Although things are still progressively molasses slow when it comes to Uninvited and Crazy, I am still working on the finer points, and have been getting inspired little by little. In the mean time, please enjoy other things I and my favorite fic authors have written! This one came about as a prompt meant to get me into the writing mood from tumblr user Natakamerry and kind of took on a life of its own as a result. This is a multi-chapter fic, though all the parts have been accounted for and planned out, there will be no more than six. A warning/caution is being put into place, however, because there is some major multishipping going on in here. DualRival, Ferriswheel, Checkmate, Freedom, Shiro and other assorted ones regarding the combination of Cheren, Touko, Bel and N are included here- be it hints, or outright addressed.

What can I say? Lyra Kamiya (Lyraeon via Tumblr) and nidoranduran (also Tumblr) are a bad influence and totally make it fun to experiment with. I'm on tumblr as well as Kireon, so don't be afraid to head over and give me copious amounts of crap for not uploading, send me questions, hate mail, or just come hang out. I don't bite and it's usually pretty silly. I also take prompts for fics/one-shots on occasion as well!

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Her name was half past his lips before Cheren realized he was still half-asleep.

Sweat saturated the clean t-shirt he wore, the sticky fabric clinging to him in a strangle hold as he hooked a finger into pull it away from his throat. Skinny shoulders rose and fell rapidly as the black haired teen struggled to get his breathing back under control. His inhaler, almost forgotten, lay within reach on his nightstand, glowing softly in the slice of moonlight shining through his window. His heart beat an unstable, rapid rhythm against his chest and ribs. It still haunted him; her voice still echoing in his head as he took one shallow, shuddering breath after another in an effort to calm himself. It was only a dream, he told himself, and dreams were the result of the brain's subconscious handling of situations in one's every day life, of issues left unresolved.

They weren't real; these things in his dream and the events that happened in them.

They weren't real, and they couldn't hurt him- her, they most certainly couldn't hurt her. There was nothing logical or rational about dreams, and as a result, he had nothing to get worked up about. Logic was key, he needed to remember how reality worked, to hold on to the knowledge it was just some stupid dream.

A familiar buzzing, tingling spread from his shaking fingers into his wrist as he swore from between tightly clenched teeth. He knocked the inhaler off the table in his haste, uttering something that would have shocked Bel and Touko both had they been around as he hunched forward, fingers on both hands gripping the damp white sheets and navy blue bedspread. Breathe, damn it, Breathe! His thoughts raced, the silent command instantly washed away in the unwelcome surge of unbridled fear. He tried thinking of their smiles, of her grin- triumphant and filled with life- and tried thinking of their laughter, tried to pull memories from the past to the front of his thoughts.

All he could see was her back as she continued to walk away from him, from them. And then her form was consumed by shadows that laughed in that half-sane way that still sent shivers down his spine; leaving nothing but the blood-stained, tattered fragments of her cap, impaled by ice that wouldn't melt.

His eyes, widened and unblinking, slowly burned with hot, bitter tears that slowly slipped down his cold cheeks. His throat felt closed up, the lump growing, thickening as it rose from somewhere in his chest towards his mouth in a scream he knew wouldn't have a sound. His legs were useless now, the pins-and-needles, that vibrating buzz had consumed him from toes clear up to his hips. He couldn't even go get someone even if he wanted to. Paralyzed, he felt the world spinning around him, found himself on his side in seconds that felt like hours- and it was all he could do to just command his increasingly unresponsive fingers to hold on to the bed covers like they were his one tenuous grasp on reality.

Cheren squeezed his eyes shut, tears continuing their heated tracks down his numb face as one impossibly heavy arm wrapped around himself, fingers of one hand digging into his bony shoulder in an attempt to hold himself together while he felt himself falling apart. In an instant, he had gone from a man to a little boy- and he didn't know how to make the transition back.

The dream, the laughter, that one image that stuck with him, all of it kept circling in his head. Unending, always looping back like some demented time loop, some kind of broken record-

Fingers moved through his hair, gently massaged his scalp and seemed to reach down deep into his mind where the thoughts, the fear persisted. Calloused and rough, but still unimaginably strong and gentle were the hands that pulled him up and into an equally warm, if slightly too skinny body. There were familiar arms wrapped around his chest and shoulders, and a scent that felt like home surrounded him in an instant. He choked, gasping for breath as hard plastic found its way between his lips and something bitter and acrid coated the back of his tongue and shot down his throat. He froze, holding it in until she removed the plastic piece from his mouth and loosed it in a hitched breath.

He knew her voice, knew she was speaking to him, but his brain wouldn't allow him to focus enough to make out the words- and the only thing he could do was press himself closer to her, frantic to hold on to her, to confirm for himself that she was real, that he wasn't hallucinating or having another dream. Her words stopped, eventually, and all that was left was a steady, more than slightly off-key humming that she'd done ever since she'd found him like this the first time, all those years ago. He could breathe better, just a little, but the chaotic wreck inside his brain wasn't done, wasn't through with him yet. And the sound of her voice just broke him more.

The tears fell anew as Cheren rolled to his stomach, burying his face into her legs in shame as sobs shook him, muffled by her chest and shoulder as she held him firmly, her hands roaming in a soothing pattern up and down his back and her lips pressing gentle kisses atop his head, against a sweat-dampened forehead.

It seemed like hours later when he calmed down enough that he could actually feel his body again, instead of just the constant tuning-fork-dinged-against-the-side-of-a-table humming and vibration that stole most of his ability to think. Her off-key, wordless song had stopped too, though the one hand he hadn't claimed was still moving in soft circles around his back. "How'd you know?" He asked, too exhausted to be cranky with her.

"Bel, you know how she is." Came the instant response, calm and in that same soothing tone she always used on him post-attack even as one hand slipped off his back, cold fingers slipping through to entwine with his own damp, shaking ones. "She's got a knack for that kind of thing, she always knew whenever I was having a bad night too."

A bad night, funny how those three words made something so exhausting sound so... simple, and not as stupid as he felt it was. Touko didn't get them anywhere close to as often as he did, and she was particularly stubborn about trying to hide hers in ways he wasn't. Cheren's chest hurt just thinking about the haunted look on her face, of the telltale signs of tear tracks down her cheeks and the shadows beneath her eyes from a lack of sleep- a state he knew all too well.

"She's such a wife," he grumbled half-heartedly, secretly pleased that Bel was still attuned to him enough that she knew things weren't right. She denied being psychic, and refused to get tested by Sabrina or Morty whenever they were in Unova, and she always managed to be on the other side of the region whenever Caitlin came by the gym to inspect him. Either she was lying, which she was terrible at doing if they were being honest, or she was afraid it would change things, or change her for the worse, and thus didn't want to deal with it; which was more likely. "don't know what to do with her."

He could feel the eye roll from there, but the brunette didn't comment.

"You gonna tell me about it?" Touko asked after another period of semi-awkward silence. She never could leave a subject alone for very long, not when she couldn't find the reason "why" behind something. Probably why Reshiram chose me in the long run, I have to know the truth, the reality of a situation even if it's ugly. It was a disturbing thought, knowing that she'd rather cast aside any pretenses of an easy, and light filled life if it meant living a lie.

Cheren's hand involuntarily squeezed her own, tight enough she looked down at him sharply, noting the pallor to his skin. He wouldn't look at her, and that small thing alone told her a number of things right off the bat. It was personal- and it had to do with her. "Did I die having sex with you or something?" She asked, finally, unable to resist attempting to lighten up the mood and get his mind focused on something else for a moment.

Her best friend's face twisted into a disbelieving, thunderous scowl at the same time his pale cheeks flooded red. "Die having- you've gone and lost your mind." He snapped at her, clearly embarrassed by the idea- and that she'd guessed, correctly, that he'd had a dream or two regarding the two of them. Not that he was admitting anything, but the evidence was on his face and his adamant refusal to look at her all the more.

"...you totally dreamed about us having sex!" She used her free hand to shove his shoulder, feeling a slow burn on her own cheeks. For reasons she already knew, she was grinning like an idiot. "You jerk, why didn't you tell me? Was I any good?"

"Were you any-" Cheren spluttered, glaring at her through the messy tangle of his bangs. "Did you come here just to ask stupid questions?" He was not going to divulge any of his personal information regarding his dreams of her, thank you very much. She could put him in a scissor hold with those long, beautifully toned legs all she wanted, he wouldn't talk.

Blue eyes glittered, as did the wicked grin she gave him as he shoved himself out of her chest and shoulder, just sitting beside her- or rather, in front of her, sort of. "No, but you don't seem willing to talk about the thing that set you off, so I figured I'd try guessing until I got it right."

In layman's terms, she was messing with him until he felt stable enough to tell her. Great. Fantastic, his best friend thought teasing him over hormonal dreams was a better idea than just getting straight to the point. Cheren wondered again what he'd done to deserve such friends. Probably had something to do with annoying the hell out of them, and being a bit of a snitch, during their grade school years. Puberty hit and then the tables had turned, now she won regardless of what he tried- in and out of dreams.

The world just wasn't fair.

"You've met her by now, I'm sure," Cheren began after a while of scowling and sighing. "Rosa, I mean. Or Mei, whatever the hell she calls herself outside of PokeWood these days. Anyway, she's the one who found Kyurem while Nate- Kyouhei, whatever he decides to call himself these days, your family and their whole dual naming is strange, just so you know- took care of loose ends over in Humilau with Marlon." He was babbling, and the teen knew it well. His grip on her hand tightened, and he dared to reach out and grab the other. He had to hold on to her, to remind himself that she was here, with him, and not there.

He needed to hold her- just for a little while.

"She stumbled into Kyurem's lair, why or how, I don't know, she wouldn't tell me that much. When she got there," He closed his eyes against the sounds, tinny and distant though they'd been, at the images that had come in from Rosa's Versus Recorder- and the way the girl's teal eyes had shimmered over, her voice had grown quiet and had trembled just a little while the video played.

Touko's fingers closed over his, a squeeze from her hands drawing him out of the memory. She'd said nothing, though the expression on her face was enough for the Gym Leader to guess at her thoughts. Her eyes searched his face, taking in everything that he hadn't said, but showed on his expression nevertheless.

Cheren swallowed hard and forced himself to continue. "When she got there, Ghetsis was there, with Kyurem, waiting for her." He felt the involuntary tightening of her grip at the mention of the Team Plasma leader's name, and somehow knowing that she reacted only made things easier for him to go on with the tale. "It... might be easier just to show you, but, she was attacked. He- well, you know how insane he is, you were there before." Back when Team Plasma had threatened Unova the first time, using N as a puppet, a figure head while secretly doing things behind the older boy's back that had shocked, had devastated him upon revelation. It had been Touko then, back at that time, who'd stood where Rosa had, and who'd stared down an unstable madman who had nothing left to lose.

"What happened?" Her voice was strained, as tense as the iron-clad grip on his hands was. She would be trembling, if he looked, though he couldn't honestly tell the difference between his shaking and her own at this point.

His tongue darted out, wetted dry, chapped lips as he cleared his throat and forged ahead. He was strong now, much stronger than he'd been even just a month ago. He could do this. He could tell his best friend what haunted him at night some times. "He tried to kill her." Cheren's voice cracked and his eyes closed as the sheer strength of emotion swept over him once again.