UPDATE 22/03/2019: A cover image has recently been added to this fic, made as a gift by Zojak. Once more, I can't thank you enough for taking time out to make this for me. I really love how it turned out. Anyway, on with the show.

"Ah! ...ugh, not again..."

Chase hadn't been sleeping at all well the past couple of nights. Ever since he had that stupid dream of him being unable to save Ryder from dying in action and his funeral being held, he'd been sleeping far more lightly. Even though it came about a week ago, he was still suffering aftershocks in the form of continued night terrors. Different variations and continuations on the same dream. The other pups noted that he'd never looked more vulnerable before or since the nightmare. He'd been praying that he wouldn't be woken up by every little jolt or take an age to fall asleep for about a week now, but this had regrettably not come to pass. He rested his head on his paws and stared into space.

"When will these thoughts go away? The others can't see me waking up from every bump in the night..." he thought.

The images from the nightmare flashed through his head again. Him completely failing to help Ryder before the branch he clung to gave way completely. His friends howling and wailing in utter despair when receiving the news. His owner laying in a coffin. Mayor Goodway's speech to the city. It all seemed so real. Chase cringed. Despite everything, he'd already had the misfortune of the others seeing their second-in-command break down crying like a helpless puppy. When Chase didn't join them at breakfast, they all grew suspicious and looked for him, only to find him sobbing in his house. They tried to help by fetching Ryder to come check on him, but they only made it worse as Chase's emotional defenses crumbled at the sight of his owner, and he leapt into his arms, crying harder than ever. Truly a haunting sight the pups wouldn't be forgetting any time soon.

He was in no hurry for them to see him anywhere close to that state again. Chase ceased cringing at the memories of the awful dream and the breakdown that followed and sighed heavily. Realising he wouldn't get back to sleep any time soon, he got up, stretched himself out, and went for a walk around the bays.

The first thing he noticed was Marshall. Or rather, the lack of Marshall. The thought of him having gone to the bathroom was swiftly eradicated when Chase looked over to see their usual bushes devoid of any presence at all.

"That's weird. Is he OK?" Chase thought.

Since Ryder was nowhere to be found, and the rest of the pups remained sound asleep, he decided to look for him, with the thought that it was probably nothing at the front of his mind. But at the back, the uncomfortable thought of something bad happening took root.

Doing his best not to disturb anyone, the door to the Lookout slowly slid open into total darkness. He looked left. Nothing. He looked right. Nothing. Inky blackness was all that surrounded him. As the door slid closed behind him, a strange sound greeted his ears. It didn't sound like an intruder, nor did it sound like any footsteps. It sounded like a voice. In fact, it sounded like...

"...crying?" Chase thought to himself.

Sniffles and sobs filled the air in the darkness, and as Chase tuned his hearing to track its location, the voice sounded familiar. He looked for the light switch on the floor near the TV, and as he found it and turned it on, the room illuminated with the white glow of a nearby standing lamp cutting through the darkness, and revealing something Chase was not expecting in the slightest.

"Marshall?"

If he hadn't just been woken up, Chase would swear that he was still dreaming. He shook his head around to see if he was just tired. But no, what he saw before him was very much real, much to his shock. Marshall, his eternally-cheerful baby brother. Marshall, the silly, kindhearted klutz. Collapsed in the corner sobbing his eyes out. As he heard his name, Marshall stared up at Chase, with red eyes and a coat stained with tears. Chase's heart dropped into his stomach.

"Marshall, what's wrong?" he asked, more concerned than he had been in a long time.

As Chase drew near, however, Marshall flinched away into the corner. It took a lot to upset Chase, but seeing his lifelong friend flinch away from him as if he was about to tear him to pieces, staring at him with a face of tearful fright felt like a knife to the heart.

"Marshall, did something happen?" Chase asked again, attempting to shrug off what just happened.

"...d-d... please don't hurt me..." Marshall sobbed.

Chase froze. What did he just say? "Hurt?! Wha- why- wh-what are you talking about?!" Chase started to wonder if this was an imposter lying before him.

"Marshall, why in the heck would I hurt you?" He moved in closer and laid down beside him. He wasn't taking 'no' for an answer. "Did something happen to you? Are you injured?"

Chase made sure that Marshall wouldn't pull away so easily by wrapping his arms around him. He'd never seen Marshall so distressed and upset before. Unless he was flying or had to get a shot, barely anything could drag him down. He'd started to worry if someone else had somehow caused this. After a long pause and feeble attempt by Marshall to pull away, he finally choked out some more words.

"...Chase... you... you and... the others... d-do... do you... h-h-hate... me?" Those last two words were less spoken and more squeaked. Chase grew even more confused and alarmed.

"Hate you?! Wh-what in the world would make you think that?!" Chase asked, his voice raising in pitch and volume.

"...I... had a... a-a... nightmare..." Marshall continued through his tears.

Chase sighed. "Another nightmare? Ugh, we just had me and Rocky, now Marshall, too? Is there something in our food?" he thought. Chase was still reeling from the effects of his nightmare, but it wasn't long after that that they had another case of bad dreams.

Rocky, too, had suffered a seriously nasty dream a couple of nights prior. Almost prophetically, it was about Marshall. But this one was different. Rather than dying in action, he saw Marshall turned against them. More specifically, Marshall suffered an accident which destroyed his memory, leaving him amnesiac, and a ripe target for Humdinger to kidnap and brainwash, feeding him lies about the Paw Patrol and turning Marshall to hating the rest of them. Rocky only mentioned that Humdinger took over the city with Marshall's help and illegalised the Paw Patrol, disbanding and scattering them for good.

Poor Rocky was a mess for the rest of the day after that. Ryder and Marshall both sat with him for hours, telling him that Humdinger wasn't THAT smart or evil, and even if he was and that came to pass, he wouldn't be able to enjoy his victory for very long. After so long together, no-one would take that sort of thing lying down, least of all Ryder. Despite this, Rocky still hesitated to leave Marshall's side for the last couple of days. The healing from a nightmare like that was still a work in progress. So was Chase's, despite what he wanted everyone else to think. Despite Ryder's insistence that him being K.I.A was never going to happen, and that they were all too safety-conscious for that, Chase could never shake the feeling of mortality behind their work since then. Now it looked like there was going to be a third case of nightmarish trauma to add to the pile.

"...Ch-chase?" came the voice next to him. Like a dog-whistle being blown in his ear, Chase snapped back to reality. "Ah! S-sorry!" he hastily apologised. He cursed himself internally. His best friend was a sobbing wreck and he was spacing out?! Getting his mind back to the fear at hand, Chase went back to being ready to listen.

"What nightmare could you have had to get you like this? You can tell me." Chase whispered.

Those last four words were something that Marshall desperately needed to hear. With a sniffle, Marshall went on. "O...OK... I-I'll try..."

"Chase... I dreamed... that we had a fight... about something..."

Chase noted that it made sense that Marshall would dream about something like that. Since the incident of him leaving the Paw Patrol for a little while, Chase had wondered if his friend was more insecure than he was letting on.

"Do you remember what it was about?" Chase whispered.

"N-n... no..." Marshall sniffed. "B-b-but... it was... loud... and... ugly..." His crying started to get worse. How could this be causing him to act like this, though? "And... and... and... a-and..." Uh-oh. It looked this pot was about to boil over. But in this case, putting a lid on it would only make things worse.

"Everyone attacked me! You, Ryder, everyone! You all ran at me and beat me up!" Marshall sobbed loudly. Chase stared at him in shock.

"What?! That's... so awful! Why would we do that?!" Chase said in fright.

"I don't know! B-b-but I remember being bitten... kicked... stomped on... torn at... e-e-e-e-everything!"

Marshall was in very obvious pain. Chase hugged him tighter. It was one thing to dream about having Ryder die. It was another thing to dream about Marshall hating you while not even remembering who you are. But dreaming about having all of your friends turn on you and attack you? Chase shivered as the scenario played out in his head.

"All of you... I-I-I-I remember... Y-y-you... you all... yelled about... how I w-w-w-was... was-"

Marshall shook violently, clearly about to erupt again. Chase braced himself.

"USELESS! CLUMSY! ANNOYING! STUPID!" he screamed these words as loudly as he could, slamming his paw into the ground on each one. They were clearly tearing at his very soul.

Chase's jaw was hanging wide open. Simply thinking that comments they made about a cartoon villain were about him drove Marshall away. But hearing words like that from the ones who loved him? Chase couldn't even find the words to reply. "Then you all kicked me out of the Paw Patrol! You threw me into the street and just... left me to die!" Chase couldn't help but feel horrible. Obviously, it was a dream and they'd never do that in real life, but he still felt unbelievably guilty. He felt like he had a role to play, even though the incident was literally all in his friend's head. As Marshall heaved ugly, uneven sobs, Chase hugged him tighter still, rubbing his side for good measure.

"No-one deserves a dream like that." Chase thought. "Not even the likes of Humdinger and Sweetie."

He tried to calm the sobbing dalmatian to the best of his ability, but deep down, the feeling lingered that what he was doing wouldn't work.

Finally, Chase spoke up. "D-did... you wake up after that?"

"Y-y-y... Y-yeah... I-I-I... I did..."

"Marshall, you need to speak to Ryder... That kind of dream could be dangerous... for you to have... You saw what that kind of dream did to me and Rocky." Chase told him, tearing up a little himself.

"I... know... b-b-but... I-I..." Marshall sobbed. "I can't help... but think that... some of it... was true..."

Those words caused something to break inside of Chase. "Wh-?! Wha-?! Wh-wh-wh-?!" he stammered in response. Marshall's words caught him completely off-guard, striking him dumb.

"I'm clumsy! I fall off my ladder! I need to be rescued all the time!" Marshall yelled, before breaking down again. "Deep down... I kn-know... I-I'm... just... a useless klutz... y-you all... probably th-think... y-y-y... you'd... be... better... off without me-"

"NO!" Chase screamed, startling Marshall into looking right at him.

"That's insane! How long has the Paw Patrol been together now?! Do you really think we'd turn on you like that after one fight?! That we'd do... THAT?!"

By now, the volume of his voice was the last thing on Chase's mind, as was the fact that he too was breaking down in tears.

"We all have flaws and none of us care about them! We all love each other! Nobody minds rescuing anyone! We'd all be there for each other in a heartbeat! That includes you! How could you dream about something so awful?!"

He hadn't quite noticed, but Marshall was starting to break down further. Chase's yelling wasn't helping, but he was deeply hurt by the fact a lifelong friend could not only dream about him doing something like that to them, but believe that what he was told in said dream could be true.

As Chase ran out of steam, he finally noticed his own broken sobbing. He squeezed Marshall like he was about to fade away in his arms.

"...Marshall... don't you EVER think that might be even a little true... we're a family... right...? Just imagine... how the others would... feel..." Chase sobbed.

These words only served to deepen Marshall's wounds, reducing him to despondent wailing. As much as Chase was trying to help, for once his emotions had completely run away with him. A friend in despair like this wasn't something he was experienced with. Cats in trees he could handle. Tracking people down wasn't a problem. Helping Adventure Bay out of a jam was nothing to him. But a friend completely and utterly breaking apart was beyond even him. He may have been there for a crying Rocky, but since the others had already made efforts to cheer him up by that point, he was nowhere near the level that poor Marshall was at now.

"...Chase? ...Marshall?"

The sobbing of the two was suddenly broken by a voice. Having been woken up by the two's screaming and crying, Ryder stood to the side of the elevator brandishing a flashlight, eyes wide. In all his years leading the Paw Patrol, he'd never seen anything quite like this. One of his pups collapsed bawling on the floor in the corner of a dark room, barely able to look at him, with a wailing dalmatian clinging to him for dear life.

Ugh... Jeez, have I been nervous in uploading this. Not only is this the very first piece of fiction I've ever dared to write and put into the public eye, but it's for a fandom that I'm actually kind of self-conscious about being a member of (I mean, let's face it, the fact that I've taken a liking to a show for preschoolers isn't exactly something you discuss at the dinner table). Everyone has to face their fears sometime, I guess.

At any rate, I suppose I should forewarn you that this is going to be a bit of a long one. I got a surprising amount of mileage out of writing this. Maybe because Marshall's my favorite character? Because I tend to ramble? Because I didn't think there were enough fluff fics about him and was determined to balance things out? Who knows.

I'd like to say "please go gentle" since this my first time, but obviously that's not a good attitude to take, is it? I suppose we'll see how this goes. There's a first time for everything after all. I intend to update this fic at a rate of one chapter a day, real life permitting. Yes, I wrote this all in advance. I'm not a fan of loose-ends and inconsistent schedules, after all. Anyway, I do hope that people enjoy this fic all the same. Hopefully you'll stick with it. Thanks for listening and goodnight.