Title: "Falling Asleep"
Author: The DayDreaming
Summary: "Do we dream when we die?" Congratulations. You've won. You're the king and he falls before you; again, and again, and again, and again… / NxTouya, one-shot
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This is wrong, you think. It's wrong, but you won't stop it.
The way he lays against you, so perfectly still, coma-like and death-like and…and peaceful-like. But it can only be a mocking sleep. Things are never so still and silent. He sleeps like the dead and wakes like a scream, dying in the throat of a lost child.
You like this, you tell yourself. You like it when he's so tired from dreaming of escape that he lets you put his head in your lap. He's not angry or sad; it must be a kind of happiness.
He tells you that he's forgetting the face of his mother, but the moment he lets this slip he trails to something else, and at one point asks you what a mother is. Sometimes he cries. These are the moments you can't stay with him.
Sometimes he'll look at you though, and it makes you shiver. You just keep thinking that he knows. So you send him in for another session with the beheeyem, and hold him when he comes back out and sighs and tells you that he thinks he might have had a…a…a…
The repeating is the worst. At first you don't understand what it is that he's doing. He'd latch onto words and say them over and over, and it isn't until you open a drawer and find the pages upon pages filled with that same word that you realize. You take the paper and pens away, but it doesn't stop him from repeating it with his mind, his voice.
The day he finds a paring knife and draws on the walls is the day you bind his hands and keep him at your side.
Some days he just keeps silent and to himself. He won't move, and you figure this is good enough. You know it's not, but it's those times that you can leave without worrying.
He asks you about a dragon, one day. A panic seizes in you, but he goes on to say that it was the scariest thing he had ever seen, all cold with fierce yellow eyes, hollow and old. He tells you it looks broken.
When you kiss him, he holds very still, and allows your lips to wander. You whisper how much you love him, how difficult it is to keep up with his silly moods, how beautiful his eyes are.
"So why don't you let me go?" he asks. But something in you shivers and breaks apart and you grip his head, smashing mouths and teeth together. It is hot and angry and desperate, but only you know this. You feel him mouthing , and pull away and know he is repeating again, the dullest expression in his eyes.
"Let me go. Let me go. Let me go. Let me go. Let me go."
One day, you give him a book. It's supposed to be a silly fairy tale, one to make him smile, because he does so love it when you tell him stories. He spends hours on it, and fights when you try to make him eat and drink, but it is worth knowing that a spark lights his eyes.
But, things are never perfect.
"What is death?" he asks, so perfectly sweetly as he holds up that damnable book.
"It is to die. Like falling asleep, yet not waking up."
"Do we dream when we die?"
"I don't know. Maybe not."
"I'd like to die," he says, handing the book back to you. "If it stops the dreaming, that is. I have the strangest dreams, sometimes. They feel happy, but when I wake up, I can't really remember them, and it makes me feel like my heart is crying."
You frown and touch his cheek, cradling it. "Why didn't you tell me? We can fix those dreams."
"Well," he replies, shuffling away a bit. "I kinda thought that maybe…thinking about it…maybe death is like one big dream. If I can't wake up, maybe everything can just stay happy. Like a happy ending."
But it's not. So you send him away, and when he comes back, he tells you that he can't remember what a sky looks like, and that is enough.
Everything has gone right in your life. You have become the one true Hero, and command both dragons, and hold sway over the land, and are attempting to expand your borders. The resistance crumbles every day, and you gain comrades and friends, and save those precious lives you had always known needed saving.
But the boy in the highest tower still sits and stares at the ceiling, and asks you if he ever had a mother, and if not, maybe a sister, or a friend, or a large blue monster with command of the sea.
Despite everything going right, you still find the greatest happiness when he lays still, coma-like and death-like and peaceful-like and…
Because he is only ever perfectly the way you want him to be when he is like this.
But sometimes he stares at you, and it's as if he knows. There is the mask of a boy that had once known how to make the world fall to its knees and bow to him, like a king, like a god.
One night, he kisses you back, and asks if you've seen his mother.
And one day, on a day where the resistance has successfully fought back, you come home to find that the boy locked away in the tower is gone. And you know who's done this; the dirty cowards that hide behind pokemon and make them suffer. They have stolen him away, like thieves in the night.
You find the old fairy tale book on your pillow, reverently placed. You make to pick it up, but as you lift, the pages come tumbling out and scatter like leaves to the floor, each piece marred in thick red ink.
And it repeats, over and over and over and over…
'I AM DREAMING'
You scream.
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end
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I've always been fascinated with the concept of using the Beheeyem to mind-rape Touya into submission. Like really, that is the most amazing concept ever. For those that don't know, Beheeyem has the ability to change or erase memories, which is pretty fucking scary when you think about it. This is just a take on what it would be like if Touya lost to N. Because thinking about it, if Touya lost, then Ghetsis would never reveal what an asshole he is. But I don't think he'd be killed either. It would gain more public support if both heroes said they didn't want humans to have pokemon, right?
So yes. Kinda creepy, kinda sad. Touya may or not be insane, but how would you like it if you keep forgetting things, and know it's happening to you? Hence the repetition, to try and force certain memories to resurface, or at least not be erased. Fun times.
The idea of rebel resistance is also intriguing. Especially if Touko, Cheren, and Bianca are part of it. XD I bet they'd want to steal him back. Like, way to kick your enemy in the balls.
Let's pretend there's a happy ending? Anyway, please review, and thanks for reading! I'm working on a new, longer one-shot for Valentine's day and the next chapter of Summer Brave. If I time it right, I may be able to get both up. We can hope, eh?