Everything but his mind wanted to sleep. Whenever Abel's eyes closed and his mind began to drift towards the darkness of sleep, something would come crawling out of the blackness. It was usually starlight or red flashes of fear, but tonight it was black hands stretching out of the void, grasping at his shoulders and shaking him awake.
Abel's eyes snapped open and the dark of the room pressed down on him. The hands were gone, but not the fear. Trying to sleep with the lights on made everything just a little worse, like starlight hiding behind his eyelids.
Abel slammed his fist down on the empty space beside him and let out a frustrated, tired sigh. It was going to be another long, dark night lying in a cold, empty bed. Normally when he couldn't sleep he'd get some coding done or sneak to the hangar bay and sit on the Reliant and watch the stars drift by. Cook had given him a week out of rotation and no tasks to do; all he was assigned was to sit and rot in his room while everyone else moved on with their inevitably short lives. Stress management they had called it. The medics had given Abel something to help him sleep but the first and last time he had used the strange little pills, he had woken himself up screaming. Part of him was glad that Cain wasn't around to witness it, but there was a more painful part that wished there was something better than an empty bed and his own mind to wake up to.
He let out another exhausted sigh and sat up, feeling his ribs shift beneath his skin. The mess hall wouldn't be open this time of night, but even if it was it wasn't going to do him any good. The sour taste of hydrochloric acid and orange juice still remained between his teeth and tongue.
Abel shuffled his way into the bathroom. When he had swept the shower mist off the mirror this morning, he had almost screamed at the stranger staring back at him. It took him a few moments to realize the gaunt, hollow-eyed thing staring at him was himself. So the lights stayed off.
He gathered his clothes from where he had dropped them in the morning and slid them back on. A shiver ran up his spine as the cool fabric settled on his skin. The sensation was almost pleasurably nauseating. Avoiding looking at his darkened form in the mirror, Abel crept out of the bathroom and to his boots waiting by the door. Crouching, he yanked them on and attempted to stand up, only he found himself floating, the only sensation his fingers in his laces. The darkness curled around his eyes and behind his forehead.
Only when his head pitched into the metal of the door did he snap back into control. Embarrassment flooding his cheeks, Abel rose to his feet using the door to prop himself up. The last time he had spaced out like that he had fallen in an elevator of fighters. Luckily Keeler had been there to hover over him and drag him up. But Abel had caught the looks the fighters over Keeler's shoulder. Predatory and cruel weren't even close.
Abel's fingers pressed the door open and he stepped into the hallway. Lights out had been six hours ago and the guard rotations would probably be more relaxed now. All Abel had to do was avoid running into any and he'd be home free.
The ship was eerily quiet, the only sound coming from the constant hum of the Sleipnir. He didn't know where he was going; only that he couldn't sit in the dark with his mind anymore. There were plenty of places he'd never been on the ship before and plenty of reasons why he hadn't. Cain always came back smelling like sweat and blood when he'd been on the fighter's floor. Abel always pulled him into the shower before he let Cain near. Abel had yet to hear Cain complain, probably because they usually ended up pressed against the wall and sighing into the shower steam.
Instead of a blush creeping across his face, blood pounded against his forehead. Abel stopped and leaned against the wall until the ache had subsided.
He continued along the hallways, his mind drifting further away with each step. He had read somewhere that some kid had kept himself awake for seventeen days for an experiment and by the end of it had begun to hallucinate and click in and out of consciousness. Abel had forgotten to count the days since his release from the medical bay. When Abel had gone for his follow up at the medical bay, they had said his reactions were normal. Every solider goes through a period of shock, but they get over it. They just failed to mention how long it took.
It was when Abel emerged into the hangar bay that his mind clicked back into place. His breath caught in his throat and he stumbled to a halt. Entire galaxies stared back at him through the hangar windows and starlight settled over every surface. Something crawled between his ribs and Abel's legs began to shake. He should have paid more attention to where he was walking. His eyes squeezed shut and his heart lurched in his chest.
All he had to do was walk back into the hallway and he'd be fine. Not completely fine, but further away from the fear. He went to step backwards but found his legs weren't responding. They only felt weak and frozen in place. Abel sucked in a deep breath. Just like when the ship's engines had blown out. Don't panic.
He exhaled slowly and his eyes rolled open to face the eternity of space and stars beyond the windows. The same stale fear curled around his heart but he pushed it to a dark corner of his mind. It was just an infinite expanse of plasma undergoing thermonuclear fusion. He wasn't going to drag himself back into the hallway just so he could have another panic attack the next time he entered the hangar bay. He wouldn't give Cain the satisfaction of hanging that over his head.
Abel's legs moved forward and he found himself creeping through rows of silent ships. They towered over him, but he found he didn't mind. Better than staring out at the stars. He approached the spot where the Reliant usually sat but found another ship in its place. Abel knew they didn't keep damaged ships in the hangar bay. It was bad for morale to see a fellow soldier's blood sprayed across the twisted metal. Having soldiers realize that they were just as likely to be blasted off the map was not how the war machine worked.
Abel drew to a halt at the edge of the hangar bay, just before the floor ended and all that was separating him from the vacuum of space was a thick pane of glass. The fear began to rise inside his chest again but he was determined to keep it down. He placed his hands on the glass, watching the stars flicker underneath the fog of his breath.
His mother had been the one to show him the stars for the first time. They had sat on the top of a frozen hill and she had gathered him up in her arms. She had pointed at the stars and breathed the constellations into his ears. When he had woken up the next morning with a cold, his father had thrown a fit but his mother had just smiled and winked at Abel.
He continued to watch the stars, hoping that she might be out there somewhere and smiling up at them too. It was too late now to go back and tell his parents that they had been right. War wasn't an adventure, a nice little aside in his otherwise plain life. It was cold and uncaring, just like the faces of the medics who hauled corpses out of starfighters so the ship could be recommissioned and recycled for the next team. It was when his fingers began to tremble did he realize he was holding his breath. Abel rested his head against the cool glass and quietly sighed into it. The chill was almost inviting, sending a fevered shiver through his skin.
Abel jolted awake to the sound of voices echoing through his head. He whirled away from his foggy spot on the glass and watched as the mechanics filtered into the hangar bay, chatting loudly amongst themselves. They didn't look his way, either they hadn't noticed him or they decided to ignore him.
Abel padded out of the hangar bay and back into the dark corridors of the ship before they could notice the red flush of his embarrassment. All he needed was someone mentioning to Cook that one of his navigators had been drooling against the glass in the hangar bay.
Abel managed to avoid meeting anyone else in the hallways, deftly avoiding the echoes of footsteps. He couldn't handle the looks that most of the navigators gave him now, like he was a pitiful creature that didn't quite belong anymore. Something similar to the look Cain's creepy fighter friend always gave him.
Abel pressed the call button for the lift. Perhaps he could convince Keeler to let him start up on the new engine configs again, something to distract him from reality for a little while. Something to keep him out of his quarters just in case Cain came back.
The lift's doors slid open.
His automatic step past the threshold stumbled when he realized whose unfocused, dark eyes were staring back at him.
The lift doors slid shut.