[Week 23 | Day 4] (Dream) Crystalline dreams shatter at your feet
There is nothing, nothing at all, save an oppressive darkness - the kind that seeps into the marrow, steals your breath and leaves you gaping, scrambling for air, panic-filled eyes wide as you stand in a frozen stasis.
And then the sound of feet, the echoing resonance of water splashed with each step as you run and run and run, never looking back, not daring even a peek for fear of what you’ll find, the only sound that of your breath, each shallow, labored, as if you’ve been sprinting this marathon for a small eternity, with no sign of stopping-
- until you slam full tilt into a wall.
Familiar stone and mortar, stained crimson, so far as the eye can see.
You spin away, unable to face this once more, not now, not when he’s here, somewhere, you just have to find him.
Only you don’t find him. You stumble and you fall and as you try to push yourself up once again, try to force yourself to climb your mountain of sin once more for him…
A hand.
Long and slender, powerful.
It lifts you up, and with it, your eyes raise to see a man. Regal and resplendent, tawny eyes filled with something you don’t recognize. Something that strikes a muted fear in your heart.
Kindness
(But you can still hear it, those steps, running, running, running, splashing across the surface in a desperate attempt to flee.)
You take that hand and like a lock to your key, something within is branded. Condemned as image after image flashes:
This man, wrapping gentle arms around your desolate form, offering you the first gentle touch since they pulled His hand from yours.
Those strong hands carefully cutting your hair, braiding the long, broken strands and setting them within the stone on your beloved twin’s chest.
Sealing your twin in a spell of spun crystal, locking you both in a reflected stasis.
Setting tome after tome, book after book before you, teaching you the language, teaching and testing your new knowledge as you soak up spell after spell like a dying man gulps down water.
Those hands, soothing over flaxen locks night after night, holding the cup to your mouth after you've screamed and screamed and screamed a single name over and again through your nightmares, covering your slight form as you sleep fitfully on the edge of the pool, where you spent your evening, every evening, reading your studies aloud to a twin that had no hope of hearing.
His smile, his encouragement through your first few failed attempts at making your lips curve up in such an unfamiliar way that it physically hurts.
That look, the one he thinks was hidden, of mourning regret when he sees you've realize the false smile is capable of holding others at bay.
The consummate skill and grace you try to emulate with staff and sword and bow as His Magesty, the King, personally sees to training you himself, his touch always firmly gentle as he corrects stance and form.
The bright flash-bang of a spell meant for your savior, blocked by your own lithe form even as the magic flies from your fingertips in a deadly, electric arc, follows the path of the spell that nearly kills you back across the battlefield to kill not only the mage that had foolishly dared attack your king directly… but nearly half their army as your own spell decimates their ranks, leaves their side to rain exploded earth and blood and bodies and you smile through his admonishments.
His gentle teasing as you wake from your first hangover.
The look of pride as he watches you step down from the Royal Dais and stride through the throngs of nobles, offering the perfect smile and nod, until you stand before her, the village girl that taught you to smile, and later to laugh, now being skillfully harassed by those foolish courtesans that find her wanting, silenced with shock when the first person you ever leave the dais for is a commoner.
Shocked even more when you dance the night away with her, and only her, under the indulgent eye of your king.
Your own numb shock to see her lying there, in a pool of her own blood, frozen to the snowy path, surrounded by the corpses of the now slaughtered village you’d saved from an avalanche so many years ago.
…that soul-wrenching despair that cuts you down from that illusion of ‘safe’ and ‘home’ and ‘love’ when you sprint through the streets and castle corridors, dead bodies strewn about, bloodied and mutilated while you were gone to investigate a threat - only to find the threat standing in the throne room, wearing the face of your beloved King. Blood-splattered and mad, he’s the third ruler your influence has driven to insanity, the first you truly loved and thought that love returned.
Until all that is left is a hollow, empty excuse of a being, all traces of hope gone as clashing magics spark and collide in a chaotic war between you two, resignation to the fate that you truly are a cursed being, only capable of bringing death and destruction and despair to those that dare reach out to you.
And despite the promise to protect this country from every threat, you realize that it was a promise that you could never have kept… because you are the threat. You are the one that plunged this beloved leader, your king, your father into a madness you could not cure. And so, with the last traces of your perceived humanity… you seal him in a spell, unable to kill him for your own mistakes, and pray that this rest will restore him back to the gentle soul he’d once been.
And you hope, as you stare at the still form of your beloved twin, your other half, that you find the way to give him his life back before His Majesty wakes… Because in your heart of hearts, you believe that he has the power to heal the hurts you’ve caused. That this life you’ve robbed him of will correct itself, once the true owner is given back what you’ve so selfishly stolen.
[ The dream fades, yet Yuui does not awaken. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t move at all, save for a slight twitch, a subtle tension that threads through his frame before it relaxes once again. Only once that tension fades does he reach out a hand, slip it out instinctively to curl around Fai’s middle, draw his twin close in slumber.]