ELBINA

Chapter 27

"So, you have nightmares too?" I jolted my head up from my hands, I didn't even hear the lock of the door go.

I was still breathing heavy, the panic attack slowly ebbing away when Fallen closed the door behind him. He leans against the wood with his arms crossed remaining quiet as he waited for me to respond.

"Erm... Yeah." I wiped the tears from under my eyes, gulping down hard to stop any more surfacing.

"Are they always that bad?"

I groan a little in embarrassment. "You heard?"

He nodded at me slowly, I mumbled a sorry before pushing the covers off my legs. The bed was damp with my sweat despite how cold the room was, the early morning frost left a sheen on the window. It was easily distinguishable with the daylight that streaked through the window, the trees surrounding us frosted over.

I look back at Fallen when I hear movement, he seems uncomfortable, like he's not sure what to say to me.

Maybe he didn't want to make it worse for me.

Either way, I can't sit in the awkward silence for much longer. "They weren't too bad for a long time, but, they've gotten worse again."

"Makes sense with everything." I nodded along with him.

The weight of the silence sat heavy on my shoulders. For a moment, I take in a big breath just to focus on how big I could expand my lungs, how I could feel the muscles between each of my ribs ache from the tension.

Fallen cleared his throat from the door.

"Do you ever have dreams about our parents?"

I shake my head.

"No." His head dropped down away from my stare. "Except maybe one? It's pitch black, I'm always curled up in the corner and there's just this slither of light in front of me. I can't see anything, I just, I hear people shouting. They're always shouting and fighting." He gave me this weird expression, it sounded stupid. "I know it doesn't sound scary, but it feels so real, and they keep saying my name. My first name, that is."

His face morphed into realisation, sadness mixing in through his blue eyes.

"It's a memory, isn't it? It's not just a dream." I say the minute I see his expression shift.

"That would be the cupboard."

I didn't know what to say to that.

I'd had that nightmare on and off for many years, not that I got what was happening. It explains why I'm so scared of it, whenever I have that nightmare, it takes days to shift the feeling. It makes me scared to fall asleep, along with the multitude of other reasons to be afraid to go to sleep.

Fallen finally leans off the wall before awkwardly helping me out of the bed.

Helping to twist me around so my feet planted on the floor by the bed. It was so strange... all of this. How was I supposed to react, one minute he's like this, the next he's aggressive and authoritarian?

I remembered his words when he first entered, speaking up when he pulled up my trouser leg to analyse my swollen knee.

"You said too?"

He didn't look up, only looking at the bruised skin around the joint. Pressing his palm against it and feeling the heat still coming from it. The primary bruising spread along the inside of my leg where it directly hit the rock.

"Huh?" He mumbled.

"You said 'you have nightmares too?'" After a while of looking at my knee, he pulled down the material and stood up. My head followed.