"Wake up fifteen, wake up."
He didn't want to wake up. He wanted anything BUT to wake up.
"Come on fifteen I know you're in there."
Soemthing stung his face, and he opened groggy muddled eyes onto the scene before him. The room around him was slate grey, the floor layered in a thin film of filth, mostly blood, slowly being washed away by the slow trickle of water from an open faucet against the far wall.
It stank, and despite his drug addled brain, he knew where he was, and he knew what was going on.
It wasn't often they let him get this lucid. Mostly they just let him sleep, waking them up on occasion and pumping them full of drugs before sending them out to wreak havoc on their enemy.
Gods of War Admiral Abelmen had said.
Gods of war he had called them.
He did not feel like a god.
He hung against the far wall like a piece of heavily used equipment, just waiting for his next deployment.
Fifteen hadn't been allowed to lay down in months.
When had he started calling himself 15?
Probably just force of habit right now.
As soon as his eyes opened and the fog in his mind cleared, the pain came. It wasn't so bad as to cause him to feint or scream, but it was bad enough to make him squirm. It was a hard sort of pain to describe, originating from everywhere in his body and nowhere, like he was on fire, and flames licked over his skin, but.... Less than that because it wasn't enough to make him scream.
Less fire and more embers waiting to be stoked if the levels of drug in his system were to drop too far.
His eyes focused and he looked to the man who had called his name.
Admiral Abelmen stood before him in his once smart-grey uniform now stained darker grey with the continual ashfall outside. The expression on his face was soft, almost tender, but the look in his eyes was....
Was....
Void
Like there was nothing there. Looking into the blackness of his pupils, he felt like he might fall in and drown.
He tried to look away, but the man's hand was in the way cupping the side of his face, and forcing him to look the admiral in the eye. "There you are fifteen, I have another mission for you."
His already crumbling and brittle resolve melted away like cotton candy in a rainstorm. Images flashed through his head, the bloody sky, the sound of ash rolling against his armor, and the cracking of bone underneath his hands.
His mind was filled with visions of dripping orange blood dripping down his hands and onto his feet. He began to breathe heavily, his heart pounding in his chest. He gasped for air that felt as if it was thickening around him, less air and more liquid. His lungs weren't powerful enough to pull it in.
he was hyperventilating now, straining for oxygen that just, wasn't, there.
Clawing for air like a drowning man, his mind was inside a confused haze, he knew it was, but even as he tried to think, rational thought slipped away from him into a land of tired confusion
He shook his head, "I.... I don't want to." It came out as a whimper, a plea, "S-send someone else I- c-can't."
The man stroked the side of his face with all the tenderness that a father might reserve for his child, "Shh, shh its alright, don't cry, don't cry fifteen."
He choked on a sob, "That's not my name." but his protest was meek, week like the pleading of a child as the man stood before him.
"I know."
The man comforted him touching his face and his arms, with comforting hands, and despite.... Despite everything, despite knowing what this man was, he couldn't help but receive a sick sort of comfort from it, from the gentleness of his touch when the world around him was a world of pain. He stroked his hair, gently rubbed his arms, chasing away pain for mere moments, and even while he was afraid of the man, he couldn't help but love him to.
For taking away the pain, even if it was for just a moment.
"I'm here fifteen, everything is going to be alright."
Tears rolled down his face, and onto his neck, "that's not my name." He repeated
The man took a step back, a frown crossing his otherwise kindly face.
The pain flared up again, and he grimaced.
"Why, why do you have to do this. After everything I have done for you." The man's voice rises with anger, "After everything I have done for you, giving back your legs, turning you into a god, keeping you happy, and you treat me like this."
He scrambled feeling the tears rolling from his eyes now in panic, "No I... I didn't mean."
"Didn't you?" He turned away, "Very well then, I will leave and find someone else, since it is quite clear that you do not want my help."
The pain in his body flared as if the embers were being stoked with fresh oxygen, and he broke, begging the man to stay, not to leave him alone.
He cried like a child afraid of the dark, worried about the things hiding under his bed, and slowly the man came back, wiping the tears from his face with a gentle hand. He shook his head like a disappointed parent, "There there, you're alright." His voice grew stern, "I wish you wouldn't do this to me, all of this could have been avoided if you just did what you were told, if you would just behave."
He nodded, "I will sir, I promise."
"Good, fifteen. Now are you ready for another mission?"
Weakly he nodded his head, "Yes sir, yes sir I'm ready."
"That is what I like to hear."
And then his mind goes hazy and his vision is filled with burning red, red sky and black ash and monsters in the dark with a thousand arms.
He fights gods, he defeats gods, he feels like a god, stronger and faster than any mortal man. He can leap to great heights and is powerful enough to tear trees from the ground with his bare hands. He punches through flesh, and rips bones from their resting places. Gore spatters his visor, and the more blood, the more violence the more alive he feels, and he howls to the sky with triumph as bodies fall before him paving the road he builds to hell.
Until the drugs wear off.
Until the god flees from him, and he is left as a man again, stranded in the ash surrounded by the bodies of a hundred dead, blood on his hands. The glory fades and is replaced with nothing but horror. And in those moments he wishes he would just gone, wishes someone was strong enough to stop him, to put him out of the misery that was.... Him.
Why can't he just....
Stop.
Dead eyes stare at him accusatorily from the ground, gold and orange, and yellow boring into his soul, filling his vision up threatening to drown him.
***
He wakes up unable to breathe, the muscles in his chest and torso paralyzed.
He bolts upright clutching at his chest mouth moving though it is unable to take in the air that he so desperately wants. He claws at his chest, slams his fist into his sternum as if he can restart his breathing.... it sort of works.
He gasps but he feels like he is trying to breathe through syrup.
His mind is too confused to take in his surroundings for a moment, only when her voice breaks through into his head does he remember where he is.
"Adam, Adam." Her voice is calm, not urgent, and that helps him.
His eyes are wide struggling to piece together the darkness.
His body rocks involuntarily as if to reassure him that everything is alright.
Her voice comes to him again, but it doesn't echo the words of that man, doesn't promise him that he is going to be ok. She just says, "I'm here, Adam. I'm right here."
His name.
She uses his name.
And that alone pulls him out of it, but still, sitting down he feels like he can't breathe. He tries to stumble upright, but forgets and pitches to the floor like so many other times. He hears covers being thrown away, and then she is at his side, helping him stand. She doesn't insist that he sit, doesn't claim to know what he needs.
She helps him do what he needs to do.
It doesn't make much of a difference, but still standing helps him to feel more in control. He isn't vulnerable lying on his back , and he isn't hanging from a steel frame on the wall.
She wraps her lower arms around his waist to help hold him upright on his wobbly human leg. Her upper arms thread under his and then up, her palms resting against his bare chest. She rests her head against his shoulder and neck, and the cool of her carapace chases back the heat.
It doesn't last long.
Finally he can breathe again.
And his mind is clear.
They don't generally last long these days. Not since she's been here.
Waffles rests on his feet, the first responder to his pain. He has been stroking a hand through her fur though he can't remember when she first appeared.
His breathing evens out and she hears it.
Her voice is slightly muffled, "Are you ok?"
Adam takes a deep breath and nods, "Yeah I, just a.... nightmare."
"Do you want to sit down." She asks.
Still she doesn't insist, he can hear her asking what he needs, what he wants, handing the choice over to him, even though the choice is small.
He is feeling better.
"Yeah that's fine."
She helps him sit, sits next to him.
After a few minutes of rubbing his hands through his hair and shaking off the rest of what he is feeling he insists he's ok to lay back down. She doesn't argue with him, but wraps her arms around him again and pulls the blankets back over them. She is behind him, and by now she knows he feels more comfortable avoiding eye contact after waking up like this. It has something to do with shame, maybe, but he isn't quite sure.
Inside her arms he feels wrapped in a cocoon. It is a comforting feeling, though she worried at one time weather it would feel to constricting to him.
The truth was.
Constricting didn't bother him.
He found the touch of metal comforting.
Because it wasn't the suit that had scared him so much..... it was everything that revolved around the Stele eye suit. If anything the suit was the once source of power and control he had had during those times. She wouldn't like it if she knew about that comparison, so he didn't tell her.
She was warm, and the bed was soft, and it was nothing like what he tried to forget.
He could relax now.
Waffles was curled up to his chest and he sighed.
They were quiet for a long time, but based on her breathing, he knew she was awake.
His head was clear.
"I'd like to talk about it."
There was a pause on the air, and he could sense her surprise even though he couldn't see her. For as long as they had been together, he had never talked to her about what happened to him, never talked to anyone about the particulars. It was all over and done with, there had been a trail, the people who had done the horrible things were put away.
But still he was remembering things.
Still he was chased by visions in the dark, and still he had never confided in her what he saw.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Despite the topic he could sense a smile in her voice, "Than why did you make us lay down. You're only going to get up to pace."
She knew him to well
"Sorry."
"Don't worry."
He sat up rather sheepishly and she crawled over to help him. She knelt on the floor and helped him pull on his prosthetic, a habit she had gotten into since their unarmed fight. In a way he thought it was her way of saying that she was the one who gave him support.
A symbolic gesture.
Drev were all about that sort of thing.
He stood, feeling the steel eye leg whir softly for him.
At one point sunny had worried that the leg was part of the problem, but he assured her it was fine.
He wasn't sure how she would feel if she knew how it made him feel, powerful and back in control again.
Probably not a healthy outlook.
"We can go on a walk."
"I was thinking just that."
Waffles trotted at his side as they made their way up the dark ship hallway.
They didn't hold hands like they might have, and he felt sorry for it. he wished he was more predictable, how was it that having her arms around him was more comforting than holding her hand, which somehow managed to worry him when he was in a state like this.
She didn't try to explain it.
He wished, however, that he could if not to at least give her an explanation.
They made their way onto the viewing deck.
No one was here tonight, which was nice.
He looked out at the stars and she stood at his shoulder, not touching, but close enough to let him know she was there.
"I know what you're going to say, but I'm sorry to wake you up."
She opened her mouth.
"Yes, yes, I know" His voice was more.... Casual than he thought possible, as if he was completely fine.
He supposed he had years of practice.
She didn't push the matter, "You wanted to talk."
He paused for a moment, but let his words shatter the silence, "Do you know a lot of people think the steel eye operation only lasted a few days?"
He could hear the surprise in her voice, "Really?'
He nodded, "They seem to think that steel eye happened and we just tore through you all in one go.... I suppose it makes sense, The last Battle of Ash was the big one where the Drev finally surrendered, and that's really the only one they talk about, but I mean steel eye went on for months before it was over."
She listened quietly.
He knew she knew most of this, or at least the timeline, but he felt it helped him get his thoughts straight.
"There is a lot about steel eye that no one really knows..... Even after the litigation, and the vido evidence.... They still don't have quite the whole story. Yeah, it was bad, but there were small things about it that just.... make it so much worse when I Think back on it."
He let the silence draw out, and then turned to loo kat her, "I've been lying to you..... been lying o everyone." He looked down.
"I remember more than I claim to remember, but I thought that.... I lied and said that I don't remember much of what happened because I was worried.... That you would see me differently if you knew I was lucid for a greater majority of it, and that I can still remember things that happened when I was drugged.'
She was silent.
He didn't want to look her in the face but knew he had gone to far to stop now.
"It was odd.... Sometimes I feel like steel eye was.... Meant to feel like a cult almost." He lifted his head, "Do you know what a cult is?"
Her eyes were difficult to read in the dark lighting, and she half shook her head, "Only in passing, it is not soemthing that happens on my planet, or at least that I have heard of."
"Well.... Its generally when a person or a mall group of people uses certain tactics to completely control a group of people. Financial control, belief control, isolating them from their families, you know its actually like an abusive relationship but scaled up to an entire group of people. First they Isolate you from family and friends, generally they seize your assets so you don't have an monetary way to leave. Often they are strict and use drugs, or hard labor to keep your mind tired, and then they alternate between abuse and what's called love bombing. It happens in both cults and abusive relationships, where they do something horrible to you, and then they come back later and they lavish you with love or attention or gifts and say they are sorry. Sometime during this process the person adapts to survive the situation, their mind changes and they start to believe what these people or person is saying until even if they could escape they chose not to. They take away your identity to help do this. "
He turns to look out at the stars, "They never called me by my name you know."
He rolled the obsidian ring around his finger, "Called me fifteen, Unit fifteen. Never used my name, even though I begged them to, but then they would get angry, and threaten to leave me alone, and I would beg them to come back, and I would forgive them. They used drugs and human contact as reward for good behavior. Sometimes they were so gentle.... So caring that it was impossible to hate them even though I knew what they were. I forgave them time and time again." He sighed, "I was wearing the steel eye armor so I could have broken all of them in half like glow sticks, but I didn't.... could have escaped at any time.... But I didn't because that's what they do to you, they don't build walls physically but they build them inside your head."
When she took his hand, he didn't stop her.
He was feeling back to normal now, with the words finally in the air.
"There was more to what they did to us than anyone knows, but at this point, doing anything about it would be redundant. We sort of just have to move on."
He stepped back into her, let her wrap her arms around him again as he stared out at space, her chin resting atop his head.
As he thought his eyes narrowed slightly.
"You know, I think we were wrong."
"About what."
"The void having just found us."
He felt her lift her head in surprise, "Why do you say that."
"I think, in some way or another its always had its hold on us. Light and dark have been in opposition inside man for a long time. It didn't just start now. This war is far grander than simply the players that stand on the table."
"Waxing poetic I see."
He rested a hand against one of her arms.
"Poetic or not poetic, still doesn't change the fact that the void has been here all along, the only difference is now it has a face."