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Laura dreams.
This has yet to lose its novelty. For almost her entire life, sleep has been nothing other than a necessity, a state her body slipped into easily and painlessly. Despite everything she had endured while living in the facility, she had never had nightmares there. Whatever she experienced, whatever she witnessed, nothing ever disturbed her sleep, no monsters rippling up from under the dark waters of her subconscious to trouble her nights. Once, her mother had asked her if she dreamt. Laura had told her no. She had not understood at that time the troubled look her response had conjured in her mother's eyes, the unease that had tainted their interactions for a time afterwards. She had not then understood the importance of dreaming, or the significance in that she did not. What purpose, after all, did dreaming serve? Disjointed, obscure and often nonsensical as the process could be, it seemed to Laura to have no obvious function. And at that point in her life, Laura had rarely thought beyond the functional.
Now, when sleep comes the dreams follow. Nightmares more nights than not. An inevitability; feelings, memories, fears – things she has spent her whole life repressing but which demand expression. The monsters stir in the murky depths of her mind and she learns that they were always there, waiting just below the surface, waiting to drag her under. Laura wakes tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, screams catching in her throat, blood trickling down her knuckles where her claws have ripped free.
Still, she is thankful. When Gambit, concerned and sympathetic, asks if she wants him to get her something which will take the dreams away (“Gambit knows a t'ing or two about bad dreams, chere.”) she declines. Awful as the nightmares are, she fears them less than the nightly oblivion that had come before.
So Laura is not afraid when she sees Daken at the end of her bed, even though he's been dead, really dead, for weeks now. She is used enough to the dead coming to life at night; the corpses she killed refuse to stay buried, they invade her dreams in an endless parade to stare at her in cold reproach. So she does not wonder if this is real, if Daken has once more managed to cheat death. Logan had told her how he'd died, in curt, blunt sentences that did nothing to soften the blow. Daken is dead, indisputably dead. Daken is stood at the foot of her bed. Everything seems touched by incongruity. Moonlight spills through the open window, and in its sinister light the familiar becomes strange.
Nothing is made more strange than Daken, or the ghoul which he has become. He's dripping wet, his skin shining spectrally pale, dark hair plastered to his scalp like seaweed. He stares ahead, directly at her. Through her. Like she's the ghost in this room. There's a smell saturating the air, something like swamp water on a hot day. Fetid, stagnant. It grows stronger as the seconds pass until she's breathing through her mouth in an effort to keep from gagging. Interwoven with the more prevalent stink of wet rot is Daken's own scent.
“Daken?” she asks, though any doubt she had was gone the second she picked out his scent.
His eyes shift at the sound of his name, and his gaze focuses until she knows she has his attention. Her skin crawls under his cold, fish-eyed gaze. “What do you want?” she asks, and the words sound flat, like somehow the short space between the two of them has been transformed into a void. What. Do. You. Want? One by one her words fall into that void, vanishing without the slightest ripple to mark their passage. She cannot tell if they even reached him.
Perhaps they did, or perhaps he simply senses her question, because he opens his mouth as if to answer, but instead of words, water comes out. Dark, dirty water that bubbles up out of his throat and stains his lips with silt, that overflows his mouth and dribbles down his chin, dripping to the floor. That dreadful gaze never leaves her face. Suddenly afraid, Laura's hand scrabbles against the covers and she pulls the sheet over her head. The steady drip of water hitting the floor fills her ears, and she gasps, choking on the stink that still fills her nose, that feels like its filling her lungs, drowning her in it like Daken is drowning in front of her. She puts her hand over her ears and takes shallow breaths, trying to cut herself off from the nightmare.
She cannot do this. She cannot lie here in the dark while Daken drowns, again, in front of her. She is not the heartless one. What is one more horror to her? She has seen countless worse. She has seen the lifeblood of her mother slipping through her fingers to stain the snow crimson. She has smelt the flesh of mutant children burning, has choked on the acrid smoke of their fragile bones crackling up in the hungry flames. One dead brother should not scare her like this.
So she draws back the sheet and forces herself to sit up, to confront the terror head on. She has never had the luxury of doing otherwise. Laura meets Daken's gaze again, and asks the real question. “Why did you come for me?”
A flicker of something like satisfaction crosses Daken's face, and his jaw slowly closes, stemming the steady stream of water with a click. He turns slowly, and begins to move. She flinches back, startled, claws popping free of her skin, but he is not coming for her. He reaches the doorway then turns again and begins to walk away, down into the darkness of the corridor. The shadows creep over his skin, swallowing him.
“Wait!” Laura scrambles out of the bed and follows, heart pounding and the bitter taste of adrenaline at the back of her mouth as she steps into the void after him. Her eyes adjust to the imperfect dark, and she sees him up ahead, a shadow passing steadily through the subterranean gloom. They walk through the Academy together, past the doors of slumbering students, feet whisper-quiet on the hallway floors. Eventually, they turn onto the main corridor. Windows are spaced out equidistant along one side, and the moonlight falls through them, painting the floor with silver patches. Daken seems to wink in and out of existence as he moves from light to shadow, leading her onwards like some kind of will-o-wisp to who knows where.
Eventually, they come to the main door which leads out of the Academy, and without pause Daken opens it, heading unhesitatingly towards the beach. With growing trepidation, Laura steps out after him.
Down on the beach there's a brisk sea-breeze that brings fresh, clean air and whips their hair in their faces, almost blowing away the stink of rot and wet that still clings to Daken. For a moment, they just stand together, watching the black waves crash endlessly against the bone-white sand. It's oddly peaceful, and Laura wonders if this is all Daken really wanted. If in death, he had finally learnt to seek peace. She has been told drowning is a peaceful way to go, and from what Logan has told her, Daken had not fought his death. If it had not been that she would have smelt the lie on him, she would have believed Logan to be lying to her, trying in his own way to spare her. The Daken she had known might have stood calm at the centre of an inferno of his own making, but would not have gone quietly in a fight.
Daken turns to her, as if he senses her confusion, and Laura looks at him, searching for answers in his eyes, but they're like empty, dark as the spaces between stars. “Why did you come for me?” she asks again.
No words but he reaches for her, and this time she stands unflinching as his cold fingers wrap around her wrist in a clammy grasp. He feels like the dead. He starts walking without pause to see if she will follow, grip jerking her into motion after him. Her bare feet sink into the sand. Soon the dry sand shifts to wet beneath her feet, and each step she takes leaves shallow, watery impressions, until at last the surf swirls up around their feet, bitingly cold, and Laura finally hesitates, wondering how far this strange game of theirs will go.
“Wait,” she says, or tries to say; the words fall uselessly from her lips. Daken does not halt, pulls her inexorably after him as he moves further into the water. It's up around her knees now, wetting her pyjama shorts with spray as the waves lap against her. With each step she sinks into the sand a little deeper, the adamantium that coats the bone of her claws weighing her down. Laura could fight this, could break his grasp and run, yet she does not. She doesn't have a death wish, has no desire to let Daken drag her out to a watery grave, yet the same odd compulsion that made her stay in Madripoor drives her now, that morbid curiosity to find her limits.
They're moving into deeper waters now. Wading out, the water up past her thighs, lapping cold against her stomach, the fabric of her thin cotton t-shirt clinging wetly to her skin, until she's up to her neck, struggling to keep her head above the water. Daken pulls her out just a little further, until she's far enough out that the water is rising over her face, salt water clinging to her lashes and stinging her eyes, the taste of brine on her lips. The metal in her body weighs her down, dragging her down like an anchor. Daken turns to face her, finally releasing her wrist from his vice-like grip. For some reason the loss of contact is what finally scares her, brings her to her senses. The tide is pulling at her; when she pushes off the sea floor, gasping for air and trying to propel herself back to shallower waters, it only drags her further out. Wave after wave hits her, saltwater burning like cold fire in her lungs as she breathes it unwillingly in. Her limbs are growing heavier, each time it costs a little more energy to push herself back towards the water's surface, to keep her head above the waves. “Help,” she tries to say, to call out to Daken, though she can't see where he's gone, vision blurry as the salt stings tears from her eyes. It's useless, the wind whips her words away and anyway, he wouldn't help her.
Laura rises one final time, takes one final breath, then the waves close in over her head and she sinks. Darkness crowds the corners of her vision; oxygen deprivation. Soon she'll lose her higher functions, and then she'll die, for good this time. There's no panic at the end, no fear. It is, as has so often been said, oddly peaceful. Before her vision fades completely, she thinks she sees Daken in the water ahead, his pale skin almost glowing in the gloom, black hair swirling like ink in the water. He's smiling and he opens his mouth, lips moving. It takes her brain a long time to process what she's lipreading, thoughts sluggish and slow. Before she can begin to think what his words mean, what this all means, her vision is tunnelling, tiny supernovas bursting before her eyes as brain cells die, before it all goes black.
“...what should we even do -”
“...healing factor?”
“ - Laura? Laura, can you hear me?”
Voices ring distantly in her ears. Everything feels muted, except the sudden sharp pain in her ribs as someone strikes her. Another blow and ribs crack, her throat burns as water spews from her mouth.
“That's it, good girl.”
Hands drag her upright, thump her back solidly as she splutters, coughing up more water. The hands steady her, firm but not ungentle.
“She's breathing!”
“Oh thank god, oh thank god...”
Everything hurts, not with the sharp kind of pain that she is used to, but in a dull, achey way that she can't remember ever experiencing before. Her throat feels raw, each ragged breath a lesson in pain management. Muscles spasm, nerves feel raw and she's cold.
“Laura?” The voice is kind, familiar.
Laura tries to place it. Her brain still feels slow, like her neural wiring hasn't yet properly repaired itself. A distant part of her feels alarmed at how slowly she's healing. She concentrates on the voice. Tigra. Dazed, she opens her eyes, is almost blinded by the light. Slowly, faces swim into focus, anxious and alarmed. A handful of students, Finesse among them. Hank Pym is standing worriedly to one side while Tigra kneels next to her.
“You can hear me? Good,” Tigra says, sounding infinitely relieved. Her hand rubs soothing circles into Laura's back, and despite herself Laura leans into the comfort, the warmth, with gratitude. “Thank god, girl! You had us all scared out of our minds.”
“I an sorry,” Laura says, or tries to say. Her throat has yet to heal apparently. The fog's beginning to lift from her brain however, leaving her acutely aware of the scene she has caused.
“What are you trying to speak for?” Tigra chides her, “you just drowned! Silly girl.” Despite the rebuke, Tigra doesn't remove her arm, even though Laura is healed enough to sit up by herself.
“I am fine,” Laura rasps, pulling away. “I'm sorry if I woke you.”
Tigra makes an upset, choked-off noise at that, but lets her pull away. “Sweetie, no one's mad. We're all just worried. You nearly died. You would have died if Juston hadn't been out here and seen you go under.”
“I owe him thanks,” Laura says, stiffly, glancing round until she sees Juston's freckled face in the watching circle.
He looks pale and scared. It takes her a moment to realise he's scared for her. “N - no worries, Laura.”
“We're just glad you're okay,” someone else – Hazmat – adds. Everyone else nods, murmuring their agreement. Laura can sense their sincerity, their concern. It is confusing, overwhelming. They barely know her, yet their worry for her is palpable. Her eyes prick with unexpected tears, and she curls her fingers into her palm, pressing nail against skin to hold them back. She does not know what to do with their concern for her welfare.
“I – I am sorry,” she says, stilted. “I did not mean to -”
But she cannot finish that sentence, because at no point this night had she done anything she hadn't meant to. Every decision that had led her to this point had been her own. At no point had she thought of the potential ramifications of her actions on the others at the Academy. She'd considered the risks she'd been taking to be purely to herself. It seems she was wrong. “I am sorry.”
“Stop apologising already,” Hazmat says, abrasive as ever. “No one's mad, everyone just wants to know what the hell you were doing out here.”
“That can wait,” Tigra begins, protective, but Dr Pym interrupts.
“Hazmat has a point. What were you doing out here, Laura?” The question is asked kindly, but Laura still tenses. Tigra glances at her, close enough to feel the shift in Laura's posture and interpret it correctly.
“Now's not the time, Hank, you can see -”
“I just need to know there's no danger coming that Laura, for whatever reason, felt unable to tell us about,” Pym is apologetic, but firm.
Reluctantly, Tigra relents, though she sticks close to Laura in silent but fierce protection.
Dr Pym looks at Laura expectantly. “Go on Laura, there's no need to be afraid.”
“I am not afraid,” Laura says automatically. She hesitates, then replies, “There is no danger. It was... nothing.”
“Nothing?” Dr Pym asks, unable to mask his scepticism. “So...?” He trails off, looking at her with patient hope.
Laura sits, tongue-tied. There's no sign of Daken, because he was never here. Daken's dead, dead and buried. She came out here chasing ghosts and nearly followed one to the other side. How can she tell anyone this? Tigra shifts, restless by her side, worry radiating off her, but she doesn't speak to intervene and save Laura. Finesse is silent too, watching with unreadable eyes. She won't be stepping in to cover for Laura this time. “I sleep-walked,” Laura says finally, the words clumsy and awkward/
Still, Dr Pym's eyes soften in understanding, and he nods, accepting her answer. “I see. I wasn't aware you sleep-walked, Laura. Have you been having bad dreams?”
Laura nods, though it's a gross oversimplification, but she sees understanding bloom in the other students' faces. Enough of them have their own night terrors to sympathise.
“You should have said,” Dr Pym says softly. “You don't need to suffer in silence, Laura.”
Laura doesn't respond, still doesn't know how to. It's the same thing Gambit's been telling her for months now, yet every time someone tells her it's still a shock. Years of programming and dehumanisation tells her that they're wrong, but she wants to believe.
“Come on,” Tigra says softly, slinging an arm under Laura's shoulders and helping her up. “Lets get you back to bed, okay? And this time try and stay in it. Everyone else, show's over. Back to bed.”
The other students begin to disband, a few talking, others yawning as they head back to dorms.
“I am fine,” Laura says. “I can walk unassisted.” It is true; her healing factor is kicking in, each breath comes a little easier as the lung tissue mends, as ribs knit themselves back together.
“God girl,” Tigra says, exasperated, “let me help you.”
Laura licks her lips, tastes the dried salt crusted against her skin. She'd tried to tell Daken once that caring wasn't weakness. She nods, finally, letting herself lean on Tigra a little. “Okay.”