The Rising (final book of The Call series) ~ TMNT Fanfiction

Chapter 30: Living Nightmare

Leo's POV:

I wake up trembling and in a cold sweat. My heart is racing, the world around me seems to spin out of the control, and I have to focus on steading my breathing.

Damn it. Not another one.

"It's okay, Leo," Mikey says softly from the corner. "It was just another bad dream. Everything is okay."

Once my heart rate finally goes down, I close my eyes. But the images are still there, so I open my eyes again. Still, there isn't much else for me to look at besides a different variation of darkness. Even though my brothers are in the same cell as me, I can hardly see them.

"Are they the same?" Donnie asks quietly.

"No," I say. "The dreams are getting darker."

"Do you want to talk about this one?" Mikey asks.

I don't really want to talk about it. I usually only go in very surface-level detail. But for some reason, I start to think that maybe the nightmares will stop if I actually talk about them. Maybe I'm giving them power by suppressing them.

"They found Lexi. She was walking to the lair all alone. The Dark Angels found her and they took her. They beat her, and they tortured her..." I trail off and close my eyes. The images remain in my head, no matter how much I try to cast them out. "Even worse than anything they've done to us. She was screaming, and there were people around, but nobody heard her. The Dark Angels were in plain sight and yet nobody did anything."

"It was a dream, Leo," Donnie says softly. "You know that people would do something in real life to help."

"I know," I whisper, shaking my head. "It was just...hard to see. They took her to the Brooklyn Bridge. She was screaming the entire way. They tossed her off. I woke up while she was falling." My brain hurts from the replayed images. Lexi's tormented and terror-ridden face. Her screams. Melinda's look of satisfaction.

And the fact that I could do nothing to help.

"Were you there in this dream? Could you do anything?"

"Nothing," I say. "It was like...watching a movie. A sick, twisted movie. I could only sit there and hope that the ending turned out alright. I wasn't in her reach – couldn't do anything." I squeeze my eyes shut. "I couldn't do anything..."

"You've been having a lot of those," Mikey says. "Do you think there's a meaning behind it?"

"I don't care if there's a meaning. I just want them to stop."

I'm no stranger to dreams, and even nightmares. I used to get them a lot when I was younger, and I've gotten them here or there since growing older as well. But there's something so horrible about these ones: I feel helpless.

"I think it's a reaction to you being away for so long. It's a sense of helplessness. Not only are you unable to be near her physically, but you have no idea what's happening right now. Even if she is safe, your mind doesn't know that. So naturally, it roams, and your imagination can come up with a lot of different potential scenarios. But like I said, it's out of your reach. So it's manifesting itself through dreams," Donnie explains.

I don't really ask him to explain or give me his scientific reasoning, and quite frankly, I don't want it. It doesn't change the fact that I've been having these nightmares for what I'm pretty sure has been weeks, and they're only getting worse. But for some reason, his explanation helps a little bit. Even if the dreams don't go away, the explanation puts me at ease for now.

My brothers and I always tease Donnie about how he always acts like he knows everything. And usually, he doesknow nearly everything. It can get annoying sometimes. But it's times like this that we're grateful for his explanations. Even if it's just him trying to reassure himself, it gives us some sort of security.