Things Remembered - Dream 03
Warnings: Hints of domestic violence, mention of neglect, and the sudden dramatic abuse of a bead table.
Dream Effect: Sadness, emotional detachment, anger, and despair.
It's night time. There's a little light in the house, just enough to cast shadows on the walls. You can hear screaming. An angry male voice assaults a more high-pitched feminine shriek. You turn to look, and there's a man right next to you, towering over you. You're sitting on the ground, no taller than the boots that rise up his shins and end just before his knees.
“Daddy.”
You reach for his leg, but he doesn't seem to notice. He steps away from you and keeps yelling at your mother. You start to cry, softly at first. Then you wail until there's no more air left in your lungs. They still won't stop arguing. It's only when you pause to catch your breath that you hear another sound.
Crying. Like an echo of your voice, a high-pitched sound that belongs to a toddler. But it isn't an echo.
You're not the only one crying.
*****
It's between late afternoon and early evening. Cold, unfeeling light shines in through the windows. You're just tall enough to see out of them, but you don't look. There's nothing to see. There's no one else in the main room of your home. The man you knew as your father has been gone for years now, but it seems like much longer.
The voice that used to cry along with yours in the middle of the night has also disappeared, but you can hear someone else crying.
It's your mother. You peer into her room for a moment. Her face is buried in a pillow. She cries like this all the time.
*****
The next setting is an unfamiliar building. You walk out of a hallway and into a small waiting room. Your mother and an old lady dressed in black sit down at a table. On the other side of the room there are little chairs, a few scattered toys, and a table with beads connected to wires.
You don't understand why you're here. This place is strange, the hallways are cold. You lean against the wall and ignore the voice of the old lady when she tells you to sit down. The next thing you hear is the voice of your mother. It's a soft, frightened sound that trembles as she speaks.
“Gonou, why don't you sit down and play with the toys?”
You walk over to the play area, past the chairs, and stop right in front of the table with all of it's obnoxious wires and beads. Then you lift your leg and kick it over. The beads rattle and clank as it falls on it's side. Your mother starts to sob.
“There, there now, Miss Cho,” says the old lady in back.
“He hasn't always been like this.”
“Yes, yes, I know.”
“He started kindergarten this year. His grades were excellent at first. They talked about moving him up a class or two, but then he started talking back to the teachers and fighting with the other students....”
“Don't strain yourself, my dear.”
“I just don't know what to do."
"There, there, now."
"There's something wrong with him!”
Anger boils within your chest at the sound of those words. No, mother... you want to say. There's something wrong with you.
The other parents loved their children. They hugged them, held their hands, and patted them on the head when they came to pick them up from school. She hasn't touched you since your father left. She would bring you half-cooked meals on chipped plates with her trembling hands, and after you were done eating she would tell you to go to your room with her trembling voice.
You think that she's been afraid of you all this time. You wonder if it's because you remind her of your father.
Papers shuffle on the table, and you hear the scrawling sound of a pen. You ignore it. You give a half-hearted kick to the table because no one will listen to you.
“Sign there... and there.” The old lady's voice rumbles, rough with age. “After you pay the fee, he'll be the property of St. Catherine's Orphanage and you can go on home, dear.”
“Thank you so much.”
*****
[Notes: Hakkai's cannon doesn't give this much information about his childhood. All I had to go on were a few facts. His parents divorced when he was three, his father took his sister with him, Gonou was left at an orphanage at five, and the orphanage was run by Catholics. Everything else in this dream is complete speculation on my part, but I think it fits his personality and explains a lot of things.]
[*The "friends" mentioned in the filter would include anyone that Hakkai's talked to more than once. Mostly people he's known for awhile (like Gojyo, Tamaki, Elizabeth, and Alice), but also people he's met recently (like Nozomu).]
Dream Effect: Sadness, emotional detachment, anger, and despair.
It's night time. There's a little light in the house, just enough to cast shadows on the walls. You can hear screaming. An angry male voice assaults a more high-pitched feminine shriek. You turn to look, and there's a man right next to you, towering over you. You're sitting on the ground, no taller than the boots that rise up his shins and end just before his knees.
“Daddy.”
You reach for his leg, but he doesn't seem to notice. He steps away from you and keeps yelling at your mother. You start to cry, softly at first. Then you wail until there's no more air left in your lungs. They still won't stop arguing. It's only when you pause to catch your breath that you hear another sound.
Crying. Like an echo of your voice, a high-pitched sound that belongs to a toddler. But it isn't an echo.
You're not the only one crying.
*****
It's between late afternoon and early evening. Cold, unfeeling light shines in through the windows. You're just tall enough to see out of them, but you don't look. There's nothing to see. There's no one else in the main room of your home. The man you knew as your father has been gone for years now, but it seems like much longer.
The voice that used to cry along with yours in the middle of the night has also disappeared, but you can hear someone else crying.
It's your mother. You peer into her room for a moment. Her face is buried in a pillow. She cries like this all the time.
*****
The next setting is an unfamiliar building. You walk out of a hallway and into a small waiting room. Your mother and an old lady dressed in black sit down at a table. On the other side of the room there are little chairs, a few scattered toys, and a table with beads connected to wires.
You don't understand why you're here. This place is strange, the hallways are cold. You lean against the wall and ignore the voice of the old lady when she tells you to sit down. The next thing you hear is the voice of your mother. It's a soft, frightened sound that trembles as she speaks.
“Gonou, why don't you sit down and play with the toys?”
You walk over to the play area, past the chairs, and stop right in front of the table with all of it's obnoxious wires and beads. Then you lift your leg and kick it over. The beads rattle and clank as it falls on it's side. Your mother starts to sob.
“There, there now, Miss Cho,” says the old lady in back.
“He hasn't always been like this.”
“Yes, yes, I know.”
“He started kindergarten this year. His grades were excellent at first. They talked about moving him up a class or two, but then he started talking back to the teachers and fighting with the other students....”
“Don't strain yourself, my dear.”
“I just don't know what to do."
"There, there, now."
"There's something wrong with him!”
Anger boils within your chest at the sound of those words. No, mother... you want to say. There's something wrong with you.
The other parents loved their children. They hugged them, held their hands, and patted them on the head when they came to pick them up from school. She hasn't touched you since your father left. She would bring you half-cooked meals on chipped plates with her trembling hands, and after you were done eating she would tell you to go to your room with her trembling voice.
You think that she's been afraid of you all this time. You wonder if it's because you remind her of your father.
Papers shuffle on the table, and you hear the scrawling sound of a pen. You ignore it. You give a half-hearted kick to the table because no one will listen to you.
“Sign there... and there.” The old lady's voice rumbles, rough with age. “After you pay the fee, he'll be the property of St. Catherine's Orphanage and you can go on home, dear.”
“Thank you so much.”
*****
[Notes: Hakkai's cannon doesn't give this much information about his childhood. All I had to go on were a few facts. His parents divorced when he was three, his father took his sister with him, Gonou was left at an orphanage at five, and the orphanage was run by Catholics. Everything else in this dream is complete speculation on my part, but I think it fits his personality and explains a lot of things.]
[*The "friends" mentioned in the filter would include anyone that Hakkai's talked to more than once. Mostly people he's known for awhile (like Gojyo, Tamaki, Elizabeth, and Alice), but also people he's met recently (like Nozomu).]