A/N: Thanks to PB7 for betaing this. Also, do drop by the forum I made for us: fanfiction dot net /forum/All-Hail-King-Julien-Forum/184494

It was a normal, peaceful night in the lemur village. Just like any other, and almost all of the lemurs were sleeping soundly, without a care in the world.

Almost all of them.

Maurice woke up drenched in cold sweat and gasping for air, his heart beating a mile a minute. His bloodshot eyes darted wildly from side to side in his dark bedroom, trying to find something to ground him while his brain attempted to catch up with reality. There was his nightstand with unlit candles. A small table with two chairs tucked neatly in. A closet with clean bed linen and extra pillows in it. A painting on the wall, impossible to see the colours properly in the darkness. The door to his kitchen. Everything was like it should be, confirming that it had been just a dream and he was awake now.

He sat up and wiped his forehead with the back of his paw, his tail wrapping defensively around his body without any conscious input on his part.

It had been just a dream. A nightmare. Or had it?

Maurice stopped breathing for a moment and stared at the wall with wide eyes.

Perhaps it had indeed been a dream just now, but what if the reality was the same? All he could see was his bedroom shrouded in darkness, and it wasn't like that would have changed, no matter which outcome was the true one. What if when the sun rose and he went to wake King Julien up there would be nobody to wake?

His best friend could and should be dead. Killed by the devastating fall combined with the explosion of the old landmine. Covered in soot, laying limply at the bottom of the gorge and not answering his desperate calls as Clover, Mort, and he were looking for a way down. Not so much as twitching, no matter how hoarse Maurice's throat got from screaming his name over and over again.

What if he hadn't miraculously risen after all? If he had truly sacrificed his life for a piece of fruit, never to smile at his advisor again, never to suggest anything stupid anymore, never to drag him to the water-slide against his will ever again?

Maurice forced himself to stop his almost hyperventilation and breathe slowly. In. Slowly out. In. Slowly out. In. Slowly out. There.

King Julien was alive. He had survived the fall. And the explosion. He had returned to the land of the living with his usual confusing explanation of what he thought had happened while he was out. Maurice remembered all that clearly.

But he remembered the nightmare clearly too. Very clearly, in fact. So clearly that it easily could have actually happened.

How could he know which was the real deal? What if the happy ending had also been a dream and the nightmare, all the more frightening because of being the truth, woke him up from it?

He swallowed the painful lump in his throat and shivered. His eyes found the open window and stared into the darkness of the night. Well, it would be dark for any other lemur in the village, but certainly not for the Aye-Aye who thrived in the dark. He bit his lip in indecision for a moment, and then made up his mind and got up from the bed.

He had places to be.

ooooo

The door to King Julien's bedroom opened slowly and quietly, and Maurice peeked in with some apprehension. At first he couldn't see any sign of life anywhere and his chest constricted in fear, but then he heard breathing and, upon carefully entering the room and taking a few steps closer to the bed, spotted Julien sleeping peacefully. Just like he should be.

Maurice breathed a huge sigh of relief, but still wasn't quite convinced that he wasn't seeing things. He tiptoed over to the bed and peered at the sleeping form, and then spotted the ringed tail hanging over the edge of the bed. Acting on a whim, he carefully took the precious tail between his paws and stroked it gently, savoring the softness and warmth of his definitely real and living friend. Unfortunately, that stirred Julien, who immediately muttered his protests in a sleepy but mildly irritated tone of voice, without so much as turning to look at him.

"Karl, is that you? Cos lemme tell you, I'm not in the mood to deal with crazy psychopaths right now, okay? I had an exhausting day and need my beauty sleep, so go away."

For a moment, Maurice was just happy to hear King Julien's clearly-not-dead voice. For another moment, he was baffled by the fact that Julien was so blasé about a possible night-time visit from an enemy. Then he realized that he needed to answer something, preferably right now.

"Um, actually, it's... just me", he said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly with one paw, absently holding the tail with the other. He hadn't meant to wake the King up and didn't have a decent reason to be here. At least not one he was willing to share.

He still hadn't let go of the tail either, but he couldn't bring himself to do it just yet. This might turn out to be another dream if he did that.

"Hmm? Oh, Mo-Mo", Julien said, sounding decidedly happier about the true identity of his visitor than he had been about the assumed one. However, he still wasn't planning on properly waking up, apparently. "Nice of you to drop by, but can't it wait until the morning? As I already told Karl, I'm sleepy."

Maurice found himself smiling at the response, and his paw went back to stroking the tail again. Only the real Julien would say something like that, his dreams could never capture his bizarreness quite so.

"Of course, your majesty. I'll leave in just a moment, and come back in the morning", he said, and prepared to do just that. However, as he was gently lowering the tail back to its previous spot, it circled loosely around his wrist.

"No, you can stay", Julien said, and turned his head just a little bit to look at Maurice through almost completely closed eyelids. "Keep doing that, it feels really nice. Like... all kinds of not dead and stuff..."

The King yawned and closed his eyes again, his tail uncurling itself limply but staying within Maurice's grasp. The Aye-Aye himself stared slack-jawed at his friend before pulling himself back together and sitting down on a comfortable position to resume the tail stroking.

It seemed he wasn't the only one affected by previous day's events, and his decision to come here tonight had been one of the best decisions he had made in his life.

After all, he should always be there when his King and friend needed him.