the dream drabble

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

Rating: PG-13 for swears
Word Count: 385
Pairing: Dawn/Sully
Summary: Dawn had a dream.
Notes: The night of February 13, 2009. Fits into canon 100% perfectly after this.

She was freezing.

That was the first thing Harry Sullivan noticed when he woke suddenly to find his wife curled up around him as best she could be, feathers sprung from her back filling the rest of the room and blocking his view of the window or the clock.

The room wasn't freezing, but Dawn was freezing, and more than that she was still asleep and shaking. A further inspection, bleary-eyed and all (though he didn't need his glasses) had him realizing that she was, in fact, genuinely freezing - her lips were blue, her fingertips weren't responding when he lifted her hand up and pressed down on the nail beds.

She was clinging, she was cold, she was crying softly and she was asleep. She had to be asleep, because she was crying. She had to be asleep, he kept telling himself. Just because she was frost-ridden didn't mean she was dying.

"Dawn," he whispered into her sweat-covered hair, sweat that seemed to be lined with snow. How had that happened? "Dawnie, wake up, it's just a dream."

It had to be a dream.

(She wasn't waking up.)

It had to be a dream, she'd had dreams like this before – not like this before, where she'd gone all cold, where she'd acted in a way where he didn't know quite how to get her back. Where maybe she seemed hypothermic. But she'd had moments where she cried in her sleep, where she woke up screaming, where she insisted it had been so real and she was so sorry and she hadn't meant to upset him.

She never really was upsetting him until she cried and became so afraid he didn't know what to do anymore.

What she dreamt didn't upset him when he didn't know what it was.

This upset him.

"Dawn," he prompted again, practically begging, holding her close and then suddenly her head lifted, her wings disappeared, she gasped for air and collapsed crying again, face hidden in her pillow.

He pulled her into his arms, silent, not asking.

"Fuck," she whispered into his shoulder.

"You're freezing," he said.

"I know. I know! I don't care! I'm not freezing, she is –"

"Who?"

"Isabella!"

"What?"

"Al's mum, you idiot!" Dawn's crying got harder. "It was all so hazy –"

"Did you see something about Al's mum?" Sully was practically asleep.

Dawn hit him with a pillow.

"Get me a telephone," she said.