patchwork satellite

They have a routine most nights. It takes him a while to calm down, but at least the other Vault Hunters have stopped joking about buying an oversized kennel or making him sleep in the yard. If they’re at home—because the Crimson Raiders’ headquarters is home now, or the closest thing to it—she’ll start a few hours early, while there’s still some light in the sky, before anyone else can think of turning in.

They have it down to a signal, a gesture—a quick exchange of glances, and he shrugs off whatever he’s doing and follows her upstairs, sometimes dragging his feet like a sullen child, other times stumbling over them in eagerness. It’s better if they’re alone, although they’ve managed on occasions when they aren’t, when they’re camped out on a mission and there’s no place to rest but in the truck or a cave or a crumbling shed of tar paper and scrap metal. Nights like those, everyone used to take turns keeping watch over the camp, but more often now it’s just the other four in shifts while she spends her night watching over him. Mostly, they’re relieved they don’t have her job. The beasts and bandits of Pandora are minor nuisances compared to a sleep-deprived psycho with a buzz axe to grind.

But they’re safe here in Sanctuary, relatively speaking. He sits down on a bunk without her telling him, and she works to relieve him of as much hardware as she can unfasten—the bolted metal plates and gauntlets that leave rust marks on the sheets and holes in the wall when he flails around in his nightmares—before he starts getting restless again. On a good night she can distract him long enough to slip off his mask and hang it from the bedpost. The tone of her voice relaxes him, so she talks—no matter what she says, he listens like it’s poetry—or hums a few bars of the chants and hymns she learned at the Abbey. She used to sing them to herself, alone in her cell, pretending they were lullabies. They’re not so grating when she leaves out the words of devotion.

And she’s come a long way from Athenas, she thinks as she’s tracing her hands over the knots in his back and shoulders. He used to flinch, even from her—she guesses it’s been a while since anyone touched him who wasn’t trying to hurt him—but he doesn’t tense up anymore. Instead he goes quiet, intent, almost reflective, as if he’s trying to remember the warmth of someone else’s hands, the way compassion used to feel. The pain runs deep in him, embedded in flesh and scar tissue all the way to the bone, but she almost reaches something buried deeper. She’s learned to use her powers in new and subtle ways, soothing nerve and muscle and mending cuts and bruises and abrasions with her mind and her fingers in concert. The Order taught her to control, impress, intimidate her followers, to awe and terrorize them into worship. She finds it ironic that Pandora—the planet of outlaws and cannibals they warned her about—finally taught her to heal.

His breathing slows and softens as he slouches forward, and soon it’s all she can do to ease him onto his side facing the wall. He has to curl up to fit on the mattress, and his feet still hang over the edge. Most nights, if she has nothing else to do, she’ll lie beside him, tucking her head under his chin. His arms fold around her in reflex and pull her against him, and she feels the heavy plod of his heartbeat while his hands stroke her hair and cradle her back. He rarely ever wakes up screaming anymore, and the other Vault Hunters thank her for their nights of uninterrupted sleep. For her part, she’s been sleeping better too.