Nightmares
By Deanie
March 2005

Spoiler Warning: Up to "If the Wheel is Fixed"
Rating: PG-13
Archiving: Beka Valentine Fanfic Archive, fanfiction.net (all others, please ask).
Summary: Though he escaped death in the inter-dimensional tunnel in “The Tunnel at the End of the Light,” Tyr is haunted by what happened… even though he has no memory of those events.
Disclaimer: Tyr, Beka, and the Andromeda crew don’t belong to me. I’m just playing with them, and will return them when I’m done…

***

Pain. Blinding pain. Ripping through his body like a laser blast, cutting him to the core. The darkness was waiting. Overpowering his will, stripping his senses, it consumed him. The light had been so very bright, but even it could not stop the darkness. It had welcomed him, like a friend, the shadows banishing the pain for long moments. Betrayed by the darkness, abandoned by the light, he existed. Cold. Dark. Hurt. Alone.

Alone. Had he been…? There had been someone… out of reach in the darkness. Was she merely mist and shadow, or had she truly existed?

Was he even real? He could almost remember, life beyond the cloudy walls that surrounded his mind. Memory was fleeting, dimmed by the darkness, eclipsed by the pain.

So strong. Breaking him. Tearing, shattering, destroying who he was. The agony blinding until he welcomed the oblivion of the dark.

Tyr gasped, sitting straight up in bed as he escaped the dream. Drenched in sweat, he shivered despite the room’s warmth. He looked around his quarters, reassuring himself that he was home and safe. Since he’d gotten back, the dreams had been relentless, pursuing him each time he slept. He’d taken to sleeping with the light on, the disorientation brought on by his unlit quarters unbearable in the dark of the ship’s night. Even as a child he hadn’t been afraid of the dark; now, he was helpless against the panic that overtook him when he stood in shadow.

He pulled the blanket around him, willing the warmth into his chilled skin. Every time he closed his eyes he saw… he didn’t even know what he saw. Flashes of light, darkness, blinding pain. He felt lost, alone… but there was someone else…

The lack of memory was intolerable. He should be able to remember. He had superior mental faculties. These dimension-shifting aliens should not be able to defeat him so easily.

But they had. They’d defeated him, destroyed him in ways he’d never thought possible.

Unconsciously, he rubbed his bare forearms. Stripped of the one physical characteristic that marked him as a Nietzschean, and he didn’t even know how or why. He couldn’t remember it happening. All he had were flashes… light, darkness, pain. Surrender. Surrender to the dark and it will take away all your pain.

He clutched his head in his hands, trying to drive away the voices. The whispers, the shadows that should have long been exorcised…lingering, threatening… driving him mad. Pain begat more pain, and fighting…futile. Nowhere to run.

He jumped up, looking around, as if he could see the voices in the shadows. His quarters were the same as they had been when he had left for that fateful mission, and that seemed even more unsettling. After all they’d been through, more should be different…

For him, everything had changed, though the world around him went on just as it did before. Leaving him alone, walking to the mirror to look at what's not there.