Prompt: Sleep Paralysis.
Words: 639
Sleeping was supposed to be easy. Second nature, like breathing. You just lie down and close your eyes, and soon you slip into another state of consciousness, filled with as much happiness as darkness.
It wasn't easy for Ron. It was funny, in a sick sort of way. Even in the darkest days of the war, he'd found sleep easy to come by. It was the last thing he had to worry about, after all. When there were bigger enemies to fight than the horrors of his own mind, sleep was a warm old friend. But now, he feared it. He lay awake for hours, eyes shut while his ears caught every little sound from the street outside. His mind whirred, thoughts clawing and scratching at the back of his eyeballs for his attention. The sting they left behind was the worst.
Ron knew what sleep brought. It usually caught him just before the first light of day, drawing it in towards its murky depths. The nightmares were less stories and more images, bright flashes of images. Blood. Death. Trapped. Pain. Falling. Always, the falling. It was the falling that jerked him awake, and that was the part he hated. He woke with a start, moments before his alarm clock sounded, paralysed in fear. He wanted to scream; he wanted to run. He wanted to fight with every drop of energy he had to make them stop. But he couldn't move. He could hardly breath, his muscles limp and lifeless, as if death had already caught up with him, but hadn't yet deemed it fit to inform his brain.
Every night was the same. If he was lucky, it only happened once. If he wasn't, he'd spend all day on edge, his muscles on fire, alert, tense. What it did to him, he wouldn't inflict on his worst enemy.
At least, he thought, he couldn't scream. As much as his brain screamed to make his vocal chords work, he was glad no sound passed his lips. He didn't want to wake Hermione. He didn't want her to know.
Even if he did want to tell her, he didn't know the words. How do you describe fear? Is it the sweat that creeps down your spine? The twisting in your stomach? The palpitations of the heart? He didn't know the words. He was afraid of them.
And she didn't need to hear them, anyway; she had her own battles. She fought alongside him; she had her own nightmares. But she was strong enough that she was beginning to come through them. She didn't need bringing back down with his ship.
It was a Sunday morning when it happened. He awoke as he always did: suddenly, frozen. Only this time, he wasn't staring at the ceiling of their bedroom. This time, he was staring into her warm hazel eyes, wide in shock as her mouth hung agape.
"Ron?" she asked. He said nothing. He couldn't, not for a few moments.
When he could move again, he didn't want to. He just gulped, and stared at her as she stared at him.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, before leaning forward to pull him into an embrace. He stroked her soft hair as the urge to fight disappeared.
"I was scared," he admitted.
"Of what?" she asked, leaning back to look him in the eye. "What's going on, Ron?" she asked, disbelief and concern edging her words.
"I don't know. I don't know, Hermione, okay? It just is. It's just my life now. I have to live with this," he argued.
"No," she said, kissing him on the nose. "No, you don't. We can get help, okay? We can speak to the Healers. We can fix this."
"You can't fix everything," he told her, defeated.
"I don't know unless I try."