Dream a little dream of me

[Jack Ripley]

Not all bad, she said. But... Jack couldn't get past it. Past them being one and now them not being one. With his hand still over his heart, he ruminated over it, wondering if it cause some kind of change in dynamic between them. If Brayden would distance himself. If he had inadvertently fallen in love... with somebody else.

So deeply in thought was Jack that he didn't see the slap coming and he jumped, startled, when Marge gave him a good, healthy smack on the shoulder. He stared at her, not sure whether to be indignant or not. (He wasn't, really, just a little startled.) Moving his hand from his heart to his shoulder, he eyed her.

"You could kill somebody with just your hands, you know that?"

Somehow, he was certain that she did know it.

"What? What do you mean, project ourselves into the past?" Jack asked. "We weren't in the actual past. Just in a vision. Weren't we?" He was always out of his depth here, when it came to magic. What was he doing? For all he knew, they time traveled. But no, nobody saw them. They were spectators alone and nothing else. He thought.

Nobody told him it was so dangerous. Brayden didn't make it sound scary. Marge did, though. And Marge was a tough one; it had to mean something that she didn't like them doing it. Jack rubbed his arm, not out of pain but out of a cold chill that crept over him.

"Yeah..." He couldn't help it; every time it came up, he could feel his expression threatening to crumple. Again, he saw the beast go after him, the blood, the eyes... He shivered, his hand tightening in Marge's after she took it.

"We only did it twice because B was certain there was some kind of message laid out in the visions... He saw something in the first one so I agreed to try again to see if there was one in the next one." Resting his head against the bed, he sighed in relief. "There wasn't, thankfully."

[Marguerite De Silva]

Marge just gave Jack a Look because—yeah, she could kill somebody with her bare hands. Literally. She could throttle their heart from the outside, like she did to that golem fucker who tried to kill Brayden and Jack. So yeah. She did. She knew it, too, and she wasn't afraid to use it if it meant keeping her friends safe.

"They're visions but you pull them from the past. You create this... dimension where the scenes play out, like a temporary movie theater. But if you're not careful, you can get trapped there. And you'll be there watching that same scene play out over and over again, until you find the exit—if you're lucky." Her tone was grim but it was a grim and horrible fate that could have awaited them! Jack and Brayden could have looped through the same visions forever! Meanwhile their bodies would be here in the bedroom, prone and unconscious, unable to be awakened. Scary shit!

"What did he see? What message?" Marge saw the notepad on the bed earlier, but only just now pulled it over towards her. She scanned the two words written down on it, frowning. The first one was neatly written; the second one was... scrawled, that was the only word for it. It was scrawled onto the pad in great distress.

"What do these mean?"

[Jack Ripley]

"Well," he said, "that sounds terrible."

Shit. Nobody warned him! Did Brayden know that was a possibility? He couldn't; he never would have told Jack to do something so dangerous if he did! Would he? Of course he wouldn't. Jack's exhaustion was getting to him. He slid a hand over his face and tried his best not to yawn but... he yawned.

"Armed, is what he saw. I don't know why he thought it was a message but he was pretty excited about it... And he seemed pretty adamant about finding more of these... messages. He thinks one of us hid them in those visions somehow? I don't know how..."

He trailed off to look at the notepad Marge held.

"That's the notebook he wrote the message in." He paused. "These? What do you mean?" He peered over to look at the book and scrawled under armed was rateably. Jack frowned. "Is that even a word?"

[Marguerite De Silva]

"Really?" Color Marge intrigued. So Brayden noticed clues but Jack didn't. Brayden wrote the two words down while Jack was busy watching their past lives go by. It sounded like maybe it was Brayden who left the messages for himself to find at a later date. Or... whatever, an older version of Brayden who felt the need to leave little breadcrumbs. That did sound like a Brayden thing to do, Marge thought—that forward-thinking was indicative of his ability to over-think everything, but to also come up with some pretty good plans.

She squinted at the words. Armed. Rateably. Jack wasn't much help but he looked like he was going to pass out pretty much at any given moment, so she didn't expect him to have much insight. "I guess it's a word..." Marge turned the book this way and that, staring down at the two words. "You're sure he found nothing in the second vision?"

Armed.

Rateably.

They made no sense without context. "Which one was first? I mean the first vision, which word did he find first in the first one? Armed or the other one? Because..." She turned the book again. "It sort of looks like a word scramble. You know, like the letters could spell something else... another word..."

[Jack Ripley]

"He... must have," Jack said faintly. "There was only one word in the first vision. He must have seen that other one in the second vision."

So there were clues. Jack didn't like it; he didn't like what it meant. And he had no intention of going back in there, of digging around through vision after vision for clues. Maybe that was the exhaustion talking. Or it could be the fear.

"Armed. Armed was first." Did it matter? He raised his brows at her idea of a word scramble. What could they even spell out? Mared? Dream...? Jack sat up again, head spinning at the sudden action.

"That one's dream," he said, pointing to the word armed. It... it had to be, right? There was no way it was all a coincidence. Brayden, a dream-walker, a word that could be scrambled around to become... the word dream.

"Damn it... B was right. There's clues in the visions. Fuck me."

[Marguerite De Silva]

"Brayden Smith, you clever son of a bitch," Marge muttered to herself as she stared down at the page. Yes... Armed did spell dream. Dream, to go along with the fact that Brayden was a dream walker, and the prince of the house of dreams.

"He left these for himself. Whoever started this, whichever version of Bee initiated this whole thing, he left them in every lifetime for you guys to find." Marge grabbed the pen and scribbled down 'dream' underneath the first word. She looked hard at the second one, which was longer and more annoying to figure out.

"Shouldn't we get Bee? He can help, he's the booky type." Marge was more the shit-talking type, or the violently actiony type. "Where did he get off to anyway?"

[Jack Ripley]

Jack was too tired to even start in on the second word. Scrambling around armed to dream was just an accident. (And he couldn't say it was a happy accident, either, because of what it meant.) How many lives did it take for another Brayden to send this message out to them? To Brayden? They were in places only Brayden was looking at, as if he knew where another Brayden's eyes would be.

"I... yeah." It would make sense to have Brayden in on this. He started the "quest" and he would surely want to know he was correct. This kind of puzzling was right up his alley, too. Of course it was. He set it all up for himself with that in mind.

"He said he needed some air and water," Jack said, slowly dragging himself up to his feet. But he had been gone for a while. How much air and water could he possibly need? Absently, he rubbed at his tired eyes and suppressed the urge to yawn again.

Out in the living room and dining area, he wasn't all that surprised to see the others. But Brayden wasn't amongst them so he went outside. Air, he said.

"Brayden?" Where the hell did he go?

[Marguerite De Silva]

"You need to sleep soon." Marge followed Jack outside, scanning the room for Brayden. Raf looked up with one of his annoyingly bright smiles, from the couch where he had been cuddling with his surly little boyfriend. And Ken immediately appeared watchful; Marge was sure he noticed the haggard look about Jack, and Marge's worried frown.

"Ignore us, everything's okay." Marge walked outside to an empty courtyard, but pointed across the way. "He's in his apartment. Look, the light's on. Come on baby." Slipping an arm around Jack's waist to support him, Marge walked over to Brayden's apartment, where the door was unlocked. Gently she pushed it open, to the sight of him clutching a book to his chest, fast asleep on the couch.

"Aww... poor thing." She touched Jack's hand with hers. "See his light? It's different, right?"

[Jack Ripley]

How could he not lock the door?! Jack was alarmed that it was open, for just anybody to walk in. They might live in a gated apartment community but who knew what others lived inside with them? For all they knew, there were spies all around them!

Annnnd he hated being paranoid. It wasn't a good look for anyone, least of all him.

Still, the worry was with him when Marge touched his hand and he saw for himself that Brayden's light had changed. It had. Marge was right. Jack lowered his gaze and then quickly slid his hand out of her grasp. What did it mean? He was too sad and too tired to want to know right now.

Jack moved forward without Marge and gently plucked the book from Brayden's chest to get a look at it.

[Marguerite De Silva]

Marge still wasn't convinced the light changing was a bad thing. She didn't feel it. It was just different, in a neutral way maybe. She couldn't be sure yet, but her sixth sense wasn't tingling and she wasn't freaking out the way she might have if the light went dark or went out.

As Jack plucked the book from Brayden's hands, he stirred and his eyes opened. When he caught sight of Jack he smiled. Marge thought that was the kind of smile with enough power to break hearts, if Brayden wasn't careful.

"Hey," he said tiredly and sleepily, reaching up to touch Jack's hand. "Did I fall asleep?"

Marge moved forward to get a glimpse of the book too. It was a photo album, she noticed, and her heart panged unpleasantly. Brayden was looking through photos of his family over here, all by himself...

[Jack Ripley]

"Hey you," he said back. He turned his hand over to take Brayden's in his. What was happening? He was afraid of it, afraid that it spelled the end, that everything was about to be over. Despite that one small vision of the future that said otherwise--and he couldn't even trust that anymore--it still felt like everything was coming to a stop that he couldn't avoid.

He didn't know why Brayden left to come look at a photo album but... Maybe he felt like it was all ending, too. Like his second wind was not going to be enough to sustain him for another lifetime. He handed the book over to Marge as he swallowed hard, sinking down to sit with Brayden.

"I didn't mean to wake you up." He should probably tell him that he was right about the visions and the clues but it didn't feel like the right time to bring it up. Instead, he used his other hand to gently stroke Brayden's hair before leaning in to kiss him, to bring his head into his chest, to hold him.

[Brayden Smith]

"It's okay. I was just tired..." Bray curled into Jack as soon as he was able to, resting against him and letting his eyes drift closed. He didn't mean to disappear on them; he had only gone for a glass of cool water to settle his stomach and he went outside for some air.

When Bray felt ill, he liked to look at old pictures of his family and of himself. It made him feel better to be brought back to a simpler and happier time, when his troubles seemed big, but really were so small. Childish troubles didn't compare to the ones he had as an adult, after all.

And he liked to see his parents smiling, happy, posing in front of a giant redwood or perched on top of a rock, with the lake at their backs. Sunny pictures of them on vacation, one which caught Bray coming out of the shower with his hair all sticking out, looking like a startled little goblin, another with him as a little baby smiling toothlessly up at the camera. Happier times.

But he lost track of time and he fell asleep, and Jack and Marge must have been worried to come out in search of him. "I'm sorry," he whispered against Jack's chest, pressing a kiss to the tender hollow of his throat. "I didn't mean to make you worry."

[Jack Ripley]

"Yeah," Jack said, "me too."

It was the same kind of bone tired he felt when he waited for a lifeless Brayden to come back, with the fear eating him alive that he wouldn't come back. Now, with all this new information about their past lives, he couldn't help but fret over what it meant for their future. If something was bound to happen, if he would continue to be hunted down until he was no more.

What did the past Jacks do when he lost Brayden? He swallowed hard as he stroked Brayden's hair and down his back. Knowing himself now, he could only imagine bad things. A lot of alcohol. Too cowardly to kill himself but longing to just disappear. Holding himself at arm's length away from anybody that tried to get close to him.

"It's okay," he said softly, glancing once at Marge before turning his gaze down on Brayden. "Just... let's get some rest, okay?"

[Brayden Smith]

Jack looked and sounded as tired as Bray felt, which was no surprise given how much they had been through. Two visions, two harrowing glimpses into their past lives. Bray thought it was romantic that their fates were twined like this; he used to take comfort in knowing that there could be other lives they might live together. Now... it all felt like one giant nightmare.

He hugged Jack tightly. They were already sort of comfy on the couch and Bray just didn't have it in him to get up, walk over to either his bed or Jack's bed all the way across the courtyard. He closed his eyes, already half-dozing.

"Can we sleep here?" He could've dropped off to sleep right then and there. Vaguely he felt somebody throwing a comfortable fleece blanket over him and smiled. Marge. Her hand passed over the top of his head, and then over Jack's too. A kiss landed on his temple. Jack's also.

"I'll keep the other guys over at your place, Jack," she said quietly. "Go to sleep. I love you guys."

"...love you too Margie," Bray murmured. Or was that just in his own mind? He couldn't tell; he was warm and comfortable and safe in Jack's arms. For now, he was safe. No one could get to him when he had Jack's arms around him...