There is always a scream.
A terrifying shriek of agony, filled with pain, shock and fear. Then, a body starts falling to the ground, and just a moment later, it's suddenly already over, just in a second, as if time suddenly jumped.
A body of a man with long hair lies in a pool of bloody mud in a bamboo forest. He lies on his back where the death wound is, getting all the dirt and mud even deeper inside it, making it even less possible to heal the enormous, deep cut.
Not that it was still possible. It's just a body, just an empty shell now.
And Kiku just always stands there, staring, not even registering that he can move. The man's eyes are slightly open and there is no light in them, no color, no life.
He never thinks anything, just stares, that's it, nothing else. The man's clothes are ragged, bloody and weathered, the bottom slowly soaking wet from the bud and the blood underneath him. His hair in a ruined ponytail are glued together in strands, to where it's hard to tell what shade of brown they once were.
He had seen many corpses before. This is nothing different, nothing unusuall.
But suddenly, a boy appears.
A boy with black, shiny hair is wearing casual, yet clearly expensive clothes. He kneels next to the man, fear and shock painted on his face.
„Gege..." His eyes are wide like saucers. He grabs the man's dirty, green qi pao and shakes him with almost full force those small hands posses. „Gege, w-what's wrong? Gege!?" The chocolate eyes are already filled with tears. „Gege, w-wake up, we have to move Gege!".
The boy always appears out of nowhere, he never sees him arrive, and he always always starts screaming all those naive, pathetic things.
And chanting this banned, dreadful word.
„Gege, we need to get home! PLEASE WAKE UP GEGE!"
That's when Japan feels a familiar object in his hands.
Fat tears of children's grief are streaming down the boy's little, red cheeks. He presses himself onto the man's chest. „You're h-hurt.. wake up, p-please..." His voice is so desperate and Kiku so badly so badly wants to scream 'stop', but he cannot, the voice cannot come out. „W-wake up Gege" The boy's voice is stronger than his. The voice of a black haired boy that lies on an unmoving chest of his caretaker, is stronger than him.
He grips the sword handle in his hand harder.
„Gege-e-e.." The little, fragile body is being absolutely wrecked with sobs. He whines and cries and sniffles on top of the noble man's body.
„GEGE!"
The Great Japan shots his eyes open. The overwhealming, uneasy feeling at the back of his skull welcomes him yet again in the darkness of his room...
'Tea heals everything' is the logic he was raised with. He lies on the floor, a tea cup in his hands, with his legs under the kotatsu, wearing the traditional night robe he decided to put on tonight. The ceiling is wooden, as always and there's a little cobweb in the corner of it.
Is there any way of ending these nightmares? He gets them around every third night and they are always a bit different, yet always about the same thing. About little himself crying on top of China's 'dead' body.
Some are worse than others though, because in some he acually is there, and the little boy turns to him, hysterically asking 'Why?' 'Why did you hit him?' 'Why did you hit Gege?'
He sometimes breaks into tears after those.
He remembers what China had said when he and his stiblings were children. That every conflict between them can always be fixed with a talk, no matter how hard and emotional. Well, he surely wasn't talking about something like jumping on your big brother/father and younger brother with a katana and declaring war. This wasn't something they could just talk through. This wasn't something he could just apologise for. Neither this was a memory that they could just forget and move on.
He was one of the oldest living creatures on earth right now, and he was sheding tears over not feeling his family's love ever again. He should be happy he's even allowed to see them.
How long will these nightmares go on?