[dream 03] just a junkie preaching to the choir [week 1, day 6]
This dream doesn’t begin with sight, but sound. You hear it, dragging you out of deeper sleep, faint at first but growing louder, closer, sharper with every staccato sound you hear, something like -
clap.
clap.
clap.
Until you’re awake, and you know, with a sick memory of feeling in your gut, that you know that sound.
You turn around.
Mao. You’re supposed to be dead.
And there he is, Mao, with the long gray coat (maybe once-white, maybe faded with years of wandering into other people’s personal nightmares) and the headphones and the reflective glass hiding his eyes from you (or hiding you from his eyes); there’s the man who walked into your life one day and left a trail of wreckage in his wake.
Mao claps his hands twice more. They sound like gunshots in this silence. Lelouch, he laughs, long time no see.
Your eyes narrow. I thought I told you never to speak again.
His manic grin only spreads; you can see the tips of his canine teeth now. Don’t be so bossy, Lelouch. That’s such a terrible habit you have. Thinking you’re so much better than everyone. Thinking you know so much better than everyone. Thinking you’ve got everyone on your side.
He shouldn’t be speaking. That bastard. He shouldn’t be speaking -
This is a dream, Lelouch, he says. You moron. I know I’m dead, I can hear you thinking it. His voice is less playful now, more scornful and biting. But you know, I’m pretty satisfied, all things considered. The smile returns now, predatory.
You force your hands to unclench. Oh? It’s important, with Mao, not to let him know he’s getting to you - which he will invariably know anyway, by virtue of being able to read your goddamn mind, but still.
Why, me being here. In your dream. It means you still remember me. I still haunt your thoughts. Even from beyond the grave- here he makes a mocking gesture, a sweep of the arm you’re rather notoriously good at - I have the power to reach out and trouble you, simply by virtue of once existing. Crossing your path. He claps three more times, smirking. So, Lelouch. Did it happen?
Mao, either you shut up, or you start saying something that makes sense -
You know what I’m talking about, Lelouch, he says, and the manic glee that oozes from his voice is enough to set your skin crawling. Euphemia. Did you? Did she?
(You don’t know, but you remember fragments, fragments of a day - the summit and the stadium and the hope and fear... and something like utter, total, blinding, animal panic, the kind that paralyzes you so utterly you can’t breathe without reminding yourself to - when she’d placed her hands on her ears as if to drown out some awful sound and screamed I DON’T WAN)
You’re such a coward, Lelouch. You think you can’t remember it properly, but you really just won’t. Because that would mean taking responsibility.
You snarl, I am more than willing to take -
I’m not talking about responsibility for actions of war, Mao says. He’s loving this, almost purring out the words, delighted to have some sort of point to dangle over your head. You’re so good at that, after all. You just love taking the blame for other people’s actions - because that makes you powerful. And that’s what I mean, Lelouch. You don’t want to take responsibility for yourself. For your own power. Maybe you...wanted to do it.
You shouldn’t listen to this, but the dream won’t let you plug your ears, or wake yourself up; you have no choice but to listen to Mao if you want it to end at any point -
He grins again. Maybe that means you’re just like me, now. I suppose that’s why I’m the one here, telling you all this. Don’t I represent everything you fear in your -
Don’t flatter yourself, Mao, you snap. You were never a threat to me. In fact - and now it is your turn to grin cruelly as a new strategy occurs to you - why don’t you look in my mind and see exactly how much of a threat you were, Mao? Why don’t you scan my memories and watch how you die?
His smile vanishes; or perhaps it just twists into a rictus of rage, his teeth still bared. Watch it, you -
Didn’t you die at her hands? You know he can read the thoughts before they fall from your lips, but that’s not the point, the point is to put you in control of this dream before Mao finishes that thought (don’t remember why this would be important, though, who’s watching?) - Didn’t you die like a dog in the street? Didn’t she put you down like a mad dog, Mao? You were no bark and no bite, though - you couldn’t even tell her you loved her, after all, didn’t you die choking on your own tongue while she put a bullet in your -
Shut up, you little fucker! Mao shrieks, lunging towards you, and -
[ Lelouch wakes up gasping for breath, and angry, but he can’t remember why until -
(How many days has it been, seven or a score of them? How many did I just lose to -
to -)
These gods.
These fucking gods are going to pay for this.
He throws the Hitomi against the wall - the video cuts out before it repairs itself. ]
[[ OOC: As with Balthier's dream, this is posted the night between days 6 and 7, and marks Lelouch snapping out of hearts mode. ]]
clap.
clap.
clap.
Until you’re awake, and you know, with a sick memory of feeling in your gut, that you know that sound.
You turn around.
Mao. You’re supposed to be dead.
And there he is, Mao, with the long gray coat (maybe once-white, maybe faded with years of wandering into other people’s personal nightmares) and the headphones and the reflective glass hiding his eyes from you (or hiding you from his eyes); there’s the man who walked into your life one day and left a trail of wreckage in his wake.
Mao claps his hands twice more. They sound like gunshots in this silence. Lelouch, he laughs, long time no see.
Your eyes narrow. I thought I told you never to speak again.
His manic grin only spreads; you can see the tips of his canine teeth now. Don’t be so bossy, Lelouch. That’s such a terrible habit you have. Thinking you’re so much better than everyone. Thinking you know so much better than everyone. Thinking you’ve got everyone on your side.
He shouldn’t be speaking. That bastard. He shouldn’t be speaking -
This is a dream, Lelouch, he says. You moron. I know I’m dead, I can hear you thinking it. His voice is less playful now, more scornful and biting. But you know, I’m pretty satisfied, all things considered. The smile returns now, predatory.
You force your hands to unclench. Oh? It’s important, with Mao, not to let him know he’s getting to you - which he will invariably know anyway, by virtue of being able to read your goddamn mind, but still.
Why, me being here. In your dream. It means you still remember me. I still haunt your thoughts. Even from beyond the grave- here he makes a mocking gesture, a sweep of the arm you’re rather notoriously good at - I have the power to reach out and trouble you, simply by virtue of once existing. Crossing your path. He claps three more times, smirking. So, Lelouch. Did it happen?
Mao, either you shut up, or you start saying something that makes sense -
You know what I’m talking about, Lelouch, he says, and the manic glee that oozes from his voice is enough to set your skin crawling. Euphemia. Did you? Did she?
(You don’t know, but you remember fragments, fragments of a day - the summit and the stadium and the hope and fear... and something like utter, total, blinding, animal panic, the kind that paralyzes you so utterly you can’t breathe without reminding yourself to - when she’d placed her hands on her ears as if to drown out some awful sound and screamed I DON’T WAN)
You’re such a coward, Lelouch. You think you can’t remember it properly, but you really just won’t. Because that would mean taking responsibility.
You snarl, I am more than willing to take -
I’m not talking about responsibility for actions of war, Mao says. He’s loving this, almost purring out the words, delighted to have some sort of point to dangle over your head. You’re so good at that, after all. You just love taking the blame for other people’s actions - because that makes you powerful. And that’s what I mean, Lelouch. You don’t want to take responsibility for yourself. For your own power. Maybe you...wanted to do it.
You shouldn’t listen to this, but the dream won’t let you plug your ears, or wake yourself up; you have no choice but to listen to Mao if you want it to end at any point -
He grins again. Maybe that means you’re just like me, now. I suppose that’s why I’m the one here, telling you all this. Don’t I represent everything you fear in your -
Don’t flatter yourself, Mao, you snap. You were never a threat to me. In fact - and now it is your turn to grin cruelly as a new strategy occurs to you - why don’t you look in my mind and see exactly how much of a threat you were, Mao? Why don’t you scan my memories and watch how you die?
His smile vanishes; or perhaps it just twists into a rictus of rage, his teeth still bared. Watch it, you -
Didn’t you die at her hands? You know he can read the thoughts before they fall from your lips, but that’s not the point, the point is to put you in control of this dream before Mao finishes that thought (don’t remember why this would be important, though, who’s watching?) - Didn’t you die like a dog in the street? Didn’t she put you down like a mad dog, Mao? You were no bark and no bite, though - you couldn’t even tell her you loved her, after all, didn’t you die choking on your own tongue while she put a bullet in your -
Shut up, you little fucker! Mao shrieks, lunging towards you, and -
[ Lelouch wakes up gasping for breath, and angry, but he can’t remember why until -
(How many days has it been, seven or a score of them? How many did I just lose to -
to -)
These gods.
These fucking gods are going to pay for this.
He throws the Hitomi against the wall - the video cuts out before it repairs itself. ]
[[ OOC: As with Balthier's dream, this is posted the night between days 6 and 7, and marks Lelouch snapping out of hearts mode. ]]