She's been back for a few months now, and almost as soon as she was back, they were back to how they had been. Granted, it was a bit different, since they were a good day's sail away from any sort of land so they had a a great deal more privacy than what they'd had previously.
She spent most of her days on the deck of the Rouge, sunbathing and reading and just existing on his boat, in his bed, and in his arms.
She was okay. She was with him.
He had hoped that with her return, so would sleep, and that the nightmare–her nightmare–of the eyeless man, would finally leave him be.
But it didn't.
If anything, it was as if her return made the nightmare more aggravated, and like it wanted to punish him more. The man had gone from passively sitting in the chair and accusing him, to attacking him–forearm pressed to his throat as he was slammed back against a wall. He screamed in his face, his breath smelling of onions and cigarettes, and he was forced to look in the gaping chasms in his skull where his eyes should have been. He never really remembers what he yells at him, but he knows that he always wakes up with the fear of him being right.
He always sat up quickly, gasping awake, and would immediately turn towards her, to make sure she was still there. She always was. Whatever the eyeless man in his dream was capable of, he could never take Jennifer away from him again.
He tried to keep his waking up in the middle of the night from waking Jennifer, and always wondered into the stateroom to collect himself. He got away with it for a few nights before Jennifer finally wondered out to find him.
He was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at his bottle of bourbon and debating on a third glass, when he heard the door to his room open. He looked up to see her yawning and rubbing her eye as she padded out of the room. She was wearing one of his shirts (he wondered if she even bothered unpacking her own shirts to sleep in or if his were all she wanted to wear anyway), and her hair was adorably rumpled from sleep.
"Duke?" she rasped before clearing her throat and trying again, "What's goin' on?"
He leaned back into the bench of the breakfast nook, shaking his head, "Nothing, love; go back to bed, I'll be there soon."
She kept walking to him before she finally settled into his lap, resting her head in the crook of his neck, "You've been doing this a lot since I got back. Is something wrong? Did…did I do something?"
He rubbed her back gently and shook his head, "No. No, you didn't–I just can't sleep is all."
She grabbed the hand that had come to rest on her legs and started to play with it lightly, "Do you want to talk about it?"
He sighed, watching her small hands knead his, before finally lacing their fingers together, "You remember that nightmare you told me about? About the eyeless man?"
She nodded, he didn't miss the tension that sprang up in her shoulders at the mention of it, as he continued, "After you died it…it was like it was transferred to me. And…and instead of waking up before he can say anything, he called me a liar for not protecting you and lately he's gotten much more vocal about what I've done wrong."
She didn't say anything at first until, almost as an after thought, he added, "I don't remember what he says but I know I'm afraid that he's right."
"He's not." She said, firmly. She shifted so she could look at him before holding his face in her hands, "It's a dream, Duke. It's something in your head that you can control–and that eyeless dick doesn't know you like I do. He's wrong. What ever he says about you, whatever he makes you believe about yourself, know that he's wrong. Nothing that happened to me was your fault. You found me, remember? You brought me back."
He rested his hand on her wrist, studying her intently and so amazed at how completely certain she was about what she was telling him. She kissed him, slow, deep, and thorough, before climbing to her feet and pulling him up with her, "Now let's go to bed. And if that eyeless motherfucker shows up again, I'll have a few words for him."
He grinned as she led him back to their room, "You swear a lot when you've been woken in the middle of the night."
"It's my repressed anger bubbling forth," she smiled over her shoulder at him, "I try to only let it out late at night so I don't hurt anyone."
"Well I like it. I could stand to hear more swearing Jennifer Mason," she just laughed at him before crawling into bed next to him.
She curled into his side, her head resting on his chest, "You okay?"
He kissed her head, "I will be."
That was the first night he slept through the night in a long time.