eli is from the darkest timeline (skittish) wrote in pandoracrack, @ 2011-12-18 18:54:00 |
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Samara was never really prone to having nightmares, though she had had a few in the past five years since she performed the memory charm on Eli. He would go completely insane from her having done the charm incorrectly and end up in St. Mungo's and Jason and she were left alone and the whole reason she had performed the charm backfired on her. This could not compare. There was not anything she had ever experienced in her life that could hold a candle to the horror of the nightmare she was now having. When Eli opened his mouth, lifting the flesh of their child to his lips, Samara shot up in bed, screaming at the top of her lungs. She was drenched in sweat and shaking uncontrollably, her eyes set wide as she relived the dream in her mind. She wasn't even aware that there were tears falling freely down her face. Eli had never been a deep sleeper, not that he felt that he really needed to sleep. It seemed unnecessary. So he was used to waking up all through out the night, but while he was used to that this was noticeably different. Tonight he blinked away to the sound of his wife screaming. Disappointment really shouldn’t have been the first thing he felt, but after all that work the woman in his dream went through to prepare such a unique meal, it was a shame not even have his dream self know what it tasted like. After the disappointment was a dull dread in the pit of stomach that something wasn’t right, but the most immediate one was his screaming wife. “S’mara? What is it?” Although about mostly awake, his words were still a little slurred from sleep. “What’s wrong?” Eli reached out to hold her. She was crying - never a good sign. “Hey, what is it?” It took her a moment to become fully aware of her husband speaking to her. Her mind was still working over the dream, trying to piece together whether or not it had been real even though she knew it had to be anything but. When he pulled her into his arms she finally stirred into the present and looked up into his face. “Elijah?” she asked tentatively, her voice was shaky and it felt alien as it left her lips. She didn’t normally use his full name, but the situation seemed to require it because she just wasn’t sure—was this her Eli or the man in the dream? She looked into his face and was not entirely sure right away. And then the rest of the nightmare washed over her like a waterfall and she felt dizzy from the heaviness of it on her mind. “Oh,” she whimpered and leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “I-I thought it was...” but she wasn’t even sure she could say such a thing out loud. The fact that she had even dreamed it was bad enough but to admit that she might have done that to her own child was unforgivable. Now that she was reliving it she knew that it had not been him, it had not been - “Jase,” Samara said quietly and began to cry freely against her husband’s neck; she grabbed hold of his arm with a vice-like grip and dug her nails in without really thinking about what she was doing. He held her more closely as she started to cry. It would be logical to assume that she had a rather unpleasant nightmare. Eli supposed on a technical level, he too had a sort of nightmare, it certainly wasn’t pleasant, but intellectually it was a curiosity. What would it be like to consume your child as made lovingly by your wife? Honestly, the true nightmare the night before with him losing his mind and his soul, that had actually been scary, then there wasn’t any way to break it down and make sense of it all. The mere utterance of their son’s name gave him pause. “Huh.” As her nails dug in, he wondered the likelihood that they would share some sort of conjoined dream. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possible, even if the research never amounted to anything conclusive, group consciousness did exist. Except what did it mean? And if they both had the same dream, did Jason have it too? “Do you want to go check on him?” “Yes,” she replied and immediately she was scrambling to get out of the bed, but then her mind caught up with her maternal instincts and she froze. Should she go check on him? What if he wasn’t safe around her now? She sat back down. “I-I can’t,” she said, wiping at her face, wishing that the tears would just stop already so she could focus more clearly. She looked over at Eli pleadingly and asked, “Will you?” It only took her a half a second to remember that he had been there, that he had willingly eaten what she had willingly prepared and that meant that she was not the only one who could not be trusted around Jason. She was on him in an instant. “Wait,” she said, grabbing his arm again, but this time it was purposeful and her eyes were hard when she looked at him; she had never looked at Eli in this way before. Samara would not let anyone hurt her son, even if it was her husband—or herself. “I will go with you.” Once Samara agreed, Eli was already in motion picking up his discarded pajama top and pulling it over his head. He was reviewing the aspects of his dream, strange in how it felt like one of his own memories, but not quite. Eli made a mental note to look into it a little more at work. For the moment he was only vaguely aware of his wife was panicking again, going back and forth on whether she wanted to see Jason or not, which served as preliminary confirmation of initial theory. He froze when she grabbed his arm again, taken back by the force and that look in her eyes. Eli wanted to ask her what she thought that he was going to do to their son. Except he was a more interested in seeing how she reacted to Jason and even how Jason reacted to her. He needed the raw data before he started asking questions. Instead he just put his hand on top of hers, his gaze carefully neutral with a pinch of reassurance. “Okay, let’s go check on Jase then. Together.” She watched him for a moment longer before nodding and softened her gaze, turning her hand and twining her fingers into his. She did not know why he hadn’t asked her about her dream yet or why she was worried about Jason. Her behaviour was obviously erratic, and shouldn’t he be wondering what she was suddenly crying for? Well, he had asked, so maybe he was just waiting to let her calm down and check on their son before finding out. When they reached Jason’s bedroom door her hands were trembling when she reached for the doorknob. She pushed it open and squeezed Eli’s hand as they walked forward into his room. The boy was still sleeping in his bed and she listened to the sound of his breath moving in and out of his nose softly for a while before she realised that she had not actually advanced further than the middle of the room. She wanted to go to him, to brush his hair back and hug him and hear him call her name but she was genuinely worried that she was a danger to him. She felt the tears welling in her eyes again as she looked to her husband, speaking softly. “What if I do hurt him, Eli?” Looking into the room, Eli was taken back at how small Jason seemed. That couldn’t possibly be a worthwhile meal, all bones and still forming muscles. Jason would need about another stone on him at least. He shook his head, pushing that thought away. There would be time for such considerations later, right now he wanted to see what Samara did. Eli pulled her into his side, offering what comfort he could give. “You probably won’t hurt him,” he said pressing a kiss to the side of Samara’s head. “And if it gets to that point, I’ll stop you, but you are his mother.” He added extra emphasis to the last part, feeling that it should mean more. They were blood and that was a strong, powerful sort of magic. Eli would know, he had always had a fascination with using blood to make spells more powerful. “Unless you would rather I go?” She needed him to reassure her, but there was that word. Probably. He did not know anymore than she did whether or not she was a danger to her own child. And yes, she was his mother, but Eli was his father and he had partaken just as much as she had. In fact - “But you didn’t. You didn’t stop me, Eli.” She was being irrational, because that was a dream and she could not blame her real husband for what her dream-husband had done and none of it even mattered because their son was fine. But she didn’t feel fine. None of this felt fine. Nothing felt right. “No, I think we both should go,” she said and tugged on his hand to pull him out of the room. For the first time since he was born, Samara wanted to get as far away from her son as possible. She could not look at him anymore, or be around him thinking that she might possibly do him harm. That either one of them might. The tears had dried and now she felt the fear clogging her throat, threatening to suffocate her if she didn’t confront this. She shut the door to Jason’s room and said to her husband, “It didn’t feel like a nightmare, Eli. It felt too real. I’m scared for him.” Now, that was interesting. She was clearly shaken by this nightmare, to the point where she appeared to consider it as reality. Eli watched her for a moment after she shut the door to Jason’s room. For him, the nightmare was a sort of puzzle, something he was tasked to figure out. It was only made more interesting by the fact that it was a shared experience. Perhaps later when he was back in his laboratory, he would transfer the memory into a pensieve and see if could dig around it more. Although that would be a challenge better undertaken if he knew everything he could about Samara’s nightmare. “Okay, you’re scared for him,” he said agreeing with her, “but we just saw Jase and he’s fine.” Their son was sleeping rather soundly and Eli didn’t think he was in any immediate danger. He pulled Samara into his arms once more. It seemed the only thing he could do was offer to hold her. “Do you want to tell me what it was about?” Despite his curiosity, he was trying to play the role of supportive husband rather than man with something to figure out. “I know, I know he’s fine now,” she replied. She accepted his embrace, holding him around the waist like he was a lifeline. She buried her head in his neck and shook it once in answer to his question. If she started talking about it now she might not be able to stop and reliving it right now would break her. She knew her husband well enough that he’d want to know all about it but she wasn’t ready for that yet. She leaned back and looked at him, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I will tell you later and you can analyse it all you want, but not now, okay?” She leaned her forehead against his chest and sighed. “I just - I need - just don’t leave me, yeah?” It sounded normal enough, asking him to stay by her side because of the nightmare, but she was also trying to keep him by her side, away from their son as well. She wanted them both away from him for now because she didn’t understand this nightmare and what it meant and she didn’t want to take that risk. “I love you,” she added, because she did and because she felt slightly awful for distrusting him with his own son, but she didn’t trust herself either. Eli couldn’t help the twinge of a smile at the fact she knew him well enough to know he wanted to pick it apart. “Alright, we can talk later,” he said agreeing a bit too easily, but he really didn’t think there was ground to be won this evening. Not this was supposed to be about winning. “How about we head back to bed for now? Neither of us actually have to be up for another few hours.” Not that he was particularly tired, but he hardly thought he would be allowed to kip off to his study to start pulling things together. Right now, he really just needed to be a husband with a somewhat distraught wife, hard as a role that could be to fill at times. “I love you too,” he said pressing a kiss into the side of her head. And he did, honest and truly or else he wouldn’t have it inked permanently into his skin. “And I’m not going anywhere, okay?” Going back to sleep didn’t sound like the best proposition, not if she was going to have nightmares again, but there wasn’t anything else for them to do really. She didn’t know if she’d have them again or not but even the possibility was an unwanted one. Samara stayed there for a while, just hugging him not really wanting to head back to the bedroom where the nightmare had began but eventually she pulled back and sighed, “Alright. Let’s go. And - thank you, Eli.” |