Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ever since they rescued Wolfgang from being kidnapped and tortured at the hands of Whispers, the cluster had been having nightmares.

They didn"t happen every night, and they weren"t the kind that woke them abruptly in a cold sweat, adrenaline buzzing at the back of their neck, shivering with the speed at which it both arrived and left them. The nightmares were fuzzy in places, tainted black around the edges like fingers of encroaching darkness, and it was Sun, after a month and a half of random nightmares causing her to shoot awake with a gasp, Mun murmuring worriedly beside her, to put together that these nightmares were not an attempt by their psyche to repair itself after the war with BPO and Whispers, but memories.

She wasn"t sure what gave it away first- the fact that every single time, she would wake up with clenched and shaking fists and a rage that burned so hotly in her chest that she had to breathe deeply and slowly to rid herself of it, or the tigers.

The zoo was abuzz with laughing children and their frazzled families, but Sun stood there and watched a little blond boy with a bandage across his bloodied nose eye the passersby with a vigilance beyond his years, shoulders drawn tight and back straight, alert and perceptive as he surveyed the crowd. He barely even looked at the tigers as they prowled back and forth in their exhibit, too busy watching the crowd for something. The woman sitting beside him was older, familiar in the sense that she looked just like the boy and the boy was familiar, with thick dark eyebrows and her blonde hair tight back, a large bruise darkening her cheekbone, a swollen lip, and a cut still healing and encrusted with dried blood on her temple. She stared fixedly at the pacing tiger, eyes following it as it moved back and forth and back and forth and back-

"Wolfgang," Sun moved to crouch beside the boy, because she knew now, as sure as anything, a knowledge she could feel in the marrow of her bones, the blood in her veins, the breath in her lungs, that this little boy with the bruised face and grit teeth and fierce gaze, watching the crowd for any hint of danger so his mother could enjoy a moment of peace, was Wolfgang. "What is this? Why are we here?"

The young Wolfgang didn"t answer, or acknowledge her presence in any way, and Sun figured that these nightmares must have been like loops, unchanging and consistent. He spared his mother a glance- a flicker of his eyes towards her, so fast she almost missed it- before he leant into her side. Her arm came up and she wrapped it around him, holding him flush against her. He looked small like this, but then again, didn"t everybody look small when held within the safety of their mother"s embrace? Sun remembered when her own mother used to hold her like this, and how she felt like there was nothing in the world that could hurt her, not while she had her mother"s arms around her and her heartbeat strong and sure in her ear where she was pressed tight against her breastbone. 

His stomach growled in hunger, and he frowned down at it, displeased. He fished a crumpled granola bar from his jacket pocket and offered it to his mother, who pulled her tired gaze away from the tiger prowling mere meters from her to peer down at the offering, clutched between Wolfgang"s pale, slender fingers with the bruised knuckles. "What"s this?"

"Food," He replied softly. "You should eat. I"m hungry and you didn"t eat breakfast so you must be more hungry than I am."

"No, Wolf," His mother smiled. She brushed his hair away from his face and placed a kiss on his forehead. She looked tired, and worn, and her eyes occasionally drifted towards the tigers in the cage before her, but Wolfgang"s gaze continued to survey the crowds, carrying the weight of a vigilance unbefitting of a child beyond his years.  "I"m alright. You should eat it."

Frowning, Wolfgang riffled through his pocket again to produce another similar squished granola bar. "I brought another one. In case we get hungry later."

Sighing, his mother held him closer against him, tucking him under her chin. Wolfgang settled back against her, sliding the granola bar back into his pocket and curling up on the small bench seat. "Where did you even get those?"

Blushing, Wolfgang pressed his face into his mother"s chest, voice muffled by her shirt. "Felix gave them to me when I went to his house. I told him I was hungry and he made me take them home."

"Every day, I count our blessings for that boy," She hummed, smiling, before ducking down to mumbling into his hair. "Wolfgang, you know that I love you very much, but I don"t need you to take care of me. I"m your mother- I"m supposed to be taking care of you, and here you are, making sure we have food to eat when we don"t know when we"re going home. You don"t have to grow up so fast, OK? You should stay a kid for as long as you can. Run around with Felix, watch Conan until the sun comes up, eat sweets until you puke. You don"t have to worry about me."

Wolfgang frowned. It was, Sun was pleased to note, the exact same expression he wore as an adult, with the deep crease between his brows and the tightening of his lips, worry bleeding into his eyes like it was injected into his veins, palpable and omnipresent. "You"re my mother," he said simply, softly. "We take care of each other, like a team."

She sighed, and Sun thought that she looked sad, too sad for someone sitting in a zoo holding her little boy to her chest like the most precious of treasures. Her mother used to hold Sun to her chest just like that, but she couldn"t ever remember her looking quite so sad while she did it. "Oh, my little Wolf," she held Wolfgang tighter and he went limp in his mother"s hold, allowing her to keep him close. "How did I get so lucky to be blessed with a boy as good and as kind as you?"

"Wolfgang, this is a dream," she tried. She reached a hand up but froze- Wolfgang"s entire body had gone still as stone and taut like a pulled bowstring, coiled and waiting and ready, his eyes focused on her now with the same ferocity as the tigers behind the bars. She didn"t touch. "You have to wake up."

Somewhere, a child screamed in excitement, and it echoed around the zoo as the shrill voice bounced off of the metal cages and the tall walls of the exhibits. Wolfgang and his mother both flinched and spun around to seek the source of the sound, her grip tight on Wolfgang"s shoulder, and Wolfgang"s hands curled into fists.

Sun was jettisoned out of the dream and back into her body in Seoul, and she sat straight up in bed with a sharp breath. Mun muttered, just like he always did, and reached for her. "I"m alright," she promised. "Go back to sleep."

She could feel it now, stronger than ever- that same rage that typically threatened to consume her every single time she woke from one of these nightmares- nightmares, she reminded herself, Wolfgang"s memories- bubbling and churning in her chest like a pot of water set to a roiling boil, and she used the heel of her hand to rub it away, taking deep breaths to calm herself. It wasn"t her anger she was feeling, she tried to reason. She could feel Wolfgang"s fear and rage and hatred like it was her own. 

With a final sigh, she left her apartment and visited Will, who was also curled up in bed, fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut, Riley asleep on the bed beside them, frowning deeply, brow furrowed, lips white between her teeth. When one of them endured a nightmare so palpable and vivid like the memories Wolfgang was currently reliving, did all of them experience it? Was it the kind of thing that was felt through their connection, seen through their eyes fuzzy in the middle and dark around the edges? She hadn"t thought about it. They had all, at times, seen the loss of Riley"s child and partner, and felt the horror and mortification Lito felt when he was outed and dreamt of Capheus as a superhero dressed in a cape and underwater over his pants. They could feel each other"s emotions, hear each other"s thoughts without sound, intrinsically know each other"s wants and needs, share each other"s bodies and visit each other from anywhere in the world- it only made sense that they could endure each other"s worst nightmares.

"Will," she shook Will awake and he jerked upright with a gasp, just like she had mere minutes before. He took a deep, calming breath and glanced down at his hands, and he frowned as he forced his fingers to uncurl from where they were clenched into tight fists. "What were you dreaming about?"

Riley blinked awake, suffering from an anger that didn"t belong to her, and sat up to join Will. She blinked up at them, bleary-eyed, as Sun moved to sit cross-legged on the end of the bed. "Is something the matter?" Her voice was thick with sleep, and she almost felt bad about waking them.

"You both had a dream," Sun repeated. "What was it about?"

Will and Riley exchanged a frown. "A zoo," Riley said. "Tigers."

"A boy and a woman. A son and a mother maybe, there was definitely a resemblance," Will looked back at Sun. "They felt familiar, but I don"t..."

"Wolfgang," Sun said before he could finish. His eyes narrowed in confusion before widening in understanding. "Ever since Whispers took him he has been having these nightmares, but they"re not nightmares, they"re memories."

They spoke for a while, low tones in the empty villa in Paris, seemingly empty after it had housed so many people, and failed to reach any sort of productive conclusion. The anger still simmered in the back of her mind, and she watched as Riley forced herself to take deep, calming breaths, watched Will catch himself and force his clenched hands to relax. Eventually, Will ran a hand through his hair and sighed. 

"I don"t see how we can come up with any good answers tonight," Will admitted. "We"ll have to be careful how we come about it. Wolfgang is..."

"Like a tiger," Sun finished. "Sharp-toothed and waiting to pounce."

That night, Sun lay in her bed beside Mun, his arm slung over her stomach and face buried in the crook of her shoulder, his cold nose pressed against her pulse point, and she started up at the ceiling as she thought about sons and mothers and tigers until the sunrise shone through the curtains. She concentrated on the tight fist of rage that weighed heavy in her chest and slowly went through the motions of unfurling it, breathing deep and focusing on her fingers and her toes and her eyelids and the hair on her head and every little part of her until she was sure that her emotions were entirely her own and she was able to put the image of a beaten boy and his broken mother out of her head.

Lito was of the opinion that these nightmares were starting to get out of hand, especially considering the entire cluster was getting them and being affected by them. As sparingly and random as they were, his makeup artists were starting to comment on the dark circles under his eyes, the heaviness to his eyelids and the defeated way he carried himself after every single one, where he woke up gasping and angry between Dani and Hernando and needed to excuse himself to the bathroom to splash water on his face and stare into the mirror to make sure his face was still his own and his bathroom was still the one he shared in Mexico City and he hadn"t accidentally found himself in Iceland or Mumbai or San Francisco or something.

Tonight he followed the sound of screaming, the sound of flesh on flesh, the aborted cries of a child and the angry slurs of a drunkard, his feet pulling him forward through doorways and down halls despite his brain screaming that this was a terrible idea. This was how people got killed in horror movies, moving towards the danger and checking it out instead of running away, and the gay guy always got killed first.

He tiptoed into the main room and peaked his head around the corner. It was a low-lit bedroom with the sheets torn off the bed and a television smashed and imploded like someone had driven a fist through the screen and the cracks had spiderwebbed out to create fractals out of the cheerful competition show playing, the happy music a gross juxtaposition to the sight of the young boy being beaten with the closed fist of a balding, pot-bellied man on the floor in the middle of the room.

Stunned, Lito could do nothing but stand there in shock as this young boy with bruises on his face and fire in his eyes squirmed and kicked and punched in an attempt to get out from under the older man, pinned to the floor as he was by a heavy hand on his shoulder and a leg thrown across his knees. Even from this distance, the man stunk of stale alcohol and unwashed flesh, his teeth yellowed and gums stained with nicotine, his threadbare singlet stained with grease. He felt revulsion, gnawing at him like a dog with a bone, but that was nothing in comparison to the rage that pounded in his chest like a second heartbeat, hot and scathing like an uncontrollable campfire.

"No son of mine is going to grow up to be a fucking fairy cunt," the man spat, spittle flying from his lips to splatter across the bloody face of the boy beneath him. The boy was familiar, somehow, but Lito was too busy watching the man"s every move to pay it much mind. This was just a nightmare, after all. It made sense that his subconscious would take the faces of people he had passed in the streets and pair them with people in his dreams. "What kind of man chooses to watch a fucking singing show instead of the fucking boxing. I"ll never understand-"

"Mama loves it!" The boy reared up to shout, his teeth bloody, eyes wild and frightened, his pupils pin-pricks of pain. "She-!"

"Shut the fuck up about your fucking whore of a mother," The man rolled his eyes as he laid his large hand over the boy"s mouth, his skin coated with the boy"s drying blood. Lito felt his fists clench at his sides, angrier than he had been in a long time. If only the rest of the cluster could enter his dreams- he could really use Sun"s help right now, or Will"s. Maybe throwing a cop in the mix to toss this oversized bully behind bars would help more than Sun kicking his ass into next week only for him to recover and come back and do it all again. "You think you know her, but you don"t. You don"t know a goddamn thing about that bitch."

"She"s my mother!" The boy cried bravely, voice muffled by the palm over his mouth. His nails clawed at the back of the man"s hand, leaving marks and drawing blood, and Lito felt righteously proud until the man hissed in pain and rammed his knee into the boy"s ribs with a meaty sound. "That"s all I ever need to know! That she"s my mother and I love her and she loves me and we both hate your fucking guts!"

The man laughed. It was an unjoyous sound, like the crunching of glass underfoot, sharp and grating. He used his hold on the boy"s face, fingers pressing hard into his cheeks and the hinge of his jaw to slam his head hard into the ground, hard enough that a picture frame sitting on the bedside table rattled. The boy went still, dazed and breathless, as the man clambered to his feet. He stumbled, intoxicated and uncoordinated, before he wiped a spot of drool from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the boy"s blood across his face. He didn"t seem to mind, and Lito watched him with horror and revulsion as he stumbled out of the room, snatching a bottle of booze from the kitchen as he exited.

"There"s my boy," The man had the audacity to laugh, thrown over his shoulder like garbage, not like the stinging barb that it was. "I"ll make a man out of you yet, Wolfgang."

The door slammed shut behind him loud enough that the windows rattled dangerously in the panes, and Lito felt his heart drop down into his toes as his blood ran cold and he slowly turned back to look at Wolfgang on the ground slowly lowering himself to his feet. Of course, Lito thought, as he watched him waver slightly before leaning against the wall, wiping blood from his face, of course this was Wolfgang. Who else could it possibly be? This was more than a nightmare, it was a memory, Wolfgang"s memory, hazy and darkened around the edges, but a memory nonetheless.

"Hey, hey, hey," Lito rushed forward with his hands raised like he was trying not to scare off a spooked horse as Wolfgang winced and held a hand against his side with a pained hiss. "Take it easy. Nobody else is here, you don"t have to go anywhere."

Of course, the memory of a young Wolfgang didn"t listen, because Lito was many things but "lucky" was never one of them. He watched, helpless, as Wolfgang clenched his fists and slowly approached the TV, face twisted in abject rage, eyes filled with so much hatred that Lito thought the sight would burn him. He wondered what it would be like to hate someone this much, at such a young age, especially a parent, somebody who was supposed to love and take care of you unconditionally. Lito could never imagine hating his mother this much, but then again, his mother had never done anything like Wolfgang"s father had done to him.

Lito followed him as Wolfgang approached the television and the show playing pitifully through the cracked screen. From this memory, information that filtered through the veil of another person"s history, he knew now that it was a German singing competition show, like the ones they had back home, and although the smashed screen made the image distorted and warped, the woman on stage was trying valiantly to break through the painfully tense, stilted silence of the bedroom, no other sound beyond Wolfgang"s pained and angry breathing and the blood rushing in Lito"s ears.

When Wolfgang roared in fury and fear and pain and slammed his own fist into the much larger crater left by his father"s wrathful strike to the screen, sending glass spraying everywhere and the television to break completely, the gameshow glitching out until it displayed nothing but static in some places and blackness in others, Lito realized that his own fists were clenched and trembling, his knuckles smarting and his nails biting into the skin of his palm and though he tried to reach out to Wolfgang- he could have sworn that he had seen angry tears glinting wetly on his cheeks- the boy turned around and screamed at him and-

Gasping, Lito woke up in his own bed with Dani and Hernando on either side of him, legs tangled up together, Dani"s hand over his belly, Hernando"s head on his chest. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer and his breathing was fast and erratic. He could feel the concern and question from Capheus, awake and worried in Nairobi, but Lito pushed reassurance in his direction and hoped he didn"t waste time on a visit. I"m fine, he tried to tell him, just another nightmare. For months now, they"ve all been having these nightmares that would leave them shivering with rage and panting with fear, and Lito wondered if anybody else knew that they were actually Wolfgang"s memories the whole time.

There was no way that Wolfgang knew about it. He was sure of that, at least.

Slowly, Lito sat up, careful not to disturb Dani and Hernando, and concentrated on slowing his breathing. He stared down at his hands in his lap and straightened them from the fists he had curled them into, and stared at where he knew Wolfgang"s blood should be but wasn"t.

When the nightmares first started happening, Nomi thought she had finally gone insane, except for the fact that the rest of the cluster seemed to be having them as well, and most of them were as sane as anything. If Sun, Will and Capheus were reporting nightmares that felt too real and left them waking trembling and angry for reasons they couldn"t discern, then she couldn"t be too crazy, right? So what if the edges of these dreams, fuzzy at they were, held a hint of familiarity, of recognition? She just wanted them to stop, because there were only so many more nights that she could wake up like that with Amanita rushing to comfort her and her heart rabbiting in her chest with unfamiliar rage burning a hole in her ribcage like a meteor had struck her and the flaming tail had carved right through her.

Amanita had reasoned that the dreams were probably a combination of a lot of things- the compounding stress and exhaustion of eight connected people, all living their own lives and dealing with their own issues, their subconsciousness"s warring against the strain she had put it through now that they had the chance to relax, no longer fighting BPO or fighting for their lives, their minds seeking an outlet it couldn"t otherwise explore, but Nomi wasn"t so sure.

Tonight she dreamed of two little boys hiding under a bed. One was blond and bruised with his jaw set in an angry jut, and the other was brunette and squirrely, wide-eyed and glancing between the other boy and the door. In another room, somebody raged. There was the sound of shattering glass, moving furniture, and angry slurred shouting. At every loud, unexpected sound, the boys would flinch and cower together, and it made Nomi want to get down on her knees and hide with them, shielding them from the approaching force with her boy. If Neets was right, and this really was just her mind trying to offload stress, why would her subconscious want to show her this?

"You should go," the blond boy muttered. He was larger than his friend, with broader shoulders, a stronger jaw and longer, calloused fingers, but he was also more bruised and batted. "He won"t catch you if you leave now. You can reach the street from the window."

"No way," said the brunette boy. He looked familiar, but Nomi couldn"t put her finger on why. "If he"s going to try and hurt you then I"m going to try and stop him."

"You can"t stop him. I"ve tried," The blond boy shook his head. He looked older than... what? Ten? Eleven? "I don"t want you to get hurt. You"re my brother, Felix. If he hurt you I don"t think I could live with myself."

Felix turned to frown at the blond boy with watery eyes, and Nomi realized why he looked so familiar. Even as children, Felix and Wolfgang both looked the same as they did as adults, with the same lanky mop of brown hair and cocky expression and watchful eyes, the same clenched jaw and crystal blue eyes and something beautifully haunted in his face. Felix turned a strained smile to Wolfgang, flinching when the shouting got closer. "We could always kill him. It"s not like anybody would miss him."

Nomi was shocked by the callousness of the statement coming from a ten-year-old hiding under a bed, but it was enough to surprise a bark of laughter from Wolfgang, closer to a hysterical giggle than Nomi had ever heard. Felix"s expression turned satisfied as if that was exactly what he wanted to achieve. "Not like it would be hard," Wolfgang agreed in a whisper. "He"d be so drunk that he wouldn"t hear anyone coming."

"And we"re sneaky," Felix agreed. "By the time he realized it would be too late."

Through his cracked lips, Wolfgang smiled. "We could-"

Before he could finish, the sudden moment of calm was shattered by a hairy arm snaking under the bed and latching onto Felix"s ankle. "There you are, you little brat," and with a cry of fear, Felix was dragged bodily out from under the bed. Nomi gasped, horrified, as Wolfgang scrambled to follow after him, cracking his head on the wooden slats of the bed as he did.

Wolfgang"s father had Felix pressed up against a wall, his meaty hands fisted in the front of his shirt so Felix was dangling from his grasp, toes brushing against the floor. "I"ve had enough out of you, you little cunt," he growled. "You"re the one teaching my son to behave like a little bitch, huh? Well, that ends right now."

"You"re a terrible father," Felix said, and though his voice didn"t waver, Nomi could tell he was afraid. His eyes were wide and wet and his face had gone bloodless. It was a hard thing for a ten-year-old to pretend not to be afraid in the face of a raging bull. "You should do everyone a favour and go fuck yourself."

"Is that so?" Wolfgang"s father"s smile was anything but kind. Wolfgang was shouting, no, leave him alone, don"t touch him! and Nomi was torn between watching the stricken look on Wolfgang"s face and the way Felix was shaken around like a childs toy. "You think you know anything, you little brat? You"re just a child, you don"t know shit about the world and if I have to be the one to teach you then I fucking will."

He brought his arm back, fist clenched and cut knuckles cracked with dried blood and Felix winced as he tried to pull away, tried to wiggle free of the tight grip in his shirt, but couldn"t. "Stop!" Nomi screamed as if she could possibly do anything. This was a memory. This had already happened. "Stop it! Leave him!"

She moved forward, but when she tried to grab the old man"s arm, her hands went harmlessly through him, intangible, unreal. Felix was starting to breathe faster, too afraid to hide it, and Nomi no longer felt herself questioning why Wolfgang always carried so much rage in his heart, rage that she could feel even now, in a dream, in a memory, because if her parents tried to hurt any of her friends just because they cared about her, she would probably want them dead too. Wolfgang"s father brought his arm forward and Felix closed his eyes and Nomi screamed and-

There was a terrible sound of metal ringing off flesh and bone as Wolfgang"s father crumbled to the ground in a heap, moaning lowly, and behind him, Wolfgang stood holding a cast iron pan so heavy and unwieldy that he struggled to hold it, the heavy rounded base wavering in his grip where it held the handle with two hands. He was breathing heavily like he had just run a marathon, nostrils flaring and teeth grit so hard she could hear them grinding together. There was something in his eyes that made him look unhinged, wild, feral, like a tiger, or the wolf that he was named after. Distantly, deliriously, she remembered when Neets had been fascinated by the names of her cluster and searched the meanings behind each one, and they always thought that Wolfgang; the way of the wolf had always felt oddly fitting.

With a groan, Wolfgang"s father tried to get back to his feet, but Wolfgang hit him again, leaving him lying in a heap on the ground. But then he hit him again. And again. And again and again and again as blood sprayed up with every strike and his arms were aching from the weight of the pan. He was screaming so loudly that his throat burned from it, the anger in his chest pulsing through his veins like the blood that his father spilt, wrathful and deadly, and Nomi knew what he was thinking, knew it as clearly as she knew her own thoughts; you can hurt me all you want but if you touch my brother I"ll fucking kill you.

Nomi was so sure that she was about to watch Wolfgang kill his father with a cast iron frying pan, but Felix gasped and scrambled to stand by his side. "Don"t," Nomi tried, voice faint with horror. "Don"t get any closer. He doesn"t want to hurt you."

But Felix has never been afraid of Wolfgang, not like other people have. "Wolfie. Wolfie, stop," On the next swing, Felix caught Wolfgang"s wrist and held his arm aloft. "It"s OK. You can stop."

"He almost hurt you," Wolfgang growled through grit teeth. "I should kill him."

"You can"t. People will know it was you," Felix tried to reason. Already, he was winning, slowly yet steadily guiding Wolfgang back and away from his father"s body crumbled and bleeding on the floor, moaning lowly. "Let"s just go, alright? We"ll go to my place and we can watch Conan and drink my dad"s beer and we"ll spend the rest of the night being happy and pretending like this never happened."

Slowly, reluctantly, Wolfgang lowered the pan. He stared at his father"s twitching body with a dark expression. "If I ever did kill him... I will tell you. You"d be the only one I would tell."

"You wouldn"t have to," Felix took Wolfgang"s hand and led him out of the room, dragging the pan with one hand behind them. "If he ever finally dies like the swine he is, I"ll know it was you who did it because nobody else would ever have the fucking guts."

Nomi watched as they washed the bloody pan in the kitchen sink and left it in the rack to dry before Felix helped Wolfgang pack a backpack full of clothes. They left the house together, shutting the door solidly behind them, and Nomi was woken up by someone shaking her awake.

"Oh thank god," Amanita gasped as Nomi finally opened her eyes. "You scared the crap out of me."

Her hands were bleeding. She could feel the pain, the wetness, the warmth from where she had clenched her fists in her sleep and her nails had bitten into her palms, but she couldn"t think past the rage pulsating at her temples like a migraine. "They"re not nightmares," was the first thing she said as Amanita fretted over her.

Amanita frowned, confused. "What are you talking about?"

Slowly, Amanita helped Nomi sit up. "The nightmares I"ve been having aren"t just regular nightmares, or my subconscious seeking an outlet or compounding stress," Nomi explained. Amanita listened intently, despite it being almost two in the morning. Nomi loved her so much. "They"re memories, they"re Wolfgang"s memories."

As realization dawned, Amanita"s face fell, and Nomi realized with a sickening lurch that now that she knew this information, she had no idea what to do with it.

Ever since that first night, when Sun had visited Will and Riley with the memory of the tigers at the zoo still stark in her mind, Will had known that all the nightmares that he and the rest of the cluster had been drawn into were Wolfgang"s memories. Most of the time, he tried not to pay much attention to them, knowing that Wolfgang would despise the idea of them having some sort of insight into his deepest thoughts, and also that if the roles were reversed, he wouldn"t want anybody to look too closely at the things his mind could conjure up in it"s bleakest of moments, and after everything that had happened with Whispers and the BPO, Wolfgang had been in some pretty bleak places. 

Most of the time he tried to ignore the goings on of the memories and instead tried to focus on the details of the house Wolfgang grew up in, the look of the Berlin streets at night as he ran through them with Felix, the classroom where he learnt mathematics and literature, and tried very hard not to focus on any memories that involved blood or screaming or the man who, Will was fairly sure, was Wolfgang"s father. It was the right thing to do. It would be different if Wolfgang was offering his memories up of his own volition but he wasn"t, so Will tried to give him as much privacy as he could.

Typically, when he had such nightmares, he entered at the beginning of the memory, there to watch the lead-up and the eventual bloody aftermath. This time, he was thrust right into the middle, with no prelude, no warning, as Wolfgang"s father slammed his mother into the ground so hard that she bounced off the tiled floors, and Will winced. "Anton!" she cried, pained. "He didn"t mean it, he"s just a boy-"

"You shut the fuck up, you cunt," Anton stuck his wife with a closed fist and blood spurted from her split lip, the scab breaking open and lengthening. "I"m sick of hearing your voice."

For once, Will couldn"t stop himself, and his instincts from years as a cop moved him forward despite his previous desire not to observe such private thoughts. "Hey!" he snapped and approached, trying to defend this woman from this vile man as he had for Kala from the puja seemingly so long ago. "Don"t you touch her."

Anton stared right through him to the woman on the floor. "This is all your fault, you know that? You"ve poisoned him to me. He acts this way because you"ve told him to.

"I haven"t," she sobbed, curled up on the ground, trying to make herself a smaller target. She looked like Wolfgang, he realized belatedly. The same crystal blue eyes, the same blonde hair, the same square jawline, the same strong nose. He looked more like his mother than his father, Will was pleased to note- at least when he looked in the mirror, he would be reminded of her instead of him. "I promise, Anton, I didn"t say anything to him, please don"t hurt him-"

"Shut the fuck up, Irina," Anton delivered a hard kick to Irina"s side that had her keening and curling up, trying to protect herself. Will felt wrath slinking up the back of his neck, worming its way around his heart like a clenched fist. Still, it was a familiar rage, it was Wolfgang"s rage, and he glanced away from where Anton was kicking his wife to see a young Wolfgang standing in the doorway, his fists shaking at his sides as he watched his father beat his mother. "Ah! There he is! The man of the hour," Anton crowed as he moved away from Irina towards Wolfgang. Will automatically moved to place himself in front of Irina, though he knew it wouldn"t do any good. "I"ve been looking all over for you. Don"t you know your mother and I have been so worried?" Fake concern spilled from his lips like drool. "I need to have a word with you, you little bitch."

"Leave her alone," Wolfgang"s voice trembled not from fear, but from anger. "Don"t fucking touch her."

Anton laughed like this was the funniest thing he had ever seen, clutching at his belly and throwing his head back to cackle at the ceiling. "Oh, I knew my pussy of a son had some fight in him, deep down inside. But this is still my house, boy, and you"re not the big man you think you are. I"ve still got some life in me yet and it"s about time you remembered that," The mirth fell from Anton"s face and he lunged for Wolfgang faster than a drunk should have been able to, and in one swift motion, he hefted Wolfgang up over his shoulder and shoved him into the pantry, slamming and locking the door in his face before Wolfgang could clamber to his feet. He slid a kitchen chair under the doorknob and backed away. "I"m going to teach you a lesson if it"s the last thing I ever fucking do."

Suddenly, Will was no longer in the kitchen with Anton and Irina as he prowled towards her prone form sprawled ungainly on the cold tiles, but locked in the pantry with Wolfgang, the two of them squeezed into such a tight space even though Will wasn"t really there. Wolfgang pounded on the door with his hands as he cried, "No, leave her alone you bastard! Don"t you fucking touch her!"

He was pounding on the door with a fervour that made Will nauseous, and he couldn"t help but wonder if Wolfgang was claustrophobic and he somehow never knew. Was he often shoved into too-small cupboards and locked away as a boy? He wouldn"t be surprised. "Wolfgang," he tried. It felt ineffectual, too little too late. "It"ll be alright. You"ll be out of here soon."

But Wolfgang ignored him, unable to hear his reassurance in this memory. His pounding turned to punches, sharp jabs of his fist against the wooden door that made Will wince, the door unyielding beneath his knuckles. And then he heard it; the sickening sound of flesh-on-flesh and the pained whimpers and cries of Irina as Anton continued to beat his wife to a bloody pulp with his bare fists, his blood mixing with her blood, his wrath mixing with her distress to create the young Wolfgang that was trying to escape from this pantry like a man possessed to reach her.

Wolfgang pounded at the door until his knuckles bled, screaming at the top of his lungs, and Will had no choice but to stand there and watch as he raged and raged. There was a flicker, the sheen of light off a stagnant pond, and Will was staring at an older Wolfgang, the Wolfgang he knew in the present day, shouting and punching the wooden pantry door until the wood began to splinter and his knuckles were torn and bleeding. In another flash, like a skipping recording, Wolfgang was twelve years old again and his throat was raw from screaming and the locked door was unchanged beyond the smears of blood from his hands.

Outside, Anton was still muttering in slurred, angry German and Irina was sobbing in low-pitched, warbling tones, obviously trying to keep Wolfgang from hearing. With a defeated sob, Wolfgang fell to the floor of the pantry with his legs pulled to his chest and could do nothing but wait, so Will waited with him, trying to ignore Wolfgang"s rage that blazed like a forest fire behind his ribcage by trying to pick out details of the man he knew from the boy before him. The same dirty blonde hair, the same blood-stained skin, the same furrow between his brows...

In a dream, in a memory, Will had no way of telling the passage of time from within the pantry, but eventually, the chair was moved away and the pantry door was unlocked. Wolfgang stirred and stared up at his father with wide eyes, his white singlet stained red with dried blood, as Anton sneered down at him. "Pathetic," he spat and a glob of yellowed phlegm landed on Wolfgang"s boot. "Just like your mother."

Muscles coiled, heart in his throat, lungs frozen, Wolfgang waited for the front door to shut behind his father before he sprung up from the ground, skidded out of the pantry and flung himself at his mothers still, crumpled body on the kitchen tiles. Will watched over his shoulder as Wolfgang cradled his mother to his chest and sobbed, great heaving sobs that wracked his young body and left him cored out and shuddering in their wake. It was only the second time Will had ever seen Wolfgang cry, and he wondered if Wolfgang had ever cried again, other than when Kala had almost died.

"I"m sorry, I"m so sorry," Wolfgang wailed into his mother"s shoulder. Irina"s face was swollen and unrecognizable, all bruised and busted flesh and blood caked in cuts and wounds, but she managed to bring a trembling hand up to rest on Wolfgang"s shoulder. That only made Wolfgang cry harder, holding her more securely to his chest, the tight hold making her cry out in pain. "Mama, mama- I"m sorry-!"

When Will woke up, Riley was already awake, watching him with a sad, knowing expression, her hands endlessly gentle in his hair. So far it seemed that whenever Wolfgang had a nightmare like that, they were all pulled into it, witnessing it from all around the globe like they all had their own private screening of Wolfgang"s most painful, vulnerable memories. Riley had seen the same thing that Will had seen, and so had Lito and Sun and Nomi and Capheus and Kala-

"I don"t know what"s going on," Will said into the silence. He unclenched his fists but allowed Wolfgang"s rage to burble in his chest for a moment longer. He wanted to feel it, now that he knew why he was feeling it in the first place. It only felt fair. "But we need to find a way to make it stop."

"Or," Riley added. "Figure out why."

He didn"t have a response for that. They were both right and knew it, so instead Will finally let go of that second-hand rage and allowed Riley to coax him back into the bed. They didn"t go back to sleep, and Will kept his senses tuned to Wolfgang"s awakening, though he was careful not to visit. If he truly had no idea that his nightmares were affecting the rest of the cluster, he didn"t want to alert him to anything amiss. Riley rested her head on his chest and Will thought about the similarities between Wolfgang and his mother until the sun came up.

Kala had known that the nightmares were manifestations of Wolfgang"s memories from the very first time, standing in his childhood home as he and his mother ate silently at the dining table, heads bowed, while his father drunkenly raved about something Kala couldn"t hope to understand. She had recognized him immediately- even as a child, he still sported those bright blue eyes that were more calculating and weary than any child should be, the same sharp jawline clenched too tightly and strong nose and short blond hair that looked like his hands had been running through it, the same furrow between the brows, the same way he watched his father slam his fist into the table and shout uncomprehendingly, eyeing the way that his mother ducked her head and kept her eyes fixed firmly on her meal, his muscles coiled and waiting, like a spring. It was the same way the Wolfgang she knew and loved would seek out exits and come up with contingency plans, always walking at the back of the cluster so everyone was carefully within his line of sight, seeking out the biggest and most immediate threat that he could take care of and coming up with ten different ways to come out of any situation unharmed and intact. 

She had known, deep down inside her like an ache she couldn"t place, that the nightmares were out of Wolfgang"s control, that he had no idea that the rest of the cluster were experiencing them right along with him, that they were seeing him and his mother and his brother endure pain and suffering and heartache at the hands of his father, that every single time they woke with rage in their hearts and fear in their minds and their fists clenched hard enough to ache. She knew that she should feel terrible about baring witnesses to such a sacred part of him, but she didn"t. She couldn"t bring herself to. It was easy, as she leaned to hate his father as much as Wolfgang himself did, learned to alter her definition of fatherhood and childhood, learned all the reasons why Wolfgang thought of himself as nothing but a mother, built for nothing but causing pain and destruction, dealing out worse than he is dealt. She knew now why Wolfgang needed to be the biggest and most dangerous thing in any room, because that way, there was nothing that could hurt you, nothing that could scare you if you were a monster. 

Over time, she began to file away all these special little pieces of Wolfgang that she had learnt through these memories that he would never tell her in person. As an adult, he favoured vodka because it was the only straight alcohol that his father couldn"t stand, and he avoided his particular brand of beer like the plague. He likes his shoes because as a child they were often so worn out that his mother would repeatedly patch them up and the soles would disintegrate and his socks would get soaked on the wet Berlin streets. He genuinely enjoyed watching singing competitions, not just for the pretty ladies or for background noise, but he always had critical and comprehensive thoughts about every vocalist and musician that took to the stage, remembering a time when he was curled up in his mother"s arms, doing the same thing. He and Felix had always quoted Conan, but seeing them do it as kids after every bloody altercation and tearful event made the words taste bitter when she tried to recite them. The cold didn"t bother him too much, neither did the rain or the sleet or the wind, but the heat would make him grumpy and miserable, and his mother would make icicles out of syrup and sparking water and put them in the freezer for him to suck on, and his father would laugh and call him a pussy and so Wolfgang would only indulge in them when his father wasn"t looking, his mother sneaking them to him behind her back or wrapped in paper under her shirts so they wouldn"t get caught. Kala doubted his ability to cope in the heat of India if he ever made his way across the ocean to her, but made sure to remember just how his mother prepared those icicles all the same.

This dream was different than all the others. There was no blood, no drunken shouting, no pained cries. They were not in that run-down house with empty bottles on every surface and holes punched in the walls, or the school classroom where Felix and Wolfgang spent so much time in detention together, or the streets where Wolfgang often had to stand up against bullies who tried to be bigger and meaner but had nothing on the rage in Wolfgang"s heart and the strength behind his fists. No, this time, Kala walked barefoot across the snow-covered ground, relieved that in a dream she couldn"t feel the biting cold eating away at the soles of her feet, and she crossed the floor of the church to Wolfgang kneeling before an altar.

The church was so dilapidated that the roof had fallen in and all the pews were covered in a heavy coat of snow, Kala followed the imprints of Wolfgang"s footsteps as she reached him. He was shivering, his thin coat not enough to stave off the chill, and his head was bowed. There was snow melting down the back of his neck where it met his skin, smattered across his shoulders, and the ends of his hair. His breath fogged up in such icy conditions, and in her pyjamas, Kala wrapped her arms around herself and was suddenly thankful that Mumbai had such a warm climate instead of this icy hell.

"Please," Wolfgang was begging with chattering teeth. "Please, help us. I don"t care what it will cost. I"ll do anything, anything you ask for, just please, make him go away."

"Oh, Wolfgang," Kala sighed as she sat beside him on the pews. She followed his gaze up to where a cross hung. There might have been a carving of Jesus there once, but over the years it had either fallen away from the main structure or someone had stolen it and now there was nothing left but the plain wooden cross, chipped and scratched and weathered from age. "Praying is not supposed to be a punishment."

That"s what it looked like. Like Wolfgang, under-dressed and shivering in the snow, on his knees before his crumbled altar, was punishing himself in a desperate attempt to attract the lord"s attention. She remembered his distance and doubt of her own god when they had their first real conversation, at the temple, so long ago it almost felt like a dream but it was only a year ago. The gods don"t give a shit about us, he had said, I speak from experience. She hadn"t understood then, but she thought that she did now.

"I don"t care if you kill him," Wolfgang sniffled and wiped his nose with his sleeve. His hands were shaking, his nose and cheeks were red, his lips were tinged blue. He looked so young. Kala wanted to wrap him in her arms, hold him close to his chest, and never ever let him go. "I don"t care if you make him sick and put him in a coma, I don"t care if you make him have a car accident, I don"t care if he slips on the ice and falls in a lake and drowns, I don"t even care if he drinks too much and chokes on his own vomit and dies in his bed. I don"t care if he hits his head and gets amnesia and forgets all about us. I don"t care if he falls in love with some pretty lady and leaves us to start a new family with her far away from us. I don"t care how you do it. He just... please. He has to go. You have to make him go. He"s going to kill her if you don"t."

"Asking God to kill is like asking the sun not to rise," Kala reached out and tried to brush some of Wolfgang"s hair away from his head, but her hand went right through him as she expected. "It"s an impossibility."

"He won"t stop," Wolfgang"s voice sounded thick and teary. "What if he kills her? I"m worried about what he"ll do if-"

"Wolfgang?" His name echoed through the remains of the church, and both Wolfgang and Kala spun around to see Wolfgang"s mother stumbling through the threshold. Her bruised face broke into a relieved smile when she saw him there, kneeling. She was bundled up in scarves and coats, and another, smaller, child-sized coat was clutched in her hands. "There you are! I"ve been looking for you for hours, thank goodness I asked Felix where to find you. What are you doing here? It"s freezing, come here."

Wolfgang allowed his mother to usher him up and manhandled him into his coat. "I was praying," he told her. "Some boys at school said that God is more likely to answer your prayers if you are hurting when you make them. It shows Him that you want them really badly."

She frowned, zipping up his jacket. "I don"t think that is true at all," she said lowly. Kala didn"t either. She couldn"t imagine worshipping a God who asked for pain and suffering. "What were you praying for that was so important that you had to come all the way out here to this old place and freeze yourself half to death?"

"I asked him if he would kill Dad," Wolfgang said in a tone as if he was discussing the weather, and his mother sucked in a startled breath. "I asked him to save us from him."

Slowly, his mother sunk to her knees in the snow. She held Wolfgang"s hands in hers, trying to rub some feeling and warmth back into the freezing digits. "First of all, never let anybody hear you say that. Your father is a very powerful person and you don"t know what people might do to defend him, even from his own son," she warned softly. Wolfgang nodded, chastised, and averted his gaze. His mother gripped his chin and turned his head back to face her. "And second of all, no matter how much you pray, or how much you hurt, God isn"t going to do anything for you. You can"t pray your problems away and hope that God deals with them. You have to face them yourself. Nobody else in this world is going to help you when you need it most, Wolfgang. You need to learn that the only person you can always depend on is yourself. Do you understand?"

Wolfgang shuffled his feet but didn"t look away. Like this, their resemblance was uncanny. "Yes, mama."

She nodded, satisfied, and stood up. "Then let"s go home. Your lips are turning blue and I have some hot chocolate with your name on it."

Kala remained sitting on the altar with her legs folded beneath her, watching Wolfgang and his mother exit the church, hand in hand. She peered back up at the abandoned cross hung high above her. "I would never ask you for such a violent act," she said. "But you could have answered him, just this once, even just to tell him no."

When Kala woke up to Rajan asleep beside her, she followed Wolfgang"s anger that percolated within her like the strong black coffee that he most enjoyed, and allowed it to bring her to Berlin, where Wolfgang was asleep in his bed, his hands fisted in the sheets so tightly that she swore she could hear the fabric creaking in protest, his teeth grit even in sleep so firmly she worried for the integrity of his jaw. His skin was slick with a sheen of sweat and he was breathing fast through his nose like he had been running through the same crime-riddled Berlin streets he had grown up in. Wolfgang was a man of few words, and even in his sleep, he was quiet. The rage beat behind his chest like a second, stronger heartbeat, and Kala felt herself drawn to him, like a point of connection tethering her to him that had her crossing to perch on the end of his bed and gently card her fingers through his hair.

The bed did not bend to the shape of her body as she sat beside him, and he didn"t stir as she carefully, gently, combed his damp hair away from his sweat-slick forehead, but she hoped, somewhere within his subconscious mind he knew that she was there with him, and knew that she was trying with all her meagre might impart some modicum of comfort. Maybe she imagined the way his fists seemed to loosen their hold on the sheets and his breathing started to even out and his jaw slowly relaxed, or maybe she didn"t.

Kala stayed with him until she had to get up and start her day back in India, and she watched the Berlin rain patter against the window until she couldn"t see anything past her own fruitless tears.

When Riley opened her eyes, she knew it was another one of Wolfgang"s dreams, because she could hear the sound of a little boy singing from the other room and the gentle encouragement of a woman"s voice. She and the rest of the cluster have slept through enough of these horrific memories to recognize that she was in Wolfgang"s childhood home, and that was his mother spurring him on in gentle tones, and probably Wolfgang himself who was singing. She had learnt, over the many months of these sporadic nightmares, that Wolfgang used to love to sing, and only did it these days when he was alone or too drunk to think better of it. A pity, really. He had such a nice voice.

She followed the sounds and smiled at the warm sunlight filtering in through the blinds, at Wolfgang standing before his mother as she beamed at him and ironed their clothing, singing with the grace and confidence of someone who performed like this often- to an audience of one, on the stage of the living room, lit by sunlight. She was flooded with relief as she sat in the empty chair to watch. Finally, she thought, a good memory. I was starting to think he didn"t have any.

There was a loud crash, and Riley jumped at the same time Wolfgang did as his father slammed open the door, barreled into the room and stood at the doorway, watching them with a twisted expression. Even though this happened years ago and Riley wasn"t really here, she still felt weary, as if he might break the rules of this unreal place and swipe at her. His skin was sweaty and he reeked of alcohol, and a half-drunk bottle of clear booze hung from his limp grasp. His eyes were fixed firmly on Wolfgang, deadly and calmly like a wasp nest just waiting to be swatted.

"Stop teaching my son to sing like a fucking queer," he snarled, and Riley took a step back as he took a step into the room, moving to stand beside the young Wolfgang, his hands twisted anxiously in his shirt.

Cautiously, Wolfgang"s mother moved forward, putting herself between them. "Anton," she tried, "It"s for school." 

That didn"t seem to appease Anton in the slightest, and he worked his jaw as he stared Wolfgang down. Riley wanted to reach for him but knew by now that she couldn"t. "Nobody tells me how to raise my son," Anton reached out, quicker than Riley ever could have expected, and grabbed Wolfgang"s mother by the throat and dragged her towards him. Riley gasped at the viscousness of it, and almost tried to turn away, but didn"t. For some reason, she felt like she should watch this, someone other than Wolfgang needed to bear witness.

"Don"t touch her!" Wolfgang shouted as his mother struggled there, straining in his father"s grip, scrabbling at his wrist as he held her above the floor.

"You love your mother, huh? You love her more than your father?" Anton was watching Wolfgang like a bug under a microscope. What a terrible question to ask your own son, Riley thought. What a terrible thing to demand of him while holding his mother by the throat like a dog on a chain. She moved to stand behind Wolfgang, hoping that even in his memory-turned-nightmare he might be able to feel her there and know that he wasn"t alone. She couldn"t fight as he and Sun and Will could, but she hoped that she could offer him this, at least. "You won"t love her so much when you know our little secret."

Gasping, Wolfgang"s mother kicked her feet out to try and regain her balance as her eyes went wide with undiluted fear. Riley knew that look. It was the same one she had seen too many times, often looking back at her in the mirror. It was the face of somebody who had something precious to lose that might be taken at any moment. "You"re drunk!"

"You wanna know who your mama is, huh?" Anton"s voice was almost a purr, swarmy and mocking. It sent shivers down Riley"s spine, like ice water down the back of her shirt. Anton looked like he was enjoying this too much as if terrorizing his wife and son were his favourite pastimes. "Mama"s boy." 

"Stop it!" Wolfgang"s mother cried, desperately. She pulled and twisted at his shirt, but still, he refused to release her. He was holding her so tight that Riley was sure she would have bruises in the shape of his fingers.

A familiar expression crossed Wolfgang"s face, one she had seen many times and often took solace in, but it looked out of place on such a young face as Wolfgang yelled, "Stop it!" and sprang forward to punch his father in the face. Anton reared back and stumbled away, clutching at his face, and collapsed in a heap against the wall. As soon as he had released her, his mother had run to Wolfgang and clutched him to her, trying to protect him from retribution with her body, but Wolfgang peered at his father beneath her arm, watching, waiting.

"It"s OK, Wolfgang," Riley tried, hoping that even in this nightmare, this memory, he might be able to hear her, and take comfort from her words. By now, she knew that the anger that pulsed behind her eyelids and curled her hands into fists wasn"t her own, that even in his dreams Wolfgang carried so much unbridled rage and hatred within him, but that didn"t stop her from trying to control it, by taking a deep, shuddering breath in an attempt to lessen it. "This has already happened. It can"t hurt you any more."

But then Anton started laughing from his place on the floor, a drunken, grating thing and slowly began to lever himself to his feet. Riley wasn"t a violent person because, with Will and Wolfgang and Sun, she had never needed to be, but right now, if she had the chance to beat Anton into silence, she would.

"That"s my boy! I knew there was a man in there. A man like me," Anton crowed, pleased right down to the stains on his singlet and his unbuttoned trousers, and Riley flinched at the same time Wolfgang flinched, as if even in the midst of this nightmare they were both remembering my father was a monster, and so are you, and so am I. Undeterred, Anton continued, "I know what I am. and I know what that makes you. And this cunt, she"s more than your mother."

"No!" Wolfgang"s mother screamed, desperate, angry. She held Wolfgang closer to her as if shielding him from Anton with her body might stop the words from reaching him.

Grinning with all his yellowed, uneven teeth, Anton pointed with the hand still clutching the bottle of alcohol and declared. "She"s your sister!"

The sound that tore itself from his mother"s throat was like jagged shards of glass and the ending of the world all wrapped into one, the screeching of car tyres on slippery Icelandic roads, the crunching of metal and glass, the heartbreakingly sudden silence of a newborn in her arms. Wolfgang"s mother rushed Anton, still screaming, but Riley had turned away from her to face Wolfgang, who stood there, frozen. He looked stunned and confused, glancing between where his father was laughing and his mother was screaming, and Riley had the distinct impression that for the first time in his life, Wolfgang had no idea how he was supposed to protect his mother from this, especially when he barely understood it himself. 

This time, Riley did reach out for him, desperate fingers trying to stretch across time and space to offer him whatever comfort she could, but the scene changed like the ripples of water through a pond, and suddenly they were no longer standing in a sunlit room filled with screaming and laugher, but a darkened bedroom lit by nothing but a dim lamp and such silence that it was almost uncanny. Wolfgang"s mother was curled up on the bed, terribly small, trembling.

Everything happened in a blur as Riley began to wake up. She got flashes- of he came into my room, and I tried to run, and he always found me. Flashes of we have to go, and I"m going to fix it, and this time he"s not coming after us. Wolfgang, jaw set, watched as his mother, bloodied and beaten and bruised, rose from the bed to cradle his face in her hands. The rage was overwhelming, and for the first time since the nightmares started, Riley found that she didn"t want to push it away, but how much of that was her desire, and how much of it was Wolfgang"s? She couldn"t be sure.

When Riley woke, Will was already sitting up, watching her. He looked just as drained as she felt, and she remembered that he had witnessed the same memory, that they had all witnessed it, all eight of them. It made something horrible twist in her chest, knowing that now Wolfgang"s most precious secret was out in the open, shared between the eight of them without his permission. But there was something in her that was trying to compare the Wolfgang of today to the young Wolfgang in the memories, trying to find the overlap and intersections. It was as easy as it was difficult.

Will was still watching her. Riley forced herself to even out her breathing and uncurl the fists her hands had balled up into while she slept, but she didn"t let go of that anger. She wanted to feel it for a little while longer, even if most of it was Wolfgang"s. Eventually, Will sighed and opened his arms up to her. "I know," he muttered as she folded against her side. "Me too."

He held her as she cried and thought about monsters and mothers and the unending denial that anyone could treat their partners and children that way and still be allowed to live.

Over the past months, Capheus had decided to think of these nightmares as tests of strengths, opportunities to overcome and to move forward. One of the reasons he loved his Van Daymn movies so much was due to the certainty that no matter the circumstances or the stakes, no matter how dark and uncertain things might be, the good guys always won in the end. He was learning that such a trait was not true for Wolfgang"s memories.

It had been easier, at first, when he didn"t know what was going on. When he just saw this young blue-eyed blond body with a chip on his shoulder and bruises on his young face, he could distance himself from it, consider it as one of his movies that he had to learn the lessons it was trying to teach him. Now that he knew that the little blue-eyed blond boy was actually Wolfgang, and the chip on his shoulder and the bruises on his face were all due to his father"s drunken hand, he had stopped seeking out some hidden wisdom from the nightmares and had just taken them for what they are. Memories of the most painful sort.

This time, when he entered the nightmare, he knew he was in the streets of Berlin, and that it was late. So late that the sky was dark as pitch and the streets were empty, save for Wolfgang hiding behind a corner of a building, peering through a gap in the brickwork. Something white dangled from his back pocket, and he shifted on his feet, fists clenching and unclenching as if he couldn"t decide what he wanted to do with his hands.

"What are we doing out here, friend?" Capheus asked. He knew by now that Wolfgang couldn"t hear him and wouldn"t reply, but that had never stopped him from speaking to him before. "It"s very late. Shouldn"t you be at home, in bed? Won"t your mother worry?"

As expected, this young, weary version of Wolfgang didn"t answer. He tilted his head back and forth until the muscles in his neck released with a pop that was seemingly loud in the empty streets, and shook out his hands, stretching out his fingers as far as they could go until the tendons shook. Capheus had seen such a motion many times before, on both a young Wolfgang and an older one, and he couldn"t for the life of him figure out what he was preparing for. He was alone. Surely nobody else would be foolish enough to be out in the cold at this time of night?

There was a scuffling, the sound of shoes dragged against cobbled stones, and Wolfgang pressed his face to the hole in the brickwork, holding his breath in anticipation. His eyes were fever-bright, wild-looking, and when Capheus looked at him, for a fraction of a second, he realized that there was something about this child that was both unfamiliar and too familiar, a part of Wolfgang that he had never known before, although, of course, it was, because he had seen Wolfgang take on entire mansions and restaurants full of armed guards knowing that he might die but refusing to flinch or hesitate regardless. It just looked frightening on such a young face, baby fat still clinging to his cheeks and clothes too big for his small body, not yet bulky with muscle and thick with scar tissue.

Capheus watched as a man stumbled drunkenly into the street, and when he passed beneath the streetlight he realized that it was Wolfgang"s father, a bottle of something dangling from his fingers. He swayed against a wall, muttering under his breath, and Wolfgang"s entire body went taut, like a tiger waiting to strike, pacing back and forth. He frowned. "Wait," he said wearily as Wolfgang"s fingers inched towards his back pocket. "What are you going to-?"

Too slow on the uptake, Capheus was unprepared for Wolfgang to dart out from behind the crumbling wall and yank the white power cord from his back pocket in one smooth motion. He leapt onto his father"s back, wrapped the cord around his throat, and locked his legs around his torso as his father failed and stumbled, fingers scrabbling at his throat as he tried to claw the cord off of him, but Wolfgang"s grip was unrelenting. His teeth were grit, his face was already red and sweaty with exertion, and he was pulling so taut on the cord that his arms were trembling with the strain.

Wolfgang"s father fell to the ground, legs collapsing from under him, and Wolfgang tumbled away. He scrambled back to his feet before his father could recover, and regained his hold on the ends of the wire, wrapping it taut around his bruised knuckles. He placed his foot on the side of his father"s face and used his position on the higher ground to pull with all his young might until there was a sickening crunching-snapping sound that seemed to almost echo throughout the silent streets. Wolfgang continued pulling for a second longer just to be sure that the deed was done before he allowed the garotte to go limp and he stumbled backwards and away from the body of his father, breathing heavily.

Horrified and sickened right down to his stomach, Capheus stared down at Wolfgang"s father- at his bloated, purple face, at his bloodshot eyes rolled upwards, at the dark bruise wrapped around his broken neck. Dead, deader than dead, so dead that there was no point calling for aid or performing lifesaving measures because Wolfgang had ensured that there would be no saving this man. The bottle of booze had shattered upon impact with the ground and shards of crystal glass were scattered in his hair where it lay on the wet cobblestones, booze soaking into the back of his head.

He watched as Wolfgang stood there, breathing heavily, staring down at the dead body that was once his father. His face was expressionless, but there was a familiar glint in his eye that might have been a smile. He tucked the bunched-up cord back into his pocket and bent down to begin dragging his father out of the street, arms hooked under his armpits, bent at the waist, his father"s feet dragging after him.

Capheus could do nothing but stare as Wolfgang heaved his father into the front seat of a waiting car and buckled him in. He retrieved a bottle of booze from the backseat and poured it all across the interior of the car, spraying amber-coloured liquid everywhere. Every motion was smooth, meticulous, and practised as if he had put plenty of thought into every move he was going to make.