#docutrauma

Estela couldn't sleep at all. The air around the open bunks felt heavy, hot and oppressive. At least being a slayer didn't require that much sleep. Not for a little while, anyway. She'd gone long enough periods without it before so two nights would be nothing. In any case, if what she'dchat heard a couple of the men talking about was accurate then Gen would be in for a very aggravating couple of night if she continued on as she was. Wiping her clammy palms against her pants, she dropped off of the top bunk to the ground. Estela ran her fingers through her dampened hair, swallowing hard as she listened to the soft sound of voices from outside of the barracks. Whether it was a normal procedure to have people on guard at all time or if they were just special because of who they were, she wasn't sure. But being the second night hearing them so close, just standing out there made her stomach turn over. Her skin crawled. She closed her eyes tightly, forced an even breath that failed to deliver any relief and lowered herself to the ground to occupy herself with sit-ups. Push-ups, crunches, whatever. It didn't matter. Falling back into excessive training was something that was familiar. It worked. It was a distraction. It was better than risking an uneasy sleep that could very well end up in nightmares.

Gen wasn't sure if she was dreaming at first. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and her body was clammy from the thickness of the air. Spring was coming. The average temperature rose a little each day, and their last two days in the yard had taken place under a beaming sun. Was it morning already? Someone was moving. The darkness still hung around her like a blanket, and the guards' voices were still outside as they walked by on a patrol. Not morning. She yawned, rolling onto her elbow toward the noise. She'd have thought it was just someone getting up to go to the toilet if not for the rhythmic breathing, the well-timed sucking of breaths in and out. "Hey," Gen whispered, lightly nudging Estela in the side with her foot. They had been the first to steal the bunk in the far corner of the room, furthest away from the door and pressed against the wall so they only ever had to be vigilant of someone approaching from one side rather than both. That had been Estela's idea, of course. Gen had just preferred being tucked as far away from everyone else as possible. She wasn't used to sharing rooms. Their vague isolation was a comfort, now. Everyone else slept around them, several beds away. Even if they were awake, they wouldn't hear much but indistinct whispering. "Five A.M. isn't for another... three hours," Gen yawned again, her voice soft and delicate, a natural inclination toward comfort. "You okay?"

Estela immediately rolled away from the soft prod, her heart leaping into her throat violently as she automatically glanced over at the door again. "Yeah," she muttered, dropping once more onto her back a little out of reach once she was certain that no one was actually coming in. "I'm sorry for waking you. Just go back to sleep, okay? Everything's fine." Everything was just fine. The men could come in at any moment. Any number of people in the barracks with them could decide they didn't want slayers around anymore. A thousand things could go wrong and a thousand things could get Gen hurt. It was bad enough when they kept them separated for assessment so that they could just scrutinize them individually. Estela laced her fingers together and pressed her palms to her forehead, ignoring the hair sticking to her skin. "Everything's fine…" She repeated in a nearly inaudible sigh, closing her eyes as though that would somehow stop her from focusing on the guards' voices.

Gen heard the words, but she didn't believe them. Go back to sleep. She'd have a better chance actually passing one of those firearms exams, or upping her grade on 'military procedure' from poor to anything but poor. "You can't lie to me," Gen whispered through the dim night. "I know you too well." She sad up a little in bed, just on her elbow. The bunk bed was too low to allow her to sit up all the way, comfortably and without craning her neck. "Is it the earthquake?" she asked nearly silently, taking a guess. Estela's family had died in one, hadn't they? It had to bring back awful memories, and she was stuck in here with nobody to share them with. Except her, Gen thought. Estela still had her.

Estela shrugged as she returned to to her sit-ups. "What'd you do to annoy the guys who assessed you? I heard one of them grumbling about the 'posh slayer'. Kind of assumed that was you. I don't think there's any reason for them to be calling me posh." Maybe that could at least sidetrack Gen from asking questions to focus oh the fact that she truly did not seem to take orders exceptionally well from these people. At least if Gen was talking then it was something gentler to focus on than the grating of the other voices on her nerves. "Did you fail to call them 'sir' or something?" Yes, sir. No, sir. Right away, sir. Scoring excellently on her card as a soldier just made her even less likely to ever leave, didn't it? Wonderful.

Gen wrinkled her nose in a gentle huff. 'Posh slayer' couldn't be anyone but her. She watched Estela with distraction and discomfort. Her avoidance hadn't gone unnoticed, but Gen played along for the moment. "Depends which one," she shrugged, twirling the engagement ring on the chain around her neck between her fingers. She wondered what Simon was doing right now, what he would say about her scores, how he could have helped her do better if he had decided to come... "It might be the one I had for one of my verbal reasoning tests. I took half an hour explaining to him how MI-12 could benefit from implementing the various Watcher's Council departments along with its academies." She paused, reading the look on Estela's face. "They said I could pick the topic."

Estela sighed, glancing down at the ring briefly. "Yeah, well, keep annoying them and they're going to find a way to punish you once they figure out that trying to make you drop and do fifty push-ups isn't anything to you." One of the guards laughed faintly outside and Estela stopped to brace her hands against the ground to prop her up, her palms hitting the floor harder and louder than necessary. "I can't try to look out for you if they toss you in isolation or something." Her words came out edged. Sharper than she meant them. "Nice ring." Estela restlessly climbed to her feet and braced her hands over her head as she stepped out into the aisle between the bunks to study the room for the umpteenth time.

Gen didn't need Estela's warnings. She'd already had the same arguments with herself, and Penelope, and Simon. "I could be doing a great deal worse if I wanted," she sighed, managing a small smile at Estela's words. "But it's sweet, that you want to look after me." She had finally stopped doing sit-ups and push-ups and whatever other kind of 'ups' she could think of. Estela's eyes darted towards the door. She was afraid of them, Gen realized. Maybe they all should have been. Estela's words bit through Gen's distraction. Nice ring. Gen let it fall onto her chest again. She was the farthest thing from prepared for that particular conversation. "Thank you," she said quietly, lying back to watch Estela's pacing more easily. "It was a present."

Estela had an inkling just who the gift was from to be kept so close like that. "From Simon?" Estela said after a moment. "Never mind. It's none of my business." She wasn't even sure if she wanted to hear the answer or not. It felt more taunting. There was no reason she should have asked. She paced down the aisle slightly, came back, hovered by the wall, repeated the cycle uncomfortably. Why couldn't they just leave? Didn't they have other places to patrol? "You didn't have to actually come." God, they seemed like they were talking so loud. Laughing and joking like everything was just perfectly okay. Maybe their damn lives were all nice and fine. One entrance, one exit. Four breakable windows. Wrap hands in sheets, smash the windows, clear the debris. Emergency exit one. "I would have been fine handling myself. Buffy will be here eventually. It would have been fine and you could have gone and continued on with your life."

Gen gladly took the option not to answer the question. Perhaps she should have. It would be easier now than later, wouldn't it? What did she think was going to happen, that Estela would just come to their wedding and everything would be fine and dandy? She wasn't even sure there'd be a wedding. It depended on them getting through this first, didn't it? "Stel," Gen sighed, extending her hand off the edge of the bed. "Will you come here? All that pacing is giving me anxiety." She didn't wait to see if Estela listened or not. "And I chose this. I didn't do it for you."

Estela immediately shied away from the outstretched hand, avoiding looking at Gen in favor of continuing to examine the room. Her chest felt heavy with pressure weighing in on her. "Yeah, well, it was a dumb choice. Even Peyton figured out that the best thing to do was leave. Headstrong, bratty, maddening Peyton." The air felt hotter and thicker even against the perspiration beginning to coat her skin once again. Her heart wouldn't stop pounding. Estela stopped her pacing to brace her back against the wall by their bunk. She leaned down, hands pressed hard against her knees. This had happened commonly during the military occupation back in Brasil and then after certain sessions with Liam. It would pass. She just needed to suck it up and breathe. "Sorry... Sorry, wasn't trying to worry you. Not pacing anymore."

Gen turned to look around the room for signs of stirring bodies, but there was none. The room was nearly empty. There had been precious few volunteers. "Tell us how you really feel," she half-murmured into her pillow, a note of sarcasm edging into her voice, but there wasn't much humor in the situation. Whatever had Estela riled up was no small thing. She was radiating anxiety. "Hey," she soothed as Estela came closer. "You're okay. Come and lie down." She edged sideways to make room, regretting it almost immediately. Gen's ability to detach romantic implication from physical closeness wasn't something most people shared. Just because it wasn't awkward for her, that didn't mean it wasn't awkward for Estela. She'd probably just made her feel worse. Friendship: Poor.

Estela wanted desperately to just go curl up in bed even with the pang of how it made her think go the last peaceful time they'd been like that. Yet her muscles wouldn't quite cooperate and as soothing as the idea promised to be it caused another twist of panic in her heart. Being that close and actually touching? It wasn't just Gen, no, the idea of that with anyone caused bile to rise in her throat. Fear gripped at her lungs and she just shook her head, raising a hand briefly. "Can't." She managed softly. "I'll be—I'm fine. I'm okay. Everything's okay." Maybe it could be nice, though. Gen was offering sanctuary even if it was just for a second. "It'll pass." Estela breathed, trying to get a better grip on herself. "I'm fine."

But she wasn't fine, and Gen knew it. She had acted out those very same nervous mannerisms herself too many times to count. "Stela," she sighed, maintaining as much comforting composure as she could manage. "Listen... You're going to wake the others up, and as little as you want to talk to me, I think you want to talk to them even less." She swallowed the lump in her throat, giving Estela the most subtly pleading look she could manage. It probably wasn't all that subtle. "Please?"

Estela looked around at few other people in the barracks with them. It was bad enough that she'd woken Gen up. The rest of them didn't need to be disturbed as well. Estela took a shaky breath, nodding slowly. Still, she hovered by the edge of Gen's bed for a long few moments just considering it before hesitantly sliding in next to her, tucking her head against the pillow. "Sharing beds is against protocol." Estela managed weakly, covering her eyes with her hands like some sort of shield that might keep her from having to explain anything.

Gen smiled sadly at the defeat in Estela's words. She took a breath, her chest relaxed as she slipped a gentle arm around Estela's back, loose enough so that she wouldn't feel confined. "I won't tell if you don't." Gen's voice was distant and dreamy, as though the further away it seemed, the less Estela would feel boxed in or panicked.

Estela cringed at the renewed sound of the soldiers coming closer once again. She twisted away to put her back to the door in favor to curling into Gen. Damn it, she felt like a little kid hiding beneath the blankets from the big bad monsters under the bed. Now, she supposed, parents couldn't very well tell their children that those things didn't exist. There was no protecting them from the reality that creatures beyond their nightmares roamed around the dark. "Thanks," Estela swallowed, closing her eyes tightly for a moment. "I'm… don't they have somewhere else to patrol?"

Gen was surprised when Estela curled closer against her, rolling toward her. However subtle it was, it felt like a sign that they were getting back to normal, that the friendship she thought she had destroyed was still there somewhere. She let her hand trail languidly along Estela's back, rubbing it with an absent-minded gentleness. Perhaps, if they were lucky, they would be able to steal another hour or two of sleep before drills, but as Estela spoke, that possibility became ever more unlikely. "Maybe they think we're staging a hostile takeover," she sighed, squeezing Estela's forearm. "It's okay. They aren't coming in here."

Estela mulled over the words. It was likely that they were just being particularly cautious just in case one of them proved to be a threat. Patrolling teams armed with lethal and non-lethal options were what she would have chosen for a similar situation because it's what Liam would have chosen. Well, he might've not actually allowed the non-lethal options. She shook her head, twisting her mouth slightly as she brought a hand up to toy absently with Gen's dark curls. "You don't know that." Estela finally said, trying to keep the nervous resignation from bleeding into her voice. "You never know that."

Gen was quiet for several moments, surveying Estela's features carefully. Estela was afraid. Estela was never afraid, except of Liam. "If they do, they'll regret it." Gen would take one of their bullets to the head before she let them hurt anyone in this room.

Estela smiled sardonically. "You don't fight the military, Gen. You don't argue, you don't tell them they're wrong. You fall in line, you follow orders. You don't undermine them. Don't bruise their egos. Don't… challenge. You just do what you're told. Keep your head down. Cooperate." Because one of them could know exactly who and where her family was. Her voice caught in her throat but she roughly cleared it. "You just obey, that's what you do. Anything else…"

Gen studied Estela's face as she talked, honed in on the ups and downs in her voice, her hesitations, her fears. "It'll be different... after we're done with basic training, and learning their protocols." Her chest was heavy with the weight of the possibility she was wrong, but she had to believe it. She didn't have another choice. It was too hard otherwise. "That's why they're testing the Watchers for Leadship abilities." She slipped her hand through Estela's, giving it a small squeeze. "We'll be alright."

Estela frowned. "Maybe…" Where was Peyton at the moment? Portaling somewhere? Maybe she'd already left with Xander and Oz and Lara happily curled up in someone's lap. Maybe they'd just get a real plane ticket and fly instead of Illyria dropping them off elsewhere. Brushing her thumb over Gen's hand, she sighed softly. "Or when they're confident in our cooperation just use us for what they want whenever they want it because of their nice little uniforms." There was the possibility they could be every bit as twisted as her own military. "I'd… I would rather be really, really wrong, Gen but I just—" What was she supposed to say? Estela ducked her head, throat tight, and nuzzled closer. "...I'd like to be wrong."

Gen swallowed the expanding lump in her throat. Don't let them take away the part of you that knows when shit's messed up, Simon had told her. She had to remain true to that. She would do their drills, take their proficiency exams, go through their training, but she wouldn't be a tool in someone else's war. "No uniform can make us follow their orders. We always have the choice to walk away." Even if it meant walking away from saving people, too. Not saving people was a great deal better than actively killing them. "I have to believe we were chosen for a reason. It could have been anyone in the world, and sometimes I wish it had been, but I have to believe the force that chose the slayers is out there guiding other things, too, that it won't let this happen to them on a large scale." Because that had worked so well when all the potentials had been killed. This was different, she told herself. they weren't potentials. They were slayers. They had the power in them and it wouldn't let itself be stamped out. "I hate magic," she sighed, "but everyone always says it has to have a balance. If they try and use a force meant for good for evils, not just with a single slayer, but with an army, it won't let them. Something will happen." Or she was making all of this up to make herself feel better. Either way. "And no matter what, I've got you, okay? We're in this together."