Chapter Text
He awoke to a scratching sound.
Wiping the sleep from his eyes he looked around for the source. The window. The scratching was coming from the window. Still drowsy he went over to it, throwing open the blinds, only to come face to face with a six eyed monster. It had already stripped half the barrier from the opening.
It took a full second for the shock to hit him. He screamed, turned to wake his wife, but it was already too late. There was shattering behind him and he was thrown to the floor under a heavy weight, pain lancing up his back.
His last thoughts were of his daughter, Undine, how she would have to go on without...
He bolted upright, panting and coated in sweat. It had been a nightmare. Just a nightmare.
“Everythin’ alrigh?” his wife slurred out beside him, her sleep disturbed by his waking.
“Yeah, just a bad dream,” he answered.
“‘Kay,” she managed to murmur back, before rolling slightly. She was snoring again within moments, and with her went his distraction from the dream.
Usually when he had these sorts of dreams it was the other way around, Undine would die during the nightly patrol and he would be the one left to mourn. Sometimes she would simply not come home and the dream would mercifully end there. Far too often they would involve him opening the front door to his daughter’s bloody corpse on the steps, fallen only a few inches from the safety of home. Such dreams had become a fixture of his nights ever since… Ever since…
Throwing that thought from his mind he swung from the bed to get water, the clock read 1:36, pink light seeping through the blinds.
He heard a scratching sound from the window.