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"Dad...? D-dad?" A tiny hand comes to rest and shake lightly at his arm, and Jack stirs awake. He stops the chill of ice from crawling any further up his fingers, and reminds himself that he's no longer in Rapture. Such extreme measures to be taken during his resting hours are unnecessary. He'd hate himself if he ever had to rush to the hospital at midnight because of his own idiocy. He turns around from his position facing Tenenbaum's sleeping form, and cracks an eye open, trying to focus it on the source of the small voice trying to bring him back to the waking world. It's Trudy. "Wh... whadd'you wan, dahlin'...?" Jack slurs with slight unease, pushing an arm beneath his body to help him into an upright position. Trudy fidgets for a moment before answering. "I'm thirsty..." Jack visibly relaxes, sighing through his nose. "Thirsty, huh? Well, let's go to the kitchen." He rasps, sitting on the edge of the bed before standing up and taking his daughter's petite hand on his larger one.
They make their way past the bathroom, and down the stairs, their bare feet making the old hardwood creak gravely even with the careful steps they take to avoid waking anyone else up. Already in the kitchen, Jack helps Trudy onto a chair, and pads towards the fridge (the normal one, the one they use besides the three restaurant-grade freezers on the basement), grabbing a jug of cold water from it, and a glass from a near cabinet. He hands a half-full glass to his daughter, who in turn grabs it and starts taking small, thoughtful sips. Jack eases himself onto another chair and observes his daughter for a few moments, both dusted with the dim, pale moonlight that filters through the window's sheer curtains.
"Now, tell me the truth." Jack asks, and Trudy stops mid-sip with eyes wide like saucers. She purses her lips twice before retorting. "What do you mean...?" She attempts to sound secure, but her voice wavers just the slightest bit to not be attributed to neither drowsiness nor a cold-numbed tongue. "You weren't actually thirsty. Tell me the truth. What woke you up?" He tries again, his voice soft despite its low, deep tone. She makes up a quick excuse on the spot. "I also needed to pee." But Jack knows better, and the way he tilts his head and crooks the corner of his mouth in disbelief lets it show. The little girl sighs, defeated. "I... I had... I had a bad dream..." As soon as she begins, her voice cracks, and when she finishes talking, the knot on her throat is incredibly tight, and her little face is scrunched up with the effort of trying not to cry.
Instantly, Jack's expression softens and molts into a worried, empathic one. He opens his arms in a welcoming gesture, and Trudy wastes no time in jumping down her chair and crawling onto her father's lap, burying her face into his chest and crying freely, tears and snot wetting his white undershirt. He holds her close, but not restrictively so, shushing her not in an attempt to silence her, but to soothe her, to remind her that he's here, always here for her. After long moments filled with bouts of tears and hiccups, Trudy finds her voice again. Peeling her face away from the wet cloth, she sniffles and hiccups once again, before tilting her head upwards to face her dad. "I'm sorry..." She says with barely a thread of voice, strained through the obtrusive lump that her own lament has built in her throat. "What? No...! No..." Jack answers, surprised and worried, and hugs Trudy tighter, showering the top of her head with kisses. "No... why are you sorry? Everyone has bad dreams every now and then. Even I do! Why would you be sorry...?" He inquires, trying to avoid his desperation from showing. He wants to be a strong, reliable parent for the little ones, as well as a good... husband, for Brigid. How can he do that if he can't control even this situation? Before he can muse to himself any longer, Trudy answers his question. "I-I'm a big girl... and big girls aren't scared of bad dreams! What if I'm not a big girl yet? What if I never get to be a big girl...?"
"Oh, darling..." He holds her tiny face between his large hands, wiping away her tears with his thumbs. "Everyone has bad dreams. Everyone does. Tenenbaum does, I do, your teacher probably does as well... you don't have to be sorry about that. It's normal." She stares at him with her teal eyes, glossy with tears, and sniffles loudly. "Is it...?" She manages, inquisitive. "Of course it is. Now, I'll tell you a secret an old lady told me once. They say that if you tell your bad dreams to someone you trust, they'll never become true. Ever." As he speaks, he inflects his tone to range from confident to mysterious and wise. Her eyes open wider in awe and curiosity, and she blinks away the few tears that remain perched on her eyelashes. "Won't they...? Do you promise?" "I promise." The little girl looks away and worries her lip for a moment, trying to recollect the events of her dream and connect them coherently. Soon, she speaks again. "I dreamt about the bad bald man. He hurts you, but in the dream, you don't get up again. He gets bigger and grosser and badder, and he makes us do bad things..." Her voice starts faltering once again, but Jack is faster, and tilts her head up to make eye contact, his eyes kind and a warm, assuring smile spreading through his face. Trudy nods once in understanding, and swallows hard past the lump on her throat to continue. "Then I... get in the hidey hole, and start crawling away from him, but it gets smaller... and smaller... a-and I can't move... or breathe... and th-there's... there's no one there... Daddy never... D-daddy doesn't..."
A tight hug cuts her, and she allows herself to start crying again upon Jack's silent approval. She buries her face against her dad's shoulder, pressing her nose flat against it and letting tears flow freely against the already soiled undershirt once again. Her whines are muffled by the cloth, which found her way to her mouth and now she viciously gnaws on in her fear and frustration. Jack lets her, uttering comforting words to her. "There, there. You don't have to be afraid. I'm here. I'm here for you, and for all your sisters, and for mama Tenenbaum as well. I'm here for all of you..." Long minutes pass, and the crying slowly dies down, with just a few short relapses before silence settles between them once again. Trudy cranes her head to the side, facing the kitchen's wall, her bob of glossy black hair sticking out in odd places and matted with sweat and tears and her hands balled into fists, holding Jack's shirt in a relentless grip. Suddenly, she sighs, and her tiny voice, now unrestrained, reaches Jack's ears once again. "Daddy...?" "Hm...?" One of her hands leaves its merciless hold onto the battered garment, and she messily wipes some of the snot under her nose with the back of it. "You said that you're here for us... who's there for you, then?" Who's there for him? Who is there for him? That's a good question. One that he doesn't need to ponder about for too long. "You are. You, and all your sisters, and Brigid. You're always there for me. Always..."
Silence falls between them once again, but Jack doesn't move. He can feel the unspoken words lingering in the air, and in staying silent, he hopes his little daughter will speak up and let go of her worries. The words don't take long to come, and the voice that utters them is perky, now less afraid, less worried. "Daddy?" "Yes?" "Mama Tenenbaum has bad dreams as well? Really?" "Really." "Really-really?" "Really-really-really." His equally-perky response earns him a wide smile from Trudy, and if knowing that he helped his daughter with her night terrors hadn't already made his night, that smile definitely did. "And what do you do when that happens?" She asks once again, ever-curious. "Well, the same thing I did with you." "You give her water and let her sit on your lap and cry? But doesn't she weigh like, thousands of pounds!? Like you!?" She squeaks with unrestrained and child-like surprise. Jack has to fight not to chortle aloud. "Well, not the water or the sitting part. But I do hug her and let her tell me what's wrong." "Does she... cry as well?" Jack looks away and sighs through his nose. He knows Brigid would kill him if she ever knew he told the little ones she cried, but he can't lie to his daughters. He's been lied to for the most part of a lifetime, and that's something he won't replicate. "Yes, she does." He admits. "Ah." Trudy says, and doesn't press any further. Briefly, he wonders if it's because her curiosity has been sated, or because she's acquired enough tact from her social interactions on the surface to know when she has to drop a subject. Either way, he's grateful.
"Dad?" Trudy asks again. "Yes?" Jack answers, and never expects the request that comes after that. "Can you tell me your bad dreams? I want to help you get better and stop them from becoming real." He opens his eyes wide in surprise and, for the first time tonight, he's speechless. A fond chuckle soon breaks his silence, and he combs through Trudy's hair with his fingers. "It's okay, dear. You don't have to." "Please!" She insists, straightening her back. "I can't, they're too scary." "Mine are scary, too!" "But mine are scarier." He retorts, and suddenly, she gets all serious and authoritative, a frown on her brow and her arms crossed. "Mama Tenenbaum says we shouldn't make stuff into a competition." He laughs, low and airy, and stands up, carrying Trudy on his arm as he makes his way towards the stairs. "But mama Tenenbaum is asleep now. Like we should be." The petite girl wiggles happily in his hold, muffling her laughter with her hands. "Dad! I'm a big girl! I know how to walk!" "Nonsense. Big girls get carried back to bed by their dads all the time. Trust me." Soon, they reach the little ones' bedroom, where twenty little girls sleep the night away in twenty comfortable beds. And soon to be twenty-one. Jack leans Trudy down on her bed, luckily the bottom part of one of ten bunk beds, and tucks her in snugly. "Daddy?" "Yes?" "Do big girls also get tucked in by their dads?" He chuckles fondly, low enough to avoid being heard by the rest of the girls. "Of course they do. I mean, I just tucked you in, right?" Trudy smiles brightly, and even in the dark, Jack can perceive her newfound ease and contentment. He leans down and kisses her cheek, whispering a low 'good night' before leaving the room. Bad dreams will never get his girls. Not on his watch.