i begin to fade {OPEN}

[Tick-Tock]

Heat was washing over her face, flames licked at the hem of her shirt. She was here again, in the terrible nightmare she had been fighting off ever since Irving Hall had burned down. Her hand reached out for his, her mouth was still open from when she had tried to tell him what she felt about him…but he wasn't there. He'd run, probably to do his best to help others. She could hear herself call out to him, then cough on smoke. Her feet moved her forward and she ran, trying to find him. He had to know. He needed to know. Tick-Tock could see him now, see his familiar mop of brown hair. Her speed picked up, she called out for him to wait. He turned around.

It was not Bullseye she saw. It was Brooklyn. She pulled up short, then shouted his name, started to say those three little words…then there was a creaking overhead. Her gazed darted upward to see a beam or something similar come loose and start to fall. She leapt forward, screaming "No!" But the beam fell faster than she could move–

She jolted upright, sweat beading on her forehead for the first time since the nightmares started. Had she screamed? Had she made any noise in her sleep? What had happened in the nightmare? It was an unexpected change. She hadn't expected the face to be his. But now that she was awake, trying to catch her breath, she was elated deep down that it was a dream, a nightmare. On the surface and the layer just beneath, she was deeply concerned, not only for what had happened in the world of sleep, but why it had changed.

Tick pulled the blanket off her body and slipped downstairs after swiftly changing into a looser version of what she wore in the day, hoping not to wake anyone. She didn't care that her feet were bare as she made her way to the docks. What did scare her was how her hands and legs were shaking.

Keeping her feelings locked up was starting to work against her. She needed to tell someone…no doubt quite a few people could probably already tell, but she hadn't told anyone. She needed someone she could trust…

Maybe she could just shout it from the docks in the dead of night. It would possibly fill the need.

She reached the docks in silence. She made her way to her usual beam–nearly falling a few times because of her shaking–and sat down, looking out at the navy water and black sky. What the hell was going on with her? She didn't like the changes that had come with the burning of Irving Hall. People shouldn't suffer this much…especially people her age. She was only sixteen…only sixteen.

Those two words, combined with the sound of Brooklyn calling her 'Tickers', bounced around her skull until it seemed to make it start pounding. She pressed her hands against her ears and tried to block it all out.

This needed to stop. And to make it stop, her only current option was to tell someone, weather it be a stranger or Brooklyn himself, she needed to come clean.