.
He wandered a landscape of nothingness. A desert devoid of life, of existence, somewhere distant but familiar. Black flowers blossomed beneath his heavy footsteps, softened and muted by sands. Reaper was in a dream, but a dream he always returned to.
He looked back to see the trail of flowers he left behind, but the distance never seemed to change. He had been walking in the same place for what felt like eons. He looked up, the sky was empty, a pure dark canvas without constellations or moons. He was a timid, wild one. His mind was chaotic.
A young man appears. Dark skin and curly hair. He recognized him, but the other did not.
He paused. He felt the warmth of his own breath moisturizing the inside of his mask. A ghost staring into another ghost.
"How did you get here?" The young one asked him.
He was silent, having a déjà vu of the same question being asked many, many times before. He had always been silent.
"Why do you look like that?"
He took a step forward. Another flower blooms beneath his feet.
The roots twisted and turned as it grew to his ankle. A bud formed on its tip and opened up into beauty.
He held shotguns in his hands, the instruments of death. He listened to those words and denied their effect on him.
He was but a stranger. They were but strangers to each other.
Those halcyon days are long gone. He didn't care. He wanted nothing to do with them anymore.
He began walking forward as patches and patches of darkness followed him, until he stopped with a gun to the young man's chest.
Young Gabriel looked at him with confusion, then realization. His expression soften.
"You don't have to do this."
Lies. Lies. All lies. He had heard them before. The hand holding the gun began to shake.
"They betrayed us."
"They didn't mean to."
He laughed. A laughter that roamed far. Mockery.
"I will find them, and I will kill them. I will make them pay."
He pulled the trigger. There was an explosion, and then nothing. He watched as the other fell into the sand with a shocked expression.
Dark blood seeped into yellow sand, like rivers flowing down a hill. Blood nourished another fresh patch of blossom that began to grow beneath the body.
He tossed the guns onto the ground and stared at his talons. Smoke escaped the seams of his clothing, like little tendrils vanishing into the dead air.
A phantom is all that's left of him now. An empty, formless shell of the man once named Gabriel Reyes.
A moon suddenly rose into the skies above him, large and haunting. A drop of dew fell onto his palm and another black flower sprouted like magic. Its petals were delicate and glittery, but its roots pierced through his flesh and kept growing into him.
There was no pain in the realm of dreams. He watched, bewildered and overwhelmed by its beauty, as the long limbs of the flower crawled and embraced his form.
He released the mask from his face and saw smoke clung onto its white edges. The body had disappeared, and he knew he would wake up soon.
Say goodbye, Gabriel Reyes.
Say goodnight.
I'm better off without you, tearing my will down.
He is the Reaper now.
And when he wakes, nothing is going to change.