A/N: This was the horrible new fic I started way back when instead of working on all the other stories I have yet to finish. It's pure Covenant with a few extra twists, the biggest of which probably occurs in, like, three paragraphs.
Fire.
Reds, oranges, yellows, and the faintest chasing of blue leaping from ground into heat and burning, crawling up skin – eating away at flesh and blood and bone even as the world raged, the inferno burning.
A crescendo of sound, the roar of the blaze rising, and rising, pushing like a tsunami, unstoppable – absolute destruction. Screaming, clawing, battling against walls, pressing and roaring frustration until there was a loud crack and suddenly the heat was everywhere, all consuming and never ending and burning the world, burning them…
God, it was awful. Like the yowling cry of a dying animal, Reid Garwin's hoarse screams echoed through his ancestral home, waking all occupants in the dead of the night.
"Fuck," Chase swore, racing from his room, stumbling hard into the wall but never loosing momentum as he bolted down the hall to Reid's room.
Sound greeted him before anything else – the harsh grunts and half-begging orders as Tyler struggled against his best friends flailing limbs.
"Reid!" Caleb's gritty order ended on a grunt, the tell-tale sound of flesh on flesh punctuating the exclamation.
"Damnit, Reid, wake the fuck up," Tyler snarled. Chase entered the room – a virtual battlefield – his heart beat racing when he realized Reid was still caught in the grip of the nightmare.
"Shit," he muttered, taking in the scene. Tyler was struggling against the straining violence of Reid's upper body, practically screaming in the older boys face as he tried to wake him up and Pogue and Caleb pressed the entirety of their weight on his lower body. Caleb had a red patch on his ribs, a sure sign of a major bruise to come.
"Tyler! Move!" Chase snapped, moving forward to grab Reid's arms, grunting under the strain as Reid's upper body shuddered, another terrifying and terrified scream.
"Shit, Tyler, wake him up already!" Pogue grunted.
"I'm trying," Tyler snapped back, sliding one leg over Reid's torso, reaching under Chase's arms to grab Reid's face and focus.
Screeching, metal and man, protesting in voice and rising volume as the violence grew.
Red flashed, a flowing river of blood. A hand appeared, reaching weakly towards them, fingers trembling and palm collapsing downward as the flames licked forward, tasting before consuming.
Agony punched a hole in his – their – chest and he screamed again as the fire rose, racing past the hand, flesh already peeling, the fire already searching out its next target.
"God fucking damnit," Tyler swore, sweat dripping down his naked back, his breath coming in shallow pants and pain ripped through his skull.
"What is it, Tyler? What did you see?" Chase grunted as Reid's body convulsed once more.
"Fire," Tyler grunted, expression tightening as he tried to push his way back into Reid's mind. "Everywhere, eating him alive, skin and bones."
"Shit," Pogue breathed for all of them.
He felt it on his skin, a burning caress more painful and powerful than anything he'd ever felt before. He struggled away from it but his body was already weak and his desire for survival gone.
Everything was gone.
Nothing was left for him, nothing left to fight or live for. He was the last, the only – alone. He didn't want to be alone.
Surrender never felt sweeter than that moment, his breath escaping on a sigh as he surrendered to the fire, consciousness slipping in bits and pieces until something moved in his peripheral.
He turned his bleary gaze, blinking at what he found, his heart giving a fragile, shuddering beat of hope in his chest.
"Tyler…"
Tyler glared at him from the edge of the flames.
"Wake up, Reid," he ordered, voice tight, eyes flickering like the flames as he stared directly at him. "You're dreaming – you need to wake the fuck up."
Reid's eyes snapped open less than a heartbeat later, the discomforting heat replaced by weight and an unwelcome press of bodies that had him shuddering once more.
"Get off of me," he murmured weakly but with enough spine for the order to be followed.
"Asshole," Pogue muttered, straightening to his feet and shooting Reid a darkly worried look before walking around to help Caleb upright, the older boy's side already turning an ugly matted purple.
"Love you too," Reid replied with a humorless smile, eyes closing for a moment before opening just as quickly, the fire already threatening to rise once more.
"What happened?" Chase asked, one arm touching Caleb's shoulder, making sure he was alright, before his attention focused on Reid. "I thought you said you had a handle on it."
"I do, I did," Reid hastily amended, running a hand through sweat-soaked hair, wincing as he pushed himself upright, his muscles protesting even that small movement.
"They were never this strong before," Tyler was sitting next to him on the bed, one hand rubbing the side of his head as he spoke. Reid felt a momentary pang of guilt, knowing he was the cause of the headache, and immediately stifled it when Tyler winced, shoving his emotions behind the carefully constructed walls all of them had mastered years ago.
"Quit it," Tyler ordered him, his tone harsh with displeasure as he glared over at Reid.
"What?" Reid asked, feeling the chill of the air as his body started to cool down in the wake of the dream.
"Hiding," Tyler replied, turning to face him, hand dropping as his anger flashed in his eyes. "You've been having this dream for three months now. We know bits and pieces but you've been holding back, haven't you?"
Reid kept his silence, resolutely looking away – answer enough.
"Goddamnit, Reid," Caleb swore, annoyance and worry in his tone. "How can we do anything about the dream if you don't give us all the information?"
"It's my decision," Reid snapped back, reminding them all of his place in the Covenant. They all had their unique gifts to contend with and they all had the right to the privacy of those gifts.
"Bullshit," Chase bit out before Caleb could. "That's not you dying, is it?"
Reid went silent again.
"Who?" Chase demanded. Reid said nothing as the eldest of their Covenant stared at him, expression deadly calm, deadly focused. That was Chase – determined to the end to do whatever it took to get what he wanted.
"Who?" He demanded a second time, turning his focus instead to Tyler whose gaze Reid could feel burning a hole in the side of his head.
He didn't have to be an empath to feel the younger boys fear and sudden determination. He was going to tell.
Reid's head jerked up, his mouth opening in protest as he met Tyler's crystal clear gaze, his jaw slowly closing at the fear, determination, and pure worry he saw there.
"Us," Tyler replied, swallowing tightly as he looked up at Chase. "You and Pogue are dead on the ground, Caleb's pinned to the wall, and I'm…"
"Burning," Reid finished, eyes closed as the scene replayed itself in his mind, his breath hitching as his heart gave a painful thump in his chest. "You're burning and I'm last. They always save me for last."
"Whose they?" Chase asked, but Tyler spoke before
"You don't see the girl?" Tyler interrupted, frowning as Reid jerked his head up to stare at him.
"What girl?"
It's only a dream, Morgan reminded herself, ten months of therapy floating through her head as her feet traveled down the darkened hallway.
Saint Jude's was never this quiet or empty in real life. It catered to the rich and retired which meant there were always people moving around, supervising one thing or another. If the silence hadn't given the dream away, the darkness would have.
It moved like some sort of fog, following her – pushing her forward to avoid being caught in its grasp.
Her feet were bare and the tiles cool under them as she moved soundlessly down the hall towards another bank of darkness, heart racing as she tried not to think of what was inside that cloud.
"Please let me go," she whispered into the silence, praying to whatever entity was controlling her mind for mercy.
The clouds moved in response and suddenly her feet were gone, the hall was gone, and she was falling, screaming as reality dipped and disappeared around her. She fought against the invisible force holding her, blinding her from seeing where she was and who they were, and had the brief thought 'This is how I die…' before solid ground reappeared.
She collapsed to the ground, legs curling underneath her as she choked on a sob, shivering and shaking and wanting nothing more than to just curl up in a ball and will herself somewhere, anywhere else.
She was picked up and set on her feet before she could whimper again, hands gripping her head and turning her chin towards the door.
It was made of old wood – practically gray with age and decay. It smelled musty with just the barest hint of something underneath, wild and untamed. The hands shoved her forward a few steps, message clear – open the door.
She didn't want to – she'd seen the door before in different dreams, different settings, but she knew what would be on the other side.
"I don't want to," she told the darkness, earning herself another push in recrimination.
Just open it, she told herself, hand raising, palm flat. Open it and it'll all be over.
Her breath held as she braced herself, she placed her hand flat against the surprisingly smooth wood and pushed, eyes snapping closed.
No blinding flash of light or wall of flames greeted her. She wasn't burning.
She wasn't burning.
Her breath released in a shaky exhale, her eyes reluctantly opening to take in the empty barn in front of her.
There was hay and farming equipment everywhere, lying amongst dirt and ratty old wood. She could smell the hay now – no where near fresh – and that wild scent still lingered in the air.
Cautiously she lifted her foot to step forward into the scene only to fall back as the doorway disappeared, her body continuing the fall as the darkness disappeared, leaving her sitting on her butt with stinging hands in the empty hallway.
Her heart raced in her chest, mouth dried as she moved to push herself upright only to freeze as a familiar rumble filled the hall.
"No," she breathed, eyes wide as she turned towards the noise just in time to see the first explosion as the hallway imploded around her and the fire raced forward, engulfing her in its scorching grip and she was screaming, screaming….
"Morgan!" The nurse was there, shaking her, face creased with worry as the poor girl bolted upright in bed, sweat beading on her forehead as she sucked oxygen into her lungs and stared desperately into the woman's eyes, her own filled with tears.
"It's only a dream," she repeated shakily, but when she closed her eyes she saw the fire again, and knew it wasn't.
Maybe it never was.
A/N: I actually used the first part of this as a poem for a creative writing class. The teacher told me it was too generalized and needed more detail (who, what, when, where, and most importantly why). I think it fits nicely. It's a little raw but that's kind of what I was aiming for. Anybody got any suggestions/comments they'd like to make about it?
