insomnia
Tycho doesn't remember entirely. Just fragments, images, sounds.
Graceful rounded edges of a shining white marble building, pink flower petals slowly drifting to the ground, a flash of long brown curls and bright brown eyes and a curve of a smile, laughter-- She's close and her hand is sliding up his side "Keep talking pretty like that, flyboy, and I'll see what I can do" and green eyes hold his until the last possible second, when they're too close and her face shimmers out of focus and mouth comes in-- Running neon orange and silvery-white up ahead and he curses and ducks back behind the relative cover of the wall, blaster bolts flashing past right in front of his face, and wait just "WAIT" dammit! and her cry of pain stops his breath-- The craft is pulling against him, stabilizers gone, astromech shrieking, sweat stinging his eyes as he yanks the stick back as hard as he can, staticky voices buzzing over the comm; he levels out just in time to whip through the cloud of debris that was once Rogue Seven-- Laughter and overlapping voices on the holo "You were right, Tych, i-" "-nd really, she should have slapped him for wh-" "-there're no Ewoks, though; a definite overs-" "-ou say 'yub yub' I'm going to stran-" and then static, and he shouldn't but he sees the explosion, sees his home ripped to pieces, sees the brand new asteroid field floating in the black and this isn't right they weren't there it's not how it went--
A boot to the ribs, another to the face and he's spitting out blood and teeth but he can take a beating and he's snarling up at them and then they're hauling him to his feet unmindful of the broken arm and dislocated shoulder and there are straps and webbing and agony at his temple and there's something not right driving into his head, digging deep into his thoughts and his memories and ripping them all out and the open air burns-- Choking and gasping, every breath a knife in his ribs his chest his head and the hand is flinching and touching the bruises on his face, the huge gash in the side of his head and he shouldn't be here; he tries to tell him to leave before he's found but he can't speak, can't do anything but bleed, and he's torn away and he can't lift his head but he can still see him writhing and screaming--
Boots ringing out on a cold metal floor "I'm so sorry, Colonel; the mission went south" and there's a body on a slab and he can't look but no life now, no green eyes; the face is a black smoking crater, silvery-white hair fanning out on the cold metal table.
Tycho doesn't remember his dreams entirely. But he remembers enough that he's sitting on the edge of the bed now, all of the room's lights blazing. He reaches for the chrono on the bedside table, struggling to control the shaking of his hand. 0320 hours. Great. More than a week it's been now since the nightmares started, and he hasn't had a single night's respite since. He sleeps in snatches when he can; he doesn't think he's had more than two hours of rest in any given 24-hour period.
They've never been this bad before.
Tycho Celchu isn't a man to dwell on the past, consciously or otherwise. He's had his share of nightmares about the past, about the deaths, both real and fictional, of loved ones and friends, but never like this. Never to such a point that he avoids sleep like the dark side, that he wakes up heaving for breath, that he carries a feeling of unease with him all day. He has a general idea of what's causing them: being Bound. Being useless. Worrying over Winter. Missing the squadron. So his subconscious drags up old days, dogfights, nonexistant firefights, Alderaan, Lusankya, highly feasible deaths, and people. His family, old and new; his parents his sisters his brother Nyiestra Winter Wedge Wes Hobbie Gavin Corran Inyri Ooryl all Rogues, past and present.
He digs the heel of his hand hard into red eyes, and he wonders if this is how madness starts.
Graceful rounded edges of a shining white marble building, pink flower petals slowly drifting to the ground, a flash of long brown curls and bright brown eyes and a curve of a smile, laughter-- She's close and her hand is sliding up his side "Keep talking pretty like that, flyboy, and I'll see what I can do" and green eyes hold his until the last possible second, when they're too close and her face shimmers out of focus and mouth comes in-- Running neon orange and silvery-white up ahead and he curses and ducks back behind the relative cover of the wall, blaster bolts flashing past right in front of his face, and wait just "WAIT" dammit! and her cry of pain stops his breath-- The craft is pulling against him, stabilizers gone, astromech shrieking, sweat stinging his eyes as he yanks the stick back as hard as he can, staticky voices buzzing over the comm; he levels out just in time to whip through the cloud of debris that was once Rogue Seven-- Laughter and overlapping voices on the holo "You were right, Tych, i-" "-nd really, she should have slapped him for wh-" "-there're no Ewoks, though; a definite overs-" "-ou say 'yub yub' I'm going to stran-" and then static, and he shouldn't but he sees the explosion, sees his home ripped to pieces, sees the brand new asteroid field floating in the black and this isn't right they weren't there it's not how it went--
A boot to the ribs, another to the face and he's spitting out blood and teeth but he can take a beating and he's snarling up at them and then they're hauling him to his feet unmindful of the broken arm and dislocated shoulder and there are straps and webbing and agony at his temple and there's something not right driving into his head, digging deep into his thoughts and his memories and ripping them all out and the open air burns-- Choking and gasping, every breath a knife in his ribs his chest his head and the hand is flinching and touching the bruises on his face, the huge gash in the side of his head and he shouldn't be here; he tries to tell him to leave before he's found but he can't speak, can't do anything but bleed, and he's torn away and he can't lift his head but he can still see him writhing and screaming--
Boots ringing out on a cold metal floor "I'm so sorry, Colonel; the mission went south" and there's a body on a slab and he can't look but no life now, no green eyes; the face is a black smoking crater, silvery-white hair fanning out on the cold metal table.
Tycho doesn't remember his dreams entirely. But he remembers enough that he's sitting on the edge of the bed now, all of the room's lights blazing. He reaches for the chrono on the bedside table, struggling to control the shaking of his hand. 0320 hours. Great. More than a week it's been now since the nightmares started, and he hasn't had a single night's respite since. He sleeps in snatches when he can; he doesn't think he's had more than two hours of rest in any given 24-hour period.
They've never been this bad before.
Tycho Celchu isn't a man to dwell on the past, consciously or otherwise. He's had his share of nightmares about the past, about the deaths, both real and fictional, of loved ones and friends, but never like this. Never to such a point that he avoids sleep like the dark side, that he wakes up heaving for breath, that he carries a feeling of unease with him all day. He has a general idea of what's causing them: being Bound. Being useless. Worrying over Winter. Missing the squadron. So his subconscious drags up old days, dogfights, nonexistant firefights, Alderaan, Lusankya, highly feasible deaths, and people. His family, old and new; his parents his sisters his brother Nyiestra Winter Wedge Wes Hobbie Gavin Corran Inyri Ooryl all Rogues, past and present.
He digs the heel of his hand hard into red eyes, and he wonders if this is how madness starts.