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Aeffa dreams of reeds, the kind that grew in the fields she used too play in, that grew tall, their stalks sturdy and green, reaching towards the sky as if begging for more of the salt-laiden air that should've killed all it touched. Through the floorboards the.grass creeped, right where her mothers body layed, stained with all that is red and unholy.
She dreams of smoke on the air, the sticky smell of burnt pine sap mixing with burning flesh. She can see the ash in the air, floating like a cursed form of snow that crept its way into her lungs.
Fire. Smoke. A burning body. Her little sister at her side, Aeffa is covering her eyes as to not allow the five year-old Bo to be scarred by the image of their home on fire with their only parent still inside. Tearing back too reality, she wakes, she wakes to rumbling of an engine. That incessant, godforsaken rumbling.
No smoke. No fire. No Bo. Only steel and the red of the lights above her.
She looks at the Clock on the nightstand, squinting at the harsh, blue light. 02:45
She sighs, before mustering the strength too push herself up. Her ribs protest against the unwanted movement, the damage from the countless times of being obliterated then rebuilt before being broken again.
"Shit..." She murmurs, running a hand through her hair.
It was a bad week, Rex had swiped her cigarettes, thus she had resorted to picking at her thumbs and now they had been picked raw, to the point where she couldnt even bend them if she tried. They burned, the skin on the joint on both fingers was bloody and an angry red. She gives a pityful little whimper as she curled herself up with her hands tangled in her hair. Pain shoots up her hand as a hair pulls as the the raw skin.
Sitting up, she quietly pulls the drawer out from under her bunk, and pulls out the roll of athletic tape, then wrapping her thumbs up in the sticky fabric. She lets her eyes close once more.
Memories of Firesmokeburningbodiesashlikesnowintheair cause her to rip her eyes open once more, the heels of her palms digging against her eyes.
"Sanne?" The voice triggers every instinct she has, and she reaches for her blaster on her hip that isn't there.
The figure's hands raise, a closer look provides his identity.
Onyx, the Corporal she did an Op with not too long ago, the curly hair clipped in a short mohawk is easy to find even in the dark.
"Fuck..." She breathes, "You scared the living hell outta me"
The corporal makes his way over, sitting on the cot across from her that once was occupied by shiny but as of three weeks ago had been rendered empty.
“That's not an easy thing too do" he says. She nips are her lip, the taste of blood coating her tongue as she tears a fresh gash in the dry skin.
Ashlikesnowsmokeontheairburning.
"Aeffa." Her eyes snap up again, welling with tears,
"Name five things you can see"
"W-what?"
"Look around, name five things you see" She does so, rattles off what she can see.
The pinup poster above Fives' bunk.
Her kama at the end of her bunk.
The clock.
Onyx, his helmet.
the stack of data pads next too Echo's bunk.
Slowly her mind comes back too earth, she wipes the tears from her eyes, looking away from the trooper in embarrassment.
She's a trained killer for fucks sake.
"Wanna tell me what's going on?" He asks "Talking helps.Believe me"
She shoots him a glare of death, dark brown eyes carving a deep pit into his soul.
"...Or we could just sit here."
On a normal night, she wouldn't have tolerated this, experience had taught her that having someone, "watch over" while she slept never ended well, but she knew Onyx was someone she could trust. And soon, she drifts back too the reeds, back home.
No fire came too find her.