Recover My Heart

Nightmares & Knights

Cold wind washed over my skin and caused me to shiver. Through my dark surroundings I could see a small rectangle where the wind was coming from. It also allowed little slivers of moonlight to give a slight glow to the one area.

I swallowed, recognizing the space instantly.

My basement.

My old basement.

I held my breath, wondering what sort of thing would be done to me. Nothing happened, and I thought perhaps she'd forgotten about me. I tried to move, to run back up the stairs, which I knew were behind me. To run back to safety.

But my feet were dragging and cold metal bit into my ankles. I ignored it, and when I got to the end of the chain- five steps, I was brought to an abrupt halt. She'd chained me to the walls, and left me here for who knows how long.

As my eyes adjusted to the barely lit room, I could see that the chains went right into the cement. They weren't bolted there, they were part of the wall, placed there while it was still drying. How had I never noticed this before?

My body began to shake out of fear more than shivering.

There was a loud crash in the direction of where the door at the top of the basement was. Light flooded the room, leaving me blinded as I tried to blink my eyes back into focus.

"You'll never leave, whore. You're never leaving this house."

I didn't have to be able to see her, to know it was my mother. She shut the door, and I was once again plunged into a wasteland of darkness. Even the mood had hidden from sight behind a cloud. I was alone.

"Sang Baby, wake up. Hey, you're okay, are you cold? You're not alone. Dammit, wake up!"

My eyes struggled to open. When I finally made them work, I noticed that North was out of bed and barely able to keep his footing where he stood next to mine. Some time during the night, he'd gotten up, and walked over without my help.

It wasn't a long walk, but I was still sort of proud at the lack of sweat- though he did look a little winded.

"North?" I rubbed a hand over my face.

When my eyes shut I could practically feel the chains, I could hear her voice, I could smell the musty basement...

".. You were whimpering in your sleep."

I looked back up at North and frowned softly, trying to comprehend what he had said. His dark eyes were searching my face, and I knew that not all of the nightmare had been washed away from my mind. I was still freaked out, and shaken up.

He made a face. "I'm sleeping with you tonight."

I sat up and shook my head, "North you should sleep in your own bed."

He scoffed softly, "What and let Luke be the only one to be able to say he slept with a gorgeous Doctor? We can't have that." He said, trying for humor, but the worry in his eyes overshadowed any humorous attempt.

"Hey now, if you wanted to sleep with a hot doctor, you know where I sleep every night, Northy-poo."

North's eyes flared as he looked over me to glare at Sean Green, who'd also been woken up because of me. I sat up to look around the room, and noticed the only ones who had slept through North's attempts to wake me up, was Silas Korba, who was in a coma, and Gabriel Coleman.

I felt guilty.

"You should all be resting.."

"Relax Princess, let us take care of you a little bit. You're having nightmares, Luke told us about last night. Let one of us fight them off... If you don't want North, Luke, or any one of us would be happy to volunteer."

The way he said it made me want to defend my reasoning, but it came out all wrong.

"No! I want North!" North smirked and Luke's face fell a little bit. I hurried on to correct what I'd said. "I mean I want Luke too.. I mean no, I mean I wouldn't mind any of you sleeping next to me," I paused, trying to make my sleepy brain function like I wanted it to, "I mean-"

"So it's settled," Kota said with a sleepy smile as he watched me wreck my train of thought. "We'll take turns being your knight in shining armor, fighting off bad dreams at night, and during the day you can rescue us from our injuries. Win win, I think."

Victor, on the other side of the room, made a noise of disapproval. I looked over, expecting him to ask to be taken off of rotation.

"If anyone is her Knight in shining armor, it's me. I mean, she is my Princess."

I held up my hands before they could start arguing. "Wait stop, I couldn't ask any of you to do something you don't want to, and it's selfish of me to use you to keep nightmares at bay."

Luke shook his head. "Sugar, it's selfish on our parts too. I mean, you're pretty and we get to play hero even when some of us aren't exactly in the right health frame. Let us have this small win?"

Well if you're all going to insist on taking turns cuddling with me, I'm not turning that opportunity down.

Kota, seeing it in my eyes, looked satisfied with my answer. "We'll go in order of who met you. Which means Luke yesterday, North tonight, myself tomorrow, then Gabriel, Victor, Doc, and by then I'm assuming at least one of the others will have joined us and want in-"

"How do you know they'd want to sacrifice a night of sleep to make sure I don't have nightmares?"

Victor laughed softly, "Sang we know our brothers. They'll help, and in this case, they'll be tripping over themselves to help."

Was that a compliment? I'm taking it as one.

We all settled down after that, and I made North go back to his own bed, figuring that it would be easier to keep him on his IV and monitors if we went to his bed rather than switch to the one I'd borrowed. His bed smelled like him.

I wanted to blame my actions on the dream, of being scared, on being half asleep. But I knew in my heart that in that moment, I was letting myself get complicated with them. I was allowing myself to venture down a road that my mother would disapprove of. She'd say I was living up to my whore-ish ways, sleeping with two men in the same number of nights.

But she was wrong.

This. Them. Me. It was all different than her words. I wasn't some slut, luring men into my bed for sex and thirty minutes of feeling like something other than complete crap. I was an almost-doctor, who was letting her friends take care of her.

That last part wasn't completely true, but I couldn't figure out what to call them.

You could be falling for more than one person at a time, right?

Either way, even if I wasn't having feelings for people who were so obviously off limits, there was no way any of them would continue down the path after they were done needing my doctoring.

I snuggled into North's arms. He held me tight, yet gently, pressed against his chest. Like I was a teddy bear he refused to release, but liked too much to squish.

Then again, were they off limits?

"Goodnight Sang Baby."

I turned my thoughts off. Reminding myself not to worry about the future when it came to them, and just be thankful for the care while it lasted.

I couldn't help the small thought, that they didn't seem the type to get invested with a girl flippantly. The way North held me.. The way they'd all claimed me in some way, that wasn't flippant was it? It wasn't just teasing and all in good fun, right?

I wished I had someone to answer my questions for me.