She was trembling so hard beneath his hand, her breath coming in ragged gasps, skin icy cold despite the blanket she had been wrapped up in. Those expressive chromed eyes were squeezed shut, and a dampness weighted her dark lashes. She shuddered at the light, hesitant touch of his calloused hand, her breath coming in wracking shakes.
"You alright?" he repeated, his low growl slightly tinged with concern. His brows huddled on the bridge of his nose, casting the reflective eyes into even deeper shadows, their sullen glint flashing at her in a mimicked glow of the control panels.
She continued to shiver, but he was able to pull her back towards him. His coarse fingers lightly brushed her hair away from her face, and he peered up at her.
"It's all right, rabbit. C'mon. Shush." Slowly she folded back onto his lap, her shaking stilling but her breath still convulsing her thin frame. His hands were hesitant, but he stroked her soft hair lightly. "Was just a dream, that's all. Want to tell me about it?"
She shook her head, burying her face against his chest, but then began to murmur.
"...was awful..." He could feel her shaking her head. "...blood... dark... all my fault..." The trembling began anew.
"What was all your fault?"
"...dead..." A sob heaved her shoulders, and she tightened into a ball for a few moments, shaking uncontrollably.
Then she took a deep breath and straightened. She still trembled ever so slightly with her breath. Her pale face was blotched with red, but her eyes were steady when she looked into his face. She blinked a few times, worrying her lip.
"For the last week or so, I've been having this... Feeling. I should have told you sooner, but I didn't. It's like someone is following me wherever I go, watching me. But there's never anyone there. I can't shake it. I even feel it here, when I know there's no one else here.
"I can't explain it. I look, I feel, but there's never anything to find. Nothing. But I can't shake it." She shook her head, rubbing her palms briskly on her shoulders and upper arms. The dark hair fell forward again to curtain the luminous eyes. "And now, even when I sleep it comes.
'I was here, in the shuttle. But I was all alone; you weren't anywhere to be found. And then I realized I was being followed. Wherever I went, wherever I turned, there was something following me in the dark that I couldn't see, something that was there but not there. And the more I searched, the more fruitless it was.
"Until I heard something- the first sound besides me. It was you. Only you were dead." Another shiver claimed her for a moment, shaking her voice to silence. "My shiv was in your chest. And then someone started laughing. And it was me. I was looking at me, standing over you.
"I think the abyss is finally gazing back."
He was silent. There was a cold set to his stoney features, and a muscle in his cheek was slowly working. The frozen eyes stared deep into hers.
"'People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.'" He withdrew a little more behind the frost, his eyes taking on the strange unfocus of deep thought. It even seemed that in his still he ceased to blink. His breath sounded in the silence, a syncopated rhythm behind her own staggered breaths.
Spook tasted a sharp tang; she had worried her lip to blood in the smothering silence while the bronze killer stared out into the vastness of space trying to find something within himself. Her hands were sore with clenching them.
Finally the statue of flesh moved. He turned his frozen eyes towards her,a strange melancholy reflectin up from the depths of them. "'It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world.'"