+
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the Characters or references.
Notes: Well first I shall say that I am oh so happy people like my story! And thank you so much for all the lovely reviews! Secondly I will mention something I was supposed to say earlier which is anybody who should touch my house Gremlin shall suffer a most painful death (snuggles dark green leathery creature who fights with all its might). Also I may have to change my title. I just realized that I'm probably not going to be able to end this story the way originally planned and if so then the title won't have any point. When I figure out what I'll be changing it to I'll say so in the notes of the chapter before I change so you can all find it again. Or you can all just look up the author. This is my only story with multiple chapters so it should be easy to find anyway.
Chapter six
(Dream a Little Dream)
Jinx couldn't sleep, there was just too much on his mind, to many problems to worry over. Finals for school seemed to have snuck up on him yet again, oh the horror. He groaned at the thought of the upcoming history test. He hated history and the twenty-second century in particular was unbearably boring. The whole class was just memorizing dates and listening to some old fart drone on in a monotone that would send the most studious to sleep! What was the use of that? History never put food on your plate or got you a place to sleep.
He turned over and buried his face in the pillow. His bed was refusing to be comfortable tonight and Ethan was snoring again. Everybody else was just as overwhelmed as he was from the sudden cramming and ugly tests, so they were no help. Their new roommate was still giving them all the cold shoulder and it seemed the tension level in the room had risen several degrees.
Ugh, he could hear the bathrooms leaky faucet from down the hall. He shifted on to his side and punched his pillow. Drip, drip, drip, drip… he swore, one of these days he was just going to take a gun and shoot the thing. He aimed his finger at the wall and pretended to do just that. Then let his arm fall back with a sigh as the dripping continued.
Plus Neon had started having nightmares again; not as bad as last time, they were getting better. He flipped onto his back with a sigh and stared at the ceiling. He might as well give up; he wasn't going to be sleeping any time soon. Actually, he thought, lifting his head to look across the darkened room to where he knew Neon's lumpy form should be. He could just barely make out his huddled shape from the surrounding shadows. He was surprised his friend didn't have nightmares more often considering. He was pretty good at hiding it, but Neon had had bad time on his own. He had never told them what had happened or what he dreamt about, but for a long time Neon would wake himself up screaming. Now whoever was awake at the time (usually Jinx) would just nudge him awake if he started whimpering. He often wondered how Neon had survived at all, blundering and clumsy as he was. Yeah, Neon had had it much worse than him; he had been lucky. He turned his head to look at the other bed across the room from him.
Ethan always took it kind of personally when any of them had a bad time. Whether it was inner demons or just teasing and bullies at school, he considered himself responsible. He had even taken it upon himself to help Jinx make some friends, no easy task. Whenever any of them needed a laugh they'd picture Ethan all decked out in his hockey gear, face painted, looking fearsome, and wearing a flower apron. Ethan had tried his best to squash the image, but by that time it had been well established. He was still trying to get Odin to open up to them. Neon had followed Jinx's example and left him alone.
Ethan had never been on the streets, fending for himself, so he didn't see the ominous way Odin moved that the other two instantly picked up on. Jinx admitted he was intimidated, Odin wasn't the kind of person you really expected to see in the daylight. If Odin wanted to make friends that was up to him, but otherwise they would give him his privacy, and keep their necks intact. Besides, Jinx thought morosely, I'm not exactly the best person at making friends. I always make such a mess of things he mentally grumbled to himself.
He was so tired. He was almost drifting off when a noise from off to the side grabbed his attention. He looked up and peered through the gloom. Was that Neon? Jinx sat up and tried to make him out it the dark. Across the room Neon shifted under his covers and Ethan continued snoring softly. Neon began whimpering and tossing about restlessly. Jinx sighed and pulled back the covers intending to go wake him up; maybe it was just one of those nights. However before he could stand, Neon sat straight up with a gasp and looked around, searching for what had woken him up. Jinx caught his eye and Neon came over, stumbling across the room and plopping himself down beside him.
"Bad night?" Jinx whispered, pulling the covers back over his legs. Neon rubbed his hands over his eyes and fell backwards across Jinx's bed with a groan.
"Not one of the worst," he whispered back with forced cheerfulness. Jinx reached up behind him and turned on his reading lamp, blinking in the sudden brightness. Neon gave a dying gurgle and covered his eyes with his hand, "ugh, that there's cruel and unusual punishment." Jinx reached into his nightstand drawer and pulled his battered deck of cards,
"Shut up and deal," he said.
They had been playing for about an hour, Jinx was losing, and discussing various ways to murder the dripping faucet, when they heard another set of troubled noises. These were much quieter then the little whines Neon had made and at first the two couldn't tell where they were coming from. They carefully put their cards on the bed, face down, and listened. The little noises grew slowly louder and more frequent. They both turned their heads when Odin gave a sharp, tiny little cry and tossed his head. Jinx and Neon looked at each other, then back at their new roommate. Odd, Jinx thought, normally Odin slept like the dead. They watched uneasily as he grew more and more agitated in his sleep. Neon rubbed his hands against his thighs in an unconscious, nervous gesture.
"You think we should wake Ethan?" he whispered, Jinx nodded as Odin began to tremble and then started shaking with more force. Jinx stood up to go wake the snoring older boy. Ethan came immediately, after Jinx finally woke him up, the boy slept like a log. He came and sat on Odin's other side, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"How long did it take you guy's to come wake me up?" he asked, Neon glared.
"Hey that's not fair, we woke you up first thing," Jinx hissed at him. Ethan reached out and gently shook the sleeping teen, but instantly regretted it. Instead of quietly waking him from whatever dreams upset his sleep, the contact only agitated him further. Odin shouted and began thrashing about, as though fighting some invisible force. The other boys all went to hold him down, no longer attempting to be gentle, just trying to wake him up. Hopefully before they woke the entire building. Ethan was yelling at him to wake up and snap out of it, while Odin strained against their confining arms. He bucked underneath them, kicked, pushed, bit and shoved, anything to cast them off. Neon was thrown to the ground with a kick in the face, but Jinx and Ethan held gamely on.
Finally he managed to hurl Jinx off with such a force that the other boy flew across the room and collided with Neon's nightstand, spilling the contents onto the floor with a crash. Neon's swearing was being drowned out by Odin's cries. A strange tormented sound that sent shivers up their spines. It was almost preternatural in quality. An unusual combination of an agonized wail, a howl of rage and the laugh of a madman. Well, so much for remaining inconspicuous, Jinx thought shaking his head in an effort to clear it. By now the whole building must be awake. Neon pulled himself back up to help hold Odin down. At last Ethan leaned back for a moment, muttered what sounded like an apology and slapped Odin hard across the face. The reaction was almost immediate, the screams sharply cut off and the wrestling match came to a sudden halt.
"What are you doing?" A low, deadly voice hissed from beneath them. It was not a question, it was a demand.
"Wha? Uuuh," The two teens loosened their grip with startled grunts and looked down in surprise at the lighter form underneath. Two frost bitten eyes glared murderously back at them, causing them to gulp visibly.
"Get. Off. Of. Me!" he whispered darkly, each word pronounced slowly and completely. Ethan had no time to respond as he surged up between them, freeing himself easily. He slipped through their fingers like steam rising through a grate. He turned around to face them as soon as he stood. Neon had lost his balance and fallen on the floor again when Odin stood, but he quickly scrambling to his feet.
"Hey lighten up man!" he snapped quietly, trying to at least pretend that glare didn't make him want to soil his pants. "We was just tryin' to keep you from hurtin' yourself, or us." Ethan then stood, hands upheld in a gesture of peace.
"You were having a nightmare, we were trying to wake you up; that's all." A nightmare? That was…
"Impossible, I don't have nightmares." Not anymore, he thought. Ethan looked momentarily stumped. Neon began nervously brushing himself off, looking anywhere but Odin.
"Yeah, right, hey why else would we be trying to hold ya down, so we could steal your money? You're as broke as the rest of us," Neon whispered. Ethan shivered as the temperature in the room lowered. Odin never twitched, but some how it seemed his bearing grew even colder. From the look of it, Odin could think of plenty of reasons, and Ethan was sure he didn't want to know any of them.
A groan came from the other side of the room where Jinx was slowly extracting himself from the wreckage of Neon's bedside table. Odin spun around to face this new threat, confident that he could stop the two behind him before they made a move. He stopped however at the sight of Jinx stumbling to his feet and holding his head. No… did he? He must have thrown him against the wall. He stared at the debris around him, dazed. He couldn't remember a thing, not a thing.
If not for the obvious destruction he wouldn't have believed the others. He looked down to his right at the reading lamp on the floor, the smashed remains of its light bulb scattered about it. He must have knocked it over at some point. Damnit, not again! Not now, he thought, balling his hands into fists to stop their barely noticeable shaking.
The first time he'd woken up to find some broken object on the floor, he thought little of it, it wasn't a priority. But as the war continued, it kept happening, again, and again. He'd wake up bathed in sweat on the floor or the other side of the room. Things would be smashed or overturned and sometimes there was a dead animal. He'd search the bunker or abandoned building for an intruder, but there was never anyone there. Then that night, the night he'd had to bunk with Quatra. The night he found out that he had nightmares. The night Quatra found out and told him, through his newly busted lip… that he'd been screaming. He never knew what he dreamt about. Never remembered even having a bad dream, or what ever it was that made his heart beat at a faster rate. Quatra was the only one who knew, Relena and the others had probably guessed at some point, but Quatra was the only one who, knew.
The nighttime occurrences had stopped when he'd gone off on his own. He'd decided that they must have simply been a temporary, detrimental side effect of being around certain people. Easily remedied. Only now it was happening again. Now someone else knew, he thought, poking at the shattered remnants of his lamp bulb with a toe, and that was leverage against him. He should let them know the consequences of informing anyone.
Jinx watched Odin's glare slowly turn from the carpet to the rest of them, uh-oh. Jinx could almost see the wheels turning in the other boy's head. Neon gulped and Ethan shifted his feet. The dangerous silence was suddenly broken as the door to the hallway burst open with a loud boom, saving the three teens from an uncertain, but most likely painful fate. Anna stood framed in the doorway gasping for breath. Her fiery hair flying in all directions about her face and her chili pepper bathrobe flapping around her heels. Behind her the hallway was filled with frightened and worried faces, all peering around the doorframe. Anna took a rapid survey of the scene before her and swiftly turned to the curious onlookers. Blocking the view of the room behind with her body and partly closing the door she said,
"Back to bed, all of you." The children hesitated, some asking questions, wanting to know what was wrong. Anna would have none of it, "NOW," she barked out. The sound of retreating feet filled the air as they scurried away. Anna was known for being very even-tempered. It was rare that she would raise her voice to anyone, but when she did it was best to do exactly as she said. Anna hoped she hadn't frightened the other kids too badly, most likely she would have several rumors to quell tomorrow. She walked into the room of turmoil and shut the door firmly behind her. She needed all her attention on the situation before her and she couldn't be worrying about all the people in the hall at the same time. It looked as if things were going to be complicated enough on their own without all the extra people awaiting the outcome.
She placed her hands on her hips and waited. Jinx was avoiding her gaze, concentrating on righting Neon's nightstand without skewering his feet on any of the nick-knacks that now littered the floor. Neon was wiping blood from his nose, and seemed to have found something fantastically interesting on the ceiling and was giving it his full attention. Ethan was nervously shifting from foot to foot; probably feeling chagrined that he hadn't taken proper care of the situation. She had to look for Odin. He had vanished from his original place in the center of the room and it was a lucky glance that showed him disappearing into the back wall. Finally she said
"Well?" inviting someone to start explaining. Ethan glanced at the empty place where Odin had been standing and mumbled something under his breath. The others made no indication they had heard her. "Pardon?" she asked, Ethan repeated himself slightly louder.
"Odin was just having nightmare." Anna looked at each of them, incredulous.
"Just, just?" judging from the sounds that had woken her in fear, she had thought one of them was being pulled apart from the inside out! She was not about to dismiss the incident as 'oh just another nightmare' and she made this clear to all of them with a look. Ethan continued, very slowly. He recounted what had happened, trying to wake Odin up, the screaming, and Odin's apparent lack of memory. Anna listened carefully while keeping her eye on the place where she'd seen Odin melt into the shadows of the far wall. Though she couldn't actually see him anymore. If she hadn't already known where he was she would have thought he wasn't in the room at all.
Odin was listening as well. From his dark little corner he heard the larger boy describe everything. He had pressed himself into the wall, shrinking in on himself, becoming as small and invisible as possible. He was edgy and wanted a gun. Ethan's voice lowered in pitch when he came to the part of his screams. They all knew now, all of them. He could have contained the information if it had just been the three of them, but now. Now everyone knew. He'd seen them all, peering around the door, faces staring at him, gawking and gaping. They would be everywhere. They all knew.
He considered his options, there weren't many. Leave, or stay, stay, or leave. While all the thoughts in his head warred for supremacy, his eyes systemically checked the status of each person in the room. Jinx favored his back but it shouldn't be serious. Neon's nose was bloody but not broken. There was no other bodily damage worth noticing, just a few bruises. He stopped abruptly, then recounted. There were still only four, someone was missing. He stepped forward, walking between them without pause. The majority of his mind that was always working noticed that Ethan had stopped talking and they were all watching him. He said nothing. Ethan had already voiced all that was needed, there was nothing left to say.
He marched out the door and down the hall. He ignored their calls. He had to make sure she was safe, the fact that she hadn't been in the room was insignificant. She had to be safe! The march quickened to a jog, the jog to a moderate lope, and soon he was running. He wouldn't be in time! Doors flashed past and corners seemed to turn themselves while he ran. He skidded to a halt outside her door, his socks sliding on the smooth wood. He checked himself before flinging her door aside, and quietly opened it a crack.
They all lay in their beds, shifting under the covers, pretending to be asleep. A solitary slice of moonlight crept between the curtains of the window and lay across her, cutting her in half. He should leave now, but what if that wasn't her? He slipped into the room and padded silently up to the second bed. She was on her side facing away from him. Sushi was tucked close under one arm, the other lay beside her face with the thumb stuck securely in her mouth. Her face twitched as she tried to remain still in her false sleep. He stepped softly around the bed and knelt down by her face without making a sound. She looked like she'd been slashed through the middle by the moonlight. He lifted his hand, oh so slowly, reaching for her. He stopped his fingers mere centimeters from her face. If he touched her she'd disappear as if she never was. And all that would be left would be a pool of blood, staining the happy doggy sheets a grisly red. His hand flinched when something grabbed his fingers.
She took his arm and tucked it firmly against her next to Sushi. When he started to pull away she made a little noise and glared at him. Her mouth pouted around her thumb, her eyes demanding. The look said quite clearly 'this arm is mine and I'll fight for it!' when she was sure he wasn't going to try and get away again, she closed her eyes, snuggling closer and pulling the big hand up under her chin. That scream had been scary! But nothing would hurt her if Odin was around, even the closet monster was scared of him, she thought sleepily. Odin leaned in, resting his head against his captive arm, her breath tickling his hair. She's alive.
Anna stood in the doorway with Ethan. He'd insisted on coming after Odin as well. 'Just in case' he'd said. She closed her eyes, pressing two fingers to her temple. She was going to be in permanent therapy before she was fifty, she was sure of it. She turned around to Ethan and nodded her head in the direction of his room. He took a last look inside and left. Anna sighed and looked at the scene before her. They lay curled together with Odin kneeling on Caltha's other side, casting a protective shadow over her. The thin lance of moonlight fell onto his back, impaling him instead of Caltha, and giving his skin a corpselike pallor. The two were deathly still. Anna felt a chill run up her spine in the eerie silence, staring at the frozen picture before her. She stayed there for a very long time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
