1.

Every night, it was the same dream. Over and over again, on an endless loop, the same dream—he was with Harry, and then Harry turned into the pyramid-headed monster, and then he woke up, shaking and terrified for reasons he couldn't explain.

The sick thing was that, in a way, he looked forward to the recurring nightmare, because it was a chance to be with Harry again, even for a short time. Even knowing how it would end, knowing the transformation was inevitable and unstoppable, he found himself looking forward to the first part of the dream and the sensations it brought with it. The horror of the dream's second part was still vivid and visceral, but somehow having Harry back, even for a few minutes, even in a shadowy dream world, was worth it.

James had always known he was fucked in the head, and this just proved it.

One night, after Harry had transformed and become the monster, when the monster had him in the corner, he asked it a question. He didn't think he would get a response, he wasn't hoping for one, he wasn't even sure why he was trying to communicate with the thing that haunted his dreamscapes and turned the best thing in his life into an abomination; however, no one could ever claim that once James Sunderland got something in his head, he wouldn't follow it through, and maybe, just maybe, he thought there might be some small part of Harry hidden behind that rusty red helm, and that Harry might force the thing to answer him.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, hopelessly, trying to delay the thing's dive for his throat and the accompanying terror as long as possible.

The thing tilted its heavy head back and started making a noise James had never heard it make before; it was a dark, wet, gurgling noise, a sound like diseased lungs struggling to breath, and for one horrible moment he was reminded of Mary. Then he realized the thing was laughing, and his blood froze in his veins.

As quickly as it started, the thing stopped laughing and looked down at him again. It pointed at him with one hand and with the other made a strange, fluttering motion to one side. The gesture looked surprisingly feminine and delicate for the monster, but James understood the meaning as clearly as if it had spoken: You got away.

2.

He sat bolt-upright in bed, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat.

The clock on the nightstand blinked 3:41 at him in orange numbers, and the house was still around him, the only sound his ragged breathing. The thing had communicated with him, let him know why it was haunting his dreams… he got away.

James clenched the damp sheet in his fist, suddenly furious. He hadn't gotten away, he'd been haunted by that thing and that place for the last ten years! It was never far away from him, he was never truly free of it. The only time he felt any peace, the only time he felt like himself again, was when he was with Harry, and now that was gone too and it felt like that place's hold on him increased a little more every day. And now that thing had the audacity to suggest that he got away, that he was free from its influence and sick, corrosive effect.

James picked up a pillow and flung it across the room, where it bounced off the dresser and landed on the floor with an unsatisfying plop. He flopped back onto the mattress with an angry sigh and glared up at the ceiling. In a way, he was grateful to the thing—usually he awoke to horror that almost immediately turned into heart-rending loneliness, feeling like he had lost Harry all over again. Anger at least he could understand. Anger he knew how to process.

He lay in the bed that he had returned to reluctantly, after deciding that reaching out for someone who wasn't there was slightly preferable to falling off the couch, and thought dark thoughts, the kind of thoughts that hadn't troubled him in years.

3.

He's up to something, I know it.

He thinks he's being subtle, that I'm too wrapped up in missing Dad to notice him, but he's wrong. J.D. has always worn his heart on his sleeve; he can't hide anything he's feeling, and he's really lucky that he's never tried his hand at poker, because he'd suck at it.

I'm worried about him. I don't know what he's thinking, but it can't be anything good, not the way he broods and mopes around the house. The moping I get, I can't find any enthusiasm for anything either, but the brooding is something different. There's an undercurrent of anger to it, and that anger scares me. It's like it's bubbling just below the surface, waiting for an excuse to get loose and destroy everything in its path, and it scares me more than anything in that place ever could. J.D.'s a little older now, but he's still a big, strong guy, and I think that if he ever really, really lost his temper, he might do something that he couldn't take back.

I don't think J.D. realizes that he's all I have left, and that losing him now would… well, it would be the end of me. That's it, no more Heather Mason, the end, goodbye. I need him, but J.D. never thinks that anyone needs him, he's always surprised when someone depends on him or even wants him around. When he had Dad around to reassure him (probably constantly, although I don't know for sure), he was okay, and maybe even believed that we loved him and needed him, but now… now he's lost again. He was lost when he first got here; I was only a little girl then, but I remember how lost he was, I remember asking Dad if he was going to run away, and I remember that Dad couldn't answer me because he didn't know.

But Dad's gone now, gone away and left a huge fucking hole in the middle of our lives, and sometimes I feel like we're on opposite sides of this giant abyss created by Dad's death. We can see each other, we know that the other person is there, but we can't reach across the hole, can't help each other, can't even help ourselves. I love J.D., and I know that he loves me, but without Dad to hold us together, we're on our own.

I wish I could fix this, and I think that with enough time I probably could, but J.D. is pulling away, turning into someone else, and I'm so scared that I won't have time to figure anything out before he does something stupid and I'm left all by myself.

At least he's sleeping in his bed again. I know he's still having nightmares, but maybe they aren't as bad when he's in his bed instead of on the couch, and at least he's not falling out of bed and hurting himself. He probably thinks that I don't know about how he used to carry Dad to bed almost every night (and honestly, I've tried not to think about it since I was old enough to figure out what it meant), but I do, and it made me so sad that he was sleeping out there, like he was waiting for Dad to come back and need him again. I didn't think I had room for any more sadness until he woke me up that first night with his rug-burns—he just looked so lonely, so abandoned, like a little kid that has lost his only friend and was trying to get him back the only way he knew how, and if my heart wasn't already broken, it would have broken right then and there.

To top it all off, we're both in danger of starving to death, since Dad always did all the cooking and neither one of us has any idea how to make anything on our own. It's been straight take-out and fast food since… well, since, and I don't know about J.D., but I'm feeling sick and gross all the time from it, and feeling like crap doesn't help with grief at all, let me tell you.

I bought a frozen pizza today, and somehow managed to burn the edges while leaving the center soggy and uncooked. Not that it really mattered, since neither J.D. or I are eating like we usually do, but it still made me feel crappy that I can't do anything without Dad. It also made me feel a little angry—Dad had so much time to teach me how to do stuff like this, and he never did, and now he's gone and I'm completely helpless and have to learn all this shit on my own.

J.D. didn't seem to care about the pizza's unappetizing nature. He dutifully took a couple of pieces and ate them mechanically, staring off into space and only speaking when I spoke to him, and even then in monosyllabic grunts. It gets exhausting trying to hold up a conversation like that, so eventually I just stopped and focused on my own gross slices.

We were done eating and just sitting there, waiting for something to happen or for the other one to do something, when J.D. asked me a question that I never thought he'd ask.

"What would you do to get him back?" he asked, as casual and nonchalant as if he were asking about the weather.

I gaped at him, completely shocked. He looked at me quizzically, one eyebrow partially arched, waiting patiently for my answer. That was creepy in and of itself; J.D. is a lot of things, but patient doesn't usually top the list, especially about things that he really wants. And I knew that he wanted Dad back as badly as I did, probably even more. "J.D…." I started hesitantly, "Dad is gone. He's not coming back."

"But what if he's not really gone? What if he's… trapped somewhere?"

"Are you talking about limbo?" I had read Dante over the school year, and the limbo level of Hell had been the creepiest one, in my humble and unpopular opinion. The lonely, abandoned, hopeless souls in limbo had been more terrifying than anything in the deeper levels.

He shook his head. "No, not limbo. Somewhere else. Somewhere… that we both know. That he knew."

I dropped my fork, and it clattered off the tile floor with a sharp, ringing sound. "Are you talking about that place, J.D.?" I asked, dreading his answer but already knowing what it would be.

He nodded, his eyes showing the first spark of life and eagerness that I had seen in a long time. "What if he's there, Little Bit? What if he's lost and can't find his way home?"

I shrank back, ashamed but unable to help myself. For the first time, I worried about J.D.'s sanity. What he was talking about… it was like the grief had tattered his grip on reality and made him focus on the worst thing he could remember.

J.D. must have noticed the look on my face; typical, that he would choose that particular moment to become perceptive. "I know it sounds crazy, Little Bit, but… but every night, it's the same dream. Always the same. He's in that place, and it's changing him, doing something to him… he needs help, and I think he's trying to reach out to me in my dreams." His hands shot out across the table and grabbed mine as I gasped in surprise—he's so much faster than a man his size should be. "What if he needs help? What if he's waiting for me?"

"J.D., he's not waiting for you. He's…" and here I had to swallow, had to force the word out, "he's dead, and he's not coming back."

"But what if he's not?" J.D. countered stubbornly. "You know how that place changes things, how things that have no right being alive are. What if it works the other way too?"

I opened my mouth to respond, then had to shut it. There was a certain logic to that, a certain logic that sparked a sudden desperate, impossible longing deep in my chest. "I'd do anything to see him again," I whispered, hardly aware that I was speaking.

J.D. suddenly dropped my hands like they were hot and sat back in his chair, eyeing me critically. "No," he said firmly. "No, you're not going."

"What? You're not seriously thinking about going, are you?"

He shrugged, refusing to meet my eyes. "He would go there for me," he said quietly.

"Not if you were dead! He wouldn't if he had buried you the week before!" I saw J.D. flinch, and I hated hurting him when he was already in so much pain, but he needed to hear this. "Dad wouldn't throw everything away on some hunch, something that came to him in a dream!"

J.D. sighed, his shoulders hunched in a very familiar posture. "He wouldn't if I died naturally," he said, slowly, like he was thinking. "But if he thought that place had me, that I was trapped, he would go. He wouldn't let that place take me." He looked up, his eyes burning. "He would go there for me."

I couldn't argue with that, because he was right; Dad would have gone to the ends of the earth for J.D. or for me. Until I came home and found him, I half-expected him to leap out and help me during my own journey to that place. "You're going to go there, aren't you?"

J.D. hung his head and didn't answer, and that was answer enough. "When are we leaving?"

That got his attention. His head shot up and he glared at him. "I already told you, you're not going. It's too dangerous."

I laughed, I couldn't help it, even though nothing about the situation was funny. "No shit, it's dangerous! I was just there, J.D., and the only reason I'm going back is so your stupid ass doesn't get killed!"

He shook his head. "I won't let you."

"You can't stop me!" I responded, getting angry myself now. "You're all I've got left and I'm not letting you go off by yourself on some half-cocked rescue mission that you might not come back from! I'm going, and that's final!" I slammed my hand down on the table, making the plates and the slowly congealing pizza jump.

J.D. glared at me for a moment longer, then he smiled, which nearly shocked me out of my anger. It was a grim, humorless smile, but it was the first one I'd seen from him in nearly a week. "You really are your father's daughter, you know that?" he asked.

"I'm both my fathers's daughter," I retorted. "My dad wouldn't do anything this stupid, but my James-Dad wouldn't take no for an answer." I shrugged and brushed angry tears out of my eyes. "So when are we leaving to go get ourselves killed?"

"Thank you, Little Bit," J.D. said quietly, and there was so much tenderness and love in his voice, more than he could have possibly been aware of, that I started crying in earnest. He put his arms around me and let me cry on his shoulder, his shoulder that was so much broader and stronger than Dad's, and waited until I was done. Then he asked, "How does tomorrow night sound? We can drive all night and get there in the morning. I… I want to try and find Harry before nightfall."

"And if we can't?" I asked, my voice muffled on his shirt sleeve.

"We will."