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His old life fades and the nightmares return.
He doesn't call it the "real world" anymore, the life they'd lived on the other side of the divide, before Senna, before Everworld, and he tries not to think that it's because he prefers to believe that maybe it never was real, that maybe this was where he was meant to be all along. The others cling to it, in their own ways, April with her stubborn insistence that the version of her from that reality is the true one, Jalil with his unwavering logic, Christopher with his pop culture references that only make himself laugh, but David…David tosses it off like a cocoon, like it was just the first step in his development that he is more than happy to leave behind.
Until he sleeps, and he dreams, and he wakes wild-eyed and panting.
"Hey." Christopher's voice is hoarse, breaking in the quiet of the room, and David doesn't quite flinch away from the hand that lands warm and solid against his arm, but it takes all his effort to stay stiff and frozen under it instead, not lashing out at Christopher, not reaching for his sword. As the memories fade and Christopher shifts beside him, David expects him to make some crack, to cut through the fear and the tension with some barb that will leave David somewhere between annoyed and amused, but instead he just pats David's arm a couple of times and lets his hand fall back against the sheets. "'t's cool," he mumbles into the pillow. "You're good."
He doesn't say you're safe, because that's not a guarantee he can make, but he curls closer, until David can feel his warmth pressing against his side. Christopher waits until he feels David relax back into the bed before he continues. "I get 'em too." His head tilts against David's back, hair tickling the back of his neck. "Sucks."
"Sucks," David agrees, voice hollow.
They're a mirror of April and Jalil across the room, April fitted against Jalil, his arm around her almost protectively, and there's a part of David that wants to shift, that wants to take the place of a barrier between Christopher and the outside world, between all of them and the horrors that might be just outside their door, but he's so tired. He's exhausted, and he's that person every day, all day, when they're awake. The one with the sword, with the plan. General Davideus, his mind mocks, and the voice is Senna's.
He shivers, and closes his eyes, and falls asleep with Christopher filling the space between him and the door.
_______________
"Ale!" Christopher declares, tipping back in his chair to offer a tankard to David, and manages to not react at all to the withering look David gives him. "Or not! More for me." He takes a giant gulp from the glass, smacking his lips obnoxiously, and turns back to the table, laughing at a rowdy tale being told a few seats down. Jalil is across from him, deep in a conversation about the physics of dragon flight, and David wants to join in, wants to strategize, but his eyelids are heavy, his limbs feeling like they're stalling out as he reaches for another bite of food that he's not actually hungry for. He looks around for April, and doesn't see her.
"I'm going to bed," he declares to no one, and Christopher salutes him mockingly.
It's an effort to get moving, to stand and gather his strength, and more of an effort to make it up the stairs to their room, push open the door. He wants nothing more than to collapse face down on the bed lengthwise, leaving no room for Christopher, sprawling out and sleeping like the dead, but April's already there, sitting on her bed brushing out her long hair, knees curled up, looking quiet and content and like exactly the opposite of the overwhelming chaos downstairs. David meets her eyes and somehow has enough shame that he can't quite bring himself to lay flat out, instead making the effort to turn his back and change out of his everyday outfit into slightly more ragged clothes for sleeping, kicking off his shoes, carefully setting his weapons and belongings beside the bed like he's functional, like he's able to care for himself, like he doesn't just want to curl into a ball and sleep for a million years.
"Had enough of the party?" she asks sympathetically, and he answers by finally flopping onto the bed and letting out a low groan. She laughs, pretty and light, and agrees, "Yeah." She swings her legs off her bed, turning to look at him, and when he rolls his head to meet her eyes, he sees her brow faintly furrowed in the dim light, expression shadowed with concern. "You okay?" she asks. It's more matter of fact than he expects, informational rather than personal, and he nods against the pillow, because yes, in all objective senses, he's fine, he can do his job, do what needs to be done, and that's what she's asking, isn't it?
"Fine," he says. It's a little too short, a little too clipped, but to say, I'm good, or even Yeah, I'm okay, might be a lie, and lying to each other does none of them any good.
She hums quietly in response, and wraps her arms around herself, shivering. She gets up, paces across the room to grab a warmer shirt that might be Jalil's, and shrugs into it. She looks out the window, listening to the echoes from downstairs, and David lets his eyes close while her back is turned, drifting comfortably on the quiet sounds of distant revelry, and the even quieter noise of her footsteps as she crosses the room again. He feels her tugging lightly at the sheet over him, and makes a quiet questioning noise, not quite opening his eyes.
"Scoot," she says, already settling in beside him, pulling the blankets around her, and he shifts away, rolling to look up at her curiously. She tilts back, letting her head rest against the headboard, and hums along quietly to the faint music from below. "I like this one," she says, and when he doesn't reply, she starts to sing along quietly. He thinks she might be making up some of the words, but it's nice, the feeling of her next to him, the slow soothing rhythm of her voice, and when he closes his eyes again, her fingers brush into his hair, moving in time to her voice, a pattern that sends a pleasing rush of tingles down his back.
He doesn't remember falling asleep, but he also doesn't remember Christopher and Jalil finally stumbling into bed, and more importantly, he doesn't remember his dreams.
_______________
"On the road again…" Christopher's singing as he sets out his bedroll and David rolls his eyes, but he spreads out his own blanket alongside Christopher's like it's expected, like there's nowhere else it would go.
"I'll take first watch," he says unnecessarily, hand on his sword, and none of them respond, because of course he will. Instead, April starts singing along with Christopher, and Jalil settles in to start a fire.
David circles for a while, pacing while the others settle down, somehow too restless from their day of travel to sit. Christopher and Jalil bicker about cooking for a while, and their voices growing quiet is David's indication that the food is done. He wanders back in their direction and meets April halfway, headed toward him with food.
"Here," she says, stuffing an unidentified meat product into his hand along with some bread from her pack. "According to Christopher, it's cooked wrong, but it's cooked, so." She shrugs.
He smiles gratefully. "Thanks," he offers, and she waves over her shoulder as she heads back to the camp.
He keeps pacing, until their voices fade out into nothing but the quiet crackling of the fire, and when he settles in beside it, Jalil is the only one still up, poking at the logs and looking up to nod in David's direction companionably.
They sit quietly for a long time, listening to the faint noise of Christopher snoring in the background, until Jalil looks over at him and says, "You always take first watch." It's not a question, so David doesn't respond right away, but Jalil lets it hang there between them for long enough that the silence grows uncomfortable.
"Yeah," David finally agrees, leaving the so? unspoken.
Jalil shrugs. "I mean, strategically speaking, if you're looking to be the most useful, we're much more likely to be attacked later in the night, once the fire's out and we're mostly asleep."
David frowns. "Did you want to change the watch order, or…?"
"No," Jalil replies. "I like late night watches. I feel like I sleep better if I take a break in the middle, like long naps. It was just a comment."
"I don't," David says shortly, and Jalil looks at him steadily until he continues. He doesn't want to, but something about the quiet around them, the even way that Jalil talks, like he's not judging, just considering, makes him want to say more. "I take first watch because if I wake up in the middle of the night, there's basically a zero percent chance of me getting back to sleep. I'm not doing it to be useful, I'm doing it to be selfish."
"Ah." Jalil nods. "Makes sense. How are the nightmares?" He says it matter of factly, like it's just a part of life, and maybe it is, here, in this mind-warping place with its improbable laws of physics and horrifying nightmares tucked away into all the hidden corners of the world. "You seem to be sleeping better lately."
"Yeah," David agrees, noncommittal. He is, and he's not quite sure why, and doesn't want to look at it too closely, doesn't want to scare it away. He falls asleep with them around him, and it's somehow comforting, not in the sense that they can protect him any more than he can protect himself, but just knowing that they're there, knowing that of all the things that are unpredictable in this world, he can expect to wake up to the feeling of Christopher warm and grumpy beside him, Jalil short-tempered and sharp edged until he's fed, April yawning hugely with her hair a rumpled mess around her face. It's not much, but it's something, one solid predictable factor in this world, and it's enough that David can close his eyes and know that when the nightmares come, he'll wake from them to this instead. "I guess I am," he replies, belated, distracted, and Jalil nods like maybe some of David's thoughts came through.
"Good," he says simply, and stands, stretching. "Guess I should take this chance to get some sleep, huh?" He claps a hand to David's shoulder. "Wake me, okay? When you need to."
David nods, and Jalil hovers there for a moment, awkward, until David reaches up to tap at his hand. "Yeah," he agrees. It's significant, somehow, the way Jalil looks down at him, the same way that Christopher curls against him in the night, the same way that April's fingers feel in his hair when she sings him to sleep, and David watches him pace away into the darkness, listens to the quiet rustling of them settling down to sleep together, and he feels oddly content.
In this place where he sits in the darkness, surrounded by gods and terrors, the night noises as likely to belong to banshees and sirens as to be squirrels and bats, he smiles into the fire, and when he falls asleep later that night to the feeling of April and Christopher pressed on either side of him, he closes his eyes and isn't afraid to dream.