Dreams
He used to have dreams. Back when he was allowed.
When he was a boy, hiding in his room from who his father became after hours, he would burrow in deep under the covers and lose himself in the darkness. Dreams of planting a flag--his flag--in the island at its highest peak, where the land kissed the clouds and everything was white. The air was cool, where no one else had breathed it before, and everything he looked down on was his.
He chased a pigtailed girl through the jungle who flashed her freckles and childish eyes he knew too well over her shoulder at him, encouraging him, begging him onward. White rabbits at their feet scattered like cockroaches into the underbrush to watch with pink eyes as the two children thundered by. Dark clouds hovered overhead, whirring and clanking and clicking like no cloud he'd ever seen before. He'd try to call her name, but a roll of thunder hid his voice whenever he opened his mouth.
Ben sat shock-straight up in his bed some nights, her name still caught in his throat. His father never came to check on him when he cried himself back to sleep.
Dreams in the dark, of a wave sweeping over the barracks and flooding everyone out. Those who weren't safe were killed, and when the water drained back out to the ocean, the bodies lay where they died. Ben stood on his peak, his cloud-ringed haven, and watched, and did nothing.
His father said that he read too many books. He fell asleep with his flashlight under his covers, a book spread open before him with the little light flickering dimly over the pages as his eyelids fluttered closed. He headed down rabbit holes, through mirrors and into worlds that didn't exist. Curiouser and curiouser.
Dreams of twisting metal haloed with fire, the smell of blood on his hands. Ben knew they were dreams, but even that couldn't wrench the hook of fear from his heart that rent him open from the inside. Thick, dripping red blood up to his elbows--and somehow he knew it wasn't his own.
He couldn't get back to sleep that night. He could only watch his hands colored pale silver from the moonlight through his window, looking for the specks of blood that felt so real. He pressed a hand to his chest to make sure that his heart was still beating.
Ben hated the fear. If he was afraid, he was nothing. He had to block it out, hide it all away, lock it somewhere secure. He couldn't stand the fear of the dreams, so he simply stopped.
He didn't dream anymore. But he used to have dreams.
AN: Here's another short BenFic. Man, I never in a million years thought I'd be writing BenFic! But the master manipulator seems to like the living space in my brain, so I'm letting him stay as long as he wants. I got this idea while I was almost asleep and I had to write in on the back of my homework... That was weird explaining it to my professor. BUT I digress. Hope you like, as I've never written Li'l Ben (I mean, when he said "I used to have dreams" in Cabin Fever, it BEGGED for something...) Anyway, enjoy, leave us some love, and stay awesome!