All throughout the night, the subtlest creaks jolted her awake, a tenseness to her body that she couldn’t shake. Despite laying down, her eyes were wide open, staring at the doorway to the bedroom. The door was closed, the ship was locked tight, she’d personally seen that the droids were on standby.
So why couldn’t she sleep?
Haunting visions every time she’d pass that point where her mind would start to wander and she’d start to dream. If it wasn’t the sudden sensation of drowning, starved for air and desperately clawing at the water to reach the surface, it was that obscured face staring back up at her as her hands kept them down, just below the water. Hatred fuelling her actions. Her lungs burned no matter what side she found herself on, and the fear bubbled up within her like the last gasp of air rising to break the tension of the water’s surface.
And so it went, and when it finally came time for the faint light of dawn to creep through the ship’s viewport, casting a dim glow over her quarters, she slowly rose from the bed with a tired groan. Her heart was racing still, her mind was still half-caught in the corners of the room like something would jump out at her. The familiar creaks and groans of the ship she’d built herself, now serving to keep her eternally on edge.
Casting the blanket aside, she sat on the edge of her bunk, trying to steady her breathing. Her hands shook even as she tightened a grip on the corner of the bed, the tension in her body refusing to dissipate even now. She took a breath, and ran her hand through tangled copper hair, forcing herself to stand and move. She got dressed, hoping the familiarity of a morning routine would ease the burden a bit. It didn’t.
Despite her mind cycling through a hundred different horrible fates that would await her beyond the door, nothing was waiting for her. The empty hallway greeted her as it ever did, and she turned into it to find her way to the bathroom. The first order of business, splashing cold water on her face to clear some of the fog from her mind, though it did little for the tension in her muscles. She grabbed a towel and patted her face dry, avoiding the reflection in the small mirror-- she couldn’t face her own tired eyes staring back at her, not today.
Worse, perhaps, was the lingering fear that the face staring back at her wouldn’t be her own. The fear of it being some malformed creature, an amalgam of flesh and pain.
She reached up to rub her face with a groan, stepping out of the ship to greet the day ahead. She let out one more tired sigh, before anybody saw, before a mask she’d perfected over countless sleepless nights swept over her face. With a deep breath, she straightened her posture, forced a smirk to her lips, and practiced her tone on the way out of the spaceport, raising a hand to those assembled outside.
“Hey hey!”