Nightmares

Nightmares

I didn’t think my heart would have broken anymore for Kuro after that last piece from yesterday, but yep. Seems it could still be chipped at a little bit more today. Since @theprojectava took the Shiro route, I thought I might try my hand at Kuro’s. I hope it turned out well!

He dreams he’s drowning in ink. There is black spilling into his lungs, staining the very life of him darker than the blood on his hands and the disappointment in his mind. It’s robbing him of breath, and it’s telling him that death will not come easy, that it will be slow and it will be painful and it will only arrive after he has paid the highest of costs.

He will never have a life to call his own.

But he can dream of it, and when he does, the nightmares come and eat the very best of them alive.

He cannot wake from them. As they devour the very best of all he could have hoped for, he’s made to watch, trapped in this pool of liquid devastation with his head just above the surface and his lungs burning for air. Every bit of the destructive nature the world wants him to embody sinks into his skin as he treads those waters, snuffing out the starlight in his cells and waiting for the entirety of him to go dark as a moonless night.

Until no hope can exist, no dreams can survive. Until there is only the remembrance of pain and loss, binding his will up as tight as Fate’s red ribbon, just as inescapable.

So, the dreams turn to horrors, and his sleep forgets what peace should be. He writhes and he turns, he cries out some nights, and on others, he simply cries. All of this outside of his own recognition, his mind lost to the harsher realities of his nightmares, for those projections seem real, feel real, are based on the very reality of his existence, and Kuro can’t avoid them for all he tries.

The day affords him control, however. Better control at least, enough to survive in the Arena, enough to not succumb to his wounds or the Druid’s tortuous machinations. He remembers the day Shiro arrived, and he remembers reminding himself that he still has control enough to not tear out the Black Paladin’s throat for the very lie that he has become, has enough wit about him not to claw into his mind for all the things he does not do. The Black Paladin simply sits there, watching, waiting, and Kuro hates to think that there might be pity in that stare, so he lets his dreams convince him there is hatred burning in those gray eyes instead.

And in those dreams that morph in the hazy mists of his subconscious, becoming monsters fit for the telling like all good stories need, Kuro lets himself pull apart the man that brought him to this, brought him his very existence.

Without Shiro, he would not be.

Without Shiro, he could be something else.

And then, Shiro starts to talk. His voice is calm, his words measured and even. There is a cautious warmth that permeates every syllable, a quiet need to understand. Bit by bit, Kuro begins to answer until the answers come easy, and he finds there’s something almost likable about this man who is neither Champion nor Black Paladin completely, but some human mix of the two.

Kuro comes to learn that Shiro is not him.

The nightmares still persist though, because despite that small flicker of warmth there in their cell now, the pain did not stop. Day in and day out, one or the other of them greet the Arena and its crowd. Night in and night out, Kuro dreams of drowning in a colorless void until there is nothing left of worth in him anymore. His dreams end when he becomes a monster that terrifies even himself.

He thrashes and he cries. He makes confetti of his bed sheets and gouges scars in the walls.

Until one night, something sparks in the nameless black of his dreams. Small and white, it bristles against the lifeless night, puts out tendrils of light that call warmth to his skin and calm to his mind. The monster he is supposed to be shrinks from its glow until it is nothing more than a shallow puddle, so threadbare Kuro can step in it without so much as a splash.

And then sleep comes easy.

Without Shiro, Kuro doesn’t know if he would have ever found peace.