The road is old, a narrow ribbon of beaten earth running between browning fields of corn left standing, unpicked, under a red-orange harvest moon.  The fields haven't seen human intervention in quite a while; the corn grows as it will rather than in rows, with a tree rising here and there.  The moon is bright enough to cast shadows across the earth, to pick out the small piles of stones set at intervals along the road and not yet overgrown by ivy or corn.

Stalks rustle as a breeze snakes through the field, tugging at a few early sycamore leaves on the road, at strands of his hair.  The ground underfoot is more comfortable than he somehow expected, the dirt just moist enough to hold together, dry enough not to squish between bare feet.  It's warm, too, just shy of too hot to sleep under even a sheet, as if the day had been scorching and banked its heat in the earth against the night's chill.

It's a gorgeous night, he realizes, and shivers.  Part of him knows this is a dream, knows how it was supposed to go.  Horror lay ahead, may still lie ahead, and somehow Duncan can't bear to see this peaceful farm country ravaged by his nightmares.  Woods are fit territory for such dreams somehow, and for a moment he thinks he hears children counting in German off to his right, but not these fields, not this harvest moon that should rise over farmers getting in the last crops and walking home to get some sleep before getting up to race the autumn storms for their crops.

Not here.  Please.  Not now.  Not like this.

"No, Duncan.  None of those, I think."

Sean shouldn't be here either is Duncan's second thought.  It's the thought that surfaces after he's already got arms around his friend, hugging him hard enough to feel leather and linsey-woolsey against the bare skin of his arms, to smell French cologne, incongruous though it is here.

Sean hugs him, hard enough that Duncan knows they're still friends, then sets him at arms' length, his hands strong and grip firm on Duncan's upper arms.  Even in the moonlight, Sean's eyes are still too knowing, and that bare quirk of a smile tells him it's going to be one of those talks that wanders around the point until he figures out what the point is.

The relief that sets in at that idea tells Duncan he needs it, too.

Sean doesn't wait for him to produce words, only starts them walking down the road.  An owl calls and Sean turns to look for it, his smile widening.  A moment later, he catches up with Duncan again, just as Duncan slows for him.  Their strides even out quickly and Sean chuckles.  "You're a stubborn man, Duncan, but we knew that."

Never lie to ghosts, Duncan always heard.  And lying to Sean never seemed to work anyway.  "Not stubborn enough.  I killed you."

Sean just nods.  "Part of you did, yes."  Duncan's heard people more upset about household problems; much more upset when it was broken plumbing.

"Part of me?  My hands, Sean."

"Hand.  I had the other one."  Sean glances sidelong at him.  "Neither of us is armed here, I notice."

"I thought... didn't you do that?" Duncan asks, uneasy.  He didn't feel naked until Sean said that. Now his shoulders itch for the weight of his baldric and clan sword.

"It's your mind, Duncan."  His voice is gentle and firm at once.  "I'm just in it."

"I know you are."  Duncan winces, tries to forget his blade in Sean's body, Sean's blood in his sword sheath.  "I see you in my nightmares, Sean.  Every night."

Sean turns off the road, walking into the corn, and Duncan follows him without protest.  The ground drops under their feet.  When Duncan stumbles, Sean catches him, his grip firm on Duncan's arm and quickly released.  "Mind the ditch, Duncan.  Not much further, it should be... here."

A few feet further in, an old stone fence winds parallel to the road.  Grey stones still sit mostly atop one another, still retain some of the day's heat which they're slowly returning to the sky.  Sean brushes at it, scattering a few sycamore leaves, a corn husk, some acorns and acorn caps.  "The squirrels must love their highway when the hawks don't make them regret it."

He sits on the wall, feet up on the stone and bare as Duncan's own.  Sean leans forward enough to wrap an arm around his knees and waves to the wall in front of him.  "Have a seat."

"If this is my mind," and Duncan fights to hold his voice even, "then where are we?  I've never seen this place before."

"I was tired of your woods," Sean said seriously.  "I hoped you were, too.  When I shaped one of my homes, you turned to it."

"You shaped... you're thinking in my mind?"  The idea of another mind in his should be horrifying, but after weeks of nightmares, Sean's lucid calm seems exactly the refuge Duncan needs.

"Duncan."  There's enough patience and love in Sean's voice to match the warmth coming off the stones; maybe that's the source of it.  "You've been calling me up every night for how long now?"

"Too long."  Duncan's trying to relax, trying to listen, and it's so hard over the things he's already saying to himself, the ones that have him twitching when he can't sleep and maybe even when he can.

"Exactly.  I'm dead, Duncan.  It's past, and you can't change it, and neither can I.  You can change how you feel about the past, but you can't change the events."  Sean waits him out in silence until Duncan looks up to meet his eyes.  It takes quite a while, but the wind and moon keep them company, and somewhere, the owl's caught dinner:  a rabbit's death shriek cuts the night, leaving silence behind.

Duncan finally meets Sean's eyes and, to his surprise, Sean's almost smiling.  There's steel lacing his voice, however; velvet-covered, but steel nonetheless.  "I'm tired of haunting you, Duncan.  Killing me happened when you weren't in your right mind.  If you keep calling me up to be a ghost or zombie or skeleton chasing after you to shove guilt down your throat, you'll soon be out of your right mind again, my friend.  What then?"

"That's what I'm afraid of, Sean!"  He's on his feet again, corn husks under his soles, around him, and they're rustling off-beat to the way his fisted hands are shaking.  "I'm going to become that again."

"You are making this a self-fulfilling prophecy, Duncan.  We have all done things we wish we hadn't, small and large."  Sean watches him, quiet and centered and ruthless as the master swordsman he once was.  "We have all killed and stolen, lied and betrayed, and chalked it up to survival.  The person you are now did not wish to kill me, but the evil you took in surprised you and overwhelmed defenses you had never prepared.  You have a dark side, Duncan, as we all do.  If you continue to deny it, you leave yourself defenseless against it and unaware of its actions until it is too late."

"I killed you...."

"Yes."  That matter-of-fact tone leaves Duncan taken aback and defenseless against his own accusations and Sean's words.  "Those hands killed me, Duncan, but not the persona I'm currently talking to.  If you continue to exhaust yourself with blame, however, you will erode your defenses and leave your hands once more in the control of a madman with your strength and reflexes.  At that point, my friend, it will be a madness you permitted, rather than one that rolled over you.  Is that what you really want?"

"No, of course not."  Duncan turns, strides back to the wall, willing his fists to unknot as he sinks to the ground beside Sean, wishing, futilely, that he could confess to Darius.  Wishing for the words, te absolvo.  "I didn't want to kill you, Sean.  I don't want to kill anyone else that way.  I just... it is my fault."

"I did say stubborn....  For the record, Duncan, I never fancied myself a scourge of anything.  That includes my friends."  Sean watches him, his voice as intent and serious as his gaze.  "I wish you'd quit flogging yourself with me."

"Is this my dream or yours?"

Sean chuckles. "If you can ask that, it's yours."

The moon is getting brighter around them, painting Sean's hair red instead of bleaching the color out.  "Ah.  You're waking up, I suspect.  Try to remember this, Duncan:  I forgive you.  Now go and forgive yourself."

He wonders, briefly, if they're his words, not Sean's, but he knows that tone of old.  Sean's fingers are gentle in his hair, pulling a sycamore leaf out as Duncan says, "Sean, I--"  Duncan hesitates, sees the corn waver into wheat, shift from brown neglect to a glorious gold full of possibilities that don't include hunger.  "I'm sorry."

"Very stubborn."  Sean chuckles, with him rather than at him, and that's fine now, perfect, what Duncan needed without knowing he needed it.  "Come see me any time, Duncan.  But no more forests like those last few, hmm?"

"No, I--"  Duncan looks around at the barge, at light spilling in the portholes and lying in sharp lines along the floor.  For the first time in weeks, waking isn't a matter of adrenaline and cold sweat.  Dead or not, Sean hasn't changed that much, and the thought makes a smile flicker across Duncan's mouth.

The clock says it's barely six.

Sunlight lying along the blankets, water rocking the barge in long-familiar patterns, and the sheets smell of nothing worse than lavender, not fear and pain.  Duncan rolls over, plumps his pillow, pulls the comforter up over his shoulders, and goes back to sleep, to see if his truce with Morpheus will hold.

Somehow, he thinks it will.

Comments, Commentary, and Miscellanea:

Written as an antidote to Memento (Mori) for my sake if no one else's, and because Sean is a pleasure to write.

Many thanks to my betas for the advice, although I'm still sorry I didn't manage to work in the discussion about Richie, Duncan, horror flicks, and other undead jokes.  The reference to children counting in German is, I think, a reference to Hansel and Gretel counting steps to try to get home, but I could be wrong, too.