InsaneJournal

Who: Wash and Anna
When: Late last night
Where: Wash’s apartment
What: Anna tries to wake Wash from a bad dream
Rating/Warnings: PG13ish
Status: Complete!



Wash didn’t Dream every night. When he had started, his Dreams had faithfully come twice a week, usually on the same day. However, that hadn’t happened since Epsilon. The frequency of Wash’s Dreams was all over the place. Sometimes he went one or two weeks without anything and sometimes he Dreamed every night.

This didn’t mean he necessarily had a restful night’s sleep those evenings in which the Dreams left him alone. Wash had been a young boy when the nightmares and night terrors had started. Generally speaking his mother had ignored the cries and screams in the night, or slept right through them. When she couldn’t, young David would be shaken roughly until he either stopped or woke up.

Once he was awake, Wash had no recollection of what had terrorized him in his sleep. This did not please his mother, who was convinced that it was all a ploy to get attention. Eventually, Wash was moved from his bedroom upstairs to a smaller space on the first floor that had probably either been storage space or a small study back when the house had originally been built.

By the time he was a teenager, he’d outgrown the nightmares. After his discharge from the marines, however, the terrors came back now compounded by the combat Wash had seen overseas. They were infrequent, at first. Just once a month, maybe twice, up until Epsilon. The event with the broken A.I. had changed a lot of Wash’s life both in the Dreams and in reality and he was still dealing with the fallout now.

Wash and Anna had been asleep for a few hours when the first scream cut through the night air, followed quickly by violent thrashing as if Wash were grappling with some unseen monster.

Anna was out cold. She slept hard when she slept, sometimes drooling, and curling over every once in a while and messing up her hair. Of course, she always woke up with bed hair. The white streak turning into more of a Bride of Frankenstein look than anything else. Tonight they’d spent an early evening in, then cuddled up and watched a movie. Anna was thankful that her studying for the semester was almost finished, finals coming up but easy.

Anna was in the middle of a Dream, collecting birthday presents along a long string with her sister, even though she told her sister that Elsa was too sick to be out and about and that they really should go home and put her to bed. She was just climbing up into a Clock Tower, when a shriek pierced through the night air. At first Anna was confused. Who was screaming? No one had been screaming in her Dreams. Then the thrashing started.

With a jolt, Anna sat up in the bed. What was happening? Wash was thrashing around and whimpering, shrieking. Anna reached over to try and figure out what was wrong with him. Had something hurt him? Was he bleeding? Was this a Dream thing? She reached out with both hands to try and calm him, try and still him. She was vaguely aware that nothing she could do would fix this. She’d have to wake him.

There was no blood, no phantom wounds appeared on his body that would have meant he was experiencing something having to do with his Dreams. The earlier thrashing had made the comforter and bedsheets twisted around his legs and binded up his body. Now he was struggling to sit up. Sweat beading on his forehead. His eyes were open, but they were wild and unfocused. He was clearly not there in the bedroom, but somewhere else entirely, scared and fighting. He was trying to get away, but the bed linens he seemed to be unaware of were not allowing him too, which only increased the mind stupefying panic.

He also didn’t seem to be aware of Anna, reaching out to calm him. All he felt were hands on him and he confused them with what was wrapped around his legs and torso. He lashed out and shoved Anna away, practically off the bed and tried to scramble away himself. When Anna reached for him again in an attempt to keep him from falling out of bed himself, his elbow connected with the left side of her face.

At the first sound of screaming, Sophie the German Shepherd had come to the door of Wash’s bedroom. She didn’t bark or growl. Once she had nosed the door open, she trotted around to Wash’s side of the bed and jumped up to put her front paws on the mattress to press her cold nose against Wash’s skin.

Of course, she should have moved to untangle the sheets, the blankets, whatever else she could do to try and make his dream less nightmareish? But then he was shoving Anna off, nearly falling off the bed, and then… whack! Wash’s elbow made contact with Anna’s face. A yelp escaped her after the contact, and she flopped backward against the pillows, holding her face in her hands. She wasn’t even sure where she’d been hit, except that the world went white for a moment, and blinding pain took over her face. She didn’t notice the dog coming in to comfort Wash, though she would have been pleased if she could think straight.

Sophie persisted in nudging Wash with her nose and when that didn’t seem to work, she hopped up on the bed. She was not at all phased by his cries or continued thrashing. She sat on his legs, as Carolina had instructed her. The pressure combined with constant face-licking provided enough unpleasant stimuli to ground Wash back into reality.

“Sophie,” Wash gasped. “‘Mma wake. Good girl.” He gently pushed the dog from his face and blindly reached for the bag of dog treats, just as Carolina had instructed him. Carolina had also trained both Sophie and Wash certain commands for the dog to help prevent continued stimulation to combat an emotional overload something like a night terror would create. Carolina had taught the commands to Wash as a way to help her continue Sophie’s training, though, he was starting to suspect she had ulterior motives. “Sophie, off.” And the dog hopped off the bed. With the next command, “light”, she trotted over to the night switch and reared up on her hind legs to paw at the light switch until it turned on.

Wash squinted in the suddenly bright light, but it did the trick. What remained of the nightmare that had held him in a strangling grip dissipated like smoke. Sophie was back on the bed, settled between Wash’s legs and Anna’s and happily chewing the dog cookie as her reward for a job well done.

Wash rubbed his face. Like it had been when he’d been younger all he really knew was that his heart was racing and a cold sweat had caused his skin to break out in small irritating goosebumps. He sighed and glanced at Anna, hoping he hadn’t woken her up. He was surprised and alarmed to see her next to him holding her face. “Anna?” He reached for her. “Anna, are you alright? Anna?”

Now that Sophie was jumping up onto the bed and nestling between them, Anna was aware that the dog was around. She could hear the panic in Wash’s sleepy voice, and didn’t want to make things any worse than they already were. But she was a little panicked herself--was she bleeding? It hurt to the point where she thought she might be bleeding. She pulled her hand away from her face, fearing the worst--but it was dry.

“Yeah,” she gave a hearty sniff, her eyes and nose leaking a little with the power of the smack to her face. But she didn’t want to focus on it. She was more concerned that Wash had just been thrashing around like he was on fire. “Yeah, I’m okay. Are you okay?”

Wash looked at Anna, horrified. The left side of her face was red and a good sized painful looking goose egg was already starting to swell up over her cheekbone by her nose. She was sniffling with tears dripping from her eyes. Wash didn’t understand what had happened, but it was obvious that he had done this. He had hurt her.

Wash’s chest seized up and for a moment he just sat frozen, absolutely horrified at what he’d done. He saw her lips move, but didn’t hear her ask him if he was alright. “Anna,” his voice was tight, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” he trailed. He’d heard those words so many times before. His mother would always tell him Ralph didn’t mean it. It was hard raising someone else’s kid. Ralph didn’t mean to hurt him…

Wash felt sick. He drew back from Anna, afraid to touch her, terrified he’d hurt her again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he kept saying over and over. She needed something for her face. Ice. She needed ice to help the swelling go down. Ibuprofen for the pain. Tissues for her eyes and nose. Wash quickly got out of bed to retrieve what Anna needed.

Sophie was done with her cookie and simply laying on the bed by the time Wash got back, hands full of tissues, water, pills and a towel wrapped around a frozen bag of peas. Carolina didn’t normally let her up on the furniture. Maybe if she lay really still, Wash wouldn’t notice. And he didn’t. He was too focused on Anna to even realize the dog was still there. Wash sat on Anna’s side of the bed, by her legs, again almost as though he were afraid getting any closer would hurt her more. “Here,” he handed her a couple of the ibuprofen pills and the class of water. “Take these and then you should hold this against your face,” he indicated the bag of peas in his hands.

“It’s okay,” Anna found herself saying, though she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. Because it wasn’t really okay. Her face was banged up, and Wash was obviously distraught over the fact that he’d smacked her. An inch up and she might have had an injured eye. An inch to the side and she might have had a broken nose. As it was, her cheekbone was throbbing painfully, and she was bound to have a deep, black bruise around her eye. “It’s really, really okay, Wash.”

But then Wash was springing from the bed to get her things. Things Anna wasn’t sure she needed. She climbed up off the bed painfully, not moving her head too far in any direction. She swallowed down the pills without question, and took the bag of peas.

Then she laughed. It hurt to laugh, so she forced herself to stop. “I’ve never… um. Like this?” She asked, lifting the bag to press against her face. She’d never been smacked in the face before. Never had a bloody nose or shiner. This was a new experience for her.

“What happened? Were you having a nightmare?” She knew he’d had them before, but this was the first time it ever got violent.

“Yeah, like...wait, like this,” Wash reached out to help her hold the peas-in-a-towel to her cheek, tentatively at first, but ended up holding the bundle in the right spot and then guiding her hand to it. “Ten minutes on, ten minutes off, then we’ll see how it looks.” Yeah, he’d had to take care of a few shiners before in his day. Her laugh caught him off guard, but it was better than her crying. As it usually did, it pulled a smile, as small as it was, from him.

The smile faded and disappeared when Anna asked him what happened. “I don’t know. I don’t...remember.”

Anna let him position the bag of frozen peas against her face. It was weird how it both hurt more and less at the same time. It was cold on top of the pain, but the cold was starting to numb the skin, which was good? She thought it was good. Or maybe the pain killer was kicking in. Couldn’t be kicking in that fast, could it? Her stomach was empty and she had a low tolerance, so anything was possible.

“Okay,” she said, bringing her hands up to hold the bag in place where he’d showed her. “You’ve had nightmares before. I… they weren’t anything like that one, though. I don’t know what that was.” She was still way more concerned about his well being than she was her own.

The neurologist Leliana had set Was up with last year had told him that the night terrors were normal for someone who had experienced a head trauma and brain injury, especially one that had put him in a coma for three months. The implants? Well, he couldn’t say for sure, but it was likely they may play a part as well. Well, duh. Everything had been mostly fine until Epsilon had shown up.

Wash was quiet a moment. Would Anna believe that, or would she think he was lying too? “It’s called a night terror,” Wash explained slowly. “It’s like a panic attack, but in your sleep. Sometimes soldiers returning from war are prone to them as are people who have suffered a brain injury.” He knew he wasn’t the first vet in the world to have his and his partner’s sleep interrupted so violently. It may have been “normal”, but it was still terrifying for the both of them.

“Night Terrors?” Anna asked. It sounded horrible. A panic attack in your sleep? She didn’t like the sound of that. If she could have done anything to make it better, she would have. Neither of them wanted Wash to be terrified and flail around in his sleep--especially when Anna was beside him. She adjusted the bag against her face, then tugged it away. “My eye’s cold.” And it was starting to swell, too.

Wash frowned and reached to move the bag back to her face.. “It’ll help the swelling from getting too bad,” he told her. “Just five more minutes and then I’ll take a look at it.” Once the bag was back in place. He ran a hand through his hair, letting it come to rest on the back of his neck. He looked at Anna carefully, sitting there with a bag of peas pressed against her swelling eye. It was starting to bruise already. Wash’s stomach twisted and he grimaced. “Anna...the last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

Anna took a deep breath and pressed the ice pack against her face for a little longer. She frowned as she looked over at Wash, the grimace on his face made her feel so sad and twisted and guilty inside. Her free hand reached out for his. “I know.” Her words were spoken softly, with as much love and compassion as she could muster. “I know you would never hurt me on purpose.”

Wash looked at her hand holding his, then back up at Anna. He couldn’t change what had happened. All he could do was prevent it from happening again. This time, though, he wouldn’t push Anna from his life to protect her like he had with Kyu. “I can’t say that this won’t happen again,” he admitted. “I don’t know what triggers the night terrors. It might happen again. It probably will happen again. The best thing to do…” and Anna probably wouldn’t like this, either, “is to not touch me. I might try to fight you or shove you away and,” he made a vague gesture towards the now-melting pack of icy peas against Anna’s face, “I may accidentally hurt you again.”

Anna watched his face as carefully as she could with one unobstructed eye. She ran her thumb over one of his knuckles, finding that his skin may have been a little rough, but it was warm. It felt familiar to her in a way that she couldn’t express. It was home. She shook her head a little. “I’ll do whatever you think is best.” As hard as it would be for her to watch him have that kind of fit without doing anything about it.

The way Anna caressed the backs of his knuckles had a calming and grounding effect. The electric tension in Wash’s shoulders and gut eased considerably and he felt as though he could breathe a little better. Anna had no way of knowing this, but sometimes the simplest touch was all it took. He knew it would be hard for her, but it was better that she remain safe. “Ok,” he said softly. “Here,” he reached for the bag of peas, “let me take a look at that.”

There was no doubt that the spot below her eye would be discolored in a few hours, even deeply bruised. The bone itself may have been bruised and Wash thought it was lucky he hadn’t broken her cheek or even her eye had his elbow connected a little higher. His guts still twisted at the thought. “It’s probably going to hurt for a few days, and be tender for a few more days after that. I’m so sorry, Anna. Do you want to...go? Home? Or, you know, I can sleep on the couch tonight.”

Anna lowered the bag of peas and opened her eye. She blinked a few times, as her vision was now half-blurry. The pain was still there, but a lot less powerful. There was a cold numbness over half her face, now, due to the bag. “How bad is it, Doc?” She teased, giving his hand a squeeze before letting go. Hopefully it wouldn’t look too bad. But it still smarted. Anna was normally something of a stomach sleeper, but she figured she wouldn’t want to put any pressure on her face now if she could help it.

“What? Why? It’s the middle of the night.” Anna frowned slightly. “Do you… do you want me to leave? I can go if you want me to, I just… I was hoping we could just go back to sleep? Unless you want me to go.”

Wash wouldn’t have blamed Anna if she hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of the night in the same bed as him. Even if he hadn’t clocked her in the face, he had woken her up screaming his fool head off. That had to have been terrifying. It was a relief that she didn’t want to leave and that she didn’t want him to leave.

“Yeah, we can go back to sleep,” he said with a small relieved smile. He gave her hand a squeeze before setting the bag of peas aside and pulling himself up onto the bed and back over to his spot on Anna’s other side. Sophie was still at the foot of the bed – naughty dog – and the jostling made her raise her head from her paws to look at the two humans. When Wash didn’t give her the command to get down, she lowered her head and was soon asleep again. It was Carolina’s rule that prevented the German Shepherd from getting up on the furniture, but on nights like this, Wash preferred to have the dog nearby.

Once Wash was settled he leaned in to give Anna a gentle kiss, being mindful to avoid the injured side of her face. “Than you,” he murmured, his face still close to her’s.

Anna was still ringing. Her face ached gently, but it was a lot less painful than it’d been only a few minutes ago. Perhaps the pain medicine was kicking in. That and the cold on her face made her feel a little numb and completely exhausted. Yet, somehow she was wired at the same time.

“Good,” Anna said as she moved over, closer to him, and then laid gingerly against the pillows. She was gonna have to sleep on her back instead of her side or tummy for a while. At least tonight. She returned his kiss--gentle and tentative, and then took hold of his hand and pulled it to wrap his arm around her.

She wasn’t sure how much sleep she was going to get, but she knew how important it was for them to be close now. For her to show him that she loved him, that she wasn’t afraid of him. She closed her eyes and started breathing slowly and deeply, and eventually dozed off.