Dream to Sleep
AN: If you thought they were even remotely mine then all I can say is: where the hell have you been for the last twelve years? Enjoy!
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The dreams started in 1992, he thinks. He's almost ashamed to think it but he can't really pinpoint the beginning. They started as weird little things that happened when he dropped off, usually to be disturbed by some scholary disaster not even halfway into it. The kind of dêja vu dreams that you've lived, or dreamt, before. The ordinary day sort of dreams that you forget the moment you wake. It was only when he made it all the way through one, finally saw the ending, that Al realised he hadn't had that kind of an ordinary day in decades.
He'd dreamt about Grin before. Almost every night after he'd walked away from the prisoner door. Dragged himself away for the half-hearted pleas, feeling as though he was leaving behind more than just heart. These were different though; they weren't exactly haunting, more of just an uncertain presence that lingered in the back of his mind, even when he woke. It was comforting, in a peverse way, like having Grin back. . . the old, or should it be young, Grin back.
As time swept on he slept less and less, but dreamt more and more. He'd find himself gazing into space, reliving the shortest and longest two months of his life over and over. Some days he's swear he could smell the warm grass, hear the hum of crickets, recognise the sensation he'd come to accustom with his friend. He'd lose days, and more than just someone must have noticed but no-one said a thing. He wondered if maybe they we're coming to know what had dawned on him too; the meaning of these dreams. He was dying.
Long before the ring, the poison by the lake, even a hint of age, Al knew. The distant murmur of memories let him know years in advance that his time was coming. In the last few months his nights no longer reminded him, and fabrications of the past appearred. The hopes that were now dreams guided him towards what he knew must be the recommencing of his youth.
When he finally faded from the first world he'd known he almost grinned. The concern had been there, at the back of his mind; he'd learnt to face this world with Grin, how would he learn to take on this new one without him? The night before the day he planned to be his last he turned the lights off, followed the dark a little earlier. He dreamt of heaven, of feeling fingers interlock with his one more time. And he knew Grin wouldn't be far behind him.
Al woke into the dream that would last him until judgement said otherwise without trepidation. He never slept, but he never tired either. He had all the time after the world to wait so he did. The perpetual daydream was only disturbed by reality once or twice. He could live with that. . . or rather, he didn't have to.
He'd seen lots of friends, young and old, embark for this newer world; only leaving his vigual for one. He'd been the best memory of himself for others; a young child for his mother, a teenager from before she was attacked for Ariana, but for the first time he was the memory of two months everyone else would rather forget he'd lived. As he became someone he thought he'd lost along with Grin he didn't feel younger. He had all the wisdom of his many years, but he had lost all the anger, and shame, and waste from them; he kept only the forgiveness.