[Fanfiction]: And Yet I Scream, Chapter 02 (Moonchild)
Title: And Yet I Scream
Part: 2 / ?
Warnings: angst
Rating: R
Pairings: hints of Kei/Sho and Kei/Yi-Che
Disclaimer: Moonchild does not belong to, nor do its characters or anything else related to the movie. I make no profit out of this story, it is written merely for fun and entertainment of other fans. Yadda yadda.
Summary: Sleep only brings nightmares, jumbled images and feelings.
AYIS Chapter 00: Prologue
AYIS Chapter 01: Please
And Yet I Scream
Chapter 02: Dreams
~*~
It is a well known fact that the human body has some sort of inner clock. Wenn it grows dark outside, your body will tell you it is time to go to bed. In summer, when the days are longer, you will probably not feel as tired as in winter, when it gets dark so much earlier. Vampires are the same, only reversed, of course. The reason I sleep during the day and am awake at nighttime is not just my vulnerability towards sunlight. When the sun rises, I simply grow tired.
There is no sunrise in my tomb far beneath the earth.
I have no way to judge the passing of time. Yes, occasionally I will feel fatigue creeping into my body, dragging me into uncomfortable sleep, my whole figure twisted and cramped due to the tiny room that I have left in between solid stone. But I know I can't rely on my body to know the difference between day and night when I am surrounded by eternal darkness. My senses keep trying to convince me that since it's dark I ought to stay awake.
The natural cycle of sleeping and waking is disrupted down here, and I have no way of judging the passage of time. How long have I been here?
Hours? Days?
It could be weeks for all I know. I don't know how long I sleep, when exhaustion claims me, for without feeding and trapped beneath the earth sleep brings no rest for me.
Sleep only brings nightmares, jumbled images and feelings.
When I close my eyes, I see the dead eyes of all victims, hear their desperate sobs and feel their blood running down my tongue, carrying their hopes and wishes and turning them ashen in my mouth. I see Luka die. I watch Sho, I watch Yi-Che and endure the horrible pain of feeling the loss that is bound to happen, destined to happen, because I am a vampire and no matter who holds my heart, they will not make it beat. It will always be a dead weight in my chest, a place of darkness and regret; the graveyards for my feelings. I feel a pillar of stone collapsing on top of me, snapping my spine and pinning me onto the collapsing floor. Sometimes I hear Sho screaming something that sounds like my name. Always, though, I am conscious of dreaming. Trapped in my own body I see my own past actions unfold, unable to change the events no matter how much I long for it.
The nightmarish visions of killing and death, slaughter and fading life envelope me like silk at first, soft fabric on my naked skin, black on white. However, the silk changes with each face flashing before my eyes, with each life I take although I am begging with myself to stop, with each last human breath ghosting over my cheek and each last drop of blood burning down my throat like acid. The silk changes and becomes a wire, and the wire cuts deep. I stare down at my body and I want to scream, but I can't because this is not real and my nightmares trap me inside myself just as I am trapped beneath the earth. I see my flesh being cut open by the wire. Blood so dark it seems black seeps from the wounds, cold and thick and dead, and stains my pale limbs. I can see the wires cutting ever deeper, I can feel them tightening, forcing themselves deeper into my body, under my skin and towards my bones. And as my wounds close, the wire cuts deeper, becoming a part of myself. I can feel it moving through me, cutting and hurting, too much and never enough, painful and yet too soft, punishment dealt without the visciousness I would inflict upon myself given the chance. I am being torn apart from the inside, and yet I stand in perfect silence. My suffering takes place on the inside and no one who looks my way would know my pain, for this is how it should be. My eyes are wide and my mouth is open, yet I cannot scream, and that is possibly the worst part of this dream.
In my dream, I know that I should stay with Luka. Burn by his side, ending the life that should have ended ages ago when I fell and broke and he could not let me go. In my dream, I always try to make my legs move, but they never carry me towards him. As I stand in the shadows and watch him burn, I fight for control over the events unfolding. I wish to joing him, to move, to call out to him once more, to join in his song and his sorrow and his death. But nothing happens, I just stand in place as long as the ever approaching dawn will allow me to, and then I turn and run, loathing my cowardice and screaming my throat raw with loss and regret.
In my dream I fight to open my mouth, to interrupt Sho and Yi-Che as she tends to his wounds. I yearn to run my tongue over the blood oozing from his wound, I yearn to feel her hands on my cold skin, I yearn for a human's touch to warm me and ease my suffering for only a short while, to ease it in a less gruesome way than feeding. I want to ask them to look at me, I want to ask them to turn their backs on me. I can't stand the thought that they might find happiness with each other. I want to tear them apart, I want them to sort out my conflicting feelings for me that I try to bury, but I know that each time I have dug a fresh grave for an emotion, thinking of them will ruin all my efforts and I'll have to start anew. I yearn for the day when Sho confessed he had not yet been kissed, I long to respond to his unspoken question differently than I did. I yearn for the moment on the beach when we took a photograph, I long not to tell Yi-Che to smile but to ask her to smile for me. I want them to know that I am always wondering if Sho's kiss or Yi-Che's smile for me could have made me remember what it is like to fall in love with someone. But as I witness these scenes I cannot change the actions and words I regret to this day. They will never know. Knowing I have missed all my chances is worse than the wire cutting ever deeper. The part of me that is still able to hope Sho made it weeps at the thought that with me out of the picture they will probably find happiness with each other.
Whenever my dreams turn toward the latest job gone horribly wrong I can't help but rage inside myself as I see the mistakes so clearly. I am not strong enough for a big job for lack of feeding. The job feels wrong, too unusual and too risky. I want to punch Toshi for suggesting it to Sho, who always gets too excited by danger. I want to tell Sho to take care of himself as I usually do, but this time I am too preoccupied with not thinking about the way his heartbeats quickens when we enter the building. The worst part, though, is that when my spine is snapped and my body is crushed I am not able to look up. I need to raise my head, I need to see Sho, see him run for the stairs. The worst part is not knowing, not seeing what he does when the floor gives way.
Each time I wake up there are tears on my cheeks and the dead muscle that is my heart clenches too tightly, too painfully, grows too heavy in my chest. The pressure is too much, but it does not lessen. My heart cannot shatter as long as the wire is wrapped around it so tightly, so painfully. There will be no relief for me, the pain is eternal and with each passing moment I burden myself with more.
And so I try to force myself to stay awake, fully aware how futile the attempt is. Sooner or later I will not be able to fight my own body anymore, no matter what I do.
I have taken it upon myself to make myself as familiar as possible with my surroundings. After all, if I am to spend eternity in here, I might as well be fully aware of my casket, my prison, my hell. It gives me something to do. It keeps my mind away from my dreams and my memories and my fears and my panic.
It keeps me from thinking about the vast eternity stretching ahead of me.
The space I occupy is tiny, to say the least. I can't raise my head more than a few inches before my forehead touches rough stone. Turning around is painful, for I have to twist myself around between the stone above and underneath me forcefully. I don't care about the skin tearing from my shoulders in the process. The wounds will heal, after all.
When I press my back against one wall I am unable to stretch out my arms completely before my palm touches the other wall. At the same time, my legs are always bent at an uncomfortable angle, because although I am small, my tomb is not long enough for me.
My eyes, adjusted to the darkness as they are, have scanned the tiny space to its full extent, including the torn and shredded clothing clinging to the poor bastard trapped in here. Judging from the lack of company, I believe it safe to guess that the poor bastard is me, indeed.
My fingers have found every tiny crack in the stones, every bump in the texture, every irregularity and every jagged edge. I have learned the hard way that the remains of a metal bar are sticking from the rubble around me, nearly impaling myself on it one night. Or day. Or whatever.
Time is a funny thing. I cannot being to say how often I have pictured my boys - and now boys and one girl - growing up, imagining how they would look like as they aged. I envy those able to age. I will always be trapped in this body. In the beginning I found it amusing to tell people I was fourty, amused by the disbelief written all over their faces. No one turns fourty and looks as youthful as I do, after all. But I did not only that. I also turned fifty and decided to stop counting when sixty was looming close to the horizon. Counting the years when you know you'll count for an eternity becomes quite depressing.
I seem to loose focus of my train of thought more and more often down here.
I used to imagine how they would age, trying to foresee the subtle changes in their faces and bodies. Whose hair would fall out first, who'd sport the first wrinkles, whose teeth would fall out first. I have always treasured the image of them together in old age, still laughing together, still bantering.
Would I be with them? When would Son and Yi-Che finally catch up with what Sho, Toshi and Shinji had known all along? How would they react? Would I be the ever youthful one, older than all of them on the inside, yet young enough to be their grandchild on the outside, or would I be the bad memory they'd share? Remember that monster Sho befriended once? The one who would never age. Or would I sit with them, suffering from being called „boy“ and „little one“ but laughing along nonetheless because I loved them and they loved me.
I believe I prefer the picture that does not include me, simply because somehow it would seem more pure, more real, less tainted. I have always been so scared of watching my friends aging and dying. Now I find myself wishing for the chance to see my family grow old. Even if I could just watch from afar, it would be enough.
How long will it take me to forget their faces? It will happen.
I remember all my victims' faces with shocking clarity. I could tell tales of the stories written in their eyes as I drained their lives. If I ever chose to share the memories I could describe their taste and scent and sound in vivid details. Once I tried to capture them in a sketchbook. But it filled far too quickly for my liking and I grew more and more disgusted with myself. After all, who am I to draw them and keep them with me like that, making them trophies, making each of them a face among many for the world to see. No, it is better to let them stay in my mind and memory, tormenting me and haunting my dreams as it should be.
What makes me feel all the more guilty is the fact that I cannot quite remember the faces of the family and friends I used to have. Whenever I look into a mirror I find myself wondering which parent I used to take after. I never remember. The sound of their voices, the smell of their skin, the details of their faces; the have vanished from my memory over the decades. Sometimes I dream of them, but they always remain lifeless and blank. Other times I believe to recall that I used to be closer to my mother. Then again, maybe that is just wishful thinking, holding onto a fragment that is possibly not even a real memory just so that I can tell myself that I have not forgotten everything.
I don't ever want to dream again.
It's inevitable, though. I can feel exhaustion pulling on me, like chains attached to my mind in an attempt to drag me under. Sleep and think, that's all I can do down here, and I hate it.
Groaning, I roll over again. I wince and hiss softly, as my shoulder is violently dragged across rough stone. With a groan I press my face into the hard ground beneath me as the wound starts healing. It takes longer each time, because I can't feed anymore.
I wonder what will happen. I will never be able to feed again, not even if I want to. The craving cannot be satisfied down here. I am going to starve and I'm going to do it eternally. My only hope is that the beast will grow hungry enough to crush my consciousness and allow me to escape to a state of blissfull nothingness. Then again, hopes are foolish in themselves. Hopes creat expectations and expectations lead to disappointments.
There's no use in hoping that I'll never dream again.
There's no use in hoping that I'll ever escape.
There's no use in hoping that Sho did the impossible and made it out alive.
The silence is too heavy to bear. My tiny space is filled with too much silence where there used to be laughter and banter and joking, heated arguments and delightfully pointless conversation. I lick my lips, and open my eyes - when did they close? I don't want to close my eyes. I don't want to dream. I don't want to.
Slowly, I take a breath.
Then I scream.
As loud as I can. As long as I can.
The sound pierces the heavy silence, rips through it and fills my surroundings. The scream sounds unfamiliar to my sensitive ears and I dimly wonder how long I have gone without making a sound for my own screams to seem so wrong.
When I cut off my own scream to catch my breath again, chest heaving, I realize that I made the silence worse. Where there was a scream that hurt all the way from my heart up my throat and into my ears, now there is that silence again.
I don't want eternal silence. Silence just makes me realize how tired I am. I can't go to sleep. I don't want to.
So I scream again. And again. And again until my ears are ringing and my throat hurts. Still there is a sound. I realize that it's chocked sobbing. I realize it's coming from me.
„Don't cry, little vampire. Go to sleep. I will watch over your dreams.“
I freeze. My sobs stop suddenly, I hold my breath and stare into the darkness with wide eyes.
Who...?
It's not possible. I'm alone.
Am I not?
„Go to sleep. I'm here.“
Am I dreaming? Have I fallen asleep without noticing and this is a dream?
Please let this be a dream.
Because if this is not a dream, if this is a real voice I am hearing...
… then I'm afraid I have begun to lose my mind.
Let this be a dream.
„Go to sleep.“
~*~
TBC...
AYIS Chapter 03: Pieces
Part: 2 / ?
Warnings: angst
Rating: R
Pairings: hints of Kei/Sho and Kei/Yi-Che
Disclaimer: Moonchild does not belong to, nor do its characters or anything else related to the movie. I make no profit out of this story, it is written merely for fun and entertainment of other fans. Yadda yadda.
Summary: Sleep only brings nightmares, jumbled images and feelings.
AYIS Chapter 00: Prologue
AYIS Chapter 01: Please
And Yet I Scream
Chapter 02: Dreams
~*~
It is a well known fact that the human body has some sort of inner clock. Wenn it grows dark outside, your body will tell you it is time to go to bed. In summer, when the days are longer, you will probably not feel as tired as in winter, when it gets dark so much earlier. Vampires are the same, only reversed, of course. The reason I sleep during the day and am awake at nighttime is not just my vulnerability towards sunlight. When the sun rises, I simply grow tired.
There is no sunrise in my tomb far beneath the earth.
I have no way to judge the passing of time. Yes, occasionally I will feel fatigue creeping into my body, dragging me into uncomfortable sleep, my whole figure twisted and cramped due to the tiny room that I have left in between solid stone. But I know I can't rely on my body to know the difference between day and night when I am surrounded by eternal darkness. My senses keep trying to convince me that since it's dark I ought to stay awake.
The natural cycle of sleeping and waking is disrupted down here, and I have no way of judging the passage of time. How long have I been here?
Hours? Days?
It could be weeks for all I know. I don't know how long I sleep, when exhaustion claims me, for without feeding and trapped beneath the earth sleep brings no rest for me.
Sleep only brings nightmares, jumbled images and feelings.
When I close my eyes, I see the dead eyes of all victims, hear their desperate sobs and feel their blood running down my tongue, carrying their hopes and wishes and turning them ashen in my mouth. I see Luka die. I watch Sho, I watch Yi-Che and endure the horrible pain of feeling the loss that is bound to happen, destined to happen, because I am a vampire and no matter who holds my heart, they will not make it beat. It will always be a dead weight in my chest, a place of darkness and regret; the graveyards for my feelings. I feel a pillar of stone collapsing on top of me, snapping my spine and pinning me onto the collapsing floor. Sometimes I hear Sho screaming something that sounds like my name. Always, though, I am conscious of dreaming. Trapped in my own body I see my own past actions unfold, unable to change the events no matter how much I long for it.
The nightmarish visions of killing and death, slaughter and fading life envelope me like silk at first, soft fabric on my naked skin, black on white. However, the silk changes with each face flashing before my eyes, with each life I take although I am begging with myself to stop, with each last human breath ghosting over my cheek and each last drop of blood burning down my throat like acid. The silk changes and becomes a wire, and the wire cuts deep. I stare down at my body and I want to scream, but I can't because this is not real and my nightmares trap me inside myself just as I am trapped beneath the earth. I see my flesh being cut open by the wire. Blood so dark it seems black seeps from the wounds, cold and thick and dead, and stains my pale limbs. I can see the wires cutting ever deeper, I can feel them tightening, forcing themselves deeper into my body, under my skin and towards my bones. And as my wounds close, the wire cuts deeper, becoming a part of myself. I can feel it moving through me, cutting and hurting, too much and never enough, painful and yet too soft, punishment dealt without the visciousness I would inflict upon myself given the chance. I am being torn apart from the inside, and yet I stand in perfect silence. My suffering takes place on the inside and no one who looks my way would know my pain, for this is how it should be. My eyes are wide and my mouth is open, yet I cannot scream, and that is possibly the worst part of this dream.
In my dream, I know that I should stay with Luka. Burn by his side, ending the life that should have ended ages ago when I fell and broke and he could not let me go. In my dream, I always try to make my legs move, but they never carry me towards him. As I stand in the shadows and watch him burn, I fight for control over the events unfolding. I wish to joing him, to move, to call out to him once more, to join in his song and his sorrow and his death. But nothing happens, I just stand in place as long as the ever approaching dawn will allow me to, and then I turn and run, loathing my cowardice and screaming my throat raw with loss and regret.
In my dream I fight to open my mouth, to interrupt Sho and Yi-Che as she tends to his wounds. I yearn to run my tongue over the blood oozing from his wound, I yearn to feel her hands on my cold skin, I yearn for a human's touch to warm me and ease my suffering for only a short while, to ease it in a less gruesome way than feeding. I want to ask them to look at me, I want to ask them to turn their backs on me. I can't stand the thought that they might find happiness with each other. I want to tear them apart, I want them to sort out my conflicting feelings for me that I try to bury, but I know that each time I have dug a fresh grave for an emotion, thinking of them will ruin all my efforts and I'll have to start anew. I yearn for the day when Sho confessed he had not yet been kissed, I long to respond to his unspoken question differently than I did. I yearn for the moment on the beach when we took a photograph, I long not to tell Yi-Che to smile but to ask her to smile for me. I want them to know that I am always wondering if Sho's kiss or Yi-Che's smile for me could have made me remember what it is like to fall in love with someone. But as I witness these scenes I cannot change the actions and words I regret to this day. They will never know. Knowing I have missed all my chances is worse than the wire cutting ever deeper. The part of me that is still able to hope Sho made it weeps at the thought that with me out of the picture they will probably find happiness with each other.
Whenever my dreams turn toward the latest job gone horribly wrong I can't help but rage inside myself as I see the mistakes so clearly. I am not strong enough for a big job for lack of feeding. The job feels wrong, too unusual and too risky. I want to punch Toshi for suggesting it to Sho, who always gets too excited by danger. I want to tell Sho to take care of himself as I usually do, but this time I am too preoccupied with not thinking about the way his heartbeats quickens when we enter the building. The worst part, though, is that when my spine is snapped and my body is crushed I am not able to look up. I need to raise my head, I need to see Sho, see him run for the stairs. The worst part is not knowing, not seeing what he does when the floor gives way.
Each time I wake up there are tears on my cheeks and the dead muscle that is my heart clenches too tightly, too painfully, grows too heavy in my chest. The pressure is too much, but it does not lessen. My heart cannot shatter as long as the wire is wrapped around it so tightly, so painfully. There will be no relief for me, the pain is eternal and with each passing moment I burden myself with more.
And so I try to force myself to stay awake, fully aware how futile the attempt is. Sooner or later I will not be able to fight my own body anymore, no matter what I do.
I have taken it upon myself to make myself as familiar as possible with my surroundings. After all, if I am to spend eternity in here, I might as well be fully aware of my casket, my prison, my hell. It gives me something to do. It keeps my mind away from my dreams and my memories and my fears and my panic.
It keeps me from thinking about the vast eternity stretching ahead of me.
The space I occupy is tiny, to say the least. I can't raise my head more than a few inches before my forehead touches rough stone. Turning around is painful, for I have to twist myself around between the stone above and underneath me forcefully. I don't care about the skin tearing from my shoulders in the process. The wounds will heal, after all.
When I press my back against one wall I am unable to stretch out my arms completely before my palm touches the other wall. At the same time, my legs are always bent at an uncomfortable angle, because although I am small, my tomb is not long enough for me.
My eyes, adjusted to the darkness as they are, have scanned the tiny space to its full extent, including the torn and shredded clothing clinging to the poor bastard trapped in here. Judging from the lack of company, I believe it safe to guess that the poor bastard is me, indeed.
My fingers have found every tiny crack in the stones, every bump in the texture, every irregularity and every jagged edge. I have learned the hard way that the remains of a metal bar are sticking from the rubble around me, nearly impaling myself on it one night. Or day. Or whatever.
Time is a funny thing. I cannot being to say how often I have pictured my boys - and now boys and one girl - growing up, imagining how they would look like as they aged. I envy those able to age. I will always be trapped in this body. In the beginning I found it amusing to tell people I was fourty, amused by the disbelief written all over their faces. No one turns fourty and looks as youthful as I do, after all. But I did not only that. I also turned fifty and decided to stop counting when sixty was looming close to the horizon. Counting the years when you know you'll count for an eternity becomes quite depressing.
I seem to loose focus of my train of thought more and more often down here.
I used to imagine how they would age, trying to foresee the subtle changes in their faces and bodies. Whose hair would fall out first, who'd sport the first wrinkles, whose teeth would fall out first. I have always treasured the image of them together in old age, still laughing together, still bantering.
Would I be with them? When would Son and Yi-Che finally catch up with what Sho, Toshi and Shinji had known all along? How would they react? Would I be the ever youthful one, older than all of them on the inside, yet young enough to be their grandchild on the outside, or would I be the bad memory they'd share? Remember that monster Sho befriended once? The one who would never age. Or would I sit with them, suffering from being called „boy“ and „little one“ but laughing along nonetheless because I loved them and they loved me.
I believe I prefer the picture that does not include me, simply because somehow it would seem more pure, more real, less tainted. I have always been so scared of watching my friends aging and dying. Now I find myself wishing for the chance to see my family grow old. Even if I could just watch from afar, it would be enough.
How long will it take me to forget their faces? It will happen.
I remember all my victims' faces with shocking clarity. I could tell tales of the stories written in their eyes as I drained their lives. If I ever chose to share the memories I could describe their taste and scent and sound in vivid details. Once I tried to capture them in a sketchbook. But it filled far too quickly for my liking and I grew more and more disgusted with myself. After all, who am I to draw them and keep them with me like that, making them trophies, making each of them a face among many for the world to see. No, it is better to let them stay in my mind and memory, tormenting me and haunting my dreams as it should be.
What makes me feel all the more guilty is the fact that I cannot quite remember the faces of the family and friends I used to have. Whenever I look into a mirror I find myself wondering which parent I used to take after. I never remember. The sound of their voices, the smell of their skin, the details of their faces; the have vanished from my memory over the decades. Sometimes I dream of them, but they always remain lifeless and blank. Other times I believe to recall that I used to be closer to my mother. Then again, maybe that is just wishful thinking, holding onto a fragment that is possibly not even a real memory just so that I can tell myself that I have not forgotten everything.
I don't ever want to dream again.
It's inevitable, though. I can feel exhaustion pulling on me, like chains attached to my mind in an attempt to drag me under. Sleep and think, that's all I can do down here, and I hate it.
Groaning, I roll over again. I wince and hiss softly, as my shoulder is violently dragged across rough stone. With a groan I press my face into the hard ground beneath me as the wound starts healing. It takes longer each time, because I can't feed anymore.
I wonder what will happen. I will never be able to feed again, not even if I want to. The craving cannot be satisfied down here. I am going to starve and I'm going to do it eternally. My only hope is that the beast will grow hungry enough to crush my consciousness and allow me to escape to a state of blissfull nothingness. Then again, hopes are foolish in themselves. Hopes creat expectations and expectations lead to disappointments.
There's no use in hoping that I'll never dream again.
There's no use in hoping that I'll ever escape.
There's no use in hoping that Sho did the impossible and made it out alive.
The silence is too heavy to bear. My tiny space is filled with too much silence where there used to be laughter and banter and joking, heated arguments and delightfully pointless conversation. I lick my lips, and open my eyes - when did they close? I don't want to close my eyes. I don't want to dream. I don't want to.
Slowly, I take a breath.
Then I scream.
As loud as I can. As long as I can.
The sound pierces the heavy silence, rips through it and fills my surroundings. The scream sounds unfamiliar to my sensitive ears and I dimly wonder how long I have gone without making a sound for my own screams to seem so wrong.
When I cut off my own scream to catch my breath again, chest heaving, I realize that I made the silence worse. Where there was a scream that hurt all the way from my heart up my throat and into my ears, now there is that silence again.
I don't want eternal silence. Silence just makes me realize how tired I am. I can't go to sleep. I don't want to.
So I scream again. And again. And again until my ears are ringing and my throat hurts. Still there is a sound. I realize that it's chocked sobbing. I realize it's coming from me.
„Don't cry, little vampire. Go to sleep. I will watch over your dreams.“
I freeze. My sobs stop suddenly, I hold my breath and stare into the darkness with wide eyes.
Who...?
It's not possible. I'm alone.
Am I not?
„Go to sleep. I'm here.“
Am I dreaming? Have I fallen asleep without noticing and this is a dream?
Please let this be a dream.
Because if this is not a dream, if this is a real voice I am hearing...
… then I'm afraid I have begun to lose my mind.
Let this be a dream.
„Go to sleep.“
~*~
TBC...
AYIS Chapter 03: Pieces