Whenever Kaia slept she was either in a nightmare or total dreamless blackness. If she had good dreams, she never remembered them. In her nightmares she was always adolescent but on the younger side, still on her home world in a time when she hadn’t yet met Kits, and the Handlers were interrogating her. Interrogation wasn’t what the Handlers called it. They were pseudo-holograms, artificial intelligence programmed to affect kindred magic, so they called it a term they understood. Diagnostics.

“You will sit,” said the Handler. It was an amalgamation of anti-magic tech which looked like Kaia except when it didn’t. Blue skin flickering a bit too brightly, yellow eyes with no depth behind them, red hair held impossibly away from its face without a clip or tie in sight and not one strand out of place even when it turned its head. In the cubical anti-magic room where Kaia had spent all her years, the Handler projected itself onto the floor before her. It pointed down with the blank expectation that its command would be followed. “Protocol will run diagnostics.”

Kaia didn’t want to sit. Diagnostics hurt. But she knew there wasn’t any arguing with the Handlers. They were the Handlers. She sat.

It reached into her, shoved its holographic hand all the way inside her body in a way that only Handlers could, right into her heart, and a shock ripped Kaia’s nerves so bad she screamed. She could feel the electricity arcing between her teeth.

“You will be silent during diagnostics.” The Handler’s hand remained under Kaia’s skin as it rose its fingers up to her throat.

Her screams stopped making noise. That didn’t mean she stopped screaming.

Kaia.

“Compiling results.”

Kaia stood there on her tiptoes without any means to move while her muscles strained to their extreme, her whole body a cramp. It hurt it hurt it burned it hurt it hurt.

“Error.” The Handler flickered and dropped Kaia. She was so outside herself she heard the impact but didn’t feel her legs or the rest of her hit the floor. In that moment while she seized out of catatonia and breathed in burning rasps, twitching involuntarily as every spasm flared a fresh needle-pin pain through her system, the Handler became so many other things besides an imitation of her physical appearance. Its hair flashed purple, its eyes turned red, its posture changed to favor one hip. It buzzed with leftover electricity and flickered some more. Finally it became a blank slate, nothing but the faintest blue veins in its skin, white hair, white eyes and no gender.

Kaia lay there and didn’t try to get up. Her whole body felt like the gelatinous food that was her only sustenance here in this room which was delivered through tubes along one wall. The absurd thought that she might soon be squeezed through a tube too occurred to her, but she didn’t have the energy to consider whether that notion held any merit. It was useless to move. Moving would make it hurt more. No more. No more no more no more please no m—

Hey.

“You will sit. I will rerun diagnostics.”

Her shoulder started shaking. She couldn’t fight it. Maybe she was dying. Dying meant you didn’t feel anything anymore. Must be nice. Maybe she could wait it out. Couldn’t do much besides twitch anymore anyway.

She felt like she was forgetting something important.

Kai—

The Handler reached down inside her again and the agony returned. Her throat went raw with the words she screamed but couldn’t hear.

“Stop stop stop I’m sorry stop stop I didn’t mean it I’m—”

“Kaia!” Kits’ voice. “You’re dreaming and it’s ruining my sleep too, y’know!”

“Kits?”

“Hi dorkface.”

Kaia tried to flatten her ears back and remembered she wasn’t in fox form.

“Nightmare obviously.” Kits made a grand sweeping gesture of presentation at the room around them, which was as nondescript as it goes except for the scorch marks beneath Kits and the ice crawling up the walls. “Over now though.”

Kaia swallowed. Rubbed her throat and fidgeted on the mattress, which was… oh. Half of it was frozen and the other half looked burnt. Frost and ash spread unevenly along the surface as well as some of the previously fluffy innards. The pattern was ridiculous. Some of the springs showed through where the fabric had pulled back from superheat. She couldn’t blame Kits for this. I’m the one who had the nightmare. Not like I asked for it, but still. This time it was me who messed up our baseline.

“Why didn’t you call Akki?” asked Kits. “Y’know that’s kinda her job. Nightmares.”

“Too late now.” Kaia tried to shake off the fatigue and the memory of electric pain but it stuck on her like mange. She shifted into fox form and tried to physically shake herself out but that didn’t work either. For this night at least, she resigned to being shaky and uncomfortable until she got her emotions under control. Kits’ presence helped, their moods blending through the soul link, but so did other things. Unlike where Kaia had been kept with the Handler, this room had a window. She stared out that window and basked in the starlight that shined outside. Unlike her claustrophobic dreamscape, the night on this world was clear, sharp-scented with ozone. She listened to the curtains billow in gentle wind. Then she shifted back to her humanoid form and felt gross again because now she resembled the Handler. “Sorry. I should’ve. Should’ve screamed for Akki. But I forgot.”

“Nah.” Kits lounged beside her. “Forgetting in dreams is just one of those things. Want me to craft you a pleasant one?”

“You can do that?”

“Akki taught me how.”