Prompt: Alyss & Break, mindfuckery (from my good friend Jou)
Rating: T, I think. Nothing too explicit.
Warnings: Dissociation. Eye gore. General mindfuckery.
There was a lot of cool formatting with indentation in this on the original tumblr post. Oh well.
Even now, these nightmares feel too real.
Is he even dreaming? Somehow, it feels more real when he can see in his sleep, when everything has crisp outlines and it's not so fuzzy and indeterminate, fading away too soon, leaving the rest of his senses set high on edge—yes, surely while its happening, while he's not quite conscious enough to realize that it's too clear, it feels far more real than reality outside does anymore.
( That's part of why he can't help but question if he's even alive anymore, if reality feels more distant than a past that by all means should have faded by now but absolutely refuses to. )
He can't count how many times he's been here, in the core, his empty left socket bleeding out—it still hurts, or it seems like it should, phantom pain at the tips of the optic nerves so cleanly yet crudely and cruelly exposed—and he feels like he'll go mad from it, from the suffocating pressure on his lungs that can only be described as this place's air. But he's older, even if he doesn't appear it, and he's already burning up, already being shredded from within by the power shegave him, and the idea that you can't feel pain in dreams seems like an insane myth compared to everything he knows by now.
In one moment she's smiling, hands folded dainty over her breast, those innocent and pure and flawlessly pale white fingers that he knows far too well the capability of—and she giggles, leans down to greet him with childish exuberance. "You came to play with me?" she's so happy, the honest voice of a lonely child—and he wants to believe that's all there is to it, really he does. She says red is a lovely color on him, that she really loves his eye and the empty crimson socket alike, but she doesn't mention that she made that hole, that she could just as well make the other match it—she's forgotten that, for now, it seems.
Whatever causes her to change, he has no idea—but it always seems to happen, her simple happiness flowing into mania, violet eyes mad and disfocused but they're still fixed on him, always fixed on him, for while he's here, he has center stage. And those perfect, pure fingers wrap around his neck—he can't move, much less escape, paralyzed by pain or fear or confusion or perhaps all of those things at once. He can't breathe, either, though it's not like he could before, and he's not sure what she's saying anymore—
—until she begins to cry; she always begins to cry.
"Why haven't you saved me yet? Why do I have to keep suffering like this?" she pleads, throat strained, words coated in pain like she's the one whose windpipe is being crushed— ( what if it was, what if he reached out and grabbed that tiny, flawless neck {it wouldn't even take both hands, would it?} and squeezed— ) but soon enough her grip loosens and she's just holding his collar as she sinks down to his level, to her knees as well, and she sobs and it's his fault, he'd almost rather be strangled than remember that it's his fault and he promised her and—
—isn't that wrong? But at the same time, it's right; this is a responsibility he took, a promise he made, and he keeps his word, and even though his throat is so dry it could break apart into brittle fragments if he dares push air through it he whispers "just a little longer," because even if hatred is gnawing at him as well he is the only one at fault here—truly, there is no reason that she should have to remain as she is, and yet…
Somehow, it always seems to be when he reaches out to her (to comfort her or to destroy her, because he did promise to do so, and sometimes he can't help but think he'd be best to just kill her himself as though that would work and could actually happen) that the scene fades away, blurry reality returning, and the blood is gone but there's pain lingering throughout him—he gasps, for if one thing does feel right it's the air that burns but doesn't constrict his chest further, the plain and familiar taste of breathing in this invisible, painful reality.