Title: A Beat In My Heart

Disclaimers : In other Chapters

Summary: I'd really have to kill you if I told you.

Author's Note: Yeah worst writer's block ever...and wayyyyyy to much real-life work to do!

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Chapter 4: The Lost

0900 hours

After a rough night of soothing Wesley with alcohol baths, and force feeding him ice chips, frozen juice chips, Beverly sat at her table looking at the reports from Wesley's blood work. She shook her head, confused at the outcome.

Her worst fears were confirmed. Wesley had in fact contracted the Leutcher virus, but he also had a seemingly unbreakable fever that was now also affecting his organs. She was resorting to slightly chilled fluids to help chill him, but he was still very ill. She'd never seen him so sick, and he was easily sicker than anyone that had the virus on the Enterprise. If he continued to deteriorate she would have to put him into a drug induced coma so he could be treated. The mere thought sent a chill down her spine.

The sound of his voice in her bedroom cleared her exhausted mind as she dropped what she was doing and raced towards him.

She heard Wesley thrashing around in the bed, and heard the scamper of his feet on the floor. His voice screamed out...

"No!...please stop...no..."

When she arrived in the room, Wesley was nowhere to be found.

"Wesley...?"

"Please stop...please stop...please..." the whimper came from the closet. When she moved her clothes aside, there sat her son, tears clinging to his cheeks, his eyes closed, with head against the wall mumbling his mantra.

"No...please stop, no..."

"Wesley..." she reached for him, and he drew further into a ball and Beverly brought her hand to her mouth and fought back tears. She made a space and sat down next to him. She pulled his shaking form into her embrace, and held onto his very warm frame tightly in her arms. He was far to weak to resist at this point.
After a few moments the shaking subsided and his very ill body fell asleep.

It was then and only then that she allow the tears to flow freely as she held him tight.

0200 hrs

After the third time Wesley had woken up screaming from night terrors, his scream, one that nearly gave her a heart attack, she nestled in the bed beside him and held him until he could drop off to sleep again. His fever was putting his already vivid imagination into overdrive. The next time he woke, and after more than half an hour of assuring him, he was in fact not on fire, he told of being trapped in a burning ship, of being strapped in, and being paralyzed from the waist down, but able to feel the fire lapping at his skin.

His voice, strained, barely above a whisper, he vividly described his terror as he clawed on the walls of his ship as he tried to escape the burning inferno, where he could hear laughter but no one would answer to his screams. It wasn't until the fire had all but consumed him did he escape the terror and come back to the saftey of his mother's arms. Hearing the horror he endured brought tears to her eyes again. She knew with his photographic memory that it must have been completely terrifying for him, and was thankful when the tremors that had overcome him subsided. It had been two days of watching her son suffer, she didn' know how much more she could bear.

Finally seeing Wesley settle into a fitful sleep, she got up and cleaned herself up, changed her clothes, and got something to eat before settling in a chair next to him. She nibbled on a snack as she studied more of her notes about his condition, and reached out and held his hand. Before she knew it, the soft snore coming from her son, was enough to lull her to sleep as well.

10 hours later...

It was getting harder to breathe. Even without the gag, which had been placed in his mouth since he'd been stolen from his family, he couldn't scream, for his lungs lacked the air necessary to carry out that simple task. Every inch of his flesh was on fire. He was strapped to a chair, his body seemingly taking on the permanent shape of a chair, from days, weeks, or what seemed like months of being in the same position. His arms tied behind his back, stretched so far that the tendons had long sense snapped making them nearly useless to him. His ribs ached each time he breathed from being his captive's personal punching bag. He was sure he had atleast four broken ribs, and from the coppery taste of blood tinged on his lips from a cough that was forced to his throat, he knew something was wrong with his chest or lung. The stench of his own flesh; burnt, bruised, and bleeding sickened him.

The dark dismal hell had been his home since he was captured during a routine away mission. He remembered being by the shore, collecting water, a flash of light and then being strapped to a table with volts of plasma and electricity flowing into his head and body. That was all before he refused to help them, before they found out he was not as valuable as they had thought. Now he was just waiting to die. His days and night in this hell hole had brought him to the brink of starvation. The tight ardmium straps on his ankles and wrists were streaked with blood and his flesh raw and angry where he'd been trying desperately to escape his prison.

After another hour of tossling with his bonds and the feel of the cold sweat covering his body he felt one of the bonds loosen from his hands as he slowly slipped it from its prison. A gasp of relief escaped his lips, as he inhaled happilly and dragged his heavy arm forward to grab the gag from his mouth desperately pulling in air to his starved lungs, immediately bringing fresh blood to his lips with his cough. He almost laughed.

Wesley slowly began the task of freeing his other hand and his feet, but as he stared at his near naked body, his skin and bones staring back at him, he pondered if his body had the strength to move. He would have to get to his feet. He would have to leave this place. Wesley would have to do this on his own.

He rocked himself back and forth, back and forth, until finally he fell from the chair to his knees. He had escaped his torture, but he was too weak to run. He had to get he could muster the strength to stand, before his nemesis returned.

The voices were haunting him, first there were two, then ten, then hundreds of voices talking, laughing, squealing, crying, commanding. He tossed his head back and forth. The voices were familiar and yet they they seemed so foreign to him as the overlapped in an unending cacophony. He had to get away from the voices, they were getting louder, and his head was pounding. He held his hand to his head as he tried to escape the voices. He saw a strange red haired being in the chair beside him...he had to escape, they were going to find him, kill him, he had to get away.

Wesley crawled away from the cold bed of torture snatching the chains from his arms and off his body as he stumbled quietly from the room. It was dark and as he moved a wall opened up before him. A bright light illuminated his path, as the cold assaulted his barely clothed body. The light brought a searing pain to his head as he almost collapsed to the floor. The fur beneath his feet felt foreign to him as he scurried close to the walls holding on to them for dear life for what felt like miles. As he touched the wall a panel opened up and his hand felt along side it. Wesley had found the rabbit hole. He climbed in the cold dark tunnel and followed it into the bright light. He was no longer lost

Please review! Suggestions welcome! Thanks for reading...a new update soon...like days not months!: ) Sorry I'm working on my PhD in Education and it's killing me!

And just so you know...all of Wesley's dreams in all of my stories are from other stories I'm working on for him...