“Hey,” suddenly Baikal didn’t seem so upset, and he hushed him calmly, draping his body over Rabbit’s so there was a comfortable weight but he wasn’t crushing him. “I’m not going anywhere. Breathe through it.”
There were no monsters lurking in the corners or under the bed. His mother wasn’t secretly watching him suffer from a video camera. He was all right, he was with Void, and the dream he’d been having was just that. A dream.
“It’s a memory,” he whispered, as though unable to allow his mind to convince himself of the lie like it usually did when he woke in a cold sweat after. “A terrible memory.”
“It’s okay,” Baikal said. “I’m here. The past can’t hurt you anymore, Rabbit.”
“Not me.” He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, blocking out the dark before realizing that didn’t make things any better. When he opened them again, he made sure to keep them locked on Baikal’s teal gaze instead, taking in the vibrant color, like a tropical ocean on a perfect summer day.
“Who then?” Baikal picked up after giving Rabbit a minute to collect himself. “Who got hurt, little bunny?”
He licked his lips, hesitant before, “Oli.”
A slight narrowing of his eyes was the only indication the name pissed him off. “Tell me.”
“I don’t want to remember.”
“Nothing will ever get better if you keep running from it, Rabbit.”
“It’s already getting better,” he disagreed. “You’ve made it better.”
Baikal eased his hand off his throat and moved to comb his fingers through Rabbit’s bangs instead. “This has to be a joint effort. Just like fucking.”
He scrunched up his nose.
“What? It’s true.”
“Making light of the situation won’t help,” Rabbit stated.
“Sure it will,” he said. “You need to feel comfortable enough to open up to me. Are you there yet?”
Rabbit wanted to pretend it all away like he usually did, but something stopped him. Perhaps it was because this time he wasn’t alone, or perhaps it was because he was emotionally drained by all of this. He was tired of carrying it around, and while he still didn’t want to remember everything entirely, what he did recall he could share.
“Do you know much about music?” he asked, and Baikal shook his head.
“I only started listening to you play because it’s you,” he said. “I never had an interest before. Even now, if it isn’t you up on that stage, I don’t care.”
“So you’ve probably never heard of Oli Easton then?”
Another shake in the negative.
“He wasn’t nearly as famous as my mother, had only just begun his professional career, but he was a rising star in the community. A beiska player.” Rabbit had to pause as another wave of panic threatened to wash over him, breathing through it and continuing once he had it under control. “When I was twenty, my mother started touring more and more off planet, but she didn’t trust I wouldn’t fall behind in my practices so she hired someone to teach me.”
“To spy on you,” Baikal guessed. “Like Professor Ludo.”
“That was the plan,” he nodded, “at first. But Oli wasn’t anything like the professor. He started out idolizing my mother the same as everyone else, but unlike them, he was gifted a front row seat to the way she treated me. She explained it was the best way to gain results and told him I had agreed.”
“To being locked up in a room with no food and no light?”
“He was skeptical about that too.” The corner of Rabbit’s mouth started to rise and then abruptly stopped as he brought up the rest. “After a few months, he started to help me. Whenever she’d go on a trip, he’d tell her he was sticking to her methods and would lock me up if I didn’t produce anything new after a month.”
“This happened monthly?” Baikal sounded shocked.
“It depended on her mood. When she was home, it could happen on any given day. You’d think I would have gotten past my fear after being thrown into the dark so many times. I sort of had, actually, but then…That night happened.” He sighed. “Saying all of this out loud makes me sound like an ungrateful prick, doesn’t it? Like I’m complaining about being treated poorly when it wasn’t even all that bad. It wasn’t really abuse—”
“It was,” he disagreed vehemently. “How often did she starve you?”
Rabbit thought about it. “I’m not really sure. At some point I stopped feeling hungry all that often.”
