In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,

Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,)

Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,

I dream, I dream, I dream.

-Walt Whitman

Thomas hunches down in the dark corner of his room and he sees red when he closes his eyes, hears the shrieks of artillery shells and sons who will never see their motherland again. It all smells of earth and iron to him, and it nearly makes him retch. He shudders, breathes in desperate gasps when the shadows on the wall twist and twist again- shades of screaming comrades gather against the walls and watch him, and they can wait a lifetime for him for they are the hollow men, blasted open and borrowing the night.

The world roars around him, that sound burrowing deeper and deeper and deeper into his skull and he can't get it quiet no matter how hard he claws at his skull.

Thomas knows it's all illusion, some trick the trenches have tucked into the folds of his mind to follow him back to Downton, but by Christ it's the raped and ravaged soil of France he kneels on now, and the bullets have followed him over the Channel. Two places at once, or no place at all, and Thomas wonders if the shell-shock will kill him.

There's the scrape of metal on metal behind him, piercing through the storm like a needle and he braces his back against the wall, heart throwing itself against his ribs again and again. The lock clicks, and the ghosts scatter when his door swings in.

Sarah O'Brien pads into his room, golden lamplight guarding her steps as she slowly draws near him. It's strange to see her in just her nightgown and robe, he thinks, with her hair unpinned and swinging about her hips. Her eyes are huge in her pale face, and she looks at him like he's a stranger.

"Thomas?"

The sounds have stopped, and Sarah's lamp keeps the dead men in their trenches. Thomas realizes, under the fear and the sickness, that she can't see him like this; yet when he tries to tell her to fuck off back to her own room he yelps his mother's name, and the tears finally come.

"Shush, Thomas, it's not real anymore. You'll not go back, I swear to you that it's over…"

Sarah's sitting on the floor beside him, and she doesn't mind that he clings and shakes and twists the material of her nightgown between his hands. They somehow end up with him halfway sprawled over her lap, and her head is bowed over him.

"It's done, Mikey, it's done an' you're 'ome now, an' I won't let them send you back again, I swear to God I won't let them."

She smooths his hair, but not in the way his mother would have done; it's a touch learned from a different woman, given to a different son who would wake screaming in the trenches. Thomas clutches Sarah's hand until the blood's driven from her fingers, and they hold fast until, years and empires later, the shaking's stopped and his face begins to dry.

O'Brien lifts her hands from him and Thomas sits up, scrubbing at his face and breathing deeply. The scar is rough against his cheek and eye, and it seems like the hand isn't his. They don't look at one another as O'Brien straightens her nightclothes and flicks her plait back over her shoulder.

"Outside?"

Thomas nods, and she helps him to his feet. She takes up her lamp again as he hunts up a pack of fags, and together they leave the room, close the door, and head for the yard.

"How'd you pinch the keys?"

"Didn't- if you wanted privacy, you shouldn't 'ave taught me how to pick locks."

They step out into the chill night air and the stars burn in the blackness overhead. They lean against the stone wall, shivering and speaking not a word for the longest time.

Thomas lights Sarah's cigarette for her and makes sure he has her hugged tight into his side when he asks what Michael O'Brien was like as a boy.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or setting within, nor do I own the poetical might of Master Whitman.

Constructive criticism desperately needed in terms of characterization, and I must know if my prose is altogether too flowery for a topic such as this. I need to do the situation justice, and any help would be greatly appreciated.