Disclaimer: I do not own this wonderful fandom!
Summary: Claudia is having nightmares about Joshua, and Pete puts her weary mind to rest. With Fraiser and cookies, of course. ;) Brother/sister fluff!
A/n: My first Warehouse 13 fic, plus I wrote it at like 1AM, so please be gentle. I highly recemond listening to "Asleep" by The Smiths. That's where the title came from, plus it's an awesome song. ) Enjoy!
The warm breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees and guided the long blades of grass to sway with it, like a hilly ocean of green. From the branches above, birds sang in a perfect harmony, bringing a joyful melody into existence. Claudia couldn't stop the smile that crossed her face when Joshua started to hum along even if she wanted to.
Joshua was sitting with his back against the trunk of the immense oak tree in the middle of the peaceful meadow, a book in his right hand and his left in Claudia's hair, gently toying with the soft strands. Claudia opened her eyes and looked up at him from his lap, where her head was currently resting. Her smile grew. Joshua, if he noticed, she didn't know; he kept a straight face, but asked,
"What?"
"It's nothing," she said immediately, ignoring the smirking look that her brother shot her.
"Claud," he said, his voice light as if he didn't have a care in the world, "what is it?"
"It's just…" Another breeze blew past them, ruffling Joshua's already unkempt hair, and she sighed. "It's so peaceful."
"Of course it is," said Joshua, "I'm here. Knowing you, you'd probably end up setting something on fire just by looking at it," he quipped, smiling as playfully tugging on his sister's bangs.
"Ow!" she squealed, and retaliated by reaching up and knocking the book out of Joshua's hands.
"How dare you!"
"How dare I? How dare you dare I?" laughed Claudia, swiftly standing up and narrowly missing the swipe that Joshua had made at her.
"How dare I dare you dare I?"
"Dude," said Claudia, putting her hands on her hips as she watched her brother stand up, "your comebacks suck. I think an old lady with fifty cats could come up with something wittier."
"I'll show you witty!" Joshua growled playfully, lunching at his sister. Claudia squealed and dodged his attack before turning and running.
"You'll have to catch me first!" she cried over her shoulder. She heard Joshua's laugh from behind and she smiled.
Wind rushed past her ears, blood pumped through her veins, grass from the meadow whipped at her ankles, the sun beat down on her skin and she had never felt more alive.
But suddenly, it all went wrong. The sky turned dark as storm clouds appeared, thunderous and threatening. The soft breeze turned into a violent wind that slapped her across the face. The birds stopped singing. A flash of lightning cracked across the now darkened sky, causing the girl to stop running and whirl around.
"Joshua?" she called. She got no answer, and her brother was nowhere in sight. "Josh?"
"Claudia!" shouted Joshua's voice. It sounded distant, and it had an echo to it, and Claudia couldn't pinpoint where exactly it was coming from. Fear shot through her as another crack of lightning shot out across the sky.
"Joshua! Where are you?" Claudia shouted back. Her eyes quickly scanned the darkened meadow, which no longer looked peaceful but sinister.
"Claudia, help me!"
"Josh!" cried Claudia, dashing across the meadow, searching for any kind of sign of her brother.
"Claudia, please!"
"Joshua!" shouted the girl, but her voice got lost in the wind. The oak tree was gone. The meadow was gone. All she could see was darkness as the voice of her brother surrounded her, consuming her until it seemed to fill her very being.
"Please, Claudia, help me!"
…
Claudia woke with a start, shooting upright in her bed. She was breathing heavily and in a cold sweat. She put her hand over her chest and felt her heart beating fast enough that one might believe that she had just run a marathon.
Groaning, she buried her face in her hands. The words 'help me' still seemed to vibrate inside her head, echoing over and over until she couldn't take it anymore.
This wasn't the first time this had happened. Ever since she had gotten Joshua out of that inter-dimensional time warp thing, she had assumed that things would go back to the way that they had always been for them—she would go on living with Josh and they would continue their lives and go to college and get drunk and do normal young people things. But of course, Josh wanted to go to some big research facility in Switzerland and even though Claudia didn't like the idea of him leaving her just yet, because really, they had just gotten back together after being apart for so long…Anyway, it was what he wanted, so she let him go.
Things seemed to go well, at first. She and Pete became fast friends and Artie was teaching her about the warehouse and she was teaching Myka cool fighting moves and Leena was trying (and failing) to make her more feminine—a task that both she and Pete found hilarious.
But then the nightmares started; all of them about Joshua, all of them in the same scenario of her not being able to save him no matter what she did. It had been weeks since she had gotten a full night's sleep. She had been using coffee and energy drinks to stay awake during the day in order not to rise suspicion among her friends, but she got the feeling that it wasn't really helping.
Knowing better than trying to go back to sleep, she raised her head and looked at the digital clock beside her bed. She had made it herself, rewiring it out of an old fashioned alarm clock, only making the numbers on the clock's face glow a soft red in the darkness.
Two forty-five.
Claudia groaned again, threw back the covers, and got out of bed. What would one find on TV at two forty-five in the morning? Well, she was about to find out.
…
Pete yawned widely as he rubbed his eyes and tried to get them adjusted. He had woken up about thirty seconds ago with the deep craving for a batch of Leena's cookies. Acting on said craving, he groggily got up out of his bed and walked out of his room. He was at the top of the stairs when he heard the sound of voices.
Now more alert, Pete braced himself and quietly descended the stairs, all the while trying to keep as close to the wall as he could, so as not to be seen. When he got to the bottom, he was shocked at what he saw.
Claudia was sitting by herself on the couch, the television on and blinking, the colors illuminating the redhead in the pale light. The girl's knees were pulled up to her chest, her eyes wide open and unblinking, and she was nibbling on a cookie.
Pete blinked, and then frowned. The team had just gotten back from a rather tiring mission involving the sarcophagus of a crazed Egyptian Pharaoh that when touched, it brought forth the wrath of one of the 10 plagues on its victim. (Pete had accidently bumped into it and got attacked by locusts. Not only were they hard to kill, they were freaking creepy. He made a vow to veto all Egyptian-related artifacts from now on.) When they got back, he, Myka, and Claudia literally looked at each other, laughed a little, then promptly went up to their rooms and fell asleep. And that had been at seven-o-clock.
So now, it was the middle of the night. Claudia had been through as much as he or Myka had. And after passing Myka's door, he could hear the soft sound of her breathing from the other side, so he knew that she was still asleep. So why was Claudia still awake?
"Hey, Claud," greeted Pete, walking over to the couch and sitting down next to the redhead. She jerked slightly in surprise.
"Jeeze, Pete, don't do that!" she breathed, shifting so that he could have more room.
"Did I scare you?" asked Pete, raising an eyebrow.
"Of course not," said Claudia quickly, her natural wit kicking into action. "I'm just practicing my acting skills."
"Sure, you're a regular Julie Andrews."
"Are you seriously comparing me to an old British woman who twirled around a nunnery singing about hills?"
"That depends," said Pete, "are you seriously watching this episode of Fraiser?" He gestured to the TV, and Claudia looked at it as if she was just now realizing that it was on.
"Is that what this show is?" she asked, frowning at the television. "I thought it was Seinfeld."
"What?" cried Pete in mock-horror. "Thinking Fraiser is Seinfeld is like thinking Clark Kent is Batman!"
Claudia looked at him blankly for a minute. "Pete," she started slowly, "Clark Kent is Superman, not Batman."
"I know."
"But that doesn't make sense."
Pete sighed, shaking his head slightly. "Nevermind," he said, reaching forward and grabbing a cookie off of the tray that Claudia must have set down on the coffee table. For a moment, they just sat in silence as they watched the TV. Pete kept looking at Claudia out of the corner of his eye. She seemed paler than normal, the colors from the television casting shadows onto her skin. But Pete knew that the TV wasn't causing the dark shadows under her eyes. Those were real.
This wasn't the first time Pete had noticed those shadows. He knew that there was something wrong with Claudia's sleep pattern due to the fifteen gallons of caffeine that she drank almost every day, but he didn't know what. He wanted to help her. Ever since she had joined their team he had felt a special bond with her, and he felt like he needed to protect her, help her, make sure everything was okay with her. After all, he was practically her big brother.
"Can you quit staring at me?" asked Claudia, her voice startling Pete, her eyes not leaving the television. "It's kind of creepy."
"Sorry," said Pete sheepishly. "I was just wondering why you were awake."
Claudia immediately stiffened, her whole body going rigid. Her grip on her legs tightened and her jaw clenched, and Pete knew he had hit a nerve.
"Couldn't sleep," she answered quickly.
"Why?" prodded Pete. "Bad dream?"
"No," snapped Claudia all too quickly.
Bingo.
Determined not to push her too far, Pete turned his eyes back onto the television, watching as Niles got his tie stuck in the zipper of Daphne's dress. He smiled, remembering when he had first watched this show with his parents.
"When I was younger," said Pete quietly, "I used to get all these nightmares about my dad. He was a fireman, you know, and it scared me to go to bed when he was out of the house during the night. I kept thinking, what if he doesn't come back? What if I never get to see him again? So I would have dreams about him not coming back.
"Whenever my mom heard me scream, she always came in to my room and gave me one of my dad's shirts. It smelt like him, and she would tell me that as long as I had a piece of him to hold on to, he would always come back to me. To this day, I still have a couple of his old shirts or a jacket or something with me, so that if I ever miss him, I just hold on to it and smell it and it's like he's back with me again."
Pete stopped talking and let what he just said sink in, the sound of automated laughter filling the silence all the while.
Finally, Claudia softly asked, "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I want you to know that it's okay to miss Joshua. I know you do. And thanks to you, he's back in the real world and he's only a phone call away," Pete reminded her.
Claudia scoffed, "Yeah, but there are the time differences and the important projects and meetings and professors and so many other important things that he has to deal with. I don't need to be added to the list of his worries." She took a deep, shaky breath, and clutched her legs tighter against her as she added, "besides, I almost didn't save him."
"But you did," pointed Pete out gently. He watched Claudia stiffen again, her eyes becoming glassy and her jaw clenching again.
"But I almost didn't," she said, her voice sounding raw. "There are so many ways that everything could have gone wrong! I could have put in the wrong calculation or I could have never believed he was real and leave him stuck there! I didn't at first! I thought I was crazy! I would have just left him…" She trailed off.
"You saved his life, Claudia. You're his sister. He loves you," said Pete softly. "You should let him worry about you. It's what brothers do." He added the last part with a small smile, but she shook her head before hiding her face in her knees and letting loose a quiet sob.
Pete moved over to her and wrapped his arm around her shaking shoulders. She buried her face in his chest, and her sobs increased, shaking her whole frame. Pete rubbed her back while shushing her gently.
"I…I keep dreaming that I lose him," said Claudia between sobs. "I couldn't save him…and it was my fault…I can't lose him…not again, Pete…"
"It's okay," Pete murmured into her hair. "You saved him. You won't lose Joshua ever again, I promise."
They stayed like that for a while until Claudia calmed down. Eventually she did, but she felt so drained from everything that had happened that she didn't move from her position of practically sitting in Pete's lap.
"Pete," she breathed, her eyelids becoming heavy as she struggled to form words. "I'm so tired."
"When is the last time you actually slept?" asked Pete.
"Umm….two weeks ago?" she answered, truly not knowing.
"Two weeks?" Pete looked down at the little redhead in his arms. "You're crazy! How have you not had a heart attack from all that caffeine you've been chugging?"
Claudia smiled weakly against him. "It's a talent."
Pete chuckled and absentmindedly rubbed his hand across Claudia's back again. Her breathing evened out, and Pete knew that she had fallen into a deep sleep for the first time in apparently two weeks.
The agent gently shifted her so that she was curled up in his lap, her face buried in his chest. For a while, he just sat there on the couch, watching Fraiser, rubbing Claudia's back, listening to the steady sound of her breath. Eventually, he started to yawn and he felt his own eyelids become heavy.
Gently reaching over Claudia as not to stir her, he grabbed the TV remote and turned it off. The screen went black, and he shifted Claudia again, standing with her in his arms. Pete noticed that she was a bit too light. He would have to challenge her to a taco eating contest to fix that.
Pete navigated his way through Leena's darkened house until he reached Claudia's room. Thankfully, the door was already open. He didn't think the redhead would like it if he kicked it open and ended up breaking the door.
The agent walked over to the bed and gently eased Claudia onto it. He pulled the blankets up and over her, tucking her in. Pete couldn't help but smile; Claudia looked so peaceful, and it looked like those dark rings under her eyes were finally going away. He brushed her hair back from her face and placed a kiss on her forehead.
"You're safe now," he whispered. "I'm not gonna let you get hurt, and you won't ever lose Joshua again. I promise."
Claudia sighed softly and her lips twitched upwards in a small smile. Pete smiled as well before turning and tip-toeing out of her room. He breathed, "Goodnight", and shut the door, leaving Claudia to her much needed slumber.