Pyre (Frerard, Rikey, Ryden, Petekey)

2: Visions Sounds Less Crazy Than Hallucinations - Right?

Gerard awoke with a start, shooting up in bed so quickly, he suffered a spout of dizziness from the sudden movement.

When he realized it was just that same fucking dream again, he settled back down, even though he knew sleep wouldn't be returning to him this night - well morning actually, because many of the vampire stereotypes may not be true, but the sleeping through the day thing was an accurate one. Gerard definitely didn't bed down in a coffin though, and as far as he knew, he couldn't transform into a bat on a whim, much to his disappointment.

All humor aside, there was nothing funny about Gerard's current predicament. This dream was going to be the death of him, because it wasn't just a dream - not anymore. No one dreamed of an identical situation for three years running, at least, no one sane, and Gerard was definitely beginning to doubt his sanity right about now.

The pounding headache and accompanying chills and stomachaches began to assault him as soon as his head hit the pillow. This always happened after his visions, which is what he had started calling them, because they felt so real that dreams didn't seem a good enough term for this phenomena. Hallucination would have worked as well, but that would just reinforce the crazy image Gerard was trying so hard to avoid.

They hadn't always been this bad, not at first. In the beginning, Gerard could honestly convince himself that they were just dreams, and the following headaches were just an irregular coincidence, and there was no direct correlation between the two. He had assumed they were memories of the purge: fear of the horror, and fire, and senseless death brought on by the stupidity of a few ignorant rogues, coupled with the vile nature of humans, which in turn had changed his life forever.

But as time progressed, it became more and more difficult for Gerard to maintain the illusion that this was a run of the mill nightmare. What had started out as random images of being burned alive slowly morphed into a full five minute scenario, well...five minutes in dream time that is.

It had taken ages for him to put it all together, when dreaming of fire and death turned into visions of him being lost in a burning building, unable to remember how he got there, or what had caused the inferno in the first place. They seemed like completely different dreams, and Gerard continued to delude himself that they meant nothing - everyone had bad dreams right?

They used to come months apart - if not longer, but as the dream itself gained in length, so did the number of occurrences. Once every couple of months turned into once a month, which had now evolved into a weekly ritual that Gerard had grown to dread, and with each shortening of time between them, the painful after effects strengthened as well. What started out as small headaches escalated into full blown migraines, and then to a fever coupled with the inability to keep his stomach contents where they belonged.

The vision always began in the same place now as well, Gerard didn't see the dreams in fragments, or the end first anymore. It had morphed into a never-ending sequence that, try as he might, he couldn't sway the outcome in his favor.

But it wasn't until this year that the dark haired man had shown up, before then, Gerard had simply died alone for no reason, his screams unheard or ignored, and honestly - Gerard had preferred it that way.

With the addition of this stranger, they had become even more of a torment to his already fragile mind, because in the dream, he cared for him so much - almost as much as he did for Mikey, but he still had no idea why. It made no sense, because he didn't know anyone who fit his description - hell, with his life spent constantly on the run, he didn't interact with anyone besides Mikey and Ray, so why was his subconscious plaguing him with this beautiful oddity?