AN: Hi! So I think I promised that this chapter would be more cheerful but... a lot of you liked the drama so... here be more drama! Warning; chocolate once again advised for beginning but after that it's fiiine... O:) reviews always appreciated, makes me write more often and whatnot so... let me know what you think! Enjoy :)
"Hey Duncan! Duncan, look!" Duncan glanced up from his work to peer out of the window, watching the small purple girl sail towards him on a glider, stumbling slightly as she landed. Bouncing through the door, she beamed happily and held out her hands.
"What am I meant to be looking at?" Duncan as, bewildered, as he watched Kim's outstretched hands motion towards him. She laughed as she linked her hand in his, pulling him outside into the sunny day. Duncan blinked a few times, adjusting to the sudden brightness; he had been working inside for too long again.
"Come on Duncan!" Kim grinned eagerly as she let go of his hands and flew up into the sky, gliding away towards the sun. Duncan squinted, unable to look.
"Wait for me!" he called, flying after her. As he flew, he noticed the world was changing around him. The sun was dying, the trees were fading and monsters were appearing covered in taint, snarling and snatching at him. His jetpack disappeared as he flew into the ground, crashing to the ground. Raising his head, he watched as Kim landed, laughing, as the monsters swarmed towards her.
"KIM!" Duncan screamed, reaching for her as a skeleton shot an arrow into her head. Kim continued to laugh at Duncan, motioning for him to join her, seemingly unable to feel the arrow which should have killed her. "KIM, RUN!" Duncan shouted as a creeper blew up beside her, knocking her off her feet and into the outstretched purple arms of a zombie as she continued to giggle and laugh. "KIM! NO!" Duncan managed to pick himself up and flung himself in-between the arms of the zombie as it suddenly disappeared before him. All the mobs disappeared whilst Kim's laughter finally stopped.
She turned to Duncan, her body covered in the flux, head bowed down. "They were my friends Duncan… I just wanted to show you my friends…" she said sadly as she looked up as Duncan watched, horrified, as she stared at him with empty purple eyes and held out her outstretched hands to Duncan, dripping with blood and flux. "Duncan… Duncan…" she chanted as Duncan stumbled away from her, aware of his own hands turning purple. "Duncan… Duncan…" she continued as Duncan watched the sad fluxed girl in front of him and stopped running, feeling the taint spread to his shoulders, deciding to merely close his eyes in defeat. They were both dead anyway. She was dead.
"Duncan… Duncan… DUNCAN!" Kim was yelling as Duncan's eyes shot open as he sat up quickly in his bed, breathing healthily, not knowing where he was for a second. "Duncan... calm down, it's me, its Kim…" Duncan spun his head around and saw Kim sitting on the edge of the bed, holding half a bucket of water in her hands as she watched him cough as he failed to take a breath. Kim watched in shock as Duncan gradually became aware of his surroundings, looking everywhere and at everything apart from her. Eventually he ran his hands through his hair, momentarily looking panicked as he drew them in front of him. "I poured water on you…" Kim feebly explained as Duncan continued to examine his hands carefully, turning them over. Kim was worried; she'd never seen Duncan like this before.
"…Hi." Kim came out of her thoughts to see Duncan looking at her, with what looked like an attempted smile on his face. The injuries from… that night… were still healing but you couldn't tell from a distance that he had been hurt. They had both been coping so well. Or so Kim had thought.
"Hi…?" she asked questionably back as Duncan glanced out of the window, noting that the sun hadn't come up yet. He would have probably woken up in an hour or so if it hadn't been for that… nightmare.
"Why are you awake?" he asked, swearing to himself under his breath at the look Kim gave him in response. A mixture of pity and sympathy combined with a hint of 'really-you-don't-know?'. She shouldn't be awake before him, he was the one who had to get up earlier than her each day...
"You woke me up…" Kim muttered, putting down the bucket and playing with her hair instead, wondering if she should say the rest. Duncan had his face in his hands and Kim decided to risk it.
"You were saying my name… a lot…" Kim began, noticing how Duncan immediately froze. She continued "I thought you were laughing at first… but then your voice changed; it became more anxious and worried and…" she trailed off, recalling shaking Duncan desperately as he had clawed at her and the pillow before she had given up to run outside for a bucket for water; when she returned he had been limp, and for a split second she didn't breathe. She replayed the moment when she had ran over to his seemingly lifeless body, spilling water in the process, only to notice that he was whimpering slightly and tears were leaking through his scrunched, closed eyes. She had thought he was gone. She had thought she was alone.
"… and then I poured water on you and you woke up!" Kim concluded, trying to sound cheerful as Duncan peeked through his hands and looked at her in disbelief.
"Really?" he questioned, his voice still slightly shaking as he took another deep breath. That was the worst nightmare he had ever experienced… well, definitely a top three; the nuke and the past was an old favourite in his nightmares. "...I think I preferred your bottled nightmares" he said after a while as she smiled at him and giggled slightly. As she did, he was reminded of his dream and had to look away again, causing the slight smile and giggling to stop on Kim's face. She edged closer to him, only stopping when he looked back at her a few seconds later.
"What happened?" she asked in a low voice, not wanting to press him but curious to know at the same time. The screaming, the crying… what could possibly have made Duncan hurt to the extent where even a smile from her couldn't cheer him up?
Duncan rolled away from her, facing the wall. "Well… there were monsters and the flux had pretty much spread everywhere…" he tried to say casually, managing to succeed in sounding indifferent about it. He knew Kim was nodding behind him, despite being unable to see her.
"I guess that would be pretty scary…" she smiled, as Duncan made a noise in agreement. Kim knew he wouldn't say the rest, but she could guess that she had been taken over by the taint. Just thinking about it made the voices whisper more urgently in her head… Kim shook her head, unable to take her eyes off Duncan's back. She was curious though; why had he been so shaken? Pausing, she asked carefully "… did you get taken over by the taint?"
Duncan edged further away from her, closing his eyes and sighing, telling Kim that he didn't want to talk about it. She yawned obviously, destroying the torch that she had lit beside them, and climbed onto her side of the bed, once again noticing Duncan freeze; his nightmare must have been terrible... she must have been terrible. She stared at the ceiling for a while, listening to Duncan's uneven breathing as he failed to control them, slowly drifting off to sleep as the minutes passed; it was still dark enough outside to pretend it was night.
"I don't know, Kim." Duncan's voice whispered through the darkness as Kim's eyes fluttered open, darting over to look at the shape that was Duncan. He rolled over to face her and she quickly shut her eyes again, despite knowing that in the dark he'd probably be unable to see them open anyway.
Duncan listened as he heard Kim's even breathing and sighed. "I didn't care about the Flux taking me; I was unable to save you and I woke up before I knew what had happened to me. I had failed you." Duncan's voice cracked slightly on the last few words, watching as Kim seemingly woke up as he tried to turn over so he wasn't facing her. A hand on his shoulder prevented him from doing so as he looked back at Kim.
"Do you want to know what I dreamed about?" Kim whispered cheerfully. Duncan knew that she had heard him and also knew she was being kind enough to ignore that at the same time. Duncan turned red in the dimly lit room, reassuring himself that he hadn't given his feelings away, as he nodded before answering "Yes" in case she hadn't seen him.
Kim rolled over to face him; she couldn't see his face but still smiled away, just in case he could see her. "I dreamt we were with the Chocobos and you were looking after them all whilst I played with the smaller ones. Then you shouted something and I turned around and you had managed to get the black one and you let me have her and it was awesome Duncan, we went flying and we took the rest of them all on a run and it was really funny because you were trying to steer them all back home and they were all ignoring you…" Kim got wound up in her story telling and only realised when Duncan chuckled in response.
Kim cleared her throat. "Anyhow… after that we mucked about with all the flowers, and we were picking petals. We made the world's longest daisy chain, it wrapped around the whole house, and all the pipes too! And then we had these ridiculous flower outfits on and we were trying to race on who could get the most petals at one time…" she paused momentarily as she laughed as Duncan's sniggers had turned to outright laughter. "Excuse me!" she said indignantly, pretending to be offended as she continued over Duncan's hushed laughter "… so yeah, I won, obviously, and then we put flower petals in all of the Chocobos feathers and you got so grumpy because we couldn't tell them the females and males apart…" Kim once more gave into laughter as Duncan propped his head up on one hand, looking at her as she turned to face him, grinning. The sun must have risen slightly because she could make out more of the distinguished features on Duncan's face, like his nose, where his eyes were, and most importantly the smile on his face.
Kim took a deep breath before quickly carrying on "Ooh, and then we went up to the Slime Island and had a massive fight and the slime blocks acted as trampolines, so we jumped in the water, and Nilesy turned up and complained about us needing a pool so we put the luggages down and started mining for material and we decided on marble and cobblestone brick and we couldn't decide…"
"Kim, I'm alright now." Duncan's voice cut across Kim as she stopped, taking a short breath.
"What do you mean, I'm just telling you my dream; it's not finished yet!" she said innocently as she watched Duncan tilt his head to one side slightly and knew he was giving her a suspicious look. He sighed as he plonked his head back onto the pillow, seemingly closing his eyes.
"Go on then, how did it finish?" Duncan asked sarcastically as Kim stuck out her tongue before continuing.
"Um I don't really know, I'm running out… I mean," she laughed awkwardly as Duncan's eyes shot open as he laughed and pointed at her, saying something along the lines of 'Got you!' triumphantly, "…I can't really remember; you saved us from the taint and we lived happily ever after, the end!" she finished teasingly before stopping as she realised Duncan's laughter had suddenly cut off. Cursing herself, she quickly turned and re-lit the torch, casting a sudden light in the room. Allowing her eyes to adjust, she turned to see Duncan smiling at her, hair slightly ruffled, with slightly sad eyes.
"I'm sorry Duncan, I already forgot…" Kim started to apologise but Duncan waved her away, chuckling.
"Kim, stop apologising, I'm alright. We're alright." The sad look in his eyes was still there but Kim knew that he was being serious. Kim smiled and after a second he smiled back.
Duncan watched as Kim lay back on the bed next to him, staring at the ceiling. He mimicked her, wondering what she was seeing when she looked up at the dull greyness above them. He laughed under his breath and felt Kim turn to look at him.
"What?" she asked as Duncan shook his head.
"Nothing – I can just see an image of you wearing a petal outfit and looking ridiculous" Duncan said truthfully as Kim grabbed her pillow and threw it on his face as a response. Duncan picked up the pillow and looked as if he was going to throw it back at her, causing Kim to shriek in advance, but instead he propped it under his head. "Now I have all the pillows…" he said smugly as Kim realised her error and folder her arms across her chest crossly. Duncan closed his eyes and started to pretend to snore, to emphasise the point.
"Fine… in that case…" she said innocently as Duncan continued to snore, "… I get the covers!" As she said this, she leant over Duncan and grabbed the end of the covers, pulling and causing Duncan to yell as he fell out of the bed, holding onto the quilt and taking it partly down with him. "Ha!" Kim announced triumphantly as she held onto the covers with one hand and leaned forward to take the pillows. A tug from the quilt however caused Kim, despite having a tight grip on the cover, to go sailing over the bed after a few seconds of struggling, falling on Duncan as she shrieked as she landed on the covers and therefore on top of him, as Duncan had managed to wrap them around himself in a caterpillar fashion.
Kim pushed herself off Duncan and looked down at Duncan's defenceless smug face and considered hitting it for a second before settling on sitting on top of him instead. "Are you going to turn into a butterfly Duncan?" she asked sweetly as Duncan laughed and tried to get out from the covers, failing due to the small person sitting on top of him.
"Kim, let me go…" Duncan complained as Kim laughed evilly and pretended to consider his question. "I'll tickle you…" Duncan warned, expecting her to jump up and run away. She stuck her tongue out at him in response.
"You can't tickle me if you're trapped in a cocoon!" Kim pointed out, smiling innocently as Duncan realised this and tried to sulk instead, turning his face away from her. Kim leant over and grabbed the pillows, intending to hit him with them but stopped. She leant closer to him, suddenly serious. "Duncan, promise me that if you have any more bad dreams you'll tell me?" she asked, watching Duncan carefully for signs of lying when he said yes. He turned back to face her and smiled.
"Yes, okay… and you'll tell me if you have bad dreams too, yeah?" Duncan replied, waiting for her to lie and play with her hair, like she did when he asked her if she knew where all the metals had gone; she didn't though. Kim smile was a bit strained but she nodded happily.
"Yes, I promise too!" she said, propping a pillow behind Duncan's head before placing one on his face as she lay on top of him and the covers, pretending to go to sleep.
"KIM! I AM NOT A CAT MAT!" Duncan's muffled voice shouted at her but she ignored it, smiling wickedly. It was nice to know, even if it was just for a moment, that Duncan was somehow dependant on her for once.