Helen Magnus (britishcharm) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-09-30 18:40:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, helen magnus |
Who: Helen (Narrative)
What: A restless night.
When: Saturday
Where: Kaiser Hospital
Status: Complete!
Rating: Low. Brief implications of death.
For weeks she had dreamed of the man in the mask, saw his face every time she closed her eyes. Adam. He was familiar, someone she had known at Oxford. But she couldn’t recall his significance. There had to be something, some reason he would be haunting her dreams.
But tonight the dreams were different. Scattered fragments of memory, jumbled together without order, without context. They spanned decades, places she had never traveled and times she had never lived through. Yet, she had no doubts as to their reality.
Loud. Clear. Precise.
She knew who she was, where she was. She knew she was dying.
---
Helen woke still grasping at a warmer memory, one with edges softened by familiarity, focusing on the feel of John’s arm around her, the solid planes of his chest pressed against her back. She had sought comfort in his arms, safe in the knowledge he was unaware of her actions. How often had he held her that way in this lifetime? How safe had she felt when he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close?
She closed her eyes tightly against fresh guilt, twisting a hand into the sheets until her knuckles turned white with the effort.
It somehow didn’t matter that the love she felt now existed in the world of her dreams. She was real. John was real. Hadn’t she loved him once? Was it so difficult to believe she might love him still?
Absently brushing her fingers over one damp cheek, she gave up all pretense of being strong. She was tired.
She was tired of fighting, and tired of questioning the reality in which she lived. John was her past. Her future rested in Varric. Or so she had begun to hope. Why, then, was she having such trouble distinguishing her feelings? Why could she not separate what she felt in this world from what she felt in the other?
Pushing those thoughts away, other facts begin to slip into her awareness. Small inconsistencies, words that had lost their meaning upon her waking.
The loss of a daughter.
And James. Such a constant in her waking world, he seemed oddly absent in her dreams, making only the briefest of appearances.
Her world felt fractured. Something had been lost, damaged. It left a hollow ache in her chest, and for a moment, she was certain life must have ended.