Marauders - Always - Part One

CCV: Give It A Go

Storm Lyson woke suddenly, startled out of slumber, and lost himself for a moment before remembering where he was.

The Sanctuary. A small church in an Icelandic town, somewhere south of the location of Fallengunder. He was in a room behind the main hall, which had been mostly renovated in the years since it had acted as a true church. The room behind the pulpit was small, set up like a flat, and currently housing Storm, Spencer, and Remua as they awaited permission to move the pack headquarters back to the castle.

They'd been waiting several days since they'd left Hogsmeade, where Remus has requested the permission be granted, just waiting for an answer from this Dumbledore bloke.

Storm was getting anxious.

Coming to the town the Sanctuary was in always made him anxious.

Anxious enough to give him a nightmare.

In his dream, Storm had stood before a closet door, a small room below cellar stairs, his body prone and practiced for exactly this situation. He head to protect the cupboard no matter what... her life depended upon him.

He had this nightmare regularly - sometimes, he managed to do it, and there would be a celebration and he would wake feeling safe and happy, satisfied, even. But other nights...

Other nights, he watched wolves tear her apart with no way to stop it.

And sometimes, though very rarely, he was the wolf tearing her apart.

His heart raced.

He stared up at the ceiling that loomed overhead, slowly counting as he inhaled (one... two... three... four... five... six...) and exhaled (six... five... four... three... two... one...). Slowly the images left his mind, fading away like voices going down a long hallway.

He held the blanket tight to his chest in his balled up fist.

Fire light flickered against the ceiling and the wood cracked and shifted in the hearth. He sat up, finding Remus Lupin sitting in the chair nearest the fire, legs crossed, a book lying open on his knee, but his eyes stared unseeing into the fire instead. Remus's fingers moved slowly along the too edges of the pages, ruffling them with just the tips of his fingers in an absent motion.

Remus must have sensed Storm's eyes upon him, for he turned and they locked eyes a moment before Remus looked away. "You're awake," Remus said, looking once more into the fire.

"So are you," Storm pointed out.

Remus murmured, "I had hoped to have heard from someone this evening... but I don't suppose I will now. It's rather late. He lay a bookmark down across his page and put the book on a short table beside him. "I'll have to wait and read about what happened at the Triwizard Tounament in tomorrow's paper." He smiled sadly. "I suppose we would have heard something if --" he stopped and didn't finish the sentence.

Storm slid out of bed and walked over to where Remus sat, lowering himself onto the carpet near to his chair. Remus stayed staring at the fire. Storm stared, too, and rested his elbows upon his knees, his chin leaning against his arm, and watched the fire move, embers dancing down to ash below the logs.

"You were having a nightmare," Remus said after a few moments. It wasn't a question. He'd heard the shifts and sighs too many times before - mostly from Sirius - to not recognize a nightmare-riddled sleeper. The bloodshot and darkened eyes that Storm wore were giveaways, too. "Do you need to talk?"

Storm shook his head. He didn't want to appear weak to the Alpha. He hated that Remus had noticed at all, as though nightmares made him smaller. He had worked all his life to be bigger, to be stronger, to be better than he had been the day before. That's what it took to survive in his world, what it took to overcome pressures, expectations...