the other side of the dream
Title: the other side of the dream
Series: Tsubasa
Characters: Yukito
Rating: PG
Warnings: Spoilers (somewhat) from the end of the series.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Yukito dreams. However, what he sees and how much he understands don't always go hand in hand.
the other side of the dream
When Yukito dreams, he stands alone in the sidelines, watching the future unfold before his eyes, like hundreds of tulip buds, opening one after the other.
But this time, he’s not alone. There is a shadow standing behind him, a cloaked figure whose shape seems to change every time he looks at it, its outline blurring and shifting in an endless circle of motion. He tries not to pay attention to it, because his dream is different, too: it’s not one of those dreams where he forgets that he’s even seeing a dream, falling into the blissful realm of unawareness; or the dreams he has of strange worlds, of a man in black and red, of burning rain and flying vehicles and distorted time. This time, the images he sees are of his life, except that it isn’t the life he knows: in the dream, he isn’t the High Priest of Clow, Touya isn’t the king, the queen still lives and the king, in turn, looks like Syaoran-kun’s late father. He tries to make sense of what he’s seeing when the figure, now resembling a human shape, cloaked in something black and velvety, lifts one hand and something - somewhere - cracks.
The air around them blurs, and when everything clears once again, a magic circle glows beneath their feet. Yukito watches, mesmerized, as shapes appear in the circle, as though the surface has somehow turned into a mirror, reflecting something from a distant past or future to him. When the shapes solidify, he gasps. He’s looking at himself, but something… is off.
The dream… must come to an end.
It is like a faint whisper, a thought put in his head, and as he keeps looking at his image, reflected back at him in the glowing surface of the mirror, his head starts hurting. He feels like there’s something he should remember, something that should make sense to him but eludes him, dancing around the edges of his consciousness, always too far to reach.
Yukito’s head keeps pounding as the images (memories, ideas, imaginations?) of his life change, little by little, shifting in his head, and he can no longer tell where reality ends and dreams begin.
He whips his head around, to look at the figure, and his thoughts scream why and what and how much of this is real, but the figure doesn’t answer, can’t answer, because when Yukito turns around, all he can see is the glimmer of a red eye before the figure disintegrates into thousands and thousands of butterflies.
Somewhere, a bell tolls, once.
The world shifts beneath his feet.
Yukito wakes up.
fin
(End notes: If someone didn't get what was going on, I apologize. I don't want to spell it out here, because I think it's more rewarding if you make the connections yourself, and besides, there might be several interpretations different from what I intended, which are still just as right as my interpretation. But if you want to ask about something in the comments, fire away.)