*Light's POV*

Something was brushing on the edge of my awareness, a feather-light, timid kind of touch over the knuckles of my right hand. It was enough to peel back the dark shelter of sleep in steady increments, but it unfurled me to the hateful, stabbing edges of the world once more. A groan caught in my throat, wretched and miserable, and I could feel a golden, glowing pity at my side.

"Light, I need you to take some more medicine," L's voice was soft; his consonants sanded smooth like polished marble: careful and considerate. His vowels tender, curving lines of comfort.

There wasn't much of a choice as careful hands took my body in a supportive way and lifted me up from the mattress. The weight of my head felt like it was far heavier than what a neck could support and everywhere the sheet and mattress touched was scalding me raw. But maybe the mix of chemicals would help sew me into another long sleep.

L's movements were a symphony of Fantasia on a Theme, no more than a mere whispering. And his voice, though I couldn't make out what was said, held tones of a vermillion warmth to it. I did my best not to flinch as pain ricocheted up my right arm as L's ghostly gentle fingers took my hand to place the pills into it.

I wasn't sure how much was my movement and how much L had to coast my body to move, but with the chill of polar ice caps, I got the medicine down. Time was a blur, and there was pain as my body rested back on the mattress The medicine was a chaotic internal rush of sanguine smoke that filled up the empty spaces with haze. The pain did not go, but the drugs eased away the panicky, anxious alarm that filled me, letting me truly determine the damage of my mind.

The word mess would not describe my mind in the right way. I needed a stronger word, but those escaped me. All I could compare it to was some horribly abandoned place where the walls were tumbledown, overgrown as if centuries had passed with no human contact. The scatter of facts and knowledge with putrid tones of rot and maleficence in the form of books was stern across the cracked marble floor.

Eternity lay here, captured in the vault of my skull. I could see it all from beginning to end, alpha to omega, useless chatter and life and stars gone wrong in their waltz. It was madness, without order and purpose.

"It's alright. I'm here."

It was L's voice again. Was he speaking again, or was it the same conversation as before? Had seconds passed or years? I felt hazy at the edges and my body was fuzzy in a way that my skin had no right in being. There was still a pain in my head, a nauseating and throbbing ache, drums of war.

"I'm going to move the pillow so I can see your face. Can you open your eyes for me?"

Velvet. That was L now. A soft drape and shimmering surface, lush with concern.

"Light?"

I could feel his fingers moving the pillow to expose my face that had been shoved into it. I wasn't sure if the hiding had been on a subconscious level or not. The bedroom air was silky against my face, soothing in a way, but I was ready for the clawing of the light when I finally did open my eyes.

Yet, the merciless skewer of light didn't come. Only a few hazy patches of coloured illumination wavered, seemingly suspended in mid-air. They were innocent.

"Candles," L whispered, though I couldn't put the voice to his body. "They're supposed to be better for photosensitivity." There was a darkening over my left eye and then my right and I could only guess that L was checking my vitals. "Can you please try to say something?"

I didn't like his tone, it was sharp and rough, a scarlet emotion of pity and concern. I didn't want that. I wanted my gentle sunset back.

"My head hurts," I said, the sound of my voice rolling over itself like an ocean wave to be crashed up against the side of my skull. Why didn't I whisper.

"I didn't quite get that," L muttered, the mattress beside me dipping and showing me where the floating voice was. "That wasn't any language I know. Please try again." The tone was a hopeful, confusion merigold.

I took a deep breath, daggers moving down to my lungs, as I tried again. "My head hurts."

"I didn't expect anything less," L said, shifting slightly beside me. My hand slid down to meet with the denim fabric of L's jeans, rasping at my knuckles. "You were having a nightmare," he explained, his voice smooth chocolate. My eyes slid closed again, darkness greeting me kindly. "I don't know if you remember much, but you've been out for nine hours."

I gave a weak sigh through his nose, hoping it was enough to convey that I understood him. There was a small laugh beside me, a little too high, a little too afraid.

"Keep talking?" I asked, hoping that I was hitting something close to a language that L understood. "Please."

There was a sharp inhale, as if there was going to be a question before L realised that I didn't want the conversation, just his voice. I wanted the cozy warmth of the fire that came with his voice. That warmth of stepping into a cafe on a winter's night.

And I was wrapped in that velvet one more. That shimmering draping of verbs and nouns. He told me about cases, making them come to life in my mind with disturbing accuracy. Of his time in high school, where I could smell the teen angst in the air and could feel the cold chill of bullying eyes on me. Of the lake he would sit by on warm summer nights.

The breeze picked up, stirring the stern papers in my head, tossing the facts around, but it wasn't unpleasant. We sat together, watching the sun through glassless windows, pain swirling on the horizon, waiting.

The breeze turned frigid and my body moved of its own accord, becoming smaller to hold onto whatever warmth it did have. Darkness bound me, weighing heavy on my bones. It pressed between my lips like smoke, tainting every breath, choking me.

The marble was cold, raw and arctic beneath my bare feet. It clawed mercioulsy at my skin, frosting me over with thin layers of ice. Through the cracked and scarred roof lay a swirling oily black sky. I looked down at my bloodless skin, my shirtless body revealed to the cruelty of the elements, pulseless.

It should have alarmed me, and maybe it did, but my mind was too scattered to fully comprehend what I was feeling. But I could see my thoughts, reflective like a mirror and shattered like glass. They hovered in the air before me and cut me as I pushed passed them, shedding my skin as if I were paper.

The cold pulled on my bones harshly as I continued through scattered hallways, rooms with doors on their henges, though I wasn't sure where they lead. Probably past events long forgotten, and best left that way.

At last, beneath the endless stretch of the putrid sky ,I found one door still standing, one slice of warmth, closed. Something in all this wreckage survived, light and life in all of this apocalypse. I reached out, my fingers skeletal and thin, torn by the endless passage of razors.

And what greeted me was home. A single couch surrounded by case files in stacks that threatened to spill over and looked like something out of Alice in Wonderland. White, dull walls and deep hickory floors.

But a form at a large black piano is what held my attention. A living, breathing body with dark spindles of wirey hair. The paper on the piano turning as he was captured up in it's contents, his fingers obeying the composers wishes.

He turned sharply around and I stepped back into the thickening darkness in the doorway, fear striking through me. The light and warmth weren't meant for me. This was his place, not mine.

But before I could move, a hand was around my wrist, pulling me further into the room and away from the shrieking clouds of smoke. There was a smile over L's face as he pulled a blanket from the couch and draped it over my skeletal frame as if I were something valuable, as if I had worth written in braille over my skin.

"I missed you," he whispered, pulling me tightly against him. There was a kiss placed to my cheek and I could feel something stirring within me, beneath my ribs.

But when I opened my eyes again, i was shoved back into the darkness and I knew that the dream was done. My head throbbed hollowly as glacial sweat covered my skin. My entire body ached and felt swollen as my nerve endings tore through the numbing and back into the pain again.

The room lay thick around him, the dancing light of the candles no longer there, though I wasn't sure if it had been a dream or a reality.

There was a bitter cold with a taste of humidity around me and there was a brittle silence in the air. My muscles seemed to shake with hypothermic impulses. Was I in a bed of snow? I had to have been. Underneath me was rough and scratchy and frozen solid. But as my fingers grasped out, my surroundings moved around me like fresh powder.

And then there was a weight over me. An agonizingly heavy scarlet. And now it was like I was in a block of ice. It burned, but it was so cold I swear I could see my breath deadly before me in swirling porcelain. A cry left my mouth, dragging claw up my throat, my body contorting in a way I couldn't control.

And immediately the heaviness was removed, but the whispers left clung to me in the flavor of artificial cherry, leaving me to dig my nails into the fresh powdery snow.