Dreaming
Summary: Everyone in the Sanctuary fears dreams. Everyone in the Sanctuary sleeps alone; but to protect themselves or each other?
Set: Early season two. Certainly a long time before Animus and after End of Nights.
Spoilers: `The Five`, reference to a character who is introduced in `Fragments` and vaguely `New Moon` (twilight)
Rating: T for very bloody violence and mild language.
Genre: horror/humour believe it or not.
Disclaimer: This world and everything in it (Basaaklas aside) belongs to Martin Wood, Damian Kindler and Amanda Tapping. The idea for this fic came from a story in the anthology `Gentle footprints`.
This fic does need a substantial explanation. I wrote it more or less over-night, having had the ideas bouncing around in my head for weeks. I had a basic plan in mind, but it more or less wrote itself. As you'll probably realise, I wrote this before I saw Animus, I still resolutely see Henry's alternate form as a canine quadruped, to all intents and purposes a wolf (more like the twilight wolves than what we saw in animus, but smaller). I don't know how the biped were-`wolves` you see in most TV and film could ever be described as wolves, so here, Henry turns into a quadruped wolf.
By the way, in English English, a duvet is a duvet. In American English, it's a comforter. I've used the Americanism here because I know most readers are American.
Forest. Tree-smell. Earth-feel. Breathe in, muzzle high. Smell. Listen.
No danger smell. Good smells. Hunger. Prey smells. She-prey. Close smell. Walk. Careful walk. No-noise walk. Head low, tail low, hunting walk. Alone. Forest smells. Bird sounds. Wind sounds. Dark night. Tree shadows. Earth-feel.
Stop. Wait. Prey-sound now, and prey-smell. She-prey smell, alone, no fear. Prey-see soon. Careful. Careful.
Leaves over face. No noise. No noise. Close now. Yes. Prey-see, prey-sound, prey-smell. She-prey, alone, no fear. She-prey, Two-legs, can't see in tree-shadows. Two legs slow, four-legs fast. Easy. Stop hunger. Lips back. Long teeth. Strong teeth. Ready.
Jump. Run. Two legs running, screaming. Hunger. Jump. Paws on back. Falling. Baying, growling, screaming. Fear-screaming. Thrashing, hitting. Flesh. Bite. Blood. Good, hot blood in mouth. Swallow. More. Hunger. More. Pain-screaming. Thrashing. Bite. Bite. Hunger. Throat-bite. Blood. Dying-screaming. Blood in mouth, blood on face, ears, eyes, ears, neck, legs, chest. Swallow. Hunger.
No screaming. Two-legs still. Hunger. Nose down. Smell. Blood, prey, fear. Nose up. Smell. Blood, forest, no danger. Nose down. Mouth open. Bite, tear two-leg half-fur away. Hunger. Teeth into Two-legs. Pull flesh from still bones. Swallow. Hunger. Bite. Pull. Swallow. Bite. Pull. Swallow. Bite. Pull. Swallow. Bite. Pull. Swallow.
Thrashing.
Bite. Pull. Swallow.
Kicking.
Taste blood.
Taste blood.
Good, hunger.
Bad. Very bad.
Teeth into Two-legs.
Thrashing, Trapped.
Tear.
Can't move right.
Tear.
Who...
Bite.
What...
Swallow.
Am I?
I am wolf.
No. No. I'm not. I'm not.
Bite.
Hands to face. Feel. I'm human. I'm human.
Tear.
Can't. Arms won't move. Head down.
Swallow.
Fur on fur. Long nose. No. Oh Holy...
I am wolf.
It didn't make sense. Nothing did. He couldn't move. It felt like a net. He forced himself to roll over, onto his back, but he couldn't. He fell, feeling the other side of his head, limbs, body impact something. Blood still in his mouth. He could barely move at all now.
"You're panicking." A calm, She-two-legs voice inside his head. "Lie still and get your bearings. Struggling is making it worse." Doc's voice, talking sense, as usual. Henry went rigid, chest heaving, trying to see, trying to hear, trying to smell.
Home. That was what his bonds smelt of. They didn't feel like a net either, not to his face. Oh, holy... it was his comforter. He'd had the crap scared out of him by his own comforter. That was just pathetic.
Henry lifted his arm, feeling for the edge of it. But his arm wouldn't bend in the right place. He looked down at it. Holy crap. That wasn't an arm. That was a leg. A leg with a paw on it. A wolf's leg. . He'd changed. He'd changed in his sleep. That had never happened before. Henry forced himself not to panic. He slowed his breathing, unclenching neck, head, body, legs... tail.
After a moment, it started. The horrible, grinding sensation in his hips and shoulders, crawling down his arms to the elbow, then that feeling you get when you hit your funny bone in every vertebra of his back. Henry bared his teeth, visualising the process as it happened, he found it helped. Knees now. The tendons twisted violently, making him yelp as they slid 180ยบ from their starting point. Worst over. Shooting pains in both his feet as he brought them away from what would soon be his hands, claws sliding back. Henry exhaled sharply, ready. His ribcage bent, losing depth, getting wider. He breathed again as the shooting pains took his arms, his hands. Nearly there. A shiver passed through him, taking his fur with it as it faded. Two knifing pains in the side of his skull. Sound distorted, then returned. A wrenching sensation in his neck. Nearly there. His face burned and retracted, the darkness deepening around him, his gums throbbed, his teeth shrinking, bluntening. Then it was over.
Henry lay still, panting. He hated the wolf-human change. If he morphed human-wolf, he was usually so high on adrenaline that it barely hurt. When they'd watched `New Moon`, he'd spent a lot of the werewolf scenes going,
"No way you could change that fast." Doc's response (when she'd heard them talking about it) had been,
"They're script writers. They're exempt from the laws of biology, and physics." It'd been kind of surreal to watch a gothic horror/fantasy movie with a Sasquatch and a psychiatrist. Will had kept profiling the characters, and he'd said,
"Bella needs to see someone." seven times, by Henry's count.
Smirking, he reached for the edge of his comforter, managing to find it this time, and crawled free of the cocoon he'd created. He sat up and reached for the lights. He hated hunting dreams. They were so... creepy. They seemed to exist to show him what he could turn in to. A killer. They were only dreams. That was what Rachel and everyone else had always told him. Only dreams. Doc had even suggested that they were showing him what he saw as normal wolf behaviour, not what actually was... whatever she'd said it was. She had a point (as usual) He had never been fighting other wolves, playing with other wolves, running away from anything, watching cubs...
Crap. That was blood. In his mouth, he could taste it. Henry spat into his palm. There. A red ribbon cupped in his hand. No way. No way. How was that possible? He hadn't left his room. He couldn't have. No way. But there was blood in his hand. He could see it, still taste it. He pinched himself hard. Still there. No way. How was that even possible? He couldn't have left his room. Could he?
CCTV. He could check that. There was a camera at either end of his corridor. If he'd left his room, he could have... He wasn't a killer. He was going to go down to his lab, check the CCTV and prove he hadn't left his room. But why was there blood in his mouth?
Henry scrambled to his feet, feeling his T-shirt fall down from where it had been, bunched up in his armpits, and pulled his pants up from round his ankles. He grabbed a dressing gown from behind the door.
A lot of new arrivals were creeped out by the Sanctuary at night. Twenty years ago, yeah, he had been. Now, the sight of the long, dark corridors, carpeted, panelled in wood, was calming, in spite of the taste of blood. He barely needed to see at all.
He met nothing, bar a prowling Basaakla, on the way to his lab. He was glad of that. His hands were shaking as he entered his codes. He couldn't have... He wasn't...
Cameras 86 and 87. From... say 23:00, speed x10. A Basaakla chasing a mouse, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, Bradley sleep-walking, well, sleep-somethinging, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, him. No, hang on, that had been at 2:22. It was only 2:48. That had been him coming down just now. Then how the hell had he got blood in his mouth?
"OK." He spoke aloud. "I wake up, the r- Ow!" He raised a hand to his mouth. A stab of pain had pierced his tongue as that bit of it had touched his teeth. He'd bitten his tongue. How could he have been so stupid? He'd bitten his tongue. "You idiot." He muttered, wincing again.
He glanced at the clock. He had a little over three hours before the rest of this place woke up. He could snatch a bit more sleep before this.