Loft above Luke's, Sunday night

[lovemykilt]

So apparently post-war on Dinah looked just a smidge clingy. Not that Priestly was objecting. Not even a little. He was still enjoying having her there and safe too much to worry about how much snuggling and petting was going on.

They'd marathoned Doctor Sexy yesterday, spent this evening watching bad kitchen reality shows, surrounded by junk food and soda (and veggies and water, because this was Priestly, here). Priestly had put several tiny braids in Dinah's hair and they'd done each other's nails, and then crashed out fairly early, Priestly steering Dinah over to the bed when she started falling asleep on the couch, reading a bit of Anthony Bourdain while serving as a body pillow before finally drifting off himself.

[ooc: for she who is mentioned in the narrative. Content note: will contain PTSD and memories/dreams of animal aggression and NPC character death.]

Comments

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Like Dinah had said yesterday: it'd been a while since she'd shared a bed with anyone. Especially anyone close enough to cling to like a teddy bear. And she was pretty wiped out.

So at some point, Dinah's hand touched Priestly's arm. And stayed there, as she started to dream.

...howling wind in the dark, cold, sharp air.

running running running, dogs barking ahead and people running running

a storm with faces in it nipping at their heels

[lovemykilt]

So Priestly had been dreaming about trying to rescue a lost and injured seal wandering the streets of Baltimore, but the seal dove into the harbor pretty much the moment the dogs started barking.

He turned to look, buffeted by the people running past him, and the clouds coming at them was a little too shades of Hong Kong for his liking.

The Nothing had never grimaced and yowled at him, though.

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah frowned in her sleep. Something wrong, even more wrong than before--

"RUN!" Momoko was flying with the coach dragging by yo-yos, and Samantha was screaming this from a dogsled lit up by witchlight--

Denys grabbed her hand and yanked her out of the way of a wolf but she looked back and--

Priestly?-- no no no no

"PRIESTLY, RUN--"

And the wolves started circling closer and the snow sliced into their skin and the storm was right there

[lovemykilt]

Run? Don't be silly, you couldn't outrun a storm like that. You couldn't outrun nothing --

But Dinah said run, so --

Priestly bolted, no idea where he was going or when it had started snowing or who the woman with the light was. He tried to keep an eye on
Dinah as he went, but there were too many people, the world turned into a swirling mass of black and white by the dark and the storm and the snow and the running. He tripped, nearly faceplanting in the snow when someone, a kid, maybe, no one he recognized, but young and terrified, went down in front of him, and he stopped, trying to tug the kid to his feet, trying not to look back at the screaming storm.

And instead, found himself staring at one hell of a set of very sharp, very pointy, very angry teeth.

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

The boy was bleeding and he wasn't getting up, blood all over the snow

There was a girl not too far away and a wolf standing over her licking its teeth

Priestly was standing over the boy trying to protect him no this wasn't how it--

Denys was dead

again

Dinah threw TK at the wolf and it tumbled away, but more were closing in, too close, they tipped over a sled and

what was she
supposed to
do?

Priestly?

....SCREAM

Dinah awoke on a loud inhale of breath, flailing and hitting and sitting up before she was even awake.

[lovemykilt]

Even if he hadn't already been waking up with Dinah, the flailing would have had him wide awake in a moment. He let out a hard breath with the first consonant of a curse, not entirely clear on what was going on even as he grabbed for Dinah's wrists.

"Dinah? Dinah. Dinah."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

The skin contact grounded her and finished waking her up like nothing else could. Priestly? Then aloud, in a confused whisper, "What? Where...?" Dinah panted for breath, looking around, then slumped, almost hyperventilating. "Dream."

[lovemykilt]

Priestly hissed out another breath and smiled at her. "Yeah. Just a bit."

It didn't take much of a leap to work out that her touch telepathy had somehow let him in on said dream. "Wolves, huh?"

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"Unh?.. uh-hunh." Dinah closed her eyes, shivering. Then snapped them back open again quick, not wanting to imagine being back on that mountain ridge. "Ummm..." She rubbed at her arms, trying to get warm. "When we evacuated the village, they chased us. Not for very long. But..." She swallowed. "It was a really long trek. I growled at them." Maybe she could be more incoherent, if she tried.

[lovemykilt]

"I bet you did." Jesus, those teeth. Man, and Priestly had always liked wolves. "The boy?"

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

So had Dinah. Maybe she would again. Eventually.

"We got him into the sled. And to a Healer." Dinah let out a long shaky breath. "The girl didn't make it." She burrowed further under the sheets and comforter, needing warmth, please. Trying not to remember her family crying. "The man-- that was Denys. He wasn't there. He died weeks before that." Her throat was dry. "The witchstorm didn't catch us."

[lovemykilt]

"The screaming Nothing." Yeah, he wasn't going to shake that association for awhile. "That's what got Jono?"

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"Yeah." Dinah bit down on her lip, hard. Maybe if she talked about it, she wouldn't have to dream it again. At least not tonight? She hadn't wanted to give Priestly nightmares-- and then she had shared them, directly, so. "There's this plant there. Witchblood. Grows where a witch was murdered, and buried in secret." She lay down, her voice dropping lower. "Poisonous. Hobart-- there was a whole field of it. His guys set fire to it. And this, this, acid rain-cloud, this storm of crazy, it got generated."

[lovemykilt]

Shiiiit.

"Tell me this fucker got his, at least."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"Not yet," Dinah whispered. "Soon. Hopefully. We're telling everyone What they did. Showing them the village we weren't there in time to evacuate. Yllestad." Exhausted tears were sliding down her face into her hair now. Dinah didn't really notice. "Everything was just-- gone. Melted. Burned. Erased."

[lovemykilt]

Curse words didn't really cover it. Priestly leaned over to press a kiss to her forehead. "I'm sorry."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah sniffed, and smiled up at him, then cuddled closer, but still so, so careful not to touch his skin. He didn't need to see what was in her head.

"I know." She swallowed. "Jono got caught out in it, that's when he hurt his lungs. Some of his guys..." She shook her head. "He's blaming himself. And it's so hard on Momoko. When there's no bodies, and... she has this whole thing about respect for the dead...."

It was so much easier to talk about her friends' pain, than all the stuff she still didn't have words for.

[lovemykilt]

"I don't think that sort of thing can be easy on anyone," Priestly said. He didn't mind if Dinah shared things telepathically, but he wasn't going to try to force it on her. "That's probably why the bastard picked it as a tactic. Even when he loses, he'll still have left his mark on everything."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. Somebody-- Jono maybe?" She wasn't really clear on half the conversations she'd had the last couple days. "Said something like that. How it makes it so hard to keep fighting. Or to survive." Her voice was getting hoarser. "Because. You feel like..." What was it he'd said? "How can we still be here? When they're not?"

[lovemykilt]

Priestly hugged her harder, careful to avoid skin contact as she'd been. "There's no real answer to that, I don't think."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"I want him dead." Dinah froze for a moment, then touched one finger to Priestly's arm, burrowing closer. I want to kill Hobart. I can't even feel guilty about it any more. It wouldn't stop the war. Too many people involved... It wouldn't bring anyone back. But I want him to feel it. Pain. Fear. Everything he's done to the people who can't leave, who have nowhere to go... Who am I turning into? And a quick image, throttled and suppressed, of that Other Dinah, the evil vampire one.

[lovemykilt]

"No." Priestly held her harder. "That's not evil, Dinah, that's just anger. That's just being a person. He did terrible things to people you cared about and you want revenge and that's normal."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"Are you sure?" Dinah croaked. 'Cause I'm not. And then just crying, along with a jumble of half-spoken, "Sorry, wasn't going to--" and half-thought, I didn't cry at all until now, I don't get it, I gotta go back, I can't give up now!

[lovemykilt]

You're not, Priestly thought hard. You're not giving up. You're just letting some of it go, and that'll make you stronger.

"Yeah," he said outloud. "I am."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah stopped thinking in words then, just hung onto Priestly and cried it out, muffled into his shoulder and the sheets. It took a long while.

When it had finally subsided into hitched breathing, and fingers loosening, she mumbled, "Best friend ever."

[lovemykilt]

Priestly smiled faintly. "I love you, too."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"Love you back." Dinah sighed, eyes already falling shut. "Careful. You don't wanna be back there again..."

[lovemykilt]

"If it helps you out at all, I don't mind."

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah just lay there for a minute, not saying anything. Then curled into him, head down on his chest, nodding. I won't let the nightmares get you, though. Swear.

[lovemykilt]

Priestly just kissed her forehead again, settling in himself.

He wasn't exactly a stranger to nightmares. He'd help her through hers whatever way she let him.