priordivergence | In All My Dreams I Drown

I'm dreaming again. I know this in an abstract way that comes from repetition. This isn't the first time I've had nightmares of my time in Dauntless training. Sometimes I dream that I have to spar against Peter, only he's stolen all of my clothing again and so I have to fight naked or not at all. Those dreams are frustrating and abstract. The worse dreams are the ones of memories, when I watch my friends and family die.

Then there are the dreams of my fear landscape. The scenarios repeat and repeat until I wake myself up. Ironically, it's harder to separate myself from the fear when I'm dreaming than it is under serum. When I'm under a serum, I have a clear memory of being put under. When I'm dreaming, I lose myself in the liminal space between being awake and then being plunged into my own deepest fears,

Tonight my fears blend together. I'm on a rocky outcropping in the ocean, dragging myself up by my knuckles as I'm battered by waves. Overhead, I can hear crows squalling, waiting to eat me whole.

If I stay on the rocks, I will drown. If I climb them, they will come.

There's no point in escaping this by waking up because I will dream it tomorrow night too.

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"Is this really okay?" I ask, breath coming in pants now that it feels like I've got a chance to catch a few in a row again. It had all been too fast, too unfamiliar. I'm left gasping and trying to make sense of it.

I try to catch her eyes, wondering if this will be the last of it. If the birds will return. Or worse. "I this every night for you?" I know that the quaver in my voice says all that it needs to about how unacceptable that idea is to me.

"Not every night," I say, staring up at the cold steel ceiling provided by my imagination. Not every night. Just most of them. "I know it's not real." That knowledge doesn't do anything to keep me from feeling afraid, but it gives me the strength to know that I'll wake up and this won't be where I die.

"Every Dauntless had to go through it."

Not every night she says. As if that makes it any better. As if knowing it's not real makes it any better. I know that dreams aren't real; that's what it is to be a mage, to be wholly aware of when you're dreaming, and where you are when you do it.

The reminder sends a vicious chill swimming up my spine, making my shoulders tense.

"If you know it's not real," I ask, worried about the answer. "Can't you just wake up?"

It does not actually surprise me to hear that every Dauntless had to experience such a thing. As every mage had to experience a Harrowing, however different in every way that might be from whatever-the-hell this was.

Edited 2015-06-22 04:23 (UTC)

"I could, but I'll dream it again tomorrow, or the night after." Even if my mind remains fearful and lost, my body can at least recover. "They're not as bad as they used to be."

Not as bad as they were before Tobias came. Most nights, his arms around me are enough to distract from the worst of it.

"Everyone has bad dreams. I just have to learn to cope."

"Tris," I say, moving closer with the crackle of wetm broken glass as I close the distance. I want her to see my face when we talk about this. It seems, somehow, horribly important that I don't just let her slide by thinking ... that this is alright, I suppose. Something along the line failed her. That makes me angry.

I try to catch her eyes.

"Everyone has awful dreams. Not everyone remembers having them in the morning! Not everyone has the same kind every night. Just coping seems like a real kick in the arse to me. There's got to be better out there than just learning to cope. If this was me, well I'd ... I don't know what I would do, but I certainly wouldn't be just accepting it."

"You'd have to go to my city and undo every single Dauntless initiate then," I say, sitting up. I can still remember Al crying at night while Christina would simply sit quiet except for the way she occasionally startled. Tobias has gone into his fear landscape so many times, dealing with the same four fears again and again.

"I'm not scared of my dreams anymore, not really. But they don't go away."

She seems set in her beliefs, that nothing can be changed. As much as that bothers me for some reason, I'm not about to fight with her about it -- or anybody else about a personal belief, if it's truly personal. This is. This is her problem, because she wants it to be. In the same way, I suppose, I feel about the rift between my father and myself.

"Well, then, ah--"

I pause, shifting my feet around in the glittering wet glass, rivulets of cold water still moving through the field of it. It would be shitty behavior to cut and run while she's still here, especially if this is every night for her.

Why this? Why the crows, why the glass case?

"Then you can't just wake yourself?"

"I need the sleep." My body needs to rest and recover, even if my mind is still exhausted and fraught. Despite the lucidity of my dreams, I'll step out of bed refreshed in all but my mind. "And I am asleep, outside of this dream."

Isn't he? I'm suddenly less certain. Dorian is a mage, I suppose. Maybe he runs on different rules. What Dauntless would make of him, I think.

"As am I, for the most part," I say. I've managed to make my way over to Tris, though not without a little stumbling, and a lot of intensely paranoid staring around. This is her dream, not mine, and dreams are unpredictable in the best of circumstances. Someone else's dream, that was a realm of impenetrable that was maddening at worst, annoying at very best.

"But I don't -- mages don't, where I am from -- sleep like other people do. We're lucid. We know we're dreaming, and we remember, every time. We don't usually go traipsing into other people's. There are a few reasons for this particular situation, and I can go into detail about them later, but suffice to say; at least one of the methods I am currently regretting, just a bit."

"We don't have mages, where I'm from." Just science and serums that help me eke out everything I fear. I'm waiting too, for the next obstacle, but it seems as though focusing on Dorian keeps my brain from designating new horrors. I can't complain.

"You can still leave if you want. I know my dreams aren't exactly fun."

Do I want? Yes and no. But if I can't help, and she can't leave, and there is not much for me to learn here, it seems foolish to stay, even though it also feels cruel to leave when Tris is stuck to her nightmares. Alone.

Pressing a thumb against my cheek, I smooth down one edge of my mustache. I must seem agitated -- I am agitated -- and all that I can think to cover it up is to take a smooth, slightly too theatrical bow to Tris. I doff an imaginary cap.

"I suppose I'll take my leave -- but I'm going to make you talk about some things the next time we meet." I don't want to be cruel. But I can't help but think that talking about them, these awful nightmares, to someone, anyway, can't be the wrong decision in the long run.

We can talk as much as he wants, it won't change my dreams. Christina still has the same night terrors and Tobias finds new ones. I'm not special, though Dorian's concern is surprisingly kind.

Feeling better, I offer him a bow of my own.

"We can talk then. It's okay."

After a lingering look at Tris, at the strange space around me, the emptiness and silence of everything outside of the broken glass case and Tris' too-steady expression, I take my leave.

Waking, it fades behind me. I find myself, a moment after, sitting up in my own bedroom on a messy bed; I must have been tossing and turning. I didn't, not usually, especially not after lyrium. My feet are cold, the blankets discarded. It reminds me a little too much of the rush of icy water.

Tris will be around town; she will have to be, because Darrow was not something easily left. I can find her at leisure, I suppose, and speak to her again about it. Though I know she won't very likely be in much of a mood for discussing it.

In All My Dreams I Drown

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