Crack Of Dawn (Dream x GeorgeNotFound)

Back To The Roots

If he were to find out what was really happening... he had to start from the beginning. The day he was captured. God, he hated referring to his kidnapping as that, but that's what he was - a prisoner, captured like an animal in a zoo for a stranger to pore over and examine while he watched, helplessly.

But that's exactly why he was doing this. He'd go through the memories, he'd subject himself to the torment, all to unearth the past and the key out of here.

He stood in a familiar field - the limbo between the real world and that of the past. A mockingly peaceful scene of greenery and songbird.

He felt something warm trickle down his lip. He swiped at it with a finger that came back wet, so he could only assume it was a nosebleed. Possibly a side effect of the drug.

The beginning of all this. The fateful night of his capture. He repeated the words in his head until he was transported to the alleyway again, although this time... he was sitting next to a masked figure on a fire escape ladder.

The man gracefully twirled a switchblade in between his fingers, impatience barely showing through his poised stance. A heavy-looking hammer laid next to him.

Two pairs of footsteps echoed into the dark alley - one sloppy and unorganized, the other determined.

"Dude, a creepy bar. Really?" George heard his own slurred voice in the distance. "You know the drinks are free back there, right?"

The first firework went off with a loud bang. Clay looked up at the sky as it burst in an array of exquisite colors and sparks. The beginning of the firework display.

Two silhouettes came into view below them. One was himself, hunched over and clearly under the influence of an ungodly amount of alcohol. And the other was his friend.

Nick stopped, pointing towards a dilapidated door on the ground floor of the building which the fire escape belonged to.

"Right there." He stood aside to make way for George.

"Dude, I'm not going in there." The past him turned around, clearly suspicious. "It's like a... crack den or something. Let's go."

But he'd only taken one step when Nick's hand shot out to hold him in place. He couldn't see anything from this angle, but he remembered the unnerving toothy grin on that face like new.

Nick jerked his hand backwards, making past George stumble closer to the dingy motel building. "Come on now, George." He tilted his head to the side. "What happened to being the adventurous one?"

George knew what was about to come next. The futile escape attempt. He watched himself push his friend with all his might, barely slipping from his grip and making a mad run for the light. He stumbled over his own feet a couple of times, the intoxication clearly dawdling his movements.

"George! Get back here, right now!" the usually collected man sounded agitated, like a kid whose prize had gotten away from them.

From this angle, his movements were even slower than he'd thought. He'd barely made it halfway across the alley when Clay vaulted over the fire escape railing and closed the distance between them inhumanely fast with a hammer in his hand and then...

A dull crack and George was out.

This was the part he'd been unable to see before. The pool of blood forming underneath his own head as he lay unconscious on the cold asphalt, and the two figures quickly getting to work on getting him inside the "motel" door.

He wasted no time trailing Clay and making his way over the railing and to the ground. He fell slowly - almost gliding down like a feather. It seemed the memory wouldn't allow his actual body to get hurt.