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Prompt #6: Fleeting - Sometimes, when he's still half-asleep, he thinks he can see again.

Words: 582

Phantom images.

Flashes.

Dreams.

All the little things the doctors had warned him about.

Might seem like...will appear that...might present itself as...

Words, medical words, just words that skate over the general issue.

Your body will try to trick you.

It's happened. He's gone through it.

Sometimes it's just for a moment. He'll think he sees a flash - an honest-to-God flash of light, just out of the corner of his eye - but only blackness greets him when he swings around to look.

Most often, sight returns in his dreams. The earliest ones were of the explosion, and the hours leading up to it. Those had him jack-knifing upright in bed, breathing hard and doused in a cold sweat, his unseeing eyes wide in the darkness. As they abated, he found himself dreaming of being back with his family in Illinois, seeing the faces of his parents and siblings as he'd last seen them.

Then the dreams began to mosey away from memories and forayed into the realm of fantasy. His unconscious mind, being as tricksy as he was when he's conscious, tried to conjure up images he's sure can't really be true. Faces of the women he brings home. Faces of new people he's just met. Colors, shapes, things he's begun to forget just because he hasn't been able to compare the then to the now.

Hearing and smell and touch can only get a guy so much information. Sight? Now that's the big one.

Reading expressions in one's eyes and face is what he misses. That's the big thing. You can tell a lot about someone's emotions by how their face shifts in the silence. He can only guess at what emotion the silence holds, and even then he can guess wrong. And the worst is that, without a facial expression to go on, he's never sure how people look at him.

But in the dreams, he sees. He sees expressions. He sees emotions. He sees everything. And it's amazing. Like walking out of a dream. Like he was never hurt in the first place.

Sometimes, when he's rousing himself from sleep, he still believes that he can see. It's a half-thought, a tease left over from dreamworld before reality comes in and rudely slaps his face. Then the blackness sets in, and he's left to face another day with those pesky dreams still floating around in his mind.

"Auggie?"

He blinks. "Annie? What's up?"

"You looked a little lost. You all right?"

Had he? He'd been pondering again, he figures. "Just thinking about stuff."

"Did you hear my question?"

Not really. "If I said I did?"

"And you call me a bad liar?"

He smiles easily at her. "All right, smarty-pants. I wasn't paying attention. What were you saying?"

Annie starts talking again, chattering about how she hopes to bridge the gap between her and Danielle. Auggie sits back and listens, falling back to think about certain things he wants to see again. His family. His car. His own reflection.

And he thinks, quite randomly, that he'd like to see Annie Walker with his own two eyes just once.

Was anyone else SUPREMELY ticked by the season finale? I know I was!

Review please!