Work Text:
Kenji had been having dreams, well, nightmares.
Not that he'd ever admit it to anyone, not that he needed to. He knew that he had woken up the others, but they never said anything.
They had their own nightmares to deal with.
His dad's second wife had been a firm believer in the fire and brimstone she'd even dragged Kenji to church with her a few times. Most of the preacher's words had flown over young Kenji's head. Except for the ones about hell, those had stuck home.
He could be in hell now, there was the was plenty of fire, and the dino poop could pass for the brimstone. He had certainly done enough to land him there.
Though Yasmina, Darius, Ben, they were all innocent, they didn't deserve to be in hell with him. Brooklyn and Sammy probably did though. Rage was one of the deadly sins right? Lying and stealing were too.
Hell was the only option, that's why he kept having nightmares. He put them in two categories, before and after.
The before ones were somehow not as bad as the after ones. The ones before just had them all running from dinosaurs and stuff. Ben clutching at him in fear. Sometimes he could hear Bumpy making distressed noises from somewhere in the distance.
At least those ones weren't too bad.
The bad ones are of Ben and Ben alone. Usually, he's standing in front of Kenji, though sometimes he's mid-fall, making eye contact and always falling and never getting closer or further away.
"I needed you, and you weren't there!" The Ben he sees at night screams. Sometimes with a broken neck and twisted limbs. Sometimes worse.
When Kenji was 11, his dad had been busy in meetings for a week while at Jurrasic World. Kenji had basically been given free reign of the park so long as he followed the rules.
He had, but that week a man, one of the handlers, had been killed and eaten by a crowd of the compies that had used pack tactics and the man's misfortune to kill and then partially eat the man. Kenji was part of the tour group that had accidentally discovered the man's body.
He hadn't told his dad, hadn't told anyone really, but that vision came back to him some nights in his dreams. Only now it was Ben missing so much flesh, now it was Ben with his stomach torn open and flesh missing from all over him.
Now it was Ben with his foot going one way and his head going another, both so wrong from how they should have been. Still with that accusing look on his face and his words of betrayal.
When Kenji wakes up and the first thing he does is beg a boy they're all certain is dead for forgiveness, the group never judges him for it. They know where he's coming from even if all their dreams are a little different in what they see.