050: Sleep Perchance to Dream

[Ona]

"Explain what you mean, slowly," I demand as I take short, even breaths.

Daax is protectively growling at my side, his jaw set. We both know there is only one person who is close enough to both of our dreamers to have a chance of being successful.

Me.

"Daax," I say softly under my breath, worried the same thing might happen again. "Look at me, Daax."

"Ona," he breathes, his body softening as he pulls his gaze from the containment pod back to me. "I can't. Please don't ask me to watch them put you in one of these things."

To see me in one of these pods would be a type of death for him. Daax spent 40 years in a pod very much like these, sleeping away his existence as he was harvested for energy and spare parts, only taken out occasionally for whatever torture Segundus had in mind.

One of these days, when we are far away from all of this and are lying naked and feeling safe, I will ask him what he dreamed about during all that time away. Who was he when he was trapped inside