Golden thorns chapter 31
"Coran, are you alright? You're looking a bit pale." A soft accented voice chilled the pumping in his temples.
"How can you be so calm?" his voice was weaker than expected, hoarse, strained. He felt sick. "Last time we left the city everything went to hell. We got our asses handed to us and you barely escaped with your life. If I get it wrong again then we might not all make it back. I can't waste an evening at some party when I need to go through so many scenarios and plan for every eventuality that they might produce. And besides, even if we didn't have that coming up what makes you think I can afford these clothes when I barely have enough for toothpaste."
"Alright, you're making a scene. Let's get back up to Beacon and just de-stress. Cool?" Jo walked over to him and groaned as she hauled him to his feet. "There's an airbus in ten minutes."
That night was not pleasant. Coran woke from a dream in a cold sweat. He was shivering and yet he felt hot, too hot. He kicked off his covers and ran through the dark room to the small en suite and proceeded to profusely empty his guts into the toilet. Feeling somewhat delirious, he washed his mouth, downed a pint of water and stumbled back into the main room. On his way back to his bed he tripped over a pile of something and cracked his head on the floor. Rubbing the rather large lump on his cranium, he crawled back to his bed and shuddered his way into a shallow, haunted sleep.
A cold wind blows through the drawing room in the old house, causing the thin grey curtains to drift and wave. A dark haired, middle-aged woman sits on the expensive sofa. She is crying into a silk handkerchief. A young boy walks up to her and sits down. They talk and the boy starts crying. They hold each other for a moment, shaking. She speaks to him, whispers in his ear. His sobs ease slightly. He looks up to see that she is much younger, much more beautiful, and he is older, a similar age to her. They hold the embrace for a moment longer. He looks over her shoulder to see others smiling at him.
There is a howl. She is wrenched from his grasp. A shadow sweeps across his vision and the figures are gone. He is lost in a blank greyness. He turns, desperately searching. He finds the girl again, starts running. As he reaches out she falls, lands on a bed of clouds. He takes her hand in his and she shatters. In her place is the older woman, just as still. Slowly, the clouds draw in. the boy feels cold. Lost. Empty. Alone. He can't see. All he can do is listen. Listen as the clouds draw in and start to swirl around him. Listen as he hears distant voices, shouting, jeering, wailing. He buckles over, winded and in pain as if kicked as the voices rise in volume, shouting in his ears "DEAD! ALONE! GONE! FAILED! DEAD! ALONE!" it is too loud. He lashes out with a fist to try and stop the shouting but instead there is a smash. His ears are in agony. He is falling. He screams. There is a loud-
BANG! Coran awoke to a searing pain like knives trying to cut their way out of his skull. His eyes burned. He closed them, opened them again. The burn lessened to a dull ache. He gradually became aware of his situation. He was lying on a hard wooden floor. He was in a bedroom, shared. That was it. He was at beacon academy, a school where he was training to be a hunter of the creatures of Grimm with his teammates- the pain in his head flared. He was going to be sick. He ran to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet for the second time that day.
A warm hand touched the back of his neck.
"Coran, you have a fever. You must go back to bed, okay? Devlyn and Jo have gone to get a nurse but until they get back you must rest."
"Mm- no" he mumbled "see Ozpin…" he stumbled to his feet and stood for a moment, swaying slightly. Marie came up behind him and led him by the shoulders back to his bed where she laid him down and pulled some clean sheets over him. "See… Ozpin..." He murmured.
"I will message Jo and Dev to get him on the way. Sleep, Coran. Sleep." She gently stroked his hair and hummed quietly as he drifted back to sleep.