(prompt request: "a kiss... as a promise." Post-Nathema.)
fault lines
Some nights are easier than others.
Her nightmares didn't stop with Valkorion gone. She'd never thought they would, of course. He was never the only thing crawling inside her head, too many half-heard whispers and too many old wounds ripped open too many times to ever be able to fully heal; she closes her eyes and sees Hunter grinning as she picks shards of glass from her skin, sees Revan on his knees and the light of Ziost fading through a space station window and Vaylin screaming, her face contorted in helpless fury, and some nights, like tonight, she remembers all the way back to the beginning of all of it and sees the Dominator, her hand on the button and she needs to just push it, stupid girl, it would buy them the time they need to capture Jadus but no, she can't, she can't do it, Dromund Kaas is her home-
"It's okay." Theron's voice cuts through the dream-fog, his hands wrapped around her wrists as she startles awake. (She lashes out, otherwise, a dangerous habit born of years spent reaching under pillows for hidden knives when someone woke her unexpectedly. The knife isn't there, now; she doesn't need it these days. But after the third time she almost broke his nose they settled on this as a compromise. She won't let herself hurt him.
She won't let anything hurt him any more.
He has nightmares too, she knows, especially now. But he isn't quite ready to talk about them yet- barely two weeks since she brought him home from Nathema and only two days out of the infirmary, he still shakes his head and goes quiet when she asks- and so she lets it be.) "It's okay, Nine," he murmurs again. "I'm here."
She opens her eyes.
Bed.
Theron.
Home.
She exhales. "I'm sorry. Did I wake you up again?"
"I was awake." When she flexes her hands he relaxes his grip, though he keeps his arms around her and his face nestled into her neck as she curls tighter against him, her back against his chest. "Sleep cycle's still fucked up. Bad dream?"
"Yeah."
The bandage on his stomach scratches against her bare skin. "My fault?"
"No." Stars, don't let him start down that road again- she forgives him, she forgives him but she doesn't think he's forgiven himself yet; he's been holding himself together, keeping the facade up, but the cracks in it get a little broader every day. She turns over until she's facing him, until she can look at him eye to eye. "A long, long time ago- years before we met. Before I was a Cipher, even."
He nods. "But you remember it."
"I wish I didn't," she says, shifting; he cradles her face between his hands. "It would have been easier if I didn't have my memory then, too. I knew what I had to do but I couldn't. I froze. Blew the whole op."
"What would have happened if you'd done-" he pauses. They've never really talked that far back. She can't remember half of what happened in those days, and the half she can…well, it isn't the good half- "whatever it was?"
"We'd have captured the target, and I'd have killed about a million people, give or take a few hundred thousand." She shrugs. "So I let him escape. They made me a Cipher for it and then put me in Castellan restraints. Just in case it ever happened again."
Theron blinks, then presses his forehead against hers. "I love you, you know."
"I love you, too. Though that's not quite what I expected you to say. What-" She brings her hand up along his back, fingertips brushing the outline of every rib- oh, he's so thin now- and she loses the rest of the thought in the hollows beneath his eyes.
He's here now. He will get better. They will get better.
(Won't they?)
"I hated them so much," he whispers after a minute's silence. "The first time I saw them all without the cloak-and-dagger shit, masks off, out in the open… they talked about you like you were the worst kind of monster. And they expected me to agree. I hadn't seen Marcus Trant in almost five years and you know what the first thing he said to me was?"
She shakes her head and holds him tighter.
"He said-" Theron presses his lips together into a hard line before he keeps going- "he said, 'And I thought my ex was a bitch. At least you finally came to your senses.' I almost punched him and turned around and left."
"But you didn't."
"I couldn't. I promised you I'd do whatever it took to keep you safe."
She frowns. "I know, but-"
"I promised." He's fierce for a moment, even in exhaustion, even in pain. "No matter what. I hated every minute of it. I hated myself. But if you made it through, if you beat them, it'd all be worth it no matter what happened to me."
"Don't say that."
He presses his mouth to the bridge of her nose. "It's true."
"It isn't. Don't ever say that. If you'd-" She closes her eyes; her eyelids are heavy and she blinks, fighting away sleep as it tries to drag her down again, focusing on him. Sleep can wait. This can't. "They almost killed you, Theron. Don't ever say that again. Please. "
"I-"
"Promise me."
He kisses her, then, and she can feel the mask shatter in the seconds before the first tears fall. "I promise," he says. His lips taste of salt when he kisses her again; she isn't sure, after the third kiss, whether the damp tracks down her cheeks are his doing or hers but it doesn't matter now, does it? He's home, he's home, he's home- "I promise."