Author's Note: Okay, I lied. I saw my itty bitty prologue posted and thought that it looked like torture for everyone. So I'm posting the first chapter tonight. This may or may not mean I post tomorrow, though. I have a friend from out of town coming in, so I might focus on things like cleaning my place and not Inception (as if, right?).

But anyway, please enjoy and leave a review!

Disclaimer: I own nothing but that newly introduced plots involved.

His life was mundane.

His day consisted of torturous routine.

His time was spent in sorrow and regret.

And this is how it was going to be until he died. How it had been for the last twelve years.

Each day, the only way he was able to go on, he thought about Phillipa and James. Wondered about their school work, their friends, their hobbies.

Did James still love his chicken with ketchup and barbeque mixed together?

Did Phillipa ever start liking her hair worn up?

He would never know these small, insignificant details.

Here he was, rotting from the inside.

Mal had won, in the end.

Their grandmother refused to let them visit him. And he was sure most if not all of, his letters to his children were thrown in the trash. Burned, if she had any say. Their grandfather had passed on nearly a decade before.

His last support.

The only person who could help and bother to care of his innocence.

Did his children even know he was alive?

Had they been told he'd died while working? Joining their mother somewhere where they couldn't go to, not for a long, long time?

Or that he'd run away because he didn't care?

Each night, as this thought plagued him in bed.

It bittered the tears that came silently, the ones that he wished he could hide. The ones that he wished didn't exist. The ones that he shouldn't have to let run out.

Of all thing things in the world, of all the emotions and thoughts that his children could have, ponder on, worry over, the thought and feeling of abandonment was one he wished they never feel. He dreamt of ways to tell them they were not unloved, unwanted.

He knew that children could bare the weight of the world on their shoulders if they wanted.

His worst nightmares had come true.

Losing his other half to his whole.

Having no one to care.

But the one that he was so unsure of, yet, the thing that ate away at his last shred of light in his soul, was that he was now unloved. That no one knew enough to cast him a shred, a glance of positive feeling. Something akin to love or love itself.

Mal waited for him in his dreams.

But she was now a demon, taunting and delighting in his anguish.

And each time, as dawn broke the horizon, as his monotonous day began anew, his heart would break a little more.

–

Dom sat up in bed, sheets tangled by his feet, falling onto the floor. His breathing, labored, was the only sound in the room. Looking around, he'd once again managed to knock over this alarm clock and the glass of water he'd kept nearby. The shards of glass were everywhere.

But that didn't matter. Not right that moment.

He tripped his way out of bed, trying hard to be quiet. The window in the hall as he passed filtered in moonlight, confirming the late hour and the near guarantee that they would be asleep.

The door creaked and whined, but he barely cared. His eyes searched the dark for the sleeping faces of his children. The only way he would know he wasn't dreaming.

James was splayed out in his bed, covers tossed to the ground in his sleep. Phillipa curled on her side, one arm hanging off the side of the bed.

He let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, a relieved sob escaping his chest.

The nightmare, while lessening as his firm belief in security grew, was very much real in his mind.

He used to not be able to dream without the aid of those pliant tubes and the needles.

Now he craved the black rest he'd wished to once escape.