This fic came into being because I realized that Yana's situation with the Master is (potentially) somewhat analogous to DID. I love sci-fi as an allegory for mental illness and I couldn't resist exploring this parallel. So here you go.
Be warned: this isn't the darkest thing I have written, but it is dark and very emotionally complicated. This is not fluff.
The Other Boy
The dreams came nearly every night...
Sometimes laughter and smiles and safety, scenes steeped in gold.
More often, studies in black and red.
Yana would have called them nightmares but the word seemed far too limited to describe what those nocturnal stories encompassed.
The visuals never lingered from those dark dreams. But the atmosphere stayed with him after he awoke. Sometimes for hours.
A need, a hunger.
And a sensation of power which he couldn't even put into words.
Like he could do anything. A certainty that nothing, no one could stand in his way.
When he woke, he was ashamed.
In the clutches of the dream, however... It was the most glorious thing he had ever felt.
The disconnect baffled him.
He couldn't describe it, even right after he awoke, before the dreams started to fade.
The doctor had suggested a journal.
But what Yana felt and saw in those dreams was so far outside of his experience that he couldn't possibly find a way to write it down.
When he tried, he just ended up staring at the blank page, pencil frozen between his fingertips.
He told Brynne about some of it. But sometimes when he did, she would frown... So he didn't tell her everything. He didn't like to make her sad.
Yana concluded that perhaps it was best for the dreams to come and go as they pleased. They had no place in the daylight.
And most days, he was far too busy with real life for the fantasies to intrude.
Now, he was dreaming again. Dreaming of being someone else.
As always, he was a passenger, witnessing this other person's choices from within their very soul.
It wasn't what he would have done...
But he wasn't in control.
The stranger was. And oh... He gave new meaning to the term in control.
No matter the situation... And Yana had seen so many: captured, bound, weaponless, surrounded by enemies...
Always, always that sense of control persisted.
Yana didn't know the stranger's name... But it was always the same person, Yana was certain of that. This man who wore so many faces, sometimes old and sometimes young, who lived in his head and waited until he fell asleep.
Reaching out to share his experiences...
Snippets of memory which Yana couldn't begin to relate to.
Memories of being old... Of striving towards impossible goals, of massive ambition and nameless, unimportant foes.
Occasionally, he felt fear, anger, hatred.
Often, pain.
But the stranger was never defeated.
Somehow, even when he ran, even when he died... Yana had somehow seen that happen several times... Still, that arrogance won out over all other emotions.
Paradoxically drunk on the power of his ultimate authority, even as his plans evaporated into dust.
Yana didn't pretend to understand this. How could he? Yana had a humble life and no memory of anything before Brynne's shipmates, now his friends and neighbors, had found him unconscious in the wilderness.
He was perfectly content with his place helping others, trying to make a difference for the better in his own small way.
The stranger in the dream was in many ways the exact opposite. He had everything. Anything he wanted, he took. And there were so many things he had to choose from.
Yana saw wonders in those dreams, though the stranger walked right past them. Peaceful forests and wide, blue skies and towering, glorious palaces and stars .
Always so many stars.
Nights sparkling as if they had been rolled in uncountable diamonds.
The stranger had all of this, had only to reach out and take it.
He knew this.
He was always searching, always taking, often only to discard his prize mere minutes later. Tired of the toy the moment it was his.
Still, he moved tirelessly on to the next thing which caught his attention, as if the new goal, the unattained, was the most important thing in existence. But he never wanted it. He just wanted to have it.
Yana couldn't begin to explain that.
It made no sense.
An obvious contradiction.
But still, in the dream... It always made so much sense.
In the dream, it was the only thing which made sense.
And yet, so many of the dreams ended in chaos and fire and pain and disaster.
This was one of those dreams.
He was trapped, somewhere hostile, locked inside, surrounded by troops loyal to the enemy.
They were hunting him down, closing in...
And the thrill of the game was intoxicating because he knew he was about to win .
Everything was burning and everyone in the base was going to be dead in under ten minutes.
Yana knew this because the man knew this.
It was largely his doing, after all.
And though this hadn't exactly been the goal, it was certainly an acceptable consequence.
His work here was done. He didn't need anything else from these people.
Except perhaps directions to the exit.
Yana heard a shout behind the man. He turned, slowly, to see another man with a weapon. The newcomer coughed in the smoke but held his gun steady.
The dream man, the stranger, the someone else Yana inhabited in this story, raised his hands and sized up his opponent in an instant, far too quickly for Yana to follow.
Conclusion: Young. And frightened.
And although there was a gun pointed squarely at his head and he should have been panicked, dismayed, preparing for death... The man just fixed his eyes on his opponent and smiled as if he'd been given a gift.
Yana woke to Brynne shaking him gently.
"Hey," she said, her expression cautious.
Sometimes he woke in the grips of violent emotion... Brynne had learned this from experience.
Yana rubbed his eyes and sat up. "Was I talking in my sleep again?"
"Yeah," she replied. Her forehead creased, eyes probing. "Bad?"
The smoke and fire were already a blur. For a moment, the young man's frightened eyes lingered in Yana's memory, then they too disappeared to wherever dreams went.
Yana shook his head, returning to the present. "No, not really."
"Good," Brynne smiled crookedly. "Get ready, you have an appointment today."
Yana sighed but didn't argue as he stood. The ship's doctor had no idea what he was dealing with, a fact which he was entirely honest about. Yana appreciated him trying to help but the attention made him uncomfortable.
But Brynne insisted and it wasn't really Yana's place to disagree.
The appointment was routine. They talked about Yana's dreams, though he didn't have much in the way of detail to contribute.
He didn't really like to think about the lingering, disjointed images which survived into his waking hours.
Yana wondered momentarily what good it would do if he did. There were no answers to be found in wherever he went when he slept. Just endless questions to which he felt he should somehow already have the answers.
"And it's still every night?" Dr. Ro asked.
"Just about," Yana answered. He stared down at his idly-swinging feet, wishing they could wrap this up. He had work to do...
"Have you thought about trying the medication again?" the doctor queried.
Yana shook his head. "I'd rather not..." he said.
They'd tried psychic blockers for a while.
It had stopped the dreams but it had made Yana feel... Dull.
As if he never slept and never quite woke up.
And it had made it hard to think. Hard to work.
He'd asked to stop the medication and Brynne had agreed.
That was when Yana had accepted that the dreams were a necessary evil. That whatever they were and wherever they came from, they would always be there.
Brynne was frowning again.
"They're not that bad," Yana tried.
Brynne barked a laugh and Yana knew his feeble lie hadn't convinced her.
"Really?" Brynne demanded. "What would bad be like?"
Yana shrugged and stared down at the floor.
Brynne was always there when the nightmares were unendurable. When he couldn't wake up, when the fear gripped him in a stranglehold and the red and black bled into reality as if nowhere was safe.
He felt bad about how often he disturbed her sleep and it bothered him that she worried.
But without someone there to drag him back to reality, sometimes he thought he'd never find his way back to the waking world.
He felt Brynne's hand, strong and warm on his back and wished he wasn't so broken. For Brynne's sake. She deserved better than that.
"He doesn't sleep through the night nine times out of ten," Brynne was saying, quite accurately. "And the terrors are at least once a week."
Yana looked up and Brynne's warm gray eyes were on him, troubled.
"It's not getting worse," she said, "but it's not getting better either." She shook her head, her gruff voice kind. "You don't need to just accept it. We haven't given up yet. Right, doc?"
The doctor sighed. "No, I think we can still figure something out." He regarded his patient thoughtfully. "The truth of the matter is, we still don't know what these nightmares are. So far, we've been flying blind. It might be time to start thinking about looking for the root of the problem."
"I haven't remembered anything else," Yana said. Everything before the refugee ship was just a vast blank.
"Are you familiar with hypnosis?" the doctor asked.
"Yes," Yana said with reflexive certainty. Then he thought about it and realized that wasn't true. "Uh... No, actually. Not really."
"If we can recover something from your past," Dr. Ro said, "it might give us a clue as to where we should go next with your treatment."
"Um, I don't think that's a very good idea..." Yana said. There was a shaky feeling in his gut, as if the ground was about to give way beneath him.
"What's the risk?" Brynne asked, rubbing his back.
"No risk," the doctor replied with a certainty which seemed unwarranted to Yana. "It's a very safe process. I think it could help."
"What do you think?" Brynne asked Yana softly.
She always checked with him though he often didn't have much to contribute either way.
He was as much in the dark as the adults, after all. More so. He wasn't even a doctor, just a mechanic.
Yana gulped as Brynne waited for him to answer. Their idea scared him and he didn't know why. Not because of what he might see. He'd had visions aplenty.
Because the past held a danger which seemed all too real.
"I don't want to," he whispered.
"I want you to get better," Brynne responded unhappily. "It's not good... For you to live like this."
She seemed very certain.
Yana got confused often. He'd know things and feel things which he had no context for.
But whenever he had no idea which way was up, Brynne always knew what to do.
"You think I should?" he asked her.
She smiled, awkwardly, trying to reassure him. Brynne wasn't very good with people but Yana didn't mind. He really wasn't either. "I think it's worth a try," she said.
"Alright, then," Yana agreed, though he nearly choked on the words as they came out. "I'll do it."
...
Yana gripped Brynne's hand tightly as they returned for their next appointment.
He was scared, as scared as he was during the worst of his nightmares. The fear had stuck with him through the intervening days, a constant companion, a fluttering thing caught in his insides.
Like so many things about Yana, it didn't make any sense. He couldn't explain it and nothing Brynne could say would make it go away.
It was irrational. He knew that. And if Yana followed all his irrational, baseless instincts, life would be incredibly complicated.
So Yana took a seat and tried to focus as the doctor explained what the process would entail. Yana only half-listened, feeling somehow as if he'd heard all of this before.
The doctor moved to dim the lights and Brynne knelt in front of him, laying a steady hand on his trembling ones.
"I'll be right here," she assured him. "The whole time."
Yana just nodded, knowing how far away right here could be.
"Alright," the doctor said slowly as he sat down in the chair opposite Yana. He held up a penlight. "Just try to relax." He started to move the penlight smoothly back and forth. "Follow the light."
Yana did until his eyes got tired and he let them close.
"Is he out already?" he heard Brynne ask in a hushed whisper.
"We see this a lot with dissociation," the doctor responded in a similar tone.
Yana didn't feel hypnotized - whatever that was supposed to feel like. He thought about telling the adults as much but he really didn't want to disappoint them. So he sat quietly with his eyes closed.
He tried his best to follow the doctor's instructions as he guided Yana into a deeper state of relaxation, looking for buried memories. But the phrasing was distractingly awkward and Yana started to feel that perhaps the doctor wasn't very good at this.
And that was when the other voice started.
"Amateur," it sniffed judgmentally.
The voice was familiar but... Yana couldn't place it.
He tried to focus on the doctor instead.
But it wasn't long before the other voice intruded again.
"This is ridiculous," it said. "We'll be here all day if we leave it up to him."
The voice was so close, so real, that Yana almost opened his eyes, convinced someone else was in the room.
"Someone's here," he informed the grown-ups.
The doctor said something in reply but Yana missed it, consumed by a sudden instinct. Fear, dread... Foreknowledge.
"This is a bad idea..." he said to himself.
Yana tried to back away, looking for a way out.
He struggled to pry his eyes open with brute force but it was as if they were glued shut.
"No," the voice said, softer now, pulling his attention back. And there was something so soothing about it now, so enticing. "Don't open your eyes. This way. Follow my voice."
Yana hesitated. He could still hear the doctor, though now he sounded distant. Wasn't he meant to be listening to him instead?
"Don't worry, he's not going anywhere," the voice coaxed. "This way, little human. Deeper... Come on, I'll show you the way."
And Yana followed the voice.
...
Yana opened his eyes in a place he'd been before, a place he didn't know.
It was bright, the white walls covered in round indentations, brown coral-like pillars supporting a high ceiling. In the middle of the room was some sort of device.
For a moment, Yana felt as if he knew every switch and button of that machine. But then the certainty vanished as he realized that of course he couldn't possibly know that.
There was a screen on the... Console? Console seemed like the right word. The screen had brightly-colored images on it. Intrigued, Yana took a step towards it to get a closer look.
"Hello, there," the voice said from behind him.
Yana turned around and blinked in confusion at what he saw.
A boy, slightly younger than Yana, in a black suit with a tie in stripes the colors of flame. His blue eyes were cold and sharp, his hair neatly combed, his shoes bore a star logo on the sides.
But none of that was what left Yana at a loss for words.
The boy was clearly, unmistakably, exactly like him.
"How...?" Yana gasped.
The stranger's face, Yana's own face, wore a superior half smile. Now, it grew into a full grin as he chuckled at Yana's shock.
"You..." Yana faltered. "You're... Me."
The other boy grimaced, shifting his head from side to side in consideration. "Well... Yes and no," he said unhelpfully.
"I don't understand," Yana said.
"I wouldn't expect you to," the other boy snickered. His face turned serious and he stepped closer, looking Yana up and down. "You're taller," he concluded, envy burning in his blue eyes. "That's... Unexpected. I suppose it makes sense though."
He stepped back, deep in thought, displeased.
"Who are you?" Yana asked. "Where am I?"
"I could tell you, but..." The other boy's gaze cut through him like lasers. "Do you really want to know?"
Yana thought for a moment, then looked away from the stranger's uncomfortably probing stare. "No, I guess not."
The boy smiled. "I didn't think so. There is such a thing as knowing too much."
Yana looked around the comfortably familiar room. "So this is what being hypnotized is like," he mused.
The boy laughed. "Not usually but... For you? Yes, basically."
Yana turned back to his doppelganger. "And you're what... My subconscious?"
The boy put a hand to his chest with a wounded expression. "Ouch," he protested. Then his eyes got dark. "Try the other way around."
Yana felt a chill deep in his bones as he realized what the boy was implying.
He wasn't real?
No, he was definitely real... He felt real.
How could he not be real?
Everything started spinning, disintegrating.
There was a pounding in his head.
The other boy's voice pulled him back. "Let's just say I'm as real as you are," he conceded, his face locked in a strangely cautious expression.
Yana nodded, breathless as the existential panic subsided and reality stabilized again.
The white room hummed softly around them.
"So..." Yana said, "Why am I here?"
The boy brightened up. "I wanted to meet you!"
"Why?" Yana frowned. He wasn't anything special.
The boy gestured between them with a comical grimace. "Uh, why do you think?"
Yana shook his head, still having trouble believing his own eyes. "This is so strange. You look just like me."
"I could say the same to you," the boy grinned. "Although," he said, smile falling as he raised a disdainful eyebrow, "what are you wearing?"
Yana looked down at his clothes. They seemed fine to him. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" he asked in honest bewilderment.
The boy clapped his hands together and covered his mouth in a half-hearted attempt to stifle a sudden fit of laughter. "Oh," he said delightedly, "you are adorable. I bet they all love you." Regaining his composure, he nodded thoughtfully. "That's good, that helps."
"With what?" Yana queried.
The boy didn't answer but he stepped closer. "Here's the thing, though..." he mused. "I've been stuck in here for a while and I'm sort of bored. Also, as endearing as you are, I'd like to be sure our joint future is in safe hands."
"What do you mean?" Yana asked.
The boy smiled widely. "Field trip," he said.
Swiftly, he reached up to cover his counterpart's eyes with one familiar hand and Yana sank into warm, inviting blackness.
...
Silent, arms crossed, Brynne watched Yana's eyes unfocus and flutter shut.
She wasn't sure if this would work, if it was even a good idea.
But they were so far beyond first, second and third choices, those hopes were just a distant memory at this point.
It had been about a year since they had spotted Yana's lone life sign on the outskirts of the Silver Devastation.
Really, it was sheer luck they had passed that way at all. The storm had forced a slight course alteration. In fact, it was only due to their damaged navigation systems that they had been in the area at all.
Even so, they almost hadn't spotted him.
Brynne didn't like to think about that... About what would have happened to the little boy if they hadn't come by when they did, if she hadn't looked at the scanner at just the right time. If she hadn't appealed to the Captain to stop for the stray when Gorman refused.
There were a lot of things Brynne didn't like to think about.
This wasn't new. Brynne had become an expert over the decades at focusing on what could be done rather than on things which couldn't be changed.
But the little boy in the storm had brought a whole new list of things which crowded into Brynne's mind no matter how she tried to chase them out.
And she was beginning to think those things couldn't be ignored.
Or shouldn't, anyway.
Brynne knew she could survive solely in the present: she had decades of proof to that effect.
But she wasn't the one who woke up screaming night after night.
That was the very top of the list of things Brynne currently tried not to think about: above the thought of how a helpless child could be left abandoned with nothing in the middle of a barren wasteland... Above her concerns about whether or not someone out there cared about him, was searching for him in vain... Above how troubled she was by his total memory loss...
More than all of that, most of all, Brynne hated to think about how a six-year-old could have seen so many horrors in such a short lifetime.
It seemed blatantly impossible.
He was running from something, that much was clear. A refugee, just like the rest of the ship's inhabitants.
But... Despite the horrors which seemed to be his only link to a lost past, Yana didn't see the world as threatening or hostile.
Quite the opposite, in fact. He was far too trusting of others, seeming to assume everyone was a potential new friend until proven otherwise. As if everyone must necessarily have his best interests at heart.
This was what stuck in Brynne's mind more than anything else.
Children who had been abused didn't see the world that way. They were wary. Angry or withdrawn, afraid of being hurt again.
Yana had no such fears.
This was how Brynne knew someone had loved him.
He simply wasn't built to survive on his own. He wouldn't last ten minutes.
But besides that, no child could learn to trust so completely without having been taught by example that the Universe was fundamentally good and kind.
This was why, at first, Brynne had thought some of it could have been purely nightmares. The imaginings of a traumatized child.
But despite his reluctance to discuss the images which intruded on his unconscious mind, Brynne had gotten him to open up about his dreams a couple of times.
And as bizarre and fragmented as his stories were, despite his clear inability to reconcile them with anything resembling normal life, Brynne had gradually lost her grip on the comforting denial.
No mind, however creative, however disturbed, could invent such detail.
Whatever haunted Yana, it was real.
And Brynne would try absolutely anything to exorcise it.
She didn't need to understand it to know that it had no place in this little boy's life.
So, though she knew the ship's doctor was as much at sea as she herself was, she would have done just about anything he suggested.
And Yana, trusting as ever, wasted no time in closing his eyes and complying with the doctor's suggestions to relax.
Dissociation, the doctor said.
Brynne frowned, remembering the conversation they had had, privately, about the possibility of multiple personalities.
It wasn't an explanation Brynne was comfortable with.
And it didn't even answer the real questions.
But this was life at the end of the Universe: a life without the luxury of choices.
The doctor droned on, talking about steps leading downwards, about clouds of smoke blowing away into nothingness.
Yana turned his head to the side, like he was listening to something behind him.
"Yana?" the doctor asked. "What is it?"
"Someone's here," he whispered.
"Who?" The doctor leaned forward eagerly. "Who's there, Yana?"
Yana was frowning now. "This is a bad idea..." he murmured.
"Is he alright?" Brynne inquired, keeping her voice low. "He looks upset."
But then she turned back and he didn't look upset anymore. He now appeared completely at peace. She and the doctor watched as he settled back with a sigh, seemingly falling fast asleep.
Brynne thought for a moment that this was a good thing... Until she turned to the doctor and saw how confused he was.
And Brynne's heart sank into her stomach.
"What happened?" Brynne demanded, her voice creeping up in volume despite herself.
"I don't know," the doctor admitted.
"Get him back," Brynne said, the instinct making it an order. "Wake him up, now ."
The doctor nodded, swallowing nervously. "Yana? Can you hear me, Yana?"
He didn't respond at first, motionless. Then, silently, one side of his mouth curled up in a very un-Yana-like expression. Crafty, cynical.
"Nope," he said deliberately. "Yana's not in at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?"
He opened his eyes. Still blue, still the same, just as his face was the same. But Brynne stiffened with a shiver of horror. Because a different person was looking out of those eyes.
And it wasn't a person she liked.
Suddenly the dreams all made sense.
The doctor had physically backed away, the unconscious response of prey facing down a predator.
Brynne did the opposite, taking a step closer, earning her a sharp, approving glance from the visitor. The stranger turned his attention to the doctor, however.
"You," he said, looking like he'd smelled something unpleasant. "Did anyone actually teach you hypnosis? Or did you watch some cartoons and decide to just give it a go?"
"I -" Ro spluttered, oddly at a loss for words.
Brynne watched the boy laugh at the doctor's discomfort. The word really was cackle , as bizarre as it was to hear a sound like that coming from Yana's mouth.
She could see what he was doing. She had dealt with people like this. Cruel, manipulative. Exploiting others for fun, profit, or ego.
She knew how to deal with them: don't give them an inch.
She leaned closer, getting in between him and the doctor. "Where's Yana?" she demanded.
He graced her with a mildly amused look. "In here." He tapped his head with one finger. "Don't worry, he's not going anywhere. And yes, he's safe," he added insightfully before she could ask.
Brynne didn't allow herself the sigh of relief. It was best not to show weakness in front of people like this.
"Who are you?" she frowned, trying in vain to see any of Yana in the stranger in front of her. "Do you have a name?"
"Oh, yes," he smirked. "I most certainly do."
"What is it?" the doctor asked.
The boy raised an eyebrow and fixed him with a distant stare. "Send her out and give me that light and I'll tell you."
"That's not going to happen," Brynne interjected calmly.
The boy shrugged, dropping whatever mischief he was planning. "Oh well, not like I could do much in this body anyway." He looked from Brynne to the doctor. "I've got about five and a half minutes before I burn his tiny brain out. I have some questions and I'm assuming you do as well. Who wants to go first?"
"Let him go," Brynne ground out.
"Not a question," the boy said dismissively. "Try again."
"Where did you come from?" Brynne asked, controlling the urge to slap this child who had stolen Yana's body.
"Be more specific," he instructed casually, examining Yana's somewhat-dirty fingernails with a critical expression.
"How did you get into his head?" she specified with a growl.
"Better," he congratulated her with a smile which would have been charming if it wasn't so condescending. "But still the wrong question. I've always been here," he finished seriously.
Somehow, Brynne knew he wasn't lying.
The disappointment made her sick.
"How do we get rid of you?" she asked before she could stop herself.
"Ooh!" He smiled, delighted, even clapped his hands. "Very good question! You won't like the answer, though," he warned her. "You can't. Not without getting rid of him, too. And you wouldn't do that, would you?" His tone turned cloying and he clasped his hands to his chest in an exaggeratedly pleading gesture. "Sweet, little, helpless Yana. How would you live with yourselves?"
He gave them a smile like he'd just checkmated them in a game of chess they hadn't agreed to play.
Brynne ignored his mocking sarcasm, slotting what little information she had into a coherent picture.
"You need him for something..." she said, putting the pieces together. "What?"
"It's not as bad as you think," he assured her. "I just need him to live."
Brynne thought about parasites and hosts and tried to push the thoughts away.
"Does he know about you?" she asked, fervently hoping the answer would be a negative.
"No," he said with a vague frown. "Not really. He can't. The dissonance would rip him apart." He sighed but he didn't look as confident as he had a moment ago. "No, Yana will stay innocent. He has to."
"Until?" Brynne prompted quietly.
His blue eyes burned into her in a way Yana's never had. "Until his time is up."
She really didn't want to know but she owed Yana this much: she had to ask the questions he couldn't. "What happens then?"
"He goes away." He waved a hand like it was nothing. "Back to where he came from."
It took everything Brynne had to hide her devastation.
"And you?" But she already knew the answer.
"Nope, my turn," he said. He gave her an up-and-down glance, eyes narrowed. "I'm assuming you're in charge of him?"
Brynne didn't answer.
It wasn't really a question. She could see him drawing his own conclusions.
He nodded, satisfied. "You're good," he declared. "You can stay." He smirked at Brynne and there was something congratulatory in his eyes. "He chose well. Or I did," he amended with a frown. "Or whatever. I'm kind of new at this."
Dr. Ro had been watching this interaction from a distance, silently. "You're the protector personality," he spoke up.
He sounded fascinated and Brynne bridled at his tone.
Yana wasn't an experiment.
"Mm..." the boy hummed, apparently displeased with this characterization. "Sure, I guess. It's not exactly accurate but I do certainly have a vested interest in his survival. If it helps your little mind to process the reality of my existence... Fine."
"Incredible," the doctor breathed.
The boy sent him an impossibly smug smile. "So glad you noticed. Ooh." He swayed briefly, holding his head like he'd had a moment of vertigo. "Time's almost up." He turned back to Brynne, pretending to shield his words from the doctor with one hand. "I'd keep him away from the kid's brain. He's not exactly qualified to be poking around in there."
"You came to make sure he was safe," Brynne realized. And she smiled, because that meant he wasn't as powerful as he seemed to want to appear. "You don't see what he sees."
The stranger's eyes got harder, wary. And Brynne knew she was right.
"That's how it usually works," Ro contributed. "The different personalities have separate existences, memories, experience."
"Meaning..." Brynne said, eyes still locked on the boy. "You're not in charge here. So," she added, turning the tables. "Here's how this is going to go: he has a life to live and you are going to back off and let him do that in peace. Agreed?"
He threw his arms outwards, offended. "I am," he protested. "I haven't done anything!"
"The nightmares," Brynne said.
The boy squirmed uncomfortably. "I'm not sure I can do anything about that," he admitted reluctantly.
"Well, you're going to try," Brynne told him.
He looked at her and sighed, rolling his eyes like he'd been told to clean his room. "No promises but... I'll see what I can do." He blinked a long, slow blink, blue eyes dilating. "Oh," he said. "Time's up. Night night." He smiled sleepily and slumped back in the chair.
No one said anything for a few seconds and then the boy started to stir.
When he opened his eyes, it was clearly Yana again.
"Sorry," he yawned. "I think I fell asleep. Should we try again?"
"No," Brynne said hurriedly. "I think maybe you were right: this was a bad idea." She gave the doctor a warning glare as she shepherded Yana out of the office. "Not a word," she said.
...
Yana noticed Brynne watching him more closely in the days and weeks after that.
He'd catch her staring with an odd look on her face. It made him feel as though he'd possibly done something wrong without realizing.
He wanted to ask what it was so he could apologize but he was too nervous to do so.
Thankfully, however, the nightmares became a bit better. Still just about every night but they were further away somehow, less immersive. He could feel the separation now, knew he was dreaming.
It was a relief.
Months went by, full of work and people and engines and repairs.
It all sort of ran together. Yana tended to lose track of things like time and days and when to eat and sleep.
Brynne was very good at all of that, though.
So he just did what she said and it all seemed to work out.
They started systematically revamping the entire ship from stem to stern. Yana had a lot of ideas and the more he fixed the more ideas seemed to pop into his head.
And he liked to be useful. He owed the people on the ship. And besides, they were nice.
Well, mostly.
The one exception was Gorman, the first officer.
He was not nice.
The way he looked at Yana made him feel things he didn't like. Things that reminded him of the dreams.
Yana liked fixing things. It made him feel safe and useful.
Brynne agreed and the Captain agreed.
But the more they tried to improve the ship's systems, the angrier Gorman seemed to become.
"Why is he like that?" Yana whispered one day. He and Brynne were deep in the guts of a console on the bridge.
Gorman was watching from a distance with a scowl of disgust and steely eyes.
Brynne shook her head. "Some people just live to hate. It's hard to explain."
"I don't understand why he doesn't like me," Yana said. "I try to be nice to him."
Brynne laughed slightly. "It's not about you. It's about him. It's not something you can fix." She handed him a cluster of wires as if to emphasize her point. "Machines do what you tell them. People make their own choices."
Yana thought about that for a few moments as he reconnected the wires absently. "Alright."
He didn't really understand but if Brynne said it, it must be true.
Still...
"But maybe if I ask him..."
Brynne gave him a loving pat on his grime-covered cheek. "Trust me, there's nothing you can say that will make him change his mind. He can't understand you any more than you can understand him. You don't want to, believe me."
Yana shrugged and went back to the machine. Because at least that made sense .
Then came the day of the explosion.
It was an area they hadn't started on yet. All the ship's systems were old and this malfunction was sudden and catastrophic.
Brynne was in another part of the ship and Yana was close. He ran into the fire without even thinking.
People were hurt and the less-injured crew members were helping the more wounded to safety.
The section which had failed was the cooling system for the life support.
Yana ignored the people and went straight for the machines. He couldn't carry them to safety and if the life support failed, they would all die.
It was simple, really.
He started dousing the fires with the crew, tried to find a shutoff, a way to reroute the building heat.
And then it was like time stopped.
Everything felt so clear.
He stood there in the middle of the fire and smoke, watching the people struggling, fighting.
Everything was a piece of a puzzle, a component in a system, a cog in a machine.
This moment was a machine and it was broken.
But it could still work.
There was one way.
"We'll have to vent the whole section," he realized.
"What?" one of the fire fighters shouted over the roaring of the flames.
"Get out, we have to open the doors!"
They looked at each other, confused. They'd get it in a minute but they didn't have a minute.
The piece of the puzzle which was the flaming engine was rapidly approaching critical.
"Go on, what are you waiting for?" Yana yelled. He waved his arms at them, shooing them urgently towards safety.
They obeyed, giving up the losing battle and heading towards the interior of the ship.
Yana went in the opposite direction, towards the hull.
There was a maintenance hatch leading out into space. He set it on a timer and ran back towards the entrance, sealing off the emergency fire doors as he went, isolating the danger.
He made it out into the hall, closed the last door and sighed in relief.
Thirty seconds and the void of space would solve two problems in one fell swoop, putting out the fire and venting the heat which the cooling systems could no longer handle.
It didn't fix the entire problem but the issue now was simply buying time.
And Yana felt quite proud of himself for that.
"All alone?"
Yana turned in surprise, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.
Gorman was standing there in his pristine uniform, face unreadable.
Yana's breathing had increased in tempo and he coughed on the smoke. "It's fine, I fixed it. There's no one in there."
"Good," Gorman nodded. "I sent everyone upstairs. It's just you and I here."
Yana saw it, a split second before Gorman acted.
But he didn't know what to do.
Yana didn't know how to react to seeing murder in someone's eyes.
Gorman grabbed him by the back of his collar and slammed a hand on the door control, shoving Yana towards the opening.
Yana struggled and bit and clawed but he was small and he knew within seconds that it was a lost contest.
He panicked.
And then he blacked out.
Next thing he knew, Brynne was kneeling over him, gray eyes full of cautious worry.
Yana sat up. "What happened?" he asked.
Brynne sighed in relief and hugged him, pulling him all the way into her lap in big, strong arms. "You saved everyone, you brilliant little idiot."
He returned the hug contentedly. "Alright," he smiled. He blinked as he remembered. "What happened to Gorman?"
"What?" Brynne said, her voice getting tight.
"He was here, he..." Yana shook his head, unsure how to put into words what had happened.
He'd been so certain Gorman was going to kill him. Deliberately. In cold blood.
It seemed unreal now.
Maybe he had been wrong...
Who could do something like that?
Brynne frowned, seeming to fill in the blanks.
She set him down gently on the floor and got up to look through the porthole window on the door leading into the sealed-off cooling room.
Her eyes widened and her face turned a shade paler.
She came back to Yana and gathered him up in her arms, though he really was too big for that now.
"He was inside when the outer door opened," she said quietly as they exited to the rest of the ship. "Do you remember why he went in there?"
Yana shook his head. "It must have been an accident."
"Yeah," Brynne said but her tone was oddly grim.
...
Later, after Yana had gotten cleaned up and was safely tucked into bed, Brynne visited the Captain's quarters.
"Have you watched it?" she asked.
"Not yet," he said. "Are you absolutely certain you want to see what's on this tape?"
She didn't, of course. But life wasn't often about what one wanted. "I can't protect him by burying my head in the sand."
"Well said," he agreed. He put the recording in the player and they watched the security footage in silence.
They watched as Yana ran out of the door and closed it behind him, watched Gorman appear.
Brynne set her jaw and clenched her fists as he attacked Yana, dragging him towards certain death.
Yana fought for his life with the fervor of desperation.
Then, abruptly, he went limp, surprising Gorman, who nearly dropped him.
In a flash, Yana was behind him, having twisted free of his attacker's grasp.
He didn't hesitate, didn't try to reason with his attacker or wait for him to recover.
He shoved Gorman hard, causing him to stumble backwards through the doorway and immediately sprang towards the door control.
For just a couple of seconds, Gorman's face was visible on the other side of the door, twisted with rage. He pounded his fists as the boy watched, folding his arms cooly, patiently.
They couldn't see the boy's face from the angle of the footage but his posture was so relaxed as Gorman was snatched out of view in the blink of an eye by the vacuum of space.
He stepped calmly up to the window and stood on his toes to peer inside.
Brynne knew what he had seen: Gorman's body, twisted and tangled in the machinery, flash-frozen there by the vacuum of space.
Then Yana... Well, not Yana, turned around. He was covered in soot from head to toe, making his eyes appear eerily pale in contrast. He stared straight into the camera with a self-congratulatory smile and winked.
Then he slid back against the door and onto the floor, unconscious.
The Captain ejected the tape with a tense sigh. "I'm assuming you'd like me to destroy this?"
"Yes, please," Brynne said. She turned to go.
"Brynne," the Captain's voice stopped her. "You're walking a fine line. Yana's not to blame but he is dangerous."
Brynne took a shaky breath. "Your point?"
"Be careful. And let me know if you need someone to talk to."
"Thanks, Alistair."
...
Brynne sat on the floor in the dark, watching Yana sleep.
He looked peaceful.
The other boy had kept his word. The nightmares had been better since their disturbing hypnotism session.
Without warning, light blue eyes opened soundlessly, staring straight at Brynne.
She wasn't really surprised.
"You killed him," she stated.
"Self defense," he replied, stretching and moving to sit cross-legged.
"You shouldn't be here," Brynne said. "You said you could burn out his brain."
"I needed to be sure you were still invested." He peered at her in the dark. "Are you?"
She nodded, feeling sick. "He's not responsible for what you did. Or might do," she added.
"I'm not trying to make trouble," he protested dispassionately. "He attacked me. Us, I guess." He grimaced and Brynne found his use of the plural somehow more disturbing than if he had stuck with the singular.
"I don't like you much," she said slowly.
He seemed unfazed. "You don't need to. I'm not planning to visit often."
"But protecting him protects you," she said angrily. "What would he say, if he knew what you did, that all those nightmares are real?"
"He'll never know," the boy said sincerely. "Promise."
"He's better than you, you know," Brynne said. She didn't cry much but seeing this person using Yana's body brought tears to her eyes.
"You're entitled to your opinion," he said, unperturbed. Then he frowned. "But you don't really know me."
Brynne was fairly certain she didn't want to know him.
"Stay away," Brynne said. "Go wherever you go when he's awake and stay there."
"If you're trying to thank me, you're doing a fairly terrible job," he opined. "He'd be dead if I hadn't stepped in today. He needs me. Not all the time but not never. I know that upsets you but try to be a grown-up about it. We do have a common interest here."
The expectant confidence in his eyes made her skin crawl.
He wasn't wrong. And he knew it.
"Alright, agreed," Brynne said. "But you need to realize something: protecting Yana isn't just about keeping him alive. Whatever the connection is between the two of you, I don't know and I don't care. But he needs to be able to live, not just survive."
The boy quirked a smile at her and for a moment he didn't look so different from Yana after all. "Sounds nice," he said wistfully. The smile dropped as his tone became all business. "I'll do my best not to interfere unless it's an emergency and agree to leave the rest in your capable hands. Deal?"
He extended a small hand in her direction and she took it, shaking on the uneasy alliance. "Deal."
Satisfied, the boy settled back into bed and closed his eyes.
Brynne sat there until morning, unable to sleep.
If he was the protector personality, as Ro had said, who would protect Yana from his protector?
Brynne supposed that would be her job.
That was fine. Brynne had no problem with that.
That wasn't what kept her from sleeping.
The other boy had said he had always been there, in Yana's head. Had implied that one couldn't exist without the other.
She had loved Yana almost the moment she had met him. Had felt the opposite towards the other boy even more quickly.
She didn't like thinking of Yana doing those things.
The thought of any part of him being capable of that seemed so utterly, horribly wrong.
She had said she didn't care what the connection between them was.
That hadn't quite been true.
She did care.
She just didn't want to know.
As Ro had explained it, personality dissociation could be triggered by intensely traumatic experiences.
Brynne supposed that whatever the nightmares were about would certainly qualify. Whatever it was that Yana seemed to be running from.
But the doctor had also said that the different personalities had separate lives.
Yana's life had started the day he had been found and taken aboard the ship.
As much as Brynne had tried to suppress the thought, as much as she tried to reason it away when she couldn't just ignore it, she knew what that meant: Yana hadn't come first.
She felt she had been used.
And the worst part was… It changed absolutely nothing.
Yana still mattered, still was clearly a real, if possibly incomplete person.
He was sweet, kind, trusting and brilliant.
And somewhere deep inside, he was also manipulative, cruel and capable of killing a man without even blinking.
Was it possible to just love part of a person and hate the rest?
Brynne supposed it would have to be.
Because she couldn't stop loving Yana if she tried.
If that played right into the other boy's hands... Well then, so be it.
Blue eyes opened once again as the ship's automatic daylight systems glowed faintly into life.
"Morning, sunshine," Brynne smiled.
"Morning," Yana smiled back. "Did I oversleep?"
"Not at all," Brynne assured him. "I was up early. Did you sleep alright?"
"Yeah," he said vaguely, searching his memories. "I had a dream. You were there."
Brynne gulped, her mouth going dry. "Oh, really?" she asked. "What happened?"
"You said you'd take care of me," he replied happily.
"That sounds like a nice dream," Brynne said, hugging him close to hide her emotions. "And it's true, Yana: I will take care of you. No matter what."
"Thanks, Brynne," Yana said.
She held him a little too tight and wished she'd never have to let go.
But nothing was ever quite that simple.
Not even Yana, it seemed.
The End
Poor Brynne. :( She handled this well though, I think, all things considered! I don't have any more written for these characters but I hope to someday. Yana has another fifty years ahead of him, after all! Definitely more to explore here... ;)
For the record, I don't know what Gorman's problem was and I don't particularly care. He's gone and good riddance to him.
Also... I'm not sure why the Captain of the ship is a reincarnation of the Brigadier, but it came up in a conversation with my sister and I couldn't undo it. So it is what it is now lol. :p :)
Thank you for reading! :) [heart] [heart]