The X-Project

In the very early hours of Tuesday morning. After everything which has come to pass, it isn't too surprising that such things might creep into one's dreams… or nightmares.

There was light everywhere.

Everyone she cared for was being dragged under, Alison powerless to do anything from behind the blindingly bright walls, only able to watch - standing by and doing nothing. Limbs locked in light as well, the shield around her creeping up her legs, encasing her into total immobility, the silence surrounding her a dull roar in the absence of sound, pleading faces drifting away to die while she remained frozen in place. The vista changed suddenly, zooming out and all around her they were falling. Friends and loved ones, each dying one after the other, reaching out for her to help them somehow, begging and pleading as the life faded from their eyes-

With an inhaled scream, the sound lodging in her throat, Alison jerked into wakefulness, arms flailing as she tried to reach back from nightmare into reality, fighting against the covers wound around her legs and the weight of Haroun's own keeping her pinned to the bed.

Haroun, sleeping none too well himself, instantly reacted as he heard Alison scream, felt her flail. In that instant, old reflexes leaped to the forefront. Someone was attacking him. He grabbed his assailant, rolled hard off the bed, and wound up atop his assailant, forearm at its throat, just beginning to put enough pressure down to make speaking, or yelling, or indeed any sort of noise at all very, very uncomfortable.

A small, strangled sound broke the silence that followed, wide blue eyes still edged with the terror of the nightmare staring up at him as light faded from them, plunging the room back in darkness. Trembling, Alison tried to take a small breath, the half-sob that followed instead putting uncomfortable pressure on her throat, though she didn't move or try to free herself, focusing on the hard floor underneath her and the sound of their breathing breaking the silence.

Haroun came fully awake just before he was about to put into a motion a lethal amount of force on the forearm at the throat of - Alison? Swearing loudly in Arabic, he threw himself off of her, then scrambled
up to his feet, heedless of his enhanced lower-body-strength ripping big holes in the blankets. "Alison?" he said in English, moving over to kneel down next to her. "You startled me. You OK?" he asked, worry shining forth in his expression.

The ripping sounds had drawn a flinch from her, though as soon as Haroun kneeled beside her she pushed herself up, reaching for him without hesitation. The nightmare still clung to her stubbornly, the inability to move there translating now in a quietly desperate need to at the very least move enough to get herself as close to Haroun as she could possibly manage. A low sound answered him, somewhere between assent and something far more lost, Alison holding on tight and hiding her face against him.

"I'll take that as a no." he said as she clung to him. All he did was hold her, bringing up his body-temperature just a bit to help her to relax. He crooned to her softly in Arabic, trying to get her to relax, to just let it pass over and through her. "Shhhh."

It was both the sound of his voice and the very particular modulations of Arabic which started to slowly ease the worth of the tension, giving her the chance to start and relax in his embrace, bit by bit. "Bad dream," she finally managed to say, stating the obvious and not caring in the least about that fact. The fact that she didn't relinquish her hold in the least made it clear she very much wanted to stay in the realm of the held and comforted.

"I noticed. Want to talk about it?" he asked her as he held her. "You startled me. I was once almost murdered in my sleep. Tends to make me a little twitchy at times. Sorry about that. I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asked worriedly. "You look OK..."

"Surprised me," Alison said in a wobbly voice, a huff of breath escaping her at that. "Surprised each other. Sorry. Not hurt." She was also very much not inclined to move, ripped sheets and hard floor beneath them, the shivering was nearly gone now and she tried to take a deeper breath, the ghost sensation of the pressure at her throat fading further. "Was letting them all die..." she closed her eyes at that, tears burning at her eyes anew.

Haroun sighed and nodded. "When you touched me, I flashed back to that day. I was, Allah, no more than twenty-two, perhaps twenty-three. Full of piss and vinegar, as Cain would say." he laughed. "A child crept in through the window and tried to strangle me in my sleep. Almost succeeded, too. Luckily the Jew happened to be there, broke everything up before I ..."

That was only three or four years ago, she thought, shifting in his hold to look up at him a bit blankly. "I..." There were no words. For either of them, just now, Alison could find nothing to say, so instead she cradled his cheek for a moment, accepting the explanation as to why he'd reacted so, content with the feel of his arms around her, the heat radiating gently from his body.

"Doesn't matter. I'm sorry." he said repentantly. "Come on, let's get back to bed. There are far more fun places to hold story time than on the floor. And I think I ripped the blanket." he said, eyeing the discarded piece of fabric with a shrug. "Good thing I am my own best space heater, eh?"

"Bed," was the murmur of agreement, Alison contemplating the linen closet in the far corner of her room while making no move to head for it. "Bed is good." Apparently, being held by Haroun and doing nothing to change that was even better, though she did try to help with the getting up and getting into bed part of things, only pausing at one point to reach at the base of the bed to pull the comforter she'd kicked away at one point back up to cover them. It would do for now. Curling up to Haroun, Alison sighed, trying to steady her breathing into something more normal.

Haroun squirmed a bid as he tried in vain to get comfortable. Truly, he hated that bed. But he had an Alison curled up against him, and that compensated for much in the grand scheme of things. He told his aching back to shove off as he watched Alison breathe, and try to still her body. "Tell me a story?" he asked her with a grin. "Since this is Story Time, after all."

"Story..." Focusing on his heartbeat was comforting, the sound of his breathing and the small night time sounds in the room echoing back and forth lightly. "After my grandmother died, I'd sneak out of my room at night, and go down to the music room." It wasn't a grim thought, though - faint sorrow still lingered, dulled by the years and wreathed in happy memories. "I'd go sit near her piano, and just close my eyes, and breathe in. Smell of roses was still there, even in the winter. And the piano..." She smiled at that, wistfully. The piano was a good memory. The tendrils of the nightmare faded further away, echoes of a childish voice and an older, caring one taking over slowly.

"What about her piano?" he said, prompting her to keep talking while he searched in vain for a Comfortable Way To Lay Down. Giving it up, he rolled onto his side so he could face her directly. "Was that the one you learned on?"

She loved it when he did that, since it made it all the easier to snuggle closer. "Mm-mm." Nodding, she shifted just enough to be able to look up at him. "Chopsticks first, because it's the first song any kid gets to learn. Leastwise that's what she always said. It had a small nick in one leg she never let anyone try to fix. She said she'd tell me the story one day but-" she'd passed away, before that story could be told. "Mother sold the piano, a year after grandmama died. The first thing I did, with the very first payment of my recording contract, when I was signed to the label, was try to go buy back that piano."

"Were you successful?" he asked with amusement. She put such an emphasis on the physical side of things. Guess that was her way of keeping the memory of her grandmother alive. "Or is that that piano back at your house?" he asked with curiosity. "I know nothing of musical instruments. My family's not very musically oriented. We're all giant nerds." he said with a laugh.

"I tracked it down." Alison smiled a bit, reaching up to trail a finger down the side of his neck, loving the contact, the pulse under her fingertips - and paused, the memory of another fading overlaying itself briefly, blood and dust smeared over far too pale skin. Swallowing, she went on. "And I found it. Even showed up at the doorstep of the woman's house, ready to make an offer. Whatever she might have asked... and then after a while, I left." Biting her lip for a moment, old emotions surging forth, Alison hid her face against him. "She was a music teacher. There was a little sign, next to the door. And the window to her living room was open, and she was teaching one of her students Chopsticks."

Haroun grinned at that. "So it had gone to a good home after all." He said with a smile. "That's good. I don't have anything quite like that, story-wise. My childhood was a fairly unpleasant one, all things considered. The peril of being too wealthy and too French for your neighbors." he said with a shrug.

Gazing up at him, Alison smiled just a bit. From what he'd told her about his family, how he spoke of his relatives, she guessed there were stories for him to tell, hidden away somewhere. She wondered how they were doing, those people he spoke of so rarely, yet so lovingly of when he did. "Grandmama made things special," she agreed easily. "Things changed after she died." But that didn't matter, just now. And her breathing was easier, for all of the bittersweet memories, the tension generated by the nightmare nearly entirely gone now. "Thank you."

"My pleasure." he said with a grin. "Think you can go to sleep now, or should we give it up and do something else together in this bed?" he asked with a smirk. Just for grins, he let his eyes wander up and down her form suggestively. "I hear that an orgasm is a great sleep aid."

The blatant leering earned him a small smile of amusement, though Alison found herself reaching up for him, drawing him closer - passion, need, a myriad other things all blending as she pressed her lips to his, answered his light teasing with a seriousness that demanded more. "No sleeping." He was there, and sleeping would mean not showing him how much he meant to her, not sharing everything that could be shared. A moment lost, and that she just couldn't let happen.