Disclaimer: I don't do witty disclaimers like some... I'm just here to tell you fine people that I do not own Repo! or anything else particularly awesome. I just own this-here piece o' fan-literature and a crabby ol' cat.

A Brief Author's Note: I've been having problems with wordiness lately. So I'm keeping these under 1000 words if it KILLS ME. Forgive me if I underestimate y'all's intelligence, but I feel it bears explaining that a thousand is colloquially referred to as a "grand". The "baby" bit comes from the term "ficlet," which just brings to mind the image of baby fanfics.

Enough of this author-babble! On with the fic!

Nightmares

It should have been a decent night for sleep – one of the rare nights that they had been able to get a roof over their heads. Sure it wasn't much more than a room, a bathroom, and a mattress on the floor, but it proved infinitely better than a bench, a Dumpster, or just the ground in an alley someplace. Graverobber had immediately flung himself down on the mattress and yanked the olive-green blanket up to his shoulders before burying his face in his pillow. Shilo, after a quick wash in the not-too-offensive bathroom, joined him. She settled in on her left side, facing away from him. Propriety took a back seat when they had only one decent sleeping surface available, but that didn't mean they did anything of note.

Sleep had fallen on both of them fairly quickly. Graverobber conked out almost the second his head hit the pillow, while Shilo, as usual, took about five minutes of wriggling around to get it right. Her eyes slid closed and she didn't intend to deal with the waking world again for a few good hours. Curled up on her side, she breathed deeply, her nose ignoring the musty smell in favor of oxygen to the brain.

Deep sleep claimed her mind and images started to flash there… Horrible images… Blood splattered everywhere. A wrought-iron fence spiked up from the stage with the body of a beautiful soprano – her own godmother, unknown to her until just a few days prior – impaled upon it. Red stains spread over the artificial snow piled around the fence. Her mind's eye looked over the scene – first, it fell on the CEO of GeneCo, cold and dead, stage right. He hadn't been impaled, shot, stabbed, or in any other way mutilated, so he wasn't surrounded by blood.

That was when the Graverobber, his sometimes-predisposition to sleeping light manifesting itself tonight, started to feel movement on the mattress beside him. He growled, still mostly out of it, and turned on his right side, pulling away from said movement. However, the mattress seemed to have other ideas, jabbing a spring into a sore spot on his rib cage. Grunting irritably, he turned over on his back. With his brain in light-sleeping mode tonight, he could hear waking sounds better than he normally could at this time of night. A tiny voice niggled its way into one ear and he knew that real sleep would be long in coming tonight.

"Dad…" the small voice mumbled, its owner rolling over in her sleep. "Dad… no…"

Graverobber turned on his left side, his eyes cracking open. He squinted blearily at the tiny creature sound asleep next to him. Well… maybe not sound – the poor little thing was shaking in her sleep and he couldn't see her face, but he would bet that her eyes were squinched shut. Cracking his neck – surprised that didn't wake her – he shifted carefully to prop himself up on his left arm. This gave him a better view, and he didn't like what he saw one bit.

Sure enough, the kid had her eyes clenched shut and her body curled in a fetal position – on top of that, her pale face glistened with unchecked tears. She mumbled almost incoherently, but he could pick out a few words about her dad, whimpers and pleas not to be left alone. He had seen her watching him, the looks she would give him that told him how truly fragile she remained after her ordeal. She tried awfully hard to be independent, but when he was gone even five minutes longer than he said he would be he could always see the panic in her eyes when he returned. He normally couldn't stand clingy women, but this one made an honest effort not to need anyone.

A few more garbled phrases tumbled from her lips, followed by a strangled sob and a fresh wave of tears. Desire for sleep nattered at his mind, but for some reason, that annoying little tic called 'human decency' picked that moment to flare up. He couldn't just let her lie there, shaking and crying like that, but what could he do? It wasn't exactly the best idea to go waking her up in the middle of a nightmare. He'd found out the hard way a while back that doing that could result in a horrible panic attack – by that same note, he had discovered that Shilo threw a damn good right hook while panicking. Tilting his head, he watched her a while longer to see if it cleared up on its own.

It didn't. The teenager curled up tighter in her sleep, every muscle in her small body clenching in fear and desperation. Graverobber, for as much of an asshole as he sometimes acted like, really wasn't that bad a guy – still human, after all. He couldn't stand seeing the kid like that, not after catching her triumphant "last stand" against the Largos on the hoverboards and seeing what spark she really had. Not many seventeen-year-old girls, much less one who had come from her kind of situation could sass the most powerful family in the world while pointing the head honcho's own gun at each of them. Not quite sure of what to do, he scooted closer to the girl.

Shilo turned on her back again, writhing in pain, whether real or just in her head – that wasn't important now anyway. He just wanted to see her stop. Slowly, deliberately making sure not to wake her, he reached out and draped an arm around her. When this did not cause her to wake up and do him bodily harm, he carefully turned her back on her side. After pausing for a moment for the same reason, he pulled her in close, pressing her back against his chest. He knew she was small, but her skinny frame felt almost painfully frail against his solid body. She didn't settle right away, but he felt her relax.

***

A thousand words even, excluding title, disclaimer, author's note, and this, as counted by Microsoft Word!