Chester should have told the girl that he was borrowing her shiny blue car. He had meant to, really he had, but Mother had made it sound so urgent and she had sounded so sad that in the end he was willing to endure any punishment that Audrey threw his way.

And that, when he stops to think about it, is the stuff of nightmares.

It's a cold, dreary midnight when he decides to leave, wearing a wife beater and a pair of jeans stolen from the apartment. His human form is becoming easier and easier to maintain, and even if he does prefer his rabbit form, he is pretty sure that he can't drive without thumbs.

The Thunderbird is where Audrey had left it, hidden beside of a dumpster and the newly polished surface reflects the moonlight in a way that blinds Chester as he approaches it.

With his dark hair slicked back and that arrogant Devil-May-Care-But-I-Could-Give-A-Sh*t smile hanging lopsided from his face, the man looks like he belongs in that antique piece of rolling metal. Perhaps even more so than the little brunette that he is "borrowing" it from.

There's guilt there, his own and not hers this time, and Chester pushes it as far down as it would go. He can control his emotions, control the drainage that rolls off of his owner in waves, far better in this form than as a rabbit.

The car starts without a hitch, the engine purring beneath that powder blue hood like a pack of placated lions. The only thing he knows about driving a car was what he has read in books, and to read something is completely different, he finds, than actually having to do it.

Key, clutch, drive. Or is it clutch, key, drive? He tries several combinations, some doing nothing at all while others turn the car off and on until, finally, he is moving.

"Now, I just gotta figure out where the hell them brothers o'mine is."

She's used to these cryptic, strange dreams by now, used to knowing that what goes on in her head after she goes to sleep is by far stranger than what happens when she's awake. In this place, that's saying something.

She lays sprawled out on the bed, as much as she can sprawl out with the other woman laying there, her mouth opening and closing like a land stranded fish and hands gripping at the sheets beneath her. Audrey never has a peaceful sleep, one dream tumbling into another in a candle wax melt of scenery and faces and times and places so far in the past that she wonders if she had ever actually belonged to any of it.

These dreams are different; not so much the usual stock nightmares where spindly spider limbs and sharp teeth rip her away from her life and love, but more telling. More "grind your teeth" annoying because she knows who those yellow eyes belong to and reminds herself time and time again that, when she wakes, she'll remember but she never does.

She's in a forest now, the beats of tribal drums causing a dull dream-pain to well up just behind her eyes. It's disorienting, strange but she pushes through the not-quite- there underbrush of brier bushes and ferns and keeps searching for the rabbit.

Just glimpses here and there of white fur, zipping through the forest and leading her somewhere. For a fleeting moment, when blue eyes catch the snow colored blur, she feels like Alice. Feels like she has fallen down some rabbit hole. Where is it that her white rabbit wants her to go?

"Chester? Are you here? What's wrong?"

Worry in that dream whispered voice is covered with a cake icing thick layer of resentment, every corner that she turns bleeding into the next. She passes a man that she vaguely recognizes, and the guilt for not remembering his name lingers with her long after she wakes up. Slicked back, dark hair and a mega watt smile just slightly betraying the creature parading around in his skin.

"I don't need this. I don't need this," and if she repeats it enough, believes it then he eventually goes away and leaves her to her search. No broken bones this time, no blunt blows that render her face into nothing more than blood and gore and splinters of white. Nothing but the vast forest around her.

Audrey turns another corner, following another flash of white fur and loses her footing. She tumbles head over feet down a hill, knowing it should hurt but only wishing that it would just end. When it does, disoriented in the thick fog of dreams, she stands up and knocks the mud and leaves and brambles from her night gown.

Something makes her stop, keeps her feet glued into place and when she looks up she sees only those yellow eyes staring at her, up close and barely an inch from her own face.

"Emlyn?"

No. No, not her. Yellow, yellow. Her mind tosses the word around, glues it fast to everything from owls (screw owls, she's tired of owls) to cats and finally it hits her. Hits her like it always does, but the face and those citrine eyes are long gone by the time she makes even a sound.

"Damian. Desmond."

She sits up in her bed with a jolt, a sharp breath hurting nicotine riddled lungs and she looks around, looks to see the woman still asleep beside of her and just the slightest little hints of sunlight peering in from the heavy drapes on the window.

Audrey sits back, presses herself against the wall and lets her head hit it with a silent little thud.

"Chester."

Audrey finds him alright. Moving out into the cold morning air, she nearly trips over him. It takes a moment for her brain, still dulled and foggy with sleep, to recognize just what the furry little lump is.White. Fur. White fur. WhitefurwhitefurChester!

Anger and relief mix together in her mind, the urge to punt him like a football inched away by a sharp pain of guilt and pity. Guilt for even thinking about it, and pity when she realizes the shape that he is in.

"Chester?" She nudges him with her foot, hopes he's not dead but knows that he isn't. Blue eyes, the same color as her own, open slowly and stay half lidded. No smart aleck comment about how big her ass has gotten, or inquiries about the "twins". All that Chester can offer, it seems, is a weak little squeak.

Sighing, she leans forward and scoops him up. Nothing but skin and bones. As she turns to head back inside she spots the El Camino parked across the street and notices the absence of a certain powder blue colored sports car.

"Oh Chester," she says softly, caught somewhere in the midst of rage and a childish need to help a wounded animal, "if you weren't in such bad shape, I would probably skin you alive."

The rabbit, more limp rag doll than actual animal, doesn't move; doesn't say a word. Chester is so used to her empty threats by now that he's adopted that particular one as his middle name. Chester "I'll skin you alive" Dustbunnymond.

Back inside, breakfast forgotten, Audrey lays him down on the couch and goes about the room gathering up blankets and throw pillows. Under watchful beady blue eyes she creates a makeshift little bed for him on the other end of the sofa and scoops him up long enough to plop him down into the little nest.

"You're in big trou.." she can't even finish it. Once he's tucked in, Audrey sits down next to him and gently strokes his back, takes note of every vertebra, every rib that her fingertips touch.

"When you feel better I want you tell me what happened."

The rabbit snorts out an answer, eyes closed and his body stone still save for the up and down motion of his back as he breathes and the sparse twitching of his left ear when the girl's fingers touch a spot on his neck.

Soon Audrey finds herself dozing off and before she falls over and crushes the shadow of poor Chester, she pulls herself to the other end of the couch, curls into a ball and drifts back off to sleep.