nocturnus alucinari erronis
(by night dreams a wanderer)
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And by night dreams a wanderer
Who knows not where he goes.
By day his search will continue once more
But for now, he dreams only of life
And of love lost in the stream of time.
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Somebody once told him that dreams were reflections of the desires of their owners, bizarre portraits that nevertheless, told the passions of the dreamer as clearly as spoken words uttered in the light of day and waking consciousness. That somebody had also told him that answers lay in dreams that one would find no where else, if only one could solve the enigmas they usually presented themselves as.
He wondered whether this was true or not. He was Dark and Dark had yet to dream of anything in his whole existence. It was just the way things were, he supposed, and sometimes, he wished it were not so.
He sighed to himself.
Whatever.
Faraway, he could feel Daisuke's mind wandering, revolving around blue skies, azure eyes, and a cold smile hidden behind an even colder demeanor. His thoughts were sweet and light, like summer clouds and blooming meadow flowers under welcoming sunshine, untainted by suffering or agony or jealousy of any kind.
Dark envied him a little, for being able to see so clearly what he wanted without effort, while he, on the other hand, wandered forever in this eerie place between being conscious and unconscious, looking always for something that he didn't think he'd ever find.
A bittersweet grin tugged at his lips, but he forced it down and continued searching for god knows what in the infinite blackness he was stuck in.
Step, step and step. Seconds trickled by like the grains of sand inside an hourglass, unimaginably slow if he tried to count them and gone the moment he blinked. To wander forever like this was… comforting and unimaginable at the same time.
Don't worry. Don't feel. Don't think.
He didn't know how long he'd been half-floating and half-walking aimlessly and without direction, but he noticed the gradual change his surroundings were going through as he wandered, the way the air seemed to cool even more and how the emptiness beneath his feet suddenly began taking shape.
This had never happened before. Had he stepped unwittingly into one of Daisuke's memories?
The darkness didn't tell him, so he didn't know.
Somewhere in his mind, a wary little voice told him that maybe, he should turn back and forget this place, and that there was something here that he didn't want to find out. His sane side told him that maybe the voice was right; the other not-so-sane side told it to go to hell and stay there. Needless to say, the crazy side won out, and the voice was pushed back and disregarded for the pursuit to the answer of one question.
Beyond him… What lay beyond him?
Grass was beginning to sprout in a few random places now, lush green stalks waving with a wind he barely felt and peppered with a few blue and white wildflowers, suspended in the darkness. They bowed obediently under his weight as he tread over them as quickly as he possibly could, marking the places he passed with their bent leaves and the musty perfume of their sap. They seemed to be saying something to him, their words jumbled and incomprehensible murmurs hovering around his feet in fragmented pieces, but he couldn't understand what it was they were saying.
An answer, any answer. An answer lay in the darkness.
He continued his trek, following no path, just kept going inwards. Sometimes he turned left, sometimes he turned right, but always, always he went deeper and deeper into the heart of this mysterious place.
Finally, after what felt like forever and a year, he reached an empty clearing.
A few toppled pillars lay on the ground, milky white and centuries old, along with an ancient fountain that miraculously, was still working, pouring water over purple and fuchsia water flowers like rain on their waiting upturned faces. Stone benches littered the area randomly, framed by stems of crawling ivy that seemed to be everywhere. A giant majestic willow stood in the very center of it all, a marker against the passing of time, and right under it, sat the very familiar figure of a blonde man dressed all in white.
Under the low hanging leaves lay the unmoving form of Krad.
Surreal. He could think of no other word to describe the whole experience.
Before he knew it, a ball of refracted light was already forming itself in his palm, glowing unnaturally in the bright yet sunless clearing. Long trained reflexes told him that this was an opportunity he could not afford to lose, that whatever he did would not affect the Hiwatari that Daisuke always wanted to protect. He wasn't thinking, he couldn't process anything but the rush of adrenaline that flowed through his veins and destroyed all other thoughts except one.
Kill Krad.
A violent punch collided with the side of his face just as he was about to aim though, nearly breaking his nose, destroying his energy ball, and sending him flying backwards in an ungraceful heap on the ground. The world had begun swimming in his vision, black melting into ivory white and spring green in a kaleidoscope of whirling colors with the force of the punch.
Damn, could Krad punch with those sissy-looking arms of his.
Long cool fingers cupped his chin and jerked them upwards to look into frosty golden eyes. He saw hate and power colliding into each other there, creating flames that produced an uncanny luster and brightness that burned so fiercely it was blinding. Dark wondered distantly how someone who seemed to have the sun trapped in his hair could look at him with such icy hatred, mouth turned downward in a sneer that seemed perfectly wrong on such an ethereal face.
Krad felt so real, and yet, what else could all this be but another illusion?
"I am not in the mood to fight with you here. If you want to die so badly, go wake up and hang yourself from a doorknob. God only knows how badly I wish you would." The words were said with such calm venom that Dark didn't doubt the sincerity in them. Interestingly enough though, the urge to kill the blonde suddenly disappeared, like a puff of smoke carried away by the wind. It was replaced then, by an eerie calm he seldom ever felt.
His face was shoved backwards, and the fingers returned once more to their owner, pushing him aside as if he were something disgusting and worthless creature. He let his head be thrust in an awkward angle, and let the other take a step away from him without retaliation.
He realized that it hurt unbearably where Krad touched him, where those slender ivory fingers had held him, like being trapped in the maw of an ice monster with hell raging in its eyes. He was a volcanic iceberg, a demonic angel, a being of pure light stained with blood and death.
He was Dark's enemy, Dark's rival, Dark's parallel. His twin since time immemorial.
"What do you think real is, Dark?"
Krad's question was so sudden it jarred him out of his light reverie, heaving him back into here and now with little effort. Krad had a small white lily nestled in the palm of his hand, sitting perfectly like a queen on her throne, arranging her petals to better suit the curves of his hand. If Dark had been in a more observant sense of being, he would have noticed that lilies had begun blooming everywhere around them too, raising their arched heads towards them as if trying to listen to what they were saying.
But Dark didn't see them, because he was too stunned to be observant.
"Nothing here is real, if you haven't noticed." Krad continued, ignoring his confused stare. "I can make anything appear here at the simplest thought or wish. This is a place that overrules scientific explanation or human understanding. A whimsical fantasy, if that's what you wish to call it."
As if to prove himself, Krad closed his hand around the fragile lily, digging his cruel fingers into the yielding porcelain petals like the claws of a raptor around its prey. Dark expected many things to happen, but they didn't include the sudden flash of light and the golden dragonfly that appeared in the lily's place, jeweled body attached to translucent wings the same shade as the flower's.
A wind passed through the clearing, blowing unobtrusively over them, and it seemed to illicit a soft sigh from the numerous other flowers who had watched silently their one-sided conversation as it winded by unhurriedly. It played curiously with Krad's long hair for a moment, tangling itself in the waterfall of silken sunshine, laughing mutedly at it slipped through the strands with ease.
Dark didn't know if the other had willed that to happen, or if the wind had somehow acquired a mind of its own.
Krad had always had a very obsessive fetish with his hair.
"So if we are in a place that's not real, how can we be real? The two cannot share anything; they are parallel lines that will never cross. What then are we doing here, at the border of it all, not dead, but not alive either?"
The dragonfly's wings quivered as it experimentally tried to control its new found appendages.
"Can you answer me, Dark?"
Caramel eyes regarded him from beneath silvery lashes, awaiting an answer he couldn't give.
"I have nothing to say." For really, what truth could come from the lips of one who barely grasped the immensity of the question, let alone the magnitude of the answer to it?
The blonde sensed this, and turned away. In disappointment? In confusion? Again, he could not tell.
Don't worry. Don't feel. Don't think.
Suddenly he was there, directly behind Krad, arms wrapped tightly around the marble-like body in an embrace he couldn't understand, because understanding had placed itself once more on a high pedestal he could not reach, and maybe, did not want to reach.
"What are you…?!?"
I bent my head to whisper in a seashell curved ear, breath brushing aside strands the wind had loosened only seconds ago.
"You said so yourself that you didn't know if anything here was real. Not this whole garden, not the flowers, not your dragonfly, nor you and me. If this had been a different place, if you'd been a different person, I might actually have felt worried."
His lips grazed Krad's ivory neck.
"But it's not… and I actually find that I don't mind."
Silence, so much of it for the longest time Dark felt he had gone deaf.
"Can we not be real? Just for now?" It wasn't supposed to sound like a plea, but that's the way it came out.
He heard an annoyed sigh escape from the blonde's lips.
"You'll regret this when you wake up, Dark Mousy."
But with Krad's cool body resting perfectly against his, the blonde cascade of locks wrapped around both of them like unbreakable strings, Dark couldn't really get himself to care.
So he did have dreams after all.
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And by night dreams a wanderer
Who knows now where he must go.
His search need not continue anymore
For he has found the life
And the love lost in the stream of time.
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Author's Note :
[1] To answer one question : Where the hell are Krad and Dark? In Dark's dream. This means that Krad is not real, only a figment of Dark's subconscious, willed there by his own desires. Sorry I didn't put this up earlier.
My first D.N.Angel fic! And it's Dark x Krad! Yeah! So what do you think? Was it overly sappy? All comments are much appreciated.
May 01, 2004
suicidal_firefly