Like the patient's loved one, praying for one last sliver of hope, Sledge's hands were clenched tightly in front of his bowed head, the thumb knuckles putting pressure on his sinuses. Hanging between his thumbs was the thin chain he had not taken off his neck in years. A simple gold ring hung from the slack in the chain, resting against his lips. The coldness of the metal served as a reminder that the one bright thing that had happened to him had long since gone away. An ocean and one too many arguments had removed what promise the gold held. Now it was just a tarnished burden that hung around his neck, a visual representation of how one man could screw his life up so much.

But it wasn't just his own life that he had damned. In seeking to improve his own life, Sledge had betrayed countless lives. It was him who delivered the Sanctuary's blueprints to the enemy, and had coached Kaitlyn in how she could lie to, and manipulate people easier. Every action that he had taken since coming to the United States had just been another nail in the coffin. And all because Sledge had acted in his own self interest. Even the one decent thing that he had done since the world ended was corrupted. Initially Sledge had become yet another brawler in the pit to get food for the kid. Raiding shelters did not allow him to rest easily at night. Taking precious resources from the mouths of other hungry children and the cold women. Seeing that deadened look in their eyes as he took what little chance for life made him have to turn his head away. They had accepted that there wasn't going to be food for them that night again. There just wasn't any will to fight for their lives anymore. Those he had stolen from simply were existing because their body had not fallen apart yet. Fighting in the Pit was hardly a good moral choice, given that Sledge did unarmed combat, giving him an unfair advantage. However it was the closet thing he had ever had to an actual job, and it did provide some of the most basic needs of survival. When push came to shove though, Sledge had used his mutation to his own advantage once again, failing to return to the pack and share his good fortune.

Breaking the trance Sledge gave the ring a kiss. There was no action that he could take from this point on to redeem himself. In the end Sledge could not ignore who he was. He was a bastard, an insatiable crook. Even when Sledge attempted to be a halfway decent soul, nature could not be swayed and he would fall from grace. He should just embrace his inherent selfish and evil ways. The entire world was going to pot, so why not get all that he could from it? Because his bloody body wouldn't allow him to do so. It rebelled against his desires, fought against his will and damn well would kill him if he didn't pay attention and repent. His arms had given up on him. No longer would his mutation work because he did not rest anymore. Food had become less of an issue, in the sense that it came his way more often. Freshness was still to be questioned some days. The problem was that even when it was safe food for him to eat, something that wasn't going to cause an allergic reaction, he struggled to keep the food down. Sleep had gone the way of the dodo, and his mutation had suffered from it. That speed and strength that he had prided himself on gradually decreased. No sleep meant no recharge.

His only request was paper, no matter how tattered or torn and something to write with. He'd been provided with a nub of a pencil and a newspaper that had been someone's blanket at one point or another. There was a pressing desire to write home. Sledge felt his mum and da were owed the truth about him, an explanation of his behavior and leaving home. They needed to know that it wasn't anything that they had done. On the contrary, he had to admit that they had made every sacrifice possible for him. Looking back he didn't resent his life in Bradford. Anna needed an explanation too. She never had the right end of the stick when she walked in on him that day. Her view of him had changed and he was too much the coward to correct her.

The stub of lead had been abandoned though. Best he thought, to keep them from having false hope, and he didn't want to give them the impression that he was going to be coming back home. Frankly, it didn't look like he was going to make it out of the ring this time.

With a sharp intake of breath and his body jerking, Sledge was suddenly awake. His back was aching, and his neck did not want to turn more than a centimetre or two in either direction. As comfortable as his couch was, it was not intended to sleep on sitting up. The telly was still on the news network, currently discussing what had been said by which politician. On his lap was a detailed map showing the battle movements of the French and Irish troops at the Battle of Castlebar. Wincing he tilted his head first to the left, then to the right, hearing a satisfying, but slightly painful crack with each movement. This was the problem with spending many nights in a row away from his bed. At the most inconvenient time he would crash. Sledge groaned and began to extricate himself from the couch.

It wasn't as though he had been out of the world for days, but he felt like he had a pong about him. A shower was called for, if for no other reason than to get his muscles to loosen up a little. Yes, a shower would be a good idea right about now. His back protested leaning forwards to turn the television off. From top to toe he felt like lead. Coffee was in order as well. If he had been asleep for this long he might as well stay up now. One day the sheer amount of caffeine that Sledge consumed would come back and bite him in the behind, but today, he needed it.

His mind was still in that half aware state that happens when you suddenly wake up. What had caused him to stop sleeping wasn't entirely too clear. Now that he had turned off the news his flat was relatively quiet. In the background the fridge made a quiet humming sound which was peaceful in the dark of the flat. There were no signs of any intruders, so that couldn't have been what bothered him. Nothing about his flat would suggest a need to wake up from his slumber. Sledge had to have been really out of it to not have even bothered laying down on the couch when he passed out. Not making it off the couch and into bed he would be able to understand, but he could have at least laid down. Now his body was aching and his brain was telling him that he really needed to put himself on a proper schedule. On his way to the shower he paused over his desk, studying the measurements that he had so meticulously taken of the Sanctuary, and his attempts at sketching out a rough map. For a minute he stared at them, mulling over a dull niggle at the back of his mind. Something to do with them, he supposed, was what had woken him up.

As the steam from the hot shower clouded up the mirror, Sledge's mind started to clear. Never one to be fully with it upon waking, he hardly remembered having dreamed, let alone the contents of it. His dream wasn't in its entirety a nightmare. There were no major scares in it, though several parts of it did not sit well with the conman. Apocalyptic dreams tended to unsettle anyone. Imagining going from this life of comfort back to a position similar to, if not lower than his early years in England had probably been what had woken him up. He had gotten use to this way of living, and quite enjoyed having a flat of his own. Should he bring a lady friend over, he did not have to worry over being quiet for fear of waking his da. His sleep schedule could be as erratic as he wished. No shop noises kept him awake when he wanted to sleep in. Sledge was still young enough to see himself as untouchable. And yet he could not get past the image of his flat ransacked. His belongings that he had worked so hard to obtain where stolen from him or destroyed. Not only had the locks on his door been broken, but the door was off the hinges.

Sledge squirted some shampoo into his hair, smelling the familiar clean scent. The dream had been so realistic that he could swear that he smelled the putrid stench of decaying meat. Tilting his head back he opened his mouth to let the shower fill it with water. There was the usual post sleep staleness in his mouth, but simply thinking about the questionable things he had eaten in the dream had corrupted his taste buds. He had witnessed other humans resorting to Sweeney Todd dining choices. Worse yet, those were his traveling companions. A burble of acid churned in his stomach at the memory, and Sledge started scrubbing at his scalp with renewed fervor. No wonder he had felt as though he had been covered with a fine skin of sewage. The dream had been so detailed in the things that you normally don't encounter when your sleeping mind conjures up images. Once he was done with this shower and getting his coffee, Sledge was going to shave. He was feeling rather scruffy.

Strangely dreaming of a death sentence didn't frighten him as much as he knew it should. Perhaps it was because he had actually woken up before he could have died in his dream. Or maybe it was that arrogance that he could find his way out of the bad situation he was in. Sledge had been in plenty of fights before his mutation manifested and came out of them still breathing. The man had survived being hit by a car before. No, it wasn't the thought of death that was bothering him so much about that dream. Rather, it was what he had felt in regards to that in his dream. Growing up in Bradford had been hellish. There wasn't enough hot water for a shower like this. If he was to get anywhere in life it had to be through his own means. Trying to live an honest, hard working life like his mum and da only got you a lifetime of slaving away for someone else, with little or no reward for your good behavior. Sledge hated that man he dreamed he was.

Heated water kept pouring from the taps, and the temperature in the small room continued to rise. In his dream there hadn’t been a moment where he felt warm. It was worse than being caught with wet socks. His dream self had been on to some sort of profound truth. Impeding doom tended to put everything into perspective. There is only so much to go around in the world, and of what there is, it isn’t nearly enough. Even if all the resources in the world were to be split evenly, everyone would still come up short. Enough of his life had been spent suffering because someone else had more. More money, more space, more food. Not only did “they” have more than him, “they” had more than they needed. Now was the time for him to be one of “them”. This apartment, while not abundantly large, was of good size for New York City standards. His bedroom easily accommodated the queen sized bed he had purchased, along with some stylish furniture. It was truly his castle, and he wore his fedora like his crown.

With the shampoo rinsing out of his hair, Sledge gave his head a few experimental rolls. Slowly his neck was loosening up, and taking away with it the last dredges of adrenaline. He felt more exhausted now than he had upon waking. The muscles no longer being in tight coils helped with the relaxed feeling. His dream was nothing more than that. What horrors the mind is capable of creating at night. Sledge was still young. While he knew that others his age were getting married and having children of their own, he was hardly ready to settle down. Why on earth would he care to watch out for a kid?

Because that was you at one point. Sledge peeked outside the shower curtain, expecting to see someone there. He was not use to having an inner voice telling him the difference between right and wrong. Strangely the voice sounded the way that it did in his dream. “Charlie boy, leave me be,” he muttered as he turned the taps off. Having his older brother’s voice telling him how he should be behaving was, at the very least, highly annoying. If it weren’t for the times that Sledge had been sent to jail the two would still be trying to act as if they were anything but strangers. Why did the voice that was serving as a conscience have to sound like the only person who really knew what all he got into? If the real Charlie had wanted Sledge to travel the straight and narrow, he would have given him a lecture, not paid bail each time. “Besides, I was never as hopeless as ‘im.”

The situations were totally different as well. Sledge had been born into a position of poverty. He knew what it meant to be on the streets of a city. Fighting for everything he needed, eating as little as possible so that there might be something the next day, freezing at night. When the world turned in his dream, it didn’t throw him. It was a life he had lived before, and he’d do it again.