Sorta story for Halloween. It borrows from some past fics of mine. I promise to work on the ongoing stories I have.

VISITORS

He stirred restlessly in his half sleep. The barely functioning conscious part of his brain wondered if it should prod him to completely wake up, to pee, and to close the window. Another part told the first to shut down, that his bladder was fine for several more hours, and he could burrow deeper in the covers. He needed the sleep. The first part snorted that sleep brought him nothing but the monsters. But the warning came too late. The monsters had arrived.

They were remarkably similar, and there were a lot of them. Many had haunted them since he was old enough to have dreams, and they were so familiar that they scarcely frightened him anymore. He didn't know what many of them looked like. He'd inherited many of them from his mother's dementia, and they were vague shapes and forms. He'd finally learned that these monsters had no real power over him, especially after his mother lost the ability to punish him for their presence. The ones produced by the actions of the man he'd though was his father were harder to dismiss. They came from memories of very bad things, but he'd learned that if he could remind himself that he was now a grown man and not a small, terrified child, he could stare down these monsters. The recent additions to the monsters---the ones whose features were distortions of the faces of Nicole Wallace and Mark Ford Brady and his brother and Jo Gage and her father--were the ones he couldn't shake. They were real, and they were tormentors of a man and not a boy.

They were all black and nearly shapeless. Their eyes and mouths were great, gaping, crimson holes, and their claws spread scarlet ribbons. He could just see what and who they were, but he couldn't see much of their faces. And it was what he couldn't see that terrified him.

"Please," he desperately thought. "Please let me wake up…Or if I can't wake up…Please don't let it be that one…Please…"

It was that one, of course. It usually was. Sometimes the monsters took some innocent—for several weeks after he helped Maggie Coulter save herself, the monsters tormented her in his dreams. Sometimes the monsters took someone he cared about—one woman he'd started tentatively thinking about asking to marry him left after he confessed that his nightmares involved monsters taking her away. Sometimes the monsters took him into strange, undetermined abysses where he was tied up and locked away. But the worst of them were the ones where they grabbed Eames and pulled her into the dark pit, and he couldn't reach her or help her, or where she tried to help him and when she reached out to him he seized her hand and pulled her into the darkness with him. It was that one attacking him now. As the distorted shapes surrounded him, he heard her screams. He struggled against the heavy claws wrapped around him and biting into his skin. The monsters' laughs echoed in his head as he pleaded for them to let her go.

"Please…Please…" he whimpered. "Take me…Do anything you want to me…But…Please…Don't hurt her…Don't take her…"

A flash of light blinded him. The screams ended. The claws' grips on him lessened. He raised his head to see figures glowing with warm, gentle light approaching. The monsters cringed and hissed.

"Let him go," a soft, firm voice commanded the monsters. "He's not yours…He's never belonged to you, and he certainly doesn't tonight."

The monsters hissed and laughed at the glowing figures, but their laughs had become hollow and the sounds of creatures trying to hide their fear.

"We made him," one of the monsters declared. "He's our creation."

"We made him too," one of the figures said. Bobby could see her large, warm, brown eyes. Another one of the figures with eyes the color of a clear October sky stepped forward. "We fed him and clothed him while you abandoned him. We had more to do with what he is than you ever did. It's why you never understood him." A small, graceful figure with long, flowing dark brown hair appeared behind the other two. "And we're the ones he tried to help. The ones he saved or brought back to their families."

One of the monsters tried to dig its claws into Bobby's skin, but Bobby pulled away from it. He realized that as long as he looked at and listened to the glowing figures the monsters couldn't hurt him, couldn't hold him.

"Angels," Bobby thought. "They must be…"

They pulled him away from the monsters. He dimly heard the deformed creatures' cries of despair and anger. As he moved closer to the angels, he recognized their features. One looked like Lewis' mom, who had fed him more dinners and listened to him more times than he could remember. The one with the great blue eyes reminded him of Father Mac, who had rescued him one night from his mother and gotten him into a good foster home. Bobby smelled lavender, and he realized one of the angels looked like Angie, the sweet young woman who was a victim in one of the first cases Alex and he had investigated.

The monsters faded from his view and sight. There seemed to be hundreds of angels, lifting him and embracing him, their soft, tender wings enfolding him. He was warm; he was safe; he was loved. The angels gently laid him in the arms of the angel with the large, warm, brown eyes. Bobby looked up at her.

"Mom?"

She smiled at him, the warm, gentle, loving smile Bobby could just remember from the days before she became so ill. It was not so much that he felt the soft, tender touch of her hands as he knew it.

The angel gently lifted him so that he stood. She took his hand and held it out. Bobby looked up to see a glowing Alex Eames smiling at him and reaching out to him. The angel released him.

"Remember," the angel whispered.

Bobby turned to look at her. The angel raised its hand, and Bobby saw the battered, beloved copy of THE VELVETEEN RABBIT that his mother presented to him on his fourth birthday.

"Remember I loved you."

He felt Alex's hand on his arm as the angels floated away.

The cultivated strains of the BBC announcer woke him. Bobby blinked, raised his body, and stretched. He stared at his clock radio, not quite believing that he'd slept through the night. He realized his body wasn't soaked with sweat and that his bedclothes weren't a mess of tangles sheets and strewn blankets. He pulled back the covers and swung his long legs out. He stood and wondered that he felt as if he'd actually slept. He vaguely remembered his dream.

"I guess," he thought. "That's what a good dream can do for you."

There was a knock on his door as he tied his tie, and he remembered that Alex had promised to come by with coffee and to drive him to work.

"Hey," she said after he opened the door. She handed him a large coffee cup. "Here you go…You look good today…"

He sipped the coffee and stepped into his apartment. "Yea…I actually got some sleep last night…I just need to get my jacket…"

"Not a problem," Alex said cheerfully. "It's good to see you in those suits again." She moved towards Bobby's desk.

"It's good to fit in them again." Bobby, pulling the jacket on, emerged from behind a bookshelf. "I'm ready…"

Alex held up the book. "THE VELVETEEN RABBIT…This was one of my favorites when I was a kid. Doing some reassuring reading?"

Bobby stared at the book. "Uh…Where did you find that?"

"On your desk…Where you probably left it," Alex smiled. "Absent minded genius." She carefully opened the book and read the inscription on the first page. "Your Mom…"

Bobby carefully and gently took the book from Alex. "Yea…It was the first book…I remember her reading to me…The first one she gave to me…"

Alex placed her hand softly on his arm. Bobby traced the faded writing with his finger.

"I…I just need to put this back," he finally said.

"Ok."

Bobby stepped back to the area that housed his bed. He bent and carefully placed the book in its special place on the bookshelf next to the bed. He tenderly touched its spine.

"Thanks, Mom," he whispered.

He stood and followed Alex out of his apartment.

END