Sokeefe AU: The Farmer's Daughter

Part Seventeen

Keefe slept straight through the night.

This surprised him, for a few reasons. One, because he rarely slept at all, anymore. Mostly he layed in bed and stared at the ceiling, trying not to think, trying not to live at all, as the darkness crowded in on either side of him and his vision tunneled.  

Two, on the nights where he did manage to fall asleep before his hands did, his sleep was accompanied by nightmares, plagued by horrors vivid or distant, and he almost always woke ina  cold sweat, shaking, sometimes crying.  

But, shockingly, when he collapsed into bed just past midnight, he had promptly fallen straight to sleep, not waking up until five o'clock the next morning. 

Besides the early wake up, he felt well rested for the first time in a while.

Embarrassed, scared, sad, but rested. 

He tried to fall back asleep for a little while, but gave up after just ten minutes and crawled out of bed, untangling his body from the cover.

His socked feet hit the floor with a dull thump, which for some reason made him cringe.

He hailed himself to his feet, tired limbs moving sluggishly as he went about his room, sluggishly moving to the bathroom.

Standing in front of the mirror, he examined the burn on his tongue. It was aching, dully, and distantly he realized it probably needed more medicine. 

Staring at his burn, and the bruise forming on the side of his cheek, his mind jumped to the night before.

He had known it was stupid. He had known Sophie probably wouldn't believe him, or, worse, wouldn't care, but he had told her anyway, admitted to his mother being the one to burn him.

Looking back, he wanted to bang his head against a wall. How stupid did he have to be to tell her that? She probably thought he was lying, or possibly that he deserved it. He had been rude to his mother, and his father, after all. 

Just the thought of Sophie trying to speak to him about it made him cringe, and he silently prayed that she wouldn't. That she would ignore it and keep it a secret until, if ever, he was ready to do something about it.

What had even possessed him to tell her, he wanted to know? He had just had the undeniable urge, an overwhelming feeling of this isn't right take over his mind until the words spilled out of his burned mouth, but now the feeling was gone and he was only filled with a dull sense of horror.

Grimacing, he caught his eyes in the mirror. 

They looked hollow.

Dead.

He shuddered and turned away, pretending to ignore the goosebumps spreading on his arms. He pulled the door to his bathroom shut and fled back into the bedroom, heart pounding irrationally fast. 

He gulped in air and settled back on his bed, putting his head between his knees and breathing. 

It seemed, lately, that even a simple task like that took too much effort.

When his head finally cleared and he was able, for the most part, to think clearly, Keefe pulled himself to his feet and moved slowly around the room that wasn’t really his, changing and attempting to pull himself together for the day. 

At five thirty, with the sun just beginning to creep above the horizon, Keefe crept out of his room, gently thumping down the stairs and to the kitchen, careful so as not to wake anyone who might still be asleep.