Work Text:
Sam dreams. She dreams of a black haired boy, but in her dreams she is the black haired boy.
She dreams of school hallways filled with the blurry afterimages of people. She The boy is always alone. Friends are hard to make when your parents are crazy.
She dreams of a town, of a restaurant with a blurred out name.
She thinks it might be the empty shell of a building that people say exploded killing several people.
The dream is washed out colors and sepia tones. It is a strange dream, but it is not a nightmare.
She approaches a building. Her house. An average townhouse. The house was a streak of gray in the midst of the washed out colors of the rest of the dream. She was inside the house now and it was hard to see, like she was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses inside.
Inside was a large orange figure and a slim teal one. They were blurred to the point where you could barely recognize them as people. Their color stood out starkly in the gray toned house. There was fear and longing and love and heartache and confusion and despair and a whirlwind of feelings when she looked at them.
But there was also another figure. One with red fire for hair and they were gentle and kind and love and loss and betrayal.
Then Sam was in a dark room with shadows flickering along the walls and eyes watching from the darkest corners. The room was cold and she was frozen in front of a hole in the wall. There were eyes there, watching her. Shadows flickering, waiting to grab her and pull her in. Then there was a shove and she was in the tunnel-like hole and there was lightning and pain and screaming and betrayal and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and pain and so much pain and—
Sam gasped as she shot up in bed. She was gasping for breath, her eyes wide and unseeing. Her gaze flickered frantically around the room, not taking anything in except for the fact that she wasn’t in that dark room anymore. She wasn’t in that strange tunnel. She wasn’t in pain. Was she? No. She wasn’t. It was a dream.
It was a dream.
She was shaking and her sheets were drenched in sweat.
She turned on her bedside lamp. She didn’t want to be in the dark right now. She hugged her knees to her chest. She kept looking around her room, gaze flickering to the corners expecting to see shadows curling out towards her.
It was a dream. She closed her eyes then quickly opened them again.
Already the dream was slipping away. She tried to hold on to it, but it was like dust floating away on the breeze. And did she really want to remember? It was important. She was sure of it. But was it? It was just a dream, afterall. A nightmare, but still just a dream.
She rested her head on her knees, letting herself take a moment to just breathe. Then she slid her legs over the side of the bed and stood. She needed a drink of water.
She walked over to her dresser and then stopped.
There, where her glass of water should be, was the planchet.