Remington J. Steele (chocolatier) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2017-09-06 23:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, * kit, * terri, c: remington steele, r: vega rodriguez |
WHO: Remington Steele and Vega Rodriguez, dream appearances by Remus Lupin and Sirius Black.
WHEN: Technically the wee hours of Sept 7, around 2 or 3 am as the full moon peaks.
WHERE: Remi and Vee's apartment.
SUMMARY: Remi has a nightmare she can't wake up from. Vee tries to wake her up.
WARNINGS: Werewolves ahoy. Nightmares. Clawing, biting, scratching in the form of unintentional self-harm.
STATUS: Complete
Falling into bed exhausted just after sunset wasn’t Remington’s normal evening. A perpetual night owl, she disliked her alarm blaring at early hours of the morning and abhorred feeling that her evening was wasted on such a simple thing as sleep even more. She was used to functioning on little sleep and grumbling through rounds of coffee until the routine of baking pastries in the morning soothed away her dawn-induced sorrows. She didn’t always go out, but she usually read in the living room until she felt it was reasonably late. Instead, in a post-dinner daze, she had wandered to her room, crawled into her bed, and glanced at the clock only once before she was asleep. The dreams took Remington swiftly, lulling her into a sense of peace and comfort. She had normal dreams like making the perfect buttercream and spending a day at the lake with her best friends, all laughing and sun-kissed. It wasn’t until she was deeply asleep that the darkness began to bleed into the corners of her dreams. A sinister figure would loom just on the other side of a window or a scratch at a door would startle her, heart racing until some happier thought would whisk it away into nothingness. She wandered from the beach into a nearby forest, knowing that she shouldn’t leave her friends behind, but there was a reason she shouldn’t stay with them too. Weren’t they were in danger? No. She was dangerous. A brush of fur against her leg caught her off guard, and she looked down to luminous amber eyes gleaming in the darkened forest. The wolf beside her was magnificent, and even though it was feral, she sank her hands into the dense auburn fur at the wolf’s neck. She didn’t fear it like she should have. It looked mournful as it gazed up at her, leaning a heavily muscled shoulder into her touch. The fur was soft against her fingers, and she sank to her knees beside the beast. Remington both loved and hated the wolf, and it was something that she knew inherently, without ever having seen it before. She wrapped her arms around its neck, a shudder running beneath her skin, and breathed in against its fur ; honey, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Just like her. It started as an itch in her skin, her fingers digging because no matter how much she scratched, the sensation never dissipated. Something was crawling over her - no, through her - and it was begging to get out. The wolf nudged her down, pawing at her body. Its roughened claws snagged at her thighs, her stomach, her arms, her neck, but she never begged for it to stop. It wasn’t attacking her. It was helping. She needed the itch to stop. The more that her fingers dragged over her flesh, the worse it felt, but there was never any relief. The wolf snarled in her ear, and she felt that white hot pain return again. A bite on her shoulder that throbbed like a knife searing through her skin, but when the wolf lifted its head, blood on its teeth, she could only stare at those eyes. All she could see was herself reflected in them, staring right back at her. Remington’s heart crashed against her ribs, a strange sense of her world turning on end...vertigo of the worst kind. For a second there was no breath as the wolf howled a lonely cry. The sound strained her own throat, the itching in her skin only growing more insufferable as she scratched and tore. Her body was tearing itself apart from the inside out, and it was even worse than the bite. She was being remade. Her very bones fragmented beneath her skin, reshaping into something new. She screamed and thrashed in agony, so deeply entrenched in her suffering that it never occurred to her that she hadn’t woken up. -- Vee had not been sleeping especially sound since her dream the previous week that had felt too real for her liking. She chalked it up to the fact that it touched on relationships with her own biological family that she tried desperately to keep firmly in the past and the fact that it had taken that particular wound and made it raw didn’t rest well with her. It had been mostly fine. Vee had copious amounts of energy, even without several hours of deep sleep. She was the early riser, the kind of person who enjoyed being up at four to go for a run before meeting a client at the gym to give them a workout, too. Still, that didn’t mean she wanted to toss and turn all night thinking about things that were long out of her control. Looking back on it, she’d be glad for the restlessness if it meant being able to hear when her roommate and best friend was in distress. The screams came seemingly from nowhere and it took only a few seconds for Vee to rouse from her sleep. Once she was alert, she was out of her bed without a second thought about putting on pants or grabbing something to use as a weapon if there was an intruder. As she tore out of her room and toward Remi’s she spared a brief glance at the front door and found that it was still locked. She was wrenching open Remi’s door only moments later and was surprised to see that Remi was alone, being assaulted only by herself and whatever plagued her dreams. “Remi,” Vee said sharply, rounding the bed and leaning over to grab Remi’s shoulders in an effort to stop her thrashing. She noticed the scratches on Remi’s arms. “Shit,” she murmured and then shook the other girl lightly. “Remi, wake up.” -- She was twisting and transforming, muscle and bone stretching and snapping and fusing until she was something else. She sank her hands into soft earth and dragged herself through the agony to a shallow pond, thinking frigid water would ease her suffering, but when she looked down to the reflective surface, it was not her face. She blinked, but she was not...her. Sandy brown hair fell onto more masculine cheekbones, thinner and far more scarred than she’d ever been. Blinking in the confusion, he looked up when he heard a familiar voice. “REMUS!” Vee...no, Sirius wasn’t far, just a few steps away. Then he was there, hands gripping at his shoulders, but Remus knew what was going to happen. It wasn’t safe. “Get out of here, you idiot,” he demanded. The moon pulled at him, a lure that was impossible to deny. The clouds parted, and his vision changed. The colors dimmed, but everything was in sharper contrast. “Transform or…” the words caught in his mouth as his teeth lengthened and Remus snarled, and pushed against Sirius, “GO!” The wolf within would take over, and then there would be no safety in these woods until morning. For just a moment when Vee’s hands had touched her arms, Remi had stilled for a mere breath. A strangled and frustrated cry passed her lips, her body bowed and she fought against the restraint imposed upon her. She bared her teeth, and the next sound that passed her lips and reverberated in her chest was more animalistic than human, a vicious growl in protest. -- Vee had no way of knowing what was going through Remi’s dream, all she knew was that all signs pointed to apparent demonic possession and she could not wake her up. “Remi,” she tried again, louder this time, her shake more insistent. “Remi, wake up. You’re dreaming. It’s just a dream.” Her voice was reaching tones of panic, especially at the beast-like growl that came from Remi. She’d had no idea she could even make sounds like that. It sounded so inhuman. Brow furrowed, she shifted her hands to Remi’s, trying to stop her from digging her nails into her skin but all that managed was a thumbnail digging in and dragging across her palm. “Shit,” Vee said again and, then, throwing caution to the wind for the sake of Remi’s well-being, she crawled into Remi’s bed, laying down behind her, and wrapped her arms around Remi, effectively pinning down her arms and hands. “Remi. Remi, wake up. I’ve got you. Wake up.” -- Remus had grown used to the transformations, though it didn’t make them any less painful than they’d been in the beginning. The worst part was losing himself...his mind slipping away, his own voice growing smaller and stifling until he was a faint whisper, and the wolf and his needs were all that mattered. The transformation completed and a feeling of loneliness settled into his aching bones for a brief moment, the howls from before quieting into soft whimpers and whines. Then a bark caught his attention, a baying howl accompanied by a familiar scent. One of his haphazard band of misfits - his pack - had arrived. Something akin to peace finally seemed obtainable, and his tense limbs began to relax. They would run. They would be free. Just beyond the dreaming world, Remi’s struggling had finally ceased, her breathing still labored and caught in small gasps. She began to relax under the press of Vee’s arms until finally the rigidity bled out of her, and she went limp instead. She was called softly by the familiarity of her best friend’s voice, but even as she woke, her body recalled sharp pain that wasn’t entirely phantom. She tried to speak, still on the verge of waking, but her mouth was dry and she winced at the effort, “Vee?” Her voice was a fraying thread of sound. Her fingers ached, and she could feel some unknown substance on her fingers, her limbs and stomach stinging from she didn’t know what. -- Vee had no idea what else she could do and, as always when it came to her friends, she hated when she was helpless. Without knowing anything else that she could do, she just held Remi tighter to herself, repeating her words over and over again until they started to seem to do some good. I’ve got you. Remi, I’m here. You’re all right, I’ve got you. She was patient, kept her cool, even if every part of her felt ill seeing Remi being so tortured by her dreams. But then Remi slowly went limp in her arms and Vee said a silent prayer, sighing in relief, that it was over. “Babe, I’m here. You’re okay. I’m here.” Tentatively, she loosened her hold on Remi, her arms still staying locked around her middle, almost afraid to move and see the damage that Remi had done to herself. “It was just a dream. Whatever it was, it’s over and I’ve got you.” -- Remington was growing steadily more aware of the fact that a cold sweat clung to her skin, and that stinging pain wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. A shudder traveled her spine as she listened to Vee’s comforting words, and she tried to let them be a healing balm. Even as the initial grogginess continued to slip from her mind, Remi could still remember the dream vividly. The scratching in the dream must not have only been in her mind, but she’d never been able to wake herself up. She’d been a monster. She was something other. A werewolf. Just like the almost-vision she’d had that she was that little boy, bitten by a half-man, half-wolf in the middle of the night, this dream followed in the same line. The boy had grown into a young man, though the wolf had grown right along with him. Her eyes stung, her chest squeezing like she was in a vice even though Vee’s arms had loosened around her. A tremble in her lip that she couldn’t suppress followed, and as the first few tears slipped over her cheeks, she lifted a hand to her lips in an attempt to quiet the sob that caught behind her ribs. She drew her knees a little closer to her chest, knowing that she’d hurt herself, no matter how unintentionally. Her father was going to be so mad. She wasn’t going to be presentable. How broken was she, really? “I wasn’t me, Vee. It wasn’t me,” she gasped a breath, sniffling a little. She couldn’t seem to quiet her tears, though whether it was because of the shock or the pain or just a sensory overload, Remi wasn’t sure. -- “I know, Rem,” Vee said in a hushed tone that she hoped passed as soothing. She hated hearing the way Remi’s voice broke, and the way she had to be careful of where she touched her friend because the self-inflicted scratches were all still so fresh. She hated not being able to say some magic word that made whatever nightmare Remi had just slept through go away. “It was just a dream,” she said, not sure of what else to say. “Tell me about it. You don’t have to keep whatever happened in it to yourself.” -- “It didn’t feel like a dream,” Remi said quietly, almost afraid to voice those words, as though she would start sprouting fangs and attack her best friend. It took a few moments, but as she tried to gather her thoughts, her tears seemed to become more infrequent. Her eyes still stung, but she tried to relax a little while she searched for words, “When it...when it started I wandered into these woods, and there was this wolf there. But I was never...never afraid of the wolf because it was p-part of me.” Remi paused a moment, and before she could think better of it, she shifted so that she could face Vee. She needed to see her to be grounded. Even in the dim light that spilled in from her window, she could still make out Vee’s features just enough for it to be a comfort. She knew she’d scratched herself badly. Turning over was more painful than she wanted to think about, but she didn’t want to know how bad it was yet. “Something in me was changing, and I didn’t know what it was at first. I was...someone else, and so were you. I probably watched too much Harry Potter, because I thought I was Remus, and you were Sirius.” She tried to smile, but it was weak and faltering, “It’s a full moon tonight. I...I felt what it was like to transform into something not human. It felt like my bones were snapping and my muscles shredded. I needed to get out of my own skin. I’ve never felt pain like that. It was like being destroyed from the inside and reshaped into something else altogether.” She swallowed thickly before she reminded Vee, “When I passed out a few weeks ago, I hallucinated that I was that same little boy who was bitten. I don’t know what’s happening to me, Vee.” -- Only for a moment, Vee loosened her hold on Remi just long enough for the other woman to face her, but then she was holding her close again as if she alone could protect Remi from whatever horrors she’d just conjured up in her mind. I was Remus and you were Sirius. Vee tried not to let the way those words shook her show on her face or in the tension of her body. After all, it wasn’t like those words were less horrific than the thought of Remi even mentally experiencing the sensation of her body ripping apart. But, for a moment, Vee was remembering her own dream, of being Sirius Black, leaving his little brother behind with parents who hated Sirius, to seek solace with a different family. How was it that their dreams, though completely different in nature, were so alike in context? “Dreams bleed into waking life all the time,” Vee offered, trying to pass herself off as confident, reassuring. “It could be that you were feeling the way your nails were digging into your skin and your subconscious used it to exacerbate your dream.” Tentatively, she pulled one arm from around Remi and lifted a hand to push back the sweat-drenched wisps that clung to her forehead. “Listen, I don’t know what caused it, and I don’t know why it felt so real. What I do know is that this is what’s real. Your bed, your room, our apartment, me. Focus on those things, be here. I’m here with you.” -- “Maybe,” Remi agreed when Vee suggested that her scratching had just made the dream all that worse. Even still, she felt like the scratching hadn’t started until it was part of the dream...until that moon had started to rise, and her very biology had betrayed her. It hadn’t been real. She knew that every agonizing moment had been a part of her dream, and yet her brain had set her pain receptors on fire because even now her body ached. She let out a breath, closing her eyes for a moment when Vee reached up to brush some of her hair out of her eyes. Her heart thudded strongly against her ribs, and she told it to stop, ignoring the off-rhythm beat to listen to her best friend. “Thank you for being here,” she said after a moment, finding Vee’s eyes even in the dark, “I don’t think I would have woken up without you...not for a while.” She tried her best to push out the details of that nightmare, though she had a feeling that they would be lingering with her for quite some time, “Will you stay for a while? I know...if you need to sleep...I just don’t want to be by myself.” -- Without hesitation, Vee nodded and fought the instinct to pull Remi even closer. “I can sleep here just as well as I can sleep in my own bed. Of course, I’ll stay.” She didn’t mention that she hadn’t been sleeping, anyway. Adding more worries to those Remi obviously already carried didn’t seem like the best idea. Maybe sleeping here next to someone would help more than one person tonight. She hesitated, debating whether to even tell her that she’d had her own dream but then decided it might help if Remi knew she wasn’t entirely alone. “For what it’s worth,” Vee said quietly, “I had a dream the other night that felt real, too. I was Sirius Black and I was having a row with my little brother right before I left home to live with the Potters. So maybe we’ve both been watching a bit too much Harry Potter recently.” -- She had hoped that Vee would stay. She didn’t like showing weakness, but this was not her lowest point of the night and if Vee had seen her through all of that already, it was pointless to pretend to be fine now. There was so much that she wished she could say, but in the life of Remington Steele there were some things that were not spoken of. Anticipating silence to follow, Remi was surprised when Vee continued, revealing that she’d also had a dream. Not just any dream, but one in which she was Sirius, just as in Remi’s own nightmare, and it was perhaps of the same horrifyingly detailed origin. She moved a little closer to Vee, as though she might be able to protect her. She paused a moment, suddenly far more alert than before and frowning before she pressed, “If you had that dream...wait…didn’t Jahan and Calla have a dream too? They had the same exact dream as each other, remember? Jahan said we were guys - British - and that we wore funny robes and they named their kid Harry. None of this feels like a coincidence.” -- “Yeah,” Vee replied, but put a lot of effort into ignoring the concern that continued to bubble inside of her, “but we also watched those movies like three weekends in a row and had that blown up, over-the-top discussion about the topic a few weeks ago, so it’s probably just our imaginations in collective overdrive.” She shifted just slightly, letting her shoulder push up on the pillow so that she could get comfortable to actually sleep once Remi was back to sleep. “I think we’re fine, Rem, but even if we’re all losing our minds, at least we’re in good company, right?” -- “True...maybe that’s all it is,” Remi agreed after a moment, though something still didn’t feel right to her. Vee didn’t seem to find it all that worrisome, and maybe she was reading far more into it than she should. She felt Vee move just a bit, and figured that they should try to settle back in. They had enough upset to deal with for tonight. In the morning, they could assess whatever damage had been wrought, and move forward. She might not be able to sleep, but for Vee’s sake she should probably try. Remington smiled, wavering and half-hearted, but she agreed just as she closed her eyes, “The best company.” |