Memories | TMR | Two

3:4

The Scorch.

It was not until Daniel was just passing the corner at the top of the stairs did he hear it.

The shrill sound of Adeline screaming, tuned in with the soothing - yet, somehow still loud and abrupt - voice of Maggie trying to calm her.

His pace quickens immediately, and he charges around the corner just in time to see the blonde girl flinching out of the open doorway, and jumping to the left as a lamp is hurled towards her.

"What happened?! What's going on?!" Daniel questions, barrelling over to her but stopping just out of view from the entrance to the room when Maggie hops in front of him, trying to avoid being smacked by a flying book.

"She woke up" is all the blonde girl responds to him, although her tone is panicked, and slightly wheezy from jumping around so much.

Glancing towards the room, Daniel chucks his wet towel and dirty clothes to the wall on the left, curving his hands around Maggie's upper arms and shifting her away from his path before charging through the doorway. The second his feet pass the threshold, he spots Adeline, sat with her knees and feet digging into the bed, and one arm pulled back as she readies herself to throw another object out the room.

"Addy!" he calls out to her, stepping completely into the room and flinging the door closed behind him, not giving much of a damn for the fact that it has just slammed in Maggie's face as he rushes to the redheads aid. He grabs her arm, yanking it forward, snatching a bottle of pills from her hand and twisting his upper body around to launch them to the end of the bed before spinning back around to face it. "Calm down! It's alright!"

With the nightmare of the Crank still being fresh in her mind, Adeline does not hear the boys pleas, and struggles to separate her fantasy from reality as she continues to fight against his hold on her. All she can see is that kitchen, the sickening, toothless grin of the woman at the other side of the room, and the way she skulked towards her with a blood soaked knife in her hand.

"No, but the Crank! We need to get away!" she screeches, squeezing her eyes closed and putting all of her strength into yanking her wrists away from Daniel, who's refusal to let go only makes her fight harder.

"There's no Crank, Addy! It's okay! It's gone!" Daniel shouts back, his voice slightly wavered from the struggles of trying to calm her nerves and settle her flailing. Gripping his hands tighter around her wrists, he pulls them downwards, pressing them on top her thighs and holding them there for a moment as he shifts himself onto the bed in front of her. "It's gone! It's alright! I promise!"

Adeline pushes her hands down further, using the tiny bit of extra space to slide them out from under Daniel's and draw them up to cover her ears. Twisting her legs from underneath her, she quickly shifts them around on the blanket and pulls them up until her knees are mere inches from the bottom of her chin. "It's outside the door, it's- it's outside and it's- it's trying to get in" she frantically mumbles to herself, squeezing her eyes closed as tight as she can and dropping her head down in between the gaps of her knees.

Daniel drags his hands away from her at that point, pulling them out to the sides and keeping them elevated in the air while leaning his upper body backwards. He just simply stares at Adeline for a moment, unsure of what he could possibly say or do that would settle her.

He has never seen her react like this to a dream before - at least, he presumes it was a dream to make her act so... panicked.

''There's no Crank, Addy, I promise'' he pipes up after a moment, his tone now low and gentle. With his hands still hovering in the air at either side of his shoulders and his vision flickering over the entirety of Adeline's trembling figure, he wonders what had happened. Wonders what she dreamt of that was so... traumatising, that she cannot even bare to look at the room around her, or look at him, for that matter.