Found and Forgotten

Chapter 12

Zeta POV

I wake up at some point in the middle of the night, seeing Xander as a pillow. Hmm. No nightmare. Weird. I would never have guessed he would be the one to comfort me. I didn't want my brothers to find out about this. Now I'm sure he will tell them all. Oh well. I guess they were going to learn eventually. I just don't want them to pity me. On the bright side, it looks like I got another brother back. I probably should stay mad at him for how he was ignoring me, but the need for family love is causing me to forgive and forget more easily. 

I decide to go to my room and sleep in my bed. I will deal with the other problems in them morning. I drift off into what I hope remains a nightmare free night. One can only hope.

Xander POV

I wake up and start to panic seeing that Zeta is gone and I was actually cuddling a blanket. I see she is no where in the room. I quickly go to look for her. The kitchen is empty, so I decide to check her room. I am filled with relief when I see her sleeping on her bed. I'm about to turn and go to sleep in my own room, when I hear her breathing start to quicken. In an instant, she is thrashing in the bed. What is happening? She starts to say "Please stop. No." followed by a scream. It sounds like she's in pain.

I begin calling her name, pleading with her to wake up. I am about to try shaking her awake, when she springs up, effectively headbutting me. HARD. I look at Zeta seeing she is panting still calming down a bit, while holding her head. 

"Xander" she looks at me. "What the hell was that? And is your head okay?" I exclaim. "Just a bad dream, and yeah it only hurts a little. Sorry about that. did I wake you?" 

"That wasn't just a bad dream Zeta. I woke up to see you weren't around and came to look at you. When I got here, you started thrashing and screaming in your sleep. I'll ask again. What was that?" 

"I was reliving how I got the scar you saw earlier today. Don't worry, theyre usually much worse than this. The headbutt distracted me" she tries to joke. I will kill that guy. Wait, how often does this happen?

"Zeta, how often are you waking up like this?" 

Zeta POV

I decide to just tell the truth. I'm too tired to lie, and lying is exhausting anyway. "This dream is one of my most frequent nightmares" I admit. "I probably relive that night once a week. But, I have a nightmare pretty much every night. I usually only sleep a few hours a night."

I don't think he knows how to react. "What are the others about?" He asks, clearly taking advantage of my willingness to share. My adoptive family helped me to find that talking about stuff helps even if I hate it, so might as well get this over with. "Other memories from my past. I didn't have the best childhood. Lately, I've been reliving the crash a lot. Losing my family and best friend over and over again has made sleeping even harder. "

"I'm sorry that has all happened to you. Can I hug you?" he asked.  Honestly, a hug would be helpful, so I nod. We sit there in a silence for a moment.  "Can you tell me how you got that scar?" he asks. Panic surges in me, but I know that he will find out eventually, so I start: "When I was twelve, my foster father was an addict. He would come home drunk and high, and when he did, he was extremely paranoid. I would try to hide, but this night he happened to see me. His paranoia made him think I was out to get him. I was twelve. He always had his favorite knife on him. He attacked me, kicking and hitting me, I was used to that though. I wasn't ready for him to take out that knife and carve my stomach. There was so much blood." I was shaking by the end. Xander held me tighter. "It's okay. He cant hurt you here. We will protect you." Xander keeps whispering to me until I calm down. 

"Can we move on now?" I whisper. "Almost. Thank you for telling me all of this. You are so strong Zeta." That feels nice to hear, but I don't believe it for a second. "Just one more thing. I kind of have to tell our brothers about this. Do you want to tell them or do you want me to tell them for you?" I really don't want to go through this again. I know talking to it can help, but doing it repeatedly so soon sounds like too much. "You can just tell them. But wait till they get back, I don't want to mess with their trip. Also, I don't want this to change anything. I hate pity. " He nods.

We sit for a while and I start to yawn. Panic and crying are really exhausting.  "Why don't you try to get more sleep?" Xander asks. I hesitate. I don't want another nightmare. "Can you stay? The only times the nightmares didn't come was earlier in the cinema room and when I fell asleep watching movies with the twins." "Of course I can." He reassures. And so I closed my eyes to get a few more hours of sleep.

Xander POV

I sit for a while, playing on my phone while Zeta sleeps. She looks so peaceful for once. We all just wrote off her usual zombie-like state as grief, but that was only part of it. She looks so peaceful sleeping, it nice to see. I get a text from Massimo. "How is it going at home?" he asks "Okay. Cleared things up with Z. Found some information about her past. We are having a family meeting when you guys get home." I reply. Immediately, I get a call for him. I quickly decline  the call to avoid waking Zeta. I text him back instead. "Zeta is sleeping. I will call you later."

"Do we need to come home?" He texts back. I let him know to finish his trip, as per Zeta's wishes.

Zeta wakes up a while later. I tell her to get ready while I go make breakfast. I go downstairs and make simply scrambled eggs and toast. Cooking is not my specialty and I know Zeta doesn't usually have a big appetite. I fear the worst now that I got a glimpse at her past. She comes down and we eat in mostly silence.

"What do you want to do today?" I ask her.

"You don't have to babysit me. I'll be fine. You can do what you want." She still thinks she's burdening me.

"I'm not babysitting you. I told you before avoiding you was a mistake. I want to spend time with you." I wanted to reassure her.

"I don't know. What do you want to do? she asks. Hmm I don't know. Most of my free time is fighting or training, which I'm sure she wants no part of. What did we used to do when she was younger?

"Go get your switch. I think its time for another one of our Pokemon video game days like when we were younger." I state.

Her eyes lit up. "You're the reason I love those games so much?" 

"Yep. we used to stay up all night playing" I tell her.

And so we each started a new game, and played the entire day, relaxing and joking like there were no problems in the world.