Oh, good. Then she’ll keep snuggling him for the foreseeable future.

The sandstorm continues well into the night, long enough that there's not really any reasonable way for them (mostly Yvette) to just wait it out awake. They chat in subdued tones about other things than what happened today—Yvette talks a bit about details of her research, Zash tells her happier stories about his life because he has, actually, had many happy days in his life—and eventually drift off to sleep.

If Zash had been more in possession of his wits he'd have realised why this is a bad idea.

"You said you'd protect me," says a child—or a baby—or a large creature with guns for arms. Rollo's shape changes indistinctly, but the scar on his face and his accusatory eyes remain. "You said if God couldn't protect me, you would."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Rollo. I, I know I don't deserve your forgiveness, and I don't ask it. But I wish... things had been different. It's my fault."

"If wishes were fishes we'd never go hungry," says someone, a man Zash met decades ago, who liked that phrase since he'd read in a book from Old Earth somewhere. He didn't know what fishes were, but they sounded delicious.

"I'm sorry. We don't know what we're doing. Please, forgive us... Forgive humanity."

"No," says Nai, before cutting Conrad's head off with a single stroke.

His head turns into Rem Saverem's head, lying on the ground of the arcology of the ship. "I'll always love you."

"Rem... please forgive me..."

"I couldn't stop him. Couldn't save you, couldn't save anyone..."

"It's about time you leave," says Rosa, holding her bloodied son, his arm missing from where it was crushed by a falling building and had to be cut off.

    "Just leave," agrees Elliott's corpse from where it's being buried nearby.

[Come to me, Zash. You know where I am. I love you. I've always loved you, and I always will.]

"Keeping people in cages isn't love, Nai!"

"And what is?"

An image of Yvette, hugging him in the middle of a sandstorm.

"—witch!"

And he cuts her head off, too.

"Yvette!" he screams, sitting bolt upright, gasping for air rapidly and raggedly, a wild look in his eyes and sweat covering his body.

She'd been partially woken up earlier, confused and a little alarmed at why comfy snuggle time had involved such upsetting emotions bleeding into her during the night. It hadn't been clear if they were hers or not, but as she woke up it became more and more obvious the source was external. She realizes the culprit abruptly, when he awakens screaming.

"Zash," she says softly, reaching out to hold him. "Zash sweetie, it was a nightmare. It's okay. I'm okay."

He doesn't cry, while he hugs her much harder than is comfortable. Not hard enough to actually meaningfully hurt, but hard enough that she can tell he could in fact hurt her a lot if he wanted to. It helps that he's still one-armed.

He doesn't cry, but his breath is still fast and irregular, his body shaking with dry sobs as he repeats "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry..." over and over and over again.

"Shhhhh it's okay..."

This is a little bit uncomfortable, but honestly, it's fine. He's not trying to hurt her.

So she can just hold him and, well, the lullaby worked earlier when he was freaking out, she can try that again. Holding and humming and petting his hair and reassuring him that it wasn't real.

It doesn't take as long as last time for him to calm down and stop shaking, but it takes much longer for him to want to release the hug.

She can be held for as long as he likes. (How long has it been since someone's held him??) And in the meantime she continues petting him and humming half-remembered lullabies from when she was small.

Eventually he does calm down enough to pull away a little bit and look at her. "...sorry. For waking you up."

Yvette scoffs.

"None of that, hush. I'm glad I was here."

He shakes his head. "I've dealt with nightmares before." They don't usually get this bad and badly jumbled with so many different feelings but it's happened a few dozen times. "I'm used to them."