Disclaimer: Don't own. Savvy?

AN: For the purposes of this fic, I have named the barkeepers daughter Rachel Fowler and her mother's name is Charlotte.

Rachel sat and stared at the wall with a miserable expression on her face. The wall sat there and did nothing. She couldn't see anything on it anyway, the lights were out and the moon was hidden. Even the streetlights were off as the town slept.

At least it was meant to sleep.

For Rachel however, sleep wouldn't come. Indeed, a part of her didn't WANT to go back to sleep. Sleep was a place for dreams, for fantasising about impossible, forbidden things that had no place in the real world.

But sleep was also the place for nightmares. Nightmares that hurt, that accused and threatened and scared. When she had been younger, she would have gone to her parent's bed, maybe sought the comforting arms of a reassuring hug. Now she was too old for such ideas. She was FOURTEEN and she really should know better than to let a stupid nightmare bother her so much. That's all it really was. It wasn't even like she was having nightmares about someone who she have even cared about.

"Having trouble sleeping?"

Rachel looked up to see her mum looking at her through the darkness. She hadn't even heard the door open and in the darkened room, she couldn't see her face. Still, there was no mistaking her shape and voice, even in the practically lightless room.

"Just a nightmare mum," she replied and she knew immediately by the change in her mother's stance that she didn't believe her. "Nothing to worry about."

"If it was nothing to worry about, you wouldn't be sitting up in your bed like this," her mum said and Rachel knew she was right. Without any prompting, she made her way over to the bed. "Why don't you tell me about it? Maybe it will help you sleep better."

"It's nothing mum. Really, just a stupid nightmare," Rachel said, before giving a bitter laugh. "Maybe a guilty conscience I suppose."

"Is it something to do with your not so secret crush on Thirteen?" her mother asked and Rachel felt her face turn red with embarrassment. "It's not a crime to have feelings for someone, even if he is an enemy. He's a good man, always polite and friendly and he always pays his bills, unlike some of the occupation soldiers."

"I suppose it is kind of the reason…but it's more than that," Rachel paused momentarily, unsure as to how to continue. "I'm having nightmares about his old partner. Or rather, I'm having the same nightmare again and again."

"Tell me about it," her mother said and Rachel continued.

"I'm in the bar downstairs and it's a normal evening shift. I'm busy taking orders as usual and the bar is its usual lively self. I'm taking an order from Thirteen when suddenly I see her sitting beside him and she's looking at me…like she's looking into my soul and finding me wanting and I can't move. And then she looks at me and says in this really deep, penetrating voice 'You killed me'

Then I stumble backwards and suddenly I'm surrounded by her, hundreds of her in fact and the lights dim and fade and they're all saying the same thing over and over again, like they're drilling into my skull and into my brain and…" she paused and smiled weakly. "I'm just being stupid, aren't I? There are scarier nightmares in the cinema."

"Nightmares are scary when you're having them," her mother replied and Rachel was sure her mother gave her a gentle smile in the dark. "This war is taking its toll on all of us, but you are not responsible for her death Rachel."

"But I was the one who planted that bomb. I was the reason that her plane didn't have the engine replacement it needed and it was my bomb that wounded her and-"

"And this is war and people do die," her mother finished for her and she hugged her daughter. "But it wasn't your fault."

"But-"

"She chose to go up with her plane in disrepair and it was not you who fired the missile that destroyed her plane," she paused to brush Rachel's hair back. "You have nothing to feel guilty about. She ran into someone better and in the end that was all. And I doubt that her plane would have been ready, even if they had the parts needed. An engine replacement is not something easily done after all."

"I suppose," Rachel admitted and her mother gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. It was reassuring, even though Rachel felt she had long outgrown such gestures.

"Now go to sleep," her mother told her firmly and Rachel lay do. Standing up, her mother left the room. Rachel turned into her bed and closed her eyes.

She just wished it was that easy to stop feeling guilty.