Waiting For Sunrise - The Books Of Beginning AU

70. Rafe's Story

"It's not gonna rain or snow tonight, is it?"

"What?" Rafe, who had been staring off into space, turned to look at Marta. 

The girl seemed oblivious to the fact that she had startled him, and carried on conversationally, "Me and Tom and a few others were gonna get the laundry hung out to dry, but if it's gonna rain tonight, we'll wait 'till tomorrow."

"Oh. Right." Rafe rubbed at his temples. "I don't think it's supposed to rain. Go ahead and hang it up."

"Alright. Thanks!" Marta skipped off, leaving him alone once more, forehead in his hand. 

Rafe sighed heavily. His head ached something fierce, his limbs and eyelids drooped. After his nightmare, he had tossed and turned all night, unable to get proper sleep, and now he was reaping the effects. (He was fortunate that the most strenuous of today's workload had been shouldered by others, Addie and Tom and Polly all conspiring to relieve his burden, the same as they'd do if he were sick, while Kate - who had, fortunately, fared a bit better than him on the sleeping front - kept the children from collapsing into chaos, as they were so wont to do when unsupervised.)

He shot a glance out the nearest window and saw the rosy fingers of the dusk beginning to curl around the city. Had the day slipped away so fast? He hadn't been paying attention as he wandered through the church, attending instinctively to this or that, his mind shrouded in fog all the while. And whenever he closed his eyes for more than a second, he saw, as if tattooed on the insides of his eyelids, smoke and flames and, most of all, blood. 

(He heard the echoes of the Savages, screaming, in his ears. He felt a phantom crowd shoving him, roughly, wherever he walked. He smelt the flames that had engulfed his dreaming world. He tasted the ash.)

The terrible image of Kate, wounded and soaked in her own blood, dying in his arms, was too much to bear. Yet he could not put it from his mind, nor could he stop his dreams and memories from blurring into one, reminding him of the violence he'd seen and lived in the waking world, especially the three most bloody moments. He felt the ghost of a blow striking his cheek, the long gone impression of a butcher's knife in his (then small, small and so soft) hand. He felt grim responsibility like a peach pit settling in his stomach, brought upon by the wails of a six-year-old girl who had only just cheated death. 

"I can't," he murmured to himself, just as he had last night. "I can't do it."

Even though it was only a dream, the fear it brought upon him, the memories it surfaced, those were all too real. It had cracked his composure as much as true danger, like the anti-magic riots and the heavy, long days when the Wibberlys were missing, did. 

Rafe got to his feet. He needed to do something. He needed to say something. If he sat here a moment longer, he might go mad. 

He needed to talk about his memories, to tease out the root of why he was so afraid, before it strangled him. He needed to claw the rot from his own mind, else he'd never sleep again. So, as if in a trance, he walked the halls of the church, looking for the one person he felt safe showing the darkest, most primal bits of himself to.

He found her tidying, dusting shelves and organizing stolen trinkets. His heart ached at the sight of her, alive, unharmed, not even a drop of blood on her. He wanted nothing more for her to stay that way, for all of them to stay as they were, together and content and healthy. If he could gather them, the whole gang, all the people he loved, into his arms and shield them that way, he would, in a heartbeat. 

"Kate," Rafe said, and his voice came out as a rasp.

She glanced over at him, kind as ever, and mildly concerned as well. "Hiya Rafe. What's going on?"