Daylight Purgatory

[Victor]

His dreams were more like nightmares than anything lately. This one no different than the others.

He was walking down a dark hall, lit only from above from some unknown source. To each side of him, illuminated by their own light, were pedestals presenting scales of equal size, shape, and color. Upon the scales were each of his differing issues, be they external or internal. And as he walked down the hallway, they remained unmoving, equal, balanced, unresolved, and they led him down to a larger sized balance. As he walked closer to it, all the others seemed to be waiting for this particular large scale to be justified in order to release their judgements upon him. Like two lines of dominoes tipped by one choice or another. Upon this larger scale waited for him to choose...would it either be Kaelyn and the Fforde family...or would he choose Kenlie and the family at the bar. He fell to his knees before this scale and looked upon it with fear and overwhelming sadness. And then he felt a weight upon his shoulders. A warmth. And it was both suffocating and comforting. Suddenly, the lights started disappearing, leaving him in a dark space. But the pressure remained..and then..he felt the kisses. And he felt Kenlie's warmth pulling him from his sleep. From the nightmare. He buried his head in the pillow and exhaled deeply, thanking the universe that he did not have to choose.*

[Victor]

Gunfire filled his head behind closed eyes. Screams, bloodshed, a heavy feeling in his chest. He was in that same alleyway outside Jesse's shop. Night sky laden with oncoming storm clouds, streets smeared with blood and bodies of his comrades in arms. But...somehow it was different. Instead of the faces he knew, his fifteen brothers, they were the faces from the Handle Bar. Faces he knew and loved in this life. He was laying on the ground, skin spattered with gunpowder, blood pouring into his eyes, and reaching out. He roared..there was his Kenlie, eyes dead and upturned to the foreboding tempest. One arm missing, lower half of her body eaten away and just standing above her was a..and he screamed again..a fadebeast. They looked each other and the creature lifted one clawed hand above it's head, there was a pause, a stillness as all the chaos and rumbling of both thunder and gun blasts filled the air. He stared at that fadebeast and couldn't move, couldn't take a breath. The heaviness on his chest suffocating him, immobilizing him. He tried to lift his hands up in defense, to somehow keep this demise from demanding his soul once more. Then time sped up once more and that nightmare of an arm came to sever his head...

Victor woke with a start and growl, arms lifting to keep away...he looked around, he was back at the Sterling house, home. Kenlie was sleeping on his chest on the couch where they fell asleep the day before watching a movie. His head fell back against the arm of the couch and he stared up at the ceiling, panting, pulling her into his embrace tightly.