By PlatinumNacht, for Moreta.
There had been many different 'worlds' over the years; from the downright ordinary of her college halls to the fantastical outer limits of deepest space - complete with small green men with webbed feet and horizontally closing eyes. Those skittering creatures didn't worry her as much as they should, she reflected.
Nor would they ever worry her as much as they should.
"Your aliens are better than mine," he'd said when he's joined her on that occasion.
Jenny had never been able to recreate the voice in its exact perfection. The eyes, the hair and the basic form were relatively easy to build but the voice speaking words she'd never heard before was never quite right.
It hadn't been so obvious in the beginning. She'd promised to help him to somewhere without shadows, to somewhere that he'd created for himself. It had been so easy to believe, a necessity to help her get back up. She'd promised something so simple; just to dream. Of course, in the few weeks straight after she'd promised him that, it was hard to sleep from anything other than exhaustion and even the nights she spent at rest yielded only a few minutes of something similar to daydreaming.
"One day, this will not seem so cliché."
Startled from her memories even while dreaming, Jenny followed the voice back to its source. She caught Julian glance at her and offered him the space next to her on the bench outside her eighth grade class window. The sun was still high in the sky but the grounds of the school were deserted. It felt like an empty skate park.
"Summer told you about her brother's broken wrist. She used the word 'half-pipe' and it's stuck in your head because you never thought you'd hear her say it - that's where I'm guessing you're getting the idea for tonight from." Julian smiled as he explained and sat on the backrest of the bench, his boots on the seat.
"You don't guess. Did I make you wear those?" She pointed in amusement at the pair of sunglasses he wore.
Casually, he removed them and slipped them into a pocket on the inside of his duster jacket. "From Audrey's picture of her and Michael in Singapore. It's why they don't have a brand name anywhere - you couldn't see it in the photo." A touch of laughter entered his voice and Jenny thought for a moment that she'd finally got the lilting edge to it just right. "Want me to stop explaining away your subconscious?"
Jenny tried to scowl over - or up - at him but stopped when she realised that along with the traces of laughter in his voice, there was an innocent playfulness in his expression. And it was the innocence that she hadn't ever seen before. Had she inadvertently created that as well? If so, why 'inadvertently'? Didn't she want it there? She watched confusion form in the face above her but before the owner could say anything, she was already haphazardly trying to filter through previous meetings.
There comes a point in every person's experiences where they try and run in a dream and end up struggling for distance, straining for a goal which it is imperative to attain. Jenny believed this wholeheartedly. In every situation where the subject had been brought up, Jenny found that everyone questioned had experienced this in one way or another. Becoming more and more lucid, Jenny struggled through scene after scene of past dreams, not entirely sure whether they had been real or not.
One had been at sea, the sudden and crushing roar of a full broadside being fired had scared her so that she woke just before the ship went down but not before she'd glimpsed silvery white hair disappearing below deck - she hadn't even seen his face that time. Another found her clambering through undergrowth in a mission with Dee to save a talking Easter Island statue which, as it turned out, could have defended itself by bouncing on people. The voice on the radio giving her directions had been Julian's.
Ah, this was one of the ones she wanted.
The More Games shop was exactly as she remembered it, if a little fuzzy around the edges. The acid house was playing, though not as loudly as the first time, and against the cash register's cabinet leant Julian. For a little while, the music was the only sound; his voice hadn't been matched to his body up until now but when it was, Jenny was surprised at the similarity.
Faced with this, she did the only thing that she knew was concrete - she started repeating what she'd said the first time she'd met him.
"I want to buy a...Julian? Are you real?"
"I don't sell 'Julian's and this is your dream - nothing is what you'd call real."
"I've never told you that I wasn't real," offered the Julian sitting with Jenny on the bench. "I was never what most people would have considered real."
Jenny heard him but was still struggling through older dreams.
"How's Tom?"
Jenny started, almost dropped the wrench she was holding and very nearly knocked her head on the open hood of her - a - car in Zach's garage. Her hair was tied up, but there were a few strands free and to steady herself, she brushed them away with the back of her free hand.
The kid-next-door look didn't really suit Julian as well as she thought it should have. The jeans were a touch too faded and his shirt a little too big. Jenny realised they were Tom's clothes.
"Fine," Jenny answered. "Did you choose to wear those?"
Julian made a show of inspecting the clothing and even picked a few misplaced strands away before looking up and responding, but Jenny knew the expression he wore well. It was an 'I dare you' face that she knew he had down to perfection reserved for the times when he had her cornered. A whimsical I-could-tell-you-but-I-won't shrug was all she received by way of reply.
"They don't suit you."
"I could say the same thing about him."
"Don't come here wearing his clothes and waving your distaste about. You don't-"
"You made me wear them."
Jenny could only mouth the word 'how'.
Stepping forwards, Julian moved so that he was only inches away. "I don't know you well enough to know how every facet of your imagination works." He took her free hand, gently but with insistence, the contact surprising her a little."Perhaps it's just something that's familiar, something that you know." He tightened his grip around her wrist, pulling it to his shirt. "Feel familiar?"
Jenny splayed her fingers over the fabric, her skin brushing over his in glancing passes. As always, she was aware of how dangerous this could get but was rationalising the fear with the reassurance that she was only dreaming. Green eyes widened and she hissed in a breath when Julian nimbly removed the wrench from her other hand and pulled it to rest at his hip. Jenny recognised the grain on the belt leather, the denim belt loops pinched between finger and thumb and the frayed edges of the imperfect stitching at the seam. She knew the feel of these things because they were Tom's clothes in all their familiarity. She had snagged the seam when she'd taken the labels off and there had been numerous occasions when she'd pulled and tugged at the belt loops in childish insistence and sometimes impatient need.
Gripping the material firmly, she pulled quickly. Without the inches separating them now, Jenny tried her best to sound as harsh as she could manage.
"Feels very familiar."
If Jenny was completely honest with herself, she would admit that it wasn't Tom that she was thinking of as she'd pulled the Shadowman - was he still that here? - closer. She'd imagined that it should have been and that was enough for her at the time. Now, wondering why she had or hadn't wanted Julian to be anything other than what he was, she wasn't so sure.
"Did I bring you here?" she asked quietly and without looking up at him. In all the time that she'd thought about what his answer would be, she hadn't once actually asked him. "Did I create you or are you-"
"Still me? Still me. You...you create the form but I take it. You create the clothes, the scenery and the opportunities for my appearances but you don't create the words I speak or the actions I take." Without any effort, Julian lowered himself to sit next to Jenny. "You did bring me here though."
"So your expressions, the glances and the temperament are you? I didn't make you do those things?"
"I don't think you could have if you'd wanted to."
And it took Jenny all of a split second to know that she didn't want to say 'but I did want to' yet. She had admitted it to herself almost at the beginning, but it was harder to voice it aloud. Had she heard him right just then? She'd brought him here? Yeah go on, Thorny. Dig yourself a hole.
"Do you want to be here?" Quickly, she added: "I know you have other places to go." She expected amusement to flicker in him but didn't see it.
It took a few minutes for Julian to answer. The answer itself was quick and obvious enough, but the reasoning took longer to work into words. "I want to be here." That was the easy part. "For all the normal reasons but also because I learn from you." He knew she wanted to interrupt but wouldn't let her. "I've made empty worlds. I've created shells of people and things and I'm still learning what to fill them with. Now I've found out that I shouldn't fill them with anything. I can't create...essence. You couldn't manufacture it for me and I can't for anything else either."
Jenny realised quite quickly what he had just revealed.
"When I wake up, you return to your own dream. The empty one?"
"It gets more animated the more times you add things to it. I take things from your dreams," Julian explained with an almost conspiratorial smile.
"But every time I wake up, you're forced back to it?"
"You've got your 'protect the homeless cat' head on again."
That description fitted her rather well. She felt that she should protect the homeless cat; albeit a former Shadowman homeless cat. Against what some would have reasoned should have been her better judgement, she felt she at least had a duty to keep him in the light. "How do I do more?"
"You don't. You do more than enough. You can't do much now anyway - your alarm is about to go off." He wore that easy smile that told her he'd always know more than anyone and leant back against the bench, relaxed and indifferent.
Jenny stood, determined to get answers from him before they were both pulled apart. She'd learnt to fight in small ways, to resist the surge of lucidity before opening her eyes but they were only weak attempts. The sun dimmed slightly and then grew brighter than it had shone before; the few sounds of a chain gate and rustling leaves did the same. She closed her eyes, adamant to squeeze a few more seconds into her time asleep and didn't hear Julian leave the bench, didn't feel him move any closer.
He rarely kissed her anymore but each one brought the memories of all previous with it. She was pleasantly shocked, but would wake with an uncharacteristic ironic smile on her face.
"I like to take things from your dreams."
Fin.
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