Title: Nightmares 2
Author: AngelaDex
Pairing: Score/Helaine
Fandom: Diadem: Worlds of Magic
Theme: #29 – the sound of waves
Disclaimer: I own Diadem! Really! Am I lying? Yes! But I wish I weren't…

Blood. A room awash in blood. And none of it hers.

The dream was always the same.

(The nightmare was always the same.)

In the beginning, when this all started— her trouble controlling her powers, her ventures in reading the minds of those around her, the onset of a promised Dondarian winter— Helaine would jolt awake in horror and screaming.

Now, she calmly opened her eyes. Disconcerted, certainly, but no longer surprised. She supposed she should be more…shocked. Or worried, certainly, since she'd had the dream recurrently for so long: the better part of the incessant Dondarian Winter, which had lasted an eternity, it felt like.

A room awash in blood. And none of it hers. And the distinct surety of…what? What emotion woke her? What was it that Helaine found so unsettling? Glee? Certainly disconcerting.

It was early. Arguably far too early to begin such musings, but, she justified, the winter disguised the regular cycle of the day. Winter, in this realm, lasted so much longer than the winters she was used to at home. They hadn't had one, in all the time she'd lived here. They didn't have them regularly. But when they came, they lingered. And they brought with them a darkness that covered the land like an oppressing veil.

It was Score who had made the connection first: the weather affecting her so deeply. It was a common occurrence on Earth, he said. 'Seasonal depression,' he said. He got Jenna off on a quest to make medicine for it, he got Pixel off on researching something called 'psychology' that made Helaine wary. And got herself assigned companions throughout the day.

So she wouldn't feel lonely, Jenna said.

So she wouldn't slip into dark thoughts, Pixel said.

So she wouldn't do something stupid, Score said.

Like kill herself was unsaid. (It had been a long time since Helaine needed something to be said aloud in order to know it.)

Suicide was a dishonorable death. Not worthy of a warrior. Better for a warrior to die in battle.

Is this not a battle?

Helaine dislodged the thought.

(It had weight, and was hard to shift, but Helaine wasn't about to be taken by things as fanciful as thoughts, she wasn't weak.)

She discarded her nightclothes in favor of a clean tunic and breeches. With hardly a thought, water appeared in her basin.

Summoned, from the castle's stores. Moved along by helpful, makeshift sort of channels that had all but etched themselves into the stone for Helaine's wanting them to.

An unforeseen use of her power over Earth, and one that Helaine had hardly needed to think about. Though her Chrysophase was locked away, along with her Agate and her other amplifying gems, in a special box the Unicorns had in their possession.

A box that was supposed to cut off Helaine's connection to the gems, and thus, Helaine's access to their amplification of her powers.

(Helaine still used her magic without thinking. Effortlessly. It had turned into a point of worry for everyone when she did so in their presence.)

She performed the mechanics of washing her face and hands, indulging in an oil Jenna had made for her hands that held a calming scent she couldn't place.

Awkwardly looking herself over in the glass above her wash basin, she clearly incanted the spell Shanara had found for her—Helaine despaired of her hair, having always been awful with weaving and braiding, and even more awful with asking others to do the weaving and braiding—and watched with satisfaction as her hair smoothed from its sleep-muss, and then worked itself smartly into a long queue.

There. She was almost ready for the day. An accomplishment, Pixel had been saying recently. An accomplishment to be celebrated, as though the fact that it expended energy, and that Helaine did it anyway, was something worth celebrating.

(It was nonsense. Helaine was a warrior. She would do what needed doing. It didn't matter if she felt like it or not. She wasn't about to rest like an invalid for this alleged sickness Score claimed she suffered from.)

Besides. She had come to relish the few hours of sunlight still offered, and, she had been informed to her consternation, that even that would eventually go away. The sunlight. This realm was unused to human inhabitants who cared about such things. The Unicorns had never minded the darkness, and the Dragons would hibernate. Any magic-user in the past, upon finding Dondar in all of its ungodly-long winter splendor, would likely find another world with a more temperate climate.

(Helaine would gladly sacrifice sleep for the chance of soaking in each and every glorious sunrise while the option still remained to do so.)

She maneuvered thick leather over her head, threading her arms through the proper holes. The chain mail offered better protection, but had long since needed repairing, not to mention the…ah…resizing.

(It seemed that the mail she'd stolen when she was twelve, trying to pass herself off as a boy, didn't serve the same function for protecting a body significantly older than twelve. She kicked herself for not appropriating armor that fit her when she had taken her companions with her to Ordin to end their feudal war. Not that she would have had much choice in fit: they didn't make armor for women.)

The leather chest piece had been something she borrowed from Shanara, who had similar armor made by the Centaurs of Rawn for their hunters and warriors.

At least it had been made for a Centauress. A Centaur woman warrior. Not a lad of twelve.

She adjusted and buckled the straps for a proper fit, which was harder to do than it should have been.

(She kept fumbling the buckles because her damned hands were shaking. It had been a dream, why did she have to suffer like this every time? The racing heart, the shaking hands…)

The blood wasn't hers.

Her hands slipped, cinching the last sash—

they were slippery and thick with blood—dripping with blood—and none of it hers

—and she swore, examining her hands (they were clean and dry, she was just letting her mind trick her like an imbecile) and finishing the fastening, tugging at her tunic, under the armor, straightening wrinkles she couldn't see.

A blow to her stomach, robbing her lungs of air—a kick—followed by the rest of a beating that had been promised and held, for later.

Helaine shook her head, and the image dislodged easily.

Because this wasn't an image borne from Helaine's own thoughts or nightmares.

(Because it was Score's. Of course it was Score's.)

*Score, it's a dream,* she said immediately, communicating directly to his mind, despite her Agate being locked leagues away, through the snow, under protection of the Unicorns.

She wasn't wearing her arm-guards, nor her boots. She wasn't armed against an attack.

She left, anyway, at a quick trot, heading toward Score's room.

Score awakened anticipating a blow, breathing through clenched teeth even as he blinked reality in, erasing the nightmare.

"Score, it was a dream," came a voice from the doorway.

He looked. Blinked. Closed his mouth, breathing hard through his nose, instead of his still-clenched teeth.

It wasn't a dream.

*It was,* came the immediate rebuttal to what he hadn't said aloud.

You gonna argue?

It was Brio's voice, in his head, making Score's heart pound in terror, and he tried to let his gaze focus on what was here, what was real, and flinched, hard, when he took in a figure coming through the doorway—

—mad, he's mad, shit he's mad, fuck—

—wrapping him in an embrace, soft and smelling like flowers and leather and—

"It was a dream. You're not hurt. It was a dream."

*I know it felt real, I'm sorry I confused you, I'm sorry you thought I was going to hurt you.*

—murmuring soft words and letting them fill his mind, trembly-scared like he was.

Score reciprocated the embrace, haltingly and belatedly, blinking rapidly, trying to shift reality into place.

Blinking blurriness out of his eyes, feeling hot tears push down his face, not registering the release of his coiled emotions for what it was.

His heartbeat slowed its thunderous rhythm to something more normal and even, and he felt pressure in his jaw ease as he finally unclenched his teeth.

"—we're safe. We're all right. It was a dream."

Score registered the voice, connecting that he was hugging Helaine.

She smelled nice.

"Wuhzzaah mmmemory," he rasped, clearing his throat. "Nnnnightmare."

He felt her stiffen, then relax back into the tight embrace, her chin resting on his shoulder, her head sort of…nuzzling into the crook of his neck. "Mine, too," she rumbled back. "Just…not mine."

Score let himself relax further, let reality firmly replace what had been a very realistic dream. He felt the familiar textures of Helaine—the soft tunic on her shoulders, and the oiled leather buckles and straps of new armor piece she'd borrowed from Shanara, who was used to wearing such things in her ruse as Amaris, on Rawn.

Score cleared his throat, again. "'t's early," he said, as clearly as he could. "Yer dressed 'n ready already."

Helaine didn't reply, just hummed in a vaguely agreeing sort of way.

"Nnnightmare?" Score asked, trying to pull away, to pull back, to look at Helaine's face, but she was being stubborn and inexplicably cuddly, so he didn't try too hard. "That…that creepy one? Th' blood 'n all?"

A nod that Score felt in differences of pressure on the space between his neck and shoulder.

"A memory," Helaine murmured. "A horrible one."

"Not your memory," Score clarified, confusion furrowing his eyebrows.

"Eremin's, I'm fairly certain," Helaine said, after a beat.

They stayed there, huddled together, sitting on his bed, wrapped in a hug neither was ready to release. It was really nice, actually. Score decided they should do this more often. Hugging. Without letting go. It relaxed him faster than almost anything, and he felt perfectly content, now, felt himself ready to surrender to sleep again, if he wanted to.

"Your hair," he mumbled, one of his hands plucking at the end of the braid. "It's not all in a knot! You can braid, now?"

Helaine groaned as he laughed, pulling away, at last, rubbing her hand on her cheek when it brushed his jaw. "You have scratchy whiskers," she frowned, and Score's hand came up to his face.

"Needa shave," he muttered. "I wonder if there's a spell. I hate shaving. Freaks me out."

Holding any sort of blade to his own throat left him feeling deeply unsettled.

"Mmm. Grow a beard," Helaine smiled, indulging in a stretch, sitting straighter and extending her arms. "Then you don't have to shave."

"Idea has appeal," Score said at length, yawning. Tony was clean-shaven. Brio was clean-shaven. Who said Score had to be?

Then Score grimaced. "Wait, but then I'd look like your dad. Eww, or Dafyd. Or Tyrus. Gross."

Helaine laughed outright, and Score smiled, rubbing a hand over his face, wiping at the faint traces that tears had left.

It was Helaine, who initiated the kiss, leaving Score flummoxed, but not unpleased. It was gentle. Safe. Like the hug had been.

It wasn't like they had kissed in the past. There was no undercurrent of dominance or fervor.

It wasn't a kiss shared for lust, or even for pleasure, feeding a physical desire as some sort of inevitable bridge to intimacy that they had not crossed, of yet, since talk of that usually seemed to lead to marriage, bringing attention to the still-unaddressed conflict of their different historical standards. (Because Score didn't want to get married, yet, he was barely seventeen, but Helaine viewed the same age as positively ancient, for a maiden.)

Score couldn't help but wonder if this was the way you kissed someone you'd already settled down with. And done all the heat-of-the-moment, passionate stuff with.

Maybe this was the way kisses were supposed to be. When you loved someone beyond the horny teenager stage. Like…the sound of waves, on a beach. As compared to the sound of a waterfall.

Man, maybe Score had lost his sex appeal. He was already old, having old-man kisses.

Helaine pulled away, half laughing. "You are ruining what is otherwise a perfectly lovely moment with thoughts like those, young man," she said, though she was still beaming.

"Sorry, sorry," Score said, holding up his hands. "I do it out loud, too, I'm told. You just have the misfortune to hear the unfiltered version before it comes out of my mouth."

"We are going to lay here together," Helaine said matter-of-factly, scooting to the far side of his bed, patting the place beside her, "and you are going to be as virtuous as though Dafyd or Tyrus were here," she said, and Score made a face. "I am going to listen to your heartbeat, and we can kiss, so long as the avenue of thought doesn't stray anywhere it shouldn't," she continued, arranging Score's pillows to her liking, "and we are going to wait for the day to begin properly."

"Oh, we are, are we?" Score interrupted her pillow-arranging before she took the best ones, claiming a few for himself, laying on his side to face her, even as she came to lay right next to him, pulling his arms where she wanted them to go, facing him in turn, and sharing his pillow, though she had plenty of her own.

"And in the morning proper, we are going to brainstorm with Pixel about a more drastic plan to fix my problem, because I don't like sharing dreams with Eremin," she murmured, and kissed him, again.

Score was fine with his old-man kisses if he got to sleep with—um. Well. Next to—Helaine.

"Maybe we can go to Jewel," he said against her mouth when they paused. "Chuck something at Eremin. Make you feel better."

Helaine smiled into the next kiss.

Score counted it as a win.