Prompt# 333 - Sensual - In Dreams - Tekia - Original

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: In Dreams
Fandom:Original
Prompt: Sensual
Warnings:none
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When the world has descended into hell, there are always chances to fix it all. It all just depends on where you stand on the line.

Time travel was highly erotic.
Sarah knelt next to the pool, one hand dangling in the cool water as she stared out at the garden around her. The air was thick with the scent of flowers and the heady buzz of insects. The other people were all spread out in the immediate area in different states of distress.
She, surprisingly, was very calm in the face of it all.
She licked her lips and glanced at the two men that had sort of taken charge of the situation. One was an older man, his hair grey at his temples, and his skin weathered by time under the sun. He was clearly used to the role of leadership. The other man was around her own age, dark hair and dark eyes and tall. He too was used to taking control. Maybe they had been police in their own time and place. She thought she heard one of them say something about that at some point.
It didn’t matter, she thought as she returned her gaze to the garden. The trees were thick here, towering over them and all but blocking the walls from sight. Glass protected them from above, but they couldn’t see through the thick growth to see what was beyond the garden. Sarah was half convinced that there was nothing beyond the trees and glass.
She had come from two different times, one pleasant and the other hellish. She lived in two different worlds, and coming here, traveling through time and space, was almost a blessing.
She flicked small droplets of water over the calm surface of the pool, smiling at the ripples she caused. She didn’t think she could understand why someone wouldn’t want to be here in this protected, sheltered place. She could be happy here.
The garden, atrium, was so very nice, but there was something in her that warned her not to get too used to being there. It was a dream, sensual and foggy around the edges. She almost felt that she could lay back and drift away in the thick air and calm atmosphere, close her eyes and never wake up.
When she did close her eyes she saw the bleak and barren land that her home had become. Her eyes snapped open and she pulled her hand out of the water to clench her kneecap as tight as she could.
She forced her eyes to see the garden and the pool and the people. The pool was tiled and the water cool and clear. She could see to the bottom, and she could see the grout between the tiles on the bottom of the pool.
Then she saw something odd on the bottom of the pool. She leaned forward until her nose was nearly touching the water, her eyes narrowed as she tried to make out just what she was looking at. It was small, and the minute ripples of the water made it impossible to see.
Screwing up her lips, she swung her legs over the edge of the pool and dropped down into the cool refreshing water. There was a clear dim in conversation around her as people turned to stare, but she paid them no heed, intent on the object.
She took a deep breath and dived down. The pool wasn’t as deep as she had thought, the clearness of the water making the bottom look so much farther away. Still, it was deep enough that she had to kick away from the surface to reach the bottom.
Her hands scrambled on the bottom tiles as she searched for the item. Finding it and clutching it tight, she shoved off the bottom, pushing up to break the surface. She gasped loudly and heard a man calling out to her.
“What have you got there?”
She wiped her hair away from her face and turned to see the older man kneeling on the edge of the pool, one hand held out in offering. She accepted the help getting out of the pool, dripping water everywhere.
She held out her hand and uncurled her fingers to expose a set of rings, one silver, the other dark. “They’re important,” she said. The two of them stared down at the rings for a long, silent moment before the man took her hand in his two and covered her fingers. He folded her hand over the rings.
“They’re dangerous.”
She nodded. She could feel the rings all but vibrating in her hand. She looked up at the man as he stood. She sat on the tile ground and could only stare as he started instructing people into some sort of order.
“What was she doing in the pool,” someone shouted and was joined by other voices with varying levels of panic. Sarah licked her lips and gathered her feet under her. She stood next to the man, coming up to only his shoulders.
“What do you remember before you came here? What lives were you leading before you came here?” she asked, her voice carrying over the den of noise. She slipped the two rings over her knuckle and fisted her hand around it. “I came from a world that was scraping by after nuclear war. The governments were all gone, and people that had once been those we admired were scavengers and feral.”
The slicked her lips, her eyes searching over the faces around her. “There- there was a plan to fix it all.”
She could feel the eyes on her. She could feel the riot of emotions that were hidden behind the eyes. What she knew, they didn’t know. They didn’t know about the how and why they had been brought here.
“What were you doing before you came here?” she asked again. “Did you too live in the hell I lived in?”
They did. She knew they did. That had been the plan, hadn’t it? To help fix it all. To fix what had been broken. She pulled her fist up to her gut and met the eyes that still had the courage to meet hers.
“The world we know is no good. And you all remember a time when it wasn’t hell, don’t you?” She could remember it. She remembered green grass and blue skies and laughter and walking out in the day without a gun at her side.
She didn’t have a gun now, only the clothes on her back, the rings on her fingers. The rings that had such power and resounded with knowledge. The rings were talking to her, telling her that it had worked. It had worked, hadn’t it?
She took a deep breath. “There had been a plan that was going to fix it all by going back in time and picking out the people that could stop the war from happening.”
The man that was the group’s unproclaim leader stood over her, both threatening and protecting. He stared down at her, his weathered face turned down in a confused frown. “Us? We are the ones that can stop the war?”
“I’m a fucking accountant. How am I supposed to stop a war?” A voice called out, thick with anger. The man held up a hand to stop the shouts that followed the first, calling for calm.
“Just wait a minute,” he shouted and then glared until the crowd descended into silence. He turned back to Sarah. “Now, tell us what’s going on.”
She met his eyes. They were dark, nearly black with the sun behind him and the pool reflecting the light right up into his face. She licked her lips again.
“We can stop this war. I know we can. But first we have to go back in time to before the war started.” Her eyes flicked to the people over his shoulder before she lost her nerve and returned her gaze to his. “We can stop this war from ever starting if we use what we know in the past to fix the future. We know who started the war. We know where the war was started. We know the when, and how, and the why.” She stepped forward and caught his shirt in her hands. “We can restart the world.”