+ Fallacy, a 100themes Challenge +
Sarehptar

Theme: 39, Dreams
Characters: Kharl, Rath, Cesia, Garfakcy
Pairing: None? Maybe Rath/Cesia?
Warnings: General craziness and such... Also, one tiny mention of the volume 25 plot twist.
Need to Know Info: There's a line from Vaughan's "The World" buried in here somewhere...
Title Provider: Imaginary--Origin Mix (Evanescence)

If You Need to Leave the World You Live In...

The place, this time, is beautiful—all soft pastel light and lavender skies. It is something from a child's dream: endless fields of tall grain as thin and pale as parchment waver in a constant breeze that doesn't touch his clothing or the wisps of blue liquid-looking cloud above. The horizon seems unbroken at first glance, but he stares long enough to catch the outlines of trees in the distance. They are constantly shifting and out of his eye-line as if winking in and out of existence. They are glass-like, translucent-limbed, with leaves like the grain—as canvas-colored as paper.

And Rath is there, standing in the knee-high grass, black-wings whispering against his midnight robe. He is the only solid thing, the only patch of darkness in the immeasurable miles of light. His red eyes scan the horizon, pensive and impatient.

"Who are you looking for?" Kharl's voice is echo-like and amused.

"Father!" The smile on the younger boy's face is brighter than even the sky, and he crashes through the grass to leap into his creator's hold. "Where were you?" the boy pulls back to scold. "It's been three days."

"I've been working."

"Working?" There is a note of worry in the boy's voice as he steps aside to stand next to his servant. "Tell me exactly what you were doing. Don't keep secrets from me anymore." His hand fists harshly in Kharl's sleeve.

"Rath, I'm not keeping secrets. I was developing weather spells to regulate the rainfall for the gardens. Lately it's been very dry and Garfakcy's useless when his vegetables start dying." The Dragon boy laughs, a little maliciously. "I haven't seen him at all in the past two days. I think he's been sleeping in the vegetable patch to make sure his strawberries don't dry up overnight."

"Are you joking?" Rath's quizzical stare makes Kharl chuckle. "He's crazy."

"You make that sound like an insult."

"It is."

"I'm hurt."

"You're not!" But Rath's pout looks a little worried.

"I'm not." The Alchemist pats his master's shoulder gently, feeling a tenseness there that unsettles him. "How have you been lately?"

"Good," Rath half-smiles. "Yesterday Rune and I had a whole conversation, just the two of us."

"That's not normal?"

"No, he talks to me… but since that happened…" Rath's eyes are suddenly half-lidded and downcast, his mouth a thin, unsure line, "it seemed like he was avoiding being alone with me."

Kharl starts to tell the dark-haired demon that that was not true, and that his friends would accept him no matter what—but he stops himself abruptly. Rune probably was avoiding Rath. As idealistic as those Dragons loved to act, they were not infallible, and camaraderie paled in the face of natural fear.

The Alchemist settles for a weak smile and "he'll come to trust you." They both pause to pray those words are true.

"But yesterday we talked a lot. Rune's pretty easy to get along with when he's not trying to bash your face in… We talked about Draqueen and how much we'd like to tear Nadil into little pieces and feed him to Shydeman—"

"Ooh, I'll help!" Rath gives his father a level stare that plainly states he'd be more hindrance than help on a battlefield.

"We talked about Thatz… and then we really talked. Rune doesn't let it show, but he's grieving. The death of the Faerie Elder, the destruction of the Faerie forests…" The boy's red eyes are dull with guilt. "The war hit him harder than any of us."

"We destroyed the life he spent centuries protecting and took away any chance of restoration." Even Kharl feels it now: the pressing weight of how they ruined the world.

"Yeah!" Rath suddenly jerks out of his slump, face alight with something like desperation. "Yeah, he did spend centuries! He's like an old geezer! He might even be older than Lykouleon or you."

"I resent that comment—don't link me in any way with the words 'old geezer'."

Rath pinches the paler demon's arm playfully. "White hair, no fashion sense, pop-culture clueless, nasty habit of saying 'when I was your age…' Sounds like a geezer to me."

"I'd tell you to respect your elders more, but that'd be like asking to have my words thrown back in my face," the Alchemist smirks. "Besides, you really aren't one to pick on my fashion sense. I've seen some of the things you've been wearing lately. When, exactly, did pop-culture deem is necessary for boys to wear stilettos?"

"Shut up. Cesia and Rim Kaana have teamed up against us."

"Speaking of them, how is everyone else holding up? I'll probably come back to the castle soon…"

"Cesia is fine. She's searching for a way to revive Crewger. Thatz and Bierrez have been looking pretty bad lately though. Without twelve hours a night, Thatz is a zombie, and demons have been causing havoc left and right. No one's getting any rest.

"Bierrez really isn't cut out for all the Red Officer paperwork. And you can tell he's trying hard to get along with Ruwalk and Tetheus…"

"You could be more helpful to Bierrez."

"Helpful?" The word sounds odd, coming from Rath's mouth. "I don't wanna do his paperwork!"

"Maybe if you caused fewer catastrophes, there'd be less paperwork for him to do."

"But catastrophe is my middle name!"

"No it's not. Heren(1) is your middle name."

"Huh?" Rath blinks.

Kharl can't help but laugh as Rath stands frozen, mouth gaping, beside him.

"You never told me that!"

"It was Ruin's middle name. I just never felt it was important for you." Rath looks away, and the sound of his boots against the pulpy grass is distant and hollow.

"I'm still him. I am still him."

"No," Kharl shakes his head slowly. "You're Rath Illuser," he catches the boy in a gentle embrace, "and that's more than enough."

"I don't like it when you lie to me." Rath's words are muffled by folds of a white cloak.

X – X – X

"Go fly," Kharl mutters finally, giving the smaller demon a light push.

"You're not coming?"

"I might break my back, since I'm such an old geezer…"

"You're not that old!"

"Oh, so my age depends on what you feel like doing?"

Rath levels a pleading look, full force, on his father.

"I have more fun watching you." There is a momentary war waged between lilac and crimson eyes, and then Kharl settles easily in the tall grass and Rath stomps off toward the trees.

"It's no fun without you."

The distance to the horizon is not as long as it looks; in seconds Rath reaches the strange glass trees. He wraps a hand around the tallest of them, claws sinking into the translucent material as if it is real wood and not glass at all. He scales it effortlessly, canvas-colored leaves brushing against his cheeks and catching in the folds of his cloths.

His father is a white stain on the unbroken purple horizon, ivory wings still despite the steady breeze. Rath pauses for a moment to watch the other man, curled in the wheat, white feathery hair outlining his delicate face—the Alchemist looks young and fragile and for a moment Rath is overcome with fear. It seems as if any gust of wind, any misplaced blow would be enough to tear the man to shreds.

Then an ash spell blooms on his right shoulder, carrying his father's voice and an audible smirk.

"You'll wake up eventually. Don't waste what's left of the night sitting in a tree."

Rath remembers quickly that his father is an insufferable, incorrigible genius, and the only thing Kharl really needs to survive is that uppity housekeeper's cooking. With a huff, the dark-winged demon bats the spell away and throws himself from the tree limb.

The wind rushing against his face is a shock of liberation and he struggles to keep his eyes open. The ground jumps upward sharply, a roiling paper sea—at the last moment he tears his wings open, catching the air and then an updraft that carries him easily into the lilac sky. The hem of his dark cloak billows behind, a fanned raven's tail.

For a few moments, the boy is content to soar in endless circles, thermals warming his face and the hands he has tucked tight against his chest. Then suddenly soaring is not enough; Rath plunges toward the earth again, spinning, rolling, opening first one wing and then the other to cut jagged lines in the air.

He stops short, beating his wings once, twice, and then catching another updraft. He goes through the entire thing again, brushing the ground in an effort to frighten his father. Kharl remains staunch, plucking paper daisies in mock disinterest.

"Chichi-ue!" Rath rages over the wind and is ignored, save the almost devious smile that lights on Kharl's lips.

"Did you hear something?" the Alchemist asks the daisy in his hand—it is to his immense surprise that the daisy answers back, petaled-head folding like mouth.

"I haven't got ears you dolt." Then, as if it had never spoken, the flower goes as limp as wet parchment again. Kharl reminds himself to ask Rath later what exactly inspired him to dream talking paper flowers—or paper flowers at all.

His musing is cut short by a pair of insistent hands, fisting in the down feathers near his shoulders. Rath hangs upside-down from a tree that had not been there before, knees hooked tightly around a glossy limb.

"Come on!" Rath tugs at him.

"That hurts you know."

"If you don't fly I'm going to wake myself up right now." Rather than being sweetly childish, the boy's voice is demanding and petulant and Kharl can hear the underlying message. Rath's red eyes are threatening anger.

"All right," the Alchemist says finally, though he would rather sit and contemplate than lose his thoughts to the wind.

Rath pulls himself to a crouch on the tree branch as the lilac-haired man stands up at last, brushing invisible dirt from his immaculate white cloak. The younger demon's crimson eyes are unblinking, waiting to catch the moment his father's feet will pick effortlessly from the earth. The older man doesn't fly like a bird—he seems weightless, as if the light breeze is enough to carry him. Rath leaps off and catches another thermal, beating his wings lazily to catch up with the other demon.

It is a long while that they are side-by-side in silence, feeling the firm press of the wind under their wings, holding them back and up, like swimming through lilac water.

Rath's dreamscape shifts endlessly as they cross it, fields of paper wheat blurring into rivers as smooth and pastel blue as the dappled sides of robin eggs. Hills, low and grey, flit across the horizon and then vanish as the boy thinks of other things. Scattered trees become glass forests, shining in the light of the luminous, sun-less sky.

Finally, from a soft golden haze, pure chalk and marble walls rise stately and slowly. The dark-haired boy folds his wings in a shallow swoop, an ebony flicker among the rippling castle banners, and crashes lightly onto the pinnacle of a turret. Clawed hands sink sharply into the stone to stop the boy from pitching forward; black wings bate behind him like an extension of his midnight cloak.

Kharl lands on a taller turret in an almost inaudible rustle of feathers.

"Are you resting Rath?"

"Thinking."

"Why won't you use youki? It would be much easier to fly." Rath doesn't answer and doesn't look at his father. His lips are a thin line; his eyes are narrow. "Why the Dragon Castle?" Rath doesn't answer that question either and they perch in silence for a long moment, looming like gargoyles or angels over the unbroken and shadowless castle.

"Do you think I could really be a Dragon Lord?" Rath still won't turn his eyes from the far-away horizon; the red irises waver like tremulous drops of blood.

Kharl knows what he wants to say and what Rath wants to hear.

"I think," he murmurs at last, watching the gold and navy banner of the Dragon Castle twist in the wind, "you would be quite poor at it." Now the boy's head snaps around, betrayal and something like fear and frustration combined blazing in his eyes.

"But in the last era," Kharl taps his bottom lip with an errant finger, "Dusis has suffered four outbreaks of mass genocide, an attempted coup d'etat, the loss of two weapons of mass destruction, severe breakdowns of diplomacy and internal affairs, several deaths of high-ranking political officials, utter annihilation of the capital building and the pollution of the reputation of the entire Dragon race. I highly doubt your reign could ever be worse than Lykouleon's."

For a moment, Rath is quiet, and then he laughs a little stiffly. "I never wanted to be a Dragon Lord anyway."

"You'd have a dedicated staff at the very least. I can't imagine your new knights being quite the hassle you were for Lykouleon."

"Saabel's as freaky as Rune."

"Yes, but Gil and Thatz would swear their loyalty to you in a heartbeat."

"I don't care." And there's something in Rath's eyes begging the older demon to forget he'd ever mentioned being a Dragon Lord at all.

"Then why…" Kharl stops himself from asking why Rath brought it up to begin with. They're both caught in the tide of inevitability and it doesn't matter how good or bad Rath will be, who will follow him—he doesn't have a choice.

"Will you be on my side?" the boy mutters, unable himself to give up the vein of conversation that is pressing hard inside his mind. "I'll open an alliance with Arinas."

"Don't make promises you won't remember when you wake."

"This time, I'll remember." There is a fierce determination in the fangs that abuse his lower lip.

"I don't like it when you lie to me." Kharl feels cruel saying it. He moves to apologize but Rath is already cutting him off, a cold hand crushing down on his wrist and ripping him from his perch on the spire.

The dark-haired demon pulls him sharply upward without speaking. Below, the Dragon Castle crumbles in a hail of stone and smoke but no sound.

X – X – X

Rath's face looks pensive and stormy, and the wind beneath their wings is somehow no longer comforting. It is colder now. The silence is heavy, but he can almost hear Rath's mind tearing itself apart with thoughts; he wants to say something but saying nothing is safer.

The landscape is suddenly less welcoming, the glass forests are scored by fire and the pastel rivers run black with ash. The sky is darkening, flickering with jagged shocks of blood-red lightning.

At last he can no longer stand it, and Kharl jerks Rath around (a swirl of black against the roiling horizon like the flicker in a raven's eye) and catches the boy's hands in a bone-shattering grip. For a moment Rath looks frightened—the decadent smile on his father's face is not reassuring—and then Kharl throws him violently toward the earth.

There is not enough wind in his lungs to scream and Rath's claws sink deeply into the pale flesh of his father's hands as they both begin to drop from the sky. And then the force has brought him in a flawless circle above the other demon and they are end over end, turning, falling, rushing, rolling toward the ground in an unstoppable and endless ring, a compass revolving around their clasped and bloody hands. Their wings strain against the rush, wide open and rippling. Black, white, black, white—the colors flash under his eyes like two halves of the divine, like Yin and Yang and then they blur together until nothing is left of either half but all-encompassing silver. The sky is beneath, beside, above him and the gravity seems confused as it pulls them momentarily skyward, momentarily side-ways.

His father is smiling, a pure and unassuming smile, and the wind is not the only thing that makes Rath's breath stick in his throat. There is an angel falling beside him, over him. The pain of the claws locked into the tender flesh between his fingers is non-existent, and he can't hear anything but the pale-eyed man's laughter.

"Was it always like this?" he calls, but the wind steals the words away. Were you always this innocent, chichi-ue? Were you always this happy back then?

"Rath!" the white-winged demon shouts through a glittering smile. "It's time for me to wake up!"

He can't tell the earth from the sky and they might just as easily tumble eternally upward as hit the ground.

"You've got to let go now!"

"I don't want to!" But the lilac-eyed man is already slipping away, claws sliding from flesh, fingers winding free. And their endless fall, endless loop, is shattering and so is the world and the focus of everything is suddenly off. The blood from their out-stretched hands stains the air, tracing a single crimson crescent in the lilac sky. "I'll remember this time, I will."

Kharl's smile is a little sad as he fades into nothingness, like ash on the wind.

I saw eternity the other night, like a ring of pure and endless light…

X – X – X

"AHHHH!" Rath shoots up in bed, cold sweat tracing his temples and chest.

"Rath, are you all right?" Cesia is shouting through the door, pounding against it none too gently. "Let me in!"

He stumbles out of bed and unlocks the door (not that he remembered locking it), falling to rest on the frame.

"Why did you scream?" Cesia's golden eyes are narrowed in concern and frustration, as if she expects she'll have to pry an answer from him. "Was it another nightmare?"

"Yeah," he mutters, feeling his heartbeat slowly beginning to calm.

"Did you remember what it was about this time at least?"

"No," there's an echo of laughter and paper flowers in his mind, "but I think it was really weird."

X – X – X

"It's such a beautiful morning!" the Alchemist trills, pouring his tea with a barely restrained smile. Garfakcy's glower is almost caustic, but it sloughs right off the lilac-haired demon. "I had a wonderful dream last night!"

"Did it involve you completing weather spells and saving my strawberries?" The violent edge to the boy's voice goes utterly unnoticed.

"I don't think so," the demon looks sincerely considerate, "but I can't really remember, so maybe it did."

"How do you know it was wonderful if you can't remember it?"

"Just a feeling." There is a flash of smiles and lilac skies in his mind.

Notes:
(1) - Heren (Hay-ren) is Elvish for "good fortune". The joke lies in the fact that "Rath" is the Gaelic word for "good fortune". So Ruin's middle name could also have been written as "Rath".

Theme 40: Rated
"Ooh, I am not too sexy for that popcorn!" Chi crowed.