y'all thought you'd seen the last of me

uhh anybody remember that one fic i posted then deleted before it got anywhere? yeah i'm rebooting it lol

anyway uhh no ships as far as i know; there's some implied chriviva but that's about it :y

aight enjoy i gotta get out of this practice room before i suffocate lmao

"accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart."

– marcus aurelius

This was the third time this month.

Chris awoke with a start, but when he came to his senses he realized he was not lying in his bed. No warm embrace of the sheets welcomed his goosebumped skin, no familiar sound of his elder brother's snoring buoyed about the room. In fact, he wasn't in his room at all; when his bearings were gathered, the younger Kratt found that he was standing at the edge of the Tortuga's open exit, the cold breezes of the outside world whistling lethargically among a silent, starlit sky.

He was sleepwalking again.

This was the closest he'd ever gotten to actually exiting their base of operations. The first time he snapped out of his daze, he found himself face to face with the bedroom door. The second time found him sprawled out in the middle of the main room. Now, the moonlit Alaskan tundra was the sight that Chris's hazy eyes were greeted by.

Sounds of faraway wildlife whispered to him as he closed the exit hatch. Warmth swirled around the bitter draft as the door hissed closed.

It was strange; every time he would find himself in this situation, any inkling of what his sleeping body might have been doing would quickly fade away. He'd done a bit of research on the issue in the past, but nothing seemed to be pointing to why this was happening. Nobody in his family had suffered from somnambulism, as far as he knew, and the rest of the Wild Kratts never pointed it out to him, so it was safe to assume that whatever was happening to him was a new occurrence – but what was causing it?

A yawn crawled up Chris's throat as he shuffled across the main room, ultimately deciding to sink into a chair rather than heading back to bed. He was wide awake by this point, anyhow. Droopy brown eyes trailed up towards the ceiling, where tiny stars twinkled through the giant glass panes. Clouds floated along in thin contrails, weaving between the speckled navy fabric blanketed across the sky. A small exhale hissed through Chris's nostrils, and he folded his hands over his torso as he settled further into his seat.

It was the same dream, he observed, that would cause him to wake up in the middle of the night like this, standing in the middle of the Tortuga with no memory of how he even ended up that way. The dream itself was vague, but after experiencing it for a third time, the pattern was clear enough: dark caves, claustrophobic tunnels, and a giant something watching his every move.

He never stayed asleep long enough to encounter that looming presence, but the very thought of it was enough to send a sense of awful, inexplicable dread pressing down into his chest. He was mostly dismissive of the whole thing, but a small part of him longed to know more. The dream, however hazy it was to him in the waking world, was vivid enough to capture some sort of interest. After all, dreams shouldn't be influencing his thoughts as much as this one has.

His head leaned forward and slid off the back of the chair. He wanted to get up and grab his Creature Pod, or a book, or anything else to keep him busy, but his lethargic body made no effort to go anywhere fast. A distant feeling of boredom settled into the back of his mind.

Something in the corner of the room caught his eye. A soft shadow crept across the floor, hugging the molding of the wall as it slithered to its destination. Chris daren't move, but it was more out of simply not wanting to than out of caution. Possibly just the shadows from the tree, or so he figured. Despite his dismissiveness, however, he just couldn't shake the feeling that it was more than his imagination.

The shadow mingled with the cradling shade of the machinery and disappeared. No point in worrying about it now.

A slight change in his surroundings prompted Chris's eyes to glance back upwards. Through the glass panes, the navy blue fabric of the night was receding into lighter hues. Sunrise. The rest of the crew would be waking up soon.

Chris took that as his cue to do something productive. Standing up, he headed to the kitchen, not minding all the cold air he let in.