Jennifer came awake, gasping for air. The images were still vivid in her mind, and she tried to blink them away, but they were brighter against her eyelids, and when she shook her head to try to clear them, it just made her dizzy.

It was all her Uncle Ron’s fault. He’d let her watch Nosferatu when she was three, and she’d had screaming nightmares about vampires ever since, especially when she was stressed.

When she’d transferred out to Atlantis with the first new wave on the Daedalus, she’d looked through the medical files of as many patients as possible, partially to pass the time on the long flight, and partially because she wanted to be prepared. Because...aliens.

And she saw a note in Colonel Sheppard’s file: lamia, in remission, triggered by blood intake; half hearth.

It made no sense until she got to Atlantis, and she heard: vampires were real. Not just space vampires who sucked people’s life force, but Earth vampires who sucked blood. And Colonel Sheppard was one of them. She’d avoided him whenever possible. The first time she saw him, though, she was...disappointed. He didn’t look like the sexy, sleek vampires in books or movies. He looked too old. Not that he was bad-looking. He was good-looking, one of the best-looking men Jennifer had ever seen. But he wasn’t supernaturally good-looking. Except for his eyes. They changed color in the light. On his file they were listed as ‘hazel’, but that was woefully inadequate.

Judging by the number of times Sheppard ended up in the infirmary, he didn’t possess any supernatural strength or speed or healing abilities. He bled just like every other soldier.

And then she saw him when he escaped from the Genii. He walked into the infirmary under his own power, and there was something - off about him. He stripped down to his boxers and submitted to a hospital gown with aplomb, and there was a predatory grace to his movements she’d never seen before, and the slide of muscle under skin was hypnotizing. His skin had an unearthly glow, and when he looked at her, his eyes were pure silver.

He wasn’t human.

And then Beckett ordered him strapped to a bed, locked in a quarantine room, with a marine posted at the door armed with pencils. And for days, everyone had to listen to Sheppard’s agony.

Blood withdrawal, Beckett explained grimly. Not even magic could ease the pain.

That was the other thing. Magic. The first time Jennifer watched Beckett heal someone with glowing energy in his cupped palms, she couldn’t believe it. He rarely used it to heal someone all the way, just enough to stabilize them before conventional medicine could be used, because as he explained it, healing magic was draining.

Magic Jennifer could cope with. She’d read the reports. Ancients could heal things, do things like magic. Magic was science they just didn’t understand yet.

But there had been rumors about Major Lorne, who could turn into a panther, or something equally outlandish. Jennifer hadn’t put any stock into those claims, though she noticed in Lorne’s file that he was in textbook-perfect health, and he didn’t spend nearly as much time in the infirmary as his teammates, always managed to come away from an encounter with a few minor scratches. And then rumors flew across the base again, Sheppard had broken up with Lorne (apparently everyone but Jennifer was getting some, even soldiers who had to violate regs to get it), and Lorne was moping around the city as a panther, Twilight-style, and then Jennifer saw him.

Not a panther, but a sleek black jaguar, stalking along the railing of one of the balconies, dark fur rippling, lovely rosette patterns just barely visible in its velvety fur. It looked much larger than any jaguar Jennifer had ever seen at a zoo, and then it had turned and looked at her. And she’d fled.

Major Lorne had come to her the next day to apologize for startling her, and oh hell. It was real. Vampires, witches, shapeshifters. All of it.

John Sheppard never saw it coming, not with ladies ever, but especially not with alien ladies, whose cultures and social cues in general were even more baffling with Earth ladies (and he was still baffled, that he’d even managed to get married, but less baffled by the fact that he got divorced, because emotional bafflement was only cute for so long).

What John saw coming, though, was death.

In dreams. He knew someone was important in his life if they triggered a death dream in him.

The first time he shook hands with Nancy, he felt a jolt, like static shock, and he dismissed it as anything supernatural, because the air was dry that day, right? But that night, he dreamed of her, old, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by family - he wasn’t one of them - and listening to a machine wail a flatline. He hoped it came true for her, and he made the divorce as easy as possible when it came.

He saw Holland, Mitch, and Dex all die in uniform. He might have gone a little crazy, trying to rescue Holland, because he refused to let that dream come true. He had a lot of time in the brig in A-stan to think about his dreams and how vivid they were, and how they’d come true. For all three men.

So when he shook Elizabeth Weir’s hand and felt that jolt, he was nervous as all hell, because he’d never met her before, and he’d had hopes to never see her again. And when he dreamed, his dream made no sense, because she died, and she died, and when she died the last time, she had someone else’s face.

He saw Carson Beckett die twice: once in an explosion, and again in what looked like a medieval town - some kind of Renaissance fair? - surrounded by anxious-looking villagers. They were weeping and grateful. At least he looked peaceful.

The way Marshall Sumner died was...horrible. Terrifying. The monstrous woman sucking the life out of him, the way he aged before John’s eyes. The look in his eyes when he caught John’s gaze. Pulling the trigger in real life was much harder than it had been in the dream.

What terrified John most was the way he saw Rodney McKay die, in some strange, blue-gray room, that looked small and cramped and impersonal, propped up on the bed. A massive, shaggy-haired man stood over him, and a shorter, dark-skinned woman. And John was curled beside him on the bed, white-haired and wrinkled, and listening to Rodney’s last breaths, to the fading of his heart. When the woman said, “John, he is gone,” John felt his heart break.

So when Rodney dragged John into the lab the next day and handed him strange objects and said think on and think harder and you’re thinking at it wrong, John obeyed without question, because he could still feel the ragged edges of his not-yet-broken heart heavy in his chest.

“So,” Rose said, “if dreams about flying are really dreams about sex, what if you dream about sex? Are you really dreaming about flying?” She was perched on a rock just beyond the Gates of Ivory and Horn, licking idly at an ice lolly and contemplating the sky. Goldie the baby gargoyle frolicked at her feet.

There were men in military flight suits sprawled at her feet, playing some kind of obscure board game she’d never seen before that involves pieces that move by themselves and board square that flare blue. All of the men were handsome. One was young, looked barely twenty, and his flight suit was obviously intended for someone bigger, if not older. One had brown hair and bright blue eyes and a Southern accent, an American accent. The other had darker hair and darker blue eyes and dimples when he smiled. Rose would suspect the man with the spiky hair and eyes that constantly change color was Morpheus in disguise, because that was precisely the sort of thing he’d do, but Morpheus was dead.

“I don’t think it’s a straight-up exchange like that,” Dimples said.

Southerner huffs. “If flying dreams are really about sex, what does it say that I always crash at the end of mine?”

“I think,” Babyface said, “it says that you were in a traumatic plane crash and you still have nightmares about it.”

“Alternatively,” Spiky offered, nudging a game piece across the board with his mind and a flare of blue light, “it could just mean you’re really awful in bed.”

“Or afraid of crashing and burning.” Dimples flicked a glance at Southerner. “For three years after the crash, you had zero sex drive. You still get nervous about fading out halfway through. I can see it in your eyes.”

Rose raised her eyebrows. “You mean you two…?”

“Three,” Babyface said. “Three of us.”

Rose darted a glance at Spiky, but he threw his hands up. “Nope. Not my party. I can barely handle the one.”

Dimples slewed Southerner a distinctly sultry look. “You know,” he said, “this is the Dreaming. We don’t make the rules here, and this isn’t our dream per se, but we can still, you know, dream.”

“And?” Southerner asked. “I might finally beat JD at chess.”

“And,” Dimples said, “you can walk.”

Southerner blinked. Looked down at himself. Slowly pushed himself to his feet. He stared at his own legs like he’d just seen a miracle. Then he reached down and yanked Dimples to his feet and crushed their mouths together. Babyface let out a whoop of delight.

Spiky sighed and very deliberately turned his back on them when Babyface stood up and wormed his way between them, talking about positions and available surfaces and combinations and we have to try this. He pushed the game board toward Rose.

“So, what did you touch in the lab that got you sent here?”

“Oh, no lab,” Rose said airily. “I just come to visit sometimes. I’m friends with the landlord.”

“Landlord?” Spiky echoed.

Rose nodded in the direction of the castle. “The Lord of the Dreaming. Dream, his name is. The previous Dream was Morpheus. I don’t think we’re allowed to call this one Daniel. I mean, I never would. Not to his face.”

“In his realm outside the gates of his castle is in his hearing, which is close enough to his face.” Dream, pale-haired and pale-skinned but dark, dark-eyed, appeared beside Rose.

“Hello, Dream.”

“Hello, Rose. Major Sheppard.”

“Dream,” Spiky said, raising his eyebrows.

“When one is dreaming about sex, one is dreaming about many things underneath,” Dream said. “Those three are dreaming about how much they love each other. Cameron is also dreaming about how much he misses simple things, like running and playing basketball and being able to just cross a room and grab something he wants when he wants it. Evan is dreaming about, well, sex. And how much he loves the two of them. And how he’d be ruined if he lost them. And Jonathan is dreaming about all the things he regrets from his old life that he’s trying to make up for now. Starting with copious amounts of sex while he still has a youthful libido.”

“What about him?” Rose asked, nodding at Spiky. “What does he dream about when he has sex?”

“Mostly,” Dream said, “sex.”

Spiky smiled, pleased with himself.

“And now,” Dream said, “Dr. McKay is calling. It’s about time for you to wake up.”

Evan rarely slept in human form. After the end of a long day of rebuilding, using their superhuman strength to clear debris so people could find places to live, Ronon usually stumbled into the small room he and Evan were sharing and found a sleek black jaguar sprawled on the floor beside the bed, limbs twitching as he dreamed.

“Dreams are simpler in True Form,” Evan explained. “Less complicated. Memories, mostly, stripped down to the bare essentials. Sight, sound, smell, heat. No - emotions. Just the basics - hunger, lust, excitement, fear.”

He and Ronon were sitting on the edge of the square, Evan studying the crumbling Capital skyline. They’d cleared enough debris to set up tents for temporary living space. The citizens had insisted that Ronon and Evan stay in the first room cleared in a stable structure, just off the edge of Central Square, and Ronon hadn’t been able to refuse them.

“What do you dream about?”

“Hunting, mostly. Tracking.”

“You do a lot of hunting as a kid? I thought you grew up on - what’d McKay call it - a hippie commune.”

“A hippie commune, yes,” Evan said. He finished the last of his sandwich and dusted the crumbs off his fingers.

“I thought they were peaceful and...flowery.”

“They were. They are.” Evan sighed. “But I’m a Lorne, one of the Forsaken.”

“What does that even mean? You’ve said it so many times before.”

“It means I’m bigger and stronger, tougher than most shifters. So it was my responsibility to enforce Night World law against rogue shifters and the occasional witch or vampire.”

“You mean killing them.”

“Usually. The Council passed judgment. But if there needed to be a execution -” Evan looked away.

“I’ve never slept fully in True Form,” Ronon said. “Would’ve been nice when I was Running. Except, you know, naked.”

Evan flicked a heated glance at him. “You naked is amazing, though.”

Ronon laughed. “You are so easily distracted by sex.”

“By you, really.” Evan leaned over and kissed him softly.

“I should try it sometime.” Ronon finished his sandwich. “Sleeping in True Form. You doing that isn’t helping, though.”

“Helping what?”

“Helping people think you’re not one of the Old Gods.”

“You could try, a little harder, to remind them of who we are. Don’t they remember you from before?”

“Before I was a lowly specialist. You’re from Atlantis, the home of the Ancestors, and you walk with the power of the Old Gods. They don’t listen to me.” Ronon knew he was no god, but he wondered about Evan. Evan, who was beautiful, and vulnerable, but so strong and so fierce. Evan, who could make fire with his mind, and water when a child was thirsty, and wind when it was warm, earth when the farmers needed to plant. Ronon wondered if Evan had never known he was a god because all his life he’d been told he was a monster.

Ronon wondered how many gods had been taken for monsters.

Once the food was finished, Evan wasn’t one to malinger. He stood up, stretched, and then ambled over to Seersha, who was overseeing the clearing of the rubble. She looked nervous when he approached, but he set her at ease with his smile. Seersha was one of Marita’s many sisters, and while Marita was learning new stories from Evan (mostly from movies, though a few true stories, about Evan’s cousins), she was still spreading the tale of the Old Gods. Seersha assigned them to move some larger pieces of rubble. Evan nodded and beckoned for Ronon, and they set to work.

By the end of the day, Central Square was completely clear, and Ronon felt like he’d never be able to move again. He also knew that if he ate a proper meal and slept, he would feel just fine in the morning. When he returned from the wash pump, Evan was sprawled on the floor, in True Form, sleeping peacefully enough. Ronon took a breath, shifted, and then curled up beside him. One more person could use their bed, if they always slept in True Form.

That might be nice, for someone else to have decent shelter. Maybe a woman with child?

Ronon yawned, closed his eyes, and slept.

And dreamed.

Of his entire body burning, on fire, because he was crossing sand, sand, and endless sand beneath a relentless sun, tracking a bear shifter. He needed to drink. Needed water. Would die without water.

I've thrown Sandor in there, I hope that's okay ^^'

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29459697

Ooooh... I really, really like this one. I don't have any ideas yet, but it's a great question I'll be mulling over.