Author Notes: Sorry. I know we shouldn't put this stuff out in the universe. It just... wouldn't go away. Don't hate me, please.
The dreams keep coming.
Kendall can't shake them, no matter how hard she tries. And she has tried. She drinks hot milk before bed. She plays with her son until they're both exhausted. She reads books and Fusion reports until her eyes are gritty. She works harder than she has ever worked in her life. She doesn't work at all. She has tried anything and everything that her friends have suggested to make the dreams stop.
"You can't live in the past," they say, full of sympathy.
"You have to move forward, sweetheart. Think of your son!" Erica says, tossing her hair.
Bianca just squeezes her hand and looks a particularly Bianca-like combination of sad and resolute.
Even Greenlee calls from wherever she is and tells her to snap out of it and focus on her child.
Kendall tries to tell them that she is thinking of Spike; that Spike is the only reason she gets out of bed at all and doesn't just surrender to the dreams. But the words don't come. She, the queen of babble, can't find the words to tell anyone how torn she is: how she both fears and desperately desires the dreams, and how Spike is the only thing anchoring her to reality at all. She isn't sure that's fair, but so far her wonderful boy doesn't seem to know how remote his mother is sometimes.
Every night, she lies there, caught between waking, sleeping, and fighting the fear that the dreams will come and an even stronger terror that they won't.
But they always, always, come. And so does he.
"Promise me you'll come back," she demands. "Promise me."
And every time, he kisses her hand, and her lips, and then leaves her, refusing to make her a promise he knows he can't keep. No matter what comes next – or before, in the dreams – that part is always the same. The brush of his lips, the feel of his arms, the smell of his cologne, and then a deafening silence.
She wishes sometimes that he had promised. Then, maybe she could hate him. Be angry that he broke his word to her. But Zach never lies to her, not even in dreams, damn him.
Once he realized how much words meant to her – and even before, really – he never lied to her. He would either not say anything, or answer her carefully with a partial truth. When she first met him, that particular trait drove her crazy. Now she thinks it's part of one of the things she loved the most: Zach's unwavering, uncompromising personal integrity.
The refusal to make a promise he can't keep is the watershed event that never changes; but everything before and after that moment varies, depending on the night. Sometimes she dreams of their life up to that moment exactly as it really happened; she eagerly traces their path from mutual wariness, to hatred, to reluctant allies to love. Sometimes she dreams alternate paths, where one or both of them make other choices over the course of their tumultuous relationship. Zach doesn't plan the murder game; she doesn't become Greenlee's surrogate; Ethan never comes to Pine Valley.
She loves this section of the dreams, because no matter what else happens, she and Zach always find each other. Sometimes they come together sooner, and they are stronger when Dixie comes to town or when Ryan comes back from the dead. Sometimes they find each other even later – she takes longer to forgive the blackout, or she makes the colossal mistake of sleeping with Ryan, or he has a weird fling with Julia Santos. But they always, always find their way into each other's hearts, and have declared their love and wear the rings that promise Always, Only You.
But even her favorite dream – the one where Spike is hers and Zach's, and Ethan and Simone are alive and his god-parents, two things happen to mar the perfection: Alexander Cambias, Sr. comes into their lives bringing danger and destruction, and Zach won't promise not to leave her.
And then he leaves.
It happens every night, and nothing she does ever stops it.
Sometimes she watches, paralyzed, while Zach begs the monster for her life. Tears stream down her face while he promises anything – to leave her, to go back to Cambias, to take back the name he hates – anything, just so the monster will let her live. She tries to tell him that she's not worth it, but he can't or won't hear her. And she watches the monster laugh and point the gun at Zach's head as Tad and Aidan stumble through the door one moment too late.
Sometimes she screams as father and son fight for the gun and, in the struggle, launch over the side of the balcony to the rocks below, where they lie unmoving in a grotesque heap of twisted limbs.
The worst dream is the one where his father is vanquished and Zach has her in his arms, resting his head on top of hers, and he's whispering her name like a prayer. She thinks that he has come back to her and that nothing will ever part them again. She was silly to be so upset; Zach didn't need to promise her anything after all, because they will always triumph.
"Kendall," he says, over and over. It starts getting fainter and fainter. "Ssshh," she tells him, holding him to her tightly. "I'm here. We're here. We're OK."
And then she realizes that the moisture seeping through her shirt is his blood, and that they aren't remotely OK.
And he collapses there, in her arms, and she doesn't scream because at least in this dream, she gets to hold him one more time. She gets to say goodbye. To tell him that his love for her was the best gift she ever got, except for Spike, and that she will always be grateful to him for the time they had.
And he smiles at her and touches her face one last time before he leaves her.
No matter how he goes, though, she always wakes up, calling his name and reaching across the bed for the warmth of his body – her bulwark for such a short time against her fears about being alone and abandoned.
And she finds nothing, again, but the cold emptiness where his body used to lie.
So she lies there, unmoving, fighting back tears, remembering the cold hard truth.
They got back from Vegas. She and Zach, together, fought the monster and won. They returned to Pine Valley, giddy with happiness and secure that nothing could beat them. They took her son back from Ryan, and returned to their lives, certain that nothing and no one could ever separate them – Team Slater against the world. They were so happy. Kendall didn't know she even knew how to be that happy. That was what Zach gave her.
And it was ripped from her forever by one phone call from Derek Frye, Pine Valley's chief of police.
Now, lying alone, the words play through her mind again: late night. Icy road. Drunk driver.
Instantaneous, Derek said. So sorry, Kendall.
And just like that, he was gone forever. No goodbye, no farewell kiss; just a phone message that she won't erase, telling her he had a late meeting and would see her and Spike soon. The one promise he didn't keep, through no fault of his own, so she can't even be mad at him.
Instead she turns it on herself. She never told him how much she loved every moment of their lives together. She thinks he knew it; she hopes he does, wherever he is. But she can't be sure, and she hates herself for it.
She wonders now if she dreams because at least in some of the dreams, she gets to tell him goodbye. To thank him for the gift his love was to her and her child.
She closes her eyes again, not sure anymore what she wants, except the one thing she'll never have again.
Zach.