Prompt: (Your character walks in on mine having a violent flashback and is forced to pin them down for both of their safety. Send me 'wake up' for my character's reaction/coming to with yours still on top of them.) [Fluffy then added, as Sharon:] She's not sure how much longer her hold will last ─ he was always stronger than her, even when thin and deceptively frail, but at the violent adrenaline that pumped through his blood in that moment was easily threatening to throw her off once again. He was asleep, wasn't he? Wasn't that why he couldn't recognize her? "Wake up! Xerx-nii... wake up!"
Rating: T
Warnings: Um? Mild violence, mentions of blood, nightmares and insanity perhaps?
I enjoyed the hell out of this.
His nightmares are deep and terrible things, unending and black and twisted; they are one of the many things that persistently keep him from sleep, leading him to long waking hours in the night that only end when he's too tired to do anything else. Usually, his naps are short and light and that's enough to keep him from sinking too far in, but crashing as hard as he had, perhaps it was no surprise that he found returning to the surface a task insurmountable.
His body thrashes and he's grappling with someone, a person but he can't really tell what face they have; he's soaked in red and surrounded by death, fighting to leave the room empty behind him, because every one of them has to die (he has to kill them, more and more—). The scene is dark and warped, memories hardly putting it together correctly (all he can really remember is the red, the thrill, the fight and the smell of death) amid the madness.
The distortion spreads and he's falling, pulled down by cold chains, sinking fast and next thing he knows he's attacking a young girl in a white dress, holding her down with a dagger to her neck—she's hardly afraid of him, she wasn't then either. Everything's spinning and he's clawing at his eye again, something between habit and the phantom sensation of it having just been removed; a dark unreality is holding him tight, constricting his lungs, making his head throb and his body shake.
She's holding him down ("Why haven't you saved me yet, Kevin?") and she's crying ("Wake up!") and she's shaking too ("I don't want to do this anymore!") and she's every regret he's ever had all at once ("Please don't leave me alone!") pounding into his mind and his flesh as his vision is filled completely with red.
"Wake up"—he catches those words, a light amid the twisting blackness, and his eye shoots open to reality, caught by the sudden sharpness of it all.
For a moment he only breathes, letting the blur clear out of his sight and the fog clear out of his head; it hurts, everything aches a little but the air that he's drawing in so sharply is so awfully painful that it has to be real; the pressure of her fingers on his arms, her crying face, those things, too, are too awfully real.
"Sharon," he whispers, breathless—not milady, not one of the nameless girls from deep inside his madness, "Sharon"—he says it again, as though he wasn't quite sure that he said it the first time, as though it's the only word that he truly knows the meaning of. There's blood on his face—his eye hurts, the one that's missing, and he can only hope that's why, that it's his own sickening crimson and not hers.
It's still hard to breathe as he stares straight upward, unable to face her—but his hand lifts, jerky and unsure, and comes to rest on top of hers that's still gripping onto him like death. It's still warmer than his own, even with this, and he can hardly stand to touch it for fear of breaking it—so his fingers just barely touch hers, ensuring that she's really there.