Okay, I'll be clear from the beginning: this is pure and throbbing angst.

I usually don't think about Sebastian much, he killed Max and I'm still hurt by it, but somehwere inside me I think 'Poor thing. Maybe he wasn't meant to be like that. Maybe it's all due to the demon's blood', so I blame Max's death on Valentine, but the thing is a friend of mine likes Sebastian, and we were talking about him the other day when this idea popped out.

At first I was unsure about writing it, but then I said 'why not?', and here it is. I also realized I haven't written anything about TMI since Gone, and I've been way too much into Percy Jackson, so, here it is.

Hope you enjoy it!

Ghostly Arms and Broken Dreams

He was lying in bed, he knew that much, but as for where was he, he had no clue. He felt someone's arms circling his shoulders, pulling him to somebody's chest, but he didn't know who it was that held him so close.

No-one dared to go so near him, except for his father, but he knew for sure there was no way it was Valentine the one caressing him. His father hardly ever touched him, once or twice, when he got hurt during training, but it would always be in a cold and professional manner, not with the kind gentleness those arms were circling him.

Plus, there was something else bugging him. By the curves in the person's body he knew that the one besides him was a woman, which eliminated any possibility of it being his father.

"My baby" the woman whispered into his hair, crying softly. "My baby" she as he felt her shoulders shake under the pressure of each and every sob.

He didn't know who that person was, and if he were to follow his father's lessons, he should have thought of her as weak and coward, since she was openly crying now, muttering intelligible words while she whimpered, but he didn't feel disgust or revulsion towards her, but pity. Why was she crying so hard, so desperately?

"Why?" the woman continued to ask, crying more loudly than before. "Why you?"

Convulsive sobs ran across the woman's back, but no matter how hard she cried, her hands continued to tenderly caress him, as if by taking care of him she could ease her own pain and stop her tears.

He couldn't understand why she was crying, and he didn't know who she was, and yet… with her arms around him, he felt safe, protected. It didn't matter how weak she was showing herself to be by crying so painfully. It didn't matter that she was a complete stranger either. None of it mattered to him just as long as she continued to hold him to her chest with that kind fondness. None of it mattered as long as she continued to surround him with that familiar warmness.

"My son, my baby" she sobbed, but she sound of her voice seemed to come from far away, not next to him like the previous times. "I couldn't save you" the woman said, her voice drifting of slowly as if blown by a breath of wind. "I couldn't save you."

He woke up with a gasp, his left hand instantly flying to clutch his chest. His heart was pounding and his vision was blurred with something that was almost unknown to him: tears.

His breathing became ragged and hard going as he scanned the room, half relieved and half pained when he found it out he was alone.

He couldn't allow his father to see him like that, like the weakling he was. If Father walked into his room in that moment and saw him like that he didn't even want to imagine how huge his rage would be, or the things he would do to him as punishment.

And yet… in that moment, and probably for the first time in years, he didn't care about what his father would do or think about his actions.

"I couldn't save you, my son…" she'd said, weeping mournfully. "I couldn't save you, my baby…"

It was nonsense, he thought, he didn't even have a mother. She had turned her back on him as soon as she had seen him, Father had told him. She had been a cold-hearted woman who hadn't loved him, neither that he wanted so, knowing as he did that to love is to destroy and to be loved is to be destroyed.

But… the way in which the woman in his dream had held him, the pure and genuine grief in her voice… If she hadn't loved him, then why had she been crying so desperately?

He never doubted his father, he never questioned anything that he said–he had learned early in his life that such a thing was not just useless, but dangerous as well.

And yet… why was it then that he felt the need to tell his father that maybe he had been wrong about love?

But then again, she had been crying mournfully, he was sure. Who was she mourning then? Him, the child that she had abandoned and forsaken so early in his life he couldn't even make a mental image of her? The woman's weeping had been filled with pure and throbbing pain. If he was going to dare believe she had loved him… and she had been crying so hurtfully, wasn't then his father right by saying that to love is to destroy..?

That was the moment when he realized he didn't care. He didn't care he didn't know the woman, didn't care about what his father would think or about the lessons he'd been given–he would have given all of that away and risk his father's punishment just to feel those gentle arms holding him carefully again, as if he were something precious and not the monster Father always said he was.

If the warmness that had made its way to his heart while he had been surrounded by the woman's arms was to be destroyed, he didn't care anymore–he wanted so, so badly for her to be there again that he wouldn't have minded to stop existing just to feel that warmness again once more.

But no, he realized with a throbbing pain. She was not coming. She was not even real.

He was alone, as he had always been, as he would always be, he knew, but for some reason that thought hurt more than it had ever before.

Crying as quietly as he could just in case his father was still up, he pulled his legs to his chest, hugging his knees tightly and drawing them even closer as he began to shudder, in a vain attempt to keep himself warm.

The place besides him was empty, as it'd always been and always would be, and instead of the gently arms of the woman around his shoulders all that he could feel was a numbing ache in his chest and the icy coldness that had surrounded him since he could remember.

Forcing himself to forget everything –the woman, the dream, the warmness, the numbing pain– he slowly cried himself to sleep, as he had always done.

So... how did that go..? Please let me know in your comments!