[Isaac doesn't look up from the knife, a muscle flexing in his jaw as he twists it a little harder through leather and into the flesh of his hand.]
...I live yet, don't I?
[He grates out, lowly, feeling his face stiffen under Hector's attention, his scrutiny.]
Go back to sleep.
[It's a demand, because it has to be. Because a plea is out of the question. But he doesn't expect Hector to listen, already smouldering with annoyance.
He thought he had outgrown nightmares; he had lost too many nights already to panic gripping him by the throat and shaking him awake, his head stuck someplace where dreams and memories would blur and he wasn't always sure of what was and wasn't, and if he could ever feel safe again. It's funny, he thinks to himself, how pain always lasts longer than pleasure. If someone cuts another deep enough, one scars over. But as he's seen with Hector, there's no lasting mark for the kindness one may have felt, at some point; nothing to show for the briefest moments of something approaching happiness. Wounds could heal in time, with or with magic, but the body and mind are wired to remember them, to hold onto terrifying lessons that came of them for the rest of one's life.]
no subject
...I live yet, don't I?
[He grates out, lowly, feeling his face stiffen under Hector's attention, his scrutiny.]
Go back to sleep.
[It's a demand, because it has to be. Because a plea is out of the question. But he doesn't expect Hector to listen, already smouldering with annoyance.
He thought he had outgrown nightmares; he had lost too many nights already to panic gripping him by the throat and shaking him awake, his head stuck someplace where dreams and memories would blur and he wasn't always sure of what was and wasn't, and if he could ever feel safe again. It's funny, he thinks to himself, how pain always lasts longer than pleasure. If someone cuts another deep enough, one scars over. But as he's seen with Hector, there's no lasting mark for the kindness one may have felt, at some point; nothing to show for the briefest moments of something approaching happiness. Wounds could heal in time, with or with magic, but the body and mind are wired to remember them, to hold onto terrifying lessons that came of them for the rest of one's life.]