Chris was utilized with Guine's approval.
Word Count: 1257
Paris awoke confused and disoriented.
For a moment she could not even determine where she was, which seemed strange to her when there were only so many places she tended to sleep. Upon staring through the darkness she realized she was in her bedroom at home. Not an odd conclusion to draw, and yet something still did not seem right. She felt mildly out of place, like something about her surroundings had changed and no longer suited her. Or perhaps it was something in herself that had changed, and she no longer suited her surroundings.
The truth of the matter came back to her in a rapid succession of hazy memories. Chris, Lilah, Momma, the clinic, an ambush in the woods, a burning forest, a girl who wasn't really Rhiannon, and the man she remembered from Elysion. It came to her as if in a dream, yet it felt... surprisingly lifelike. The memories temporarily clogged her mind, made it almost impossible to remember what she'd done earlier that evening.
She'd come home late from the theater, after a performance of Dracula in which she'd performed within the corps de ballet. She'd had leftovers for dinner, soaked in the tub to unwind, and drifted off to sleep before Chris had even come to bed.
But she remembered... Chris in the forest... fire in the distance... Valhalla's starseed crushed before her eyes...
Paris's head swam as she pushed herself up in bed, struggling against the tangle of sheets and blankets that'd wended around her in her sleep. Briefly she palmed her forehead, breathing deep to forestall a sudden bout of nausea. The room seemed to spin around her. It settled slowly, and when it stilled again she realized why it seemed so unfamiliar to her now.
She had memories of another room at another house, in another time.
Unsettled, she turned to find Chris sleeping soundly beside her. Her hand went to his neck and felt his pulse, before sliding down his chest to feel his heartbeat. She could hear his deep, peaceful breathing. Slow, steady. He was warm to the touch, the comforter draped low at his waist.
Paris took him by the shoulder and shook him. Something wasn't right. Everything felt... unreal. She had to make sure that he was really alive, that this wasn't her mind playing tricks on her, because she was sure he'd been dead.
But that wasn't right, was it? She'd kissed him before coming upstairs earlier that night.
“Chris,” she said, quietly at first. When he didn't immediately awaken she shook him harder, and her voice rose hysterically, “Chris!”
“What, what, what is it, what's going on?” he mumbled back, jolting awake.
“Something's wrong,” she said. She could hear the panic in her own voice but couldn't do anything to calm herself. “Something's happened.”
“What? What's wrong?”
“I... I don't know... but everything's... I can't explain it, I just know...”
Chris sat up and grabbed her by the shoulders. Only when he stared her in the eye and said, “Paris, breathe,” did she realize she was hyperventilating.
She could stop it no more than she could understand what was going on. She was confused, and afraid, and nothing made sense at all. It was difficult to separate dream from reality, or one reality from another, or... she had no idea. Everything seemed jumbled, out of place, tangled up and out of order. Whole days had gone by since she'd gone to sleep. Weeks. Yet the clock showed only two hours had passed.
Chris shushed her , turned on a lamp, and stumbled from the bed to rummage around in the bathroom, returning to hand her two pills and a glass of water. Paris swallowed the pills with difficulty, choking on the water as it flooded her mouth and streamed down her throat. Her face was wet when Chris took the glass away, but it was not all from the water. Her cheeks were streaked with tears.
After setting the glass on the bedside table, Chris joined Paris on the bed again and pulled her to his chest. Paris went with no hesitation. For a while she cried without knowing who or what she was crying for. The longer she remained awake, the easier it was to pretend as if what she'd seen had been little more than a dream. She'd been having vivid nightmares for weeks. Months, really. Why should this be any different?
But there was something, some gut instinct or sense of intuition that insisted there was more to it than a simple dream.
“Are you okay?” Chris asked when Paris finally seemed to ease. Half an hour had gone by and the medication was kicking in, leaving Paris drowsy and somewhat calmer than before.
Paris shook her head. She had her face pressed into Chris's neck, feeling his pulse thrum against her lips.
“What's wrong?” Chris tried again.
“I... I had a dream...”
“What kind of dream?”
“It was... it felt so real...”
“What happened?”
Paris looked up and shook her head again. She breathed in wetly, raising a hand to Chris's face to touch his scratchy cheek.
“You were dead,” she said. Her breath caught on a quiet sob, but she managed to keep it together. “And my mom. And your dad. Michael and Peter, too. Everyone. Rhiannon was...”
She stopped and realized she had no idea what she meant to say about Rhiannon. Everything had been so vivid when she'd woken up. She was sure there was something... something important about her cousin, but the longer Paris remained awake the hazier certain memories became. She knew Rhiannon had been there just as surely as she knew something awful had happened to her, but she didn't know what it was.
“What about Rhiannon?” Chris prompted.
“I... I don't know...” Paris admitted.
She struggled to remember and failed. The more she tried, the farther away it all seemed.
“Shh, it's alright,” Chris whispered. His arms tightened around her. “It was a dream, just another bad dream.”
“Was it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Everything's fine.”
Paris lowered her face back into his neck and cried brokenly. “I don't want to lose you,” she said.
“You won't,” Chris told her. “I promise.”
He should know better by now than to make promises he couldn't be expected to keep, she thought.
Paris said nothing else. She hadn't a clue what to say or how to explain herself. She wasn't even sure where to begin. No matter how she attempted to explain it, it would only ever seem like a particularly vivid dream. She had no proof to the contrary. Certainly she wasn't prone to experiencing premonitions; she hardly even believed in such things. She'd had countless nightmares in the nearly four years since she'd awakened. Why should this one be any different?
She was home. Chris was alive. They were both alive. And if that was true it meant her mother was alive, too, and Beau, and Michael, and Peter. Rhiannon was fine and Lilah was still small. Momma would be her usual smiling self the next time Paris saw her.
They were all as safe as they could be in Destiny City.
For now, she thought.
She could almost feel the ghostly imprint of a hand in her chest, warning her against complacency.
Paris drifted back to sleep quickly, aided as she often was these days by medication. She slept until morning.
