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This was written for the word prompt "needles" over at the KHR Fic Meme; the title is taken from the 31 Days theme for April 24, 2008. Special thanks to Nikki for doing the REAL archiving for all of us~
It was an old, recurring nightmare, and the last remnant of the story he had chosen to walk away from after being dragged down through all the circles of Hell then lifted right back up, in an agony that people properly labeled "eternity" without actually knowing that they were doing it right. Mukuro told himself that he did not dream, and if anyone asked him, even if it was Chrome, he would tell them the same thing. He did not think he was lying. He was an illusionist. He could make something out of nothing. He could make fiction truth.
That did not, however, stop him from dreaming of bloodied tables, blinding floodlights, babbling voices just over the sound of his own breathing, harsh and ragged, ripping air in out of his lungs. He could retreat into his illusions all he wanted, but it would never stop him from remembering what it was like to feel leather straps biting into his wrists and measure the minute and almost poetic distance between his face and a needle before they sank it straight into his eye, permanently coloring his world in the shades of blood and birth.