Title: Fool's Gold
Type: oneshot
Rating: G
Summary: Where dreams are dreams of gold.
A/N: If you managed to read this when I first posted it on my LJ, then the only revision comes at the end. It now has a not-much-improved-but-not-as-lame-as-it-used-to-be ending. This is the fic's final revision, hopefully.
A/N #2: This fic was brought about by SF's comment for Birth which states that her continuity circuits point out that Goku was born at night (saw the full moon, and thought it was the sun).
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Moving slowly through the quagmire
Reaching slowly for the sun
Did you ever lack of moonlight?
Did you ever need a sign?
- Ever Dream of Moonlight, Orchard's and Vines
Sometimes you dream of darkness. Where ghosts flirt with shadow and the cold is rough stone and hard iron against your skin. Sometimes you think it isn't a dream at all. It is here that doubt surrounds you most, a bitter poison to one who has known only trust. In the darkness you do not exist, for one who has no memory of his past has not yet lived. Here, you have always been alone.
Sometimes you dream of blood. Where crimson clots on torn skin and death is a canvas painted over a grisly red. The scene is painstakingly familiar, a haunt of pasts forgotten and of presents foretold. Only then do you know what bloodlust really is, and that survival is different from the pleasure of a kill. Here, you think, I do not know myself.
Sometimes you dream of cherry blossoms, of voices just beside you and laughter in the wind. In this you dream of perfection, of warmth and of friendship. Of spun gold twisted fine in your hand and crushed petals tickling your toes. Here, you learn that perfection cannot exist.
Sometimes, you don't dream at all.
Always, you wake up cold and strangely bereft, with the faded edge of dreams already lost.
Sometimes you wake to chaos. Of sharp claws in your line of vision or a weapon's edge come to greet you. Sometimes you wonder if you're still dreaming, because everything is a haze of screams and movement and of pain quickly forgotten and the sound of your own laughter in your ears. Here, you think it is only natural that they can never harm you, even as your blood stains the earth at your feet and theirs stain your skin.
Sometimes you wake to silence, a shattering stillness that stops the air in your lungs and a scream of panic half-formed. It takes a moment for the soft breathing in the bed opposite to reach your ears, and a moment longer for your own breathing to return and the unvoiced scream to disappear. Here, you are never alone, but sometimes, you can never quite make out the difference.
Sometimes you wake to sunlight ice-cold and amethysts sharp as daggers and you think the sun should never burn like frost in coldest winter. Maybe it doesn't, but already it fails to warm you.
Sometimes, you wish you never woke up at all.
Always, always, you dream of gold. Of gold forever present, but always out of reach. Of gold seeping through tiny fissures where the shadows play. Of gold pooling on the tips of fingers dipped in blood. Of rogue-tinted sunlight filtered through the branches, littered with voices warm and familiar and long gone.
Not once, have you dreamt of silver... until now. It fills your dreams as surely as if it has always belonged there. It is silver bright as sunlight and twice as cold, but as familiar as the grass that tickles the skin at your back. It is the light at the edge of your vision you never wished to see. Of silver long forgotten, once, come before the sun, before the chains, before the blood and before the darkness rising.
This time you wake into moonlight. You bathe in it even as you wonder how something so pure can exist in the darkness that breeds it. When the touch to your cheek comes you aren't the least bit surprised, and it will only be days later that you will wonder how you never noticed him upon waking.
The first you see of him is hair pale as fallen snow, mirroring the moonlight as much as eyes black as midnight mirrors the darkness around you. He is a stranger to you, and yet... You feel like you should know him, and are disappointed to find that you do not.
You dreamt of silver once, and you think it is only natural that you reach up just as he reaches out to you. He is a reflection of light in the darkness turned real, strong with the scent of nature and of birth. His is the touch of dreams and the alien taste of home. And you know finally, why it is the sun can never reach you.