The Seduction of Sleep
By N.C. Stormeye
Disclaimer: Back when I was a fan, I'd come up with catchy little disclaimers. In this piece of ancient history, there is nothing catchy. All I can say is, I don't own it. In the end, for a time, it owned me.
Authoress' Notes: Ban Mido and Himiko Kudo…in the fall of year 2003 I started writing romance-fics for the both of them but never finished my intended series. Back then it was all full of sappiness. But I like to finish things, so I'm finishing them. Voodoo Child curse is nullified at this point, so slight AU.
Screw my poetic sentiments. Away we go.
I. Shades of Gray
Ban's dreams are dreams in shades of gray, on normal days. They are dreams of compressed memories and vague physical remnants. Smells, touches, tastes…childhood leaves traces even a master of illusions, of reinvention, cannot erase.
They should be-are-full of sight…since his eyes are his weapons and they are effective weapons, as are his dreams. How his twisted mind concocts so much horror is not a mystery…he gets them from those little pieces of shattered psyche he's allowed to collect at the bottom of his mind's proverbial dustbin.
Ban knows what dreaming in shades of gray means. It means that you are holding back something, squashing down something. It means a mental denial of emotion…depression perhaps. Dreaming in black and white means simplistic extremism, knowing the lines between good and evil. His dreaming in gray means he no longer knows much of the difference.
On normal days, after a cup of coffee and several Marlboros puffed away, Ban tries very hard not to dream. He tries drinking cup after cup of a potent black tea (three drops can keep you up all night), smoking three packs an hour, and watching people pass the car by, if it happens to be parked in a crowded place. He claims it's better than television, but only because he and Ginji can't afford one.
But he falls asleep anyway, as if the snake in his head (so it's in his arm, screw technicalities) lulls him to sleep with a steady, hissing rhythm. And then the dreams he does not fear but dislikes immensely come to call, playing across his mind like a film without sound. That's another little pet peeve of his, that his dreams are silent. The silence is so deafening he wishes he could fill it up with words. But he can't speak. Little wonder he makes it a point to be heard when he awakes, a coarse vocabulary that still carries a hint of its eloquent past.
He hates the silence, and the gray, and the fact that his dreams are so tangible that he can't touch them. How everything has to be so complicated and contradicting that he wishes he could…