The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Waaaaay Early Friday Morning

[okteiviakom]

The bob and sway of the Cape Rouge was not the same as the engine thrum of the Ark. But it was similar enough that sometimes there could be something almost soothing about it to a space station baby, like Octavia.

But not tonight.

She feels the vibrations of the Ark through the walls around her. Up in the room, they're much less pronounced, they're just something under your feet, a casual sensation you can feel and dismiss at the same time. But she's not up in the room.

She's down in the hole.

She's under the floor.

She's in a box, and the room above her is nothing but footsteps and muffled voices. Everything else is darkness. She's in a box she can't see, under a room she can only hear, and so all she can do is listen. She can't hear Bellamy up there, but she can hear her mother, the sound of needles and the fabric of strangers' clothes -- but then, the thumping of boots, and it's an inspection, it's always an inspection, a man's voice barking about everything the inspectors always bark about until her mother soothes it over, hushed, quick, she sounds like she's smiling --

I don't have any money.

Her voice is like velvet and burrows into Octavia's ears.

But I can pay you another way.

It's a promise shaped like a body and it feels like sirens and Octavia screams but she can still hear them like they're speaking into her head, like they're in her head, like they're in the box with her.

What about the girl?

Her, too.

And Octavia screams again and kicks her foot out because she has to get away, now now now -- but instead of breaking, the walls of the box around her start sliding closer, the hole around her starts getting smaller, and it feels like she's sinking, right into the ground or space or whatever is underneath a hole underneath a room, and it doesn't matter where she's sinking to because she won't even make it there, because the walls are closing in on her, she's in the hole and the hole is going to crush her.

The hole is going to crush her, and she can't breathe.

She can't breathe.

SHE CAN'T BREATHE.

That was what Octavia woke up to, in the middle of the night, just -- gasping for breath, immediately scrambling up to sitting, trying to desperately force air into her lungs. Her wide eyes stared wildly into the darkness of the room, not really seeing it. Still half dreaming.

Still half back on the Ark.

... Sorry, Duke.

[ooc: For the jaka who has to deal with this mess now. Content warning for (nightmare) allusions to prostitution and child abuse, with general dark backstory stuff to likely follow in the comments.]

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[betterthanaplan]

Duke jerked awake himself at the movement, from a rare, dreamless sleep that left him groggy and disoriented even as he reached for her shoulder.

"Tavi?" he muttered. "What is it? You hear something?"

Was Fandom attacking them? Could Fandom attack his boat?!

[okteiviakom]

Well, he did sort of get attacked, in the loosest sense of the word: the touch on her shoulder was met with a flaily arm, smacking his hand away because Octavia was not fully present in the here and now enough to know it was him.

She gasped in another desperate breath. It sounded a little wet --

Oh.

She was crying, too. Wonder how long it'd be before she'd notice?

[betterthanaplan]

Duke woke up fast at that. The flailing, sure, but the wet gasp?

He tried again with the shoulder touch, braced this time to dodge the flailing, going for gentle but insistent. "Hey, hey, Tavi. You're okay. It's okay, it was just a dream. Yu ste ogud, gona."

[okteiviakom]

There was another flail, but it was a lot weaker. Wakefulness was winning out, and it helped, his voice helped.

But being awake enough to know where she was didn't immediately wipe away the panic, because the panic was still a physical thing inside of her. Twisting her up, making her heart race.

"I -- I can't," Octavia stuttered, as she went scrambling off the bed and onto her feet, nearly stumbling onto her face in the process.

[betterthanaplan]

"Woah. Okay." Duke hurried out of bed himself (and was really glad he'd gotten into the habit of wearing at least shorts to sleep in, these days). He kept his hands out, ready to catch her if she fell again, wishing he could just pull her into a hug. He was interpreting that "I can't" as "no touching", though, and kept his distance. "It's going to be alright. What do you need?"

[okteiviakom]

That was as good a guess regarding what she 'couldn't' as any, because fuck if even Octavia knew what she meant with it.

She didn't answer. Maybe that wasn't very surprising? She ended up pacing back and forth like a caged animal, trying to force herself into calming down, trying to force herself into breathing without sobbing.

And all the while she felt like she could still hear her mother's voice.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had no idea what to do. He'd never actually had to talk down anyone else from a nightmare. Evi had had maybe one while they were together, and had just gone to hide in the bathroom afterwards while Duke gave her space.

He didn't think that was what Octavia needed here, though. Or -- maybe it was exactly what she needed. Just a different kind.

"Here," he said. "Hey, come on." He stepped into the hall and waved her towards the exterior door. "Let's go on deck. Get some air."

Get the open sky above her. Instead of a ceiling that served as another room's floor.

[okteiviakom]

The problem was that Octavia was stuck between two warring instincts: one to run and another to hide, which made both the outdoors as well as the nearest corner of his bedroom seem like places to be.

And she didn't know which she wanted because no matter what he said, right now she didn't feel like a gona, she felt like a girl who'd been stuck under the floor for too long and couldn't think straight.

So she didn't make the decision based on what she wanted.

She made it based on trusting him.

And so she followed him, on unsteady feet, her shoulders still quaking and her face still twisting like she was in pain.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke paused to grab the blanket off the bed, because while it wasn't Maine-cold out, it wasn't exactly warm, either. He ushered her carefully out to the open deck, shooing porgs aside with his foot to help keep her from tripping.

He wanted nothing more than to wrap her up tight in that blanket and hang on until she stopped shaking, but he didn't want to spook her more. He wasn't really sure she'd get his meaning if he just offered it to her, not in the state she was in, so he moved as slowly and gently as possible to drape it over her shoulders.

The whole time, he kept up a litany of simple, soothing words, in English, Trig, and even some random French and Russian when they were what popped into his head. He wasn't so much worried about the meaning as just letting her hear his voice, low and slow and easy.

[okteiviakom]

It wasn't warm out. But maybe that was for the best. The first big inhale of cool night air was the first thing to really break through the panic, with a flicker of a memory of the moment Octavia had first stepped off the dropship onto the ground: a moment she'd felt free and practically all-powerful.

The exhale was still very, very shuddery.

But she let him put the blanket over her shoulders, even if she didn't make a single move to secure it, herself, and even though her shoulders still shook every few moments as she failed in her efforts to stop sobbing.

She tilted her face towards the sky. In the moonlight, her cheeks weren't so much tear-streaked as just entirely wet.

[betterthanaplan]

That was concerning, but not terribly surprising. Duke hung onto the blanket for her, using it to tug her gently towards his favorite bench. If he got her to sit, he'd crouch down in front of her, making sure the blanket stayed on and that he stayed in her sight line and maybe, if she seemed to be waking up more, resting his hand lightly on her knee.

He'd noticed that touches usually seemed to soothe her. Of course, she was also usually holding herself in instead of shaking herself apart.

He didn't tell her not to cry. And he didn't tell her to "let it out". Instead, he started softly to sing:

Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei,
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia let him move her around, though her eyes stayed mostly on the sky while he did. If she could see the stars she was definitely not in a box under the floor, after all.

She didn't drop her gaze from the sky before he started singing. And even then, it took a moment before she was blinking at him, confused by the singing but maybe also a little about him being there in the first place.

"W-what?" she croaked.

Her voice sounded exactly like the voice of someone who'd just been violently crying for the past five minutes.

[betterthanaplan]

"Hey," he said, giving her a little smile. "You back with me?"

He was perfectly happy to keep singing if not.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia drew in another shuddery breath and -- just nodded. There was a jittery quality to the gesture, but her eyes (red and puffy though they were now) were fixed on him.

She knew exactly where she was.

And who with.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke stayed where he was, right in front of her, keeping that blanket in place. "Good," he said. "You want to tell me about it? Or I can keep singing for awhile. I don't mind."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia shook her head, though since she didn't actually say anything, it was a little unclear which part she was shaking her head at. Possibly both? Her brain was still a little jumbled.

She brought one hand up to rub over her stinging eyes.

When she dropped it, she was surprised to find it shaking. Not a lot, but enough that she ended up staring at it for a few seconds.

Thanks, adrenaline.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke decided she meant she didn't want to talk yet. He moved to sit next to her on the bench, figuring the shaking was part reaction, part adrenaline, and part cold, all of which could probably benefit from some external body heat, though he still didn't pull her into his arms the way he wanted to yet.

"There's this one particular harbour," he sang, soft enough to be a lullaby.
"Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within.

Ia Ora Te Natura
E Mea Arofa Teie Ao Nei
Ia Ora Te Natura
E Mea Arofa Teie Ao Nei"

He wasn't singing the song in any sort of order -- he hadn't listened to it in long enough to remember just what the order was -- but it wasn't like she would likely notice, or mind. And anyway, he figured he was hitting the important bits.

[okteiviakom]

It didn't take long after he'd sat down, after he'd started singing again, before Octavia was leaning towards him a little. Now that she'd come back to herself, she at least knew she craved the contact.

Just couldn't bring herself to ask for it, or to just lead him into it the way she normally might have. The best she could do was a little lean.

[betterthanaplan]

It was enough to at least get him to put his arm on the back of the bench, though, giving her some light contact through the shoulders and more room to lean.

"But now I think about the good times
Down in the Caribbean sunshine
In my younger days I was so bad
Laughin' about all the fun we had

I've seen enough to feel the world spin
Mixin' different oceans meetin' cousins
Listen to the drummers and the night sounds
Listen to the singers make the world go 'round!"

He nudged her a little as he picked up the Tahitian chorus again, just to see if she wanted to sing -- or hum maybe -- along.

"Ia Ora Te Natura
E Mea Arofa Teie Ao Nei
Ia Ora Te Natura
E Mea Arofa Teie Ao Nei."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia leaned further in, slowly. And tipped her head back once more to look up at the stars while she listened, finally making the effort to tug the blanket a little more tightly around herself.

There was no singing on her part, though she managed some vague humming. Yes, even despite her stuffy nose.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had run out of verses that he could think of -- at least ones that didn't vaguely reference death, anyway -- so he stuck to that chorus a few more times, then threw out the last bit of Tahitian from the end:

"Ua Pau Te Maitai No Te Fenua
Re Zai Noa Ra Te Ora O Te Mitie."

He tilted his own head back. There were less stars here than many of the places he'd been, with Baltimore so close, but if it soothed her anyway, he wasn't going to complain.

"It means 'Nature lives, life to nature, have pity for the Earth, love the Earth.' Then, 'Bounty of the land is exhausted, but there's still abundance on the sea.'"

[okteiviakom]

There were more stars here than there'd been deep in the windowless bowels of sector B-17 of the Ark.

When he translated the words, Octavia choked out a sound that probably started out as a (not particularly joyful) laugh, but ended up tapering out into a stray sob.

She wiped at one eye, and swallowed hard. "Of course."

[betterthanaplan]

"Sounds better in Tahitian, huh?" Duke said, lifting the hand along the bench to rub her shoulder.

[okteiviakom]

"I guess."

That wasn't it, but she was fine pretending it was.

She sighed and pressed her eyes closed, hoping to pull her thoughts together -- then immediately opened them again, when all she saw against her eyelids was the same kind of darkness that made her feel like something was closing in on her.

Okay. Stars it was.

[betterthanaplan]

Duke tried very hard to be comfortable with the silence. And when that didn't work, he tried to just let himself be uncomfortable, for her sake.

That worked a little better, but it still wasn't sustainable. He really hoped he relearned how not to be a babbling idiot sometime soon.

"I'm going to get you a brandy," he said. "And then I'm going to talk. Or maybe sing some more. And when you're ready, you can tell me what you dreamed about, or we can go back to bed and pretend it didn't happen, or do anything else you need. Alright?"