Maybe I'm a Mess

Night Terrors Pt.2

Winona's night terrors seemed to come around more often when she felt stressed. So she began to take extra precautions to avoid stressful situations. However, that became difficult when the stressful situation happened to be her job.
It's not that the environment was stressful, quite the opposite actually other than the bitter cold weather. It was just an upcoming scene she had with David. She usually never got nervous about a kissing scene. Hell, she had kissed Jennifer Anniston before.
So why was she rubbing her hands together with butterflies in her stomach just thinking about the scene.
David has been really supportive of her night terrors, even offering to sleep over anytime she isn't feeling well. Sometimes she can sense a bad night before she falls asleep and usually she's right.
But most nights, she tried to keep her screams in, careful not to wake David in the next room. It wasn't that she didn't need him, she did, but she didn't want to be the reason he loses out on sleep.
"Winona."
Her eyes snap over to the source of the voice, her brown eyes meeting his warm blue ones. The butterflies in her stomach seemed to multiply.
"David." she replies, matching his tone.
"Where'd you go?" he asks before taking a bite of his dinner.
"What do you mean? I've been sitting beside you this whole time." she says with confusion.
"Up here." he says, pointing to her head with a smirk. That damn smirk.
"Oh, uh, just thinking about work. Running my lines in my head." she says lamely. Ever since that first night that he held her after her night terror and she heard him whisper those things, she felt so nervous around him. Like a school girl again.
"Thinkin about our kiss scene?" he asks suggestively, wagging his eyebrows before throwing a crouton from her salad into his mouth.
Her eyes go wide for a moment before she realizes he's joking and she quickly forces a laugh, trying to play off her shock. He always seemed to know what she was thinking.
"Yeah. Right." she replies, bumping his arm.
"You know, we can always rehearse it. Anytime you want." he continues with his teasing, enjoying the way her cheeks reddened.
"Will you two please get a room." Brett Gelman interjects from across the table, unknowingly saving Winona.
"Actually, don't. Then i'll be stuck with this one." Tom Wlaschiha says, nodding to Brett as he sits down beside him with his dinner in hand.
"Ha Ha very funny." Brett replies sarcastically.
The two continued on with their banter but Winona was sucked back into her own world as her eyes stray away towards the prison where they're filming.
Their "cafeteria" was made up of a simple tent with heaters set up around it, just outside of the prison walls so they had a great view of the eerie sight.
It's been almost a month and she still hasn't gotten used to the cold. Usually she likes the cold but she's never felt a cold like this. It was almost painful at times.
She couldn't imagine how David felt running around in the snow without any shoes. She didn't know how he managed it. But honestly, in her eyes, there wasn't much David couldn't do.
Including making her swoon like a teenage girl with just one glance.
She felt a nudge on her knee and she turned away from the prison to look over at David. He pointed his head, signaling for her to follow him as he stood from the table. Brett and Tom were still bickering like an old married couple and didn't even notice when Winona stood up to follow David out of the tent.
"Hey." she says, catching up to him.
"What're we-" she begins but he cuts her off.
"Just going for a walk. Seemed like you needed some time to just think and I know walking helps you with that." he says like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Winona stops walking for a split second, shocked that someone cared to pay so much attention to the smallest details about her. He turns, staring at her with curiosity, his head slightly tilted to the side.
"Y-Yeah. Walk sounds nice." she says quickly, resuming their walk. Every few steps, she sneaks a glance at him, admiring the way the golden sunset made his blue eyes sparkle while he stares at the trail ahead of them. They couldn't go very far into the woods considering their dinner break would be over soon so eventually they stopped on the edge of a small meadow and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree.
"I'm sorry if I seem out of it lately." Winona says finally, her hands finding each other and she begins to twist.
He sets a hand on top of her moving ones, settling them immediately with one soothing brush of his thumb across the back of her hand.
"You don't have to apologize to me. Not for being yourself. People have off days." he tells her reassuringly.
"Anything in particular you wanna talk about?" he asks, still holding her hands. She didn't mind one bit, in fact, his large hand was starting to warm up her small, cold ones.
"Just can't seem to shake what I see in my dreams sometimes." she says softly, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head gently as if trying to shake away the images now.
"Do you want to tell me about what you see?" he asks. She bites her lip nervously before looking up at him.
"You'll think i'm silly." she says with a hint of embarrassment.
"Try me."
She takes a deep breath as the images begin to resurface.
"Each night is usually the same. Starts out with the same dream where someone I love dies." she begins, purposefully leaving out the fact that he plays that role in her dreams.
"Always in the same way. It's a tall man with a top hat but no face. He kills them right in front of me. And there's nothing I can do to stop it. And then the dream sort of melts away, only he doesn't. He stays there when I wake up. But I still can't move. Like i'm paralyzed. And he's just standing there at the foot of my bed, staring at me, as if to say i'm next."
By now, her hands begin to wring together even under David's comforting touch.
"I don't know how long it lasts. Could be minutes but sometimes it feels like hours before I can move again or even make a sound." she finishes.
By now she is shaking so bad that she didn't know whether it was from the cold or the fear that is once again as fresh as the images of David's lifeless body in front of her.
He seems to notice this because he removes his hand from hers and wraps it around her shoulder, pulling her into his warm embrace.
"I'm sorry, Winona. I...I know I can't do anything to keep you from those dreams, to pull you back from the dark, but i'll always be here to sit with you in it. To comfort you in any way I can until it passes. As long as you'll have me." he tells her softly.
She can feel her heart swell and tears spring in her eyes against her will. Nobody in her life had ever cared for her in this way. David was unlike any man she had ever met. Kind, caring, gentle, warm.
She turns to look at him and finds that he is already staring at her, his eyes portraying the warmth and gentleness that she felt from his words.
She can feel the space between them begin to disappear as they unknowingly lean closer to each other, as if pulled by some unseen magnet.
Just as she can feel the heat of his breath on her lips, a booming, familiar voice makes them jump away like two teenagers who had just been walked in on by their parents.
"There you are!"
Brett appears on the path a few yards away from them, walking toward them with his arms extended in the air feigning dramatic exasperation. As if he had been searching for them all day.
"They want you lovebirds back on set."
Winona felt the butterflies begin to flutter in her stomach once again but tried to keep her face from showing it as she stood from the log they were sitting on.
"Showtime." David whispers with a smirk as Brett begins to lead them back to set.

White was all she saw. Everywhere she looked, a blanket of white stretched on for miles. The snow reached about mid calf but for some reason, she wasn't cold.
And then he was there.
His hand stretched out to her, that warm, stupidly charming smile on his face, his blue eyes searching hers.
"David." she says with relief, a smile finding its way onto her face in return.
"We have to go." he says, his serious tone not matching his relaxed features. This confuses her.
"Go? Where?" she asks, glancing again at his outstretched hand.
"We have to go. Now." he says again, more intensely.
"David, I..."
"Go! Run! Get out of here!" he yells at her, his eyes pleading with hers, the smile on his face looking unnatural now.
She begins to back away on instinct but her eyes never leave his.
And then she sees him.
His face an unrecognizable blur, a top hat adorning his head, his feet not quite touching the ground but hovering over it as he floats towards David from behind him.
Her eyes go wide and she opens her mouth to say something, anything. She wants so badly to warn David, to tell him to run but she can't. Nothing comes out. Like she can't remember how to speak.
A long, sharp object appears at the tall man's side, almost like it was connected to his hand, like it was a part of him.
And before she can figure out how to use her voice, the sharp object pierces David straight through the chest from behind, making his body tense in pain and then go limp as blood begins to pour out of his mouth, painting the snow around him.
A pain filled scream echoes all around her, frightening her, until she realizes that it was coming from her.
She drops to her knees staring helplessly into David's empty eyes as the man floats over his body towards her. Using the same sharp, bloody tool, he tucks it under her chin, lifting her face until she has no choice but to stare into his featureless face.
Though he had no eyes, no mouth, nothing but darkness to fill his face, Winona knew that he was showing her something.
No.
Promising her. That David's fate would soon be her own.
Just as she was about to give in to him, allow him to take her like he took David, she hears her name somewhere in the distance.

"Winona!"
His hands seemed to encase her small shoulders completely as he tried to gently shake her awake. He had heard her screams only moments after laying his head on his pillow and he immediately ran over to find her eerily still, other than her heavy breathing. Normally during her night terrors, she would thrash around in her sheets.
This was different.
"Winona, please, baby, please wake up." he continues, one hand still shaking her shoulder gently while the other wipes her hair away from her forehead which was sticky with sweat.
Her eyes snap open, looking around wildly, filling David with relief.
"Thank god." he breathes out with a smile.
But she doesn't move. Other than her eyes, her body remains stiff and she begins to whimper with fear, her mouth seemingly stuck shut.
"Hey, hey." he whispers, his eyes quickly scanning her body for the cause of this strange paralysis.
Her whimpers begin to turn into sobs and David becomes dumbfounded as her eyes continue to glance between him and somewhere just behind him.
"Hey, it's okay. Okay, just breathe with me." he says, trying to stop her from having a panic attack. His hands find her clenched ones and he begins to rub them gently, massaging her tense muscles.
"Good girl, that's it." he whispers as her tear filled eyes bore into his, her breathing slowing down to match his.
"Focus on your breathing, okay? Try to relax." he continues soothingly as he feels her hands begin to unclench. His hands work their way up her body, massaging her arms, then her shoulders, her neck.
"That's it. You're okay." he whispers, wiping her tears as they fall down her cheeks, her body starting to come to life again. After a moment, it's like a spell has been lifted and she launches herself into David's arms, sobbing into his chest, her hands grabbing at his shirt in an attempt to pull him impossibly closer.
"He was here. He was here, right behind you." she cries, hiding her face in his chest.
"It's okay, baby. I'm here. I've got you." he continues to whisper into her hair as he rocks them back and forth.
When she finally pulls away, her cheeks shine brightly with fresh tears and she stares up at him helplessly.
"They're getting worse." he states the obvious.
Her hand reaches up and cups his cheek as she stares at him. There was something different in her eyes, a sort of panic that David hadn't seen before.
"I can't keep watching you die." she says, the last word coming out as a half sob, her thumb brushing against his soft, stubbly cheek.
His brows scrunch with confusion for a moment and then realization as he remembers her words from earlier. It starts out with the same dream where someone I love dies.
He never would've thought that he was that person.
"Oh, Winona." he whispers, pulling her back into his warm embrace. His lips press against her forehead as he rubs her back soothingly.
They sit in that comfortable silence for a few moments, both basking in each other's embrace before Winona's soft voice breaks the silence.
"Stay with me." she whispers.
He tightens his hold on her and whispers his reply into her lavender smelling hair.
"Always."

Sorry for the kind of long chapter, I get a little carried away with these two. Let me know if you have any ideas you'd like to see in the next few chapters!
xx