Disclaimer: I do not own W.I.T.C.H. or any of its characters in any shape or form.

Note: this is based off the cartoon series.

So, guess who's not dead? And no, it's not one of the character's I may have decided to kill off… (Okay, not that cruel, but hey, give a guy a break… ;). Anyway, I was going make this a chapter with Matt as has been requested by a few of you but I've got a few questions first – see the end for more. Also, sorry if the quality is a bit rough. Haven't written this for a while. Other than that, enjoy.

He was dead tired, even he could admit that (albeit with a shiver at the wording). His eyes just would not allow themselves to stay shut.

Or, more accurately, his mind refused to sink into simple repose.

Blasted upstarts. Blasted Cedric. Blasted everything.

One trouble after the other seemed to just keep coming, scorning the very word of sleep as if such a thing should never exist. Caleb was just thankful that his nightmares had all but halted. He was still thankful, even when he had realised said halting was simply because he had been unable to get anything more than a ten-minute nap every five hours over the past few days.

For all his father's and his friends' and his Queen's concern, this lack of sleep was not because the young commander was neglecting himself. Nor was he avoiding sleep – at this point Caleb would make himself Irma's slave forever if he could get his hands on a solid, untainted hour of the stuff. Rather, he had simply not had the time. And every time he finally managed to find it, some other trouble had cropped up needing his immediate attention.

The upstarts (the youth had been avoiding calling them rebels where he could without giving away the clear discomfort the parallel caused him; the other times when it was unavoidable he had quickly called upon a well-used and trusted mask to hide all feelings save those of a concerned leader) were growing more restless. More than likely the restlessness would lead to a skirmish and they needed to be prepared, both to protect the Queen and the people. No one needed to go through another war. So many people had grown so sick of the second with…her and then Phobos and then Cedric that some had sought an end another way.

Caleb had sworn to himself to never follow such a path. Yet, he could not condemn those who had for theirs were the guts that it took to pull themselves from the same thing that kept sucking him back in. The same thing that kept haunting his sleep and the sleep of other former rebels. A cursed thing for sure that belonged in no Paradise.

Yet, with upstarts and confusion lingering on the edges of his mind, Caleb would not confidently call the life he was now living a Paradise as he had refused so often before. Paradises could and had fallen - he had witnessed it. He had lived it and survived it. Many others had not. The graves of the ones they could find, the ones they could remember had turned parts of Meridian into tombs.

The youth sighed and rubbed his face.

All he wanted to do was sleep. What was so hard about that?

It did not help that the rosemary growing on his windowsill merely made him 'sick with love' as Vathek had mocked and Drake laughed only that morning. He hadn't seen the one whom he regarded the most beautiful flower in existence for several weeks, busy and on separate worlds as they both were. Not her flowing cornfield hair. Not her enchanting laugh. Not her smile. Not her voice. Not even the tremors in the earth that occurred when she grew mad. Only the rosemary shared a part of her with him, and every time he breathed in the sharp, homely scent he remembered and missed her.

Perhaps he would be able to sleep if she were by his side. She was certainly more than capable of scaring off anyone who would have disturbed him.

But such thoughts were selfish and Caleb would rather such a beautiful flower away from trouble than near him. Even if he knew the flower could take care of himself, and him too on occasion.

Caleb turned on his bed, choosing to face his door instead of the plant swaying softly in the breeze that stirred through his open window.

A moment later and prickling on the back of his neck made him turn back to face it. A moment after that and the eighteen-year-old got up and shut the offending glass.

Settling back on his bed, the young commander ran both hands through his tussled hair. Now he had the time to sleep. Elyon had all but ordered it, declaring with his father's approval that any discussions about the situation in Meridian could wait until the morning. That had been hours ago, however, and Caleb was no closer to sleeping now than he had been then.

He blinked at his shoeless feet, halfheartedly hoping that the boring sight of the unwounded appendages would send his mind to sleep. He had no such luck.

Why can't I sleep? He rubbed his eyes. Damn! Why can't I sleep?

But the cry never left his lips. They were too tired to break the eerie silence now.

Suddenly restless, Caleb shot up and strode to his door. A pause was all it took before he wrenched it open, sending one last glance behind him and a wary look around in front before he stepped into the shadowed halls.

The path was a familiar one to him, even in his aimless wandering. The dark rooms of the castle always were more so than the ones cast in light: shadows had just about been his birthright after all, his entire childhood and the nurturer of his skills. Perhaps he would never be so comfortable walking in the light where he could be seen, spied, caught and-

The ex-rebel leader focused on the statues that lined the lengthy walls. Each stood as a peculiar but tasteful figure: damsels and knights and mothers and kings. Several of Elyon had also been made and showcased, more a tribute to the artists' skills than any indulgence in their latest Queen's ego. The girl was no Phobos after all, a fact for which thousands were grateful.

Maybe if I count these statues instead of sheep…

It was a wishful notion. And a foolish one if he were honest. Sleep was never so easy no matter how much Blunk and Irma made it seem on occasion. Sleep had never been an easy thing.

Flashes of memory, fragmented and young, rushed through the former rebel's head. Glimpses of men and women with blood gushing down their faces. Guards with horrific snarls on their equally horrific mugs. Closed spaces. Chained hands. Bound feet as his sunk to the bottom of a river. All nightmarish material. All material a little too real to be a nightmare.

This isn't helping.

Shaking hands ran through brown hair once more before clenching into stubborn fists. The quiet slap of bare feet was muffled by the thick carpets Elyon had run down the length of each hall. The material was soft, comfortable beneath Caleb's feet and if his eyes had been any more cooperative he would have laid down and slept atop it. Even if his discovery by anyone not Blunk or several of the younger maids annoyingly enamored with him (and that he still had to find a way to tell the one he was enamored with about) would have seen him banished to his room for the rest of the week.

The youth grunted. The shadows dancing upon the walls, mocking him in more ways than one strictly related to his inability to sleep, were doing nothing to improve his mood.

This was not the first time he had been up and about at night, wandering the palace as surely as the guards he sometimes trailed. To their credit, most noticed him after the ten minute mark (he rarely tried his hardest to disappear at such times for he was still trying to train himself out of the habit whenever he was within the palace walls). Aldarn somehow could always tell when he was about. Vathek and Drake, on the other hand, had a lot to learn about how quiet his 'loud mouth' could be.

His father was entirely different. The man never let on that he knew his son was skulking about, but his son knew he knew. In some strange way that knowledge was comforting.

Perhaps we should go fishing again, the youth thought absently. Minus Drake's lute.

It had been a while since the two could really sit down and just be together without duties pulling on their minds. The former rebel leader never remembered ever doing so whilst under Phobos' rule. Perhaps he remembered longing for it, but if so than it had been drowned out by other more prominent emotions like fear and anger.

Caleb scuffed his foot along the floor, glancing about him as the soldier within was wont to do. Then he paused. By sheer luck his sleepless wanderings had taken him straight to his father's room.

The pause grew longer as the young commander debated what to do. His father was likely asleep; the palace was as good as dead at this time of night (a thought that was not a comforting one). Something inside him wanted to go in, to check on his father and ensure the man was fine. To make sure that he was still there, a doubt that still struck the foolish child in Caleb's heart and shamed him to no end.

Another part of him hoped that the man was asleep, that a peaceful repose had blessed him as it had failed to bless his son that night. After everything the man had been through – the rise and rule of a tyrant, a budding Rebellion and dashed hopes, a false love, capture and slavery, betrayal and fallen Paradises; things Caleb didn't even want to think of happening to his father – he deserved to rest in peace. He deserved to not be woken or disturbed by the trivial problems of his son whose experience was nothing compared to his.

But another, more selfish and hidden part of the youth dared hope the man was awake. Caleb didn't know why. He refused to believe that it was due to a need to be comforted like babe for a problem he shouldn't even have, a leader, a commander as he was. Maybe, then, he had simply grown used to his father's presence once more, the quiet moments they could spend together in this apparent Paradise.

The eighteen-year-old bit his lip in thought. Maybe he was becoming accustom to that part of this fragile peace. A peace that was already breaking apart once more.

Or maybe I'm overthinking things that didn't need overthinking. It was not a raid he was planning. Not a scouting party or the rotation for those guarding the Queen. His father didn't need to be disturbed by him.

The closed door loomed in front of Caleb, dark and ominous. Something swirled in his gut, familiar and stressful. I should go in, just to be sure…

It only took a hand on the doorknob to enter. His father hadn't even locked the door.

Caleb didn't know whether to be furious or worried.

Red filled his vision as he stepped into the room, scarlet and coppery and wrong. For a moment it was all he could breath, all he could feel against his skin despite nothing being there. Blood had always been the worst of the fighting, the blood of others more than his own, the blood of those he had led to their doom. And now it was all he could see and smell and fell in his father's room.

Distantly, the former rebel wondered if he had stopped breathing or if he was simply breathing too fast for any air to make it in.

Yet, the feel of blood overrode everything. Even that distant alarm in his head that was making his hands shake like an earthquake. He couldn't think. He couldn't move.

Caleb's mouth opened like a gasping fish.

Then he seemed to return to the world as a single clear thought rung in his head like a bell.

"Father!"

Dashing madly to where the bed was situated, Caleb frantically glanced over the figure lying in it then breathed in relief. He could still feel blood, faint scratches on the palms of his hands dribbling the stuff in an absentminded way, but the torrent from before was gone. None of it was on his father who was still there, still breathing, still alive.

The eighteen-year-old could have sobbed.

But all was not at peace in the room. While his father was still breathing, sweat beaded his brow which was furrowed as deep as it could go. A groan fell from the man's lips, not so much pained as it was anguished. Another groan quickly followed and Julian thrashed in his sheets.

He was clearly caught in the grips of a bad dream.

Caleb didn't know what to do. It wasn't that he had never seen his father ridden by nightmares before; the years spent as a boy clinging to his father during a war, of sharing rooms in strongholds, of sleeping in places most sane people would avoid had ensured that neither could hide anything about how they slept. Even if they did deny such things when they woke up.

Instead, the issue lay with how to wake a former rebel and slave from a restless sleep. Caleb knew he had given several comrades a black eye during the Rebellion when he had been pulled from a vicious nightmare, mainly Drake because Drake was the only one brave (or stupid) enough to shake him awake. Even Aldarn had usually resorted to throwing things at him in place of using how own two hands. Those moments had never been good. Caleb had felt like he had failed his own fellow rebels, his own cause because of a weakness he couldn't control.

But this was not Caleb, it was his father and his father was clearly distressed.

Words frozen in his throat, Caleb simply shook his father awake.

"Gah!" Suddenly lurching forward, Julian's wide eyes shot everywhere: the door, the walls, his own bed and sheets. Finally, they settled on the pale face of his son where he had leapt back in something akin to fright.

All it took was a father's hand to cup the youth's cheek to steady its trembling.

The dream had been a bad one for Julian, even by a nightmare's typical standards. But it had also been a common one, one that had haunted him through the years as it had haunted every parent in the Rebellion whose child had taken up the fight. Even more so now for his own child had never relinquished that fight and maybe never would.

With another shaking gasp of air, the man pulled his kneeling son's forehead to his own.

Caleb, in turn, wanted to speak; his mouth moved like it was trying to form words. Yet, no sound came out. It was as though they had been stolen from him.

To see this man, his father, his idol for years and years even when he had been captured and enslaved, reduced to something like-

Like him at his worst.

Caleb's fingers sought his palms once again, this time in self-directed anger and anger directed to the forces that had reduced them to this. His father was supposed to be better than him, more able, above the ruin that war and rebellion brings. And maybe it was naïve of him to believe this – maybe it had been naïve of him to ever have believed it – but this was his father. If he couldn't defeat his demons, than what hope did his son have?

And Caleb's fingers slackened, not out of any conscious will of his own, but from the will of a sudden, crushing despair. He did not know how to help his father; he didn't even know how to help himself.

But Caleb had no wish to examine himself tonight (nor any night it was asked of him by friend or Queen or father). Instead he returned his focus to his father, watching him a moment further.

At the same time, his father watched him back.

Julian appraised the youth in front of him as his heart steadied to its regular beat, studying every inch of his son's being. The dark circles under his eyes were noted. The tussled hair appraised. The drawn and haggard look that had descended upon his face heavily in the last hours was regarded with care. Yet, for once, the father in him ignored the concern that came with such appearances. He had been afraid, even if it was in sleep alone, and now he wanted to simply revel in the relief that waking had brought him.

A toppled head was a toppled head, a horrific thing, but the head in front of him was securely attached. He would do anything to keep it that way, no matter how unrealistic the notion was. They were at peace, even with the upstarts. Perhaps that peace could last.

Or perhaps that peace would crumble into nothing as it had before. But come what may, the bearded man could not care less so long as his son was in front of him and whole.

The young commander shifted before him, looking up at the older man with wide eyes shining with concern and a fear he would no doubt deny if it were brought up. They seemed to be asking a question in their green depths, seeking an answer to a word the ex-slave had use over and over with him.

Yet, Julian said nothing, just sat there as he roughly drew his son into his arms continuing to wonder and revel in the fact Caleb was still alive, still there. For once the man did not worry about the tension that came with such an abrupt movement despite the youth's attempts to curb it. For once old thoughts did not linger on the now or the past or any future they might have had. The man simply focused on them being.

There were no words. There was just breathing and being, just rapid breaths slowing and racing hearts fading. The air seemed to hum with a sort of electric adrenaline more primal than even that stirred by a battle to the death, but still there were no words. In that moment there was no need.

Alright, firstly I hope you enjoyed this. It turned out longer than I thought it would, mainly because I got a bit carried away with a certain panic attack and suggestions of what it might have been triggered by… (sorry about that, if I made you think a certain someone was dead. Completely unintentional – kind of just happened).

Secondly, apologies for the long update but university (and my own original writing now that I've got some time) kinda takes priority over this. Plus I had a couple of ideas for other fandoms that I really needed to get out of my head. However, this is just a short spell of rain in the drought so to speak – I am on a mid-session break for a week which is why I had time to write this. However, university is not over yet so I will unlikely be able to write anymore for at least another month. So bear with me, please!

Thirdly, I know this one didn't really have what appears to be your favourite lovebirds (and mine) in it. The next few probably won't or it will only be a minor appearance unless someone gives me a spectacular suggestion. That said, the next chapter is going to have Matt BUT I need information:

1. Do Matt's parents know about his powers/etc.

2. Matt ended up with Will, didn't he? (sorry, can't remember exactly)

3. Any other details you think are important, please fill me in on

If any of you could answer one or more of these in a review or PM, I would be most grateful! In plain terms, the longer it takes me to figure this out the longer the next chapter will be on top of university time out from writing this. Not a threat, just a fact. I'm kind of stumped here. :-/

Fourthly, I'm running low on ideas at the moment for chapters. I have one or two backlogged aside from the Matt chapter and I think I can probably develop some if I take the time to, which I don't have right now. If you guys, however, have anything you want to see me write just leave it in a review or PM me. I can't guarantee that I will write it, but more often than not it'll probably turn up in some way. Just a few notes, however: no OCs unless they are minor, only canon ships, please no stark repetitions of anything I've already written (within reason – you can suggest content for another nightmare, or another panic attack with someone), and it needs to be related to this story specifically to be published in this story (i.e. Caleb's PTSD). That said, if you have something unrelated still mention it – I may write and post it separately.

Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed this. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, followed and favourited this story so far and thanks for your patience!

Please leave a review if you feel so inclined – I love receiving them!