Subconscious

By Dani

Author's Note: This was done for a challenge on the Ed Edd 'n' Eddy Slash YGroup. Love ya guys! Heh... If anyone thinks this is worthy of continuation, speak up. I just think it's weird enough to maybe work...

Disclaimer: If I owned these bois, Eddy would get time out, Ed would get a chicken, and Edd would get a better lab than Dexter's... cause I like making bois happy. ^_^  But I ownn't, they belong to Cartoon Network.

~*~

This dream was familiar territory, but no less terrifying for his experience with it. There were screeching things that cried out in pained voices and ran into things in their horror. He was surrounded in black—-formless, deep, thick black that had no weight, no mass, and yet seemed to weigh on his skin, to fill his lungs, to coat his mouth and nose with the darkness he so feared...

"Don't worry about those things that go bump in the night, Double D. I've been dealing with them a lot longer than you."

Jonny's voice... but how? He'd had this dream hundreds of times, and no one had ever intervened before... The slight scratchiness of unfinished wood brushed the back of his hand, and Edd instinctively gripped on. The dream was changing. Maybe this time he wouldn't die in the dark again.

"Don't worry anymore, Double D. Plank's got you." The young voice was as calm and reassuring as Edd's own mind was restless and nervy. He held on tightly to Plank and opened his eyes to the light.

Jonny smiled and patted Edd's cheek softly. "You had me scared for a second. Plank said you almost gave in to the darkness again." The two boys and the piece of wood stood together, quietly surveying the landscape around them—Jonny with serenity, Plank with some inscrutable emotion, and Edd with a sudden recognizance.

"This is the place I used to dream of... Where I caught my first bug, and learned to tell trees by their leaves and bark.... All my scientific leanings started in my dreams here." He crouched down and ran his fingers through the grass. "What is going on here?"

Jonny leaned closer to Plank and held a whispered conversation with his wooden pal. Finally, he nodded. "Double-D, you were losing your sense of wonder. All your research and scientific knowledge made you feel jaded with the universe... This place is your wonder, but the darkness was eating away at it. All the little wonders you kept here turned into your little fears and neuroses...the screaming things."

"Losing my sense of wonder..." Edd just barely stopped himself from going on with "That's absurd!" He realized, with no small shock, that it was true. Between Eddy's schemes and Ed's routine oddness and his own studies and problems, he was fast becoming unimpressed with the world.

"Plank and I have been trying to help you for a while now... almost a few months. You fought us every step of the way, like you wanted to stay in the darkness..." Jonny sat down next to Edd and stared upwards into the clear sky. "Look. All the birds and bugs that used to be here are gone. You have to make an effort to get this place back like it was, Double D. I'll help you, if you want."

"Would you? Please?" Edd could feel the darkness under the edges of this utopian scene, and he was frightened. He had to fight it. There was no way he could let it win... Jonny smiled and closed Edd's hands around Plank.

"Plank is an expert at these things, Double D! Just listen and he'll tell you what to do. I can tell you the first thing, though..." The tanned boy leaned closer and murmured in Edd's ear softly, "Let yourself be surprised now and then." He swiftly pressed a light kiss to the corner of Edd's lips.

In a town called Peach Creek, in a house on a cul-de-sac, a boy with a hat and a secret woke up staring at his ceiling in shock. He tried to convince himself it had been merely a dream without significance. When he rolled on his side to try to sleep again, however, he realized that a solid piece of wood was held tightly in his arms.

~*~end~*~