Bad Dreams

Corvan woke with a start to the sound of sniffling.  It took him a few moments to orient himself.  He was on the floor of a cabin in a ship that wasn’t his own; he had let Kit take the bed in the cabin.  Sitting up and wiping the hair out of his face, he let his eyes adjust to the darkness to see Kit huddled up in the bunk.  He seemed to scrunch himself up further when he heard Corvan moving.

“Kit, you okay?” he asked, patting the covers.

There was a long pause as Kit tried to compose himself before lifting the sheet.  Corvan could see that the boy’s eyes were especially wet, and caught a glimpse of tears on his cheeks too.  His expression softened as he got up and climbed onto the bunk.  Kit huddled close to him almost immediately, pressing his head against his chest.  Corvan adjusted the boy’s head a little so that he wasn’t poking him with the horns on the side of his head then wrapped an arm protectively around him.

“Udesii, udesii,” he whispered. “Those dreams again, huh?”

Kit nodded, sniffling.

“I-I try to forget them but I can’t.  I don’t-I don’t want to remember what happened.”

Corvan frowned.  He didn’t want Kit to remember all of that either, but there was no forgetting an experience like that.  He rubbed at the boy’s back, mulling over what he would say.

“I haven’t told anyone this, but I have bad dreams too, Kit—“

He could feel the boy’s eyes suddenly on him, and looked down to see Kit looking confused.

“You do?”

“Yeah.  Remember when I went on that long trip and came back?”

Kit nodded.

“You were different...”

That was one way of putting it.  Being forced to kill his adoptive father and nearly being killed by the man beforehand had shaken Corvan to his very core.  It took him a long while to sort out all of what had happened, and for the seed of the fear he’d become like them with his own adoptive son to start festering before Strak sat him down and gave him a firm talk about children how didn’t always wind up like their parents and that he didn’t have to worry about that.  There was still that other problem of Velean being very much alive and out in the galaxy and a threat to his new family.  Corvan had shuffled her off to the back burner though ever since Grand General Breen took precedence as a more immediate threat with his large bounties on both his and Kit’s heads.

“Uh huh...I had a bad experience,” he continued. “It was pretty scary.  Sometimes I’ll wake up feeling like it’s happening all over again before I remember it’s in the past and that I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

He wiped at Kit’s cheeks.  The kid seemed to be processing all that was being said to him as his eyes looked down to the side, pale eyebrows knitted together.

“The important thing is that you’re okay now.  And if you have another one of those dreams you can always wake me up and I’ll stay up with you until you feel better, an staabi?”

Kit nodded, smiling a little as he met Corvan's eyes.

“If you don’t fall asleep first.”

Corvan narrowed his eyes at Kit, the hand around the boy’s back going to the nape of his neck to tickle it and pull a series of goggles from him.

“You better watch it, buddy.  Maybe I’ll just take over your bed and make you sleep on the floor.”

Kit wriggled, trying to grab at the hand as he laughed.

“You won’t!  You don’t wanna be a chakaar!”

Corvan slapped his hand over the boy’s mouth, putting a finger to his own lips.  Shab, he really needed to watch his language around him if he was picking up terms of abuse like that so quickly.

“K’uur, you need to be quiet.  We’re not the only ones on this ship, remember?”

Kit nodded, then squinted as Corvan felt something warm and wet on his palm.  He drew his hand away with a sneer before wiping it on Kit’s shirt.

“You’re a cheeky little barve, you know that?”

“You taught me.”

“That’s fair.”