Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, yeah... Que word vomit

Chapter 7: Dreams

Anastasia
oOo

Not in the mansion. Not in Crows Landing. Not even in Florida anymore.

New York City was not like any other city in America—it wasn't just a city. It was alive. From the cars zooming down the busy roads to the people playing Frisbee in the parks to the young couples in love who linked arms and roamed the streets, it wasthe very center of a hub of organized chaos.

This is what made it the perfect for The Caste to base themselves here, underground and in hiding, because nobody notices the young girl with the backpack among the other thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people. She is just another figure, one of those people so busy in their own heads to look up and see the sky, the trees, the buildings that touched the clouds.

Nobody notices the handle of a knife sticking out of her high, black boots, or the bulge in her jeans pockets that could easily be a small bottle of gasoline and lighter. To all of them, she is just a normal teenager without a care in the world except for herself, her friends and her social status.

But they are wrong.

She picks up her pace as she sees him turn down an alleyway and glance around as if to find any tails. This is a habit that every street magician gains and they never leave behind. But he, like those thousands and thousands of others, doesn't see her. She slowly and casually checks around the corner of the brick wall where she saw him disappear.

He is climbing above her on a black ladder running up the side of the abandoned two-story building. The windows are boarded with rotting wood and the brick looks sun-bleached, old, compared to the richer parts of the city. She looks higher still and sees his destination: the handle of a hidden door smack in the middle of on of the Os in the 'COROCO BAKERY AND CAFÉ' sign.

He reaches the handle and pushes the O open, slips inside and closes it behind him. She smirks to herself. Typical.

She grips the blade of a knife pulled from her boot between her teeth, setting down her backpack as she does so; she won't be needing it. She stays low and keeps herself behind large trash bins and in the early evening shadows as she runs.She knows that he can see her if she is out in the open.

It doesn't take her long to to ascend the metal rungs, the very same he took. She lifts herself silently, perching on the small ledge of a C. She knocks the door beneath her gently and pulls back, and it's a matter of seconds before her target has swung the rusty hinges and appeared in the frame.

She swings herself into him feet-first. He is knocked backwards and back inside what he had now made his home. She somersaults off of him and across the room, standing when she has finished her tumbles. He runs, as per the majority of people being attacked do. Not away, but towards. Who knew?

She expects this to some extent-she's been watching him for weeks- and grabs his arms, twisting one around behind his back as she jerks it up violently. He tries to free himself, but her knife is in the back of his neck before he can do much damage. He falls to the floor and she knows he is dead even before he does, she likes to think.

Avoids looking at his face when she flips him over. She takes the lighter and the flask of gasoline, both from her boots, and tucks the bottle, open now, into the folds of his muddy, cotton shirt. She flicks the lighter, watching the orange flame spring from within and sets it next to the flask, backing away from him as though he had the plague.

That man knew something about The Caste, some big and important secret that not even she knew, and that is why he had to be killed. It wasn't his fault. He hadn't meant to find out. Most people, like him, don't look for the trouble they find themselves in.

She cannot avoid his face any longer as he is burning—eyes and mouth wide open in fear, shock, and anger, hair falling into his face as it is turned to cinders… She will never admit to anybody that she screams.

oOo

I came back to my senses with the feeling like everything in me was being scrambled. I was on the couch in the living room, and I vaguely remembered falling asleep there after a long day of training. It scared me how much this was just like old times-back in my dorm after thirteen hours of no food, no water, just weapons and too many opponents to beat.

I remembered Jack giving me a nasty bruise right on the stomach when he gave me a nice stomach punch. Hurt like hell and would for a few more days, probably, but everything about the punch had been just about perfect. A little more force and he would have me coughing up blood and probably a ruptured appendix.

I opened my eyes now, seeing that I was, in fact, on the couch. Just as I thought. The grip on my shoulders lessened but the hands did not move away. I looked up to find Wilder (sorry, Jack) standing over me in the dark, concern and something else I did not fathom shining in his eyes, though it relaxed when I asked; "What?" sharply. Maybe a little too much so. I immediately apologized.

"I-I… " Ugh, that stutter again! "…heard you scream, and, uh, came down to see if you were alright." Does my accent sound like that? No, it can't. Northerners can't say 'y'all' and get away with it. Okay, I'm all good. "It's two-thirty." Yeah, like I can't see the clock… wait a second… "The rest of them are still asleep," he informed me.

I sat up, the weight on my shoulders vanishing as I did so. The strap of my bra had twisted, so I ran a finger under it to straighten it and felt it snap back into place on my skin. My hand went up the bottom of my tank top till it found the edges of the bruise, noting that it had spread slightly. I winced when I pushed on it too hard and just settled for resting my hand gently on top of what was sure to be a greenish-purple mass when I saw it in the light.

I looked anywhere but him, but I could feel his eyes burning holes in the side of my head. "Just a dream, like they always are." I tried to sound casual, but the words came out at least a half octave higher than I meant them to. I cleared my throat (my stomach suffering at the ripple the air caused) and I hoped he would just pass it off as morning grogginess.

My prayers went unanswered. "I'm not stupid." Weeeelll… "I can tell it's bothering you. You wanna… talk about it?"

I sighed, knowing that there was no point in avoiding the question. Or maybe it was just because, for some reason that I just didn't understand, there was some level of trust that I held to for him. Trust, respect… Maybe it was a mistake, but then again, so was everything I'd done in my past.

"It was one of my victims. I keep reliving his death, but I don't know why I've been bothered by it so much."

It was too dark to tell if he was surprised, and I was too tired to let my eyes adjust enough to see.

"Maybe telling someone will help," he said quietly. It sounded funny-trying to be quiet and in that accent.

I nodded (or maybe it was a shrug), and scooted closer to him so that I was leaning against him, just the same as when we'd watched the movie. His arm casually draped around my shoulder, his fingers toying with the loos strands of hair that had fallen from my braid… I couldn't begin to describe how unreal it all felt. Perhaps I'm still dreaming. Well, in that case, then I can just talk.

I didn't feel too much of a need to leave out the gory details, and he didn't seem to mind too much. His fingers never stopped threading my hair, rubbing my back, squeezing my shoulder comfortingly. My eyelids were growing heavy and my conscious mind was becoming fuzzy and unclear. I was having trouble forming a coherent sentence, and I just decided to stop talking. There's nothing more to tell anyways.

My head made its way onto his lap and my legs stretched out the length of the couch. I heard him chuckle lightly and I blamed the shiver it sent down my spine when he moved on tiredness, plain as day. His arm rested across my stomach and I breathed in deeply when he got too close to the bruise.

"Sorry, sorry," he whispered. I shook my head gently and my eyes had given up on staying open. I rested my cheek on a bony rib through his shirt, which was probably the softest thing I had ever felt in my life. "Go to sleep, Anastasia."

This was just another dream. Nobody cared enough for this not to be a dream. They told me that, The Caste, and it still hadn't changed even after I'd left them. It was nice to dream about it every once in a while, people caring, because none of that would be there when I woke up.

"'Night, Jack," I murmured into the worn fabric.

There was a moment of silence and I wasn't sure if I would wake up again before this dream ended and I went back to living in my waking nightmare. But it wasn't over yet, I guess, because he still had something to say.

"G'night, Anastasia." And it didn't sound weird coming from him at all. I wouldn't have minded if my good dreams called me that. Not a bit.

Jack
oOo

It's a very odd feeling to wake up in the middle of the night and realize that you forgot to eat in the last twenty-four hours. Wait, no. It was downright painful!

So of course I've to get up and walk down all those freakin' stairs just to get to the freakin' kitchen so I can find some freakin' food ad not wake anybody up.

I might have found it odd that Anastasia' door was open and her light was on had I not been starving.

Ah, hell. I'd gone soft! Since when was I one to complain about hunger? I'd been more hungry than I was now when I was on the streets, stealing food, or during my time with the Horsemen and the FBI scandal. Then I had a mansion with a kitchen that never had a shortage of fattening foods.

Damn this life of luxury.

I snuck down the stairs quietly, stepping strategically over the squeaky fourth step when I reached the bottom.

I just set one foot inside the kitchen, practically drooling at the smell of the roast Henley had left on overnight, when I heard a soft whimper.

It sounded like it was coming from the living room, but I wasn't really sure, thinking it might have just been the roast. By the second time, I was fully awake and creeping towards the living room, close to the walls and away from the center of the floor to avoid making too many noises.

My eyes adjusted the dark quickly and I couldn't see over the back of the couch, but there was an arm resting over it, hand clenched in a fist and sliding back down before I could get a glimpse. It looked rather feminine, but the nails hadn't been painted—that's definitely not Henley, then. It was only a matter of time before I recognized to whom it belonged. It had flung me around the room and landed me on the floor often enough for me to know it as Anastasia's.

The whimpering started up again but now that I was closer, it sounded more like unintelligible murmurs. She let out a scream when her arm slipped and thudded onto her stomach, causing me to flinch. I remembered the punch I'd landed on her and she'd complimented me with earlier in the day. I'd seen her icing it later on, but she'd tucked the bag away and dismissed my questions when I had asked what was wrong. Her scream wasn't loud enough to wake the others; they could sleep through an air raid.

I raced around the side of the couch, cursing to myself as I stubbed my toe in my haste.

I found her lying half turned on her side and half facing up, one arm brushing the floor and the other grabbing at the fabric of her tank top. Nightmare. I had suffered through enough of them to know one when I saw it, but if what she had told was true, hers were ten time worse than mine would ever be.

I stooped over her trembling form and gripped her shoulders, shaking gently. I didn't want to surprise her too bad—no use getting slapped, punched or kicked when I'm trying to help her.

"Anastasia! Come on, wake up," I whispered urgently.

She stopped twitching and her eyes opened slowly, glancing around and blinking a few times before she could finally see me and I stopped scrambling her brains. She didn't do anything (by this I mean slapping, punching or kicking) when she saw me, and I was glad to know that she at least recognized my face as not a threatening one in her hasty wake-up call.

"I-I… " No. Stop stuttering. You do that too much! "…heard you scream, and, uh, came down to see if you were alright. It's two-thirty," I told her, having recognized earlier that the clock had gone back to saying 12:00 and was beeping non-stop. "The rest of them are still asleep."

She started to sit up and I sunk down onto the couch next to her, taking my hands from her shoulders. She looked around the room, avoiding my eyes in the dark, though I was studied her profile intently.

"Just..." she paused as though she were thinking about her answer, debating on what to tell me. "...a dream. Like they always are." She's so broken.

"I'm not stupid," I told her, felling a little like a third wheel though it didn't make sense. I wanted her to trust me. "I can tell it's bothering you. You wanna tell me about it?"

I reckoned that she was like me, having nobody else to turn to when monsters and demons roamed around our heads while we slept. Maybe I could be there for her, and maybe she'd tank me for it, trust me because of it. It's not in her nature to do so.

She sighed and I couldn't tell if it was in defeat or annoyance or both. "Maybe telling someone will help," I said to her.

She nodded slightly and scooted as close to me as possible and the back of her head was on my shoulder and I could smell her shampoo and it was wonderful. Total déjà vu. Her skin was cool to the touch and I put an arm around her, hoping to maybe give her a little of but of warmth. There was something there, something over her skin that I had not seen or noticed before.

I glanced down as inconspicuously as I believed possible in this position, and it took a while of my eyes adjusting before I could finally see them. Tattoos. Birds, trees, dogs, people, words… so many of them, all over her arms and her shoulders and some that had begin to slowly creep up her neck that I would never be able to count them.

I thought back, remembering any time I'd ever seen her without a jacket on, even in the blazing Florida heat. Not a single moment. Her hair's so soft. Whoa, that came out of left field. I hadn't even noticed she'd spoken when the sound finally reached my ears, so distant it could have been coming from a mile away.

"I was on a special mission for The Caste. They told me that I was going to track down this man. The Eye had used him as a tool to find where we were, our weak spots, how to bring us down. The boss came to me personally and said if I didn't kill him, I would die a thousand times over."

She doesn't want people to see them, and I won't say a thing. Damn, Jack, keep paying attention! This is an opportune moment-you won't get one like it again! Running over her words in my head again, finally comprehending them, I squeezed her shoulder, just a little pressure on it for comfort, and started tracing lazy figure eights on her arm, the ink an odd feeling beneath my fingers from the rest of her already sun-darkened skin. She shivered again, and I wondered; from the memory, the cold or me?

"There was this old bakery. Had closed a million years ago and the building was falling down but nobody had thought to do anything about it, and he was living there. I followed him up this ladder, and it was too dark by then for him too see anybody clearly following him down this alleyway. It was the easiest thing I'd ever done.

"Anyways, I knocked on this hidden door he'd gone through and I kicked him back into the building when he opened it. He tried to attack me and I was a little surprised that he wasn't trying to run, but I flipped 'im around by his arm and stuck a knife through his neck. Clean cut, just the right angle, and he was dead before he hit the floor."

I will never, ever, complain about something ever again, I thought.

"I doused him in gasoline and lit 'im on fire, to destroy the evidence, you know? I threw the knife in the Hudson-I loved that knife. But when he was burning…" she shook her head and clenched a fist, which I noticed was under her shirt now and resting on her stomach. I did that. Shit.

"It's okay," I said, just as near silent as I could get it.

"He looked like he was still alive," she continued. "Like he was screaming and wanting to be saved, but I knew he was dead." She made a sound from somewhere in her mouth, either a cry or a whimper or something in between. "He didn't even know he was doing anything-they took over his mind and shut out his conscience. The Eye was controlling him! And it's their fault I had to go after him and kill him and he didn't even know why. I was fifteen, and I would'a been tortured and killed if I didn't follow orders!"

She was fifteen? Who are these people, making them do something like that? And the Eye. Who am I really working for? Who's side are they on?

I didn't trust myself to say anything and she was too far gone to make another sound. She turned herself around and her head was in my lap, and my arm had nowhere else to go other than her stomach. She flinched and sucked in a breath when I hit it, and I felt awful for causing her pain she didn't deserve.

"Sorry, sorry." The apologies were for more than just me hurting her. I realized something then-she trusted me. It wasn't like her. It just couldn't be. "Go to sleep, Anastasia," I finally managed to get out, refraining from asking her why?

It seemed like ages and nobody had said anything and I was sure she was asleep, but then was saying something:

"'Night, Jack." Her voice was barley more than a breath.

I smiled at the sound. "G'night, Anastasia," I whispered.

I reached behind me with a free hand to where a blanket lay draped over the back of the couch. I pulled it down and lay it over her, tucking a loose strand of pitch-black hair behind her ear.

The midnight snack was forgotten, and I hoped beyond hope that she'd not forget it in the morning, that it wouldn't be just another part of her 'waking nightmare'. And she might learn something it had taken me too long to: faith.