[Week 19, Day 1, afternoon, Dream] (Er backdated for illness)
Not this dream again.
That’s the first thought, because the dream starts out with a feeling of warmth and comfort, and you know too well what that changed into before, but this time... when your eyes open, it’s not to some kind of strange cocoon - really you wonder what the therapist your mother tried to make you see for your OCD would say about that one - but rather, to your room in the cave, where you’re snuggled up in bed with one of your husbands.
- wait, how come this seems so... am I still dreaming... is this...?
But the train of thought is there and gone again, as you raise one sword-calloused hand, slip fingers through white hair, brushing your fingertips against the older man’s cheek, a soft smile touching your lips as you smile up at him.
“You were talking in your sleep...” he says, and it seems almost just a statement, not even really a question. You’re free to speak about it if you choose, not to speak about it as you choose... you’ve never felt quite so comforted in your life.
The fingers that slip along your bare chest and brush against the scar there are equally comforting, the touch simple and nonthreatening, calm and collected. His calmness feels like your own, like that moment deep in meditation when you manage to finally let everything bubble up and out of yourself, find yourself empty and perfect.
“I was dreaming about being a kid...”
Oh. That seems to spark his interest. Come to think of it, you don’t remember telling your husband much about your history, do you? No... it seems like you’ve always sort of... well maybe you should...
And you start to speak... but the words aren’t audible at all... in fact there’s no sound at all in the room as you curl into the older man, his arm slips around you, pulling you in against his chest.
But things in the room are moving. And the shadows gather together, flicker, create images, fuzzy in the air like mirages, the scenes from your dream visible and shimmering before you, bared for his eye, your soul laid open for viewing.
The first image is of you, thirteen years old, kneeling on the ground in the snow, rather scuffed up and worse for wear. You remember exactly how that moment felt, how close you’d been to death, and then there’s the man who rescued you.
Well, it’s not as if that’s new to the audience, considering you share a home now still. But the parts that come after, they’re new...
It’s not the first kill, after all, or even the second, that shows up. No, it’s the first kill that was a person you had known well; a man not much older than your partner, who had once taken you to a horror movie you wanted to see and then laughed and hugged you when you spent the whole time complaining about the lack of realism in the injuries and blood sprays.
The blood here is real enough, flowing over your hand, turning tacky and cool against your pristine sweater vest and coating the kunai as you pull it back, the flesh resisting your attempt to free the blade.
There’s no shaking and crying, no throwing up - not by now - but the boy in the image, if you look very closely, has a shake to the shoulders and is biting his lip hard enough to bleed as he kneels down beside the body, begins to ‘collect the evidence’ and make notes in his notebook about the kill.
A flash, and then another image, here in Kannagara, facing off with a man with a scythe , blood dripping from wounds inflicted by the ninja’s powers, shadows of the wounds inflicted on the other man by your own sword.
It’s into this image that the hork-bajir comes, standing between the boy with the sword and the man with the scythe, until one quick sweep of a blade - and you remember it quite well, the exact feeling as metal hit bone, as the spine separated and...
You don’t remember what happened after that, strangely, and the way it’s playing out in the images being show isn’t right at all, because the creature turns back into Marco and... you were dead then, you know you were dead then, you didn’t see any of this...
“It was my fault he died,” and that’s the first thing the boy on the bed, curled up with his husband, has said this whole time, aloud.But it’s all right. Because the pictures are changing again, taking you back out of Kannagara and into the world before, into the world that was once your own.
And it’s showing images of life in the Nabari world, a group of ninja sitting around a table eating dinner, laughter and easy teasing... and then the next moment a standoff between two of those same people, your partner and his own former partner, gun vs. sword, and the instinctive movement of your own - notebook to the head - and then...
Another change of scenery, and it’s just everyday life now, just you (maybe fourteen years old) cooking dinner for your partner, and the way you smile at him as he steps into the room and smacks you upside the back of the head for the little rant you’re giving him about cleaning...
And the flush on the face of the boy in the image is too close to a memory of things you really shouldn’t be showing to your husband, and so the images quite suddenly disappear, leaving the room dim and silent... until you open your mouth and speak again, quietly.
“That’s enough of the past...” And with that, slender fingers slip up to twine into white locks, and lips press against lips, as the older man is drawn down for a kiss. There’s a bit of shifting in the darkness (entirely dark now, unseen) and then sensation, a heavier body covering your own, the kiss deepening...
[Gau doesn’t wake. He's fallen asleep at the shrine, again, and has fallen forward a little, slumping in his kneeling position.]