Black and White and Dream

Who: Nate (as well as Frank since it's his dream.)
Where: Frank's dream
When: Early morning

A brick wall stretching out in the Film Noir fog, a man he didn't know standing tall, speaking words that didn't make sense... It felt like slow motion save for Nate who was breathing in regular rhythm - his heartbeat steady and normal. He sat down, sighed and hugged his legs to his chest. At least his father's dreams weren't a threat to him, not so far at least. It didn't change the fact he didn't want to be here.

The man he didn't know was handing Frank a sword, he was standing up on a battered pedestal like a statue and a part of him was in fact made of stone; from his feet up to his legs he seemed to blend in with the pedestal, lined with delicate cracks and moss. All Nate could hear from him was the word War a word regularly repeated in between the indecipherable droning.

Dylan and Nate were there next to Frank and it was always a little weird to see himself in his father's dreams. The Other Nate was only about twelve and Nate wondered if he'd always looked that petulant as a kid. Dylan's face kept changing but it was still obviously him, scared eyes half-hidden under dark hair.

"I got bit, not tackled," Other Nate said sulkily and even if he said it softly it still sounded loud over the statue-man's talking, echoed through the room-garden place they were in, through Frank's mind. "I got bit. Not tackled."

"You're gonna kill us all," Dylan accused him while Frank stared down at his sword, brows furrowed. He was young there, thinner and not slouching, his hair dark and his face smooth, but he still looked tired. So tired.

"Daddy, Nate bit me," Dylan said in a whiny tone that came from a child's body and Other Nate was there-but-not-there with a large dog. A wolf. It growled, gnawing on Dylan's arm, darkness soaking the boy's white sleeve.

Frank wasn't looking at them, he was still staring down at his sword. "Stop biting your brother or I'm stopping the car," he finally said and the image was washed away. Frank was still there but he was talking to the statue man, lighting a cigarette. "I keep meaning to quit," he said and they both laughed like it was a private joke. Quitting.

Nate closed his eyes. His father's dreams always made him so tired. Everything moved so slowly, obscured by fog and darkness, no colors, just shades of grey, thick with weary emotions.

"There's a war on, Frank." Statue man said and Frank was crying, kneeling in the mud, clutching his own hand. No, a stub where his hand used to be. Just one broken man on his knees. The statue man was gone and the brick wall stretched out in front of him. Nate could see his mother there, like she was an image projected onto the wall or a ghost inside it.

She was talking but no words came out and the wall was crumbling. She crumbled with it and sometimes she wasn't mom, sometimes she was that woman from Dylan's photo. She smiled even as her head slowly got chipped away, the bricks like pieces of paper scattered in the wind and afterward there was nothing but black there. Just Frank and Nate sitting on a square that looked like a mirror, floating in the nothing. Time stood still, Frank just sat there. Just sat there and Nate closed his eyes again. He hadn't put on music before he went to bed, too tired, thinking he was still drunk enough to just sleep...

He woke up when Frank did, blinking away tears and letting the pillow take them from him. All he could think about was his mom, her smile behind the texture of bricks and how that smile reached her dark eyes. Even if she hadn't been looking at him in the dream, that's how he saw her now. That familiar smile, her hands around his with those leather straps around her wrist (what had happened to those after she died, he wondered) - his hands would be bigger than hers now, he realized. Her hands were probably so small. He squeezed his eyes shut, but finally sat up and quietly got out of bed. He didn't want to go to school stoned and he didn't need to get sucked into Dylan's nightmares either so there'd be no more sleep for him this morning.