Fic: Bad Dreams (Corvo, Cecelia)

[raptureofthemoon]

From a prompt of the same name.

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Corvo opens his eyes in the dark. He stares toward the shapeless grey mass of the ceiling wondering what woke him. A storm is moving in. He can smell the rain through the open window. But it wasn’t the storm that woke him. Nor was it the dark dreams he’d been having moments before. The details have already started to fade—Jessamine’s bloodless mouth a pale shadow in his mind—though his pulse is still racing and his tongue is dry.

A soft rush of breath stirs the air at his bedside. A hand presses against his chest. Or tires to. He catches the wrist before the palm makes contact. It’s cool and too thin.

“Corvo. It’s me.” The words come out in a panicked rush, no louder than a whisper. Cecelia. He can just make her out, standing beside his bed. A thin slat of moonlight finds its way into the room. She’s illuminated, pale as a ghost, wearing a patchwork night dress.

“What?” he says, voice rough with sleep and disuse.

“Corvo—I--” Her voice shakes, her eyes are shiny. She’s been crying. Crying, alone in the dark. And now, she stands at his bedside, shivering and wide eyed, looking barely older than Emily, though she has at least seven years on her.

“The rats. They were all over me, crawling all over... They ate my eyes. I could feel them in my mouth, my throat—” She shivers so hard the floorboards creak and she doesn’t fall so much as collapse onto the bed, one knee jutting into his hip and her hand on his chest, short nails digging into his undershirt. “Can I stay here? Please. I don’t want to be alone.”

He doesn’t ask after her fellow servants. Wallace does more for Pendleton than fetch the man wine and wash his bed linens; he has a hand in dirtying them on nights the petulant Lord can’t sleep. And Martin isn’t bothering playing at celibacy, despite the marks of his office. And since Callista had already rebuffed his advances once, Corvo knows Martin has found solace in Lydia’s arms.

Cecelia’s hand shakes on his chest. Her touch is as sexless as a child’s and without a word, he shifts over, twitches the blanket back and gives her room to crawl in next to him, which she does without a word, curling up so that her forehead presses against his collarbone and her knees push into his thighs. Her hands are folded beneath her chin, but as he pulls the blanket up over them she reaches for his and holds onto it like a lifeline.

“Thank you,” she whispers, peeking up at him once through the fringe of her hair.

Emily used to peek at him like that when she’d drag him to her room during thunderstorms. It was his job to keep the monsters away. And he did, first by checking all the shadowy corners, under the bed and in the armoire. And then by telling stories, watching the light of the storm play across her face, making her amber eyes glow.

Cecelia’s eyes are flat grey in the dimness. Corvo nods and she bows her head again.

She doesn’t let go of his hand, even when she falls asleep.

And when he follows her, sometime later, he sleeps through the rest of the night without dreaming.