Besides, would it really hurt anything if she did see me again?

~⊰⊱~

I woke up, stretching as I looked around my living room, realizing with a start that it was light outside.

Wait...was it Sunday already?

Had I slept all night?

I never slept until the sun came up.

I sat up slowly, rubbing my hair down as I looked around, wondering if maybe I wasn't really awake.

Maybe I was dreaming.

But no, that couldn't be it, because I didn't dream. 

I had nightmares.

I'd had a nightmare. Or at least, I'd started to.

But then, I heard it. That voice.

The voice that had pulled me out of my nightmare, woke me up, and made me see that I was okay.

Just like it has been for the past few months.

Only...this time, it was different. This time, it wasn't just a voice.

I had to have imagined it. There is no way there was someone standing in front of me.

No. Way.

Because there is no way the face that I saw could have belonged to anyone human.

An angel. He must have been an angel. It was the only thing that made sense, because he looked utterly unreal.

But angels didn't wear black and white checked pajamas. They wore flowing white robes, and looked almost translucent. At least that's what I believed.

It had been mere seconds that I'd seen his face, but no one could have a face that perfect.

Of course, that was simply my opinion. Clearly, we all see people differently, and someone else probably wouldn't think the same as me.

He literally took my breath away.

I don't think he was real though. I think my mind made up a vision of what it believes the voice in my head looks like.

Needless to say, my mind deserved nothing but praise at this point.

But unfortunately, we can't just conjure up the people we want in our lives exactly as we want them to be. Wouldn't the world be perfect if we could.

I sat in my spot on the couch for a few moments, wondering about the voice, wondering where it was coming from.

I hadn't really been keeping track of how long I'd been hearing it. I don't really remember when it started.

The thing is, it was helping me.

That voice, a voice that I wasn't even sure was real, was helping me.

Maybe I should be concerned. Maybe I should be just as worried about a voice that I had no explanation for as I was about the nightmares that haunted me every night.

But that voice was saving me from those nightmares. It was bringing me out of that hell that I'd been sleeping in for years.

I was starting to feel more rested as time went on. I was sleeping longer.

The sun was out, for goodness sake. I couldn't remember the last time I had fallen asleep during the night, and woke up after the sun was up, because it had been years. 12 years, to be exact.

If the voice wasn't real, if it was something I was imagining, I didn't want it to stop. 

There was a tiny part of me, a very tiny part, that thought maybe it was, in fact, real.

It wasn't that I simply heard it. It was something I could feel, at least some of the time. It felt like there was someone right next to me, speaking so quietly it was almost a whisper, but not quite.

 I swear sometimes I could feel someone breathing very close to my ear.

It hadn't been like that at first. In the beginning, the voice woke me, and as soon as I woke and realized what was happening, it was silent, until I fell asleep again.

Now, the voice continued to comfort me, even after I was no longer in the tormented clutches of sleep.

It made sure I was okay, that I was awake and no longer suffering. It stayed until I was in a more peaceful frame of mind, ready to give in to a restful sleep. 

Some were longer than others, but I'd had a period of restful sleep every night since I started hearing him.

Him 

What if he had been real? 

But...how?

Where had he come from? How did he get in here, and where had he gone?

It was impossible. Unless he really had been an angel.

Did I believe in angels? I sighed, having never thought about such a thing. I didn't know if I actually believed in them. 

But I believed that if the man I saw had really been standing there in front of me, he had to have been an angel. 

I hadn't paid attention to people much. When you're a kid, well, why would you? There were so many other things that were interesting to me besides people, or how they looked, what they were doing, how they sounded. 

I was busy riding my bike, and playing with the friends I had, and I already knew what they looked like, so I didn't really have to pay attention to that. 

After the fire, after I'd lost my parents, lost everything I'd ever known, I didn't want anything to do with anything, least of all people.

School was a necessity, and I only did it because I knew I had to, but aside from not being able to stay awake in class, I also couldn't deal with all the pity from classmates and teachers. 

Cyber school wasn't easy either, because I still had to make myself do it, without a teacher over my shoulder urging me on, and also because it was difficult to concentrate when I was always so tired. 

But I managed, and I earned my diploma. That had been, without a doubt, my proudest achievement.

Of course, I knew I needed a job. I didn't want to live with my grandparents forever, and be dependent on them. A job would mean dealing with people. The thought alone almost made me tell my grandfather I wasn't ready yet, and if I did that, I might never be ready.

But the mail room wasn't bad, and I could mostly keep to myself.

So no, I hadn't really paid much attention to people at all. 

I mean, I knew Namjoon was attractive, you'd have to be blind not to see that. There were others, too. Hobi was cute, and the one called Yoongi certainly wasn't bad either. 

But I wasn't looking at them to see if they were attractive. I didn't care. It didn't matter. 

I only knew what they looked like because I worked with them, and occasionally there were times I'd said hi, because they had said hi, and it would have been rude not to. 

I could literally go to the grocery store, and buy a weeks worth of groceries, and have no idea what anyone around me looked like, because I had no reason to care. I used the self checkout, so I didn't even have to converse with a cashier. 

That's how I liked it. 

But I had clearly seen enough people in my lifetime to know that the man I believed I had seen standing in front of me couldn't be real. 

I'd never in my life seen a face so beautiful.

The voice that I'd been hearing every time I fell asleep, that deep, soft, smooth voice that gently pulled me out of my nightmares, had to be a product of my imagination. 

He was all in my head, something I had made up, so that I could have some semblance of a life.

It was working. I felt more rested with each passing week. 

I couldn't really explain why I could sense a presence each time I heard the voice.

Nor could I explain the goosebumps I sometimes got at the feeling of someone's warm breath, softly caressing the skin of my neck.

I'd been doing my best to ignore that, believing it was also in my head, because I was always half asleep when it happened. 

Thinking about it right now was giving me goosebumps, honestly.

I swallowed, standing up from my seat on the couch, looking around the room for any sign that someone else had been here.

Something out of place, footsteps that weren't mine in the fluffy carpet, a fingerprint on the doorknob. 

But nothing was out of place. I couldn't make out any footprints in the carpet, even though I'd literally just walked across it, and why wouldn't there be fingerprints on the doorknob? I touched it every day.

I inhaled, bringing my hands up so that I could rub my temples with each index finger. 

I was getting a headache. I had to stop this. What was wrong with me anyway? I'd been having terrible nightmares for years, to the point that I could barely function. 

Now, they weren't so bad, and getting better as time went on. I could wake from them, and go back to sleep peacefully. 

I should be thankful. 

I didn't need to be analyzing the possible reasons why things seemed to be changing. 

As much as I wanted to, as much as I was curious, what if questioning it made it stop? 

What if the voice went away? 

I knew without a doubt that I didn't want that to happen. 

If the voice suddenly stopped, the nightmares would pull me in. 

I wouldn't wake up, and realize that it wasn't real. 

Everything would go back to how it was before. 

I wasn't going to think about it anymore. I was just going to let it be. 

Right. 

Sure I was.

I drew in a deep breath through my nose, then exhaled slowly. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Especially since I'd woken to a body standing before me...a body that lead to a face that for some reason, I couldn't get out of my mind. 

~⊰⊱~

I'd gone and done my job, staying away from her for a little while. But now I was back.

I hated that I never got a break. The world was very large, and full of people, and it just so happened that there was always, always someone trying to fall asleep somewhere. 

It was always nighttime somewhere. 

Sure, I got a few minutes here and there when it was quiet, and there was no one pulling at me just yet to help them. But it never lasted long. 

I knew that I could wait, and let that pull get strong enough that it was hard to ignore it. But that meant people were suffering. It was hard to know that, and not go to them. 

Seeing her though, being here with her, it made it a bit easier to forget that I had a job I was supposed to be doing. 

That's why I'd come back. I couldn't stop myself, if I was being honest. As soon as I'd felt an ease in the draw of those needing me, I had come right back here. 

She was still asleep, much to my surprise. The sun had just started to rise, and I found myself leaning against the edge of the counter, watching her chest rise and fall evenly, seeing the peacefulness on her face, and it made me smile. 

My eyes stayed on her, and as the minutes ticked by, I thought again about how strange it was that the only way I could help her wasn't by putting her to sleep, but rather, by waking her up. 

My whole reason for existing at this point was to put people to sleep, yet, my reason for even wanting to exist was changing by the hour.

This job, in the beginning, was very rewarding. It had been fun, in a way. Besides being grateful for my life being spared, I enjoyed traveling to all the different places I got to go, and helping people. It gave me a great sense of accomplishment to help the child who was crying over the loss of a beloved pet, or the wife who was missing her husband serving in the military.

I truly was happy that I could help them, even if it was only for a small part of their time of despair. 

But I'd become bored. It had become monotonous, and I felt like I was repeating each day over and over again. 

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do anymore. 

I was grateful for the opportunity to be The Sandman, and without it, I never would have known of her. If I had never gotten sick, and had lived a normal life, I would have already left this world years ago by now. 

But I had found her, and I had tried, unsuccessfully at first, to help her. 

That didn't matter, because I was helping her now. 

But I couldn't help but wonder if maybe it didn't have to be me that helped her, and that thought caused a few more maybes. Maybe it could be anyone. Maybe it could be her guy friend. Maybe he could just as easily wake her up when the nightmares started, and calm her down so she could fall back asleep. 

Maybe I wasn't as necessary as I thought I was.