Note: This should've been out yesterday, yes. In fact, it did make it onto AO3 yesterday, but I fell asleep before I could fix the formatting to FFnet's standards, so sorry about that. I guess I was just really tired. I've quickly reformatted it, but I'm sure there'll be points where I've missed a comma or something, so if you spot something feel free to point it out. I will read back over this when I can again see the forest for the trees, and fix any bugger ups I see then. Spellcheck's still wonky, so I'm sure there'll be plenty for me to do.

Title: What Can You Do, Milly Sue?
[a parody that takes itself way too seriously]

Author: Greyline

Beta: None

Written on: 2016-12-23

Post date: 2017-03-17

Universe: #19B [2006]

Summary: Sometimes dreams and reality conflict and collide until they become indecipherable from one another. On the b-side, a thousand differences in history have forged an almost unrecognizable world. At least three times a week, Mildred wishes she could return to her own world — to a place where there are no vampires, no witches or werewolves, and where there are fifty states. Unfortunately, it seems that the powers that govern the universe have very different plans for her life — she's replaced the lead-heroine in a trashy TV show and, as it turns out, only a true Sue can save the world.

Chapter: In dream-world she is a god, and he'd do well not to forget it.

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/ june /
a dubious return to normalcy

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One moment she's in the parking lot sporting a nervous twitch, all but rocking, arguing with a terrifying – but accurate, awfully familiar – figment of her imagination and...well, basically behaving like an escapee from a mental institution. The next the world is immolating, she's insufflating superheated air, limbs aren't working and the hair on her arms has already sizzled down to the skin.

Then she's hovering on the blessedly cool wind, her wings tucked in as she speeds through the sky like a bullet. She races over orange fields, pink-treed parks and narrow strips of grubby concrete.

She's in a hurry.

Too many minutes have passed since she got a nonsensical alert from her courtiers. The world is wrong inside, they'd said, their duty spying on – who they called – Shiny. Danger beyond… Danger!

And so the southeasterly became her grace, puffing up her feathers and pushing her at an unnatural angle as she rushes headfirst into whatever 'danger' there is.

The Shining One is important, needs to be watched and understood and, for now, protected. From the emptiness of over a century of swift-shifting yet unchanging life, there's come a desperation to her, and overpowering need to get back to the one who made her what she is. Love is love and obsession is twisted and consuming, yet…

From circles of bright crops, watered by rotating metal arms, a town grows beneath. Within moments she's over it, shifting east and no longer with the wind; she battles against the yellowish haze of the main air-current, progress slower than she's comfortable with.

Fire and nothing, her fellow crows murmur, spiraling ribbons of thought crossing the air. She can feel them storming something, attacking something that would harm that she needs to shelter (to keep safe for no other reason than...a puzzle, a mystery, a curiosity not yet satiated).

She shoots over the winding river cutting the town in half, coming closer closercloser. The white-bright sun is down now, last light lingering over the radiant sea – that great, sparkling ocean that marks out the edge of the world.

And so she dives dives dives.

Streetlamps rise in ovation to meet her, while her obedient court circles below, cawing discontent. She hovers level, then descends soberly down down down, until her hard, taloned feet meet with unforgiving steel.

She settles onto the crown of a light-pole, observing the scene below. This is what she sees: Fire without flame; an expanding and contracting cloud of claws and feathers, battlecry caws echoing high up into the air, waves of distorted air-currents and disjointed, crowish cackles gliding in and out of one another; smoke rising from the heart of the attacking crows – yes – but thin and wispy like a mist, floating out unnoticed by human eyes and pushing against the wind; the scent of burning flesh, too fresh to appeal to the way a scavenger like her usually consumes its meat. A column of her subjects are trying to take something nasty down. Shiny's a few feet away, sprawled in a pile flat-back on the concrete, clearly unconscious, and there's a disturbance all that is normal and sane.

This is wrong.

She's seen many unusual things in her long years, but even all of the things she has witnessed that are greater than the human world, never has she seen or felt something like this. The whole area seems to be caught in some kind of bubble of high pressure; the air feels unnaturally hot and still, improbable to have occurred naturally seeing as her activities the last few days have left cooler, rainy weather a hundred miles out from Mystic Falls in every direction. Something nearby – many minute somethings, dark and impossible and glowing, bounded by sunlight – are eviscerating all feathers loosed from her crows in the fight, and the flesh of Shiny's arms is bubbling up like overheated plastic or a side of pork cooked too fast at too high a temperature.

Danger outside air, breeze unsettled, her crows announce as one, their voices merging together from all around. It is what it is not, they riddle.

What makes sense is that Shiny is dying, unconscious in this dirty parking lot with an ailing heart. It's more than time overdue to intervene – even over the sea surely now the sun must be gone.

blood is power
and blood is life…

Puffed up breast, feet spinning around the pole, slipping upside-down. Feathers shifting and transforming through the drop to the ground. Her legs lengthen in a moment, an instant stretched out only to a brain capable of supernaturally-fast critical thought. Hollow bone becomes weighty, wingtips become the pads of fingers and nails and flesh and skin and–

black

The scent of sizzling skin became smoke and sharp, fiery pain where nerves died off. The taste of spice and oranges and copper. Thick, sluggish down her throat – ice rushed through her, coating veins and capillaries, seeping into overheated muscle, soothing and softening swelling.

Blown out above, overly bright – yellow-orange light in and out of focus. The hum of electricity stuttering through her surroundings. Pinprick-echoes like stars sparkled in a blanket of darkness.

Disorientation. Head lolling, turned to the side. Rough concrete, small stones dug into her cheek.

A surge of foreign energy lent strength to the very heart of her.

Mildred sat up gingerly, head pounding with her pulse. She felt confused and invigorated, had a power running through her limbs no mere human was usually afforded. The world was spinning a bit but everything cleared as a familiar – if out of place – face came into focus scant inches from her own.

"Damon?" she groaned in confusion, voice coming out far weaker than her body felt.

For at least the second time today, she was utterly blindsided.

Where was the not-Lucy thing?

Where had Damon come from? Surely he hadn't been stalking her creepy-Edward stylie? But if he hadn't been, then how would he have known she was in trouble? And...even if he knew she was in danger, burning up in the grasp of that Nithling wearing her best-friend's face, why would he care at all? It seemed, judging from the fact her flesh wasn't melted as it should surely be, he had healed her. Why, though? She wasn't Catherine – he knew that.

He helped her to her feet with one hand, supporting all her weight effortlessly. Despite his aid, Damon's face was turned away from her, peering out into the darkness. To him, Mildred supposed, the night probably wasn't that dark at all. If Nithling-Lucy was still around then he would likely see it.

When nearly an entire minute had passed without progress, Mildred cleared her throat – there was a thick residue coating her esophagus that she rather thought might be vampire blood – and spoke again: "What are you doing here, Damon?"

His attention snapped to her fast enough to cause whiplash. "I see you remember my name… Well, I guess I am pretty unforgettable," he quipped evasively, avoiding the question. His voice was as deep and pleasant as she recalled from their meeting on the road. Something in his eyes, though, was tense.

"Just answer," she stupidly demanded.

When a few more seconds passed without response, Mildred huffed, removing her arm from his too-tight grip. She was, at this moment, pressed shoulder to shoulder with a being capable of ripping her head from her shoulders faster than she could blink.

"I was in the neighborhood – looked like you could do with a hand," he eventually surmised. Eyebrows raised, he asked lightly, "Was I wrong?"

"Very. Everything's hunky-dory out here – spectacular, even..."

"Right – and I suppose you just came down with a nasty case of spontaneous combustion," he drawled sarcastically. "Sort of thing happens all the time – the conspiracies are true – perfectly normal, nothing to worry over."

Had he not seen the Nithling?

He mustn't have...yet...why was he scanning their surroundings for a threat if he hadn't? The parking lot was deserted but for them and it's native wildlife – there were cars and crows, nothing else.

Spontaneous combustion, though? So he'd seen her burns, he'd dealt with them… So… Oh God, he'd know she knew he was a vampire, that he'd fed her blood to heal her. It would probably best that he wasn't aware that she was aware of his nature just yet.

Trying to look as confused as possible – these days, an easy emotion to put forth given how often she was genuinely flabbergasted – she looked down at her arms. They were still hairless but now her skin was unimpaired – they were salon-smooth, in fact. She actually looked a bit healthier than before.

"But… I was burned – I know I was!" Mildred exclaimed, playing the sentence in such a way he'd easily be able to head off this train of inquiry with a bit of gentle gaslighting.

"You don't look burned – must've just been a menopausal-flush," he suggested flippantly, eyes sparkling. He laid the back of his hand to her forehead, adding mock-thoughtfully, "Though you're definitely very hot."

It was all going very well, all things considered, until she said the dumbest, most idiotic thing ever. In a bright, clear voice, she accepted his assessment of her hotness, and assured, "Don't worry, that's just the syphilis."

A beat.

Two beats.

Then Damon burst into raucous laughter, his whole body shaking and face lighting up. She wasn't entirely certain whether he was laughing at her or with her, but his exuberance was infectious and she found herself sniggering. What in the world had possessed her to say that?

"Ah, Milly," he sighed, wiping a fake tear, "I like you – you're funny."

"As funny as syphilis?"

"As funny as syphilis," he agreed sagely. "Besides the goop-brain STI, how're you feeling?"

Mildred shrugged, glancing at first her feet then the vampire side-on. With a little more prompting she declared, "Honestly? A bit like Snuffy the Seal."

Damon raised a brow again. It was like a default go-to for him or something.

"You know – that commercial where they're about to release a rehabilitated seal back into the wild," she elaborated, catching his unspoken question. "Then just before they can, a shark leaps out the water and eats poor Snuffy right off the winch."

The vampire offered her a very wide, toothy grin. "Do I look like a shark to you?"

"Uh, yeah – lil' bit."

His smile turned sinister. "Are you afraid I might eat you all up, little red?"

That was a good question – was she scared of him? Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. She hadn't found herself with an overabundance of self-preservation since that first night on the road; to be honest, she'd never had much common sense even in real-life. Prudence was for prudes, as Lucy loved to point out.

She was saved from answering, thankfully, by a relieved sounding Caroline bursting into the conversation. Matt and the blond girl must have finished eating – how long had the Nithling encounter even taken?

"Gloria, here you are! We've been looking for you for aaaages," Caroline announced only a little testily. Matt trailed in her wake but seemed to relax at the sight of Mildred well and unharmed. "What are you doing out here? You missed dessert – that's so not like you."

Oh, she'd only said she was going to the restroom...right… It felt like a lifetime ago. She ought to have just told them she was going to wait by the car.

"I– I'll pay you back for my part of the bill," Mildred quickly offered, feeling a bit bad for bailing on her this-world friends. Not too bad, though, because she had been being chased by some kind of antimatter monster/hallucination. "I didn't mean to make you worry – it was just so stuffy in there," she explained, trying to look as contritely pathetic as possible.

Somehow, Damon managed to fade into the background. It was like Matt and Caroline's eyes just swept over him as if he were a shadow. Like a perception-filter, or something. It was a neat trick, Mildred supposed, if you wanted to be a spy or a cat burglar.

"Don't worry about the bill, silly," Caroline told her sweetly, "my treat you know. We just thought you might've broken your neck slipping on a wet floor, or drowned in the toilet." Then the blond threw her hands up over her mouth. "Oh, God, I didn't mean–" she stuttered, eyes wide, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to say drowned. God, I'm such an idiot sometimes!"

"Uh, Care," Matt inserted calmly, laying a hand on the girl's shoulder, "now would probably be a good time to stop talking."

Had Mildred ever mentioned how much she loved Matt? If not, consider it true-love forever because the boy had a surprisingly good sense of social timing for a slightly-dense jock. While Tyler was brash and largely childish, screwing about in lessons and generally getting on everyone's nerves, Matt was a more gentle soul and as cool as the proverbial cucumber most the time.

With one possible crisis averted, however, another rose from behind it. Or, more accurately, from behind her. Damon chose this moment to step into the light behind her and, rather intimately, place his right hand on her waist.

"And who are these, pet?" he asked politely, though she could feel the tension humming through his chest.

"Oh, uh...right. This is Caroline–" she pointed in the direction of her perky friend, then gestured to the far more stoic boy beside her "–and Matt. They were just finishing dinner...at TFI's," she concluded lamely, for want of something better to say.

It was strange he might feel either of her very human friends was a threat; then again, Nithling-Lucy hadn't looked like much until she nearly seared Mildred's skin off. Or Damon was merely being possessive, perhaps, wanting his Catherine-doppelganger all to himself? His warm hand – thumb stroking circles in the hollow of her hip – certainly felt possessive, like a snarling wolf protecting its next kill.

Caroline did an eyebrow thing that would surely endear her to the vampire, who was the obvious King of Eyebrows. "And who is this?" she asked pointedly, the question loaded in such a way Mildred just knew she would be demanded to spill all on the way back to Mystic Falls.

"Guys, this is Damon. He's..."

"Just passing through," Damon finished smoothly, a predatory smile audible in his voice. There was a cold undercurrent when he clarified, "Saw my Gloria here in the parking lot all alone – just had to say 'hi'."

Caroline let out a slightly strained giggle, looking nervous. Apparently the girl was even brighter than previously assumed; she could clearly sense the weight of the vampire's presence no he'd revealed himself.

Why had Damon gone from reassuringly personable to frighteningly frosty, so dangerous sounding, though?

Then it hit her. It was a name thing.

He'd caught how Caroline called her by what people here knew her as. When Mildred introduced herself on the road – right at the beginning of this impossible dream – it was with her normal, real-world name.

Startled by her own dawning understanding, Mildred span around and looked up at the centuries-old man with frantic eyes. He thought she'd been lying to him before and, for some reason, that really didn't sit well with her. Not to mention lying to this guy was liable to get you killed; she seemed to remember something about Elena going along with her boyfriend's betrayal of him at some point, and getting a mouthful of vamp blood and almost a snapped neck for her duplicity (served her right, of course).

"No– Damon, I can explain," she hurriedly swore, wanting to smooth things over with him before he got any bad ideas. It was easy for her to justify this need by thinking about how deadly it would be to be on the outs with an immortal, possibly amoral, killing machine.

He didn't give her much chance, though. He brushed off her words with a simple, "There's nothing to explain, Milly. It's time for you to go."

This was the last thing she needed, to be controlled in the type of dream-place she was used to controlling.

Caught by the fierceness of his gaze, she didn't manage to close her eyes in time to stop him. His pupils contracted as far as they could as he dictated, "You will get into your car and head straight home – do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars."

He continued to speak. Her head felt murky, his voice lulling her. So close to him, even in the half-light she could see that, despite the good likeness he had for his character, on the show, he didn't look precisely the same down in the details. Just as she could be a devastatingly iron deficient, fun-house-mirror Dobrevganger – or maybe she saw that just because she was looking for it – who'd picked a fight with a bottle of hair bleach, he could almost be his tubular alter-ego's double but for a few things that didn't right true: The otherworldly olive-but-pale of his skin; the underlying rainbow glint in his hair, illuminated semi-orange by the light pole, like the sheen of a blackbird or magpie's feathers; or the odd sea-blue eyes, faint lines crossing their irises like broken ice on a frozen lake. This close up it seemed readily apparent he wasn't human – she didn't know how anybody could miss it.

By this point, he was cheerfully – if thoroughly alarmingly – reminding her, "I'll be back to see you on your birthday, just like we planned." Then firmly, "But you won't remember seeing me tonight."

"I won't remember seeing you tonight," Mildred agreed, nodding servilely. Just enough of herself broke through to cheekily/spitefully add, "You're very forgettable."

The three of them were standing around Matt's car aimlessly. It wasn't precisely cold but nor was it remarkably warm – Mildred hadn't thought to bring a coat.

"Urgh, I think we should head home, guys," she suggested, wrapping her arms around herself as she shivered slightly. She had goosebumps on her arms, though the fine hair there that should warm here was absent; it had been melted away when not-Lucy touched her. Clambering into the car, she recalled, "Jenna wanted me back before the 'storm' hit – not that it looks like there'll be one – so we best not make any stops on the way."

"Sure thing, Ri," Matt accepted easily. "No table dancing for you tonight."

"Awww," Caroline whined, "but it's so much fun when she dances. All we need is a couple of beers and some Softly hits, and she's all set. Total lightweight," the girl singsonged, seeming in high spirits.

After an exhausting day of shopping, Mildred wasn't sure how anyone could be so cheerful. She supposed that she just didn't have the energy or personality to do the literal shop-till-you-drop thing and come away alive. Actually, she was feeling quite sleepy, and the D2 thrum of the engine, the gentle vibration of the car sliding over the recently-tarmacked highway, was extremely relaxing. She could almost just…

"Hey, hey," came a female whisper, "you need to wake up now."

The truck's interior light was blinding, even through her half-closed lids. She could see the blurred lines of her own eyelashes with each failure to break through the grogginess of having been woken up at a poor moment in her sleep-cycle. What was going on? The car wasn't moving and cold night air made her curl in o n herself to preserve whatever warmth she had. Did they break down on the road?

"We're home," Caroline told her. "Well, at mine, but near enough."

This set off an anti-fun alarm in her head. "What about about Jenna?" she asked woozily. "I'm not supposed to be out late. Got to go home. No stop offs on the way."

"We already called your aunt. She's cool with you staying here."

"Here...yes, that's good. Live here now," Mildred murmured confusedly.

Quite pleased with the prospect of not moving, she navigated through her seatbelt until she could comfortably lie along the backseat, then promptly began to drift out of consciousness again. It wasn't the most wonderful place she'd ever slept – sure beat getting up, though.

Caroline made an aggravated huffing noise. "No, not here here. You've got to get out the car. Nice bed upstairs, yeah?"

Mildred didn't move, her only reply a snorting sort of breath she would, had she the energy, deny being kin to a snore.

There was a new sound that was possibly her frustrated friend stomping a foot; it sounded like click-clacky boots on a concrete-slabbed sidewalk. "Matt!" the girl nearly-called in a seething whisper, "I can't get her up."

Another voice – male and presumably Matt – chortled. "Wake Ri after just an hour – that's your mistake right there. Don't worry, I'll carry her... Not like it's the first time."

Very nearly dreaming, Mildred was gently manhandled into strong arms; the scent of pine cradled her carefully. Movement, the soft rolling motion of the sea surging up shallow steps, the sound of a bunch of gulls rattling, then a surrounding warmth as a door closed on the coast, locking the ocean out. She roused a little.

"Mine's third on the right," something said randomly.

Mildred's chivalrous chauffeur carefully ascended another set of stairs; these ones must have been quite steep, for the ride was joltier than before and the few creeks that met her ears were so deep and heavy that it sounded like there was a great chasm below. Unceremoniously, something soft was at her back now – she felt worryingly exposed, doing number-seventeen: the spread eagle. Her shoes slipped away, followed by – after some humming and hawing close by – her pantyhose; she hoped the latter hadn't torn themselves in the haste to get away from her. A soft, thick sheet climbed haphazardly up her legs to drape itself across her; pleased by the fabric's clear desire to be her friend, she turned and snuggled into it.

She could hear voices echoing up from the chasm.

"She's out like the dead. I got her out her shoes and...um, stocking things, but I left the rest for you."

"That's cool. Though, out her hose? That's all, I hope – not very gentlemanly to sneak peeks at your ex when she's passed out."

"Nothing like that, I swear!"

A feminine giggle. "Don't worry, I know you're a nice boy really."

Mildred's eyes tried to open. An out of focus and unfamiliar ceiling came into view. Her whole body was dead weight, as sometimes happened when she woke in the middle of the night' unlike on those rare occasions, this heaviness wasn't a complete inability to use any voluntary muscle (something which lead to the horrible, unsettling sensation of being unable to breathe until the paralysis subsided). She supposed she was just very tired, though some recent memory of jostling had caused her brain to become somewhat more alert.

The first thing she found herself wondering on was the scary encounter with not-Lucy – the irritating column antimatter – in the White Oak parking lot.

As far as wish-fulfilment hallucinations went, the horrific vision of her best-friend insinuating itself into her dream-world had been as annoying as disconcerting. Consistently speaking round in increasingly insane circles – check; going on about stuff that didn't make any sense as if Mildred should understand perfectly well – check; acting generally like she had all the secrets of the universe and could think her way out a triple-deadlock-sealed box given the right incentive (real-Lucy's phrasing once upon a time, not Mildred's) – double check. Basically, the vision had been very accurate to Lucy's character but extremely frustrating all the same...and, you know, way more burny than her friend had ever been in real-life (despite the woman's multiple incidents of burn-the-bastard-ex's-stuff).

She resolved not to think about the possible-insanity clawing away at the inside of her skull. It was late, she was running on fumes, dwelling on it wouldn't do much good right now; she'd be better off crashing out and taking each new came as it flew at her. Perhaps, luck willing, the hallucination had been a one-off occurrence induced by stress? (Shopping stress?) Or maybe – as she'd speculated several times in past days – she really was in a coma and the vision of Lucy was part of real-reality bleeding through, just how it had in that djinn-induced hallucinatory-reality (hallucinality?) Dean got trapped in that time.

The main light in the room flickered off, leaving her in darkness, practically cowering beneath the powder-blue comforter as if could be used to contain whatever vestiges of sense and reason remained to her. She heard Caroline pottering in the bathroom down the hall, brushing her teeth and muttering to herself. Mildred tried her hardest to drift back off to sleep.

Reprieve from her thoughts doesn't come, though.

Instead, she just stare stare stares up at the yellowing light pouring through the blanket over her – green through the fabric – wondering how on Earth life's grown so strange she's no longer capable of identifying what's real and whatnot.

Perhaps she'd sealed her own fate a long time ago.

She remembers how her parents – in a rare show of family togetherness – once took her to the theater in New York. On the drive home, she'd declared she wanted to be able to pretend to be someone else and have other's believe it, just how the stage actors could. Perhaps a decade of walk-on parts in second-rate soap operas, toothpaste commercials, traveling junior school productions, rounded off with a questionable-at-best lead in a Boston theater that smelled more of mildew than success, has finally broken her mind.

Whatever the reason, nothing is what it seems. The Nithling is proof enough of that.

Mildred has to remind herself this mantra when the walls start dripping.

The paint near the ceiling seems to grow wet and weighty, darkening almost sickeningly as it pours its way down the still-cerise parts of the wall like molasses. Crimson molasses, blood seeping from raw wounds. The grain of the floorboards shifts and ripples like the wavy, alive lines on the display of Lucy's old oscilloscope; the floor's become murky water and Gloria's fluffy rug is flotsam drifting atop it. The mirror above her predecessor's desk reflects an image of Mildred's real-life bedroom, her messy two-room above the Salvador Deli in Roxbury. The bed is an island of normalcy in a pocket of weird.

If there's a sure sign of the truth she's living in Unreality, then this is it.

Though she used to always be more than willing to play a bit with an odd scene like this, Mildred's had a trying couple of weeks and really just wants to get to sleep. She's not sure why this extended-dream's suddenly starting to behave like one, just that right now she wants nothing to do with it. So she squeezes her eyes tight shut again in a renewed attempt to reach unconsciousness, thereby gaining some relief from all the crazy thrust upon her. Turning her pillow over and pushing deeper down into it, like a child pressing into its mother's bosom, she ignores the sound of a fast-running river whooshing below the bed.

Except it's not the cool side of the pillow she's greeted with…

It's flesh dressed in slippery silk, firm where it should be soft and far too frigid to be healthy. Tentatively opening her eyes a crack, she finds a girl with flushed skin, as if sunburned from head to toe. It's definitely another person in the bed with her.

She panics at not being alone anymore, her own skin growing clammy with fear. In a dream, anyone can be anywhere anytime. Lucy was in the parking lot.

Mildred pulls back violently from the body half-beneath her.

The other blond's head flops over like she's in repose so serene she can't be roused – not by shouting or shoving. The woman's chest isn't rising and falling, though, and her unnaturally-pink limbs are askance, as if she's been tossing and turning in her sleep – fighting something off – before giving up, too enervated to go on.

Though Mildred's never actually seen a corpse up close before, the completely-inanimate nature of the blond's stillness suggests she's no longer of the living. Mildred's all too familiar with the way the woman's sun-blond hair curls roughly, trying to escape her head, and the dark green chemise rucked up her ruddy, exposed legs.

It's her hair, her nightdress, and–

a shimmer crosses the bedspread,
cotton and silk the color of coffee
blooming across the cheerful pink
-blue polka-dots of Gloria's covers

–her bedding.

God, this is her bed. It's the bed she and her father shacked together when he had a free weekend. They'd half-assed it out of apple crates and driftwood. This is its exact copy right down to the seashells hot-glued to the reclaimed-lumber headboard and the knots of Christmas lights lurking under the slats. These lights now glow far more coldly, clinically than they ever did in the real-world; they pierce through their sturdy crate housing as if it's paper, a creepy, latent glow bouncing off the water-for-floorboards surrounding the bed.

Almost too disturbed to function–

because dreams and reality have
been one and the same for a long
time now, and when that happens
nightmares aren't just adrenaline
fun anymore, they can hurt or kill

–Mildred leans forward on her knees, reaching out for the woman's corpse. Praying to something she doesn't really believe in – praying she's wrong – she closes her eyes and tugs on the body's shoulder, rolling it over.

Her eyes reopen slowly, heart completely stilled…

Instantly they lock onto her own. The corpse is Mildred. Real-Mildred. Twenty-seven with frizzy hair, eyes closer to an overcast sky than blue. Her lips are the same scalded color as her skin, slightly parted in death, and her sclera is a decaying, gone-off yellow-gray.

It's arresting fear. The kind of horrified shock where you can't even exhale because if you do everything might come crashing down around you. If you do you might break in an irreparable way.

A foreign breeze ruffles her real-life corpses hair. The skin at Mildred's nape prickles.

Well, this is delightfully morbid, a voice chimes from somewhere above her bed, slanting across her psyche like it wants to dissect her.

Damon is lurking by the open window.

Startled out her lock-up, Mildred shrieks in surprise. Only her mouth isn't open; the pitchy whistle note echoes klaxon-loud through her bones and the bed and the whole damn world, deafening her.

She scrambles back frantically, putting as much distance as she can between herself and the man, because she doe–

She tumbles backward, hitting water with a tremendous splash.

Her head goes straight under, freezing her brain like too much ice-cream consumed too fast and decimating all higher-thought. Everything is frenetic – muscles clenching, legs furiously beating against the river-current, reaching for the surface. The water's fucking Arctic and disgusting, and she's weighed down by folds and folds of sopping cloth, and she can't escape it.

Something grabs at her ankle. Long, strong fingers dragging her down into a horror-movie-set of a vehicle. Twisted, deteriorating metal and an unnaturally powerful grip…

Elena's father doesn't look good in death and nor does her mother. The two of them have blued, bloating faces and malice in partially-decomposing eyes. They speak without words, yet their message is clear: You did this. You knew what would happen – you should have saved us.

Her own mind protests, locked in an epic battle for oxygen. She kicks and scrambles, all the while screeching, I didn't know, I didn't know. How could I know? in the same nonverbal way they had spoken. I didn't know it was real.

Out of place, Mildred finds herself speculating this must've been what it was like for Regulus to drown in a lake of Inferi.

What is reality?

It's nothing more or less than the evidence of a person's senses. It's electrical signals traveling from nerve to brain, interpreted by the most intelligent natural computer evolution has ever spawned. It's close to memory and therefore to time; everything is perceived microseconds after it's passed. It is subjective, put together slightly differently by each person, and sometimes it isn't even noetic… Often not noetic, in Mildred's case.

For the second time in a month, she is drowning – this is what her senses tell her. There's zero-degree water binding her arms and legs, clenching around her chest, which paradoxically feels steadily warmer as each oxygenless second passes. Her hair's swimming away, floating out sort of like a macabre halo, to catch on the semi-disintegrated edges of the rustbucket car she is trapped in… and every time she thinks she might get away, might rise to the surface of this awful scene to a place where there's at least air, something tugs her back down, inviting her to spend the night sleeping on the mottled, moldy backseat of the vehicle.

She's so tired, life's been so strange and taxing… It almost seems worth dying just to get a bit of rest. She's not really ready, in her heart, to succumb...but is resigned to doing so anyway.

Then, breaking through the water above her like glorious sunlight, a large hand descends through the grime and debris, taking a tight hold on her elbow. Reinvigorated – kicking out blindly at the Gilbert parents – when a second hand appears she leaps for it.

A rush of water skates down her body as she's pulled from the unholy torrent. One moment she's drowning at the behest of Miranda and Grayson, the next she's emerging up up up until her feet are hovering several inches above the surface of the river. She's dry almost instantly and her lungs loosen at the first gasp of fresh air.

Her eyes flicker up to gaze into the face of her savior. Strong arms holding her snug to his chest, she's surprised to see Damon's still haunting her subconscious. It's odd – she hasn't really thought on him much since the night out on the road before the accident. At this moment, though, she can't recall having ever been happier to see someone in her life.

He puts her down slowly, almost reluctantly.

Second time today, his resigned sigh says. I should charge.

As if he possesses a supernatural control over the physical world, the water has returned to being plain wooden floorboards. When she hesitantly looks around, she finds everything else remains twisted, like a sketch of a hellish realm where up is not up and down is left. There's brown, gritty residue marking out a waterline along the walls and everything below it is coated in sand and silt and bits of glass. From the floor to the bed, to the now-drenched corpse of her real-life self – unmoved from before but it's freakishly pink flesh now caked in grime – nothing has survived the impromptu flood her subconscious turmoil caused.

Why did this place have to choose now to start behaving like a normal dream? Why couldn't it have been fluid and mutable when she still had the wherewithal to escape it?

Damon's in front of her, immobile but for his eyes; they dart about the room like dragonflies, taking in the devastation. It all feels very...familiar. Like a dream half-forgotten. This man looking for threats, ready to protect if needs must.

This'll be hell to clear up, her mind laments.

His eyes snap back to hers as if he heard this thought. Which part – the inconvenient flood or the inconvenient corpse?

It's confusing and not, somehow both things running together. Damon's now staring at the body on the bed. He approaches it, observes it closely as if trying to discern its identity, then nudges it with his knee. It...crumbles...dissembles like it had been a carefully painted shell, delicate and all filled up with ashes. Like a traditional Easter egg, yolk and white blown out a small hole with a straw, so fragile when decorated. Like that episode of Fringe with the cosmonaut and the metaphysical entity; like a whole frickin' person can be blown from the world by no more than a desk fan. Like a hollow puzzle of a being who can no longer exist.

In many ways, Mildred felt better when the corpse was still there. Now it's just a metaphor – a chilling one that shakes the foundations of everything she's ever known. Before it was a body and now it's a dusty imprint on a stranger's bed. Everything she was is gone as if it had never been, and it's irreversible, unchangeable definiteconcreteabsolute

Thesaurus, comes a low chime.

Dinosaur called Thea, her mind spews randomly.

Then, on the back of that pointlessness, she has a bit of a breakdown – it's smaller than John and the kitchen. There's no obvious answer as to how Mildred goes from staring at the foul stain on the bed to being enfolded in the arms of a man she knows by no more than name, some rumors, and a kiss – mind you, a damn good kiss.

Not so bad yourself.

Tears run so fast she could almost literally cry herself a river… Which, considering Damon just deleted one from existence for her, would be counterproductive. There doesn–

WAIT! – – –
– – – REWIND

He removed a whole river from her reality…

How could he do that? Unless… Mildred looks down at where a small, brown-ink 'A' is daubed on the webbing between her right thumb and index finger. Question overcame distress: Is she awake or is she dreaming? Working out which state is which used to be second nature to her; since the night of the accident, she can't necessarily tell anymore. Considering the circumstances, that's no surprise, but…

All the same, it is a–

Wait...no – she's asking the wrong question here. What it should be is: Is she dreaming or is she double-dreaming?

What's the last thing she did?

Fell asleep in the car. Matt carried her upstairs. Took off her clothes–

a low growl shakes the room

–so she wouldn't overheat in the night. Her friend spoke downstairs. She thought about Lucy. Caroline brushed her teeth and came to be and–

Turned the light off.

Caroline had turned the light off before she went into the bathroom. For that matter, this is Gloria's bedroom, not her friend's; she isn't even at her own house tonight, so how can she be in her usual bedroom? It's not like Damon could've snuck into Caroline's, spirited her out her friend's bed, only to take her back to the Gilbert house… And even if that is what happened, she strongly suspects he wouldn't turn the light on because little unsettles a victim more than being hunted through an impenetrable cloak of darkness.

So why is she at home? Why is it so bright in here?

Damn it all – she is double-dreaming… A dream within a dream. Talk about cliches and masochism. She's fucking Inceptioning herself.

With new understanding the corpse wasn't real, none of this is reality in any way shape or form, she smiles. Her head lifts itself of Damon's chest, though he doesn't stop rocking her. This is truly a proper dream-world, not the anemic, unmalleable dream-lite she's become used to since waking in the hospital. She can bend her surroundings to her will.

Her soul psyches her up with a sure whisper: I am a god.

Damon's everything chuckles irreverently. It's a familiar cadence, though she isn't sure why it should be – she's never heard him laugh before. He isn't mocking her supposed-hubris for long, she makes sure of that.

Gloria's bedroom slips away like it was a fabric backdrop and the rope holding it up has been cut. This is a set she designs – she is the architect of this world...or, at least, her memory is.

A haze of her life swirls around them like a tornado-cum-mirage. Music comes, mid-notes breaking bright colors across the ground, high-notes scattering pale points of light across a dusky sky, low-notes painting the ground below maroon and navy and forest green. The bedrock is slightly bouncy. Each of her steps – so much greater than normal gravity would allow – set a fresh rhythm to this nightmare-unwritten.

Mildred lets out a peal of delighted laughter. Finally, this is her place, the sort of palace of imagination she's been unable to forge since the accident. Damon, possibly her own creation or possibly having somehow invaded her mind, is bemused – she can feel it welling up below her feet.

It's little fun to dance alone, though… So Mildred undoes him with a kiss. It's not amorous but barely there – it's questing, searching, pushing. She slips between cracks of Catherine and chaos, Stefan and sanguinity and instability, Mildred and madness and miraculous impossibility…

She lets herself fall into his mind.

New places start to flow around them. Places she's never been during decades she wasn't even alive.

blood was always life
but blood became power

The din of an Elvis concert – screaming fans and air thick with the pulse of blood. Mini-skirts and fresh sound, and dark, dirty corners for darker, dirtier deeds–

when painted red
was the white flower

The view from the top of Everest. Icy chill and wind, and so far far far above everything that truly that this is the roof of the world. So high her problems can't have come with her, the ghosts must've turned back...except they didn't–

A yacht's teak dead tilted at a worrying angle as it turns into a breaking wave. The taste of salt and sweat and the rocking that's more than the ocean's pull–

alone there in the darkness
how it bloomed

A dark, smoky hotel room occupied by three scantily clad women. A bad day and a worse night, and a century behind there's an even worse night still waiting to be forgotten–

while shadows grim
encased its fellow tombs

A lakeshore and a moue of deep regret. Utter despair, heart barely beating, and there's just no reason to go on in this, a world crueler than the creatures that stalk it–

what was a dream by day
forsook the sun

A dirigible puffing out little balls of smoke over vibrant grasslands. A rare moment of peace, soon to be shattered as all such moments are–

and cares of the heart
were at last undone

A comet bright bright bright pulling its tail across the cloudless daytime sky. To come again, one day, when the seasons have turned over and over and over one another until they're dizzy and the cosmos is perfectly aligned–

It's all coming in too fast – too tumbling.

His mind's moving too fast to get a fix on anything.

STOP!

Her command takes hold of the world instantly. The spinning ceases, the haze of psychedelic images dissipating, clearing away to be replaced by insubstantial swirls of foggy, gray nothingness. It's not the same sort of nothingness Lucy tried to sunder her with, more the graveyard obfuscation seen in a b-rate horror flick.

Sprouting like briars, brown tangles of color wrap around themselves until layer upon layer of brick-like shapes are formed. Piece by piece, a hose builds itself. Dead grass pushes from an indistinct, whitish plane of ground, followed by sad-looking flowers, jagged gravel paths and forlorn, unkempt hedges. The sky above is nuclear-holocaust green and stars twinkle too clearly for noon; the weathered sundial standing a few feet away claims it's midday.

Nothing looks very...pleasant, or even realistic. Yet...she knows this place, has seen it before: It's the old Salvatore estate, now overgrown and all but gone; only disrupted forest and foundations and – proudly displayed in the school library – photographs remain as evidence it ever existed at all. In this scene, the buildings and gardens still stand, clear from overrunning flora and fauna, but it is...somewhat eerie. It's the way the light is cold and everything feels dead. Of course, it's also just a little bit beautiful, in that strange way the ruins of something once-glorious can make you feel sad and content at the same time.

No. Not here.

It's hard to say which one of them feels that. The thought is clipped and low, burrowing under the ground and making shuddery, shivering children of each grass blade, open-mawed monsters of each thorned, twisted rose bush. A river, murky as the one from her own nightmare, cuts through the back of the property, and she wonders if it had been there in reality or if it's of her own import, a manifestation of her fears following her into his psyche; perhaps, if tired and frightened enough, she would bring a freight train through the house like a regular Cobb.

The willow trees beside the water are bare, spidery branches arching up to a peak before falling limply like they ought. They lack the silver leaves that make willows so attractive. When she was a child, playing on the shore of Cranberry Pond, the willows were a haven for her – a place to hide and, blissfully alone, be found. The underneath of the great trees were like a whole other world, hidden from the real one by a curtain of leaves.

If a willow is bare, it offers no protection – no escape or reprieve. Why is it that in this dream-place the willows of his are naked? All the other trees at least have – curled up and dry – fragile skeleton leaves the color of rust.

You can't hide from yourself…

This time she knows the understanding is her own. Mildred has never been able to hide from herself, either, even when pretending so desperately to be someone else. Out in the waking world, she is small, emotionally crippled and mostly gliding listlessly through life. Does she intend to squander her dream-world doing just the same?

How much of this will she be able to recall in the morning? Any catharsis will ineluctably be swept away with her waking to the other dream-world, where people would think it weird if she asked them to call her Mildred, and even stranger she's so far gone she can't recall the names of her 'parents' half the time. She doesn't know who she is, she doesn't know where she is or what she should be doing...but by God, she knows how to dream. She's an armchair expert on this one.

So screw the dying trees and the scent of tuberose rising from the ground; no decay, no corpse-flowers to rain misery down on her fucking parade! This is her show, opening night, and if she wants she can fly… Not as a bird – because she doesn't want to be a bird again – as a girl, long limbs and heavy hair, spinning up up up into the air.

I'm a leaf on the wind
I'm a leaf on the wind
a leaf on the wind, her mind chants, desperate to be...not weightless, per se, but this thing of joy that's scarcely affected by worthless things like gravity or logic. She's been such before and she will be it again – a life in Unreality can't take this one pleasure from her, it cannot take her dreams.

I'm a leaf on the wind
I'm a leaf on the wind
I'm a leaf on the wi–

Wait – no, that's not the best take-off mantra. The last time a guy went with that he ended up with a big pole through his chest and broke even the hearts of the douchiest critics. If anyone in this dream god a spear of wood through them...well, then they'd die – immortality be damned.

Damon rears back. His eyes narrow, flash threateningly, flicker with...is that fear, uncertainty?

She's freaked him out. Quite an achievement.

You know, is his only thought. You can't know, howcanyou know? Suspicion resounds through the gardens of the old Salvatore Mansion, chased by juddering growls of, What are you? How are you doing this?

The man comes at her with vampire speed.

She flickers and disappears before he can catch her, re-solidifying behind him. Over here… her mind sings tauntingly, drunk on the power of this mind-place.

If blood is power then dreams are a power greater.

It's a game of cat and mouse, thrilling in its execution. Her voice is thrown about, hiding amongst the hedges, rattling off the house's many windows. Her body can be incorporeal because she wills it to be so. Her ideas and desires and wishes act as traps, slowing him down.

With each difficulty he faces, Damon's determination to get at her only seems to grow. So, though, does his dawning horror and disbelief. This is his mind-place, after all, and she's strong enough to be the one pulling its strings. For all he knows she could rewrite him from in here.

What are you? he demands again – the words boil up from the very pit of his soul.

The architect, she says.

She perches herself onto the edge of the sundial and he takes a step in her direction, probably lead by the few traces her movements leave upon his psyche. It's his mind… Nobody can walk in another's world without imprinting themselves there.

She lets him get quite close, her toes curling comfortably into the verdant, dandelion-bedecked grass spreading out in a circle around her. Here, in this place of him, everything is dead but she herself and that she touches. In contrast to the blooming, smoothly unfolding swathes of color she brings to the landscape she's in direct contact with, the places Damon treads are even fouler than the rest of the garden. It may be to do with how he perceives himself in the privacy of his own mind, but the ground below him isn't merely a drought-stricken yellowish brown but caked with something dark and thick she thinks must be blood. He leaves a trail of destruction through the dreamscape, just as he tends to leave in the waking-world.

When he's so close to Mildred she can feel his breath, angry and humid, stirring the air, all that's physical about her – which, in this place, is to say nothing – blows away. She's so much smoke spreading between an idea of atoms as the Lucy-Nithling had in TFI's bathroom. Her all performs an evasive, acrobatic move to the circumference of Salvatore Estate. Like ash, parts of her coat the windows and the tiles of the roof, settles on flowers and deadened grass, and the time on the sundial she left behind spasms and shifts until it reads thirteen minutes since two.

Damon's resulting expression is frustrated and furious.

Giggle high and haunting – ephemeral like that of a creepy, disembodied girl in a cheesy horror movie – Mildred is less tangible than even an idea of a leaf on the wind can be. Cheshire Cat grin hanging amongst the sickly green sky and pulsating stars, her presence hovers just on the edges of his mind now, skittering away whenever he tries to get a proper fix on her.

You think you're clever, hiding from me in my own head – but out there… The threat hangs unfinished. Anger and wonderment collide… It's his and hers both...and resurging is his desperate, delirious need to know: What are you?

One last jibe – mystery – before she withdraws into her own mind, leaving his free and unfettered. (She doesn't want to be trapped here – one layer of Cloudland's enough, thank you very much.) A tinkling laugh – one so much more like the woman she used to be than the girl she's become again. A golden dress, shining like the sun, and a blinding halo that's big enough to encompass the whole sky.

Fifty foot tall now and grinning like a loon, she announces:

Weren't you listening the first time?

Everything rushes away, so many ideas like sand slipping through the fingers of her mind, and her parting line echoes dramatically into him in a way that greatly pleases her theatrical nature.

...I'm a GOD