A/N: Recently, a friend re-sparked my interest in fanfiction and reminded me of all the stories I'd planned to write, including this one, that never left me alone.
...This could be a very long story...
"Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes"
Neon lights hum and pop overhead, and she moves in and out of their garish light and the flickering shadows. Somewhere, not too far away, a deep bass beat rumbles, and faint voices float over it. She's close. She knew they'd be here. She knew it.
I found them. The old subway station on 29th and Miller.
The night air is empty, cold and dark, with just a hint of winter chill seeping into the wind. She blocks out the cold, blocks out everything but the mission. Tonight's the night.
Here we go…
Too much sunlight leaks through the battered blinds—relics of the 2000s, no doubt—and spills through the kitchen. She glares at the windows a she fishes two pieces of bread out of the near-empty loaf bag. It shouldn't be this bright first thing in the morning.
"That's because it's almost ten."
She refuses to jump, even if she hadn't even realized she'd said the words out loud. She shakes her head instead, more at herself than at him. Talking to herself again. That was a dangerous habit—but a hard one to break. Who else did she have to talk to?
"We should talk," he says from over the rim of his battered coffee mug, echoing her thoughts again. It catches her so off guard she almost drops her bread on the floor.
"Talk?" she echoes, as if she's the mother of a teen who just trotted out some potentially-obscene new piece of slang. She drops the bread in the toaster and slams the lever down. "What is there to talk about?"
He sets down the mug. "Well, the nightmares, for one." She can hear the frown in his voice even without turning to look at him. "They're getting more frequent, Leigh." He hesitates, then adds, "Your file didn't mention them…" He lets the half-formed question trail off.
"No." Why would it? No one in Stonegate acknowledged that they were happening. None of her cellmates ever had a death wish, and it wasn't the guards' problem. The counselors? They never saw her sleep, and she'd have cut off her right hand before telling any of them a single word about them.
He drums his fingers on the table, a restless habit that seems to belong to a younger man. "Well, I thought we could start by talking about them now."
Start. As if this is going to be a thing. As if she is going to bare her soul to this man, who seems to think that a court order makes him her lost-lost grandfather or uncle or something, and spill her darkest secrets. As if they are going to do cozy dream-shares over the breakfast table like they live in some non-euthanasia-happy version of The Giver. (Stonegate has a library, okay? Prison sentences are too long not to read.) As if he could possibly understand, even if she did tell him.
Except, he just might…she thinks…she can't be sure… not without using her gift, and she can't, won't, not again.
Besides, the stupid bracelet-thing would go off.
"What's there to talk about?" she says, pouring orange juice into a glass—coffee is not a Good Idea for people like her—and sitting down. "It was just a nightmare."
"What about?"
She shrugs. "Murder. Mayhem. The usual." She looks him dead in the eyes and grins.
He doesn't react. She hates that. He doesn't edge away from her glance, or fume that she's not taking him seriously. He just returns her look steadily, waiting.
No one looks her in the eyes. They're not crazy…or even if they are, they're not that crazy. No one wants to set-off the psycho-freak who can make you wish you were dead without laying a finger on you. But this guy…he just stares back at her, like he's too dumb to know what she is, like he just sees some regular girl.
She hates it.
The toast pops, giving her an excuse to get up from the table. "Look, I don't actually want to talk about this," she says. Her knife digs into the butter a little deeper than strictly necessary. "I'm not going to talk about it."
He takes a long sip of coffee. "Are the nightmares always about the same thing?"
"Are you listening to me?" she demands. A tiny sliver of butter flies off the knife and lands somewhere on the linoleum.
"Yes." He leans forward. "You said you didn't want to talk about it. It. Not them. So, if your nightmares are an it, they'll all connected to one thing, right?"
She grits her teeth. "We're not talking about it."
She can't. She won't. He can't make her. No one can.
