insomnia

Jace was now on his fourth night without sleep.

His mind reminded him of one of Ral's devices when its internal battery was starting to run low. Occasionally, it seemed to function just fine. Just a little jolt of sensation or a cup or three of coffee would bring it back to normal. But eventually it would slide back down, slow to a crawl, making pathetic sounds of protest as he prodded and jostled and begged it to function.

More than anything, though, he existed in a haze. Everything seemed distant. Present, but only barely, clouded and indistinct like walking around in a dream. Reality and memory blended. He looked down at the papers underneath him and found that the letters on the pages scattered like mice when he tried to grasp them.

Exhaustion. Pure exhaustion.

So why couldn't he sleep?

See, that was the insidious thing about insomnia, he reasoned to himself. Not during the day of course, when his heavy body begged for rest. No, the torrent of thoughts came when it was time to sleep. His bed became an object not of relief, but of dread. With no distractions and no obligations, what should have been an escape from the day turned into an assault of would-have-beens  and could-have-beens. Regrets, past embarrassments, comments he could have made but didn't. Constant arguments with himself or some made-up adversary. All of it would whittle down the hours until the sun came up again.

An escape from his own thoughts. But no escape from the exhaustion.

He used to not worry about it too much. Eventually some sort of survival instinct would kick in, or whatever it was called when his body could no longer take anymore and he would quite literally pass out and sleep for fourteen hours. But now during those waking hours someone depended on him. Not things he could simply blow off and take the time to recover. No, now an entire plane, and who knows how many others needed him alert and aware.

And with that brought more regrets and arguments.

Whatever, he thought. It would all work itself out. Especially since, at least now, there were people who would notice the bags under his eyes and tell him to go get some goddamn sleep for once.

Whether or not he could was irrelevant. What mattered is that for the first time in years, someone cared enough.