2.1:8H To Sleep/TBS

You’re muse has been without sleep for several days, for some reason. Write a fic about the last hours before they finally do sleep.

I want to believe it's all a dream, that I'm already asleep and that all of the horror we have gone through, are going through is just part of a seemingly never-ending nightmare. Please, don't make this real.

I can hear the music so much more clearly now, it calls to me as I sit here in the dust, and blood of those whose lives have already been taken. Can't you hear it? It sounds like angels calling me and I have to wonder if it means my time is almost here. I have to make my peace, I have to ask for forgiveness for all the years I turned my back on the church, turned my back on God. I have to make it right if I want to be reunited with Danijela and our children.

It's fear that drives me, that finds the strength in my exhausted limbs to force me back to my knees, fear that makes me once more bow my head in prayer, that forces words from my dry and cracked lips.

"Oce nas, koji jesi na nebesima,
sveti se ime tvoje...
dodi kraljevstovo tvoje,
budi volja tvoja...

Kako na nebu tako tako i na zemlji.
Kruh nas svagdanji daj nam danas...

I otpusti nam duge nase
kado i mi otpustamo deznecima
nasim...

I ne uvedi nas u napast,
nego izbavi nas od zia."

It's hard for me to understand all that is happening, as they grab me I'm sure it's to take me to the tent where all but Patrique met their deaths, but we don't go there. Instead, I find myself thrown into a truck where other dead already rest. The smell, oh God, the putrid smell of death is everywhere, and all I can do is lay there on top of the bodies, afraid to move, afraid to attract anymore attention. I can hear their voices around me now, and soon, other bodies are thrown into the truck, I'm afraid the weight of them will suffocate me, and I wonder what is the worst kind of death.

Suddenly we're moving, I don't understand, why not kill me where everyone else died? The motion of the truck could easily lull me to sleep if not for the stench from those all around me. Gasoline and exhaust fumes mingling with the over-powering smells coming off the bodies, sweat, urine, feces, but none more powerful then the blood as it leeches into my clothing wrapping itself around me until it claims me as it has it's victims.

When at long last the truck grinds to a halt I can only imagine that my time of death has finally come and I whisper again those silent prayers. I ask for forgiveness, begging God to allow me to find my way to those who joined him so many years before as hands grab at my clothing and pull me off the bodies. Squeezing my eyes closed, I pray that my death comes quickly but, instead of a bullet I find myself landing with a hard thud on the ground, and as I dare open my eyes again I find myself in the darkness of a small hut.

I'm beyond understanding, and when Sakima's voice whispers to me in my ear, and coaxes me to sip brackish water I do so willingly before giving in and allowing my eyes once again to slowly close. Her words are so quiet, and as she reassures me that safety is finally ours. I want to believe her, finally, at long last I can surrender to the sleep I have been denied. Sleep, as I edge closer to it I can't help but pray that when I wake I'll find that all of this has been just a dream...please, let it be just a dream...

(Luka's prayer is "The Lord's Prayer")