"It's hard to wake from a nightmare when the nightmare is real."
-Kristin Cashore

Gus was finishing his shift in the worst way: cleaning toilets. As an apprentice, it was something he was tasked to do regularly, but it grossed him out. He'd never tell Jeff though. He wouldn't let anything ruin the amazing opportunity he'd been given here, and he always felt he was a mistake away from Jeff kicking him back out onto the streets.

The shop was empty and quiet. Ethan and the others had gone home for the night.

"Hey, Gus, when you finish I need to talk to you for a second," Jeff said over his shoulder.

Gus froze. "What'd I do?"

"Nothing. Just need to talk to you."

Gus worked faster after that, sick with nerves. Was Jeff gonna fire him? Kick him out? He always had the feeling he was fucking something up.

Gus walked to Jeff's booth like Moon when she'd broken something: slowly, head down, shoulders hunched.

"Sit down," Jeff said, motioning to the long tattoo chair that doubled as a table.

Gus sat, nervously swinging his legs, which were an inch too short to touch the floor.

"It's August now. Do you know what happens in September?" Jeff asked.

"Um... summer ends?" Gus guessed.

Jeff smiled. "Yeah, and I go back to the ranch for six months."

Gus felt a cold deluge of panic flood his body. "You can't!" he exclaimed.

Jeff raised an eyebrow. "Why is that?"

"What about me?"

"I'll leave you in control of the house. Your drug test results will continue to be sent to me electronically. I trust you to work hard here with Ethan and take care of my place and keep on doing what you're doing. You're an adult and completely capable of being independent, as I'm sure you know."

"But... but... it'll be Christmas soon," Gus said out of nowhere. He was embarrassed and immediately regretted the words.

"Yes. I spend every Christmas at the ranch." Jeff said softly.

"I know."

"So why did you say that?"

Gus shrugged. "Forget it."

"Tell me why you said that."

"'Cause I thought you'd spend Christmas with me!" Gus exclaimed, tearing up. "My first Christmas in a house with an actual family... I was lookin' forward to it. God that's embarrassing. Pathetic huh?"

Jeff's face softened. "Gus, it's not pathetic. I understand. But you're in a good place now. You've reprocessed your biggest traumas, and now we're just working on the little stuff. But there are other kids who aren't in a good place. I have to help them. There are other kids who need a father figure. Other kids who're like you when you first came to the ranch. Do you understand that?"

"You care about them more than me!" Gus snapped angrily.

"Gus, that's not true. It has nothing to do with-"

"You wanna replace me. You was just bein' nice sayin' I was your son! I knew this was all bullshit! I never shoulda believed you! You're a fuckin' asshole for makin' me think you cared! You knew I never had nothin' like this! You knew everything that ever happened to me! You knew and you still fucked with my head and then you DUMPED ME!"

Gus jumped off the chair and swiped at the tears on his cheeks.

"Gus, I need you to calm down and think rationally. I am not leaving you. I am not replacing you. I am not abandoning you. I meant what I said about you being my son."

"Yeah right!" Gus shouted. "You're just like everyone else! Pretendin' you give a shit when you don't!"

"I need you to trust me," Jeff said slowly. "I am not throwing you away."

"Don't matter if you do. I'll make it on my own like I always have!"

With that, Gus turned and left the shop, slamming the door behind him. It was late and there was nowhere to go, so he ran to Adam's Bridge. He didn't know if Hex would meet him there. They had already had dinner together on his break and said goodbye for the night, but he sent her a text anyway.

"Wanna hang out?" he typed.

"Sure, where?" she replied.

"Bridge."

Before Hex arrived, Gus sat at the bridge by himself, chain-smoking and cutting himself with a sharp rock he'd found. He hadn't cut in a long time, and the release of anger, shame and sadness felt better than an orgasm. The jagged gashes on his scarred arm dripped thick blood on the concrete, drawing bugs. Mosquitoes were biting him all over, and it reminded him of sleeping on the streets. By the time Hex got there, the wounds had mostly scabbed over.

"So what's wrong?"

The voice belonged to Hex. Gus looked and saw her making her way over to him on the slanted wall.

"Why do you think somethin's wrong?" Gus asked.

"You're smoking. You usually don't do that unless you're stressed. And you're cutting. You haven't done that since we met up again," she said.

"How do you know that?"

"Because I saw your scars. I know how many there are, and that number never changed," Hex said.

Gus shrugged. "I just wanted to. Needed to."

"You wanna talk about it?" she asked with concern.

"No. I'm fine. Nothing's wrong."

Hex sat down and touched his cheek with her hand, coaxing him to turn his head and look at her. He did. With one finger she began tracing the line of his jaw as she searched him. Gus felt like she was seeing into his very soul. Then finally, mercifully, she broke the eye contact and let him go.

"You don't have to tell me," she said. "But don't pretend you're okay. Don't disrespect me like that."

Gus looked into the ravine. "Sorry. Yeah, I'm not okay, but it's stupid and it doesn't matter."

"It matters to me," Hex said.

"I think I'll sleep here tonight," Gus mumbled.

"Then so will I."

"You don't have to. It's hot. It's gross. There's bugs," Gus said.

"Well you can come back to Ember's and sleep on the couch with me, but I'm not leaving you alone tonight. Where you sleep, I sleep."

"You think she would mind?" Gus asked.

Hex shook her head. "You know she wouldn't."

"Okay then. I'll do that."

"She has the kid, though. Like, right there. Very little privacy, so we can't get... excited," Hex said, and Gus managed to laugh despite how bad he felt.

"I'll try to control myself," he said.

Jeff had already texted Gus a few times, but Gus had ignored them all up until now. He started to feel a little guilty on the way to Ember's though, and he read the latest one.

"Just need to know you're okay," it said.

Gus was holding Hex's hand, so he started typing with his free one.

"Fine. Staying at Ember's tonight."

Jeff sent a thumbs up in return, and Gus pocketed the phone. As upset as he was at Jeff, he couldn't bring himself to just disappear on him with no explanation. Logically, he knew Jeff had done nothing wrong. He'd even taken the extra step of telling him about his departure a month in advance so Gus could have time to mentally prepare. But emotionally, every trigger in his psyche had been toyed with.

By the time they got to Ember's, it was after eleven o'clock and everyone else was already asleep. They slipped their shoes off and settled down on the couch together. They were both so small they managed to fit pretty comfortably as long as they held each other close and laid on their sides. Their foreheads touched, and they stacked their legs on top of each other like pancakes.

"I'll see you in the morning," Hex said softly.

"Thanks for letting me stay," Gus said.

She leaned in and kissed him. "I love you, Gus," she said.

It was the first time she had ever said the words, and Gus's stomach flip-flopped. He hadn't expected her to be the first one to say them, and he had been holding off telling her himself, not wanting to freak her out.

"I love you too," he said, and she grinned at him and gave him one final kiss before settling down and closing her eyes.

Gus thought he would get the best sleep of his life in Hex's arms that night, but the nightmare about the white cage changed that.

In his sleep Gus must have crawled behind the couch facing the kitchen, because he snapped up there, his face buried in his knees as he rocked back and forth, shaking with terror and choking on his own sobs. He could hear someone desperately saying his name. It was Ember's voice. She was also shaking him, but that stopped after a few seconds and Gus knew she'd gone to wake up Hex, but he couldn't snap out of it yet. The fear held him in its grip.

"Gus? Baby, what is it?"

It was Hex's voice now. When she touched him he screamed in terror. His body was on fire. The pain was ripping him apart. Half in the memory and half in reality, Gus slid away from her. They let him create space between them, but Ember and Hex wouldn't leave his side.

Their soothing voices eventually brought him out of the nightmare, and he was aware of reality again, where he was and why. It was early morning. So early it was mostly still dark in the apartment, with just a weak grayish blue light filtering in through the windows.

"Gus, can you hear me?" Ember asked.

"What's wrong, baby?" Hex asked shakily.

She started to reach her hand towards him, but Ember grabbed it.

"You might get hurt," she said. "Let him come back."

Gus blinked open his eyes.

"I'm okay," he whispered.

Hex gasped with relief and threw her arms around him, and he held her. Ember wrapped her arms around him too. It was then that he became aware of the fact that he'd wet himself, and he burned with shame.

"What was that about?" Hex asked softly.

"The white cage dream," Gus mumbled.

He saw Ember's look of confusion out of the corner of his eye. She grabbed a handful of paper towels off the kitchen counter and handed them to Gus.

"I'm sorry, Ember," Gus mumbled.

"Don't worry about it, sweetie. We have hard woods and a three-year-old. These floors have seen worse."

"Did you tell Jeff like I told you to?" Hex asked him pointedly.

Gus shook his head as he cleaned up the floor. "No."

"Why the hell not?" she snapped.

"I don't know."

"Well that's not good enough! You scared the hell outta me, Gus! Whatever this dream is, it's way more than a normal nightmare!"

"She's right. You were completely gone," Ember said softly.

"You didn't tell me it was this bad! You told me it fucks with your sleep! Not that you get up and freak out! That was like some PTSD flashback or something! It's not just a dream!" Hex said.

Gus knew she wasn't as angry as she sounded. Now that he'd gotten to know her softer side, he could tell she was just worried about him, and that made him feel terrible.

"You said Adam's were bad too," Gus mumbled.

Hex shook her head. "Nothing like this! They were dreams. I could wake him up to get him out! I couldn't do anything to get you back just now!"

"Gus, it was really scary," Ember said gently. "Like the stuff that used to happen to you sometimes back in the mansion. You'd have those episodes kinda like this. You called them... um..."

"Snapping up," Gus said.

"Yeah! It would freak all of us out. I remember!"

"Promise me you're gonna tell Jeff about this," Hex said.

Gus nodded reluctantly. He couldn't take the risk of this ever happening again.

——————

When Gus appeared back at Jeff's front door, Jeff immediately led him inside with a sturdy hand on his shoulder.

"Come on. Let's talk," he said.

They sat down at the small kitchen table, which was always covered with artwork and junk mail. Gus started telling the story about the dream and last night's episode.

"That was a new nightmare, huh?" Jeff asked.

Moon jumped up on the table and nuzzled her head under his chin. Gus nodded, stroking the cat's soft, velvety ears.

"New memory?"

Gus nodded again. "But weird, not clear. Maybe it ain't a memory. The white cage has always been in my dreams. Just not this scary."

"A white cage like a prison?"

"No. A small, white cage. It has white wooden bars, and there's no roof, but I'm too little to jump outta the top. So I'm stuck there."

"What did you experience in this one?"

"I've had it for a few weeks now. I'm in the cage. It's all dark and blurry. Sometimes there's this light and this shadow. There's a baby screamin' somewhere close, and I feel so fuckin' scared, trapped and there's this pain, the worst I've ever felt, like I'm bein' ripped apart. And there's an awful smell and I'm alone and I need somebody but I don't know who. It's kind of what I imagine hell would be like, if hell was real. Just how lonely it is, cut off from everybody, knowing no one will come to help you."

"What kind of smell is there?" Jeff asked.

"Like shit. And piss. And dirty animals. And smoke. Cigarettes, maybe. Crack, dope... maybe."

Jeff was looking at him with his eyebrows furled. He didn't say anything, but Gus could tell he was worried. More than worried. There was a look of dread on his face.

"So what do you think?" Gus asked nervously.

Jeff sucked in a breath. "I'll need to think about it more."

It was a strange reply. Usually Jeff would ask for more information or ask him to remember a time he'd felt like that or whatever. Now, it was like a door had slammed on the conversation. Gus was too surprised to know what to say.

"Can you go to work today?" Jeff asked.

Gus nodded, bewildered.

"Okay. I'll see you later at the shop then."