Dream 002 || we're rotten fruit | we're damaged goods
In the dream, she didn't even have a name. More striking, perhaps, is that she didn't even have a face. A blank canvas, featureless, eerie, like the dolls used for drawing models.
She was another way, a new way, to pass the time. Another adventure of the moment.
She was his first, even though he was really too young for a first. But then again, he was really too young for a lot of things he'd already done, seen, lived. He was too young to have watched someone die someone he loved. He was too young to have killed, hunted, destroyed. Too young to have grown so cold.
He felt cold in the dream, even against her nameless, faceless heat, as she pressed and undressed and made it increasingly obvious he wasn't her first. She probably had no idea how old he actually was. He looked older. No, not even that - he was older, in so many ways other than years, and that's what people tended to see.
She muttered words of affection that he mimicked, parroted, picking up the rules of the game as it progressed.
It didn't sink in until she was curled against him afterward, still saying those things in the sudden light of morning, that he realized she hadn't been playing the same game he had. She'd been playing for keeps.
There was no keeping him. There was nothing to keep. He'd never say those words and mean them. He'd never need this, need her, need anyone. He wouldn't be there when she woke again, and he wouldn't call.
He couldn't love her.
When she realized this, when it struck home that his words were hollow, the mood shifted; she started banging on his chest with both fists, in anger and frustration. She was probably saying something, as well, but her words didn't reach him. She couldn't speak without a mouth anyways, he realized, in the back of his mind.
He was surprised when the hairline cracks began to run across his chest, though her expressionless face didn't change. He grabbed her wrists, tried to stop her, but she pounded harder, determined to get to what he was hiding in there.
And then, with the loudest crack yet, the pieces caved in, with a sound like glass shattering, and he found himself staring down in horror at the vacant cavity within, surrounded by jagged edges.
There was nothing there for her to even find.
"I told you," he hears himself say.
§
[Jace's body betrays a shudder against the abruptness of waking. He takes a few breaths, trying to push the images from his mind. After all, he isn't sure which is worse: back then, when he didn't believe himself capable of love, or now, when he can feel it like a tangible, writhing thing inside of him, trying to claw its way out.]
[There's a part of him that wants nothing more than to feel that empty again.]
[He clicks off the Dreamberry decisively]
She was another way, a new way, to pass the time. Another adventure of the moment.
She was his first, even though he was really too young for a first. But then again, he was really too young for a lot of things he'd already done, seen, lived. He was too young to have watched someone die someone he loved. He was too young to have killed, hunted, destroyed. Too young to have grown so cold.
He felt cold in the dream, even against her nameless, faceless heat, as she pressed and undressed and made it increasingly obvious he wasn't her first. She probably had no idea how old he actually was. He looked older. No, not even that - he was older, in so many ways other than years, and that's what people tended to see.
She muttered words of affection that he mimicked, parroted, picking up the rules of the game as it progressed.
It didn't sink in until she was curled against him afterward, still saying those things in the sudden light of morning, that he realized she hadn't been playing the same game he had. She'd been playing for keeps.
There was no keeping him. There was nothing to keep. He'd never say those words and mean them. He'd never need this, need her, need anyone. He wouldn't be there when she woke again, and he wouldn't call.
He couldn't love her.
When she realized this, when it struck home that his words were hollow, the mood shifted; she started banging on his chest with both fists, in anger and frustration. She was probably saying something, as well, but her words didn't reach him. She couldn't speak without a mouth anyways, he realized, in the back of his mind.
He was surprised when the hairline cracks began to run across his chest, though her expressionless face didn't change. He grabbed her wrists, tried to stop her, but she pounded harder, determined to get to what he was hiding in there.
And then, with the loudest crack yet, the pieces caved in, with a sound like glass shattering, and he found himself staring down in horror at the vacant cavity within, surrounded by jagged edges.
There was nothing there for her to even find.
"I told you," he hears himself say.
§
[Jace's body betrays a shudder against the abruptness of waking. He takes a few breaths, trying to push the images from his mind. After all, he isn't sure which is worse: back then, when he didn't believe himself capable of love, or now, when he can feel it like a tangible, writhing thing inside of him, trying to claw its way out.]
[There's a part of him that wants nothing more than to feel that empty again.]
[He clicks off the Dreamberry decisively]