She loved dreams, sensations of the mind that brought faith while sleeping, revealing that life might be more than it seemed. Loved the sights and feelings they brought, less than reality, and just vauge enough to give wishes a chance to grow. Loved the way they exposed truth withviews of what might be that made the task of waking up hazy and unreal. What were dreams if not the truthfulness and purity of the mind's most secret thoughts and deepest buried disires? A paradise in which your visions came to live in the world your mind occupied.

But she hated her dreams.

Her dreams, she knew, were not so peaceful. She had thought for a while to call them nightmares instead, for those they were more akin to than dreams, but she dreamed only of her life, not of monsters or fiends, and so hesitated to call them such. Her dreams of dark hair and matching soul were different from the tranquility of other's, and she resented them, hated that they were her's. They refused to remain banished from her thoughts, refused to leave her when she woke, adhering to her mind, a burden through her already encumbered days. She could not get free of the dreams, so she could not help but to remember the roughness of skin she wished she had never felt, blue eyes watching with an emotion she had seen all too often, his silky voice whispering things she did want to believe she had heard, her one fear that made her dread returning to her rooms at night. They were always waiting for her.

His eyes were watching her in these dreams, eyes shining with the evil light that fueled his black soul, never blinking, but knowing, more than she would ever conceed he knew, even in a dream. His eyes never left her, even after waking it seemed, a hue of blue so different from her own, but a color that was too horribly familiar to forget. The shrouded look her often wore was gone, face concealed in shadows, shadows she did not wish to see beyond. Many times she had seen the sneers and smirks he threw at others, her brother most often, the blank, pale facade he used otherwise, and the crooked half-grin she had seen directed at her more than once. In no way had she ever been content to live in a world punctured by his dark looks, but the ones in her dreams were different, more sinister and cold than he could've ever achived in reality, like the foul carrion who scavanged the dirt in winter.

She had never seen him attempt a smile at anyone else, and hated she had been the cause of them, that any pleasent feelings bestowed on him might have been because of her, and this dark thought came to her often in sleep. And because she knew he sought ever for her acknowledgement, a fleeting look or quiet murmur, she did her best to deny him these things, in both her mind and actuality.

Someone called her name from behind her door, and her mind scrambled to wake, to be rid of these thoughts if only for a brief moment, to push them away and welcome the distraction that came so willingly to her door. She near feared the moment when she would slip casually into sleep only to have it disturbed by these visons of him, to war with her own mind against them. And though she did not realize it, she was again at the mercy of the dreams that sought to overtake her while she slept; and slowly they were winning.

His hair was murky black, like the ink that regularly stained his fingers, contrasting heavily with his skin, white as twisted moonlight. His eyes knew her completely as they gazed, threatening her with her own secrets that had become theirs because of his prying thoughts, taunting and mocking even as his hands reached out. Even his movements brought to mind bleakness, slithering steps that didn't echo in the rooms of her dreams, and as he approached, he looked every bit the Wormtongue.

She knew it wasn't real, but couldn't help being comforted by the fact that when she awoke, she would be alone.