bonding over trauma
bonding over shared trauma
“shared trauma”
“bonding” + “shared trauma” - “trauma bonding”
sibling relationships complex
“siblings” + “shared trauma”
reconciling with siblings
moving past trauma
ptsd
cluster a
what is cluster a
cptsd
cptsd symptoms
what is paranoia
“paranoid psychosis”
“c-ptsd” + “paranoid psychosis”
“reconnecting with siblings” + “shared trauma”
Faie,
I know it’s felt like a long time
Faie,
I know it’s felt like such a short time since what
Faie,
I understand why you’re distant. Part of me wants to be distant, too, but I miss you. I want
Faie,
It’s not your fau
“What are you writing?”
Neyo startles, sending his datapad crashing to the ground. “Shit, kid!”
As he scrambles to recover the ‘pad and his dignity, Caleb, who’d only been aboard the Last Hope for a little over an hour, bounces over to sit across from him, mess tray in hand. “Sorry,” he says with a grin. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I didn’t!”
Neyo shakes his head, giving Caleb his most disbelieving eyebrow raise. “If you say so, Commander.”
Caleb giggles. “I do! I do say so!” He straightens his tray and begins unwrapping his nerfburger. “Anyways, what were you writing?”
Neyo sighs, leaning forward and resting his chin on his hands. “Nothing you need to worry about, kiddo. Just some personal stuff.”
“Wike a diawy?” Caleb says through a mouthful of burger.
“No, not like a diary. Chew your food before you choke and your buir blames me.” Caleb snorts and half of his burger comes out with it.
“Kid! Fuck!”
“I’m going to tell Master that you taught me a new word,” Caleb singsongs.
“Oh, I’ll teach you a new word. Get over here you little—”
The kid is ridiculously excited about going scouting. Ludicrously, one might even say. Neyo takes pictures and forwards them to Mace as Caleb skips along the dusty, rust-red surface of the Jedha desert.
“Come on, Commander Neyo, keep up!”
Neyo sighs, snapping a picture of the way the rising sun highlights Caleb’s goofy grin. He hates kids. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Apparently, natborns, even Jedi natborns, start to get stir crazy after six months in space. General Billaba, unwilling to deal with this particular symptom of being young and Human and full of Force-fueled energy, had decided that Caleb needed a ‘change of pace’ and ‘some time to reconnect with his Grandmaster.’
This is now Neyo’s problem.
He wouldn’t have taken the kid into the field at all, but it’s o’kark-thirty in the morning and they’re only two klicks away from the next patrol team and Neyo’s as sure as he can be that nothing more dangerous than a snake is anywhere within a twenty kilometer radius. This early, they even avoid the worst of the heat. Perfect hiking conditions.
“Commander,” Neyo calls, waiting for the kid to come bouncing back from his cliffside investigation. “You remember where we’re going?”
Caleb screws his face up, wrinkling his nose. “Um, that way.” He points to a spot on the horizon maybe fifteen degrees off from where they need to go.
“Close, kid. We want to be a little more,” Neyo crouches down to Caleb’s level and readjusts his arm, “that way. Pretty good for blind reckoning, though. What’s a better tool to use to stick to the path?”
Caleb’s eyes light up. “Your HUD!”
“There you go. Now you’re moving at speed.” Neyo takes off his helmet and sets it on the kid’s head. “You remember how to work it?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Lead the way, Commander Dume.”
Caleb is a pretty good patrolling buddy, all things considered. A little over-curious, sure, a little distracted, but better than half the trained soldiers Neyo’s patrolled with. He’s attentive when it matters and understands that, when Neyo gives an order, it’s because it’s vitally important that Caleb follow it.
Kids appreciate that, he’s found. If they know you’re not telling them what to do just for the sake of telling them what to do, they’re a lot more receptive to instruction.
Caleb clambers down the livestock trail and Neyo takes a moment to appreciate his own forethought in taking his bucket back. Just watching the kid, he can see the thing sliding off and shattering on the rocks below. “Caleb, be careful,” he calls, picking his way down the rock face at a more reasonable speed.
“I’m being careful,” he yells back, turning to look at Neyo instead of watching where he’s jumping, oh Force.
Neyo’s heart does a funny thing while Caleb’s in the air, and then does another funny one when he lands safely, balanced on the tip of a rock two meters below where he’d started. Jedi, he reminds himself, taking a deep, measured breath. He’s a Jedi, he knows what he’s doing.
“Nice jump, kid,” he says instead of ‘Please stop doing that, you’re making me twitchy,’ or, ‘What am I supposed to tell your Grandmaster if you die on my watch?’ “Watch your left foot, though. You don’t want it trailing behind just because it’s non-dominant. That’s a good way to break your ankle.”
Caleb frowns, biting his lip. He’s an expressive kid, and Neyo can practically see him replaying the jump in his head. He looks down at his feet, shuffling them as if imagining a better landing. “Okay. I think I know what you mean.”
Neyo finds a steady spot on the trail perhaps a meter above a flat, jutting ledge. “Here, watch.” Caleb turns obediently, biting his lip again and tracking Neyo’s every move as he squares his feet and lines up his hips and shoulders. “See, I’m going to start with my whole body square to itself, just a little squated, yeah?” He leans into the jump and pauses, holding the lowest point of the movement. “Now see how my feet are both still on the ground? I’m going to jump, and I’ll push off a bit more on the right, because it’s dominant and I can’t help it, but when I land,” he jumps, giving it a little more umph than needed for the sake of extra air time, “my feet hit the ground at the same time because I brought them together in the air. And then, you already know this, land on the ball, roll to the heel, bend your knees to absorb the shock.”
“I thought that’s what I did.”
Neyo skids down the face, cutting a hairpin corner to stand next to Caleb. “Almost. You extended your legs like a striding jump, which is right when you’re running, but not the best for just jumping down. Keep your core tight and your whole body will follow.”
Caleb nods with adorable earnesty. When he jumps down to the next rock, his core is so tight he’s almost curling forward. Neyo laughs, following him down.
“Commander, look! A cave!”
“What?” Neyo follows Caleb’s eager gaze to what is most certainly an opening in the face of the cliff they’ve been following on the way back to camp. A cave that shouldn’t be there, according to Neyo’s intel. He frowns. “Caleb, I don’t know…”
“I want to go in there! There might be cool stuff in there,” Caleb asserts, making to run ahead.
“Caleb, wait,” Neyo barks, grabbing the kid by the shoulder and hauling him back. “I don’t remember seeing that cave on any maps.”
Caleb glances up at him. “So?”
“So I don’t know why it’s not being shown. So it might be a trap. We have to move carefully.”
Neyo’s bucketlight bounces off the cave walls, close and wet with condensation. It’s startlingly damp in here, despite being only a few meters into the cliff. The echoes of his footsteps make him uneasy.
“Caleb, stay a few paces behind me, okay?”
“Yes, Commander.”
Neyo steps over a puddle and peers into the darkness, canvassing every visible inch of the place for… anything, he supposes. Maybe this was just a cartographical error. Maybe it’s considered too small to matter.
The hair on the back of Neyo’s neck stands up.
In the gloom, something beeps.
“Caleb, run,” Neyo shouts, turning and shoving the kid towards the exit.
The noise is all-consuming, as is the rock that collapses in on his shoulders.
“Neyo? Commander? Neyo! Can you hear me? Are you alright? Neyo?”
Somehow, Neyo is alive. “I’m here, kid. You okay?”
If it was dark before, it’s fucking stygian now. Neyo raises his hand to the level of his eyes and sees its ghostly outline, too big and distorted, a figment of his overwhelmed brain. Rock presses close to his head, cramping his neck. He can’t feel his legs at all.
“I’m okay,” Caleb says, coughing around the dust. “I’m trying to call for help, but my communicator’s being dumb.”
“Okay,” Neyo says. “How long has it been?”
“What?”
“Since the rocks fell.”
“Oh. A few seconds?”
“Good.” Neyo forces the legs he knows are there to move. He’s not pinned, just contorted into this little space between several boulders. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so? Oh, I got a signal!”
Neyo bangs his hand against the side of his helmet and his bucketlight flickers weakly to life. “Good, kid. Keep trying to call for help.”
He turns the light on his limp legs. Oh. Okay. Okay.
Okay. He reaches down and feels around for the offending artery, pinching it off. It’s shredded.
Neyo’s a little dizzy.
“Kid?”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to do something for me. Reach out in the Force and see if you can find the spot where I’m bleeding.” Neyo’s bucketlight flickers.
“Okay. I found—oh. Neyo? Are you going to die?”
“No, kid. Hold that artery closed for me, yeah? I might pass out before help gets here.” The light goes out. The colors dancing before his eyes remain. “Keep trying to call for help. If it comes down to holding the artery or getting help, you get help, okay?”
“Commander…”
“Caleb, listen to me. You get help, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, tearful. Neyo feels an invisible pressure take over just as his fingers begin to slip. “Neyo, I don’t want you to die.”
“I don’t want to die, either, kid, but I don’t think I’m going to.” Neyo leans back against the rocks between him and Caleb. “You’re strong, kiddo. You’ll keep me together.”
Bleeding out is quicker than Neyo imagined. He’s going a little fuzzy around the edges. At least it doesn’t hurt.
“Neyo?”
“Here, kid.”
“I reached the other group. They’re going to be here in five minutes.” Caleb’s crying now.
Neyo forgets how his mouth works before he can offer any words of comfort.
“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me…”
Someone’s moving the rocks. They should stop that. The whole place is going to come down on them if they keep it up.
“Caleb? Caleb, are you okay?”
“I’m okay, Commander. They’re coming to get you. They’re digging you out. Stay still, please?”
That’s not going to be a problem. Neyo can’t exactly feel his body.
“Commander Neyo,” a vod calls. No. Faie calls.
Faie’s been avoiding him since arriving aboard the Last Hope. Actually, Faie’s been bouncing wildly between avoiding him and clinging to him like a fucking limpet since they were five. Maybe this will end. He hopes so.
Back on Kamino, when Faie was too unstable to do more than shout and hit people, Neyo had been underweight. All the way from six to eight, he was a skinny, bony little thing. Faie used to bring him protein shakes. Neyo’s still not sure where he got them. Probably from Priest. Neyo tries not to think about that.
Faie used to bring him things, even when he couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Neyo. Neyo has not been brought something in a long while.
“...you hear me? Neyo? Hey.”
“Faie?”
“Yeah. Alright, let’s get you out of here. ETA on medics?”
Neyo can’t really see, but Faie just picks him up, so it’s not really a problem.
“Faie, ‘m bleeding all over you.”
“Yeah, how about you focus on keeping the blood inside your body, alright? Alright.”
Neyo has no control over the rate at which blood leaves his body. He’s not even holding the artery. He thinks Faie might be, right now. Or maybe that’s the Force. Howe the fuck does the Force work?
Faie jostles him hard. “Stay awake, chakaar. I’m not dragging your corpse all the way back to base.”
Sorry, Faie. Hope you’ll forgive me for this one, too.
Neyo stretches with a sigh, relishing the unimpeded movement of his right arm and cursing the sticky patch where the IV was taped to his elbow. Almost free. Just a few more hours.
Putting his arms down, he (slowly, carefully) extends his legs, locking his knees and pointing his toes. It feels good. Almost as good as before he ripped his femoral artery in half.
Hemorrhage (who did not appreciate Neyo’s jokes about his name) says that, from the moment the rocks fell and sliced through his leg (according to the records of his vitals, at least) to the moment he was brought into medbay, twelve and a half minutes passed. He should be dead five times over, but he’s not. Caleb, who hadn’t been hurt beyond a few bruises, held him together long enough for help to arrive.
Hemorrhage also refuses to say which vod donated the obscene amount of blood he’d needed.
“Commander?” Hemorrhage leans back in his chair, looking at Neyo almost upside down. “Commander Dume’s here to see you.”
Neyo laughs. “Let him over.”
Before he’s finished the sentence, Caleb is slipping around the corner, robes flapping wildly. “Commander!”
“Hey, kid,” Neyo greets, bracing himself for the armful of child moments before it arrives. “Thanks for saving my life.”
Caleb squirms his way into Neyo’s lap and looks up at him with watery eyes. “I thought you were dead. You stopped talking.”
Neyo’s not the biggest fan of hugs. They’re uncomfortably warm and they make him twitchy. This isn’t a hug. This is comforting a child. Neyo squeezes him tighter. “I’m alive, Caleb. You did good.”
For a long minute, Caleb just sits there, clinging to Neyo for dear life and sniffling into his medbay gown. Then, he sits back and points to the bottle he’d left on the bedside table when he came in. “That’s a present for you,” he says with a teary grin.
“Oh, yeah?” Neyo picks it up, examining it while Caleb hops off the bed. “From who?”
“That’s secret,” the little bastard chirps, running out the door as fast as he came, too fast to hear Neyo’s startled, “Hey! Get back here!”
He looks at the bottle again and can’t help but burst out laughing. It’s a fucking protein shake.
Neyo smiles, shaking his head as he cracks the bottle open.