Nightmare
Dream Two: The Usual
Silence.
At first, that was all that she was aware of. Silence, and an acute awareness of the fact that is should not be silent.
Lenalee was sitting on something hard, knees drawn into her chest. She shifted; it was mildly uncomfortable. Realizing that her eyes were closed, she opened them, and took in the red world around her.
It was a familiar scene. Sitting atop the dilapidated remains of ancient ruins, staring out at endless dark water with a stark, black crescent moon hanging behind her against a curiously red sky. She couldn't see it, but this world was familiar. She had been here enough times to know that it was there.
Lenalee stood, hesitating slightly before glancing around, a strong sense of foreboding filling her. There were things ahead that she didn't want to see, but at the same time she knew that the sooner she saw them, the sooner she could get out. It was tempting to keep sitting anyway, in only minor discomfort, and put off the horrors that lay ahead indefinitely. But she couldn't. There were things that she had to do, though Lenalee was not sure what they were. Only that she could not remain here. So she looked.
Abruptly the ruins were no longer the remnants of some long-dead ancient civilization, but pieces of her home. The once solid stone of the Black Order was strewn about the water in too many pieces to count. She was reminded of something, impenetrable walls crumbling before and around her. Lenalee squeezed her eyes shut against it, and when she opened them she was no longer on the ruins, but surrounded by them, standing on the discomfortingly black water.
Somehow, as apprehension bubbled up through her chest, Lenalee knew that whatever came next was worse. Worse than the destruction of what had been her home for as long as she could remember. She took one step forward, and then another. There was something floating in the water. Another step. She didn't want to see it, but a force made her continue forward; an invisible hand or simply morbid curiosity, she did not know.
She was close enough to make out the unmistakable lines of an Exorcist uniform now. The hood was drawn up, obscuring the wearer's face, but his arm was impossible not to recognize. The skin was a deeper shade of red than the sky, with ridges sprawling out from a glowing green cross set in the back of the hand.
Lenalee realized that she was crying, though she wasn't sure if it had started with the ruins of the Order or the boy before her. Impossibly, her feet were still moving, rebelling against her mind that begged not to have to see it. She wanted to scream, but couldn't; nothing could break the silence here. Her legs continued forward until she was practically on top of what could only be a corpse, close enough to make out wisps of white bangs peeking out from his hood even through her blurring vision. The tears fell, sending small ripples through the water over his chest, and now she could see the curve of his jaw line and the scar over his left eye.
Now she did scream.
Lenalee rolled onto her side, opening her eyes slowly. Her heart beat was already beginning to return to normal by the time she was fully conscious, eyes dry. Ah, there it was. That dream. There was nothing comforting in the familiar nightmare, but it felt routine. It somehow brought a sense of normalcy to her life that she had not experienced in a long while. This she could deal with. This she could push to the back of her mind and above all else not think about why it was always Allen.