SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 919: After the Nightmare

The moment Trafalgar saw Mayla in the doorway, some of what was still locked up in his chest came loose.

She had come in a hurry.

Her brown hair was wild from sleep and she had thrown something on over herself to cross from the next room, and whatever weariness was left on her face went out of it the instant she saw him sitting awake with Aaron asleep and whole in his arms.

Trafalgar let out a slow breath. "It was nothing. A bad dream."

Mayla did not look convinced. "You don't usually wake from bad dreams shouting." She came in and shut the door quietly behind her. "I heard you from the other room and came straight here. I thought something had happened."

Trafalgar looked down at Aaron. The boy had no notion of the panic that had gone through his father a minute earlier. His cheek lay against Trafalgar's chest, one small hand curled into the cloth at his side, his breath slow and even.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

"That's not what I'm worried about." Mayla crossed the room and stopped beside the chair. "What did you dream?"

Trafalgar said nothing for a while.

He could still see pieces of it too clearly. The endless strange country. Walking and walking and arriving nowhere. Aaron sitting impossibly far off while dark shapes came toward him, and the world remaking itself every time he tried to close the gap.

Towers standing where nothing had stood. The ground rearranging under his boots. However many times he used [Godstep], his son had stayed exactly as far away.

"I couldn't tell you," Trafalgar admitted. "I was somewhere I'd never seen. I kept walking and never got anywhere. Then Aaron was there."

Mayla's face changed. "He was hurt?"

"Not yet at least." Trafalgar's eyes went down to his son. "There were people around him. Shadows. I couldn't see what they were, and I knew they were getting closer."

His arms tightened around the boy before he caught himself and eased off again.

"I ran at him. I used [Godstep]. I kept going faster, and every time I should have reached him the distance was the same. Then everything around me started changing."

Mayla listened without breaking in.

"The ground, the buildings, the whole place. Every time I moved I came out somewhere else. In the end he was just gone." Trafalgar paused. "That's when I woke."

She was quiet a moment before she came closer. She bent and put her arms around him carefully, with Aaron between them. Trafalgar went stiff for half a heartbeat and then let himself sink into it.

"I don't know what you dreamed, or why your head picked tonight to do that to you," Mayla said against his shoulder, "but it's all right. Aaron is here. I'm here. The others are here too. Nothing happened."

Trafalgar closed his eyes.

There was something old in the way she said it. Long before Mayla was his wife, before Aaron, before the Academy and everything after it, she had been the one who looked after him.

Mornings when she woke him. Nights when she checked whether he had eaten. A hundred small hours where she was simply part of his life.

Now she was standing over him again, telling him a bad dream was only a dream.

Trafalgar breathed out through his nose. "You know I'm not five years old anymore."

Mayla drew back enough to look at him. "I know. Being older doesn't seem to stop you needing someone to tell you a nightmare wasn't real."

There was no mockery in it. Her hand went through his hair once and pushed a few strands off his forehead.

"And if you're going to sit here sweating and watching the walls like something's about to come out of them, I'll treat you exactly the way I would have years ago."

Trafalgar looked at her, and his shoulders finally came down. "I've had worse treatment."

"You have."

Mayla sat beside him with one hand on the arm of the chair, and for a while neither of them spoke. The snow went on drifting past the window, and the room had the same hush it held before he fell asleep.

Mayla sighed eventually. "I really thought I'd get one night's rest."

"What?"

"I spent half the night with you, fell asleep worn out, and not long after that I'm hearing you shout through the wall." She shook her head, and there was a tired warmth under it. "Even when nothing is happening, something finds a way to ruin the night."

"That one was my fault."

"At least you'll say so."

Before he could answer, Aaron stirred against his chest. A small movement, then another. The boy's face screwed up, a thin sound came out of him, and his mouth started searching for whatever was nearest.

"He's hungry," Mayla said.

Trafalgar shifted him carefully. "He ate earlier."

"And now he wants more."

Aaron made another impatient noise and she held out her arms. "Give him here."

Trafalgar passed him over and watched Mayla sit back with him, adjusting the blanket and loosening her clothing enough to feed him. Aaron went quiet at once. The change was so quick that Trafalgar stared for a few seconds.

Mayla noticed. Her brown eyes came up. "What?"

"Nothing."

"That's a long look for a man seeing nothing."

Trafalgar's gaze went back to Aaron. "I was watching him."

"You were."

There was a short pause before her mouth curved. "You had your turn last night."

Trafalgar looked at her.

It took him several seconds to work out what she had said, mostly because it was the last thing he expected from Mayla at that hour. She held his stare with perfect composure until the amusement finally reached her eyes.

Trafalgar breathed out. "I wasn't expecting that from you."

"I suppose I wanted you to relax a bit after what you told me."

She left it there, and went back to Aaron, running one finger down the side of his face while he fed. Trafalgar watched the pair of them and felt the last of the dream let go of him.

Whatever that country had been, it was gone. This was the true one. Mayla was here and Aaron was safe, and he leaned back into the chair and let himself have it.

A knock came at the door. Both of them looked toward it, and Caelum's voice came through from the other side.

"Young Master, may I come in?"