Lol, I just realized there's a lot of sleeping going on these past few chapters. Oh well. Look, Jane is emotionally exhausted and it's coming out physically, making such great amounts of sleep possible. Right? Right?
The bits at the end are from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Chapter Twelve: Dream
He was running. He felt the jarring impact through his feet and up his legs, making his breath catch with every step.
Oddly though, there was no ground. Just an endless white, stretching below and above. Behind and before. Everywhere, so bright that it made his head hurt a bit.
As he ran, he saw glimpses—a cracked mirror, a ghostly red face mocking him from a wall, sad green eyes begging for a response, dark hair spilled along a sidewalk.
They disappeared as if they had never been there.
An orb appeared above him, spinning slowly, lazily. Shining, somehow clear and yet not.
A crystal ball.
He wanted to reach out and touch it, but when his hand extended, it seemed the sphere danced away. Always a step out of reach.
He just wanted to know why it held so much power for everyone.
"The Kingdom of God is a real place."
He ran faster, reached further, stretching.
He needed to know.
Something needed fixing, but he couldn't remember what.
Maybe the crystal ball would help.
Faces seemed to rotate in a whirl within his mind. Each one begging him to save them, tell them what they needed to hear. See something in a ball of crystal. Desperate to believe.
How could so many need something so small?
Maybe it could save him, too.
A face seemed to appear in the ball and he stared, fascinated. Dark hair and green eyes and pouting lips, furrowed brow.
He knew that face.
He pushed his legs.
He had to get it, get her.
"I'm always going to save you, Lisbon."
It stayed beyond his reach and the image started to disappear. She started to disappear.
Panic seized him and he sobbed out a panting breath.
No…
He came awake gasping for air and clutching the rumpled fabric of her blazer. The room was dark.
His legs twitched with the remembered need to move.
He breathed deeply, employing whatever biofeedback tricks he could in order to calm his pounding heart.
Lisbon was upstairs sleeping.
She was fine.
Alive.
Real.
He stared up to the ceiling, focusing on breathing in and out.
In and out.
He remembered the fading image of her face.
He couldn't sit here.
Standing, he made his way up her stairs and silently slipped into her bedroom. She pulled him to her with the force of a strong magnet and he was powerless to resist.
Her form was a dark shadow against inky blackness.
Just seeing the pile of blankets that was Lisbon made something inside of him loosen.
He snatched the extra, unused pillow from beside her and settled on the floor next to her bed.
The floor was hard and should have been far less comfortable than the couch downstairs, but her nearness calmed him. His eyes grew heavy once more. He, who never slept, felt the call of Orpheus.
He felt himself being drawn into the realm between wakefulness and dreaming…
To sleep perchance to dream…
He remembered wanting to forget.
White bandages enveloped his wrists.
He remembered wanting to escape.
…what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil…
The darkness of death and the darkness of life had seemed interchangeable.
He heard the soft exhale of Lisbon on the bed and, for a moment, was tempted to invade her space more fully. To feel her breathing, living.
It felt like something too good to be happening in his life and, if Jane had believed in the same God she did, he would be thanking Him at this moment.
But he didn't.
So he breathed in the scent of cinnamon and slept.