A/N- I really should explain a little before you read this. Yes, it is a dream sequence, but that's not what it was originally. Originally it was an AMV that was lodged in my head to the tune of Going Down in Flames by 3 Doors Down. But it was driving my nuts as I couldn't show anyone, so I decided to get it out of my head. And writing it as a dream sequence was the only way I knew how. So, yes, I know it makes no sense. It's not supposed to. It will eventually go into an original fiction piece I'm working on with some friends, where it will fit nicely.

Anyway, I felt I needed to explain that. And mostly I'm looking for input as to the imagery of the piece. So, I'm done rambling now and enjoy.

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Sneakered feet pounded the pavement; carrying the slight child blindly past the cold and forbidding government edifices she despised so. Twelve-year-old Meike did not see where she ran, did not hear anything, she was so fixed on her most immediate goal: the Brandenburg Gate, and she was nearly there.

Arrowing straight for the centermost arch her heart soared. Twenty feet ahead was Potsdammer Platz, and freedom. Without slowing she flung herself through the arch.

“Meike!”

Her father’s furious holler cut through her elation. Instinctively she halted, midway through the arch, and turned to face her irate family. Anger, white hot and uncontrollable, welled up from within when she saw that not only had her tyrannical father and her mother come to collect their errant girl-child, but all five of her good neo-nazi, fascist brothers had come as well.

Felix— her oldest brother—, a vision of the Fuhrer’s Aryan ideal, marched toward her, arm outstretched, disgust radiating from his perfect eyes. Her father was shouting at her, his pale skin ruddy in the twilight, but she couldn’t hear him. A guitar started playing in her head; it wasn’t something Meike knew, but it carried enough emotion to match her anger.

An arm gesture and a shout were all it took to set her family aback. Which she wasted no time in taking advantage of to tell them everything she thought. What she screamed and ranted while the rest of the Wahlendorff clan looked on, momentarily non-plussed, Meike did not know. As she began screaming, lyrics to the song she heard started, lyrics that matched what she felt very well.

“Don’t tell me what to think

‘Cuz I don’t care this time

Don’t tell me what to believe

‘Cuz you won’t be there

To catch me when I fall

But you’ll need me when I’m not here at all

Miss me when I’m gone, again”

Meike drew strength and resolve from the music, allowing it to fuel her resentment towards her family. She still could not say what it was she was yelling, for all she knew it could have been the lyrics. The music grew stronger in her head and as the verse came to a close she was satisfied, done. Meike was through with Berlin, finished with East Germany. She was ready to be gone.

She took a step back.

But the music had her. Bright yellow and orange flames roared up around her, obliterating all sight and sound, save the song. Then suddenly the ground gave way beneath her and Meike fell backward through the sidewalk, plunging deeper into the fire.

As she fell the chorus played.

“I’m going down in flames

I’m falling into this again

Yeah, I’m going down in flames

I’m falling into this, oh no”

Panicking, little Meike screwed her green eyes shut tight.

The sudden sensation of something beneath her again caused Meike’s eyes to fly open. Her heart raced as she sat bolt upright. It was a bed she had landed on, a very bumpy, uncomfortable bed. And right away she knew, she was in Berlin no longer.

Instead, the dim, gray-green interior of a semi cab was her surroundings. A grizzled Chinese man was at the wheel; he glanced back at her when she started up. The man said something to her, but she didn’t catch it. The music was as strong as ever, and something else had caught her eye.

Meike stared dumbly out the windshield. There was nothing outside; no town, no flora, no fauna, absolutely no signs of life, just a never-ending expanse of straight road, bordered on either side by sere grass. She could not tear herself away from the view. Meike knew they were moving, she could feel the semi hitting flaws in the asphalt, but the scenery was so completely unchanging that it appeared that they were stopped. The road went on forever.

Watching that expanse of nothingness, a terror built up inside the twelve-year-old. The shock of not knowing where she was, and the absence of anything familiar were overwhelming. Meike shuffled back on the bed until the driver’s head obscured that awful view.

Willing with all her might to be elsewhere, Meike shut her green eyes.

“Don’t tell me how life is

‘Cuz I don’t really wanna know

Don’t tell me how this game ends

‘Cuz we’ll just see how it goes

Catch me when I fall

Or you’ll need me when I’m not here at all

Miss me when I’m gone, again

Yeah-ee-yeah”

Meike opened her eyes. She hadn’t gone anywhere; she was still standing under the arch. And she was yelling at her family again. Her father had said something and it had her more incensed than ever.

Little Meike cut loose on her family. She screamed aloud every wrong, every slight, and every abuse done to her. She screamed her disdain and loathing for her family’s bigoted beliefs. She loosed all her feelings, wanting nothing more than to be free of them forever.

It took no more than that space of half a minute, and her family was, for once, shocked into silence. Meike snatched at the opportunity to take her leave of them for good, and took another step back.

“I’m going down in flames

I’m falling into this again

Yeah, I’m going down in flames

I’m falling into this again”

Once again Meike was startled when flames roared up around her and she fell back through the ground into yet more fire. She couldn’t feel, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear; the only things around her were the music and the fire. She did the only thing she could and closed her eyes.

Her feet finding solid ground, Meike opened her eyes again. She was standing in a smoky, dingy corner of a dining hall, wearing a threadbare gray work robe, her ash-blond curls pulled back away from her face. The place, wherever she was, smelled strongly of incense and was packed with white and cream robed Chinese men.

Meike jumped and spun around quickly when someone grabbed her shoulder. A Chinese girl not much older than herself, also attired in threadbare robes, glowered at her and shoved a stack of plates into her hands. The girl barked something to Meike in Chinese, which she belatedly realized she understood. Then the girl stalked off back through a door, leaving Meike to her task: to distribute the clean plates to those who needed them and to collect the dirty and discarded ones and return them to the kitchen for cleaning.

Timidly, she got to it. She made her way slowly around the crowded room, silently offering to anyone she thought needed one. When the clean stack was gone Meike made a second circuit of the hall, piling dirty plates in her arms. It was hard work, and she felt very out of place, being the only European in the room.

When she came upon a table of acolytes of some religious order, trouble started.

The acolytes, all of whom were Chinese and male, all leered at her, calling out insults. Meike did her best to ignore them as she leaned around the boys to pick up used plates— because they wouldn’t hand them to her— but she couldn’t keep an embarrassed flush from her cheeks. As she was reaching for the last plate, on acolyte kicked lightly at the back of her knee. It gave way under her weight and Meike fell to the floor, the plates crashing down around her. The acolytes laughed loudly at her expense, and tears sprang into her eyes.

Fighting hard, and rapidly losing the battle against tears, Meike picked herself up stiffly, but proudly, from the floor. From beneath the din of the dining hall the music started to swell again, the emotion and ferocity growing. With the acolyte’s treatment of her, she had very nearly forgotten about it, and now it brought despair with the anger. She hated this place, she wanted out!

Meike’s emotions, and the music, reached its peak, and Meike shut her eyes.

“I’m going down in flames

I’m falling into this again

Yeah, I’m going down in flames

I’m falling into this again”

This time there was no fire, no falling through the ground. Just the lyrics and the music. Startled, Meike’s eyes flew open, expecting to see the acolytes still laughing.

But she was no longer in the dining hall. No, now she was in the middle of a crowded corridor, full of acolytes, acolytes just like her. Now she was wearing the cream garb of one, her arms full of scrolls and books of Buddhist teachings.

Even more perplexed than ever, she glanced around the hallway. The other acolytes, all of whom were still all male and Chinese, glared at her for just standing in the middle of the hall, making an effective road block of herself, but no one was overly hostile to her.

Tentatively, she began making her way with the flow of traffic.

But then, the acolyte who had kicked her knees out from under her passed her, sneering. His toadies moved quickly to surround her in the corridor. Meike panicked and tried to force her way out the back of the group, but they closed ranks around her. She ignored them as best as she could, until they started shoving her. In no time the hallway had turned into a game of Meike pinball. Her books and scrolls scattered everywhere and hands pushed her all across the circle.

Finally, the lead bully joined into the fray. When it was his turn, he shoved her so hard she knocked into another tormentor with enough force to topple him over, and send her out into the now empty corridor. Meike managed to use her momentum to escape. She ran blindly down the halls, turning this way and that.

But her flight was abruptly halted when she collided with something rather large and solid. Bouncing back and landing in a heap on the floor, Meike looked up and gasped. She had just plowed into the Genjo Sanzo, head of this Buddhist sect.

Horrified, she started up into his stern features, the music pressing down on her.

“I’m falling down”

As the last line of the song faded, Meike screwed her eyes shut tight. She waited a second, then opened them on the last echoes of the melody. But she was still in the temple, still in a heap on the floor. And the Sanzo was still standing over her, but now he was smiling.