Sorry that it took a year, but I'm finally back to finish my stories.


Interlude – Nightmares

Johan

His nightmares would not stop coming ever since that night.

They always followed the same routine. First came the singing. Next came the laughter. Then the bells. And finally, the screams. Sometimes he woke when the bells started chiming. Other times it was the screams that laid him awake.

Eventually he became terrified of the night. So he found himself all kinds of distraction to keep his mind conscious until it wore itself out and collapsed into the blissful abyss of nothingness.

At first he simply tried staying awake out of sheer willpower, waiting on the front porch until the first sunrays came down. Even if he failed and fell asleep half-way through, he would be too tired for dreams. Later he discovered that alcohol was a much more effective solution. That, however, soon became unfeasible after he enlisted in the army.

It was no matter. He found another distraction, and a much better one at that. War.

The easy fear of not knowing if one could live to see the next sunrise kept him up at night. If not that, the thunderous shelling and constant DEFCON alerts did the job just fine. But most importantly, the screams and cries surrounded him on the battlefields made the old ones from his nightmare seem so insignificant. He didn't notice when they had faded away.

But he knew exactly when they came back. It was the night after he saw her for the first time.

It would be much later when he finally learned that running away was never the answer.

Nikolaus

He rarely had nightmares and none he could recall from his childhood days.

Every night his mother would tuck him into bed and sing to him her favorite rhyme, when his father was overseas fighting in yet another man's war. He was too young then to notice the sadness in his mother's eyes or the slight choke in her voice whenever he proudly proclaimed that he would grow up to be a brave soldier just like his father.

Looking back, he felt himself unworthy of all the sweet dreams her lullabies had brought.

Even after he came of age and went through life, he never experienced many nightmares. Perhaps he did but merely forgot after waking up. He wondered how he was so often blessed with pleasant dreams.

He - who brought nightmares to others.

Zachary

His nightmares were always strange and often too childish, or so Konrad used to tell him.

One time he was lost in a maze trapped inside an hourglass. Another time he found himself on a carousel horse chasing after someone. When he was younger, he used to tell his most trusted friend all about each and every one of these strange dreams, even though Konrad would just call him childish and let out a little snort every time.

He regretted not realizing sooner what a child he had been. He really was behind Konrad in everything, including growing up, something he could not bring himself to blame on their age difference.

Soon he stopped talking to Konrad about his silly nightmares, and his friend never bothered to ask about them again. He consoled himself that it was because they were both busy preparing for the Military Academy.

Now all his nightmares had become too realistic. Yet he had no desire to tell anyone, including his best friend, for he feared they would come true.

Konrad

He never cared about things such as nightmares.

He did not understand why some people paid them so much attention. His friend Zachary had a theory once, about how the universe was trying to give us a warning through bad dreams. He had laughed then. How could such random and senseless fantasies be of any indication or significance?

To him, reality was a nightmare enough.

That was until she started plaguing his dreams.

End of Interlude.


A/N: Just a little backstory (and foreshadowing) for the guys.

I'll be posting Chapter 8 soon. Promise!