QLFC, Wanderers Beater 1: (Dream Sequence Dimension) Write about a dream that continued happening even after the character woke up.
-[word] fire
-[Emotion] determination
-[Color] black
wc: about 1320
Thanks to Sam and Aya for beta'ing!

A/N Merope is OOC as this is some sort of "what if she was more determined to survive" scenario. This is a Merope who still dreams.
Also, putting brown paper inside your clothes helps protect from the cold (according to my grandfather).

Warnings (and spoilers): Merope experiences apparent death due to hypothermia, so (presumed) character death, claustrophobia, premature burial. Ambiguous/open ending.

All of a sudden, Merope opened her eyes. The first thing her body registered was the cold, moist air filtering through her dress and down her spine. The brown paper she had covered her chest with to keep warm must have slipped on the ground in her sleep. It rustled as she moved to look around, struggling to distinguish something in the thick blackness that surrounded her.

The sound of water flowing nearby helped steady her erratic heartbeat for the briefest minute, just enough time to become present to herself again. Merope caressed her stomach with one hand and ran the other through her hair—thinning and greasy—as if to reassure her baby and herself that all was well. She was under her favorite bridge, the most sought-after by every London pauper. Under it, there was a wide strip of grass in summer, and enough straw for a fire in winter. As she was saving every last knut for when her child would be born, this was the best place to live despite it being in the open.

Her life had made it so that it was impossible for her to experience fear—nothing could be worse than what she had been through and survived—but something in her dream still upset her, caused her angst. The little creature in her belly could feel it, too, and it was restless.

"Hush, hush," she said. To herself or her unborn child, even she didn't know.

Merope couldn't remember her dream, and if she tried to, the images welling before her eyes were confused, faded, distant—colors, faces, and voices blurring together. It was all so fast that she couldn't make out a single thing and she felt dizzy.

What was left was only restlessness. The sense of drift almost took her breath away as those images were confused to her eyes but vivid in her heart. Her pulse was strong and irregular, making her temples ache, and she was all too aware of the pounding sensation in her neck while her heart seemed to be screaming louder and louder, trying to convey some bad omen only it knew about. It beat so hard against her ribs that it felt like it could break them in its attempt to escape.

The flutter moved to her abdomen. Her baby had kicked, and Merope shook herself from those spiraling thoughts. For good measure, she slapped herself. The sting in her cheek brought her brain back to the concrete world, where more pressing issues awaited her. She was going to be a mother soon, and she didn't have a job or a home. If there was something she had learned from her family, it was that laziness was not to be tolerated and that she'd only ever have herself to count on.

As she was awake, she decided she'd better get moving and join the queue in front of an employment office. She was accustomed to pain and hard work. She'd make it through the day as she always had, despite having hardly slept.

To cheer herself up, Merope anticipated her child's future in her mind—they'd love each other and be happy together like a real family—before clapping her hands to warm them and getting up. Or rather, trying to. The sudden pain in her legs made it impossible for her to rise. Biting the inside of her cheek, she tried again, saying "Don't you worry, baby. Mommy will get up and find more money for you."

Nothing.

She palpated her thighs, ready to slap them, and in horrid astonishment, she found they had withered. No wonder they couldn't bear her weight anymore. She cried, unable to understand what was going on. There was no other way to get away from that place but to drag herself with her arms. She needed light. And she needed help.

"Mommy will get through it, baby," she whispered, starting the painful climbing of the bridge. "It'll all be well by your birth."

Tom had implanted life inside her, and she had started dreaming for the first time, lots and lots of projects crowding her mind. In the beginning, he had been on the same page as she was. He had planned to build roads and turn meadows into cultivated fields as she smiled by his side.

Now, alone, she could still feel life growing inside her. "We'll create something for ourselves," she said. "And the country we'll build will bear your name."

Dreams could come true. Some of hers already had.

.x.

Breathing heavily, Merope leaned against a wall and closed her eyes for a few moments. She'd been crawling for hours, her arms were on fire, and every inch of her body felt mangled.

Whispered words, carried by the wind, caught her attention, and she opened her eyes. She called out to the people gathered in front of a church, but none of them seemed to hear her. Yet, they couldn't be more than a few meters from her. She could clearly distinguish their features from where she was—and her sight was clouded by fatigue and pain!

She tried again, but nothing happened.

She felt like she was going crazy.

With the last of her strength, she got closer to the first group of men. There was the Muggle equivalent of an Auror among them and he was the one speaking:

"She died in her sleep last night, frozen to death. She must have not realized the wind had put out the fire."

"What about the baby? Wasn't the unfortunate girl pregnant?" a second man asked.

"He's safe. The women from Wool's Orphanage will take care of him."

Instinctively, Merope brought the hand to her belly protectively. It was flat—no child.

"No, no, no!" Her mind was frantic with desperation. "My baby, my precious baby!"

Just then, the copper—was that the correct term?—mentioned her bridge, the one under which she had slept tonight.

"It can't be," she said. "It's a dream, just a dream. It must be a dream…"

She was about to convince herself when a pang in her heart made her scream.

.x.

All of a sudden, she opened her eyes.

As soon as she realized she was lying on a hard, cold surface, Merope pulled a sigh of relief, thinking it was ground under her. "It was just a bad nightmare." Her voice—feeble and hoarse—resonated weirdly around her, sounding foreign even to her own ears.

She squinted, peering into the darkness that surrounded her, but all she could see was black. Breathing was hard as if the air was scarce, and her thoughts were as slow as swimming in thick molasses.

When Merope tried to get up, she banged her head against something. Why was this place so cramped?

She raised her hands above her head, and after too short a time, her fingertips met a wooden surface. It took her a moment to realize—the lid of a coffin.

Her hands fell on her empty stomach.

Her boy! The copper had said it was a boy. Tom.

Where could it be now? Was he happy?

"Please, let him be loved. Let someone give him that love that I can't bestow upon him."

Even as she said it, her head spinning for the lack of oxygen, a sense of wrongness pervaded her. She couldn't trust any stranger with him. She had to get out of here.

She gritted her teeth and tried and tried and tried to tap into her magic. She closed her eyes but reopened them immediately. If she ever generated the smallest spark, she needed to be able to see it. When, she corrected herself. When!

She could do it.

In her life, she had burned her hands, had blisters on her fingers, bled until she was drained, broken her limbs, worn herself out. But she was still here, even broken, even in death.

She was still here and—her fingertips tingled—she would always be.