AN: In which Donny isn't the only one who has trouble sleeping.

By the time that Donny comes up to her door and knocks, Julia doesn't remember that last time she's slept through the night. Not since she heard about Michael's death, she'd guess. That first night, after she'd gotten the telegram, she tried to sleep, but quickly realized that her days of getting rest were over. Either she couldn't fall asleep at all, or she woke herself up with nightmares,  or just obsessing over the same thoughts over and over again.

The nights had always been the hardest, ever since Michael's deployment, but she'd always managed, because she'd clung to her hope that he would come back. He'd told her that he would, after all, and she wanted to believe him so badly that she ended up doing so. So, she could sleep.

But after he was gone, after she got a telegram telling her nothing other than than "Private Michael Trojan was killed in action" and "the Secretary of War expresses his deepest regrets", sleep no longer came to her. She spent so much of the daytime pretending that she was fine, her nights were spent wondering - where was he when it happened? How did it happen? Was it quick? What were his last words? All those things kept her up at night, and when she did fall asleep, she had nightmares about all the horrible things that could have happened to him, and when she woke up she knew that she wouldn't be getting back to sleep that night.

Then she met Donny, and after having only a few conversations with him, she knew that he understood what she was going through. Like her, he was also good at pretending, but Julia could tell that he didn't sleep either, that he got even less sleep than she did.

When she actually got to know Donny, she realized that she couldn't bring up her sleeping problems around him. His were so much more severe, and she got the feeling that he hadn't actually slept in weeks, and he mentioned it so casually, Julia didn't have a clue how he was still functioning. So she kept quiet about her own issue.

Julia had been wrong when she'd thought that learning about Michael's death would help her sleep through the night and allow her to start letting him go. She had been so wrong. Once Donny told her - once she'd forced Donny to tell her - she couldn't think about anything else, and she went through so many emotions that her mind couldn't keep up.

Michael was destroyed by a grenade, there was no body to be sent back to her, he wasn't shot, it was a grenade, a grenade that Donny threw. Donny was the reason for Michael's death, Michael would be here if not for Donny. Donny was just following Michael's orders, Michael was the one who told him to throw it. Donny had to throw it because he trusted Michael's instincts, Donny indirectly killed her husband and his best friend, every day Donny has to live with the guilt that his best friend is dead and he's not and it could have been helped, Donny must feel like he's living in hell every single day, and Julia's reaction only made it worse for him.

Julia didn't sleep for even a second that night, she stayed up and she wrote poems for two days. Some were for Michael, but her favorite was one that she wrote for the band. The one that would later change every single one of their lives.

Then the nightmares started. Every night they were different, and the severity was never constant, so she didn't tell the guys about them. Her nightmares were nothing compared to theirs, and they certainly didn't need something else to worry about. So she kept them to herself.

The first time Donny learned about her nightmares was, inconveniently, their wedding night. They had never slept in the same bed before, Donny had been very good about making sure she was comfortable throughout the whole dating and engagement process, and Julia couldn't say that part of the reason why wasn't because of her nightmares. She knew that Donny had them, she'd gotten calls from him on many a late night afterwards, and she'd talk him down from them. But Donny didn't know about hers, she never found the right time to tell them. She quickly found that there was no right time.

During the whole of their wedding day, she tried not to worry about it, and that worked, for the most part, she was too happy to worry. By the time they made it back to their hotel room, her nerves were starting to work their way to the surface, but she just passed it off by saying that it was the first time she'd slept with anyone since Michael. That had worked.

They had an amazing night together, and Julia was positive that she was much too happy to have any nightmares - they didn't happen every single night, after all.

It turned out she was wrong.

Soon after she fell asleep, she found Michael standing in front of her, with a disappointed look on his face that she'd never seen before, that made her want to cry. Suddenly Donny was standing next to her, and she knew that Michael was angry with them, though he didn't say a word. Then there was an ear-splitting explosion, and Michael's face was covered with blood, and Donny had disappeared. Julia screamed.

The next thing she knew, she was sitting upright in bed, and breathing wasn't easy, but Donny was there, sitting next to her, looking at her with a concerned yet knowing look. Her breathing became quicker and harder, and she felt dizzy. The feeling scared her. That was the worst nightmare she could remember having, the first one that affected her this badly.

Her brain registered the fact that Donny was speaking to her in a calm, low voice. "Hey, Julia, listen to me okay? You gotta breathe or you'll pass out. Look at me."

Julia met his gaze, and she was startled by how scared the look in his eyes was. He acted calm despite that.

"Breathe when I do, alright?" Julia nodded, and watched as Donny took a deep breath, slowly letting it out. She tried to match his breathing, but it was a struggle. Donny kept murmuring encouragements. "In and out, there you go, that's it. In and out."

Eventually her breathing evened out, but her head was still spinning and she could feel the tears in her eyes. This wasn't how it was supposed to be, she was the one to comfort him, and she didn't think she liked it the other way around. This must be how Donny felt all the time.

"Donny... it was Michael and he... and you were - "

"Shh, I know. You don't have to talk about it."

Julia didn't know if she had ever loved him as much as she did in that moment. She let him pull her into his arms, and she held on to him tightly, neither of them speaking. They wouldn't sleep anymore that night, so there would be plenty of time to talk. In that moment, it was just the two of them, Donny holding Julia, and silently letting her know that it was okay.

This got way more intense than I meant for it to and I definitely cried writing that so, uh, happy Memorial Day guys.