Title: Quiet watches of the night
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 1000 words
Content notes: Anxiety, depression, not dealing well with them (avoiding seeking help).
Author notes: Sorry Clef. (Am I writing anxious!Clef to work though my own issues again? PROBABLY. But I mean, canon’s ridiculously traumatising and he seems to have given up on sleep for the whole of the second part so… I don’t think it’s a stretch…)
Summary: Clef bolted upright in his bed, shuddering, sparks skittering through the air about him and fading out to leave nothing but the ghostly impression of light in his eyes. Something was wrong, something had changed, had-


oOo

Clef bolted upright in his bed, shuddering, sparks skittering through the air about him and fading out to leave nothing but the ghostly impression of light in his eyes. Something was wrong, something had changed, had-

He shut his eyes, ignored the flashes, and reached for Cephiro - for the warm heart of the land. There was a gentle stirring in response to his searching, but nothing else, none of the quaking or spikes of power that had come with every earthquake, every loss of land. Nothing of unstability at all. Instead, a soft warmth flooded back over his connection, as if she was pushing calm back around him.

“Nothing’s wrong?” he whispered, and winced a little at the uncertainty in his voice. He was Guru – he was meant to know this kind of thing.

It was hard to know anything for sure when his mind was full of alarm bells primed to start ringing at any hint, even imagined, of something going wrong.

For a moment he pulled his knees to his chest, rested his head against them, and made himself just breathe. He fell into the rhythms he’d been taught as a student; breath in for a count of seven and then out for eleven, concentrating on slowing the beat until he was breathing deep and steadily. From there, he thought about just laying down again, but he was too sharply awake to think that lying down would lead to anything but staring at the ceiling.

Pushing the covers aside, he left the bedroom entirely, heading to the little sitting-room he’d made of the balcony at the back of his rooms. He’d added the balcony early enough in the process of the castle’s current creation that there had been no process to request permission, and no one with authority to grant it. When he’d added the glass walls that curved up to become the ceiling, held together with a delicate tracery of stone shaped like the curving roots of some plant growing from the side of the building, they had existed. He just hadn’t thought of them until some weeks later, and he still hadn’t decided how to get the addition recorded without causing a fuss.

He could, of course, have taken it down without anyone noticing it was ever here; it was only a little place, not overlooked from any angle, and as reaching it required going through either his bedroom or his study no one else was likely to see it. He could easily have asked for an extension of his rooms to add a more conventional living room, but…

Curling into the deep cushions of the chair he’d added, where he could look out over the silver-lit meadows, the river glinting in the valley below, the forests reaching beyond and the high clear sky of flickering stars above… he couldn’t bear the thought of losing this sense of peace, this ability to literally see Cephiro was doing well.

No, the room was staying. It was only a little wall; he would rather deal with any fuss and nuisance if it came up than get rid of it without a fight, and he would rather avoid the fight if at all possible.

A small stone brazier stood beside the chair. One touch had it heating, and he had come into the habit of leaving a kettle of fresh water waiting every evening, in case. So it was only a few minutes until he had a cup of tea in his hands, curled in his chair and watching the wisps of cloud drift by.

It was three months since he had first woken in an anxious rush only to find nothing was wrong, and it was happening more frequently. But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find anything wrong with Cephiro – she was well, was prospering, even with the challenges of remaking laws and structures to fit this new version.

So was no other conclusion he could draw than that the issue was with himself. Or, rather… that he had an issue.

Hands clutching the warm mug tighter, he took a deep breath. Through the worst of Cephiro’s dissolution he hadn’t slept much, had startled awake in a very similar manner numerous times – but there had always been something going wrong. For most of a year since Hikaru had given the land a new life, he’d slept better, or woken only to some spell or change doing something… unexpected to Cephiro. It was darkly amusing that it was only now things were actually stable that he himself was feeling anything but. He was so tired all the time, and yet he was sleeping so badly, and… he wished that the world would just pause so he could take a breath and catch up.

Anyone else who told him they felt like this, he would encourage them to go to the Priests. At the very least to the Healers. But he couldn’t make himself stop avoiding both. The idea of talking about his fears to their new Soru made him itch, but many of his fears were ones he wouldn’t discuss with anyone not already on the Council, even if he were allowed to. Letting others in on how fragile Cephiro had been, how many times they had nearly lost everything… he would not want to inflict that terrible knowledge on anyone.

He would rather speak to Miura than the Soru, though issues of the mind were technically Priest business and not that of the Healers. Only she was run off her feet as badly now as he had been just after the fall; he wouldn’t add another weight to her shoulders and drag her down with him for anything. The idea made him feel nauseous.

So he sat in the little piece of quiet so private no one else knew about it, and breathed slowly, and let Cephiro wrap calm consolation about him. It would take some time to… process everything that had happened, that was only logical. He was, at least, used to getting by on very little sleep. He had this sanctuary; it would be enough.

It had to be.