Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.
Nightmares are only dreams. Not premonitions nor messages from beyond, but misshapen plays put together for the entertainment of the subconscious. Science has proven these dreams of horror mean nothing. This means nothing.
Chapter Four: Harboring Demon Cure
Sleep came fast and quiet like a thief, stealing me off to a world of dreams that would be unrecalled upon waking. Every once in while there is the dream that lingers though, as if to tell you something, let you in on the big secret that life is keeping from you, but always too sporadic to be understood, an undecipherable message. Sleeping on the floor of my small mountain home, lying in a worn and frayed sleeping bag, one came to me that night, a dream-like reality that puzzled and disturbed. It began like many unassuming dreams, seemingly harmless, unimportant, but it quickly cast aside its casual façade.
I dreamed of the still lake of Bran Bal. It was almost a memory, recalling of the time when I had sat on the edge of the dead water and stared at my plain reflections for hours, eyes searching the mirror-Mikoto even as she searched me, intent on that one thing that caused me to be different from the other genomes, some sign, some mark, that separated me from them as Kuja's pale skin and silver hair did. In the dream though, the more I search, the less I find that could possibly be the thing I search for.
"What are you looking for?" Zidane asks me in the dream, sitting down to also stare at the unremarkable reflection within the lake, yet it isn't Zidane whose reflection shimmers in the water like the real thing. "Do you know where all our memories go Mikoto?" The monster asks and his hot, smoky breath is on my cheek, stifling and acrid, burning away the flesh to reveal the thing inside, the thing that I've been searching for. "Where do they fly off to?" The grating voice whispers and my ears are bleeding with the sound of it in my head, buzzing, buzzing, masking everything in red. "Where have they gone?"
"The rain is coming," someone says and stars are falling all around, pounding the dead ground and raising the dead dust. Fire burns it all to ash and the monster is whispering, Zidane is whispering, the monster is whispering, whispering in my ear. Where do all our memories go? Did they burn away with the funeral pyre? Do they hide under the bed; within the farthest folds of the wardrobe? Did you kill them? Murder them softly while you slept?
The world's become a wasteland, rock everywhere, not even sand to blow forlornly in the wind; just the lake, the monster and me. Do they writhe in agony as you forget them, one by one? Leave them in the darkness, broken and alone, no comforts left? Do they—
I gaze into the stillborn lake, trying to see through the smoke of the monster's words, skin shriveling and dying, peeling, flaking, dropping away. The secret's coming out now; what is it—I have to see it, must know it, look up and down and all around it, devour it with my eyes until the secret dies forever, usurped by understanding. Zidane whispers though and his breath scorches me to my bones, his words like a hornet's nest within my head. –Hanging from the tree, throats crushed, breathe gone, hearts stopped? Are they drowning in the ocean with—
The smoke is rising and the lake is shining like crystal; mirror mirror of the stone, what's the truest of them all?–Violated beyond repair, crushed and dismembered, gone from thought? Have they drunk the sleeping drought, waking to find themselves buried six feet under by those who thought them dead? Do they—I'm leaning forward, eyes intent, everything focused in that sight—eaten after being roasted by—the air is clearing, the reflection emerging, the secret soon to be known—run away and dying in a ditch with no—Tell me, tell me, tell me please, I have to know, the answer needs to be revealed—dropped from a tower to the ground the long way down—colors, shapes, lines.
"Bastard child, seed of mongrels," the secret whispers and the dead gray dirt is peeping from my burning face, pouring out, emptying my ashing skin of everything within. The dirt keeps falling, a mudslide to bury me alive, the monster cackling, whispering, whispering--Answer now. Where do all our memories go? Where do they fly off Mikoto? Tell me, tell me, now before you die. Where do they go?—no thought of helping in his mind. The world is bursting into life and the soil is falling—or is it the soil that is bursting into life and the world that falls?—the sky is spinning and all I can think is the secret is earth and I'm going to be buried six feet under in myself, yet I can not fathom why this seems so bad. I am the soil as well as Genome; bastard child it calls me lovingly and Zidane continues to whisper his stinging words to me, hot, monstrous breath kissing my cheek and I am home in time to live the end as everything begins again. Thank you mother, thank you father, existence is alright, but please, can there be a purpose next time?
I woke to golden coins gleaming out of the darkness with indifferent curiosity that was half universal hatred. It took me a moment to register that they were the eyes of the Black Waltz, awake and staring as if he had night vision, though for all I knew he could. I might have said something then, initiated some conversation, tried to open up and salve the inner wounds of the twisted creature as I had to begun to do for his body, but Rubyeyes began to purr, calling me back to the soft blankness of sleep and I found my eyes closing instead, all conscious thought flitting away like fall leaves on the wind. Any dreams that followed left all memory upon waking.
The coming morning followed the normal routine up until a point. Rising, tripping, washing, dressing, tea, climbing the many stairs, looking for airships; from waking that morning though, an idea had formed in my mind and I intended to act on it. For this reason I had left the wooden washtub outside to collect the falling spring rain and it was for this reason that I now dragged it inside, careful not to spill the fidgety liquid on the wooden floor.
Rubyeyes, always suspect whenever he saw me set out the washtub a second time, turned and disappeared among the jumble of things around the counter, not wanting to be present, knowing what a second appearance of the washtub for the day meant. Setting out towel and soap once more, along with a sponge, I went to the bed to fulfill the evil task I had ahead of me and evil it certainly was for I knew this was going to be quite the chore. "Wake up little bird," I said loudly, dragging a sack of deadweight six foot black waltz out of the bed.
An inarticulate grunt was all I received as I lugged the deadly sleeping terror of personal hygiene to the tub. Laying him down beside it, I had to think for a moment about how I wanted to do this. Suppose I just drowned him? It would be the humane thing to do, right? Save him a lot of trouble and everyone else in the world. I wasn't even human though, so no, forget about being humane. Besides, that would have meant I'd wasted a perfectly good potion; I'd learned my lessons well in my time on Gaia and I knew full well that throwing away money like that was sacrilege, right next to killing the queen. I supposed I'd best just throw him in, but what about his clothes?
Well, I'd had to share a room with Kuja before. This couldn't be more horrifying, or so I thought. How little I knew of unwashed male. At least Kuja had been clean; he had not been his own toxic, small scale ecosystem.
I fetched some ratty old gloves I wouldn't mind burning later before I began to undress the Waltz, disgustedly, yet fastidiously piling the clothes on a towel where they would hopefully not spread the diseases they were certain to be carrying to my clean floor. The last thing I needed was to be sleeping on the floor when it had sickness all over it. Amazingly he was able to remain unconscious through all of it. It wasn't until I pulled him up and pushed him into the lukewarm water that he stopped snoring lightly and gave a loud, yet garbled shout, water rushing in his hidden mouth.
"Y-you!" The Black Waltz spluttered, coughing as I sat him up in the tub, for he was too weak to do much on his own aside from breathing and cognitive thought. "You complain louder than a cave imp," I informed him, stretching out his wings which I'd been careful to keep out of the water. Wetting the sponge and adding soap, I began to gently stroke the feathers, careful to not damage them as I washed out the horrifying amounts of dirt, oil and other things clinging to them.
"Stop," my victim protested, attempting to pull away, but not managing more than a slight jerk. I persisted on, unperturbed. "You're filthy. You need a good bathing and seeing as you can't do it yourself and are even less likely to do it yourself, I have to suffer through doing it for you. There are no scummy little birds around here," I replied, laying down one of the many rules he was going to have to learn that day, my hands never faltering in their careful attention, though I did look up to see him trying to glare at me over a particularly dirt-caked shoulder.
"Then I'll go somewhere else," He snarled faintly, energy already spent.
"Where will you go little bird? What will you do? Collapse outside my door?" I asked curiously, wondering what he really thought he was going to do. The war had ended long ago and there was no purpose for him in the world anymore. In fact, the world believed him to be dead. He did not exist according to Gaia's population.
"First I'll eliminate you and then I will finish my mission," was the angry reply.
I didn't say anything to this and there was relative silence aside from the vague meows Rubyeyes was crying somewhere (he must have gotten trapped in the cupboard again; I honestly couldn't see how he could get in there, yet not out). "What mission is that?" I asked after I'd partially finished cleaning one wing, deciding not to bring him up-to-date for now.
"None of your business seeing as I'm going to kill you," the Black Waltz answered with as much of a threatening tone as he could muster, which, sad to say, the lumpy milk I'd fed my cat yesterday had seemed more threatening than. I tugged his hat, which I'd left on him (I'd discovered in the past that black mages disliked it extremely when you touched their hats, so I had left the Black Waltz's on, figuring he was the same way), down over his eyes so that he couldn't see. "That's no way to talk to someone who's helping you, especially after you nearly made a hot cake of them yesterday."
A grumbled threat was my reply; I believe he'd started to fall back asleep, exhausted already after such small exertions. Soon enough he was snoring lightly again, ignorant to how clean he was becoming. He woke once or twice again and gave me some trouble, the worst being when he pulled my tail and I nearly fell in (if he had not been an invalid I would have smacked him, though as it was I intentionally splashed soap in his eyes which made him holler in a way a thug could only worship). Once he was good and scrubbed, not exactly smelling like Alexandrian perfume, but at least bearable, I found him a sheet to wear like a robe and turned to washing his clothes, dumping out the washtub and filling it for a third time.
Pausing as I moved to hang his coat in what small space I could find, I found myself looking at the Waltz with a feeling I'd seldom felt, but recognized all the same; it was empathy. Laying down the coat, I sat on the edge of the bed and hesitantly pulled him into my arms, wrapping them around him in an embrace that wished to do away with all the pain that was sure to come upon learning of all that had happened during his wanderings. I knew a hug, no matter how sincere and wishful of helping, couldn't solve problems, but I'd had an exact count of one in my life—that from a cheery Zidane upon his return which had been accompanied by a tousling of my hair that didn't help my blond bird's nest—that I knew a hug could still do many small things. Is a Black Waltz strong? I didn't know, but I hoped so, for having the world you knew disappear and leave you behind is not an easy thing to move on from.
Standing before I woke him and he said some very likely rude things, I picked up the coat again and resumed hanging it, a song Garnet had taught me on my lips, the first and only song I knew. "Alone for a while I've been searching through the dark…"