For @littlestartopaz, with the prompt “Your technomancer has a nightmare about the electric-user and decides checking on her is the best way to calm down. But the electric user wakes up before she can leave.”

All right kids quick rundown of the shit you need to know (because these are characters from one of the as-yet-untitled novels I’m writing, not fandom-access characters).  It’s set in a near future where…basically Trump wins the presidency and sets himself up as a dictator.  We’re about 18 years down the line from the guy (Stone) getting elected and shit’s gone to hell in a pretty big way.  People are getting deported, people are reporting their neighbors to the police, whole families are vanishing overnight.  If you’re LGBT, non-white, non-Christian, an immigrant, or an outspoken supporter of any of those things, you’re in deep shit and a candidate for being disappeared.  The novel revolves around Max, who is part of a rebel organization called Polaris (largely made up of the people listed above) and who is one of a few people who’ve started to pop up with superhuman abilities.  The existence of these people—she calls them ‘blues’ and since she was the first one Polaris found, they go with it—is pretty much an urban legend, largely because the government has that shit on lock.  Max’s ability allows her to manipulate technology with her mind and make it do…basically whatever she wants.  Her (eventual) girlfriend Lessa Stone is the daughter of the Trump-equivalent dictator, who broke Max out of a holding cell and joined Polaris.  Lessa, besides being gay as FUCK, is also a blue, with the ability to generate a massive electrical current in her body and project it as lightning bolts.  So basically I’m writing a novel that can be summarized as “girlfriends with superpowers join a cast of LGBT people and PoC to smash the patriarchy.”  This snippet takes place sometime between Lessa joining Polaris and the two of them getting together properly (Lessa has Some Issues to sort out regarding her sexuality, shockingly).

I shuddered awake, panting.  The room was black around me, nothing to reorient myself, and my hands shook as I reached out and fumbled with the lamp on the floor next to my cot until the bulb flared to life.

Leaning forward to press my head into my hands, I tried to steady my breathing, lower my pulse, ease away the sick rushing nausea swelling through my chest. It didn’t work—every time I blinked, the dream flashed behind my eyelids.  Lessa’s blood on my hands, the sound of my scream ringing in my ears, the faceless figures of the police standing around us as her eyes went glassy. No lightning in the air, the faint crackle of ozone that followed her fading away as she died.  Not even dying for the cause, for Polaris, for her people, just for the crime of holding another girl’s hand.

It would never happen, of course—unless we managed a miracle, I was never going to hold a girlfriend’s hand and kiss her in the street, and Lessa wasn’t ready for something like that, wouldn’t want it with me even if she was. And they hadn’t quite escalated to executing gay couples in broad daylight, although honestly it wouldn’t shock me.  But it was so real, as real as anything I’d ever seen, and I was breathless with the memory of it.

The handful of shrinks rattling around the base said I had PTSD.  I’d replied that, hey, Ursa Major was a big base, and if they could show me a single person without some trauma I’d never touch another computer again.

Right this second, though, there was no chance in hell that I was going to get back to sleep without seeing for myself that Lessa was alive and unbloodied.

I extricated myself from my nest of blankets and stood, pulling on my jacket and a pair of socks and combat boots in addition to my pajamas.  I turned off the lamp and left my little closet of a room, heading for the second floor and the conference rooms we’d renovated into public barracks—Lessa wouldn’t get her own room unless she was promoted a lot, or moved in with at least one long-term partner.

Which I was not thinking about.  Because I never thought about that.

Ursa Major was never dead, even at—I peeked at a clock and grimaced—two in the morning.  There were too many people with odd work schedules and too few people who could reliably sleep through the night for that.  I passed at least one person in every hallway.  Glare was in the stairwell when I started down, his dark hair rumpled with sleep, chest unbound and the familiar thousand-yard stare of someone after a nightmare clear on his face.  I touched his shoulder as I passed and he twitched, eyes flicking up to me.

“You should find your binaries,” I said quietly.  “Staircase isn’t a good place to deal.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” he gumbled half-heartedly, and I mustered a faint grin.  “Zara’s on shift and Damien wasn’t in bed when I woke up.”

“Et tu, Glare?” I said, my smile fading.  “I think I saw him near the mess upstairs.  He looked pretty drained, I don’t think he’s slept yet.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Glare said.  He levered himself up and he gave me a quick once-over.  “You look like a wreck.”

I arched an eyebrow at him and remarked, “You say the nicest things.” He grinned a little at that.  “Just…dreams.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.  “I feel you. I’m going to find Day.  See you in the morning, Max.”

“See you, Glare.”

He turned and started back up the stairs, and I reached the second floor, where it was quieter.  There was etiquette to be observed around the barrack rooms, where there was always someone asleep.

Not Lessa, though, I noticed.  She wasn’t in her allocated space of floor.  Logically I knew it probably just meant she couldn’t sleep either, but my pulse picked up again, rattling under the thin skin of my throat until I could feel every heartbeat.

“Piti bós,” a whisper behind my shoulder said, and I almost startled right out of my skin, whipping around with a fist already clenched.  It was for the best that Elijah’s reflexes were so good, and he slipped out of my reach without missing a beat, hands open in front of him.  He looked tired, like he was just now going to bed, and he had a fresh gauze square taped over the bullet graze on his bicep.  “Dezole, Prime, I didn’t mean to scare you.  Why are you down here with the riffraff?”

I breathed and lowered my fists, shoving them deep into my jacket pockets. “I…had a nightmare,” I murmured.  “I was looking for Lessa.”  His face split into a wide, smug smile and I kicked out at his ankle.  My second-in-command was a horrible human being, I couldn’t believe I habitually trusted this man with explosives.  “Shut up, Two,” I said.

“I didn’t say a word, piti bós,” he protested, still grinning like a fool.  “Men, if you really wanted to know, I saw her in the infirmary.”

“Is she all right?” I asked, voice rising with alarm before I caught it.

He waved a hand, long-fingered and lazy.  “She’s fine.  Looked like she couldn’t sleep either.  You know, if you wanted, I’m sure you could solve that problem for her…?”

“Go the fuck to sleep before I murder you, Elijah,” I said, sidling past his unnecessarily tall and lanky form.  “You’re terrible.”

“Wi, but only for you,” he said, and blew me a kiss as I left.

I went down another floor and wove through the halls until I reached the door to the repurposed garage, and slipped into the brilliant white-lit infirmary. Seb was standing nearby, a stack of files on the counter, and he had a vague, bemused sort of frown on his face as he scowled down at them.  It threw the weary dark circles under his eyes and the lines fraying outward from their corners into bright relief.

“Seb,” I said, and he looked up.  “We’re not in crisis mode or anything, go the hell to bed.”

“Maxima,” he said, the nickname layered with a sharp tone of ‘I am twenty years older than you and half this base thought I was your father so do not order me around.’  “I’m just working through some charts.”

“At, what, zero-two-hundred?  Does Jun know you’re still up?”

As if saying his name had summoned him out of the eternal crowd in the infirmary, Jun Li appeared at my shoulder, an exasperated look on his face. “Jun has been trying to make him go to bed for the best part of an hour.”  He crossed his arms and glared at Seb.  Jun wasn’t as tall as Seb, nor as habitually irritated, but he did a pretty intimidating glare when he felt like it.  “Come on, bǎo běi.  You haven’t turned that page in ten minutes—and yes, before you ask, I was timing you, don’t question me.  Put the file down.”

“I have stuff to do, Jun.”

“Put.  The file.  Down.” Sebastian McCoy was many things, but stupid was (normally) not one of them, and he put the file on the counter with the others.  “Good,” Jun Li said, smiling and stepping forward to rest a hand on Seb’s cheek.  “Now come on, wǒde tàiyáng, let’s go to bed.”

Seb sighed, but bent his head to press a kiss to Jun Li’s lips, and said, “All right.  Lead the way, sweetheart.”

“Sap,” I said fondly, and he gave me a half-hearted glower as Jun Li towed him sternly toward the door.

I scanned the infirmary once they were gone, my eyes gravitating toward the niche at the end of the counter that I usually sat in when it was me in here, sleepless.  A leg, kicked out into the walkway, was visible, and I walked over as quietly as I could.

Lessa was asleep, sitting on the floor and propped against the counter, her head tipped back to show the vulnerable line of her throat and the twining Lichtenberg scars that rose up the left side.  One hand lay open in her lap, the other tucked tightly around her waist, and I could see her chest rise and fall with each breath.

The tension bled out of my muscles.  She was here. She was fine.  There wasn’t a mark on her.  I didn’t know if I’d be able to sleep now, but I could probably stop shaking. I took a deep breath and let it out, slowly, and tried to retreat as quietly as I could.

Her eyes flickered open and landed on me.  She wasn’t quite as paranoid as some—like, just for example, myself—but she was starting to reach the point where she could sense attention on her.  It was a good skill for a sniper.

“Hey, Tech,” she said, quiet, as if the infirmary wasn’t constantly a low level of chaos.

“I’m sorry,” I said, half-blurted.  Goddamn everything straight to hell, I was a spy, it was my job to be good when put on the spot, I could manage this without being a disaster.  “I wasn’t—I just wanted to see—I had…a nightmare.”  I trailed off and sighed, then started over and forced myself to order my words coherently.  “I just needed to see that you were all right.  I can go…?”

“No!” Lessa yelped, jolting upright and drawing a few glances from the staff.  She turned bright red, the blotchy blush rising up her throat and throwing the scars into sharp relief.  “I mean, um.  You could stay, if you wanted?  I didn’t. Um.  I didn’t sleep very well either and I remembered you said you came down here sometimes when you couldn’t sleep and you were right, it helped, but.” She stopped and snapped her mouth shut. “Sorry, I’m a little sleep deprived,” she said with a short laugh, high and tight.  I wondered what she’d been dreaming about—she sounded almost nervous, jacked up on adrenaline.  Nightmares all around, maybe.

“Do you mind if I sit with you, then?” I asked, and she shook her head.  I folded myself into the space beside her as neatly as possible.  Under most circumstances, I didn’t mind being built on short, stocky lines, all broad shoulders and muscles from fighting, but beside Lessa I felt clumsy and inelegant, like a dwarf next to an elf. I silently made a pact with myself to never let Seb know how thoroughly he had managed to corrupt my twelve-year-old self with Lord of the Rings.

For a few minutes, we were stiff, a careful handspan of space between my arm and Lessa’s, but then she sighed and leaned slowly into my shoulder.

“Is this all right?” she murmured, and I made myself take a deep breath before I answered.  I was a grown woman and a revolutionary, with a list of past partners as long as my leg.  I absolutely was not going to be reduced to stuttering over a pretty girl leaning on me.

“It might work better if I put my arm around your shoulders,” I said, and my voice came out smooth and even. We shifted, rearranged ourselves, and settled again, with my back against the wall and my arm tucked around Lessa, her head resting in the curve between my throat and shoulder.  She was at an angle, one leg tucked up beneath her, and her breath tickled my collarbone with every breath.

“Stay,” she whispered, so quietly I almost thought I’d imagined it.  By the time I realized that I hadn’t, her breathing had evened out into the slow drag of sleep.

Her weight warm and heavy against me, I thought there was no was in hell I’d get to sleep.  But it was easy to let my breathing match hers, to let my cheek drop to her hair and my eyes flutter closed.

I didn’t realize I’d dozed off until I was woken up, vaguely, by someone dropping something soft over us. Glare, looking somewhat better than before, gave me a small smile as he tugged the blanket out to cover my legs, and left, his fingers tangled with Zara’s and Damien’s arm around his shoulders.

I tipped my head and pressed an absent, automatic kiss to Lessa’s hair, and let my eyes close again.