Work Text:
SONA
I shoot up out of bed, gasping for a breath I don’t need. I don’t need it because I am metal and glass and no one knows where it ends and I begin. It is inside me it is inside me get it out get it out GET IT OUT—
ERIS
We all sleep lightly now. If we’d ever slept deeply. But even in this fucking perfect home, in this world that’s been free of deities for months, we still sleep like we will need to leave at a moment’s notice.
So all of us wake up when Sona does.
I’m not especially worried at first. Nightmares are also a common occurrence here. I start to reach for her—
“NO NO NO NO GET IT OUT OUT OUT OUT!” Sona screeches.
Recently, she’s been slipping back into her Badlands accent every so often, even her tongue knowing she is safe now. This is not the case now. Every terrified word spilling from her mouth has the snippy, controlled tone of Godolia.
And she claws, her nails tearing at her skin, at her eye.
I pull her hands apart, pinning them to her sides as she writhes, falling back to the bed.
“Glitch. Hey, Sona ,” I say firmly, loudly. “You’re safe. They don’t control you anymore. You are Bellsona Steelcrest. You're human.”
This was around the part where Sona should’ve stopped struggling, instead letting me take care of any injuries she might’ve caused herself and eventually, going back to sleep.
Instead, she pulls from my grip with a burst of almost inhuman strength and, barely making it on her side, throws up on the floor.
“Huh,” says Theo, still half-asleep. “I didn’t know she could still do that.”
Nova smacks him on the arm, blond hair wild and half crushed against her head. Arsen mumbles something about baking soda and ambles towards the kitchen, preemptively giving Nova the finger as he crashes into the doorframe. She laughs anyway.
I throw them all a glare and turn my focus back to Sona. She’s curled up tight on the bed, sweat beading along her hairline. I smooth my hand along her hot cheek and am rewarded with a whine.
“Oh, love,” I sigh.
“Eris? Frostbringer. Eris. You are the—You are Eris. I love you.” She says all of this like a question, like she’s fighting herself, and it stings, though I don't let that show.
“Yeah, you’ve got it,” I say.
She brings her hand up to her eye again, and I fight the urge to lunge for it. Instead, I stand very still, waiting with bated breath for the return of the panic and the tearing. But Sona only ghosts her hand over her eyelid, as if only just remembering it was there.
Finally, she wraps her hand around her midsection and closes her eyes, humming discontentedly. I untense as she comes away from her eye.
“I feel wrong,” she says, and she sounds disconnected, far away in her own head. Her forehead creases slightly, as if she’s kind of aware something is up but is too unfocused to be properly upset about it.
I don’t know what to say to that. I never know what to say when she is like this. So I only sit with her, holding her hand.
Nova crawls over from where she’s at and combs through Sona’s hair, starting to braid it tightly. When Sona first came to live with us, none of us knew how to do her hair, with its thick curls. Not even Sona. She said her mother used to do her hair when she was little, and then at the Academy, they made her straighten it. Nova said if she managed to dye her hair every month of the fucking apocalypse, she would fucking figure this out. Sona did not argue with her, smiling when Nova, despite her feigned confidence, watched her for consent.
Sona doesn’t balk now, either, even when Theo comes over, rubbing sleepy eyes and resting his head near her knees. It’s a testament to her trust, that even when she feels her body is betraying her, she’d let us close to her. It makes my heart flutter even when she feels terrible.
Arsen comes back eventually, brandishing the baking soda and seeming slightly more alert than he had when he left. Or at least, he makes it through the doorway this time.
He doesn’t ask us for help and we don’t offer. We all know he’d rather be cleaning than what we’re doing. He always moves away from touch, even once he stopped flinching, and his leg starts bouncing when we just sit and exist together. That’s okay with us. We know he loves us. Sona knows it, too, humming appreciation at him even when she can’t quite reach words.
Nova finishes off her braid. “All done,” she tells Sona.
Sona reaches back and pulls her braid forward, thumbing the end slowly.
“I’m human. I’m here now,” she says, sounding much more sure than before.
“Yes,” I respond.
Sona nods to herself. Arsen offers her a smile and a capful of medicine. It’s the liquid version, meant for children, because none of us will take pills anymore.
When she only stares at it blankly, I take it from Arsen myself, careful not to spill. I’m just as careful with my words as I say, “We don’t know how this is going to affect you, but hopefully it will help you feel better. Can you take it for me?”
Sona won’t unwrap her hands from her stomach, so I wait for her to part her lips expectantly and feed it to her. She grimaces.
“Blech,” she says tiredly, but relaxes enough so that Nova and I can help change her shirt. We decide wordlessly that it would not be worth it right now to try to bathe her, so this is as good as it will get.
Theo doesn’t help, not because of modesty or whatever, because we all know we’ve seen each other naked more times than we can count, but instead because he seems to have fallen back asleep.
Arsen also does not help. He is finished with cleaning and watches us with a tired look in his eye. I think it’s hard for him to see us like this sometimes. I know he’ll spend an extra minute over his candle in the morning. None of us mention it.
I touch Sona’s face. Her fever seems to have gone down a little bit, but that might just be wishful thinking. She seems calmer, anyway, and not in the bad way she was in before.
“I’m sorry,” she mutters.
Theo immediately says with garbled words muffled by sleep and the mattress, “shuttup.”
Nova grins and says, “Yeah, shut up. Nothing to be sorry for.”
Arsen offers Sona an awkward thumbs up she can’t see from her almost face down position. Nova narrates that, too, “Arsen is agreeing.”
And I say what I always say: “Love you, Glitch.”
And she says what she always says, even when her legs are clutched tight to her abdomen: “I love you, Eris.”
And maybe we’ll never really be okay, but Arsen will brew tea and Nova will laugh and Theo will plant flowers and I will yell at them for tracking dirt in and Sona will never have to use her Godolian accent again.
And that’s not nothing.