"I want someone to see me for who I truly am."

Evie bolted upright, clutching at her throat and gasping. Sweat dampened her hair, her neck, her back. Her thin tank top clung to her uncomfortably and as the covers dropped away and the air cooled her skin, she shivered. It took her a few seconds to orient herself, to remember where she was. America. Her apartment in New York. Her own bed.

Alone.

Heart rate calming bit by bit with each realization, she blindly felt along the edge of her nightstand until her fingers gripped her phone. Tapping at the screen with her thumb, the device lit up, flashing her lock screen at her. She squinted against the sudden brightness.

3 a.m.

Just like nearly every night since that night.

She groaned, falling back against her pillows, brow furrowed as she stared at the ceiling, studying the shadows formed by the glow from her phone. The images from her dream filled her head, so vivid and real as to be nearly indistinguishable from true memory.

Well, her recent dreams were intertwined with her memories, weren't they? Inextricably. Truth and fiction woven so tightly together that she found it nearly impossible, at this disorienting hour, to easily parse one from the other.

This time, she'd been with Walter (or Wealdhere, as she'd come to learn he'd been called in centuries past. Before that, his father had named him Vladislaus). They were in bed together, and she lay on her side, facing him. She'd studied his expression through heavy lids as the soft edges of sleep began to enfold her. The contour of his jaw, that seductive tilt of his lips, the playful way he narrowed his eyes when he looked at her, as though he could almost read her mind, had filled her with the most offhand sort of happiness. She was a woman looking at a man who clearly adored her, and she could not help but to adore him in return. In the dream, that had not struck her as odd. In the dream, she did not fear him, or loathe him, or wish to flee him.

He'd reached out to tenderly stroke her cheek and neck, skimming her soft skin with the barest press of his knuckles, his touch quickening her pulse. Walt smiled at her lazily, showing all his gleaming, sharp teeth. And it had felt…

Sweet.

She'd felt safe. And… enamored.

Those dreams were the worst.

Usually, it was her nightmares which woke her, full of fire and the sharp spindles of gothic candlesticks as they were. They were full of other things, too. Monsters in the shadow. Blood and screams and terror. Betrayal. The wretched fear of inescapable fate. She'd wake up from those the same way: heart pounding, gasping as though she'd been running through the woods surrounding New Carfax Abbey again, sweating through her clothes. But those images, she could easily set aside. She simply told herself she was alright, that her fate had not, in fact, been inescapable. That against all odds, she'd escaped.

She'd survived.

And thrived.

If she found it hard to sleep afterwards, she'd get out of her bed and sit at her potter's wheel. What she created in those moments was better than anything she'd done before. More meaningful, somehow. More consequential. Dense. The nightmares seemed to unlock something inside of her, something she'd been unable to access before her trip to England. It wasn't creativity, or skill, really. She'd always had those in spades. It wasn't even inspiration. It was more like… desire.

Whatever the reason, her work had changed when she returned home. And now, it was getting noticed. Noticed enough that she was able to give up her shitty catering gigs and stop worrying if she'd be able to afford more than a rationed box of dry pasta for dinner. She wasn't De Ville wealthy, not even close, but she could breathe now, and pay her bills on time, with enough left in the bank to enjoy a nice dinner out with Grace, when the occasion called for it.

But after the dreams like the one she'd just had, the ones that filled her with something other than horror-fueled adrenaline, she did not get out of her bed to sit at her wheel. She did not create.

Instead, she grieved.

It was inexplicable, really, and if she hadn't just spent the last eighteen months mourning the loss of her mother, she would've denied that was what she was experiencing. But the sensation, that heavy, smothering feeling of loss, was one with which she was intimately acquainted. It was instantly recognizable and completely undeniable. And that was what pinned her to her sweaty sheets and prevented her fingers from molding her clay after her dreams of utter contentment.

Her gift had never been fed by her grief, only stifled.

Evie's logical mind told her the emotions which overwhelmed her in these moments weren't real. They couldn't be. Putting aside the fact that they were centered around a man (no, not a man. Not a man at all) who had terrorized her, who had hurt her, harming not just her flesh, but her spirit, there was the small matter of the length of their relationship. She'd only known him a few days. Even if he hadn't been the monster that he was (even if he hadn't tried to make her into a monster just like him), she couldn't know him well enough, couldn't understand him well enough to love him. Not in just a scant few days. This wasn't some silly romance novel she was living; this was real life. Her life. And she'd never been anything less than practical, artistic bent aside.

But that's how she felt when she woke up from the dreams. Like she'd loved and lost (loved greatly and lost an incomprehensible amount). Like she was reaching for something that was her everything and, failing to grasp it (to grasp him), she grieved its absence. In these moments, her fingertips could perfectly recall the feel of his smooth brow beneath them, when she'd brushed aside a stray lock of his dark hair after it had fallen over his eyes. Perhaps that was why she couldn't sculpt in these moments, why she couldn't conceive and design and produce. How could her fingers shape stiff, cold clay when they tingled with the recollection of touching his skin?

(And it hadn't been cold. That was something the modern movies and books got wrong. Maybe if it were, it would've been a warning; an outward sign that something was amiss. But it wasn't. Walt's skin was warm. Touching it hadn't repelled her. It had drawn her, soothed her, and ignited her. The feel of his skin was the opposite of a warning. It was an invitation.)

She breathed in deeply, and when she breathed out, she flexed her fingers as though it would banish the sensation which plagued them and whispered, "Just echoes."

It had become Evie's mantra after the dreams; her attempt to reason with herself, to talk herself out of this folly (out of what she could not and should not be feeling). When the dreams had begun, when she'd woken that first time and the realization of where she was had not left her relieved, but rather bereft, she'd been driven to find a reason for the strength of her own nonsensical reaction.

"Echoes," she'd told herself firmly. It was the only thing that made sense. Her sleeping mind was simply echoing some longing from before she knew the truth of things. It wasn't a valid feeling. It was nothing more than the residual ghost of an emotion only half-formed, based on lies and manipulation.

"Get your shit together," she muttered. "You are not this girl. No one sane is this girl."

You don't mourn your abductor, Evie scolded herself inwardly. You don't miss the man who lied to you, and manipulated you, and stalked you, no matter how nice your stupid dream makes him seem. Dreams aren't real. What happened at Carfax, that was real. Best not forget.

She pushed herself to remember the maids, remember Mrs. Swift. She tried to recall all their faces and their voices, their mannerisms, and use those memories to force her recollection of her dream, of Walt's face, from her mind.

It worked, for a while, but it wasn't really thoughts of his face (the perfection of his skin, the icy blue of his eyes, the aristocratic angle of his cheek and nose and jaw) that disturbed her. No, what troubled her wasn't anything her eyes could see, but rather the intense feeling with which these soft, sweet dreams always left her.

The feeling that she'd made a huge mistake.

The nightmares, they filled her with fear, until she woke and remembered where she was and that she'd made it; that she was safe, beyond the reach of callous men and dangerous monsters. Then, all she was left with was a sense of blissful relief and a drive to express herself.

The dreams were different. When she remembered where she was, and how she'd come to be there, instead of relief, all she felt was…

Regret.

"Don't be stupid," Evie hissed at herself, placing her phone back on her nightstand and rolling to the opposite side of the bed, where the sheets weren't so damp with sweat. She flipped her pillow over and dropped her head against it with an angry sigh, staring out of her window at the night until the dark melted away beneath the rising sun.