Disclaimer – Still not making any money.

Author Notes – Sorry that it took so long! Really, I don't even have an excuse! Sure, I've been busy and I've been to Egypt and all that but still, not an excuse! But, just to brag again, I've been inside Chefren's pyramid. How cool is that!?

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Chapter 11 – Night Terrors

Sometimes I remember the darkness of my past,

bringing back these memories I wish I didn't have.

- Linkin Park

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Scott remembered a time when he did not have trouble sleeping. It was ages ago, years, but he could still remember it. How it felt to just lay your head down on the pillow and the next thing you knew you were waking up with the sun shining in your eyes or the stupid alarm-clock going haywire on the bedside table. How rested you felt after a whole nights rest and you only occasionally remembered bits or pieces of what your dreams had been about.

He would admit that he was getting better again. The nightmares were getting farther apart and they were not as intense as they had been only six months ago. But they were still there and once in a while he would wake up drenched in cold-sweat and with his heart beating like crazy against his ribcage. And nightmares, well, they were not as easy to forget as dreams were.

Nightmares were of course not the only thing that had bothered him and he used to lay awake half the night, hardly daring to breath, before he was finally exhausted enough to succumb to sleep. That had slowly started to get better once he got to Horizon, long before the nightmares started to decrease, and even though he never fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow anymore it had been a long time since he lay awake half the night.

Of course, that all changed when Harry arrived.

Now Scott was once again finding it hard to fall asleep but not because he was afraid, no, now he lay awake because the boy in the bed next to him just would not get out of his head. He could not really pinpoint why he thought Harry was so fascinating but he was and it did not get any easier to ignore him when night-time was the time that Harry was practically the most alive. He was always so closed of during the day and the only time you saw any real emotion from him was when he got angry. But during the night, when he was asleep, he was an open book.

Harry did not seem to share Scott's troubles with falling asleep but he was ten times worse when it came to nightmares. He would toss and turn, moan and mumble and his face would express the fear, the sadness, the hurt that he experienced in the dream. Sometimes his mumbles would get loud or clear enough that Scott could make out words but never enough so that he could understand what the dreams were about.

And that was the reason he could not fall asleep but instead lay in his bed and watched as Harry tossed on the bed next to him. Harry was fascinating, for some reason, and Scott just could not figure him out.

A window rattled on the other side of the room and Scott spared a quick look out at the cloudy night before he turned back to Harry. The storm had been going on for days now and did not seem like it had planned on stopping any time soon which meant that all outside activities had been cancelled for the time being. No-one would willingly spend time outside in this weather and it was bad enough that they had to go outside when crossing between buildings. Daisy was of course ecstatic – or her kind of ecstatic – that there was not any sun but not many shared her joy.

"Mhmm, no . . ."

Harry turned on to his back, his face scrunched up in pain and his hands fisting in the sheets at his sides. He squirmed, feet kicking at some unknown threat before they calmed down again.

"Don't," he moaned and Scott could not have taken his eyes of him even if the world was ending. "Please."

He kicked one more time and then with a strangled cry he shot up in bed, eyes wild as he looked around the dark room.

Scott quickly closed his eyes. He did not want Harry to find him watching. He knew how sensitive he was about his own nightmares and how much he hated it when others saw so he would at least try to give Harry a little privacy as he calmed down.

Quick breaths were the only sound in the otherwise silent room and for a moment Scott feared that Harry was hyperventilating but after a minute they started to slow down to a more normal pace again. A soft shuffling followed and then the silent padding of feet crossing the room. He opened his eyes in time to see the door closing behind Harry's back.

He rolled on to his back and stared up at the ceiling. He still had not talked to Harry since that day by the woods – a few snappy comments here and there did not count – and he did not know if he had forgiven the other kid for it. He had just been making friendly conversation after all, something he was not exactly well known to do, and Harry had blown up in his face.

He did not know why but he had been upset about the way Harry's eyes had drifted over to Daisy all the time and maybe he should have minded his own business but it still did not give Harry the right to go all crazy on him.

Sneaking another glance at the door he rolled over on to his side. So maybe he had not forgiven Harry for that but maybe he did not have to. He still found him interesting and it had been surprisingly hard to stay away from him. It had been a long time since Scott had felt so connected to anyone else. Sure, he had friends here at Horizon and he, mostly, enjoyed spending time with them but there were something different about Harry. He felt . . . content when he was near.

He slowly sat up in his bed and stared at the door. Harry probably wanted to be alone right now but wanting and needing was not always the same thing. And Scott thought he might actually need to see Harry right now.

Decision made he threw the covers of and slowly crept across the room and out the door, only sparing a second to glance over at Ezra when a particularly loud snore escaped him.

Harry was sitting in the rec' room outside, curled up on an enormous armchair with a blanket wrapped around him. His eyes were distant, staring at the floor but not seeing it, and one of his hands could be seen peaking out from under the blanket and hugging it closer to his body.

He looked like the very image of a scared child and Scott felt a pang in his heart for him.

"You're just gonna stand there all night?"

Scott almost jumped in surprise when Harry spoke but managed to contain himself at the last second. The other boy had not moved from his huddled position and was still staring at the floor as if he was watching something only he could see. Taking a hesitant step forward Scott tried to catch his eye before he spoke.

"I thought maybe you wanted some company."

Harry hummed softly, the only sign that he had heard, and Scott took it as an ok to come closer. He moved slowly over to another armchair and sat down facing the other boy. Unsure what to do next he crossed his arms but then quickly uncrossed them again and left them loosely lying on this lap. He gave a quick, searching look around the room but did not find anything interesting and changed his view to looking out of the closest window.

He was not sure why he was so nervous all of a sudden. He was usually a pretty confident guy and it was not like he had never talked to Harry before. They had been on friendly terms before Harry's blow-up, might have even been on the way to being friends, but now it just felt weird. Scott did not understand it but he felt like he needed something from Harry that he did not know how to ask for. He did not even know what it was.

"I bloody hate this," Harry said suddenly and Scott looked over to see him frowning, eyes still on the floor.

"What?"

"This," Harry said. "Not being able to sleep. I'm fuckin' exhausted but I can't even sleep through one bleedin' night."

Scott did not know what to say to that, did not have any comforting words that he thought could make things better, so he just stayed silent and shifted his eyes to stare at the floor too. He saw his stepmother, felt the ghost of a touch and shivered.

"It's been so many years, you know, I thought it would get better."

Harry's words were only a whisper and Scott almost did not hear him. He looked up at him again and felt a small slice of fear at the distant look in Harry's eyes. The other boy had shifted his vision and was staring out over the room with eyes that watched something from a long, long time ago and Scott doubted that Harry would hear him if he called out. He knew what it felt like to relive memories you only wanted to forget and he felt scared for Harry's sake.

"All that nonsense about time healing all wounds, what a load of bull," he continued. "It never gets any easier." Harry shivered and pulled the blanket closer around him, his one visible hand disappearing beneath it.

A powerful roar echoed outside as the wind picked up even more strength but Scott did not notice, too transfixed by the boy sitting opposite him. His emotions were a conflicting mess. On one hand he wanted Harry to keep talking, to tell him all about what he had been through and resolve some of the mystery that surrounded him, but on the other hand he wanted him to shut up. To shut up and not let Scott in on the secret of what brought him here, to not let Scott see what could make such a beautiful boy so broken.

"I remember them saying that they loved me, that they would never leave me, but that doesn't make it better either. That makes it worse." A flash of pain crossed Harry's eyes. "They left anyway."

Scott shifted in his seat – not sure if he moved closer or further away – and his eyes were fixed on Harry's small frame. It felt like staring at a car-crash; wanting to look away and not see the disaster but not being able too.

"I can still hear him laughing," Harry's eyes closed tight as another shiver ran through him. "It's so cold. So evil. I couldn't do anything to stop him then and I can't do anything to keep him out now." His eyes opened again and Scott hated how those amazing eyes could look so lost. "I just . . . I just want him to be quiet."

The room fell silent again after that and Scott tried to relax the aching grip his hand had taken on the armrest without any success. He hated this. Hated how Harry was sitting so close and yet so far way and how there was nothing that he could do to help him. Scott had never been any good at comforting others and he had never felt as angry over it as he did right then.

"We were just going home," Harry said and his voice was nothing more then a whisper now. "Just going home and then we would have been safe. But they rammed us of the road and dad yelled but it was too late. So much blood."

Scott squeezed his eyes close, starting to regret ever coming out here, ever leaving his bed. He did not want to hear this. He did not.

"Mum dragged us out and she begged, crying and bleeding, that they would leave me alone but they laughed." Harry's voice was as distant as his eyes now, lost in the memory but dissociated from it. "They just laughed as they killed her. She never stopped begging."

He turned around suddenly and stared in to Scott's eyes. "They did not care. No matter what she said or how she begged they just did not care." His eyes were wild; fear, pain, sorrow and desperation all mixed in to one as he looked at Scott. "Why doesn't anyone ever care?"

Scott looked at him, feeling his heart break at the sight of the lost and broken boy in front of him. He did not know what to say to that. There was nothing he could say or do right now that would make Harry feel better or make him believe that there actually were people out there that did care and who would never want to hurt him.

As the storm kept blowing in the dark night outside the window the two boys just sat there – together but alone – lost in the silence.

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