betterthanaplan | Lucifer's Mansion, very early Sunday morning

None of Duke's dreams had been exactly kind lately, but they'd at least mostly stuck to a general anxiety-dream structure. Wandering the stark white hallways of the barn, shouting for Audrey, unable to escape the looming spectre of a trouble, which in dream logic seemed to mostly take the form of a generic "boogey man" figure. The sort of thing that left him discombobulated and out of sorts throughout the morning, but not the sort that would wake him abruptly in a way anyone else might notice.

His was really only a matter of time before his luck there ran out.

The white floors bucked beneath him as he walked, swaying and dipping like a ship tossed in a storm. The world through the identical windows was black and roiling, filled with debris and unidentifiable bodies.

"Audrey!" Duke shouted. "Audrey, we're going down! We have to abandon ship!"

A flash of blonde, darting through a doorway. Duke dashed after her, but every time he turned a corner she was just up ahead, vanishing around another one.

"Audrey! Audrey!!"

He couldn't catch up. He couldn't get his legs to work properly. The floor pitched up violently then dropped, and Duke fell --

He surfaced by a rocky beach, and fought his way to land, sprawling out to catch his breath. His limbs still weren't working properly, and there was noise all around, explosions and screams clogging the air like dust. He choked on it, drowning, until a hand appeared in front of his face. Duke took it and let it help him stand, only noticing once he found his feet that it was coated in blood.

Nathan smiled, his teeth red. His face was red, his jacket soaked through. His eyes were cloudy and dead.

"Did you really think you could leave it behind?" he asked.

Duke snatched his hand away, panting, and watched as the blood vanished into him. As Nathan vanished into him. "No." He choked on the word. "No --"

"It's how it always had to be," a voice said, coming from everywhere. Duke spun. It was Vince, it was Lucifer. It was Dwight and Gloria and Claire and Danny and Rey. They stood all around him, bloody and scorched and dead, and Audrey, they were all variations on the theme of Audrey, like Lucy and Sarah and dozens of others, stretching back into eternity.

"Did you really think it wouldn't follow you?" they asked.

A scream across the sky, and Duke looked up. The meteor storm. It was crashing all around, smashing through the school, through the Gull, through the Devil's Nest and Luke's and every place he'd ever felt he belonged. And one came hurtling down at the beach, straight for the sand, straight for Duke, he could feel the heat as it burned through the atmosphere, could feel his clothing burning away --

He woke with an abbreviated cry, an explosion rattling the inside of his head. He lay where he was for a moment, panting and choking on his too-rapid breaths, staring at the slice of sky visible from his spot in Lucifer's bed.

It was glowing red with the sunrise, and for a long moment, still stuck in the dream, Duke was convinced it was fire. That the meteors had come to Fandom, and everything was burning. . . .

[for those in the bed -- or the house -- with him!]

no subject