Taken • Choi San •

Memories

Cold sweat dripped down her forehead.

The cold was seeping into my skin from the hard concrete below that surely had never seen sunlight before.

A distraught whimper tore out of her mouth.

Whimpers filled the air, thicker than any other sound before and each individual voice as faceless as my own in the darkness.

Her hand flung out, colliding harshly and painfully with a warm torso beside her. A confused and disgruntled groan added to the phantom memories of the others in her head.

A man, face masked, stepped into view. He hadn't needed the mask that donned his slim face, it was too dark to make anything out beyond shapes.

"Baby? It's okay, wake up." Hands, gentler than those in the dream, shook her shoulder. Forced out of the cage of memories her mind surfaced into awareness and her distressed eyes flung open, first finding the face of the boy beside her.

"San." She breathed, voice catching on his name as he reached with concerned hands to cup her face. She leaned into his touch, closing her eyes and this time sinking into nothing but black and darkness.

His gentle hum, the one he always used to help calm her down after a dream like this, filled the air as his hands moved to her hair, stroking in familiar patterns that drew my mind out of the cold room where everybody screamed but couldn't be heard.

"You're here, with me." He repeated gently between his soft hums, warm chest rising and falling evenly. Strange that him being calm helped to ground her thoughts.

At some point the blanket had tangled mercilessly around her legs and with the same slow movements that people used around frightened animals San began to untangle it, one hand still resting on her arm as an anchor.

She watched, numbly assisting here and there by lifting or shifting her leg until it was able to be discarded beside them.

"The same one?" He questioned lightly, pressing occasional and feather soft kisses to her forehead. She worried at her lip with her teeth, fingers clenching and unclenching in front of her.

"The same." She affirmed, only vaguely surprised to hear the exhaustion and inner turmoil she felt barely reflected in her voice. She was so used to feeling it that it no longer felt like anything.

San sighed, reaching for the lamp switch and flooding the room with the gentle warm yellow light. It hit his angled face, highlighting the high slope of his nose and messy nest of blonde locks that his hair always was after sleeping.
The digital clock beside the lamp read 5:36am, about two hours before they normally woke up.

Dark circles shadowed San's eyes as he looked over at her, and yet there was no anger or even exasperation in his gaze; just concern.

"Try to sleep again, I'll be right here." He said, attempting to knudge her back down into the relative comfort of the sheets and she protested with a groan, shaking her head at him.

"You're the one who needs sleep, I'll go take a walk and wake you up when I get back." He frowned at her words, mouth opening to argue before she was even finished and she placed a finger against his lips, earning the first indignant stare of the morning from him. "Really San, I'm going to feel worse if you stay up on my behalf, and either way I'm going for a walk. So if you sleep then you're doing us both a favour."

For a moment he remained tensed, still clearly ready to argue. And then like a flame on a match running out of stick to burn, he slumped in defeat, nodding.

"Fine. But you wake me up the second you walk back in the door. Then we'll make breakfast together." He said tightly, fixing her with a serious gaze. It was rare that he dropped his dimpled smile or said something with enough intensity to make her skin shiver, so she nodded quickly.