59. Gift
He hadn't meant it. She knew that. He'd been exhausted beyond measure by Husky's training, and she'd offered her bed. He'd accepted gratefully. He couldn't have known the consequences, at least not in his fatigue.
That night, after he'd returned home, she'd stared at her rumpled purple comforter before crawling warily into bed. She'd extinguished the light and lay listening, as always, to the quiet sound of her girls moving about upstairs. The dull thudding of Nightingale's feet as she paced outside the bathroom, the quiet hiss of Oriole's shower. The creaking of Thrush's door as she turned in for the night. Wrapped in her comforter, her hair sprawled across her pillow, she'd waited for the darkness to come. Always, it came, spreading over her vision until she collapsed in terror and was pulled into the recesses of sleep.
That night, it didn't come. She'd lain there, terrified, convinced the delay meant that the nightmares would be inexplicably worse, that she'd barely be fit to be seen the next day due to frayed nerves and lack of sleep. She'd clenched her fingers into her bed sheets and waited for the bloody images to play out, to tear her out of the sounds of her home and into the screams of the nightmare maze.
Abruptly, the image of Shepherd came to mind, sprawled out on her bed, snoring lightly. Light shone on his sleeping face, and his brown hair was softly tousled. She'd smiled then, the only smile she'd ever given to the night, and rolled onto her side, burying her face in the soft fabric of her pillow. That night, the darkness didn't come.
He hadn't meant it. She knew that. But he'd given Sparrow the greatest gift imaginable. Peace.