Fic: CSI: NY, Stella, Dreams & Reality
tvrealm challenge • Episode: 3X20: Writing Images, Iconing Words
WRITING: 500 Word Image Prompt Challenge • Take one image below and use it as your inspiration and focus for a 500 word (or more) tv themed fanfiction. These images are to be interpreted as you see fit.
Title: Dreams & Reality
Fandom: CSI: NY
Characters/pairings: Stella Bonasera
Words: 612
Warnings/spoilers: Refers vaguely to some things in season 5 and the end of the season 6.
Angst Rating: FRC, Gen
Summary: Dreams, nightmares and waking dreams have are different for one Stella Bonasera.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to writers, Anthony Zuiker and CBS et al. I don't own them. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: Written for tvrealm.Written 24/02/12. Not betaed, any mistakes are mine.
Picture prompt:
~~~
Stella’s dreams in the past had usually been enjoyable, during her childhood it gave her a sort of escape from the fairly uneventful life she had at the orphanage. She had dreams where she was a girl born into a royal family and as princess she had a never ending line of admirers, she dreamt of long walks in foreign places, and adventures to find her birth father with the help of her not-dead mother.
When she grew older, her flights of fancy took on a more serious turn. She’d have dreams that seemed exactly like her everyday life at the orphanage, the only difference when a loving couple would come and take her away to join their family and she wouldn’t be stuck fending for herself.
Her life hadn’t been bad at the orphanage with the lovely nuns and her adopted uncle also stopping by on occasion but a young girl had the right to dream.
When she moved out to college on her own, her dreams changed again. She had dreams of the cute boys who sat next to her in class asking her out. A few even did, but nothing serious ever came of it.
At the Police academy she started having less pleasant dreams and more nightmares than she could count, she put it down to her apprehension of what lay before her. But none of the dreams she had during that time changed her mind about her line of work, she’d sooner protect other people than let them be the ones to have nightmares that haunted them for years to come. She’d make it work for herself.
During her years at the New York Crime Lab she had ample nightmares of the horrifying kind than she could care to imagine. But when she woke up she knew that they weren’t real and hadn’t actually happened, well, most of them.
The cases involving children were the worst, especially when they ended badly. Seeing their small bodies lying there mutilated haunted her waking dreams more than her real ones. But she had the support of her friends and colleagues, which lessened the blow.
When she decided that she had to move out to New Orleans to help the crime lab over there, she hadn’t expected her dreams to change again. After all, horrific crimes were part of the norm wherever you were situated she had assumed early on.
How wrong she was.
The first couple of months her nightmares got steadily worse, in the end she couldn’t sleep more than a couple of hours a night. It soon showed up in both her physical and emotional state. And when she snapped at her team one too time too many, she found a small package wrapped with a ribbon on her desk.
Stella,
Even if it doesn’t help, we want you to know you can lean on us more often,
From your new home and colleagues.
When she opened it she had found a small delicate dream catcher. She hadn’t had one since her days at the Academy but anything to help her sleep she would gladly try out. So when she got home that night she hung it beside her bedside table. The next few months she had the nightmares finally did not outnumber her happier dreams. She didn’t know if she should put it down to the effects of the dream catcher actually working or the fact that she finally felt that she was amongst a small family again however much she still missed her NY crime lab family.
Whichever it was, it had helped her to sleep, and to dream blissfully again for which she was grateful.
~~~
Feedback always appreciated.