tr1xx | Sleepless Night

It would be hard to pin down when the memory takes place from the beginning alone. Cammie wakes up from a nightmare screaming herself hoarse and three heads raise in the bunks around her, the fearful sound far too loud to sleep through and the sobs far too heart-wrenching to ignore.

The man beneath her shares a look with the man in the next bunk over, and after some kind of silent conversation it’s the second—tall, Japanese, with longer messy brunette hair that’s half tied up in a bun—that gets out of bed. He knocks on the edge of Cammie’s bunk, getting her attention without startling her, and opens his arms to coax her out of her tangle of blankets.

Her eyes and face are red and wet, and she accepts the offer without a word, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his torso. She buries her face in his shoulder and sobs weakly as he holds her nice and securely to his chest, carrying her back to his bunk and laying them both back down. He undoes her ponytail, pets her hair, and just lets her cry until she falls back to sleep.

Except on this night, sleep didn’t come to her so easily. Several minutes pass and, though the sobs slowly taper off and the occupants of the other two bunks drift off themselves soon after, she doesn’t fall asleep and neither does the man in the bunk with her.

Eventually, she groans and props herself up on one elbow, mumbling a ‘sorry, Kazu’ that’s a little too loud to be the mumble she probably intended it to be. He shakes his head and opens his mouth to say something, but decides against it at the last second, just mouthing it’s fine at her. Neither of them want to wake the others up again.

Cammie sighs and rolls over onto her back, staring up at the bottom of the empty bed above them. Kazu frowns, watching her for a moment, then there’s the flash of an idea on his face and he sits up. Cammie looks up at him, head tilted and brow raised.

Sign? he mouths. Her raised brow becomes furrowed brows; he doesn’t know any sign, what does he— Teach me?

The oh is visible on Cammie’s face. In hindsight, watching this, Cammie understands where the weird sense of deja vu in that moment came from, but there in the memory she just shakes off the confusion and sits up as she raises her hands.

She points at her own chest and then holds up one hand, palm facing the open space to the opposite side, and pushes an extended finger along the palm towards the front of the bed. ‘I’ll try,’ the signs say, and she mouths it at the same time.

Kazu nods, then starts looking around the room. First, he points at Nugget, who stowed away on Cammie’s shoulder when he picked her up, and mouths robot. It’s rather relevant to their line of work, after all.

Cammie snickers quietly and shows him the sign—mimicking robotic movements with her arms. He bites back his own laugh and mouths really? and yes, really, she repeats the motion to emphasise just how really it is. Sometimes signs are just that self-explanatory.

Kazu mimics it in turn and it’s Cammie’s turn to try not to laugh, because somehow it’s funnier when he does it, big tough Kazu doing the robot, and then he’s pointing at the other two beds. Names?

Cammie’s fingers flash through the signs for each letter so fast Kazu doesn’t manage to keep up, the first time, even with names as short as Val, Yaz, Kazu, Chase and Cammie. So she repeats them again, shows him each letter sign for a couple of seconds and lets him repeat it back at her before moving on.

But, she mouths, signing as she does, more fun is—

She signs the sign for ‘chase’, the verb: two pointed fingers wiggling out into the space in front of her. Then, she signs the fingerspell version again to get the point across.

Next is the letter V followed by the sign for dance: two fingers out, her hands being shaken in front of her chest. Val. Kazu looks particularly amused by that one, his gaze flicking past her to the sleeping form on the bed beneath hers.

Her own name is signed as C and rabbit: both hands miming rabbit ears up at the top of her head. Yaz is signed as Y and bird: the index finger being closed against the thumb, up by her mouth, like a chattering beak. And Kazu— well, there’s a certain glint in her eye, if you know her well enough to spot it, that’s followed by her miming a kazoo.

It takes Kazu just a second, brow furrowing as he waits for her to explain what the sign is before it clicks and in an instant his expression shifts to comically annoyed. He opens his mouth to protest and only catches himself at the last second, an aborted sound still making it up his throat.

Cammie’s shoulders start shaking and she has to cover her mouth to stop herself laughing out loud. Looking at his face does nothing to help matters, especially when he signs her own sign name back at her with indignant gestures.

It takes a good minute to compose herself enough to shake her head and cross her hands in front of her a few times—not really, Kazu. She signs K and egg, both mouthing and fingerspelling to get the point across.

Immediately, Kazu’s expression softens again, though he rolls his eyes and pulls her in to give her a noogie that she fails not to start laughing at—but if she wakes either of the others, well, no one complains.