Chapter Text
Fabian is running through the long Aguefort halls. He has been running for some time now. There’s someone he needs to reach, but they round yet another corner before he can fully see them. He just catches a glimpse of a flowing dress, or was it a pantleg?
He should call out to them. It isn’t safe here. Fabian can feel it in his bones, a painful danger. If only he could remember their name.
He skids around the corner, the floor unusually slippery under his bare feet, just as the person opens a classroom door.
Suddenly he recalls the name:
Miss Badgood! He calls to her, but she has already gone, leaving the door ajar.
He should not have spoken to her, he realises in an instant. Panic slams into him as a punch in the gut and floods his vision. He fights for purchase on the glistening tiles, running and crawling his way to the door. His eyelids struggle against him, sticking to each other with each blink. He doomed her, he doomed her!
When he reaches the doorframe he yanks himself through. The air changes. It’s colder and he feels the dew on his feet from the forest floor.
He looks out over the beautiful lake. It’s calming until he realizes there is no reflection of the moon on its surface. An uneasy feeling settles over him.
Someone is crying softly next to him. He looks over and sees Saint Kristen Applebees hunched over, her halo flickering on and off, eyes closed in mourning while blue tears flow down her cheeks.
Fabian approaches to find out what she is so upset about.
In a bed of soft grass, surrounded by sickeningly blue flowers the colour of the Saint’s tears, lies the body of Yolanda Badgood. Her chest is an empty black chasm.
Fabian stares, wide-eyed. Mrs. Badgood’s head lulls to the side and her lifeless eyes bore into his, filled with morbid accusation.
Fear hits him in an ice cold shower. He staggers back, his legs stiff and unresponsive, and trips over his own feet to the ground. He tries to get away but his legs tangle in the deep green vines that cover the forest floor. Every time he manages to pull one leg free the other is ensnared worse than before. His hands sink into muddy earth and he can’t push himself up.
When he tries to call to Kristen nothing but air leaves his mouth.
The eyes of Kristen’s dead teacher stare into him as his lips twist uselessly around the word run.
—
Fabian startled awake with violence. He flew to the ground, legs trapped in a tangle of sheets. He made it halfway across his room before he realised where he was. Panting he lay on the floor, knees aching from his panicked crawl. His heartbeat pulsed in his throat.
Slowly he sat up. He flexed his fingers once, twice, focussing on the movement, the tension and release. Then he got up and placed himself back in his bed. He willed his breathing down to a normal pace. He couldn’t quite brave closing his eyes yet, afraid he’d see that dead woman’s face again, pallid white skin with dark bags under her eyes and purple lips, staring, unseeing, dead because of them—
Fabian shot back up, violently enough to shake the image from his brain.
His mind was still addled with sleep. He couldn’t keep focus and his eyelids begged to rest. Under the curtains he saw the faint glow of early morning light.
It was time he got up anyway.
He made his way downstairs, turning on every light as he went. Every dark corner reminded him of the black hole in the woman’s chest. It wasn’t real, he reminded himself, but that only served to make him think of what she had really looked like in that forest, ribs crushed and left to rot.
He entered his kitchen, regretting his lack of foresight as he walked on the icy tiles with bare, sockless feet. The sensation of stone on skin summoned flashes to the front of his mind of Aguefort halls, elongated by his dreaming imagination.
Only after he’d finished ordering breakfast did he think to check the clock. The smaller hand pointed resolutely at the four. He would have to tip the poor delivery person really well to make up for that.
He sat at his kitchen counter with a glass of slightly chemical chocolate milk made with a brown powder Kristen had given him a box of once. Some sort of poor person’s version of the real thing. It was comforting, reminded him of sitting around the big breakfast table at Mordred Manor with his friends, laughing giddy from exhaustion after a particularly long school day.
He hadn’t had a nightmare that severe in quite some time. Maybe ever, barring the Nightmare King’s dreams.
The soft glow of pre-dawn light illuminated his spotless kitchen. Fabian traced the lines of the cabinets with his eyes, taking in the appliances he still had no idea how to operate. He focussed on how the real world around him felt, noted the bar stool pressing into his legs just so, the cool counter top not budging under the press of his fingers. It calmed him down considerably, but not entirely. His heart no longer beat at a marathon pace, but he still had a certain jumpiness, and he didn’t dare let his mind wander for fear of scaring himself shitless again.
He just needed to make it through the morning. At school, in the full light of day, his brain would surely remember he was a fearless adventurer, not the helpless child he had felt like in the dream forest. He’d surely be laughing about this with his friends later.
He was proven right. At least, Fabian insisted in his own mind that he was. After first period he had practically convinced himself he’d forgotten all about the dream. If the mournful eulogy given by a shaky Jace Stardiamond during afternoon assembly made his heart beat a little faster, it was just the belated result of the two cups of coffee he’d downed during lunch.
And if, when the ever observant Gorgug asked if he had slept well that night, he failed to mention the nightmare, it was because it was irrelevant anyway. Why should his friends care about a one-off stress dream?
But then it kept happening.
A second, a third, then a fourth dream left him dry heaving on his bedroom floor. Afterwards he slept with the lights on or not at all. Even on quiet nights he slept poorly, passing in and out of slumber in fits, finding himself wide awake long before sunrise. He picked up training in the early mornings, told himself he could use the extra exercise anyway.
One time he almost fell asleep at lunch, slamming his chin against the table as it slid from his palm. His bumbling excuse about some late night dance practice was accepted but not quite believed.
Two weeks after the first nightmare, Adaine asked him if he was sleeping okay.
Fabian sat at the bar of Basrar’s Soda Fountain writing his History of Dance essay (minimum word count: 25; Mrs. Skullcleaver would also accept an interpretive dance, but Fabian was simply too exhausted to do anything like that) while Adaine went over the company ledgers. She had her eyes trained on the endless rows of numbers as she asked, meaning she must have noticed his tiredness earlier and had sat on the question for a little while. Or maybe she was just practicing her divination spell work on him.
Fabian opted to ignore instead of answer. “You know that’s all automated, right? You don’t have to check a crystal-computer’s math.” Maybe she would just drop it.
“People have to put the numbers in there first. People can make mistakes.” Adaine looked at him over her glasses. “You’re avoiding my question.”
Fabian’s scoffed. “I’m not avoiding anything. I guess stress has been keeping me up a little lately, yeah.” It wasn’t technically a lie. Those dreams were simply a manifestation of the insane amount of stress they were all constantly under. A very dramatic but surely temporary manifestation.
Adaine put her pen down. “I used to have that all the time. Couldn’t trance because my mind refused to shut off even for a second. Do you wanna hear a tip Jawbone gave me?”
Fabian nodded his head. He would like to be rid of the dreams sooner rather than later.
“Okay, the thing is to basically imagine yourself moving through some rich, scenic landscape, like a coral reef or a swamp or whatever, and notice the things around you. Close your eyes.”
“Right now?” Fabian raised his eyebrows. He did have to finish his essay.
“Yes, right now. We have to see if it works for you. Not every technique works for everyone, you know.” Adaine used the imperious tone she reserved for quoting things trusted sources had taught her.
Fabian shrugged and obediently closed his eyes. Maybe clearing his mind wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for him in this moment. It might stop his hands from fidgeting so much. He rested his chin on the palm of his left hand.
With his eyes shut he felt the exhaustion he had been ignoring, that sat heavy in the depths of his limbs.
“Remember to breath deep and slow.” She stopped to demonstrate and Fabian followed along. “You find yourself in a beautiful forest, where light streams down through the leaves and flowers bloom all around.” Adaine’s voice was soft and a little melodic, and Fabian found himself relaxing as he listened.
She guided him on a walk through some woods, pointing out birds by name, only some of which Fabian could put an image to, most of which were left to his imagination.
“You see a brown bunny further up the path. It looks around a while, surveying its surroundings. Its ear twitches, and it turns his head as if to listen for something before disappearing into the greenery. You keep walking ‘til you make it to a clearing.”
Fabian let himself fall into the narration, and more and more it felt like he was really in the forest. Adaine’s voice faded to the background.
He stood in a meadow, soaking the warm sunlight into his skin. Insects buzzed low to the ground. He looked around him and admired the grand trees that lined the grass. Rich green vines twisted up their trunks and birds sang high in their branches. His eyes caught on a dark patch underneath a particularly impressive tree.
He moved closer to examine it, puzzled by the darkness of the stretch of ground in all that sunlight. He squinted and saw a figure slumped over on the ground.
Fabian crouched down and gently turned the figure over by the shoulder. Yolanda Badgood’s head slumped limply to the side yet her dead eyes peered up, directly into his.
Fabian yelped and lurched backwards. He almost fell off his barstool but caught himself just in time on the counter.
His heart raced and he looked around wildly, trying to regain his bearings. He was in the ice cream shop. Before him was not a dead body but his homework, crumpled from where he’d lain on it. His friend Adaine looked at him from behind the counter, eyes wide in alarm.
“Are you okay?”
Fabian forced himself to breathe calmy. He could see people staring at him from the corners of his eyes. Had he actually made a noise just now? “Did I fall asleep?”
“Uhm, yeah, you dosed off for a second. Did you have a dream or something?”
“What? No, no, nothing like that. I just… I had that thing where you feel like you’re falling when you’re not.” Fabian’s cheeks were on fire. Quietly he thanked his father for his dark, blush-concealing skin. A nervous laugh escaped his lips, which was almost as incriminating. “Anyway, it’s about time I get going.”
Adaine frowned, concern still lining her face. “You sure you’re okay? What about your essay?”
“The Ball promised to help me with it. He’s meeting me at my house. I’m kind of late actually.” Fabian half-heartedly pretended to look at the clock on the wall. Adaine was clearly not convinced. He just needed to leave this room, he still felt like everyone was looking at him and it was suffocating.
Adaine bit her lip while he gathered his things and turned to leave. “Oh, okay. See you later.”
Fabian mustered a weak smile as he threw a goodbye over his shoulder and fled.