Soulmates

An AU novella featuring Tom Branson, Sybil Crawley and other incarnations of them

Downton Abbey and the characters who live there belong to Julian Fellowes and ITV

I'm just borrowing some of the characters for a little while and adding a few of my own to write this story

I am not making any money from this; it's just to freeshare with my ff friends.

Chapter Two - Flashing and Foreboding

...

Mike awoke with a jump. His heart was racing and his body was sweating in reaction to the sights and sounds of his latest dream. This dream, like the ones before, again featured himself and Emma, but the settings were strange places, where, to his recollection, they had never been. They were them… and yet not them. Whatever the time and place they seemed to be in, however, one thing was constant: Emma always appeared to be pregnant.

He felt his wife moving restlessly beside him and willed himself to lie still despite the anxiety in his body. Emma was now seven and a half months into her pregnancy, and although perfectly healthy and seemingly unaffected by the usual problems of being in that state, she did get very tired and needed her sleep.

He wasn't even sure why he felt so anxious from the dreams. There was nothing actually threatening or frightening in them; they were just so strange. The fact that Emma had gone through her pregnancy thus far with so little to complain of, apart from an occasional incidence of morning sickness in the very early stages, made the incidence of the dreams even harder to fathom. If she had been ill with it, he could have said his mind had conjured them from his fears. But she hadn't been, she was fine; so why were they playing in his mind night after night? And what did they mean?

They had started a couple of weeks before, and at first he had experienced tiny snapshots and flashes, which felt like he was watching an old silent film where many of the frames had deteriorated and disappeared. But each night… each dream… had shown him more and more clarity and he could now make out clear images and sounds.

He was seeing flashes of lives of a couple; a couple who looked just like them, within the constraints of the strange costume and hair styles. The clothes they wore appeared ancient, like they were dressed for a costume party. Two of the languages they were speaking were also totally archaic, but featured a few understandable words half remembered from his schooldays. It was very, very strange to recognise his own and Emma's voices, but speaking words which were alien and unrecognisable. There were other sounds in the dreams too; none of which tallied with the noises of the 21st Century. It was downright confusing!

He seemed to be observing many different time periods and settings. Most had remained as confusing flashes, but at least three were appearing more frequently and with more detail. The oldest setting of these three appeared to be Ancient Roman or possibly Greek. He was leaning more to Roman because the clothes the man who had his face wore were very similar to his perception of a Roman soldier's attire. Also the language, although not understandable in many ways, had the occasional Italian words interspersed. He had studied Italian at school, and used it in family holidays. His parents loved Italy and the majority of their family holidays had been spent there. He didn't know Latin, but felt that this language was a likely assumption from what he was hearing.

The second period looked to be Tudor England. The clothes, furniture and language all seemed to indicate this. He felt like he was watching a Shakespearian play, except of course he was part of it. He heard Emma's voice addressing him with strange Old English words, but the name she was using was certainly not Mike.

The third time period was the easiest to understand, as it seemed to be much more recent, probably within the past hundred years. It was definitely England with some recognisable landscape looking like Yorkshire. The language was easy to understand as well, much more modern, although rather formal. The name Emma used for him here sounded like Tom.

So no, the dreams weren't threatening, but their incidence was starting to be. He was tired out because he never got a full night's sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, along came the dreams. As he saw more and more, he was getting more and more confused, and they always woke him up, and seemed to make it impossible to go back to sleep as his mind raced with what he had seen. With a sigh he resigned himself to another exhausting day and gently slid away from Emma's body and out of the bed. He was becoming restless from trying to stay still, and tossing and turning, trying to go back to sleep would only disturb his wife and make her exhausted as well.

…

Downstairs in the kitchen he made himself some tea and sat at the counter sipping it and wondering what to do. It was four am, and he was up at this time for the sixth day in a row. If he didn't do something soon he would be unfit for anything, including work, and they needed the money with the baby coming and Emma only getting maternity pay. He knew she was starting to be concerned about him, and becoming upset when he told her nothing was wrong. From the moment they had met, they had never kept any secrets from the other. They discussed everything. Was it really a viable option, however, to share the incidence and content of these dreams with her? He was worried enough for the both of them. Was it really fair to make her worry too, considering her condition? Perhaps he should try going to talk to the doctor, though what he could do, Mike wasn't sure.

The decision whether to tell Emma or not was taken from Mike's hands when she appeared in the doorway and asked for some tea.

"Darling, you should still be asleep. I'm sorry if I disturbed you. Go back to bed and I'll bring some tea up to you."

"Mike, stop it! Tell me what's wrong. This isn't the first time you've been up at this time. I thought if I let you think on it for a while you'd let me in, but it's going on and on, and you're dead on your feet most of the time. Talk to me, Babe. We could always talk. I'm pregnant, not suddenly incapable of coping with any problems we have. We promised each other we would always face everything together."

"I don't want you to worry."

"I'm more worried not knowing what's going on! Is there something going wrong with your job? Can we not really afford this baby anymore?"

"No, darling, it's nothing like that. Although if I can't work through this we may have money issues if I am sick from work. Statutory Sick Pay isn't going to go far. I was just thinking maybe I should go see the doctor."

"But what is it? Why can't you sleep? What are you so worried about?"

Mike looked at her beloved beautiful face creased with concern for him, and gave a resigned sigh. "I'm having dreams."

"Dreams? What kind of dreams?"

"Weird, strange dreams. About us, but not us. Our faces, our bodies, but in places and times far removed from now."

"Well, that's just silly. Why are you letting them affect you? It's just your imagination… You know how vivid that is."

"Em, don't just discount this." Despite himself, Mike was starting to get a little angry with her easy dismissal of his fears. "Dreams always have a meaning. I really believe that."

Her voice softened as she realised how much she had just upset him. "I'm sorry, I know you believe that. But I really think it's just your imagination. It doesn't really make much sense, does it?"

He sighed. "I know it doesn't. But whether there is a meaning or not, I have to do something about them. They keep waking me up and then I can't get back to sleep."

"Then, I'll make an appointment for you with Doctor James. Perhaps if you talk them out with him it will make them stop; maybe he heard of something like this before. It's probably just hidden fears about the baby. Or maybe he can give you something to help you sleep."

Mike nodded, "OK. That'd be good. Thanks, Darling. I didn't want to worry you with this."

"We're in this together, Mike. Always have been, always will be."

He nodded again. "I love you, Emma."

"I love you too. Now d'you think you could get a bit more sleep? There's still a couple of hours before you need to get up."

"You know, I think I could. I feel better now we've talked." She held out her hand to him and they returned to bed together.

…

Despite feeling better, however, Mike woke again an hour or so later, in a similar state to earlier, but this time also feeling downright terrified. He had dreamed again, but this dream was like a slide-show of a series of still photographs capturing the same moment taken in period after period with a looping soundtrack. What he had seen were images of the different versions of his wife, with their faces slack with death; and what he had heard were babies crying and his voice shouting in agony, the different speech patterns counterpointing each other. The English words spoken in an Irish brogue were the loudest and they sent a chill through him…

"Come on breathe, Love, just breathe… It's me, my darling, just breathe... Help her!... Please don't leave me… Please don't …"

…

AN: A HUGE thank you to LadyDunla for beta reading, and generally correcting this work. Any remaining mistakes are mine!

Please review and let me know what you think. All constructive criticism is welcomed as the only way to improve is to take on board other people's comments. I hope you will enjoy the reading journey as much as I am enjoying the writing one.