Understand Why
Author: verucasalt123
Title: Understand Why
Rating: PG
Pairing/s: none
Character/s: Stiles, Claudia (remembered), Void
Summary: Sometimes you really can’t appreciate the good until you’ve experienced the bad.
Warnings: dreams/nightmares, angst, emotional family relationships, insomnia
Word Count: 586
Prompt: ひらひら
A/N: Teeny little song-ficlet.
Before the nightmares, Stiles never gave much thought to his dreams. Even when they were nice or just plain weird, most of the time everything slipped away like it was never there as soon as he opened his eyes.
And it wasn’t ever there, not really. Because they were dreams. Learning the difference was a long process, as he found out that nightmares weren’t nearly so easy to forget; they clung to you in waking hours even as you wished them away. Sometimes they were real, Stiles realized in horror while he was Void, or maybe shortly thereafter.
It took a long time until he could sleep again - fear of what might happen if he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, fear of the nightmares, fear of the dark, the monsters, the hopelessness. He’d do everything in his power to keep himself from falling asleep, but a person’s body could only resist for so long. Even after he finally started to sleep, it took a good while before he once again began experiencing dreams instead of nightmares.
Staring at the ceiling in the dark
Same old empty feeling in your heart
But the dreams did come back, just as he’d hoped. Plain old dreams, even nice ones. His mother hanging their good tablecloth on the clothesline in the backyard, sun shining down, the breeze making the material flutter in the air. Stiles was so little in this one, he saw it moving on the wind like that and thought it would make a really nice cape for a superhero, if it didn’t have that embroidery on it. He saw her, peeking around the rest of the hanging laundry, laughing and pretending to hide between the sheets and towels and the sounds they made when they moved in the air, suspended from wooden pins. She’d make him try to find her and they would giggle like mad.
Hoping one day you'll make a dream last
But dreams come slow and they go so fast
You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Stiles had no way to know if the dream he just had was a memory or something made up in his subconscious; maybe it was a combination of different things. That’s what his therapist had told him once, that dreams are usually just a big jumble of sounds and images and feelings that were in your head.
He didn’t guess it really made a difference. He could remember this dream, this picture of his mom healthy and smiling and happy, laundry fluttering in the warm breeze, himself without a care in the world.
Since he’d come back from the dark place where the Nogitsune had taken him, Stiles had been a little bit afraid that this would be ruined. That thing used everything in his mind, including the precious memories he had of his mother, to feed itself on the chaos it caused. But now that he was back to himself, could control his actions and knew that he wasn’t sick like she had been, the dreams and memories of her weren’t so painful anymore. If he’d learned anything from that whole experience, it was that he should be happy for all the wonderful things he had instead of miserable over what he’d lost. As long as he (and his dad, and Scott, and Melissa, and…) kept the memories of her, there wasn’t a person or a thing who could take those away.
And you let her go
Psssst, could we please have a Claudia Stilinski tag?
Title: Understand Why
Rating: PG
Pairing/s: none
Character/s: Stiles, Claudia (remembered), Void
Summary: Sometimes you really can’t appreciate the good until you’ve experienced the bad.
Warnings: dreams/nightmares, angst, emotional family relationships, insomnia
Word Count: 586
Prompt: ひらひら
A/N: Teeny little song-ficlet.
Before the nightmares, Stiles never gave much thought to his dreams. Even when they were nice or just plain weird, most of the time everything slipped away like it was never there as soon as he opened his eyes.
And it wasn’t ever there, not really. Because they were dreams. Learning the difference was a long process, as he found out that nightmares weren’t nearly so easy to forget; they clung to you in waking hours even as you wished them away. Sometimes they were real, Stiles realized in horror while he was Void, or maybe shortly thereafter.
It took a long time until he could sleep again - fear of what might happen if he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, fear of the nightmares, fear of the dark, the monsters, the hopelessness. He’d do everything in his power to keep himself from falling asleep, but a person’s body could only resist for so long. Even after he finally started to sleep, it took a good while before he once again began experiencing dreams instead of nightmares.
Staring at the ceiling in the dark
Same old empty feeling in your heart
But the dreams did come back, just as he’d hoped. Plain old dreams, even nice ones. His mother hanging their good tablecloth on the clothesline in the backyard, sun shining down, the breeze making the material flutter in the air. Stiles was so little in this one, he saw it moving on the wind like that and thought it would make a really nice cape for a superhero, if it didn’t have that embroidery on it. He saw her, peeking around the rest of the hanging laundry, laughing and pretending to hide between the sheets and towels and the sounds they made when they moved in the air, suspended from wooden pins. She’d make him try to find her and they would giggle like mad.
Hoping one day you'll make a dream last
But dreams come slow and they go so fast
You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Stiles had no way to know if the dream he just had was a memory or something made up in his subconscious; maybe it was a combination of different things. That’s what his therapist had told him once, that dreams are usually just a big jumble of sounds and images and feelings that were in your head.
He didn’t guess it really made a difference. He could remember this dream, this picture of his mom healthy and smiling and happy, laundry fluttering in the warm breeze, himself without a care in the world.
Since he’d come back from the dark place where the Nogitsune had taken him, Stiles had been a little bit afraid that this would be ruined. That thing used everything in his mind, including the precious memories he had of his mother, to feed itself on the chaos it caused. But now that he was back to himself, could control his actions and knew that he wasn’t sick like she had been, the dreams and memories of her weren’t so painful anymore. If he’d learned anything from that whole experience, it was that he should be happy for all the wonderful things he had instead of miserable over what he’d lost. As long as he (and his dad, and Scott, and Melissa, and…) kept the memories of her, there wasn’t a person or a thing who could take those away.
And you let her go
Psssst, could we please have a Claudia Stilinski tag?