The Long Journey Home

24: We break, we fail, we relearn what we already knew

[ Chapter notes: TFATWS 1x06 *yes, we're still seeing moments from the finale* ]

Late night tv is crap. Utter crap. Shows the networks clearly wish they could drop, infomercials for crap nobody really needs and somehow end up with twenty of. How can there be so many channels and all of it be so incredibly awful? At least there's the movie channels that can usually be relied upon. The one that gave them that marathon of science fiction...

He's positioned himself to not be able to continually glance towards the bedroom while he refuses to turn the tv back on. She's not sleeping well. He can hear it. But at least while he's stretched out the way he is he can't keep looking at the closed door. He can, but he'd have to twist and lift himself up off the cushions to do so and he's not – going – to. At least not for another few minutes.

And then she screams.

He's up and – shit where's his shirt. Why'd he taken the long sleeve thing off anyway? Shoulda just turned down the temperature in the apartment. Only he doesn't like it cold. Not anymore. Not if he can avoid it.

He nearly collides with her when she swings the bedroom door open and emerges. She's not fully awake yet, it seems. Not fully aware. Running on fumes to escape whatever she'd been dreaming about. They've talked about their respective dreams. Their own recurring nightmares. The faces they can't escape. His dreams are a random rotation, fragments of his past chasing him to the present. Hers are something else.

"What's... bad dream?"

Obviously. Mentally, he groans at himself. He wasn't just asleep. Just laying there stubbornly refusing to turn on shit tv, listening to her restless movements. Aaaand now she's trying to burrow into him, through him, get past him to get away from whatever had driven her out of bed. He wraps her up in his arms, wishing he'd gotten a little further with putting on his shirt. Having her tucked up against him the way she is – is. Yea, something's gotta change.

"Hey. You're ok. I'm -- You're ok. We're here in New York. Here in myapartment in Brooklyn." 

          After an evening listening to strangers speculate about refugees and sending them home, an evening spent staring at the Manhattan headquarters for the GRC, you know what waits once you stop listening to the sounds of the city, once you stop trying to memorize the bedroom ceiling. It won't be the deep dark black that you always hope for and rarely get, an empty sleep allowed by exhaustion -- even though you are. Exhausted. Exhausted from sitting on the edge of the sofa, tense for any new bit of information the newscast might bring. Exhausted trying to fight the inevitable, trying to fight the bad that just keeps coming, returning to you again and again as though drawn back by a homing beacon you can't find to turn off.