monsters of the night

[Claire Pierce]

It was around two in the morning when Claire finally yawned. It had been a long, long day and was only now coming to an end. With Sirius still restricted to the house, Claire was one hundred percent in charge of the department, and as such, was doing even more work than usual. She couldn’t wait for him to come back, for a number of reasons ranging from she missed him at work to she missed making sure he did work. It had been a routine, ordinary day simply increased by Sirius’ absence. And it was also more monotonous and dull without him there to talk to, to cheer her up, to laugh with, to break the stressed feeling that hung over her and the tense atmosphere of the office. Luckily, he would be returning to work in just under a week at last – and because he would be stuck at his desk for another several weeks, she could make him do all the paperwork that her heart desired.

Once home, she had avoided sleep and what could accompany it by drinking coffee, hanging out with Sirius for a while, and then working even more for three hours. There were Auror things to do, as usual and as expected, but she dedicated quite a bit of time to Order business. But with her eyes tired and strained, she put down her work at last and stood, stretched, and quietly went up the stairs to her room. Sirius was fast asleep as anticipated, having gone upstairs about an hour and a half before. He was sprawled a bit across the bed in her absence with the bed to himself, but she was so much smaller than him that it probably didn’t matter too much.

Even tired, Claire rolled her eyes at the sight of him as she slipped into bed beside the idiot sleeping like the dead. Pulling a blanket closer around her, it slipped partially off of him, but he was so entirely asleep that couldn’t matter. Luckily, she fell asleep now relatively quickly, Sirius breathing lightly and steadily from so close to her. But the dreams soon began. It had been a while since she had received such a bad one ever since she would sleep with Sirius beside her – he had a calming, safe presence, she supposed, and made her feel less lonely and anxious.

This didn’t seem to help tonight, as soon she was thrown into a nightmare. The fight from a few weeks ago manifested in her mind now, altered to where Claire was completely helpless, watching Sirius and Ethan desperately fight for their lives without a hope in sight or any chance. Sirius crumpled to the ground, Claire fell beside him screaming curses that couldn’t do anything, and she was hit by a curse. In the last seconds, she recognized it as the Cruciatus curse –

It shifted. Claire had always been the one chasing, she could suppose, because as an Auror she was always tracking down enemies, but now, she was the one being chased and pursued. She didn’t know exactly who it was pursuing her, but she didn’t have to know their exact identity. Of course they were members of the dark uprising who had been trying to get to her for months now. She felt trapped in a maze without any way out, unable to see or do anything. And she was alone, what she hated the most. It was hopeless on her part, because soon enough they caught up to her –

Next she was reliving her mother’s death for the thousandth time. She was frozen; she couldn’t act, she couldn’t bargain, she couldn’t even scream as her mother was killed in front of her. She was then replaced with her father, the last remaining family member Claire had because she was an only child with very limited extended family; instead, the Potter-Weasley clan had taken the Pierces in with open arms. She could see the dim, shadowy figures of some of them, the ones most prominent and significant in her life, to the sides and in the back, as ones also on the list of those who Claire Pierce cares for. Obviously, the one who was next was the one who mattered the most.

The entire scenario in her nightmare was terrifying, but she lost it even more when the killer, masked and mysterious as ever, turned to Sirius. He was being tortured, so badly that even Sirius was beginning to beg –

She woke up with a start and a bit of a scream, in a cold sweat and feeling paralyzed. Her heart was pounding as she tried to breathe, as she attempted to calm herself, but her mind was already working too fast, racing as fast as her heart. The image of her parents and of Sirius (near death, tortured horrifically, she couldn’t make it unseen and forget it) seemed like it was trapped in her mind. Her anxiety and fear took over as it had far too many times but she had never spoken of. She never revealed the extent to which she worried and was scared, not even close. Sirius knew, of course, but didn’t realize just how bad it was.


notes: well... i rambled as per usual. hopefully it's okay!
words: 875 (how???)
tag: sirius

[James Sirius Potter]

A week and a half had it been? It sure felt like a couple months of boredom being stuck home from work. In the last few years since his families murder he hadn't taken a leave of absense from work at all once he came back after that. But now he hadn't had much of a choice, he could ignore Claire's demands when he didn't live with her and wasn't dating her. And it had been as easy as glaring at his younger brother and saying he would regret getting in his way to keep him from trying to make him rest, even when he needed it. But now, there was no winning. Claire got what she wanted and Sirius got a minimum two week leave of absense from work. After almost a week he had come up with a way to spend some of his time though. He had been spending countless hours during the day to start working on things for the Order. Things they would need to go over, people he needed to speak to in the following week so they could have the initial meeting within two weeks.

Though he had finally found a way to fill some of the free time, he still made sure he was home in time to make a decent dinner for him and Claire and would spend the rest of the evening laying on the couch with her, talking. That was how she was getting him to rest still, after all, she knew from the get go he wasn't going to take well to being on leave. At first it was easy for him to rest, he was so sore he couldn't help but fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon. But rather quickly the pain became a managable level again, closer to what he was used to on a regular basis, so he had become more active. But by the end of the day he was wiped out, so he didn't put up too much of a fight about relaxing in the evening. Plus it gave them time to discuss what he was missing at work, mostly because he hated not being there in person to control things. It wasn't that he didn't trust Claire --- by far she was the one he trust the most in the end. It was simply the fact that his job had become more to him than he had ever thought it would, and he just didn't like not being in the middle of all of it. The sidelines were never a good place for him.

That night hadn't been any different from the rest in the last two weeks, he had seen Juliette at the school earlier that day when he was there to talk to Ted Lupin and his cousin Victorie about the Order, and then come home and cooked for when Claire would arrive. When she got home they ate, talked a while and she worked some more as he sifted through the papers she had brought home. Then when it was nearly two in the morning, Sirius kissed her good night and apologised, but he had been falling asleep on and off on the couch for hours. He finally made his way up to bed and it only took minutes from when his head hit the pillow to when he fell asleep. Then again, it had been another long day and he knew he had probably been pushing himself too much in the last few days so the sleep was welcomed to mask the dull pain that never seemed to go completely away anymore.

The movement of the bed when Claire got in next to him every night wa so subtle that if he weren't so paranoid these days he would never have woken up to it in the past. But between years of different things waking him in the night, from pain, to his children climbing in bed with him, to being attacked in his sleep at his home, he had become a much lighter sleeper. But he only woke for the shortest of seconds, as he felt the familiar tug of the blanket as she laid down to sleep next to him, he was asleep again already.

When the sound of Claire's scream hit his ears, Sirius bolted up from his sleep in no time, instinctually he first grabbed his wand as he sat up, then looked at Claire quickly, she looked paniced, horrified maybe? Then he looked around the room and saw nothing, and then it hit him what was going on. He knew the look on her face, he had worn it himself more times than he cared to admit. He slowly took one more look around just to be safe before setting his wand on the nightstand where he had picked it up from and pulled her into a hug, even he was sore he held her close and tight, trying to calm her down. "You're alright love..." he said as calmly as his adrenaline would allow him to sound right now.

He was breathing fast and his heart was racing because of hearing her scream like that. But once he had seen that there was no one there, but the way she looked, he realized he knew that feeling. Waking up from a nightmare so real you didn't even know you were dreaming until a few seconds after you finally woke up from terror. He had had many over the years, at one point much more to the very rarely nowadays. Because he had never really told Claire about them it wouldn't surprise him if this wasn't the first time this happened to her just the first he knew of. He hated to see this, and it made him wonder if perhaps this was one of the reasons Claire hardly ever slept for very long. Right now though, he just wanted her to calm down and know she was safe as he held her close.


words, 1,003!!! shiiiiit, idk where that came from.
tags, claire!
notes, hope it was okay!

[Claire Pierce]

She didn’t even process that Sirius was beside her, well and fine and alive, and instinctively tried to fight off and escape his hold on her, which was only an attempt at calm and closeness, at first. As usual, he was too strong, and a beat later she realized it was Sirius, not a shadowy, mysterious killer that she had tried to identify for close to a decade. She was safe. Safe, safe, safe, she tried to repeat to herself, trying to calm her breathing. She was in her bedroom, Sirius was at her side, it was only a nightmare again – but her breathing was still fast and her heartbeat was racing and she couldn’t get that image of Sirius out of her head.

He had his arms wrapped around her tightly, reminding her that yes, he was there, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Sometimes, the worst nightmares had the tendency to take away Claire’s judgment and her logical thinking. The loss of control and rationality always made her feel a thousand times worse whenever it occurred, because it was one of the things Claire prided herself on and valued the most. She processed belatedly that Sirius had shot up and immediately grabbed his wand to protect them against whatever had happened. But no, it was an invisible and imaginary threat plaguing Claire tonight.

In normal cases, she would make some sort of snappy remark, maybe about how she doesn’t need protection, or about the fact that thankfully his training had instilled good practices in him and how Claire’s habits had rubbed off on him. But tonight she was farther from that sort of response than ever.

“You’re alright, love,” he said, clearly fighting to be calm, but she knew she had unsettled and startled him too. “Sorry,” she managed to say finally, but weakly and unevenly. Leave it to Claire to apologize, embarrassed and self-conscious of her weaknesses, to even Sirius for waking and startling him. Even his heart was racing too, and she could tell. She leaned into him, wrapping her arms around him in one of her grips that, for such a small and slender person, was like a death grip. “Just a nightmare,” she murmured.

Not nonchalantly at all. Weakly, for sure.

A few months had passed since Claire could slip into bed and fall asleep beside Sirius, and she had not woken him in an episode like this at all. She had awoken sharply from nightmares before, but not as often since he had been there, and not with a scream and reaction like this time. “You were dying,” she mumbled without thinking, trying to get the image out of her head and failing. “My mother, and my father, too, and some of your family – and you. I couldn’t do anything.”

She managed to lean back enough in his tight hug to see his face, even in the near darkness of the room, just to reassure herself. For years and years, she had not been able to reassure herself of his wellbeing after awakening from a nightmare like this. She had previously relied on recovering her sense and logic enough to rationally think through it and calm herself down. At least now she had his comforting presence and general status as, well, not dying. Face clear of blood, only concerned. Unmarked, except for that irksome cut that remained from the fight and was only now nearly healed. Quick heartbeat, but attempting to make her feel better. A heavy sigh escaped her then.

She had never told Sirius much about her anxieties, her fears, her insomnia. He knew she didn’t sleep very much, and understood, mostly from his own observations, that it came from a combination of a natural inability to sleep dating back to when she was fourteen, her obsession with work, and a bit of her memories and fears from the past. But she knew that he had never realized just how bad it got for her at times, and it was only getting worse again, with the rise of what they were facing. Of course, he understood all about nightmares – he never openly said it, but she could tell they had troubled him for months and months after his family’s death. How could they not?

Claire could see that he was experiencing the same thing she was after her mother was killed. She knew from experience, and she knew her best friend. She hadn’t pushed him to confide it in her; he shared what he wanted to with her, and she was there for him in the weeks and months after the event. For a while, she had stayed over for nights on a couch placed just for her next to the bed in his brother’s guest room, doing work and keeping an eye on him, trying to keep him from drinking himself to death or being overwhelmed with the terrible memories. But she had never shared the truth, the extent of her own anxieties and nightmare affliction.

Honestly, it came down to about two main things that they didn't share with each other for a long time: how they truly felt for each other, and how bad their problems were (for Sirius, a few years ago, and for Claire, even now). The first topic had been covered by now, and it seemed the second one would be too.

notes: what is this post? I have no idea. a long long mess.
words: 835

[James Sirius Potter]

Nightmares are a horrible thing. They twist your reality, make you believe what you see is real and they can literally scare you to where when you wake up you don't know the difference. Claire seemed to be experiencing this as she tried as hard as she could to resist his hold at first. But he refused to let go, holding her tightly until she finally seemed to realize what was going on. Then she stopped fighting him off and relaxed just a little in his arms. He could feel her heart racing just as his was, her breathing frantic and all he could do was hold her and hope that she would be able to calm down. Sirius couldn't help but wonder how many times over the years she had woken up in this panic and had no one around to help her remember that it was only a dream. That everything was okay and none of that had been real. He knew just how hard it could be to bring yourself out of that once you woke up like this.

When Claire apologised to him he shook his head then kissed her forehead. "Nothing to be sorry for love." He was starting to recover the stronger, more steady and calm tone to his voice rather than the shakey one he had adopted upon waking up so suddenly. Normally, after noticing him wake up all paranoid the way he did Claire would have had something smart to say about it. But not tonight, that's another reason Sirius had for knowing something had seriously scared her tonight. Other than apologising she had been silent, shaking and breathing heavy. Then she broke the silence for just a second, explaining to him what had been so terrifying. “You were dying,” she mumbled without thinking, trying to get the image out of her head and failing. “My mother, and my father, too, and some of your family – and you. I couldn’t do anything.”

Just after speaking she pulled back in the hug, against his strong arms, and looked up at him. The expression on her face told him everything he needed to know. It was fear, it was sadness, it was worry, anxiety and relief all rolled into one. He could only hope that him being there at least helped her a little bit. He had never seen her like this ever before. In all their years together, they had always avoided certain subjects until they couldn't be avoided anymore. This was just another one of those things that they both sort of knew about each other but never actually wanted to bring it up. Who wanted to talk about all the bad stuff anyways, right? He remembered when they were in school she had started having sleeping trouble. He often had spent long nights with her running around the castle, the forest and Hogsmeade late into the night. Because of this he never questioned her sleeping habits. He knew when her mother had died she had gone through this, but he didn't know the nightmares still plagued her. Since moving in with her, he hadn't had but maybe one nightmare like this.

This being the first time he had really been around for something like this he was not entirely sure how to return them both to calm. His nerves and his habits really wanted him to turn to one of his quick fixes of a drink or a cigarette, but with Claire being like this he refused to give in to such thoughts right now. She needed him more than he needed those things. He rubbed her back in attempts at calming her down a little bit more, his breathing finally starting to return to normal, his heart rate slowly dropping back down as well. He kissed her forehead again and pressed his forehead against hers afterward. "Everything is fine. We're safe." he said softly, unsure of what else to say. What was really going to help right now? For him, nothing but letting reality sink back in had helped, and usually a few drinks as well. So he honestly was flying blind trying to help her calm down after such a tramatic dream. He just wished there was more he could do.




words, 719
notes, sorry for any errors i didn't feel like spell checking. lol.

[Claire Pierce]

Simple trouble falling asleep was the most common sleep-related problem Claire faced. She would be unable to turn off her brain, stay asleep, or even find herself tired, ever since she was a teenager at school. Of course, back then it was relatively simple: she slept little, wandered the halls of the school and holed up in her favorite spots hidden all around, and somehow kept herself energized and awake each day. It was routine then, with rather little cause. Even then she had never been able to stop thinking and could be kept up that way, but it always seemed that her insomnia was a bit of a mystery. Then she became an Auror, went through her mother’s death, and dealt with countless horrors and fears. It was then that her sleeping problems could be attributed to anxiety, to memories, to nightmares. There were periods during which the problem was significantly worse, and times when she still slept little but wasn’t troubled by all the memories and fears. She never slept well, either way, and she was generally alone. It was an accepted element of Claire’s life; it was like a simple fact of the world.

For years, Claire had been waking up with a start or a scream, alone in her room. Ultimately, it hadn’t changed too much: middle of the night, dark room, no lights, strewn blankets, silent but for her frantic breathing and panicky heartbeat that overwhelmed her. It certainly felt the same: anxious thoughts, preoccupation, horrible reliving of the nightmare, sometimes having to try to not cry, mind spinning out of control to think of the worst. It always ended the same way: steadying her breathing and heartbeat at last, standing up, walking downstairs, distracting herself with something.

If Sirius wasn’t beside her in bed now, currently attempting to calm her, she would probably eventually steady herself and end up reading or working on files or occupying herself in some way. She wasn’t used to this at all, her heart racing while she could tell his was too, at the same time. Despite his soothing words, Claire was well aware that she had scared him as well, and his racing heartbeat was an obvious reminder of this, as she loosened up a bit and leaned into his chest. It was strange, the way she found herself comfortable with this, allowing him to keep his arms around her tightly with her head resting on him.

She wouldn’t have allowed this with anyone else. She wouldn’t have allowed the situation to even arise, in fact.

”Nothing to be sorry for, love,” he said, his steady and strong tone returning, as he kissed her forehead. “I should be able to handle it better at this point,” she said quietly. There was nothing else to say; she had no words for smartass remarks as always, and no energy for dismissive comments to brush the situation off. Years of this had made her resigned to the occurrences of nightmares, and she felt no desire to make it all seem all right. It wasn’t in a whining, complaining manner – she simply had no drive left, in front of Sirius, to pretend that she one hundred percent okay.

But Sirius knew all about nightmares – he would understand. She had never openly explained what haunted her or how terrible the insomnia and nightmares could become, but there was a part Sirius had always known. They were the experts at unspoken understanding, it seemed, which was tied up so much in their relationship. Now he met her eyes as she studied him, verified he was unharmed, and then closed her eyes with a sigh. He waited quietly, letting them both calm down and think. “Everything is fine. We’re safe,” he reminded her finally. Somehow, at that point, she seemed to regain her normal voice, to say, “Of course we’re not really safe. I wouldn’t be having these dreams all the time if we were truly safe, if everything was actually fine.” She sighed, looking away from him after she was done. It was true – the nightmares occurred much less frequently when she was safe in reality. At times of more peace and quiet in their world, she had fewer nightmares, fewer fears, fewer worries, the decrease accompanying the safe environment. Now, everywhere she looked, there was something to stress about, someone’s safety to worry about, somewhere to protect.

Claire slipped out of the barrier of his arms after a moment’s thinking, and simply pulled the blanket close around her. Snatching a pillow from him to increase her amount, she settled back into them, not wanting to get away from him (she loved it, she did) but to sink into herself and the blanket and her pillows. Having mostly calmed down, Claire had done what she did best: she got angry. “I’m so sick of not being able to escape these fears and thoughts and dreams,” she grumbled. “Why can’t I get rid of this problem? I wish I could just easily control it and eliminate it.” She looked over at him helplessly, her expression a clear declaration of her frustration. “I hate this,” she said finally. “I’m supposed to be stronger than this.” The last bit was both vulnerable and upset, a quiet expression of everything that had been building up for her.


notes: i give up, here it is, i'm sorry it's awful