I'll sweep the stardust for you

SUNJATA

the flood

but am i too late? or hearts to your spades,
if i don't suit you? then what do you want from me?

The glass is abandoned and Sunjata tries his best to comfort both her and himself that it would be okay, he’d be fine, that things would be normal and easy to pretend as if nothing had ever happened, and when she moves closer, tucks herself in between the space of himself and the sink where she can hug him, her head resting on his chest where beneath the lightning scars, a rabbiting heartbeat thunders on. “You won’t.” He assures her quickly, still as can be, feeling the way she tries to soothe him from his fears, tries to help him focus on something else. “Tea… Is good.” He agrees wearily, finally managing to get himself under enough control to peer down at her, working his jaw while she begins to explain her own nightmares.

Part of it worries him, too, somewhere deep down that he’d never want to be a father like that – how terrified he was of becoming so like his father – but so far he’d done well. At least he had that going for him. The rest of it though? His lips form a frown as she explains further, and as she tucks her face in against his chest, he finally finds it in himself to let go of the counter, to wrap an arm around her. “I’m sorry that happened to you.” He manages through a hoarse voice, some semblance of getting his feet back under him until she says Nate’s name and his heart thunders again.

She looks up at him before he can hide it, the pain that flashes across his face, that breaks through the mask that’s already splitting apart from the nightmare, and he clamps his lips shut for fear of saying the wrong thing at first. But if they’re being honest, he might as well start. “Nate… He knows why I get like this… Why it happens and – and how to help. He’s done it for… A long time with me.” He manages, before that edge of terrorizing sorrow manages to make his throat thick. “I… I miss him, Maeve. And I don’t know how to do any of this by myself.” He has to pull away from her now, backing up enough to rest his back against the opposite counter for the island so that he can rub at his face. “I have to do it right, I have to fix what I did, and – and maybe he’ll come back. I can’t do this if he doesn’t. But I don’t know how to fix it so he does.” He isn’t sure if she knows enough about him to now exactly just how far Sunjata’s mental state is when it comes to the idea of losing Nate, but he tries to lay it as flat as he can.

“I- I’m terrified.” And hurting and alone and a father without realizing what it was like to truly be one. Without having one he grew up with to give him some idea of what to be like, what to expect. “I won’t… I won’t make it, Maeve, if I don’t fix it.” Between the traumas and nightmares and everything else, that would be the final straw.

He takes a grounding breath, one that steadies the fear that trembles in his chest. And when he finally looks at her again, his gaze is dark, hollow, quiet, empty. “Thank you… For staying. For listening. For not letting me be alone tonight.”

so we're not written in the stars,
but i'm okay with that. i'm okay with anything