((I do not own the following creations or cannon characters of them: Buffy the Vampyre Slayer, Underworld, Charmed, Angel and the X-Men))

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Chapter 12: Dreams

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Judy Darlang awoke on a cold stone floor beneath a heavy fleece blanket. Her eyes took a few moments to adjust to the dim light, images fading in over each-other, shadows receding into shapes. She saw the room was made of the same material as her bed, the only light came from a single torch upon the wall apposing her.

As she struggled to get up she heard a voice from somewhere out of her field of vision.

"Don't do that. You hurt your head. Wait a minute."

Judy looked around, the voice echoed off of the stone walls making it difficult to pinpoint it's source.

"Hello?" she inquired tentatively.

The pain in her head was slowly returning, a stabbing pulsating pain that seemed to ebb and flow as she tried to concentrate.

Judy took the voices advice and lay back down. "Who are you?" she asked after a few minutes.

"Doesn't matter." came the reply. "How's your head?"

"It hurts." responded Judy flatly.

"I'm not surprised by that. I am a bit surprised you're not dead. That's a pretty serious wound." the disembodied voice was at once calming, benevolent, and sinister. "What's your name?" It asked.

"I'll tell you mine..." Judy's voice trailed off as the pain in her head struck unexpectedly. She was suddenly missing being unconscious very much.

"Christian." the voice said after a minute.

"Judy." said Judy through gritted teeth.

Something dabbed her forehead. Judy started, then realised it was a wash cloth. The damp cloth was very soothing.

"Thank you." Judy said to Christian.

"Welcome." Christian said to Judy.

Another long pause. The ache was subsiding somewhat steadily if slowly. After a while Judy ventured "Can... can I see what you look like?"

No one answered for a while, and then a face appeared about five feet above her, half in shadow, the other half illuminated by the torch-light. It was a very pale face of a rather young man who looked to be about Judy's age. He had hair so pale it looked more silver than blond, his eyes looked as though they may have once been blue but were so drained of pigment they looked to be made of ice. He wore a thin black dress shirt over a tight black under-shirt, and had one silver earring. His hands and neck were as pale as his face and also rather dirty, smudges of dried mud and soot were especially visible against the ghostly epidermis.

Judy took all this in for a moment. Christian wasn't smiling. His mouth was shut in a steely dead-pan. His eyes were the only part of him that betrayed his being a living person and not a manikin, but they were so hollow and empty, it felt like looking into the deadness of space.

"Bet I don't look that good." Judy joked evasively.

Christian looked like he was almost going to smile, then his eyes wandered to her wound and he stopped short.

"You should get some rest Judy." Christian stated darkly.

Judy didn't like his tone, but really didn't have much of a choice.

"Oh, do you have a phone maybe you could call my..." Judy began.

"No." interrupted Christian. "I don't have a phone-line or a cell here."

"Oh." Judy eyed the boy wearily.

After much internal debate she decided that since he had dressed her wound and hadn't killed her so far, she could trust that he probably wasn't going to kill her if she 'rested her eyes' for a bit. There was something about this boy that put her instincts on edge, she didn't like the feeling in the pit of her stomach anymore than the one from the bump on her head, but her options were limited, she would have to wait it out.

"I think I'm going to rest a bit more." Judy yawned at length.

Christian nodded and moved took the damp cloth to a basin of water, ringing it out silently.

Just before her eyelids closed and she drifted off to painless REM Judy thought she saw the boy poor the basin-water into a jar. But she soon forgot this as she found herself drifting from dream to dream. They were strange dreams unlike any she had had before with some peculiar common threads, always there was a girl, always there were men watching from a distance, always there were monsters with distorted, cruel faces and long, dangerous fangs, each monster ending with each dream in a cloud of dust.

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This was a short chapter but I really felt the need to keep the story going even if at a bit of a crawl. Thank you to reviewers and fans of judy, I'm thinking of just taking her story and making it it's own fic. PM or review if you, gentle readers, have any thoughts on that too.

Cheers!

-TM.

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