still so close

yet so far

TINY SCRIBBLES PAINTED on the paper of the heart rate monitor as the dark haired girl fiddled with her hospital wrist band, her eyes glued down as Nina and Brenner patiently waited for her to utter the next description of what exactly happened at ballet practice, or since she turned 11.

"...While I was in this...dream,...I saw things. Horrible things." her voice broke as the image of her father flashed before her, tightly shutting her eyes, "And-- every time, after these dreams would end...my nose runs with blood"

Her big brown eyes trailed up to the worried eyes of mom, finding Kimi's soft cold hand to hold it tightly as she smekked it. The deep sigh of Brenner echoing the small room was more than enough expressions of his frustration.

"Is there anything...significant-- a pattern, that you might've noticed, June?" Martin broke the cold silence as Nina rubbed her forehead, patiently waiting for a response from the girl sitting on the bed.

"Well...There was this...boy." Kimi spoke, "He was always...somehow present right before I woke back up. Even if I didn't see him, I felt him. Felt his...energy," Kimi tried to picture the features he might've had as she thought, "I wonder if, may-...Maybe...he can...feel my energy, too..."

"Do you remember how he looked?" Martin lightly stroked his chin as his eyebrows furrowed

Kimi scrunched her nose as she searched in her mind for a boy that shared the same energy she felt when he was near. But that's all it was, energy. The vessel had vanished from her memory.

She lightly shook her, stunned at her forgetfulness. What her mind didn't want to show her.

He ceased to exist.

Brenner stood back up as he crossed his arms, looking up to the tiled walls as his eyebrows furrowed in thought.

"Have some water, sweetie. You did great, but now you need to rest" Nina smiled at her daughter while grabbing a full glass of water from the side table.

Brenner's eyebrows furrowed deeper as he stared at the motioned clear water, an idea turning on like a light bulb as he stroked his chin.

"...Maybe a lot more water than that..." Brenner murmured, Nina turning to him as her eyes quickly furrowed at the man, watching as a small smirk plastered his face.

"...AFTER THESE DREAMS WOULD END...MY NOSE RUNS WITH BLOOD" the surveillance recorder continuously repeated, Nina's curious brown eyes following the restless Martin as he continued to tap the rewind button.

Nina's head swiftly turned back to the large window in the dark room, her eyebrows furrowing as she stared at her daughter through the tinted glass, in her peaceful slumber. Ignoring the chaos of Brenner shuffling through a drawer of surveillance records behind her as she heard him murmur the words, "Nose bleeds...nose bleeding..."

As her glued eyes quit studying the peaceful sleep of June, Martin raised his restless voice to state--

"--After everything, her nose bleeds, does that sound like a coincidence to you?" he shook his head as his arms restlessly crossed, with Nina blankly staring back at him, dismissing his theoretical mode.

"I think you mean 'could her nose bleeds be a physical after effect of all...those?'" Nina waved her hand at the collected stack of cassette tapes by the VCR, all with the scribbled name: "June"

"One way to put it, Yeah" Martin paused his shuffling around the small room, as Nina's heels clicked on the tile ground, as she walked to stand against the glass, examining her daughter once again.
Her attention to Martin was caught by his sharp gasp as he theorized—

"What if the 'dreams' weren't dreams" Martin whispered, Nina turning to the man, face filled with curiosity, "What if those 'dreams', weren't actually dreams..." his voice raised as his arms navigated to the desk of loose cassette tapes, Nina's face lighting up at the theory.

"She said that there were repeating sounds," Martin clicked his fingers near his face, "feelings— the sun beaming, smell of burnt - something,—"

"The hospital lights!" Nina quickly added, her arm pointed to the ceiling, "We've been there not so long ago, that shouldn't be a coincidence, right?"

"These are memories, they have to be." Martin concluded, "Now how do we reach those memories..."

Silence followed as the two stared at the stack of surveillance tapes.

"...I don't think we have to..." Nina slowly picked up one of the tapes, installing it into the monitor opening, "It's just a matter of...knowing how far back to go to...and getting there...maybe see what we've missed" her speech slowly down after her occupation on the running tape playing on the monitor, of the previous conversation between Kimi, Nina and Brenner

"Nina, you just described your theory," Martin stammered through his sentence, "our project we tested a few days ago—"

"Your project, Mart, I was just the brains, I didn't even know you would actually turn it into a reality. Did you see how much damage it did to the lab— to Kimi?"

"But the point is, we can go back, get Kimi out of this spiral—" he pushed

"This is exactly what got her into this, Mart, I-...I can't risk it...not again" Nina dismissed, tense silence following as she looked into his eyes, until his sigh in surrender

Nina and Brenner stood in the center of the room, heads turned towards the heart rate monitor, with smaller scribbles, turning to the girl who remained stationary.

"...We don't need to do that again then," Brenner compromised, "we just...need some type of...jumpstart—"

Whirr. Clunk. Crshhh
The two simultaneously stopped moving, in dead silence, heads shot at the monitor that continued to whirr and release static noise.

"D'you do that?" Nina flatly asked, eyes glued on the machine flickering it's power on and off

"I stood here the whole time, no i didn't do that—" Martin snapped back

"Shh"

The two leaned in to hear muffled conversation of--

"--Kimi. - Listen to m--"

"D'you hear that?" Nina asked as the two leaned into the monitors echoing a muffled recording--

"--I need - slowly breathe in...- out - Breathe in...and out"

Nina and Brenner furrowed their eyebrows as they patiently waited for an end of the static followed between the recording, hearing a different heavy breathing in the background, with water rippling and softly splashing

"Someone's in water?" Nina rhetorically asked, right before the last of the recording—

"- Focus, listen, remember..." the recording loudly roared the muffled recording, giving in to the black tape getting tangled in itself, spilling out of the case.

Brenner pulled the tape out as the two lightly panted, left speechless as they tried to gather the recent encounter.

Nina furrowed her eyebrows as she watched Martin look back and forth from the monitor to the tape.

"What?"

"I thought i maybe forgot that i recorded that conversation but..." Brenner brought the tape to sit against the monitor.

"...Well?" Nina interrupted, before being handed the broken cassette tape, with tape spilled outside of where it should be

"Quickly read the date here for me, please?" Martin paced across the room

"Uh...02/04/1959–"

"Today's date right? The fourth"

"Uh huh..." Nina flatly replied as she double checked the reading, as Brenner approached the desk, browsing over the lit monitors

"Now read the one of the monitor, right here." he pointed

"01/27/1959...Didnt those tapes burn up with everything else?"

"I saw them melt" Brenner defended as he scoffed

"...So, if the tapes of the 27th are - ashes now, then how do we have these?"

Martin and Nina both let out a short gasp as they deciphered the impossible, slowly turning their heads, their widened eyes meeting, continuing in their head shift to the large window.

Dead silence followed as the two, stunned to let out a word, stared at the sandy brown skin of Kimi, but with a smudge of red down her nose as the monitor machine remained static.

27 January 1959 11:35pm

NINA LIGHTLY CARESSED the regressed curls of Kimi's dark hair, quietly singing to her the song Dream a Little Dream of me.

"...Stars shining bright - above you..." she hoarsely whispered, in between her light smiles at her daughters peace.

"Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you" Nina whispered, her voice breaking as she lightly tapped the button nose of her daughter, sighing as she turned down, resting her forehead on her hand.

She shone the flashlight on the heart rate monitors as she impatiently sighed, before grabbing a comm radio, lifting the antenna as she flatly asked—

"Any luck so far?"

"Other than you giving birth to a human prodigy, i can't say" Martin smirked as he heard Nina's hoarse chuckle, shoving his flashlight back in his mouth, the sounds of the twisting screwdriver and falling screws echoing to her comm.

As Nina jokingly rolled her eyes at Martins whispering to the song she sang just a moment ago, her eyebrows furrowed at the sound of Brenner's coughing as the metal piece finally opened

"Is it bad?" Nina asked after trying her best not to let her suspense kill her

"...Do me a favour,"

"Yeah?"

"Bring your daughter down here to undo all these...what even are these?—" his voice muffled from the flashlight he held with his mouth.

"Right." Nina huffed, stroking her hand under her nose as she lightly squeezed her daughters still hands, "Kimi, baby, just...hang in there. I need you to do me a favor sweetie: fight just a little longer for mama...I promise I will figure this out..."

Nina's voice began to slowly echo away as the monitor beeps grew louder, sounding i harmonious the louder it became as—

Kimi sharply inhaled, her big brown eyes being welcomed by the rectangular white tiles of the room she lay on a bed in, and blindingly bright lights. As her senses dawdled back, she soon felt the light tickle of her mother stroking her inner palm.

The monitor beep was singular again, Kimi trailing her eyes to her right, lightly panting as she stared back at herself through the large mirror mounted on the wall, hoping that it was just a regular mirror, and not a time travelling one.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, my love!" She loudly whispered, "How do you feel?"

"...Exhausted...Wh-...what happened?" Kimi flatly asked, endeavouring in her voice making a sound since the last time she spoke, looking down to see the faint red tint all over her left arm.

The girls eyes slowly battered as she witnessed her mother deeply inhale, staring straight at the large mirror that Kimi swore not to look at for as long as she needed to.

"That's...what we want to find out...from you"

"'We'?" Her eyebrows lightly furrowed, her eyes begging her mothers eyes to meet again as she turned them back to the mirror.

"...IT STARTED AFTER I woke up from out the pool...and my body felt like it was going to melt..." Kimi finally spat, her voice lowered and eyes faced down at the blue hospital gown she was dressed in.

Kimi's hoarse breathing echoed in her ears as the rippled water began to slowly heat up. Her eyes shut as she frustratedly panted against the thick atmosphere of the 'pool'.

"I'm guessing...that's the reason you collapsed afterwards? Because of the heat?" Nina interrogated, swiftly writing down 'hyperthermia?' on a small notebook she held, as her daughter slowly nodded

Martin Brenner stroked his chin as he watched the girls reactions of every question, him and Nina making eye contact; both with eyebrows slightly shot up in the beeping silence.

"...Do you remember...the outage? Or your projection of the intercoms despite it?" Brenner intervened, watching as the girl looked around her, before whispering—

"No. Only that it was dark" was all she timidly stated, fiddling with her pale hands, hearing the light clicking of her mothers pen on the harsh paper.

"...It's okay if you can't remember everything, but I need you to try...what else happened afterwards?" Brenner calmly urged, with a weak smile on his face

"...Um...my arm started to itch for a few days, until I went to school...and the itch turned into an ache" she continued, looking down to the tube inserted into her left arm, looking at the same spot where the irritation lay.

Kimi softly roughly scratched her left arm, in absence of the laughter shared between her mother, brother, and moms boyfriend in the warm house kitchen.

"My whole arm was red, but it didn't end there..."

Kimi softly gasped in the mirror reflection as she lay her eyes on the bright pink tone that plagued her arm, with light scars of her scratches that began to throb as a migraine would.

Soon, she found herself thumping on hollow wood, feeling heavy and paralyzed as police sirens echoed from the distance.
Furthermore, she felt a swelling buzz, a surge of familiar energy near her as she suffered, her eyes trailing back to a similar silhouette of a peer.

"I was—...I was back at the cabin...back in 1957..." her voice broke as she tried not to sob in front of the scientists, "and when I got up again...my nose would be...covered in blood"

Nina and Martin shot their eyes at the heart monitor that rapidly beeped with her panic. Nina reached for her daughters fidgety hand as her breathing hardened.

"It's okay sweetie, you're safe now is all that matters, okay?" Nina reassured, her eyebrows furrowing as she leaned in for a hug to her daughter, lightly stroking her frizzed up hair.

Brenner and Oswald shared the same concerned look, Nina looking down to her notes, looking up to Martin as her eyes quickly shot back to the large window.

ARMS WERE CROSSED as the two scientists examined the sleeping child through the dim window, Nina pacing as they tried to decipher the news.

Nina's occasional glances at the window, then back at the multiple monitors beeping, back to her notepad with wildly vague descriptions of their diagnosis, which was the underlying problem.

"She says it wasn't a memory, that...'wonderland' that she was stuck in"

"Like, like a beautiful trance"

"How do we get there?"

Of course Nina knew exactly was was needed to be done, but she didn't wanna admit that, and Martin knew it.

It wasn't before he picked up the blue landline right after rushedly dialing in a sequence of numbers, as Nina could only wait for him to utter the words:

"Hey, it's Brenner. I'm gonna need a big tank, water to fill it, your best scientists and...a whole lot of salt."

a / n

been a minute i've had this in my drafts FOREVER

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thank you so much for 6,3k reads ahh

not much happened here however it's still crucial to the plot so 🧏‍♀️🧏‍♀️🧏‍♀️ i promise this will make more sense later if it doesn't rn

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