TITLE: Once Upon A Dream
TITLE: Once Upon A Dream
FANDOM: Ludwig Revolution
DEDICATION: To Amber, who requested it, and found some DAMN pretty pictures that serve as hope and reminder that (with apologies to the Princess Bride) death cannot stop true love…it can only delay it for a while.
RATING: All audiences.
SUMMARY: Things are different after the visit to Briar Rose's castle. Perhaps not in the best of ways.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The prompt for this little piece was she treated me like a god – which I am. Highly appropriate, considering the source material.I took it, I ran with it, and this happened.
Even though he leaves Briar Rose's castle behind, strange dreams continue to haunt Ludwig. Not in a way that he'd show or that Wilhem would notice – that would never do – but in smaller ways that are no less consequential for their size. Ghosts are still ghosts, however faint.
He dreams of Frederike.
(In the truest part of his heart, he thinks of her as Idike, but the name never crosses his lips. Ever. When he mentions her, if at all, it's always by her full name. The distance gives him the illusion of separation and safety.)
The dreams are nowhere near as clear as they had been. They're only whisps of images, and that makes them all the more agonizing. To be so close, and yet . . .
She comes to him in brief glimpses; a laugh, a smile, a whisper. A turn of the head, the smell of flowers.
Idiot…
Honestly…
Unbelievable…
You've discovered who I really am, haven't you?
Each scattered fragment is under girded with affection and admiration, and every instinct tells him to reach and to see and to hold. It breaks him each time he does, as she always manages to slip just outside his grasp while he's jerked back to consciousness.
When he wakes up, he does so with the feel of her lips on his. It chills him, maddens him. He'll touch his mouth in the morning dark and try desperately to recall just how she tastes (pomegranate, maybe? Blueberry? Some kind of sweet fruit?) but always fails. She's gone, an insubstantial thing of memory that lurks somewhere beyond where he can reach. Upon this realization, he drives the jagged remains of his broken nails in to his palms. They cut rather effectively, and the sensation of skin being broken before hot blood works its way down his fingers is disconcertingly satisfying. He's supposed to enjoy inflicting pain, not receiving it himself. This only makes him press further, cut a little deeper, angry with the way that she's managed to turn him in on himself.
He always cleans these wounds and pulls on a pair of gloves before Wilhem wakes. It simply would not do to have this little secret revealed. And if Wilhem notices that Ludwig's been a little more snappish in the mornings lately, he hasn't said. Small mercies, he supposes as he mounts his horse with grit teeth, the reins irritating his palms in spite of the gloves.
-Fin-