Nyx

In Your Dreams…

The hallucinations had stopped as soon as the detox was complete but the pain had begun. The new pain management regime wasn't to his liking but he had to put up with it. The pain was ok, manageable, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he slept like the dead. And he slept all the time – or so it felt like to him. He was out like a light the moment his head hit the pillow and he didn't wake up until they came to wake him. Now, for a chronic insomniac that ought to have been good news, but it wasn't because he still felt tired after hours of sleep. They told him that it was after effect; the detox and the hallucinations had knocked the stuffing out of him and he was as much emotionally exhausted as he was physically tired. He didn't like it. He hated "emotional exhaustion". Emotions had never done him any good and then they did a number like this on him. Mostly he hated not being lucid, not having a clear head, needing time to put words and thoughts together. A Kingdom for a lucid thought! Only his "kingdom" had been taken away from him. Ok, so officially he had given it up himself since he had come here voluntarily, but that wasn't the real truth. In reality he had had no choice. He wasn't safe so he had to come somewhere where he couldn't do harm. "Do no harm", he nearly laughed in his sleep. Good old Hippocrates. Not that those words actually were in the Hippocratic oath – either the old one or the new version, but so what. Hippocrates had still written those words and it wasn't a bad idea in general. Things just didn't always work that way. Sure they said that you couldn't make an omelette without breaking the eggs, but sometimes the eggs broke even when you weren't making an omelette. House opened his eyes and looked around. Damn, still in the funny farm. He couldn't escape even in his dreams.

"Would you want to?" A voice came from somewhere. House frowned and looked around. There was someone in the shadows.

"I can't see you," House complained.

A woman emerged from the darkness, though somehow she seemed to rather carry the darkness with her. It wasn't her dark skin and dark hair and dark clothes; it was something else about her that was the darkness. She was amazingly beautiful, almost awful in her beauty. Her skin was almost ebony, her long, straight hair was black as the darkest of nights, her eyes were the colour of coal and her robes were like woven onyx. She looked young in an odd, ageless way and though her skin was dark, she didn't really look like she was of any ethnicity.

"And who the hell are you?!" House wanted to know, though he felt a twinge of almost primal fear. Great, night terrors were just what he needed to perfect his existence.

"I'm Nyx", the woman responded in a deep, melodious voice. It washed over House like a warm, tropical wind when you stand on the beach on a moonless night.

"Figures," House sighed. Yeah, Night terrors it was going to be. "Nyx, the Night - the mother of blame, death and retribution. And not necessarily in that order. To what do I owe this honour – or do I even need to ask?"

"Actually, you do need to ask," Nyx responded with a small smile. "I'm not here to terrorise you. I'm here to help."

"Help?" House didn't feel very reassured. "Dreams are the products of the subconscious mind. Last time my subconscious mind produced Amber. She, too, claimed to be on my side, but she didn't actually help."

"True," Nyx agreed. "But she was a hallucination. I'm a dream. Or at least I am in your dream."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that," House frowned. "You make it sound like you might exist outside of my mind. Or even be somehow independent of me."

"I am Night," Nyx pointed out. "Is it unreasonable to claim that there is Night elsewhere as well and not just in your mind?"

"Maybe not," House conceded. "But I'm still not trusting you."

"Probably a good idea," Nyx nodded. "However I am here to help you find your way out of the chaos in your mind."

"Well, I suppose that explains why I picked you," House muttered. "Who better to help with Chaos than the Daughter of Chaos."

"Who indeed," Nyx smiled again. "But you haven't answered my question yet. Would you like to escape this place?"

"For real or just in my dreams?" House nearly sneered.

"I'm only here in your dreams so yes, just in your dreams," Nyx responded. "Besides, I already know that you would like to escape here for real."

"But why would I want to do that when I came here of my own free will?" House argued.

"Free will or not, you don't really want to be here, you just feel you have no choice," Nyx pointed out. "Besides, your main aim was to get rid of the hallucinations and to detox. You've done both and now you start to feel like you could handle the rest of it all on your own. As long as they get your pain under control, that is. You only came here instead of a normal rehab facility because here they have better ways of making sure you really do detox and don't cheat."

"Maybe," House shrugged. "But to answer your question, yeah, I'd like to escape here even if only in my dreams."

"Ok, follow me," Nyx turned to lead the way through the wall. House hesitated for a second, but then he figured that if he was going to have night mares he would have them regardless of his dream location so he followed.