Dreams of Hell
The Demon Ororon

TDO is under Mizuki Hakase, a few characters in here are my own.

A great big shout-out warning to all you folks: if you haven't read/finished the series yet, don't read this. Super bad spoilers, the worst of the whole lot in here.

chapter one
The Royal Afterlife

Where does the King of Hell go when he dies?

"A terrible place, Chiaki."

The demon Ororon sat back, resting his chin on his knuckles. He closed his dark grey eyes, a grin and a soft chuckle passing his lips as he drew a slow breath. "It's huge and great and I don't think it ever ends. Some black room with a single bulb chained from the ceiling throwing out a single circle of light, and there's a chair in the piss center of that light. A big red armchair that I hate, because it's facing the door to this place. The only door, the only door that keeps me here and everything else there, and it's locked. I can't find the back wall of this room. I have nowhere else to go."

Ororon sat in the very same plush armchair, his black self lying in drastic contrast against the coarse red fabric stapled to the frame; he could entertain the notion that it was his own blood saturating the seat. He had found nothing in the darkness behind his red chair, the throne of his afterlife, and saw everything in front of it. He wore the same clothes he had died in, more or less, though it wasn't by means of choice; he had ripped the bloody shirt away from himself and lost it somewhere in the black. Looking down at himself after that, he had been met with a scar healed ugly over his stomach. That scar disgusted him, made him wonder about the completeness of his death, and put him into a hot rage. More than once he had wanted to tear the old wound open again and dig inside himself to see if his intestine was still there, just because he couldn't feel pain in this room. His pants remained a little dripped on, but he kept them anyway, and substituted his coat for the missing shirt.

There was no way to tell how long he'd been in that room, sitting in that chair. No means of cataloging days or weeks or months, but it felt like years, like another century had been weighted on his age and, like the lack of pain, it drove him mad when he thought about it. Ororon's Hell was solely his, and it was a horrible thing to have when he had finally wanted to share. His tired grin slipped away when he realized that he had expected this, right from the rainy Monday that she had asked him for that promise. He had given her a broken promise, and he had known it. Chiaki…

Chiaki was all he had left now, and even in that he could only remember her. There were things he wouldn't trust himself to think about, because lingering in his past would just become an unnecessary terror. He kept his family away from his thoughts; his father, mother, brothers, everyone he'd known before her. He shielded himself from all of them now, refused to entertain the memories. He would sit and wonder about how dark this room was, and how bright that light was. He would stress over the silence and the haggard cough of his own voice, reducing talk to a vacant whisper. Eventually his thoughts would drift to Chiaki, and that was a welcome torture. The thought of her was a curse and a blessing on him, but he had nothing else.

Ororon…

…But what was worse than the numbness, the silence, the scar, the light and the dark and the chair and that door, was her voice. When she said his name. He would hear it, this soft nothingness in his head, a draft against the tide, drifting solemnly in his mind, and every time she echoed about him, he'd look at the door. Stare at it with a longing and hatred he'd never handled before, because it was keeping her out. It tore away at his heart, destroyed him every time he heard her, but he loved it. A curse and a blessing, he reflected with a grim smile, is exactly what she was.

The royal afterlife. Darkness and light, no pain. No hunger or thirst, not much of anything but himself and a chair. A big red chair to spend the rest of his… life, afterlife? Forever spent lounging in his red throne, spine twisted and long legs caught on the padded arm, shoulders hunched, elbow digging into the chair and chin cupped in his palm. He wanted a cigarette, but couldn't feel the dire craving for nicotine he used to heed. So he closed his eyes and slept, watching his dreams like scenes from a movie; Chiaki standing in the rain, clutching too-full grocery bags; Chiaki hovering over the stove experimenting with dinner; Chiaki sitting on the porch with him as he smoked; Chiaki laughing; Chiaki crying; Chiaki sleeping. Joking with her. Reading with her. Fighting with her. Touching her, hugging her. Kissing her.

Forever.

The Demon King slept through the depression of himself, as well as the sudden click of the door's lock.