You have all been asking for this one for so long, I'm nervous about posting it- I just hope it lives up to expectation! Thank you for reviewing and reading, and stay safe x

Rachel cursed as she blindly made her way down the corridor, one hand following the wall as she stepped tentatively. She had no idea why the lights weren't working, or why it was quite so dark, but she couldn't seem to find her way out. Which was ridiculous, because she knew this school like the back of her hand and she should be able to tell where the exit was.

It was so silent, and she was alone. It usually wouldn't bother her, but suddenly the corridor in front of her seemed like an abyss, her breathing sounded in her ears, too loud and fast and she wanted nothing more than to be away from this. It was like something was there in the darkness, unseen and unheard but still around her, waiting. Waiting for what, she wasn't sure and she didn't want to find out- she just wanted to get out of here, away from whatever was circling her.

The sudden searing against her back had her screaming.

Flames licked at her, smoke thick and choking and somewhere nearby she could hear a child crying for help, but she couldn't even tell which was up, let alone where it might be coming from. The smoke filled the air, turning the inky darkness to a thick, cloying grey that suffocated her even as she felt the heat scorching her skin. She'd been through this before, she couldn't breath, couldn't move, thought she might be screaming but she couldn't hear herself over the roar of the flames and oh God she was burning alive-

"Rachel!"

She could hear it, longed to reach for it. How was she supposed to follow a voice when she couldn't tell where it came from? She shrieked, trying to break free from that smoke that was pinning her, writhing and fighting the flames as her eyes stung and her vision was clouded.

"Rachel!"

For a moment, she truly didn't know if the voice was real or not. Eddie's voice was a welcome reprieve from the dark, but the stark fear was there that it was a trick, a figment of her imagination. She fought harder, tears streaming down her cheeks as she choked and suffocated, the flames beginning to engulf her.

Until something cold and wet splashed onto her face and she spluttered, eyes flying open as she gasped in a panicked breath. For a moment, she was still in the fire, eyes not seeing the room around her as she gulped in air. "Rachel, please!"

Eddie. At the same moment she thought it, she became acutely aware of him. She wasn't pinned, but wrapped in his arms, her back against his chest and his lips close to her ear. In bed, in their bedroom, just able to see the shapes of the room through the darkness. The room which was very much not on fire. She shuddered, let out a sob. "I'm awake, let me go."

Immediately, he released her. Rachel lurched forward out of his arms, stumbling to the window and throwing it open, knuckles white as she clutched at the frame. Her breathing hitched, ragged in her own ears as she tried to muffle her sobs.

"What in God's name just happened?"

She didn't reply, stomach sinking as she realised there was no way she could get out of explaining this one. Eddie would never accept any excuse she could give, and truthfully perhaps he shouldn't- she'd apparently just scared him half to death, judging by his tone.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and she flinched violently. Eddie froze, unsure whether moving would do more harm or good as he looked at her tentatively. "Rachel?"

"I'm fine."

At that, he scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Please Eddie..."

"Don't you dare!" he snapped, and knew inwardly that he was reacting out of fear and shock, but couldn't find it in himself to stop. "You just woke me screaming like you were being burnt alive- you're not fine."

Rachel was silent for a few breaths. "I was."

He looked at her oddly. "What?"

"I was. Being burnt alive."

Her words hung in the air. Behind her, horror was creeping over Eddie's expression as he realised why she'd been screaming, ice pooling in his veins as his stomach knotted. "Rachel..."

"Please don't."

He stepped forward, sliding his arms around her and ignoring the way she stiffened for a moment, instead simply holding her until she let out a sob, turning and collapsing into him. Her face buried into his shoulder, and he could feel her tears soaking into his top as she shook against him. Suddenly, a lot more was making sense and he didn't like it one bit. "How long?" he demanded roughly, his need for answers overwhelming everything else. "How long has this been going on for?"

"Eddie…"

"No more lies, Rachel!"

She ducked her head, looking away from him. "A while," she admitted reluctantly.

"How long is a while?"

She pressed her lips together for a moment, but exhaustion had settled into her bones and she couldn't find the strength to try and perform any sort of damage control. "Not long after you turned up on the doorstep to tell me about Lacey."

Unseen by her, Eddie's jaw dropped. "That was months ago!"

She remained silent.

"How many?" he asked weakly, an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach. How had he not noticed for all that time? Rachel shrugged minutely. The feeling only got worse, he knew that that meant she'd had far more than she was willing to admit to so easily. Eddie felt sick. "Rachel, how many?"

"I don't know. A few."

"Every night? Once a week? How often?"

She closed her eyes, the warmth of him against her doing nothing to quell the chill she felt. "Eddie please..."

"Tell me!"

"I don't know!" She tore from his grasp, whirling around as she ran her hands through her hair. "It's not like I've kept track! And they're not all the same! Most of the time they're normal nightmares but these ones... I can't always tell if I'm awake or not, or if what happened was real and even if I can tell once I'm awake, when I'm in there..." her voice cracked, arms coming up to hug herself and it was on instinct that he stepped forward once again to wrap her in an embrace. He could guard her from the darkness but how was he supposed to guard her from her own mind? Rachel hid her face against his shoulder, struggling to even out her breathing as Eddie closed his eyes, pressed his lips against her hair.

"It's okay," he murmured, "I'm sorry. It's okay, you're okay."

He could do nothing but hold her, But after a few minutes, he quickly realised that she was no longer trembling as an after effect of her dream, but of the chill of the room, icy compared to being under the covers. He smoothed a hand down her back. "Come on." He tried to guide her back towards the bed, but she resisted, shaking her head.

"No, Eddie..."

"Just to get warm," he soothed. "I know you won't want to sleep."

She still looked reluctant, but allowed him to usher her back under the covers, though she adamantly refused to lie down, remaining upright and looping her arms around her legs. He sighed, settling next to her. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She shrugged, resting her head on her knees. A flash of irritation ran through him, and he had to bite his tongue at the urge to snap at her. "Rachel."

"Because I didn't want you to know. Because it's embarrassing, because I know you'd worry, because it was my issue and no one else's, not even yours."

"And what about when it became my issue?" he questioned sharply. "When it began to affect us, our relationship? Because all of a sudden a few of our arguments over the past couple of months make a lot more sense!"

She flinched at his words. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not asking you to be sorry. I'm asking you to explain." He reached out, turned her face towards him. "Rachel, I don't understand."

She blinked rapidly, turning her head away again so she didn't have to meet his gaze. Eddie ground his teeth together, running a hand over his hair as he desperately tried to clamp down on the frustration welling up within him. "Rachel, please…"

"I can't." She swung herself back out of bed so quickly he almost didn't have time to register that she was going, until she was already out of the room and he could hear her footsteps on the stairs. He groaned, collapsed backwards against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling as he wondered where on earth they were supposed to go from here.

W.R.

Downstairs, Rachel collapsed onto the sofa, head dropping into her hands as her eyes burnt and her throat swelled. The house always felt different at night. Maybe it was because every sound was so much louder, or because the darkness cast peculiar shadows in the corners of rooms. Maybe it was simply that the world outside was so much quieter than it usually was.

She sighed, resting her head backwards against the cushions as she regretted leaving the warmth of the bed upstairs for the freezing living room. But as she made the movement, her gaze fell on something that had her breath hitching.

The silly little duck statue Eddie had bought her sat on the mantle, pride of place next to a photo the two of them had taken at the beach. She hadn't even realised she'd stood when she found herself across the room, running her fingers over the head of the mother duck as the lump in her throat grew larger and larger. That ridiculous little figurine, that didn't match anything in her house, wasn't in either of their tastes but that Eddie had brought anyway.

She was moving before she'd even consciously decided to.

The last thing Eddie had been expecting was to suddenly hear movement in the doorway of the bedroom and look up to find Rachel hovering there, arms wrapped around herself. "Are you okay?"

Her expression crumpled. Everything he could have said, and his first instinct was to be concerned for her. "No," she admitted quietly. "I never am after I have one of these."

She could practically see him straighten, suddenly paying a lot more attention. "Okay…" he accepted, watching her carefully. She came to perch on the end of the bed, still hugging herself.

"They're not all the time."

His gaze never left her. "Then when?"

Rachel shrugged a shoulder. "There's no rhyme or reason to it. I can't predict them or anything."

"But they're regular?"

She hesitated. "Not weekly or anything. But… I've gotten used to them."

He nodded, unsure of why she was suddenly being so open about it but unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Rachel… why didn't you tell me?"

She hugged herself tighter, closing her eyes. "All the reasons I said earlier. And half a dozen more. I didn't want to worry you, Eddie, and I didn't want you to know. This is not your problem."

"Rachel, darling." He looked exasperated. "When you wake up screaming next to me in the middle of the night, it's both our problems."

She flinched, a wave of guilt hitting her. This had been one thing she'd never considered when she'd agreed to move in together, the possibility of it arising as a problem had never even occurred to her. Perhaps if it had, she could have avoided all of this. "I'm sorry."

"Sweetheart, I don't want you to be sorry," he said in frustration. "I want to help you."

"I don't know if you can."

He sighed. "Would you at least come under the covers? I can practically see you turning blue."

That at least received a faint smile, and she quickly crawled in next to him, startled slightly when he drew her into his arms without warning. "We'll figure it out," he murmured, and she was silent for a long moment.

"You can't fix everything, Eddie."

"I can try."

She huffed out a laugh, pressing her face against him as his fingers drew patterns against her. It was startling just how comforting it was to be laying here with him, and suddenly she regretted not confiding in him sooner. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"Not telling you. Lying about it."

He had to bite his tongue, taking a careful breath before he replied. "We're supposed to be a partnership, Rachel. This... this you should have told me about."

She closed her eyes against the guilt that swirled within her. "I didn't want to hurt you!"

"Why would it have hurt me?"

She stiffened, realising what she'd just revealed. Her mind raced as she tried to come up with a reason, an excuse, anything to stop from having to tell him the truth, from hurting him so badly.

"Rachel?" he insisted, pulling away to look at her through the darkness. He could see the panic on her face, and felt his stomach drop as he began to put the pieces together. She didn't want to hurt him, a few weeks ago her dream had made her angry at him. Air was suddenly hard to come by. "Rach... am I in your nightmares?"

She closed her eyes. "Not... not all of them."

"So some of them?" His voice rose, out of distress rather than anger. But he instantly knew she hadn't taken it that way when she flinched minutely, stiff as she didn't move a muscle. "Rachel?"

"I'm sorry."

He closed his eyes. "Don't... don't be sorry for something you can't control. I just... what are the dreams about?"

"Don't ask me to tell you that."

"That bad?"

She flinched again, and made to roll away out of bed. But this time, his reflexes were faster and he shot a hand out to stop her. "Stop running away!"

She stilled, her breathing ragged as he sat up properly, instantly regretting his harsh tone. "I'm sorry. I just... please talk to me?"

Her voice was raw and shaky, face turned away from him. "I can't."

"Why not?"

She closed her eyes. "Because you'd never forgive me. Or yourself, for that matter."

"How can you even say that?" he demanded. "After everything we've gone through? Everything it took to get here?"

"Fine!" she snapped, wrenching away from his grasp. "You want to know? You want to know how you left in the middle of the night, how I woke up to a cold bed and an empty house and I was so convinced that it had happened that you scared me the next morning when I realised you were beside me? You want to know how in every single dream, I end up being left alone? How many times I've seen you choose Melissa over me? How I've watched you turn your back on me and walk away while I was screaming for help? Is that what you wanted to know?"

She swung her legs out of bed but remained sat on the edge, face buried in her hands as Eddie could only remain were he was, bile rising in his throat. She was right- he regretted asking now, wished he'd never heard the words that had just come from her mouth but there was no way for her to take them back, however much he might have wished otherwise and his heart felt like it might shatter from the grief and horror.

Rachel was trembling, shoulders shaking in a way that told him she was crying. His stomach twisted painfully. He shouldn't have pushed her, not while she was still so fraught from the aftermath of her nightmares. Oh so carefully, he shifted and settled into his knees behind her, wrapping his arms around her tightly. She jerked, stiffening, lowering her hands and turning her head just enough to look at him in shock. He tightened his grip. "I love you," he said simply. "Nothing is ever going to change that."

She let out a sob, one hand rising to cover her mouth as she twisted, buried herself into him. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Not for this." He pressed a kiss to the side of her head, rocked her gently. "We'll figure this out, I promise."

She drew back just enough to look at him in shock, disbelief written onto her face and the only thing he could think to do was kiss her gently. He wasn't angry, didn't blame her, loved her with all his heart.

She kissed him back eagerly, hand sliding round the back of his neck to pull him closer and what was supposed to be comforting deepening into something more. Eddie gathered her to him- this he could do, he realised. With this he could comfort her.

They ended up sprawled backwards across the bed, Eddie hovering over Rachel. Her cheeks were wet, and he knew that if the light had been better her eyes would be red rimmed and haunted. He could only kiss her again, willing away all of the hurt and upset and remnants of what she'd dreamed. Hands roamed and she clutched at him desperately, kissing him almost too hard as she urged him closer. Yes, he thought as he carefully stripped her top upwards, trailing kisses over her as he went. This he knew how to comfort her with.