Behind closed doors

Sleepless Nights

Summary:
Carmen knew insomnia as well as she did a bait and switch, it would be only fitting that she would lend a hand to Shadowsan, as he encountered his own blunders of sleep poverty.

Notes:
Forever by Mother Mother
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Shadowsan hasn't been sleeping.

He knew it well. He knew the sores in his eyes and ache of his shoulders just as well as he knew his own haircut or favourite flavour of tea. He knew that with every waking second these symptoms worsened. That his features darkened. Shadowsan also knew that giving into the insomnia pounding through his brain would be just as unhelpful as the coffee he had chugged to pass through the day now behind him. Neither made falling asleep any easier.

He had tried. He had stared at the ceiling in his nightwear with his muscles coaxed into relaxation all but one, for hours. His brain. It was the oddball in his body, the usually relaxed and emotionally intelligent fibre of his being had rebelled. Nowadays it was constantly ajar, constantly pondering facts it would never conquer, constantly questioning things he would never find the answer to. Constantly moving, and constantly awake. It was killing him.

Shadowsan reopens his eyes in surrender, finding himself tiredly glaring at the inactive light in the centre of his ceiling. As if that would either help or stop contributing to his struggle. Even a death by utter lack of energy would be an easier life than this one, he mused.

He'd just need to get to the point of physically collapsing, then that sleep, he's sure, will be enough to restore order, and maybe later sensibility. Because the more his brain spiralled, the less he slept, and the more he spiralled. It was an insane loop he once thought himself to be above. It was a ridiculous fate that had gauged him from the inside out, taxing his every strain and ridiculing every strategy, everything he'd put into place over his life felt as if it was crumbling before his eyes. Because he couldn't sleep. Because insomnia had its hooks in his weighted shoulders like some kind of vampire, because he was a failure, because of that one mistake holding his brain captive...

Shadowsan was a man of memories. That was most of what had set his head ablaze. It'd been some nightmare too daft for him to even remember just minutes ago that kept his eyes open and body sore. Some stupidly concocted guilt trip curtesy of his brain of which maybe— truly had nothing better to do than torment him. At least, it seemed that way. There was something it was getting at, something itching through him, that day implanted forever liminal and on the fence between forgotten and focused memories. Every time he willed himself to forget it would be dredged right back up from the corners of his mind at the worst moments. And he supposed it had gotten to the point of unbearable sleep poverty.

Because it was yet another problem he could not solve. There was a question buzzing through his skull that he couldn't bear to face one more time because he did not know its answer.

Shadowsan's eyes are half lidded, and his breaths feel so hollow that they're followed much too quickly with yawns. He sits up, with his eye bags dragging before him on the floor and a frown that could kill anyone who dared to cross it. The man was hardly in a state of alertness. He feared that if this progressed any longer capers would suffer, and he could not do that to Carmen, or the team. Not with the urgency that lay upon the caper next.

Because tomorrow was the night he could right this mistake... so of course proper sleep was nowhere to be found.

Shadowsan brings his feet towards the gentle stream of carpet below his bed, and sighs. Something deep and painful echoes from his body and bounces through his room, looking for someone else to infect. The man stands, his feet are not now the elegance nor stealth he should keep but rather a dragging bordering on personal disgust. Still with the utter silence that had been hammered into his brain until it was default, Shadowsan opens his door and slips away from the warmth of his shuttered away room into the exposing cool of the hallway. The night glazes over him as if it had been expecting him, though perhaps not expecting for his slippers or even for a better change of clothes to be MIA, given where he was likely headed.