William Evans

Before he went up to bed after talking to Bucky, his door returned. William considered writing a note before he coughed and decided, best to just leave now, it might not stay long.

On the other side of the door as always, nothing had really changed, which made it easier to adjust. The rhythm of life went on as it did before with chores throughout the day, making sure that Mark got to school and their mother was happy, as happy as she could be. She always looked tired and he wished there was a way to tell her that in a strange other place, Dan Evans walked and lived a half life and missed her. Maybe someday he would find a way to let her know.

When he dreamed of Mark dying again, he woke up and stared into the shadows. This time there was no one there as Mark peered at him and mumbled about getting more sleep. It was still tricky to sleep as he worried what he would dream about, but he did sleep and there were no more shadowy figures in his dreams.

Some time not long after the earthquake and the crystal appeared in Milliways, William started having new nightmares. They began as small variations on ones he'd had for the past few years, the fight in Contention blurred into Milliways with Katya falling beside his father or Mark's coughing happened in the infirmary.

While he was in Gotland, they shifted even more as doors appeared and disappeared and artillery fire rained down on Milliways until it looked like the pictures of burned out Atlanta or the destruction around Gettysburg.

When he came back and found the outside resembled the pictures from the war and Katya and his father didn't return, the dreams grew more detailed and complex along with happening every night. The worst ones always happened out back in Milliways as the churned up ground came to hold the bodies of everyone he knew: his father dying and then fading away, Mark and his mother killed by a blast of something, Katya turning and shifting into a tiger before something he can't see kills her, Thalia charging into a monster, Bill shooting until his gun runs out, Miss Barlow with a rifle yelling in anger and fear before there's something soft on his face and he wakes up with a cry.

He wakes to Horus looking down on him, resting a paw on his face and licking him. Some nights, he's able to sleep again with Horus watching over him and real and alive beside him, other times he wakes up early to work in the stables. If he does enough during the day to go to sleep exhausted, he doesn't wake as often but the nightmares are always there.