Sometimes I'm Dreaming

A Mirror, Mirror fanfiction

~1995~

"A bad dream? I have these, too." – Nicholas Romanov: Mirror Mirror, Episode 16

Although the old antique dealer made a conscious effort not to overexcite himself during his waking hours – because he knew it was bad for his health, for his condition – he could not always control what happened when he was asleep.

Ever since he was a boy – even before the horrors of the revolution – Nicholas had been plagued by bad dreams.

Unfortunately, they occurred with considerable frequency.

He had hoped he'd grow out of them, the way a child grows out of a too-small sweater or their need for a nightlight to be lit before they can sleep alone. After Sir Ivor went to prison and Joshua Iredale did what he could for him, there had been a brief period when – mercifully – they indeed seemed to have petered off.

And then one morning he woke with a pounding heart – and head – and the salty burn of tear-lines down his face, and he knew he hadn't really beaten whatever caused them.

Much like with his haemophilia, there could be days, even months, of peace – absolute peace, no incidents at all – and then...

Then...

Well, seventy-six years later, and he still dreamed darkly.

Some nights it was his family – his four dead sisters sewing and when they looked up from their work their faces were gone, hollow, or his poor mama in her wheelchair, tipped over and left abandoned with no one, not even servants, to help her, and every time he got near enough to try and do so himself his arms stopped working, limbs all swollen, or Papa was calling him from the woods, calling for assistance, stuck under a tree he'd been sawing at, and no matter how far or fast he ran he couldn't find his father at all, lost himself among the endless frost-speckled foliage of the Siberian forest – while others it was Louisa – he dreamed of her lost plane more times than he could count – or Titus missing in action during the second world war.

Occasionally he dreamed of Sir Ivor, of endless locked doors and sealed-up windows. Of Campbell's beefy arms.

Once or twice, he dreamed of Jo being taken away – of the time Sir Ivor had had her jailed on a wrongful charge of housebreaking.

Fire – rabble – flashes – screams – sneers – loss.

It hardly mattered which nightmare it was, in the end.

Today, though, when he woke, he felt as if something or someone had been, impossible though it might seem, guiding him away from the bad dream – leading him softly back to safety, back to what was real and part of the here and now.

He saw it manifest behind his eyelids as a ball of light, a sort of benevolent willow-the-wisp.

It made a comforting sound: like purrummmmmmmmmmm, purrummmm.

This good sound vibrated through his whole body – it felt lovely, simply lovely.

Something heavy was on his chest as he came to, slowly opening his eyes.

Merrooow.

The old man stared, his sunken eyes blinking dazedly as the ball of light became a creature of flesh and blood and fur, the nightmare drifting into the past.

It was the cat – the brown tabby he'd taken in when he'd found it crying outside his shop one rainy afternoon and was reminded of his own cat left behind with her two helpless tiny kittens, so many years before, in his father's palace, back in Russia, thinking how he'd have wanted someone to take her in, if they found her yowling with loneliness and shivering from cold – sitting upon his chest, striped tail swishing, ears flat on either side giving her quite an owlish look.

So this was his willow-the-wisp – his rescuer from his bad dream – was it?

Catching his breath and trying to slow his racing heart, he raised a – still shaking – liver-spotted hand to stroke the cat's head and rub her ear. "Spasibo."

Sometimes I'm Dreaming – Charlotte Sometimes (Song), The Cure.