He held a hand up to her cheek, identical and blank eyes staring at something behind him. He brushed away the drops, swiping away the trickling red. "Sshh, it's okay, it's okay," he murmured subconsciously, some brotherly part of him trying to comfort her from beneath piles of sins and carnage.
She was unresponsive. The umbrella almost slipped away but he firmly caught it. Her mouth was slightly parted. She was a statue, a replica and a fake of the past, doomed to erode away into faceless marble. Only the faint breathing gave away the dimming ember, a blazing bonfire she once had.
Before she became like this. Before he saw what she had become.
See, his younger sister wasn't at all like him. She was weak. She was fragile. She couldn't live off moonlight and blood like him. Unlike him, she needed sunlight, she needed rain. Otherwise, she would disintegrate into a thousand specks, a dandelion thrust in a tornado.
She didn't have his Smile.
Flop. She looked down at her hand with glazed eyes. The heart squelched in her white-palmed grip, and blood oozed down her porcelain arm. She carelessly let the organ drop. It bounced and skidded across the abandoned pavement of the Yato world, leaving behind a trail of gruesome red-black.
She had tried, tried so hard to follow him that somewhere, in some place where he couldn't see her, she twisted into someone else. Something else.
And he only knew too well that his little sister no longer existed, just as the older brother had died.
But some part of him, submerged beneath the gore and horrors of Yato, was fighting with just one hand above the corpses, flailing weakly. And this was the hand that tried to caress that face instead of marring it.
She stared at it in confusion and looked back up, barely even recognizing who or what stood before her. She suddenly lurched forward. He caught her. She lay limply in his arms, legs dragging in the puddles of blood she had rained upon herself.
Kamui awkwardly stepped back. He slid down to sit and she lifelessly followed.
The drizzle continued. Clear rain rolled down their scarlet hair, slowly defiling into a dirty rust color. Muddled colors like water splashed on a palette, rain streaming down a window.
She mumbled some gibberish, and he couldn't tell if she was just half unconscious or half insane. Her head slumped heavily. He prodded her but her eyelids were firmly shut. She began mouthing something but no sounds escaped her. Kamui watched her strangely, a rare frown crossing his expression. It was clear she was repeating something, but he couldn't figure out what.
He gave up and turned over. He absentmindedly flicked off drying bits of blood from his fingers. His eyes fluttered shut and he stumbled into the familiar darkness of nightmares.
The mouth-watering fragrance of meat buns smothering the slate-gray streets. The chatter of other Yato buying what sparse material was sold. The damp clothes sticking to him and the annoyance at their usual moisture. The spinning umbrella in front of him as he struggled to carry the paper bag filled with food, juggled about comically with his own umbrella. The childish mutter of "not fair" as she skipped about in the rain and splashed his feet with muddy puddles. The bizarre, gentle forgiveness for her every twinkling laugh.
And then reaching home. The sickly sweet cloy of so many herbs, remedies, medicine. The bleak, moldy, cramped room where Mami lay, smiling weakly. The sister not knowing a thing, laughing with all the freedom of the world, chit-chatting about all she saw. His thinning patience. The clenching fist and gritting teeth. That red tinted world hazily fogging him, before it all slowly simmered down.
And then that it just had to show up right there, right then, on that day when all he had tried desperately to mend together finally cracked.
The red crashed down; it was no longer hazy, uncertain, doubtful, it was all just red, red, red.
He was drunk on rage.
And he couldn't take any of it anymore.
Any.
Of.
It.
There was nothing more to say about it except he glimpsed the gateway of hell. Maybe also that he was quite surprised he hadn't passed through it by the time his fist had stopped.
But something changed in this little, peculiar nightmare of his. The little white hands were clasped around his leg, small raindrops darkening his clothes, tremors brushing his leg. He looked down, eyes unfocused yet focused. She looked up, eyes glistening and glittering, and a fat drop of blood splattered across her innocent cheek. He bent down on one knee, sky-blue eyes catching sky-blue eyes. He rubbed the stain.
"There, all better now-" The words choked as the entire cheek was smeared with more blood of family. Her bottom lip quivered.
And then she was giggling, hiccuping. He staggered with relief and grabbed her, strong arms embracing her. The sunshine that always brought him out, the love and trust he didn't and would never deserve. His chest clenched painfully and broke free with a bitter cry. She snuggled more, drifting off to sleep in the arms of a murderer.
But this was a nightmare no? And nightmares have no happy endings. Or could they...? Perhaps.
The scene faded away like shadows scattering at dawn. He awoke. There was no dawn, only a perfect blue sky, when his eyes opened. And the stinging pain in his chest.
The sky wavered, unfocused yet focused, glistening with heavy rain, glittering with sparks of the creative cruelty only known to the insane. The sky slashed apart with the onslaught of a sudden sunset and a sudden scream. A familiar fiery red splashing across the sky was all he saw before it became night.
True nightmares aren't the ones from sleep.