The human body was not meant to go long periods without sleep. It began to deteriorate, the mind slowly slipping, shadows darkening beneath the eyes. A person could die for lack of it, if too long stretched without the ability to slip into proper REM cycles. Zeke had known that before, but he was acutely aware of it now. In a way that was haunting and unforgettable, and added one more terrible reality to the melting pot of nightmares that kept him up at night.

Zeke didn't look like a man that had just spent a year on a deserted island, the auburn scruff on his chin and cheeks was a bit overgrown, but only a few days worth. He wasn't as skinny as the memories told him he should be, or his hair as long. The way he looked as he returned to the dorms after their rescue did not align with the way he felt in his mind, and it was disconcerting. Not even a long, warm shower helped.

He made it as far as his dorm room door before remembering his room still want completely put back together after the legacies had torn through the island this last time, and it made him pause, his hand on the handle and his brow coming to rest on the woods of the door.

----

The moment the word got around that those swept away had returned, Harley had dropped her hammer. Literally. It narrowly missed slamming into her foot, which was for the best, as it was promptly ignored. The trainee booked it away from where she was stationed, running back to the infirmary - and actually just running anywhere, trying to track down the rescued survivors.

By the time she remembered to check the dorms she had worried herself into the beginning stages of panic.

She had practically skidded into the hallway, and as she spotted the form of Zeke that she would know anywhere - even with the extra scruff and the unusual air about him - a weight lifted off her chest. Instantly, she felt lighter. Her world was right again. Zeke was there, whole and safe, and everything was okay.

The redhead took a minute to straighten herself out, fixing disheveled clothing and smoothing back some stray hairs from her French braid, and started a casual saunter down the hallway, as if she hadn't been running everywhere in a panic.

“Sharkboy! Trying to hide from me?” She grinned a half-grin, unable to help the look of relief that weighed in her blue eyes.

---

He jumped bad enough his forehead smacked against the door, and he was cursing, a hand pressed to his brow, as he turned to find Harley striding down the hall towards him.

His reaction to the sight of her wasn’t cool, it wasn't contained or reserved in anyway. He looked almost stricken as he took her in, and in three quick strides he'd take her into his arms, clutching her to him as if she were the last solid thing in the world, and the ground was crumbling beneath his feet. And though she couldn't see it, his eyes were wide as they stared over her shoulder, a little lost, and carrying more weight than they ever had before.

Because it hasn't been only three days for him. It had been a year. A solid year since he'd gotten to see her, or talk to her, or hold her in his arms. A year since he'd gotten to hear her laugh, or her voice when she murmured to him at night.

His shoulder hit the wall, and then he as sinking to the ground with her in his lap, his face buried in against the side of her neck while he relearned the scent of her skin and ******** she had been about to say - be it a remark about the way he hit his head, or perhaps even a shameless flirt - was lost as he gathered her up in his arms and crushed her against him. The strength of his grip and the desperation of his hold was enough to stun her at first, and until he started to sink to the ground with her in tow. A small noise of surprised followed, and she quickly adjusted herself against him, making sure nobody's knees got knocked or legs twisted.

“Whoa - Zeke -” Harley said, clearly confused by the intensity of his reaction. She had wrapped her arms around him as best as she could, to try and hold onto him with even a fraction of the desperation. Then, unable to grip him the same way, she settled for weaseling an arm free, to bury her fingers into the hair at the back of his head and neck.

“Was it that bad?” She said, sympathetically, but still rather baffled by his reaction.

---

Of course she didn’t understand why he was acting like that, how could she? To her it had been only three days. Days filled with worry, certainly, but still, only days. Nothing to the stretch of time the intermediate’s mind had been forced to endure, even if his body had not.

At the sound of his name the fierceness with which he was holding her loosened minutely, afraid for a moment that he’d actually hurt her, but the curl of her fingers against the back of his head said otherwise, and he sighed into the warmth of her shoulder and the crook of her neck before shaking his head in answer to her question. Sort of.

It would be longer still before he was actually calm enough to draw back, shadowed eyes drinking in her features as he stroked her cheek with the pad of her thumb.
How even to to begin to explain?

“Those three days we were stuck,” he was actually surprised that his voice wasn’t hoarse from misuse. “To us, in our minds, we were stuck for a year, and every day someone would disappear, until I was the only one left.” Brows creased. “It wasn’t real, but it...felt real.”

----

He didn't reply right away and Harley, usually quite the chatterbox, wasn't sure what to say. While he had undergone some awful things in the past, he didn't often hold her with this sort of desperation. Nor did he ever give her that sort of shadowed stare before. It was something new, and for once, this new was not an exciting challenge to meet and defeat. Instead, for probably the first time since they met, she felt a strange sort of protective fear; she wanted to take him from this, as far away as anyone could possibly go.

"A year?" She repeated, a meek little whisper of surprise. Three physical days had passed, but he had experienced a full year?! Suddenly, his reaction made sense. If she had thought a year had passed, without Zeke at her side, and with a crew that kept disappearing, well...she'd be haunted too. More than that, she would have gone insane; he was handling it pretty well, she thought distantly. He was always much better at handling things than she was.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Her hands, which had moved to hold the sides of his neck, not quite ready to let her touch leave him, shifted to hold his face between her hands. "You're home now, everything's going to be okay."

----


Zeke wasn't handling it at all, really, but there was nothing they could compare this to. It had been fairly endurable, at first, but then people had started to leave, called into the cove and never to be seen again. Their weapons had gone silent. Even then, it was alright because he wasn't alone, Ever had been there with him. It was after Ever had been called away as well, that was when everything had just completely fallen apart.

He'd never realized before how completely dependent he was on the presence of familiarity.

He looked back at her as the warmth of her palms cupped the dudes of his face, and after a moment he'd pay his own hands and her’s, pressing them into his skin as if afraid they'd fade away from him if he didn't hang onto her in some way.

There had been a stretch of can, a reprieve, but now it seemed like what ever was in control was making up for that lost time by throwing everything at them back to back. It was all quite overwhelm.

She, at least, had been spared the worst of it.

He nuzzled into one of her palms eyes closing as his lips moved to press a series of lingering kisses there. “I'm so tired.”

----