A little Hakkai and Sanzo angst for ya. ;P
Title: Empathetic Dreams
Rated: PG-13
Warnings: language, mild mild gore, mild shounen-ai, angst
Summary: "If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream." -Rene Magritte. 83 or Hakkai+Sanzo. Hakkai POV.
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"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else."
-Erma Bombeck
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I find it strange.
The dreams of which I have at night drift into something that's... not... regime. That's how I put it. Definitely, definitely the dreams I've been having the past few days are altering, shapeshifting...
At first, the dreams, they sting. Because when you wake up in a mixture of cold and hot perspiration, and your heart is playing a game of ping-pong in your ribcage, you realize your dream is not just a dream. You realize that your dream isn't a collection of emotions you may fail to recognize while awake; be it fear, love, lust, hatred. You realize that your dream isn't hidden meanings behind surreal signs.
You realize your dream is far from a dream. It is a nightmare. A night terror.
It's more than just a dream. It is a memory. A memory playing on repeat every time you close your eyes; the film keeps running until you breach consciousness. Then you wake up, be it in your bed or in a corner where you have sleepwalked, troubled so dearly by the lucid visions that were once actual footage and not just a yellow sticker of paper slapped to your cerebrum. Hippocampus, definitely.
I remember sometimes, in the beginning, I would sleep walk, the dreams were that strong. They took control of my cerebellum, my body, my limbs, the cords, the tendons, the sinews, everything but my actual conscience and common sense.
Though it was only when the throbbing in my stomach had stopped and I was capable of walking. The man who, gods bless his soul, took care of me said that for a week straight, he would have to walk me back to bed every time I slept and walked.
Said with a smile hidden behind a cigarette and concern you would just mistake for "oh, well, it was nothing"; told me sometimes I would be a pain to get back to bed. Once I curled up in a corner and he said I wouldn't stop crying, saying a name that while awake, I can barely even utter to this day.
He even told me once when he attempted to wake me up rather than guide me to the bed, that I had violently struck at him and reopened a wound on his cheek. That moment, it was quiet. He laughed, changed the subject. We were both hit with a sickening nostalgia. We both opened our wounds.
I apologized. He apologized for trying to wake me up. "Sleep walkers shouldn't be woken up. Some girl told me this once."
As time goes on, you can easily isay/i, gods how you can vocally claim anything, that over the years the dreams do become a regular part of your daily life. You can say that you're used to them. You can say any God forsaken thing you want, but in the end, you will inever/i get used to them.
There's no way I can numb this dream out to an ordinary thing.
Those tears on a smile identical to mine, just living a few minutes older than my own, bathed in tears I've seen only rarely in our short time together. The tremble of an invaded body that gods I wanted to hold so tight. The sight of a weapon you used to save her now being used to destroy her. The apology on her lips, oh my gods I still can't comprehend the obvious of what she said, why did she say it? Why was she sorry? For what, for fucking what?
The sound of the skin going pop from blunt, silvery penetration of a blade. Slipping grotesquely in intestine, killing a life that would never see the face of Earth. Blood making a isquiishh/i noise. And although I dream in black and white, that blood I felt hit my cheek, warm yet cold from impact on my freezing, pale face, it was red.
I can never forget these things. I can never become numb to them.
I sometimes ask myself, You take one step back every time you sleep, and tomorrow, you ponder if taking your life any further is really necessary. One step forward, one step back. You keep going in one place. The one place you can't escape.
However.
Tonight's dream--changed.
As I sat there, looking horrified at the rich crimson of blood (it's the same color as Gojyo's hair--the same color as Sanzo's rosary beads--the same color of fury in Goku's eyes when he takes that limiter off to defend the one's he loves and ultimately--), I slowly began to realize--the settings are changing.
I see... colors.
Why? What is happening?
Suddenly, the bodies that wreak of stench, decay, filth and my heated aura disappear. The bars which separate me and my other half fade. I'm afraid at first, fucking terrified, I tell you. Before I know it, everything is black. Everything around me is darkness. No limits, it seems, no boundaries. Where is a light? Furthermore, if a light does arrive, will it be ithe/i light? Am I dying in my sleep?
Then I hear a splashing noise. Like small children repeatedly jumping in puddles after a heavy rain.
I turn my head slowly towards this noise--this foreign, odd noise, this isn't part of my dream, what in god's name is going on!--and I am astounded by what I see.
About two yards from my kneeling form, is a small pool of what looks like red water. Red water? Could it be...
No, no. My mind doesn't think about if this water is dyed or a human fluid. It shifts immediately on flailing, red stained hands sticking out of the water. Someone is in that body of liquid, frantically squirming, writhing. It is human by its arms, its hands, and the way it gasps and screams. It can't seem to swim, nor get out of the body of liquid. No matter how much it grasps at the earth around it, it always seems like its being... pulled back down.
It's like someone is drowning this man.
I've been told that I do one of two things when faced with a personal ordeal. Some sort of epilepsy internally, though externally you could swear I'm a corpse. Or, I drop everything and turn to the person next to me who is in pain and take on that burden instead. It's not so hard to take on the pain of others than it is to take on the pains of yourself.
This time, I forgot where I was, I forgot the blood, I forgot the bodies, I forgot the chamber, I forgot her... and I ran to him.
"Hey!" I shouted. I nearly tripped as I fell to my knees by the pool. I could barely make out the form beneath the "water." All I saw were flailing arms and twitching hands and groping fingers.
I grabbed a hand, and it immediately latched back on. Tight, firm, but shaking, frightened. I tugged, but to no avail. What was this, bloody quicksand? I took in a deep inhale of air that was sharp in my lungs and stuck my hands in loose liquid that seemed to be so firm.
I grabbed onto something--hips, tiny, small hips--and pulled. Pulled with all the strength I had left in my dream body. And I was lucky! I was winning against this supernatural force of nature! Slowly, I was pulling this man out, and by the time I had his head out of the liquid, I realized this man was not a man, but a boy. A rather young boy--eight? Nine? Ten?
Teeth grit, eyes narrowed, muscles pulling, with a yank, I managed to get the scrawny little boy coated in red out from the pool. I fell back from the sudden weight I had yanked out, the boy falling on top of me.
However, when I opened my eyes, the boy who seemed to be only eight? Nine? Or maybe ten was far older, looking in his early twenties. It was hard to make out the colors of his features through the red, but it spotted and dripped. I got yellow hair, white robes, and...
"Uwaaah!"
Shocked, the man had suddenly went into convulsions, quivering, thrashing, screaming violently. He sounded terrified beyond all reason. I managed to squirm out beneath his semi-heavy body, weighed down even more by the liquid that soaked into his skin and fibers of clothing, and took his shoulders.
"Calm down! You're all right!" I yelled, as nice as one can yell at someone. I gave his shoulders a little shake, but he still writhed and thrashed. He almost cut my face on a couple occasions.
That's when I saw those eyes. They were the eyes of a ravenous animal! They were a ruby purple, pupils tiny dots in their blown out retinas. No... ravenous seemed wrong for this situation.
They were the eyes of an animal whose home had been invaded, and family and life disrupted by a force too strong for him to fight--yet--he tried. Goddamn, he tried.
"Get a hold of yourself!" He wasn't listening to me. He was losing vital air; the man nearly died from drowning, and now he was suffocating himself! Soon I was afraid I might be sticking my fingers down his throat to pull his tongue out from choking himself.
His head tore back and forth, familiar hot but cold droplets hitting my face, getting in my eyes.
I knew trying to croon him, trying to shake him, trying to be gentle but firm with him wasn't getting me or him anywhere. So I forced myself to do something I swore I would never do--be it man, woman or child--rose my hand and slapped him across the face.
The loud clap echoed in different rhythms in this cave which had no end nor beginning.
He stopped moving.
His head drooped to the side.
I watched, both nervous and cautious, as his chest heaved in and out against his robe. Slowly, slowly but surely, he began to breath in normal inhale-exhale patterns.
"I apologize," I breathed, "but... you were... there was no other..."
"Uwah."
His incoherent grunt made me arch a brow. It sounded... annoyed?
"Let me go."
I slowly went to take my hands from his shoulders, but he jerked back and did it for me rather. He sat back, pushing hands to the ground to keep him supported and balanced. I could see how bad he was shaking by his weak arms that served as posts.
Finally, he turned his head and looked at me beneath matted, red and yellow bangs. Slivers of dark purple glared holes in my own moss green. I could see, just barely, a tiny spot of red on his forehead behind a scraggly, thin bang.
It would not occur to me until I opened my eyes late in the morning that the man in front of me was Sanzo Genjo.
"You pulled me out." Again, why did he sound bothered? I could see in his glassy eyes something naivete. Like the expression a child would wear. For a moment, his eyes screamed at me.
Why? Why did you pull me out? Why didn't you leave me to die? I hate you!
But that voice died, like blowing out a flame on a melted candle. Then, I saw the truth. The truth in his eyes was he didn't iwant/i to drown, let alone die. But... that voice.
No.
That was the voice of the past. The child that died, the child that was gone.
Later, I would understand why this monk, Sanzo, would look suicidal only for a second, but soon hold pride in those same eyes which once pleaded for death.
Because at one point, the little Sanzo that did not have his chakra or the bags beneath his eyes had wished for death.
That was the child.
He was gone now.
"Hn."
I snapped out of my contemplating, my confused little train of thought going right off the track. "Are you... all right?" I asked. I reached to touch him. He tensed. My hand slowly drew back. Never mind.
"I'm fine." He sounded insistent, as if trying to pursuade me to believe him.
"What was..." I trailed off as my eyes moved to the pond. It's was just then that I realized the pond is infact not a pond at all. It's... a puddle. A medium sized puddle. I hesitantly reached out, fingers twitching, before I touched the surface. I was shocked to find that only an inch in, my fingers met cold, hard ground.
Was... was this not just some sort of deep pool of blood or red water a moment ago? Didn't he just ipull a drowning child--no, man--from its depths... And now... it was just a puddle of...
Blood.
The texture. The smell. The feel. I knew it too well. It was blood. It was not the blood of the one I loved--no, love, love, I still love her so much!--but someone else's.
"Eh!"
I felt my shoulders jolt when the puddle bubbled, and suddenly a chipped, golden crown floated to its surface. What... what? How could a crown, let alone ianything/i, suddenly float out of a one inch deep puddle of blood?
Oh, right. This iwas/i a dream.
Not my dream anymore, though.
Was it?
No.
But...
The man whose name is Sanzo slowly gazed back over a damp shoulder. His eye widened, forming that frightened animal look when the crown caught in the deep amethyst.
"Aaah!"
Sanzo struck out a hand, knocking the crown out from floating serenely on the top of the puddle. I watched it fly into the darkness, where it disappeared. From a distance I heard a clatter of something hitting a ground I could not see, then silence again.
Then, weeping.
I turned and saw that the blonde was weeping. Heavy tears mixed with blood--which would seem so much thicker in water, but the tears were what made the blood thinner it seemed--cutting down his pale cheeks. His bluish lips curled back to show bright, white teeth grit as he choked on sobs he refused to let leave his throat. Although he knew he still made sounds, deep throat groaning and whimpering, he didn't care.
I knew he wasn't the type who wanted to be touched. Gods know I wanted no contact either. But sometimes, when a man breaks down, a touch is all they need to start the healing...
"Dai--daijobu ka?"
Surprisingly, when the tips of my fingers touched his shoulder, he did not pull away nor slap at my hand. Rather, he kept trying to muffle the noises and control the quakes riding up and down his body from the wretched sobs.
"'S..." He tried to speak. He tried to defend himself. Try to explain himself. I'm fine, I'm just fine, I'm just angry, don't touch me, let me be, don't fucking LOOK AT ME!
Nothing of the sort came out.
Rather, his arms slowly began to curl around himself. He hugged himself, held himself. I watched his fingers dig into his sleeves, knuckles deep in the skin, rings of white and red forming around them.
My frown turned sad.
iShe/i often held herself when she hurt. She curled into herself, held herself, bowed her head, cried as she smiled, Ne, Gonou, it's okay. It's nothing, really. I don't want to trouble you. Please, don't be upset because of me. I know you're empathetic, and I don't want you to hurt, please Gonou, I'll be okay, see I'm smiling...
"Sensei..."
Gonou...
"I'm sorry."
I'm sorry...
"Iiee!"
I didn't care at this point who this person was, Kanan or a man only my conscious self knew. I needed comfort, I needed closure. I wound my arms around the man, pulled him against my chest, held him against my bosom until I swear I could have squeezed the life out of him.
At first, his reaction was a quick squirm. Then, he went frozen. Then... he slouched. He slouched right against me.
This... felt familiar.
"Warm..."
This felt like two nights ago. The bedsheets strewn across intertwined body, God, how she radiated heat like the sun in spring.
"You're..."
Her lips, oh, her lips! They melted my entire soul whenever she kissed me!
"You're warm."
It was then I realized that it was no longer cold, and behind my closed eyes and the tears that built, there was a light.
Lids slowly opening, I watched tiredly as a glow grew between my stomach and his back. A soft, calm glow. Green and yellow in color, with an almost white center. Slowly building and building. It was so comforting, it was so warm, yet it was cool like a summer breeze. It felt relaxing and calming.
It made both our bodies melt into one another.
I felt my fingers curl against his chest.
I felt his fingers grasp at my arms. Not to pull me away. But to keep me close.
"It's... like..."
Healing.
Yes. It was like healing. An energy that cleansed the surface, and... deep within. For a while, I could swear neither of us knew why we hurt, why we were crying and why we were so eager to be close to one another.
All we knew is the chi that made the darkness turn into light made us smile, just a little, and then fall asleep.
Fall back into depths of reality.
Green, yellow, white, black...
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"It's ithree/i. In the morning, by the way. The clock is on my side of the bed. Fucking red light is tattooing numbers in my forehead."
I chuckled, wiping sweat from my brow. I looked over to the bed next to mine, at red hair and a bare, lean back.
"Bad dream?"
I thought over this for a moment.
"Weird dream."
"No chicks?"
I smirked.
"No, not really."
"Damn." The figure cuddled deeper in the mattress, tugging blanket farther up his body, to cover more of his back. "'Night then."
I just nodded in regard, smiling.
For a moment, I sat in a bed unfamiliar to me. One that I would never see again after tomorrow. I looked out the window, where I could see very faint white sunlight touching the tips of a small mountain. I just stared at this for awhile, just for a bit.
Soft, white light cutting through layers of darkness...
Before I know it, I'm on my feet, walking down the hall and in the next room. Goku is, of course, fast asleep and snoring. But to my surprise, the blonde monk, Sanzo Genjo, was up. Sitting on the edge of his bed, back towards the door, to me, smoke protruding from the front of him.
"Sanzo?"
I got no reply.
I slowly walked across the room, watching Goku, making sure any slight noises I should make didn't wake him. I finally got to stand in front of Sanzo. The smoke came from, typically, a cigarette hanging from his frown. He looked miserable, if not eternally pissed off.
"Not sleeping?"
A cynical grunt. "I figured you the smart one--that's a dumb question to ask."
I just grinned sweetly. "Not tired?"
"Fucking exhausted." An annoyed sigh and exhale of smoke.
"You just can't sleep?" I asked.
"I was," he mumbled, "but then..." He paused. He never looked at me since I first stepped in front of him. He stared across the room for another minute, then finally met my eyes. I was shocked by the look in them.
A very familiar look.
"... I had a weird dream."
It was for what seemed like forever where we stared in one another's eyes.
A... weird dream...?
We then understood.
And when we understood, we didn't dare reveal it, or discuss it. I smiled, he looked away bitterly.
"The receptionist downstairs said they have a cafe opened all night," I began, "want to go down there and get some warm milk?"
"Coffee," he corrected me. His brows furrowed, angrily. "It's fucking hell to get back to sleep. Especially when that thing in the bed next to me sounds like a goddamn orchestra of bag pipes and accordions. Might as well just toughen it out until morning."
I couldn't help but cover a tiny laugh behind my hand at his description of Goku's snoring. "You won't feel so good if you stay up then and don't get back to bed."
He just smoked, then inquired, "Are you going to go back to bed?"
My smile turned coy. As if I had been caught.
"No."
"Then don't chastise me like you do those morons."
I wasn't offended by his mood or tone he took with me. It was... another form of a regime. I was used to it, and I'm sure he knew that, too.
"Come on." I turned towards the door. I whispered, "I'll get a coffee with you. We can stay up and be grumpy all day tomorrow together."
I got a little half-amused smirk from him. "Whatever," he retorted. He drew to his feet and smeared his cigarette in a local ashtray. "Smells like mothballs in here anyway."
I chortled quietly again.
My hand extended to his.
He looked at it, then slowly slipped his bare one in my own. Slowly, our fingers curled around each others hands. I smiled at him, he just stared at me. Then, making sure Goku was still asleep and not spying on us, we moved out of the room--
"You're annoying me."
"Why?"
--down the hall--
A grunt that suggested, "you know what I mean."
"Your empathy even reaches my stupid dreams."
--hand in hand.
I laughed and squeezed his hand a little tighter.
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"Sleep hath it's own world, - And a wide realm of wild reality. - And dreams in their development have breath, - And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy."
-Lord Byron
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OWARI
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