James watches in concern, wondering if he should wake Idina from her clearly unrestful sleep. She grimaces and squirms in her subconscious. She whimpers and curls into herself. "Idina...baby, it's okay..." James rubs her back to try and wake her, but the nightmare has too tight of a grasp for her to be so easily drawn awake. He slips one of his arms underneath her knees and the other around her shoulders. Even though it's an akward position, picking up Idina requires less strength than it should. He makes a mental priority to try and help her back to a normal weight. The switch of positions to sitting upright on James' lap finally brings Idina out of her nightmare. She blinks and looks at James, confused.
"You're still here..." She speaks slowly and hesitantly, refering not to the physical place, but to the fact that he didn't abandon her. "You don't hate me?"
"No, honey, I could never hate you. And I will never, ever leave you. I promise." James rubs small, reassuring circles on Idina's upper back. Shoulder blade, spine, shoulder blade, spine. Each repition he can feel her bones easily. Oh poor baby, what have you gone through? James' heart aches for Idina as he wonders in his head.
"I dreamt you did." Her breathes are still slightly irregular, but normalizing as she relaxes into James. She hates how helpless she is against nightmares. Many times she's been told it's her own fault because supposedly one can consciously rewrite one's nightmares to a more pleasant dream, but what do you do when your nightmares so parallel real life?
"Left you or hated you? Neither is true, sweetheart, it was just a nightmare." Idina leans into James, struggling to believe that the words he's spoken will remain true forever rather become broken promises like so many others.
Idina sniffs, the anxious silence filling the air before a barely audible whisper. "Both." Her head says no, stop talking now before the past repeats itself. She doesn't know if she could stand it again, left completely alone, more broken promises, the slow, painful process of her mind creating new nightmares after all the old have come true.