Two nights of interrupted sleep had already began to affect Peter at work. He had consumed more caffeine in a day than he normally did in three and still barely made it to the end of his shift. Another night, he decided, would be way too much and so, after he showered, he pulled on an old t-shirt and sweats. Setting a pillar candle on the floor, he sat in front of it, focusing, going within to find the cause of these dreams.

Karen sat at her kitchen table in her oldest, comfiest robe, drinking her favorite tea, not admitting to herself that she was avoiding bed. She hadn't been able to dismiss the image of her son screaming at her, demanding to know why she abandoned him in a vicious military school, shouting that he hated her. The voice from her dreams had haunted her all day, undermining the strong confidence of both Captain Simms, and Karen Simms. Maybe he did hate her, under the polite phone calls and duty letters. Maybe she had been a rotten mother. Maybe... she got up and poured another cup of tea. There was a new Patricia Cornwall novel she had been meaning to read...

*Straining to see in the gloom of the old fortune cookie factory, she inched along, gun locked in front of her in a death grip. She knew Skalany, Peter and TJ were in the building with her, but she couldn't hear any sign of them. The gunman had run in here, they knew that he had already killed two people and wounded Strenlich in the thigh. Dust tickled her nose and she stifled a sneeze, then whipped her head around at a low to the ground movement. A rat, of course. She eased past a pallet of long forgotten cartons and glimpsed light flickering on a metal object. When it moved, she shouted "Police, FREEZE!", but the shadowy figure whirled at her voice, then she saw the gun clearly and fired. The shadow man fell, and she moved cautiously through the stink of cordite, finally pulling out her flashlight and playing it over the fallen gunman. It caught his face, and she screamed. She was still screaming when Skalany and TJ came running and found Jody on the floor, cradling Peter Caine's body in her arms.*

Jody sat curled in a chair by the window, afghan around her shoulders, until chilly grey dawn crept in to join her. She didn't sleep again that night.

*****

A dark miasma of guilt hung heavily over the squad room of the 101st. Not one person could manage eye contact with another, questions were asked in a murmur, and any accidental touches resulted in the kind of flinches usually inflicted by electric shock. The camaraderie was gone, there were no group discussions of the problem, and no answers to be found at the bottom of a beer glass. Kermit alone remained free of the clutching fear that gripped his friends, and he spent the day behind his door. Determined to find his prey, he ran program after program, expertly hacking into places best left alone in search of the ex-merc. An email from Jewel had set his mind at ease about her, she had explained that she was hard at work on a case, running in and out of town and exhausted when she was at home. She promised to call him when she was done and had some free time. Mind still on his work, he never questioned it.

And that is what she was betting on, Jewel told herself as she hung up the phone. Kermit was involved with some case that he wasn't telling anyone about, which meant she had room to maneuver without actually having to lie to him. *I am definitely getting soft* she thought, and shook her head. Julia Adams, Girl Detective, prided herself on an ability to lie well, fast, and convincingly. She was proud of her skill, but she hated to use it on those she loved, and she was growing to love Kermit. Which made those horrible dreams worse. If Caine couldn't help her figure out why she would be having such a violent set of dreams, she wasn't sure what her next move would be. Until she knew, though, she was avoiding Kermit. Having dreamed about killing him, she was taking no chances. What if she had become a precognitive or something? *Besides, he doesn't have time to nurse your little hurts, girl* her inner voice jeered, *You want to keep him, you keep convincing him that you can take care of yourself.* She was in no position to argue.

*****

Caine was, at that moment, trying to discuss the same problem with his son. "I have tried to find the cause of these dreams, Peter. I cannot." Peter's face was pale under his tousled dark hair and he leaned against a beam in the apothecary as if he were too tired to stand.

"Pop...Father, I tried too. I meditated last night, and while I tried to find it, it came over me again! Worse than ever. Father, I killed her, and it wasn't a dream, I was awake!"

Caine closed his eyes in remembered pain. He understood his son's fear all too well. The desperate look on Peter's face was similar to the one he had worn the night before, when Caine had watching him crumple and die from a blow. A blow delivered by his father's hand. He stared down at them now, and fought back the panic he felt, willing calm into his soul. Gathering the strength of his chi. "Perhaps together we can accomplish what separately defeats us, my son."

Gratefully, the tall younger man nodded, his hazel eyes haunted. Peter was familiar with dealing with evil, his spiritual training had given him a position of strength. His normal self assurance had been badly shaken, and he had to do something about it.

*****

Kermit had him now. He sped across town, focused on his prey. Nothing would stop him from getting there this time.

When Jewel arrived at Caine's apothecary, no one answered her knock. She was sufficiently distressed to ignore good manners and let herself in, slipping up the wooden stairs to find Caine and Peter in a trance state. A shivery feeling of panic was creeping up on her, but she forced herself to lower to the floor and sit. She waited.

No guards yet. Kermit slammed through the flimsy door and glared around him, then headed toward the lighted room. A lone figure sat on a chair in the strong afternoon sunlight, as he burst in, gun at the ready, it turned to look at him. His shades cut the sun to a bearable level but he blinked anyway, trying to reconcile the face before him with the one from his memory. Until the balding, scarred man laughed. "Griffin, my old friend. Glad to see me?"

"What name are you using now?" Kermit asked him, staring frankly at the shell of the man he had hated.

"Any name is good enough, but let's try Sandman, for esthetic purposes, yes?" He raised a crooked. clawed hand and laughed again.
"I'm not the raw recruit you used to love confusing, Sandman, and I'm not the friend you betrayed." Kermit spat, "So I must be the wrath of God, finally come for your sorry ass."

The Sandman doubled over, wheezing, but came up laughing. "You have come for me??" he shook his head in simulated wonder. "You always were a thick one, Kermit. How have you been sleeping, huhm? How have your friends slept?"

And the connection dawned for the ex-mercenary, just as the bent man lashed out with the wooden statuette that had rested by his chair. It connected solidly with Kermit's skull and he fell heavily to the floor.

*****

Caine and Peter jerked and Jewel jumped to her feet. "What is it?" she demanded, looking from one equally startled face to the other. "Who?..."

Caine bowed his head. "Kermit, he is the source of these dreams and he is in grave danger."

"I don't understand, how could Kermit.....?"

"There is...no time, we must go to him or he will be lost in the void." Caine and Peter both moved to stop her as she followed them out of the room.

"Jewel, my father and I may be able to help him but not if we have you to worry about."

Her jaw was set and her eyes were shards of cobalt glass. "I've fought on arcane levels before, Peter, and whatever it is that's attacking Kermit, I'm in danger anyway. He and I... I may be able to help."

Hazel eyes widened, and Peter shot a glance at his father, who refuse to back him up. "I hope you're right." he muttered, as they piled into the Stealth.

*****

"If you knew how I've suffered these years, Griffin, your lust for revenge would be lessened. Or, perhaps not. I won't say I bore the pain willingly, it has twisted and crippled this body, but the POWER, Kermit", he leaned down to whisper the word, "Power. The power to warp your mind. The power to destroy those whom you hold dear from the inside out " The Sandman laughed wheezily and bend nearly double, crabbed claw hand reaching through the shaggy dark hair to touch Kermit's head. "Much easier this way, Griffin, much easier indeed. Let's really explore your fears, shall we? Something quite special to share, a last gift as it were.." And the nightmares rose obediently from Hell to greet him.

*****

The pain struck Caine first, then Peter, and Jewel winced. The car swerved and Caine put his hand on Peter's shoulder. *Steady, my son*. He took more of the burden on himself, to free Peter to drive.

In the back seat, Jewel had grasped the delicate pendant she wore when the pain hit, and had felt it back off from the ritually charged object's strength. Then, realizing that if Kermit was behind this sending, there might be a way to reach him in it. Taking a deep breath and holding it against the shock of remembered pain, she pulled the leather cord over her head and dropped it onto the seat. Cautiously, she opened her mind again, taking the searing fear into herself, trying to get through it to Kermit.

*runningthroughwetgrassmudsandslippingundermyfeet breatheohbreatheohshittooclosethatwastoocloseohgod helpmeinthehourofmydeathdannyi'msorrynotfastenough notfastenoughsosorryohgodthebloodhidinggottahidegotta restgottarunfasterblackpajamasandsharpbamboostakes...*

Caine strove to control the images flooding his mind, the cries of a terrified boy, and a terrified man, as Kermit raced through his past, reliving the worst moments, the ones he had locked away and now was broadcasting helplessly. The Shaolin channeled the pain, returning comfort and peace to the battered mind, trying to begin a healing of Kermit's tortured memory, but another mind was there, fighting his efforts.

The car slid to a stop and they staggered out, Peter leading the way. He hadn't drawn his gun. recognizing that this battle wouldn't be on the mundane level, and that if it was, he didn't dare have his weapon drawn. He was too wracked with his friend's anguish. Caine followed him in, and Jewel more slowly, feeling her way on two levels, moving like a woman newly blind in an unfamiliar room. The Caines charged down hallway and into a room where a man leaned over Kermit, who lay unmoving on the floor. Peter shouted, slamming into the older man and sending him flying. The stranger retaliated with a vicious blow from a body seemingly too withered to deliver it. Caine knew this man and was engaging him in another battle, one within Kermit's tortured mind. "You will not harm him further." he told the stranger.

"He is mine, now. I will do as I will, and destroy not only him, but you as well!" The Sandman burrowed further into his victim's memories and Caine pursued him.

Jewel fell to the floor in the front room, living nightmare flooding her senses. She fought it, knowing it wasn't real but living it anyway, unable to rise. Grimly, she nodded. *So be it, then* she'd experience whatever she had to, and get through it. She'd made Kermit a promise she had no intention of breaking. The young woman plunged into the shadows gathering in her mind head on. *she was running for her life, from all the fears that a woman was taught, from the stranger with candy and a car, from the man in the bushes, at the ATM, behind you on a dark, lonely road. She was running and out of breath and finally, collapsing, she turned to make her stand. "No more running!" she yelled defiantly, "Come out, man in the bushes, rapist, killer, mugger! Come on!" and a large figure approached. A gun in one hand, a knife in the other, and on his face, a large smile. "Now, this I've been waiting for." he said softly, eyes hidden by dark green shades. "Trusted me, didn't you?" She gasped in shock, trying to scrabble backwards on her hands, staring up at the face she had come to love. "You should have listened to those instincts, kiddo, you can't trust a man. You can't trust a mercenary. And you should have never trusted me, not with your body and not with your heart. Now, I'm coming for both of them." He raised the knife and streetlights glittered along the length of it. Defeated, she slumped at his feet, not protesting as he lifted her up by her shirt front and raised the blade..*

*****

Trapped inside the battleground his mind had become, Kermit fought through terror after terror, aware that Caine and the Sandman were also there. He had no way to assist Caine, as he struggled to keep from being overwhelmed by the very past he has suppressed so long. He forced himself to focus, to attempt to make sense of what he fought, to see it as a very complicated VR program. As he fought for order, it took form around him, each defeated piece took its place in the puzzle, until he stood, panting and bloodied, before a huge ironbound wooden door marked "Do Not Enter". A gargoyle door knocker grinned obscenely at him. He turned briefly, to see Caine's fight, but the exhausted man knew he didn't have much left, and he HAD to get through that door. Gathering his tattered courage around him, he touched the knocker, and the door swung open.

"Kermit! You made it! Should have known, you do like to tough it out. One of the things I like about you." Kermit moved forward toward the person ,sitting in a brightly lit room at a...computer? The man, it had been a male voice, somehow familiar, turned to greet him and he stared. The person was tall, with silver streaked dark hair, getting somewhat shaggy, in an immaculate dark suit and sporting dark green shades. The mirror image laughed, his laugh, mocking and dark. "What, you never guessed? I'M what you're most afraid of, Griffin! Yourself!"

He shoved a chair over to the detective with his foot. "Sit down, before you pass out. God, but you've gotten soft." Kermit, dazed, sat and his twin grinned at him, his old sardonic grin. When life had little humor that wasn't gallows humor, and he only laughed when it hurt. "Not you as you are, of course. Oh, no, I know you cultivate that mean, ex-mercenary image." His voice was sarcastic, "Don t mess with Kermit, man, he carries that big old gun. He's crazy, jack you up against the wall, got messed up in 'Nam, I hear." The twin snorted, "Bullshit. I like the computer gig, though. No, Kermit, I'm you as you used to be, when you really were a tough guy. Before you got so sensitive." He leaned down and spoke in a confidential, man to man tone, " I mean, what's up with that pretty little thing you're dating? You're relating to her, maybe? Being aware of her needs?" His mercenary self laughed again and gently tapped Kermit's cheek. "Not the Kermit I remember. A woman is good for three things, an assignment, a target, or a fuck . But keep your gun close during all three."

Kermit had been taking all of this in, now he began to clear his head. "You? I'm afraid of myself? " He laughed, but it sounded weak to his own ears, and his twin shook his head.

"You gotta do better than that, friend. No lies here, this is the place where you lay it on the line. The nightmares your friends were going through? All from here, all yours. But in their own style, though that's changed now." the rich voice was deepened, taking on a conversational tone, "Now they're having the one great nightmare you have, that I'm going to reappear, that you'll be a danger to them. They're all experiencing death at your hands, Kermit, the ex-merc finally returned to his roots, a killing machine, a bloody, murdering, heartless, soulless, loveless.." and Kermit leaped for him.

They went down, the dark twin fighting back with all of Kermit's jungle cat quickness and hammering moves. "You are not who I am anymore!" The detective shouted, slamming the mercenary underneath him, "and you are not going to use me to hurt them!" Searing pain radiated as his opponent drove a knife into his side, and their positions reversed.

"I'm not doing anything, Griffin!!" the mercenary laughed. "I'm you!! I'm the monster you keep locked up, until you're in a fight, and you need me again. I'm the best part of you, the strongest part, the knife in the boot that you have never left behind!" He pounded at the detective's face with his fists, gloriously alive in battle.

Caine held Peter's arm, as he would in the real world, as they stood in the doorway, watching. "We cannot help him, my son. Each man must fight his deepest fears himself."

"Pop, he's weakened, hurt. You've shared your strength with me as I battled within myself. How is this different?" Peter's eyes were anguished, watching his friend fight for much more than his life. Every instinct he had demanded that he jump in to help, and all of his Shaolin training was needed to keep him out of it.

*"No." Jewel pulled herself away, stared up at the familiar face and shook her head. "Kermit would never hurt me. I know it. You can't hurt me, not if you are Kermit."

"So young, so self deluded" the nightmare image mocked her, running the sharp blade along her soft jawline, "You think I really cared about you? You? No, honey, I was playing with you, and the game is over."

She refused to move, though her heart pounded in her chest. "Kermit cares about me. He may have all that bottled up darkness, but there's a lot of good in him too. The light.."

"The light...oh, yes, you see a light in me. That metaphysical bullshit isn't impressing anyone, little girl." He grabbed her again and pulled her hair back, but she didn't move. He brought the blade down and she concentrated on the man she knew, caring, funny, strong, it glittered and fell*

and she was on the floor, heart slowing to its regular rate. Slowly, she followed Caine and Peter to the back of the house.

A bent, twisted man lay on the floor. Caine and Peter were seated cross legged and between them, Kermit lay unmoving, his face contorted. Fighting back panic, she forced herself to trust Caine and ,as she had before, sat down beside them to wait, mind open.

" 'I'm you!'" the twin's cry echoed in Kermit's head as it was slammed against a floor that didn't exist, and suddenly, he got it. It had been there all along, his own conviction that he was set apart from his friends by his past had prevented him from seeing the answer. Energy surged through him and he shoved the mercenary away and rolled to his feet. They stood there, looking at each other, until Kermit spoke, quietly. "You are not the strongest part of me anymore, and you never were the best part of me. If you were still so strong, I'd never have left the life, I'd still be out there with the others. But I'm not, I'm here, and I have family, people that I love. Being able to feel for them, to cherish and love and protect them, is my strength now. Maybe I have been afraid that my past could harm them, that I would blow my stack one night and go postal in the squad room. "

He walked forward, putting his hands on the mercenary's shoulders. "I need the training, the skills and the intelligence I learned when I was you, they're a part of who I am today. I may still have nightmares about the past, but you won't be featured in them anymore." Kermit jerked his head toward the door, and Caine and Peter stepped aside. "Go on, get out of here."

And the fierce, cold, calculating killer that Kermit Griffin had once been hung his head and left the room, disappearing as he passed through the doorway.

Kermit looked over at Peter and flashed a trademark smile, the one that said, "I'm calm, cool and in control." and...opened his eyes, back in the real world.

Caine and Peter came out of their meditative state and helped him to his feet. "Okay, buddy, first stop for you is County hospital to get that head checked out." Peter insisted, taking Kermit's arm, and feeling a whole lot better when his friend shook it off and looked at the woman with them in the room.

Jewel didn't bother with words, her eyes searched his face, then she hugged him, so hard, he could feel her shaking against him. Then she nodded at Caine and Peter and left.

Epilogue:

Peter drove Kermit home from the hospital the next day. When the older man insisted that he would be okay, he just needed some rest, Peter yawned and agreed.

He watched the blue car leave, then went upstairs to his apt. His bed was cool and comfortable, the lights stayed off, and he didn't even glance at the computer. He did hit the answering machine, and heard his sister's voice say ,"Kermit, you'll think this is silly, but I've had the most horrible dreams about you and the kids these last few days. Is everything alright there?"

"It is now, little sister." And Kermit Griffin went to bed.

The End

next Story: One Enchanted Evening

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