Title: Graver Than Blue
By: RayOfDarkSunshine
Summary: It's not just the nightmares that scare him though, it's the emptiness they leave when they're gone.
A/N: Second in my three 'Obscure Colour Scape' one-shot trilogy. The last one was about Dally but now this story based on a different colour and different song. If you liked the last one, you might like this too. This one's a little more bitter than the last. Enjoy.
The sleepless nights were catching up. He was beginning to feel it, each day was melting into an incoherent fuzz. He couldn't concentrate, couldn't think straight and his body craved sleep but he couldn't fall and give into the craving. Fighting it, hating it and then breaking. Crumpling like paper under the pressure. So he slept. Sometimes with nights were peaceful because there were no dreams, only a bliss of emptiness and dreamless black peace. Those nights were the worst, the ones where his mind played tricks on him. Made him think that his sleepless nights were over. That he was okay. His dreams deceived him, his mind tricking him because in those empty dreamless nights he thought he was safe. Safely away from the demons of the present but he was wrong, so very wrong.
He heard it was the ghosts of his past that you had to avoid but that didn't apply to him. His ghost resided in his heart, in the present and in his mind which fought with him every day of his life. Those thoughts were easy to avoid during the day, school kept the bad thoughts away, kept the ache of tiredness at bay but day by day and little by little the façade begins to slip. Once again he begins to crack under the pressure. The dark blue nights slip by slower than the days do and he feels himself lying awake looking at the ceiling, it feeling like an eternity when it was only a few minutes. He's too terrified to sleep, not wanting to face the darkness. Not wanting it, always just want to stop. So he does, he stop caring and gives in. Fighting so hard, the numbness slipping inwards and the cravings receding. He sleeps. Once again his mind fights him, pulling him into the present. Never leaving, the memories to fresh to forget. Then he dreams.
He dreams he's in the country. Alone in a field. He can feel the wind whirl around him but everything is silent. He stands, feeling the blades of tall grass between his fingers. The stillness haunts him, everything is too silent and it scares him. He doesn't want to be alone, be he is. Always alone in the crevices of his mind. Alone despite being surrounded by other people. Cut off by his own glass wall, looking out and not able to let anybody in. That's what scares him the most, how the emptiness can change. How the hole in his heart, left there by death and despair can fluctuate and change leaving him feeling more empty and more afraid than before. That's why he wakes up, his heart jumping as though it wants to escape his chest. To stop being a part of him. It's not just the nightmares that scare him though, it's the emptiness they leave when they're gone. An inescapable emptiness that he just wants to rid himself of.
That's it though. While each time he stops sleeping his body craves the darkness like a dangerous drug. He doesn't want to put himself though it. The emptiness that the nightmare leave that resides in his heart. The ones where he wakes up and can't remember. The ones that leave him tear stained and emotionally crippled, something not even his brothers can protect him from because they don't understand it. He doesn't want to remember the worst times, tears shed, fears exposed and lives being torn to shreds. Ponyboy Curtis lies awake and hopes that one day he'll wake up to a time where smiling is worth it.