Chapter Twenty-Four (The Show Must Go On)

Missy was restless, sleeping in the hotel bed next to Jackson. Usually she'd be cuddled up to him for warmth, but tonight she lay on her back and was lost in her dreams. She was in their kitchen at Coral Gables, up early making coffee while Engel was nuzzling her legs and yipping about going out. When she went to the door to take him though, everything went sideways. She'd swung open the door but when she put her hand on the screen the normally sweet and docile pup (who frankly was putting on size and weight like there was no tomorrow) had started barking frantically with a hint of bass that had never been there before. Missy had stopped to try and calm him so he wouldn't wake Jackson, then reached for the door again only to get her feet swept out from under her with a chopblock by Engel that would have made Jax proud. She hit the floor with a hard thump, her head bouncing off the title and her foot hit the screen door. It swung partially open and on the other side she saw though the halo of stars the long black body of a water moccasin snake.

Engel barked even louder, shoving her foot away so the door would close and she sat up, her arms going frantically around the dog because she didn't know if he'd been bitten or not, and she'd inhaled a huge breath and screamed for Jax. She woke up in the hotel bed shaking and sure that scream had come across with her as Jax had shifted in the bed and she instantly scooted up tight against his warm body. Safe. It was just a dream. Stop freaking out before he makes you tell him what's wrong.


The darkness was thick and impenetrable, as if the very air was pressing against his eyeballs, pulsing against them with each blink. He held his lighter in his hand, the metal cold against his slick palm, like ice sticking to the sweaty skin and when he ran his thumb over the wheel, the spark was almost blinding before the flame flared up.

"Miss?" The blackness seemed to swallow the sound of his voice, muffling it and now he could taste it, cloying on the back of his tongue. Thick. Furry. Vaguely metallic.

There was a candle in his other hand, white and scentless, one of those emergency ones from the kitchen drawer – had it always been there? Flame to wick and then he could see them. Clocks. Heaped on the floor. Hanging on walls. Irradiated numbers casting a sickly glow. Digital. Hands. Roman numerals, dashes and dots. Mickey Mouse's arms. Each one read a different time, the piles stacked so that there was a narrow avenue to pass through.

No ticking.

No sound whatsoever and for a moment he wondered if he'd simply gone deaf, as if that creeping black had gotten into his head that way. Lashing out, he kicked one of the stacks, sending the old alarm clocks toppling. An alarm started bleating, warbling, and halfhearted like a car alarm down the block at midnight that nobody cared enough to silence. Clock radios like the kind found in hotel rooms, nondescript brands never found in any retail store and he couldn't shake the sense of foreboding. Behind him, clocks as far as the eye could see, numbers flashing, blinking, sweeping across faces.

Ahead more of the same, into infinity.

"No." The word was distorted, wax melting over his hand as he swept the candle closer to the wall and now the faces were melting like Dali's Persistence of Memory. The alarm was louder, doubled and then trebled and he looked back, unable to spot which ones had been set off. Which one was real?

Were they counting down?

Counting up?


Soaked in sweat, gasping for air, Jackson rolled over and swatted blindly at the nightstand – they weren't at home and the touch lamp wasn't there. His cell phone clattered to the floor instead, the screen lighting up with the impact. Pale blue light revealed shapes he didn't recognize, too many shadows, every muscle screaming in protest as he leaned over, fumbling at the screen before it went dark.

Just a dream. Another stupid nightmare.

For a moment, he just lay there, pulse pounding in his ears, biting his lip so hard he could taste blood. The square of light under the door seemed familiar. The ambient noise, the shape of the TV hung on the wall, the little squiggle of silver between the curtains that just didn't quite close all the way – all of it was familiar in a way that was ringing alarm bells.

Spiral. The Terrordome. Wrestle War. Thirty-seven stitches.

For a moment, the memory was so fresh he was kicking the sheets aside, fingers probing at his ankle. There were no rough knots. No torn flesh. Just a smooth sickle-shaped scar that spelled ancient history. The sigh that left his lips was equal measures of relief and exhaustion.

"Jax?" Missy's usually almost sultry tone when she first woke up was curiously absent as she said his name, clear and not muddied with sleep. She was still on her side, though his moving had removed that source of comforting heat. Usually too, she would have rolled right over to look at him, but with how she was huddled in on herself, she'd have to untangle to do even that.

The past snapped back where it belonged at the sound of her voice, the hand that had been on his ankle lifting to rub over his mouth. His fingers rasped against the stubble on his face – had he even remembered to shave today? "Hey," his voice came out hoarse, throat burning as he swallowed. "Sorry." Keeping up the single word sentences, he rolled towards her, hearing the unfamiliar twang of the bedsprings in protest. "Did I wake you?"

"No, baby. Wasn't you." Missy sighed and tried to get herself in order so she could turn over, now that was in her head she needed to look right at him no matter how poor the light was in the room. "Even if you had, wouldn't have minded tonight." She finally got herself able to roll over, at least able to keep herself from launching at him and likely sending them both sliding off the mattress to land on the thinly carpeted floor. Her big eyes were wide, almost like a spooked filly, but even seeing him in shadows was enough to finally calm the racing her heart had been going through.

"This bed..." he snorted bitter laughter, eyes adjusted enough to see how freaked she looked, "fuckin' sucks." In an effort to banish that prickle of fear he felt clawing its way back up his throat, he reached for her, "c'mere. See if maybe it's less noisy when we're in the middle, hm?"

"Yeah it sucks, you'd think they'd..." she trailed off though and scooted as fast as she could into his reaching arms. His warmth – he ran so hot and all the time – was wanted and familiar and she was able to give him a soft happy sigh as soon as her skin touched his. "Jesus Christ, that's better." She wasn't lying, the trembling, the racing of her pulse, that fear lingering from the dream, had melted right away.

"Mmm," it was more a contented growl as his arms tightened around her, lips pressing against the top of her head, "better. Yeah." He was quiet for a few seconds, simply existing in the moment. The ache in his back, that numbness in his wrists and fingers told him what his brain was still refusing to supply – he'd already wrestled. The fact that there was no new hardware in bed with them added the punctuation mark at the end – he'd lost. "Head's somewhere else tonight. Shit dreams..."

"Oh." And the way she said it, was achingly clear that she was feeling a little of that panic again, though his arms around her grounded her and kept it at bay. "Should have known, you knew. Was such a weird dream, back of my head still hurts from where I cracked it on the floor." She sighed then tried to make that a joke, of course. "Fucking how bad is a pillow that it makes you feel like that?" But she pressed herself tight in against him, whispered something he couldn't likely hear, but feel her lips brushing his skin.

"Word on the street's I've gone soft," Jackson murmured, stroking her hair, "so just..." it wasn't like him to drop words, even when he was damned close to drifting off to sleep, but he almost stuttered, covering it with a soft clearing of his throat. "Here's good. On me." For a moment he wondered if they'd dreamt the same thing. "You wanna tell me about it?"

"...yeah I think I should." Missy gathered her fragmented thoughts as best she could, her voice staying low but clear enough. "Dreamed I was in the kitchen with Engel, was going to let him out. But he knew something was wrong, and there was a snake when I opened the door and he tackled me and that's how... I hit my head in the dream, and I was screaming for you because I didn't know if he got bit." She drew in a breath and let it out with a shudder. "Just... Jesus Christ Jax it sounds dumb as hell saying it. But I was so scared."

"Snakes... someone told me once snakes in dreams mean a threatening male presence," his voice came out just as low as hers, something niggling in the back of his mind. He remembered the night Alyvia had told him that he'd thrown her across the room, broken her ribs – the actual action was forever lost in the soup his memory had become lately. "Maybe it's me," the words were hollow, haunted.

Missy moved a little, so she could slide her arm over him as she shook her head. "No. Even asleep I knew that. Engel and you, were going to protect me. That's why I screamed for you, baby. Because I knew that nothing could happen to me, as long as you were there. Can't think otherwise."

"Clocks," he muttered, "a fuckin' room full of clocks and none of 'em had the same time. Hours... minutes off... kept moving because I had to find the right one, the real one that all these other ones had been set from before they deviated and it was as big as a goddamned plane hangar." His voice was so rough it kept breaking but he didn't bother to try and clear it. Wasn't any point. "I know... I know what mine means. Don't need some head-shrinker to explain that one."

"Hold my hand?" Missy murmured it softly, her hand moving to rest over his heart so he wouldn't have to fumble in the dark looking for it. She wanted to squeeze his fingers with hers, wanted him to feel her steady presence right with him. "I wish I could say the right thing. But that's not... not saying what you want to hear, but what I need to say. I fucking love you, Jax. I'm right here. Even if you..." She took a breath and held it, willing herself not to let her voice crack just yet, just a few more words. "...were stuck in there, you know I'd come find you, right? No lines, nothing is going to keep us apart, not now."

His fingers laced with hers, a sigh passing his lips at the contact. "Babe, hey..." the words lodged in his throat, caught behind the emotion that welled up. They were just words, but he could feel the truth there. It wasn't some bullshit dance, some push and pull idiocy like two actors running lines in a dress rehearsal. The sound of her voice, the warmth of her fingers against his – they were anchors.

"I know." She mirrored his sigh, but the sound was a little warmer and she felt those tears that had been burning behind her eyes start to fade off instead of push forward to threaten to fall. "From the minute our eyes met, I knew." She murmured that, nestled in so as much of her as could be, was touching him. "We'll go home, Jax. It'll be fine, soon as we get home."