Lovely Hues | Fillie AU

August 18, 1945

With her heart rapping furiously against her ribcage, Millie's eyes shot open and were greeted with a black room flashing a furious yellow and white from the lightning outside. Sheets of rain slapped against the window and she struggled to catch her breath. The clap of thunder that pulled her from sleep still echoed around her along with the anxiety that tormented her slumber, even though it was London she was dreaming of.

Her home.

Her home that had always been her solace. Her refuge. A place she'd go to in her mind when she needed an escape.

But the London in her dream was not the London she left nearly six years ago. It wasn't the London she knew with herds of people bustling around, going into shops and boutiques with shopping bags hanging from their elbows, stuffed with wondrous goodies. It wasn't the London she'd meet her friends in on a sunny afternoon for tea and gossip. Not the London where she got married to Louis at St. John's in a quaint yet charming ceremony with their families in attendance the spring of 1939. Nor was it the London she and her husband left just months later, to come to America after Louis received a business offer he just couldn't refuse.

No, this London was a city under siege. A city being hollowed out from the horrors of a global war.

In her dream, Millie had been standing in the middle of an eerily quiet street in central London. The same street—Baker street—that she had walked down almost everyday as a child, but now it was unmistakably empty. It was silent. It was teetering on a brink she couldn't see, but could inextricably feel.

It was so quiet that she could hear a rat two blocks down scavenging some old cheese from the trash of a deli. But she had the uncomfortable feeling that it wouldn't stay this quiet for much longer.

And she had been right.

After looking into several darkened and empty store windows, and meandering the cobblestone path, she saw a single man sprint past her. She whipped around and watched as he barreled down the empty road, legs spinning fast as he tried to put as much distance as he could between him and whatever he was running from.

That's when the sirens started.

Loud and long, the sirens wailed and soon the once barren street was now swarming with people running for their lives. Nazi bombers started flying overhead and after Millie saw one drop a bomb, she joined the press of people running from an inescapable war.

She didn't know where exactly she was going but she merged with the surge of panicked people pouring up the street. Looking up, she saw the sky starting to fill with black smoke, bullets, and more warplanes. She heard the whistling of bombs being dropped all over her city and the whizzing of bullets spraying into the crowd. Shrill screams peeled into the air. People started diving into bomb shelters that seemed to be popping up on the corners of every off-street but she didn't know where to go herself. She didn't feel invited into these random safe havens of hope and her legs kept running, so she pressed on without a goal in sight.

The longer she ran, the worse her visuals became. The screams of those around her became more dire and all the old buildings lining the blood stained, cobble-stone street seemed to be on fire, crackling into flaming piles of wood and stone. And she had to start paying attention to the ground because all of a sudden she was trying hard to keep from tripping over the dead.

Bodies were scattered on the street like little road blocks with silent screams painted on their dirt spattered faces. Millie was horrified until she noticed someone familiar up ahead. Someone she hadn't noticed before. He took her focus away from the horrors at her feet and replaced the fear in her chest with hope.

He was running just one block in front of her, wearing the same old black coat that she last saw him in.

She remembered trying desperately to convince him to get a new coat in America, one with less holes and a zipper that worked, but he had complained that the metal shortage made the idea of a new zipper seem frivolous when considering the more crucial need the Allies had for any spare metal for the war effort.