The Dead on Culloden's Field

> “Did you want to say something, Yan? It’s your turn. Go ahead. Oh, no, shhh, don’t, it’s okay, it’s okay. Can someone get me some tissues? Take her out? But it’s her mother. Fine. Come here, Yan, that’s right...”

>

> -from the Iron Dreams video archive, Maxes BarCarran, at the funeral of Sinnah BarCarran

yan banner [https://66.media.tumblr.com/3a8e1d12d80117e6afc9f5f48ca78e87/tumblr_pdxwrhUDP41xnm75po1_1280.png]

Yan was alone in her little loaned room on the Sky Boat, laying face down on her bed, dressed only in her undershirt and boxer shorts.

For once she was glad to be laying down on something, rather than floating in the microgravity environment. Her guest room was in the spinning portion of the ship, but the rotation had been stopped during the fight, and had only resumed a while after the ship jumped. Being in a room designed for gravity while not having any was a novelty under the best of circumstances, but Yan was not feeling particularly in the mood for novelty.

When she was feeling lost and untethered, the last thing that she wanted was to be physically floating around her room. Now that she could stay put on the bed, she did.

Earlier, Iri had come knocking on her door, but Yan had yelled at her to go away. Maybe Iri would have been good company, but Yan was wallowing in her own inner turmoil.

She had killed people. She had crushed them with a giant piece of rock. They were dead.

She didn't know who they were, but she knew what life was like aboard ships. Every person that she had killed, they were all somebody's mother, sister, cousin, brother, teacher, daughter, lover, friend.

She could imagine it was just like when her own mother had died. Every death on a starship would set the entire community off balance. It was such a closed environment. Everyone knew each other’s name and felt each other’s pain. Sometimes, if the pain was deep enough, the family might not ever really recover.

Were there enough people left aboard the pirate ship to say the funeral rite? Did pirates even say the funeral prayer at all? Should she say it for them? Not as though she knew any of these people aside from their one fatal encounter.

Yan tried to keep her thoughts off of it, but she found that absolutely impossible. When she tried to meditate, they would creep back in and she would wind up with tears crawling out of her eyes. When she tried to pray, the feeling of guilt overwhelmed her and she had to stop. She didn’t feel her normal peace from praying. Was she lost, torn away from God? Could God not forgive her for doing this?

And even when she could turn her thoughts away from the pirates and towards the Sky Boat, she felt an almost even more confusing mixture of guilt and anger. What did they want from her? To turn back time? To kill every pirate in a blaze of anger? If she had completely destroyed the pirate ship, she would have been beyond redemption. Her stomach churned thinking of it. After all, wasn't that what the pirates themselves did?

It wasn't fair of them to ask that of her.

She didn't even know if she had the strength to do it. Ships were like living beings, in a way. The power was resistant to being used directly on anything with a stardrive, just as it resisted being used directly on another person.

She couldn’t stop ruminating on what she would have had to do, if she had tried to destroy the pirate ship. It might have been too big to break up with rocks. The shuttles were easy targets, but a whole ship was orders of magnitude larger. Thoughts of the worse things Yan might have done, and the horrible things she had, kept spiraling around and around in her mind.

She hadn't really considered it as a fact before, but Halen, and maybe even Sandreas, had probably killed before. How did they cope with it? Did they secretly spend all their time thinking about everything they could have done differently? Did they feel guilty? Would this feeling pass?

A deep horror lurked at the bottom of her thoughts. Yan had killed other people. Should there be a life taken for a life? Did she do what was right? Did she do what was necessary? Was there any other way this could have been solved?

The more rational and detatched part of her screamed that she was being melodramatic, but that part of her was drowned out by the louder part.

Yan couldn’t do anything other than dry sob onto her pillow and occasionally choke on bile that rose in her throat.

There was a knock on the door.

"Go away!" Yan yelled.

Whoever it was knocked again.

"I said go away!" Yan yelled. She picked up one of her shoes from the side of her bed and threw it full force at the door. It hit with a weak thud.

Yan heard the lock of her door click and the door slid open. She buried her face in her pillow, not wanting to look at Sid as he came in. It had to be Sid. Iri wouldn’t be coming back to bother her, and Sid would be able to open her door easily enough.

If she didn't look at him, he probably wouldn't talk to her.

Sid closed the door behind him and sat down on Yan's bed. He unceremoniously lifted up her feet so that he could squeeze himself into the space between the wall and Yan’s long body. Yan twitched her leg as though to kick him, but he let her legs go and they just flopped back onto the sheets.

There was a long minute of silence where neither of them said or did anything. Yan took even breaths into her pillow and tried not start crying again. After a while of being aware that Sid was there and waiting for her, Yan relented and flipped over onto her back, half sitting up to look over at him. Her face was puffy and she felt like a wreck, but Sid looked just as bad.

Yan's room was small enough that her bed stretched its entire width, so Sid leaned into one corner, with his knees folded up to his chest. He was as pale as Yan had ever seen him and he wasn't wearing his glasses. He looked different without them. Vulnerable.

"Hey," Sid signed. "You ok?"

"What do I look like?" Yan signed back, sitting up fully. "Are you ok?"

Sid shook his head no.

Neither of them made any move for a long moment. Seeing how pathetic he looked was almost enough to yank Yan out of her own emotions and give him a hug, but she wasn't quite there. Sid probably wouldn't have wanted that, anyway.

"The worst thing," Yan signed, "Is admitting it to myself."

"I don't want to think about it," Sid signed. "It's all-" He knocked his head with his knuckles, not gently.

"You were better, before." Yan signed, a questioning look on her face.

"It's easy to work when I'm angry," Sid signed. "I was very angry." His face curled up in a half snarl.

"Not anymore?" Yan asked.

"No one left to be angry at," Sid signed. "Except myself."

"Angry at yourself for what?" Yan asked.

"Thinking about what I could have done, more, better."

"I understand. I don't feel angry. Just," Yan didn't quite know just what she was feeling. She clenched her fist and pressed it into her stomach.

"Bad," Sid confirmed. "Yeah."

"How do other people live with this?"

"How many other people have killed a person? More than one person? Other people don't have to live with this."

"Halen has, I think," Yan signed.

"Sandreas is responsible for a lot of people. I know that," Sid signed. Sandreas was responsible for keeping people alive, and for killing them, in some abstract way as the head of the Empire.

"That's not the same as doing it yourself," Yan felt ill again.

"Isn't it?" Sid signed. "Better, or worse?"

"I don't know. Less real feeling, maybe."

"If you make it to the end of the apprenticeship..." Sid signed.

"More people on my head." Yan stacked her fists. "Same for you."

"If I make it." Sid looked exhausted. How long of a day had it been? When had they last eaten?

"I don't want to be like Halen," Yan signed.

"You're not." Sid had the faintest smile Yan had ever seen from him.

"We're both killers, maybe. We almost did a m-u-t-i-n-y. We're halfway to pirates," Yan signed. She had to fingerspell mutiny since she didn’t know the sign. "What's the difference?"

"Don't take all the credit for mutinous behavior," Sid signed, giving her the sign she was looking for. "I deserve that one."

Yan shook her head. "That's not what I mean. I-"

"Even if you were like Halen, there are worse people to be."

"What do you mean?" Yan asked.

"I like Halen. I like you." Sid started to sign something else, then waved his hands to clear the air, changing his mind.

"I like you, too," Yan signed, looking him in the eye. "I wouldn't be able to... keep going if you weren't here to help."

"Yes you would," Sid signed. "You just can't admit it."

"You can't say that," Yan said. "That's not fair."

"You want to blame what you did on me?" Sid asked. "You could have done it all yourself."

Yan felt horrible. Her face twisted up, and she couldn't tell if she was angry or about to cry again. She grabbed the pillow from behind her and threw it at Sid. It hit him, but he took it and tucked it in between his legs and his chest.

"I didn't want to do it at all!" Yan wasn't used to arguing in sign. She didn't know how to make it seem like she was yelling, but maybe her expression was doing the trick.

"But you did, and you could have done it by yourself, and you could have done it again, if you had to," Sid signed. "That's a good thing."

"It's a good thing to kill people?" Yan scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand after she finished signing.

"It's good to know that you can do what you have to to stay alive, and to get the job done, and to protect the people you care about. For all the thanks that these people have for it, anyway."

Yan put her forehead on her knees and covered her head with her hands, long arms crossed clumsily over the back of her neck. She didn't want to see what Sid had to say to her. She didn't want to think that Sid was right, and she had the capacity to do it all alone.

She heard and felt the creaking of the bed as Sid came over next to her. He wrapped his arms around her. They were a bony jumble of limbs. He rested his head on her back, near her shoulders.

Sid opened himself up in the power, and Yan felt the tumble of emotions that came from him. He was hurting just as deeply as she was, but he was trying to help her anyway. Yan sent an apology back through their connection, and received understanding in turn.

"I think," Sid said aloud, "We're the only people who can ever understand this."

Yan could feel the rumble of his voice as he spoke, but she was unable to respond. He couldn't understand her if she spoke aloud because he wasn't wearing his glasses, and they weren't in position to sign to each other.

"Maybe somebody else can feel something similar. Or people who were on the shuttle with us can understand what it felt like to be there. But nobody else will ever know the whole story."

Sid just continued to talk, pouring out his feelings.

"I think... You're better than I am at this. I didn't know what to do until you told me. Same as what happened that day we were training and Kino got hurt. If you weren't here..." Sid squeezed his arms around her, holding on like a drowning man.

Yan shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut.

"I don't know how we're going to face the Guild people. I'm not good at anything like this. I- I probably shouldn't be here at all."

She didn't know what to do as Sid continued to talk. She curled her toes in the sheets of the bed and her fingers yanked at her short hair.

"I wish it could all go back to feeling like it was a game. God!" Sid yelled. "What can I do? This is all horrible. I never asked for this. I never wanted-"

He was crying onto Yan's back. She couldn't move or say anything to help him, he was holding her too tightly. Yan tried to send him a feeling of comfort through the power, but it was drowned out in Sid's overwhelming torrent of feelings. Any comfort Yan could give felt hollow and insinccere; she felt just as bad, so how could she offer anything to him? Yan couldn't fault him for letting it out, but he wasn't even really talking to her, he was just yelling out into the void.

There was no comfort in that for either of them.

They sat there together, Yan trying to breathe slowly in and out as Sid calmed down. Eventually, his shuddering breaths turned quiet, synced with hers. They slipped, first accidentally, then willingly, down into meditation together. Breathing together, touching, and feeling that same pain was enough to bring them there.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

In their shared mental space, their thoughts blended together, and they could talk to each other more fluidly. Yan could feel Sid's body and her own, and by mutual agreement, they loosened Sid's constrictor-like grip on Yan's torso.

Yan could see the part of the fight that she had missed, playing out in Sid's mind's eye, where he had simply ripped apart the remaining shuttles and dogfighters. The movements were probably exaggerated, since it was a memory that Sid was rethinking over and over, but the feeling was real. It churned both of their stomachs.

Yan gently tried to shove that memory aside, and Sid let her. She could feel his desperation to think of something, anything else. Unfortunately, the only thing that came to mind was the sad mantra that she had been playing in her own head.

"Can we..." Yan tried to ask, then tried to stop asking, but Sid had already grasped the full thought that was floating there in front of her.

Yan wanted to say the funeral rite for those people. Pirates. People. She and Sid had killed them, and there was no way to make that right, but it felt like the only thing that they could do.

She felt Sid agree to it. She presented the text of the prayer from her memory. Though Yan had always been good at remembering the prayers, this was one that she had memorized purposely, many years ago. Sid, in their shared mind space, was distantly amused at her remembrance of what a morbid child she had been. It wasn't that funny.

They both started saying the prayer that Yan provided, mouths moving in sync. Their voices came out as the strange mixture that group meditation always gave, just on a smaller scale. Sid's perception of hearing with Yan’s ears colored the experience. In any other situation, Yan might have wanted to explore that feeling, but here she only wanted to say the prayer.

The first part of the funeral rite was the invocation, calling upon God.

"Lord God of all creation, who created the living and embraces the dead, we come before You with the soul of-"

They had to stop for a second. They didn't know what the names of the pirates were.

"We come before You with the souls of those who we... we have wronged. We ask that You bring them into Your gentle care."

Yan still didn't think it was appropriate to say that they had killed them, but they had to say something in place of the name.

The next part of the rite was the description of life, and how the universe had come about. It was fitting to describe the beginning of things before describing the end.

"In the beginning, there was light. And You moved Your hand and split the light from the light to give it form, and meaning, and understanding. In the place between, there was darkness."

Traditionally, this was done with candles, but they didn't have any. Both Yan and Sid had their eyes closed. Yan's voice was muffled because her head was still on her knees, tucked under her hands. It didn't really matter. Sid's voice, or, rather, both their voices coming out of Sid's mouth, was clear.

"In the beginning, there was God. You formed the darkness to make the sky, and the light to make the stars within the it. You set the planets in motion around the stars, and on the planets, you breathed life into the water, and the ground, and the air."

"In the beginning, You made us a creation with Your spirit, and scattered us across the planets, so that we might have form, and purpose, and understanding of ourselves and Your glory."

"Now, we are here together, with the souls of those we have wronged. These were people that we knew. We saw them and we knew them. They saw us and they knew us. To know others is to know ourselves. Let all who knew these souls speak."

This was the part of the funeral rite where everyone who actually knew the dead would say their piece. In a normal case, this could last for a while as everyone attending said their own words or prayers. Yan and Sid came to it and fell silent for a moment.

"We only knew these people for a little while. We don't know their names, or what they look like, or who they are. But we saw them, and we knew them. Because we knew them, we learned what we are capable of. We did not understand before that we could..." And then they had to admit it. "Kill another person. We did not understand before how much that would hurt."

They paused for a second, considering what they should say next.

"It wasn't worth their lives, the understanding that they gave us. But it was the price that they paid anyway. We have no way to repay that debt that we owe them."

Yan’s brain snatched control away from Sid for a second. It was unintentional, but she was overcome by emotion.

"Was it good? Was it right? Was it necessary? We're sorry. We're so sorry, we're so sorry. We're so- We couldn't see another way."

Sid exerted his own control and forced Yan to stop talking.

When thinking and speaking in the shared mind space, every word either required deliberation and cooperation or it all spilled out in an uncontrollable stream. It was a slow process to compose their short message and a relief for both of them to go back to the less personal framing of the formal text of the funeral rite. This was the last part, the return.

"In the end, there will be God. All things will return to that from which they came. We will return to the ground, the planets will return to the stars, the stars will return to darkness, the darkness will return to light, and the light will return to God."

"It will all come to pass like this. At the end of our lives we will be there with you, in the place beyond places, in the time beyond time. We will know each other there. All injury will be forgiven, all fears will be forgotten, and all sadness will fall away like rain."

"So until we meet again, there and then, we come before God to implore that your souls be brought to that final place. There, you shall come to know God as you know yourselves."

"We thank you for the gifts you have given us, we give you love for your journey home, and we release you from your bonds."

And that was it. The text of the funeral rite was mercifully short, in order to give the usual mourners space to say their piece. Here, with no one except Yan and Sid, it was over quickly, and that brought with it some modicum of relief. At least that duty, however small, had been fulfilled.

Yan and Sid lurked in the shared meditative space for a little longer, each doing their best not to think of anything. Whenever Yan had a stray thought, Sid nudged it away, and Yan did the same for him. Eventually, the odd position they were both sitting in began to hurt and intrude on their shared thinking. Trying to coordinate both of their movements to get into a more comfortable position was too much effort, so they released each other mentally.

Sid pulled his head off of Yan's back and let her go from his hug. Now free, Yan uncurled from the cramped position she had been holding, stretching out her long limbs to their fullest extent. Her joints crackled unhappily and her legs tingled painfully from having fallen asleep.

The feeling of being alone in her own head was uncomfortable, and Yan half wished she could link back up with Sid, but the moment had passed.

Sid scooted back to the other side of the bed where he had been before.

"Feel any better?" He asked.

"I don't know," Yan signed. "I think I just have to ignore it as much as possible."

Sid nodded.

"Can I ask a question?" Yan asked. Sid shrugged. "Before, why did you talk out loud?"

Sid looked embarrassed; his ears turned red.

"I just wanted to get the thoughts out. It was like... I could admit them but not hear it at the same time. When I talk, it isn't me. And since you couldn't say anything, I-"

"I get it," Yan signed. They both paused for a moment and stared into space.

"This sucks," Sid signed, using the rudest version of that sign.

"Yeah." Yan didn't have the wherewithal to make a joke about it.

There was a knock on the door. Yan sat up straighter, feeling alarmed.

"What?" Sid asked.

"Somebody at the door," Yan signed. "Any guesses who?"

"Your minder?"

"I told Iri to go away earlier, don't think she'd come back," Yan signed.

"Go see who it is," Sid said.

"But I don't-"

Whoever was at the door knocked again, and Yan reluctantly got up, trying to make her undershirt look slightly more presentable. She hoped it wasn't anyone important. She was wearing only underwear.

Yan opened the door a crack and peeked out. It was one of the boys she had met the previous night. What was his name? Zebin? Zevan? Zevin, that was it. He was the older brunette boy.

"Uh, hi," Yan said.

"Hi. Um." He held out a bag to her. It was cloth, rather large, and zipped across the opening. In all respects it was classic tote bag spacers used to carry tools. "My parents said to give this to you."

"Thanks?" Yan said, taking the bag. "Uh, what is it?"

The boy shrugged. "Food and stuff. Since you probably weren't going to go back to the dining hall."

"Oh, yeah. Thank you." That was really considerate of the family. Yan was surprised that they had thought of it at all.

"You're welcome. Uh, my mom said thank you for helping us." The teen rubbed the back of his neck. "I know people are mad about it or something, but, like, you saved me from having to scrub red paint for the rest of all time so..."

"That was the bay that got destroyed?" Yan managed a smile.

"Yeah, ha, I mean it's bad, but..." He smiled a bit back.

"Well I can't really take credit for wrecking the bay," Yan said.

"Oh, I thought that was why Captain Lida was mad at you?"

"No, that's... It's complicated. Don't worry about it."

"Ok, but you know I'm just going to ask somebody why later," he said.

"If you must," Yan said. "You should probably go, though. If people see you hanging out here they might get mad at you, too."

"Who's that?" He asked, peeking around Yan to see Sid in the room.

"Sid, he's my partner," Yan said.

Zevin raised his eyebrows. "I thought all people like you were, you know..."

"God, not like that. I meant we work together."

"Oh," Zevin looked mildly disappointed. "I was going to go gossip about you."

"Please don't," Yan said, feeling distressed.

"I'm kidding, really."

"Thank you again for the food," Yan said, rather anxious to get Zevin to leave.

"Yeah, no problem. Can I come see you again?"

Yan shrugged. She was practically under house arrest, but she didn't know how much Zevin's family would like him coming to see her, and she didn't know how much teen boy she could handle over the few days she would be on the ship. Her experience with him and his cousins had been a good one before, but the situation was different now. Her non answer seemed to satisfy him.

"Ok. Well, bye then," Zevin said.

"Bye," Yan said, watching him walk away down the hallway.

She shut the door and returned to the bed. She plopped the bag down in between her and Sid.

"Who was that?" Sid asked, watching Yan go through the bag. She abandoned her investigation to respond to him.

"One of the boys I met last night," Yan signed. "He brought us food from his family since we can't go out to eat."

"That's nice of him," Sid signed.

"He thought we were a couple. It was almost funny."

"We did spend like... two hours embracing, and I'm on your bed and you're only wearing underwear."

"That's not couple behavior," Yan signed. "The thought of being with you is revolting to me."

"How could you say such a thing?" Sid signed, fake scandalized. "You're the only one who could ever love me, after what we've done."

"Fuck off," Yan signed.

Sid smiled. "I'm kidding."

"I know, but it's not funny."

Yan investigated the contents of the bag. There was a half a loaf of bread, bottles of juice, a bag of cereal, a box with cold chicken in it, and some chocolate bars. It wasn't the greatest assortment of food, but it was food, so she couldn't complain. She handed the bag to Sid to examine, then leaned off the bed to grab her discarded Iron Dreams uniform off the floor. She fished around in the pocket for her utility knife, which most spacers carried all the time.

Sid looked alarmed as Yan came back up holding the knife.

"Look at this," he signed, then held up a small plastic bag, filled with a few pills. "What is it?"

Yan took the bag, opened it, and took out one of the pills. She laid it on her palm and turned it over. A small, ornate V was imprinted on one side.

"V-e-n-a." Yan signed. She didn't know the word for the drug in sign.

"That's generous of them. The sign is this." Sid crooked his index and middle finger, while his other fingers made a fist, and he snapped the crooked fingers onto his forehead, rather like a snake bite.

Yan made a disgusted face and put the pill back in the bag. "I don't want to be responsible for owning this."

"I'll take it off your hands," Sid signed.

"You're going to use this stuff?" The thought made Yan want to puke.

"I've heard it works wonders for keeping your mind off unpleasant things. There's a reason it was given to us."

"Yeah, but Kino-"

"Halen only said Kino wasn't allowed to use it, he didn't say anything about us."

"But-"

"And Halen isn't here." Sid held his hand out for the bag. Yan considered for a second whether she should hand it over or not. In the end, she didn't want to be responsible for it, and she trusted Sid enough not to immediately start taking the pills. She tossed it to him with a scowl.

"It's not a good idea," Yan signed.

"Let's eat and worry about it later," Sid said. Yan realized again just how hungry she actually was and nodded.

Yan distributed the food, carving up the bread and the chicken with her knife, making crude sandwiches. They didn't have any plates or utensils but they made do, even if Yan's bed got covered in crumbs. Because of the nature of the food, they had to eat without signing to each other, which let Yan stew uncomfortably in her own thoughts until they had both finished their sandwiches.

"Can we compromise?" Sid asked.

"On the Vena?"

"Yeah."

"Why? What do you want to compromise on?" Yan asked.

Sid's face looked even more exhausted than he had been when he first came into Yan's room, and he had already looked quite tired then.

"I don't think I'll be able to sleep," Sid signed. "I'm tired, but I think that I'll wake up screaming or crying or messing things up. I'm really feeling-"

Yan nodded, and he stopped. She knew how he felt. She was feeling better than she had, but that was only because Sid was there. Eating a good meal had helped a little, and being able to pray had helped a little, and being able to talk things out had helped a little, but Yan knew that the instant she was alone in the dark at night, the terror would return.

"I know that will happen," Sid signed. "I just want to make it easier."

"So what is the compromise?" There was a part of Yan that understood exactly what Sid was saying, and where his desire to take the drug came from. The more off kilter part of herself could even imagine, if she was alone, trying it. But her fear of the drug, and her fear of what people would think were stronger than that desire. Yan was vulnerable enough to convincing, though, and Sid would probably get his way.

"Can I take half of one, and stay here tonight? I don't want to be alone."

Yan looked down at her hands for a second, then at Sid's pathetic face.

"That's not much of a compromise. But you can stay," Yan signed.

"I'll sleep on the floor."

"Don't be an idiot," Yan signed.

Without further conversation, the two cleaned up the dinner mess, shaking the crumbs out of Yan's bedsheets and putting the leftover food back in the bag. They each got ready for bed, taking care of business in the tiny adjoining bathroom.

Sid had stripped down to his own undershirt and underwear, leaving his apprentice cassock onto the floor, right next to Yan's own discarded jumpsuit. He was standing at Yan's little desk, her knife in one hand and holding one of the vena pills still with the other.

"Are you really going to do this?" Yan signed.

Sid nodded. He cut the pill in half, holding out one half to Yan. She actually considered it for a second, then shook her head. She would see after tonight if it was worth the risk. Sid put the half pill back into the bag, which he closed and considered.

"Where should I hide this?" He asked.

"Under the bathroom sink, maybe?"

Sid took the bag into the bathroom and spent a minute fiddling with it. He came back without it, so he must have felt like he was successful in hiding it.

"Well, here goes nothing," Sid signed. He took the half pill that was left on Yan's desk and dry swallowed it, cringing a bit at the taste. "Now what?"

"Get into bed, you idiot." Yan shook her head at him and turned off the lights. He climbed into bed, and Yan got in behind, pulling the covers up over both of them.

"How long does it take to work?" Sid asked aloud. Yan had no way of responding to that, since he couldn't see her in the dark and he wasn't wearing his glasses.

Yan closed her eyes, trying to breathe evenly and fall asleep. Sid was still as a corpse beside her. She tried not to think about anything aside from her overwhelming tiredness. Eventually, Yan did fall asleep.

She woke an indeterminate amount of time later, soaked in a cold sweat and gasping for air, choking on her own tongue. The moment she jolted awake she forgot what her dream was about, which was a small mercy. Somehow while she was asleep, her arms had wormed their way around Sid, one draped over his shoulder and one trapped underneath his neck.

Yan first steadied her breathing, trying not to wake him, and then investigated to confirm that Sid was still alive. He was, breathing shallowly in and out.

It was a minor invasion of privacy, but through their physical connection, Yan extended a tendril of power to see what Sid's status was. She couldn't read his emotions or anything, but she could use the power to compare what he normally felt like in her mind's eye to what he was experiencing now.

His presence felt unnaturally blank. It was as though his body was perfectly there and alright, but his soul had gone elsewhere. He was muted. There wasn't even a sense about him that he was a sensitive. It was disconcerting.

There was one thing that proved Sid was in there, somewhere. As Yan breathed in and out, feeling him in the power, she matched her breaths to his. It wasn't exactly that they were linked in the group mind again, but Yan caught glimpses of the beautiful blankness that Sid was experiencing as he slept.

Yan tried to keep her focus on that, hoping for a dreamless sleep.