His dreams weren't always that way. Before Seimei died they were peaceful and warm. Sometimes, if he really tried hard enough to remember, he would get faint little memories of before. Seimei holding his hand or buying him candy as a little 5 or 8 or 10 year old Ritsuka laughed. He would always wake up from these dreams smiling to find his brother sitting at the computer or simply watching him with a thin smile.
When Seimei died, the dreams seemed to go with him. It all changed and he woke from dreams of black and white with sharp edges that cut him like the knives his mother held- still holds sometimes. When there was color, he wished there wasn't, because the color that came was always red, the steady crimson of blood and he woke up feeling sick.
Then that man came and the dreams stopped all together. Occasionally, they came back when the man hadn't called him for days, or his mother had had an especially bad attack, but somehow he always woke from it to the smell of cigarette smoke. As much as he hated to admit it, it always soothed him to smell the bitter ashy odor by the gates of the school or in his bedroom, because it almost always meant that he would look up and find the fighter standing there.
His doctor had always said that dreams were part of your memories, but for once, Ritsuka was glad to not have the memories. Not when they could be replaced with cigarette smoke, warm touches, and those lips that brushed his despite the lies he told about not liking them. Not when they could be replaced with the gentle caresses and the firm hands that could go from flinging spells to petting over his ears in mere seconds. Not when they could be replaced with Soubi.