I've Done This Before

"There's a particular skill set nobody tells you about—how to hold a person through nightmares that aren't yours, whilst your own chest is burning and the world is literally collapsing around you."

Paul's leg twitched beside me, a spasm that rippled through the darkness like a warning.

I hadn't even registered his arrival. My descent into sleep had been uncharacteristically swift—a small mercy after everything this day had inflicted—and deep enough that Paul's entrance had failed to disturb me. Normally, I lay awake for hours, my brain refusing to surrender its endless catalogue of worries and regrets. Normally, the slightest movement from another body in the bed would snap me back to consciousness like a rubber band released. But exhaustion had apparently overridden my usual patterns, granting me something approaching genuine rest.

Until now.

Paul shifted again, his breathing rough in the absolute darkness. The tent's interior was a void so complete that I couldn't distinguish the shapes of our belongings, couldn't even see the outline of the man lying inches from me. My eyes strained uselessly, searching for any trace of light that might anchor me to physical reality.

Then the canvas whispered.

The sound was soft at first—a gentle rustling against the tent's side that could have been anything.

Wind?

The question formed with a hope I didn't entirely feel. In the complete absence of visual information, every sound became magnified, every subtle movement a potential threat. The isolation of our situation pressed down on me with fresh weight. We were alone here, genuinely alone, in a place we didn't understand with no means of escape and no one to call if something went wrong.

I closed my eyes—a meaningless gesture in darkness this total, but instinct demanded it—and tried to find my way back toward sleep. The attempt felt futile even as I made it. Something in the quality of the night had shifted, an electric charge building in the air that my body registered even if my mind couldn't name it.

The absence of Henri's familiar snoring carved a hollow in my chest. I missed him with an intensity that surprised me. Duke too. Their presence, so often a source of mild irritation, had become, in its absence, a reminder of everything we'd lost.

The tent's fabric strained against its moorings, a sudden urgency that transformed the night's quality from unsettling to alarming.

Shit.

The realisation hit with visceral force: the wind is really beginning to pick up.

What had been gentle rustling escalated into something far more aggressive. The canvas shuddered and pulled, fighting against the stakes that anchored it to foreign ground. Outside, the sound of countless particles—fine dust, the same grit that had coated every inch of my skin all day—began pelting the tent's walls with increasing violence. Each impact was tiny, insignificant on its own, but the cumulative effect created a hissing roar that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Within minutes, the assault intensified into something approaching warfare. The tent became a battlefield, its thin walls the only barrier between us and the storm's fury. I turned toward Paul, seeking reassurance in proximity I couldn't actually see. His breathing remained steady—rough, perhaps, but uninterrupted by the chaos unfolding around us.

How the hell is he still asleep?

The knowledge that Paul could remain so deeply unconscious whilst a storm battered our fragile shelter was simultaneously baffling and enviable. Whatever nightmares or anxieties plagued him in waking hours, his sleeping self had apparently decided that unconsciousness was preferable to any of this.

I lay back, directing my useless gaze toward the ceiling I couldn't see. The knot of anxiety in my stomach tightened with each gust, each shudder of canvas, each reminder that our tent represented the sum total of our protection against an alien environment that had already demonstrated its hostility. The contrast between Paul's peaceful slumber and my escalating dread felt almost cruel—two men sharing the same space, experiencing the same reality, yet inhabiting entirely different worlds.

Paul stirred beside me, his movements punctuated by a sound that sent concern slicing through my anxiety.

"Paul, are you okay?"

The whisper felt inadequate, swallowed by the storm's noise almost before it left my lips. His response came not in words but in action—a sharp twitch of his leg, his toenail catching my shin with enough force to draw a gasp from me.

Fucking hell—

I recoiled, the unexpected pain adding insult to an already difficult night. In the cramped quarters we shared, Paul's poorly maintained toenails had found their target with unerring accuracy. The irritation that flared was perhaps disproportionate—a small, mundane detail that under normal circumstances might have warranted only a mental note about nail clippers. But here, now, surrounded by storm and darkness and accumulated fear, it felt like yet another assault.

With a sigh that carried more frustration than I intended, I extracted myself from beneath the blanket and shoved the fabric toward Paul, creating a barrier between his unconscious weapons and my vulnerable skin. It was a small act of self-preservation, but in that moment, it felt essential.

Paul moaned again—a sound laden with something darker than physical discomfort. His legs twitched in sequences that suggested struggle rather than rest, movements that spoke of dreams I couldn't see but could feel through the mattress's transmission of his distress.

What the hell is he dreaming about?

I strained my eyes in the futile attempt to discern his expression, wishing the darkness would yield even the smallest clue to his state. But the night remained absolute, an impenetrable barrier between concern and comprehension.

The wind's next assault hit the tent like a fist, startling in its intensity. The canvas walls convulsed, straining against their moorings with renewed violence. The absence of familiar sounds made the experience surreal—no rustling leaves, no distant traffic, no ordinary markers of weather's progression. Just the relentless movement of dust and the tent's fabric fighting forces it wasn't designed to withstand.

My body reacted before my mind could catch up—a jolt of surprise that rippled through every nerve. The sensation of the tent breathing around me, an inanimate object temporarily possessed by the storm's fury, raised every hair on my arms and the back of my neck.

Then I heard it. A distinct sound cutting through the storm's general chaos—the clinking and rattling of metal against metal. One of the tent poles, somewhere on the far side, was protesting its situation with alarming volume.

The locating spring. It didn't engage properly.

The diagnosis formed with the certainty of practical knowledge I hadn't known I possessed. Somewhere in the process of assembling the tent, we'd failed to secure a pole correctly, and now the structure's integrity was compromised.

"Shit."

The whisper carried the weight of sudden realisation. The specific location eluded me in the darkness, but the urgency was undeniable. Our tent—our only shelter in this hostile expanse—hung in the balance.

"Ro... mmm."

Paul's groan cut through my calculations, laden with an agony that seemed disconnected from physical pain. The sound was rich with distress, the kind of vocalisation that suggested dreams had crossed into nightmare territory.

Wake him? Or fix the pole?

The decision felt impossible. Another violent gust rattled the tent, the pole's clinking a dire reminder of structural failure approaching. Paul's torment would have to wait. Our immediate survival depended on maintaining shelter.

No, there's no time to wake him now.

I began scrambling down the mattress, moving on all fours toward the disturbance. The floor beneath me was cool and uneven. My hands swept ahead in the darkness, fingers seeking the familiar texture of canvas that might guide me toward the problem.

"Finally."

Relief washed through me as my fingertips brushed the tent's nylon wall. Following sound and instinct, I traced the perimeter toward the clamour. The rattling grew louder with each inch—and then, the moment my hands found the pole, it ceased entirely. The silence that followed was almost as startling as the noise had been.

I gripped the metal firmly, pulling myself to stand. The fabric brushed my face as I rose, the pole steady now beneath my hands. For a moment, I allowed myself to believe the crisis had passed.

"Rose!"

Paul's scream shattered everything.

The sound was a blade—sharp, piercing, cutting through the storm's fury with an urgency that bypassed thought entirely. My head snapped toward the source, my body reacting before my mind could process what was happening.

What the hell!?

The raw edge of agony in his voice sent panic flooding through my system. Has he hurt himself? Is something in here with us?

In my confusion, my grip on the pole faltered. My hands shot up in some useless defensive gesture—too late, too slow, accomplishing nothing except to release the metal I'd been holding. The pole struck me on the side of the head with a crack that sent stars exploding across my vision.

The world tilted. I was falling—no, I had fallen—my body crashing onto the tent floor with an impact that drove the air from my lungs. My heart thundered against my ribs, a rhythm of pure terror that had nothing to do with the physical pain radiating from my skull.

Then the structure gave way entirely.

The canvas collapsed inward with a whoosh of displaced air, the weight of it pressing down on me like something alive and hungry. My body, already rigid with fear, jolted at the encroachment, then began trembling with a violence I couldn't control. The darkness had become suffocating, the fabric a shroud that transformed our shelter into a trap.

"Make it stop!"

Paul's voice again, desperate and broken. The sound cut through my paralysis, snapping something loose in my chest that wasn't entirely physical.

Move. Get up. He needs you.

I began dragging myself across the collapsed tent, fighting the fabric that tangled around my limbs like grasping hands. My fingertips scraped against the floor, searching for the mattress, for any landmark that might orient me in this chaos.

"It's going to kill us."

Each word arrived between laboured breaths that spoke of terror beyond reason. Paul wasn't just afraid—he was drowning in something I couldn't see, fighting enemies that existed only in his fractured consciousness.

"Paul. What's wrong?"

The question escaped before I could stop it, and I immediately wanted to take it back. What a stupid fucking question. Everything was wrong. Half the tent had collapsed. A storm raged outside. We were trapped in another dimension with no way home. Asking what was wrong felt like asking why the sky was blue—the answer was too enormous to articulate.

But as I hesitated, a deeper concern surfaced. Is there more to this? Is he hurt? Is something actually in here with us?

"Clivilius is going to kill us."

Paul's whisper sliced through the darkness, and with it came relief so sharp it almost hurt. He wasn't physically injured. His panic was psychological—the accumulated terror of our impossible situation finally breaking through whatever barriers he'd maintained during waking hours.

I exhaled quickly, clinging to this information like a lifeline. Psychological I could handle. Psychological I could work with. Whatever nightmares had seized Paul, at least there wasn't blood, wasn't injury, wasn't the immediate threat I'd feared.

Keep moving. Find him. Get this sorted.

"Rose, is that you?"

Paul's voice had shifted—no longer screaming but searching, confusion evident in every sound. He thought I was someone else. He thought I was Rose.

"What the hell, Paul?"

My frustration boiled over as I shouted into the darkness, struggling to make sense of his confusion whilst still searching for purchase in the collapsed fabric. The storm continued its assault, dust particles hammering against what remained of our shelter with relentless fury.

My hand brushed against something warm. Unmistakably human. Paul's skin beneath my fingers—

"Aargh!"

His scream was pure startle, his body jerking away from my touch as though I'd burned him. Then movement—a fleeting brush of displaced air against my face—followed by the sound of frantic scrambling across the tent floor.

"Shit." The word escaped as a hiss, fear and frustration merging into something that tasted like panic. "Paul! Come back!"

My plea was raw, desperate, stripped of the cynical distance I usually maintained. The thought of him fleeing into the storm, confused and terrified and convinced he was chasing someone who wasn't there—the thought of being left alone in this collapsed darkness—

"I'm coming, Rose!"

His response carried determination mixed with delusion. He was moving away from me, toward something his nightmare-addled mind had convinced him was real. I could hear him fighting the fabric, hear the desperation in his movements as he sought escape from our ruined shelter.

I need to stop him. I can't let him—

The terror that gripped me wasn't about physical danger. It was about abandonment. About being left alone in this hostile place while Paul chased phantoms into a storm that would swallow him whole.

I can't be alone here. I can't—

The sharp sound of the tent's front flap unzipping cut through everything else, a mechanical rasp that announced Paul's imminent escape.

"Paul! Stop!"

My voice emerged louder than I'd intended, cracking with desperation as I forced myself upright. My movements were unsteady, driven by adrenaline rather than coordination, my body still reeling from the pole's impact against my skull.

"Shit!"

I stomped my foot in pure frustration, the gesture accomplishing nothing except expressing the rage and fear that had nowhere else to go. Paul's panic was going to kill me—of that I was suddenly, terrifyingly certain. His confusion, his nightmares, his desperate pursuit of someone named Rose—all of it was going to end with both of us dead in alien dust.

Then I saw it. A small glow at the corner of my vision, barely visible through the chaos of collapsed canvas. My initial gasp of fright transformed into irritation as recognition arrived—the campfire embers. Paul hadn't managed to extinguish them properly. The tent flap, now a victim of the wind's assault, offered intermittent glimpses of dying firelight.

He's heading toward the fire.

The realisation propelled me forward with renewed urgency. I rushed to the tent's entrance, the storm's fury immediately assaulting my exposed skin. Dust bit at every inch of bare flesh, thousands of tiny needles that stung my eyes and coated my throat. I shielded my face, peering through the gaps between my fingers into darkness that offered almost nothing.

"Paul, where are you? Talk to me."

My voice was almost lost to the wind, words transformed into whispers that couldn't possibly carry.

"Jamie." Paul's response was plaintive, lost—a child's voice in a man's throat. "Where are you?"

Relief flooded through me at the sound. He was close. Perhaps only a few feet away, somewhere to my left. Thank fuck.

"I see you..."

Paul's voice carried the beginning of lucidity. My heart lifted slightly—maybe his senses were returning, maybe the cold shock of wind and dust was cutting through whatever nightmare had claimed him—

"I'm coming, Rose."

The words landed like a blow. Still caught in his delusion. Still chasing someone who wasn't here. And between me and the embers' faint glow, a shadow moved—Paul's silhouette, heading directly toward the fire.

"For fuck's sake, Paul! Stop!"

My shout tore through the night, a demand born of pure desperation. The wind swallowed whatever response he might have made, transforming his words into indistinguishable mumble. Time was collapsing. Every second brought him closer to those embers, to potential disaster.

I launched myself into the storm.

The wind slammed into me with force that seemed designed to prevent progress. Each step was a battle against invisible hands that pushed and pulled and threatened to topple me. Dust particles assaulted every exposed surface—tiny grains that became weapons, stinging my eyes and coating my lungs with grit I could taste on my tongue.

Paul cried out in pain.

Before I could react, something struck my chest—hard, unexpected, burning. I gasped, the air driven from my lungs by impact and by the searing pain that followed. My eyes watered, tears escaping despite my attempts to control them, and for a moment I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything except register that something hot had hit me and was still burning.

A coal. A fucking coal from the fire—

Paul's scream cut through everything—a sound of pure, undiluted terror that bypassed my pain and triggered something primal. He was close. I'd seen his shadow flicker across my line of sight. He was within reach.

I extended my hands into the darkness and felt the warmth of skin beneath my fingertips. Paul. My fingers closed around his waist with desperate strength, pulling with everything I had left. Our bodies collided, crashing to the ground in a tangle of limbs and fabric and fear.

The impact jarred us both, but there was no time for recovery.

"Keep your eyes shut."

The command emerged firm despite my own agony. Paul's initial reaction was to pull away, his confusion still fighting against reason.

"Give me your fucking hand!"

The shout was almost lost to the wind's howl, but I felt his fingers finally close around mine. A small victory. A connection I could work with.

Every step back toward the tent was an exercise in endurance. My chest screamed with each movement, the burn from the coal sending lances of pain through my torso that made breathing feel like punishment. The dust didn't discriminate, assaulting both of us as we fought our way back to what remained of our shelter.

Paul's body collided with the tent pole as we crossed the threshold—a harsh sound that made me wince. The wind, sensing opportunity, brought the canopy down around us entirely, fabric settling over our forms like a burial shroud.

"Shit."

The whisper escaped between breaths that felt like they were being rationed. Each inhalation sent fresh agony radiating from my chest—the burn from the coal announcing its presence with every expansion of my ribcage. In the tent's collapsed darkness, the extent of my injury remained unknown, but the sharp, persistent pain suggested something more than superficial damage.

Paul's quiet sobs filled the cramped space, a sound so raw and broken that it momentarily eclipsed my own suffering.

I manoeuvred myself closer, navigating the collapsed fabric until I found him. He was rocking back and forth, his body curled in on itself, trembling with the aftermath of terror that had nowhere else to go. Carefully, I slid behind him, wrapping my arms around his shaking form.

The contact of his bare skin against my chest sent a jolt of agony through me—fresh pain from the burn that made my vision swim. I gasped, the sound escaping before I could suppress it. My eyes stung.

But I didn't let go.

I held him tighter, pulling him back against me despite what it cost. His body was rigid with distress, muscles locked in patterns of fear that sleep had failed to release. The storm continued its assault outside, but in here—in this ruined shelter, surrounded by collapsed canvas and accumulated terror—we had only each other.

Eventually, Paul's movements stilled. His breathing, which had been ragged and desperate, began to slow toward something approaching calm. The rocking ceased. The trembling diminished. In the darkness, I felt him return to himself by degrees—consciousness surfacing from whatever nightmare depths had claimed him.

"I'm sorry, Rose."

The whisper was laden with sadness so profound it seemed to fill the entire space. Paul's voice cracked on the name, the syllable carrying years of love and fear and desperate longing that had no outlet except these words, spoken to someone who wasn't here, couldn't hear, existed only in his fractured dreams.

Rose. His daughter. Of course.

The realisation landed with the weight of understanding. Paul had been separated from his children when Luke brought him here. A six-year-old girl named Rose who didn't know where her father had gone, who was probably crying for him right now in some distant bedroom on Earth while he lay trapped in an alien dimension, unable to reach her, unable to explain, unable to do anything except dream of her and wake screaming.

The agony in his words, intertwined with my own physical pain from the coal's burn, created something that felt like drowning. I stared blindly ahead, into darkness that offered no answers and no comfort, and felt my own defences crumbling.

"It'll be okay." The whisper emerged hoarse, barely audible, stripped of the cynicism I usually wrapped around myself like armour. "You'll be okay."

Tears traced paths down my cheeks, unbidden and unstoppable. They came with memories I hadn't invited—memories of holding Luke through his own battles with nightmares, of nights when his dreams had sent him thrashing and crying and lost in terrors I couldn't see. I'd held him then, just like this. I'd whispered reassurances I wasn't sure I believed. I'd been the anchor when everything else was storm.

I know how to do this. I've done this before.

The recognition didn't make it easier. If anything, it made everything worse—the echo of that past moment, now reflected in my embrace with Paul, underscoring how thoroughly my life had been defined by holding broken people in darkness and hoping my presence was enough.

But it was also, in that moment, the only thing that mattered.

Paul's weight settled against my chest, his breathing finally approaching the rhythm of genuine rest rather than exhausted collapse. The burn continued its angry announcement, but I'd stopped caring about the pain. It would be there tomorrow, demanding attention I couldn't provide. For now, there was only this—two men in a collapsed tent, surrounded by hostile wilderness and impossible circumstances, clinging to each other because there was nothing else to cling to.

"We'll be okay," I whispered again, the words more certain this time.

I didn't know if it was true. I didn't know if anything would ever be okay again. But I knew Paul needed to hear it, and I knew that saying it—believing it, even temporarily, even against all evidence—was the only power I still possessed.