[drabble] Mirror Mirror on the Wall
Title: Mirror Mirror on the Wall
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Pairing: Inoo x Inoo
Genre: Hurt
Summary: AU. He's grasping for reality. But which one?
Notes: Request for Au (au_gravityfree ) and Jess (hotfruits ).
~
The new room is white. Painfully so.
The walls and ceiling are whitewashed to perfection, the cold floor is tiled with white marble that gives his feet chills. Resentfully, he slips his feet into the thin white slippers he has been provided with, and shuffles towards the bed to sit on top of the rough white sheets.
“White,” he whispers, “too white.”
The white muslin curtains fluttering in a phantom breeze at the closed window are his only reply.
He finds that he doesn’t mind - well, not much. None of this is real, he tells himself, this is not reality.
If this was reality my parents would not have tried to abandon me.
~
Night has fallen, the cold white stars shining in the smooth black sky.
He can still hear their shouts through the thick wooden door.
“Why can’t we leave him here-”
“-he’s clinically insane-”
“Madam, Sir, he’s your son-”
“No son of mine is a freaking schizo!”
“Kimiko…control yourself-”
“I refuse to associate with him! He can die for all I care-”
A car door slams, and the screech of tyres fades into the night.
This is not real, he chants silently to himself over and over again, this is not reality.
It doesn’t help to lessen the heartache at all.
~
They all tell him the voices aren’t real.
He hears them every day, every night, whispering to him and only him. To return to them, to wake up to the true reality, to open his eyes to the truth.
The doctors all tell him the voices are just hallucinations. But they’re lying.
He knows that the voices are from people in true reality, calling out to him from beyond a huge chasm in continued attempts to save him from falling off the edge and into insanity.
It’s infinitely easier to believe the voices rather than the doctors.
~
Today he finds a most curious object hanging above the white porcelain sink in his room.
Hesitantly, he approaches the shiny circle, and peers into it. To his surprise, he sees a person with paper-white skin, bloodshot eyes, and tangled black hair hanging limply down.
The object looks very much like a mirror. But he knows what he looks like, and that person in the mirror is definitely not him. His skin is not as pale, his eyes are clear brown, and his hair is neat and definitely not hanging past chin length.
This, he decides, must be some sort of strange portal allowing him to see through to the true reality.
He waves a hand experimentally. The other person waves back.
He attempts to smile. The other person’s smile looks more like a grimace than anything else.
“Hello,” he whispers, voice hoarse from lack of use.
The other person’s mouth moves in what he thinks should be a greeting in reply.
“What’s your name? I’m Kei.”
Rei, the other person seems to mouth back.
“Rei? That’s a nice name,” he murmurs, “let’s be friends?”
Rei smiles back at him.
~
Screaming, kicking, crying, he kneels on the floor, clutching his head in his hands in agony.
It’s the pills, those damned pills that the doctors give him.
“It will block out those hallucinations,” they tell him.
But he always refuses. Block out reality, cut away his only lifeline back to sanity? Never.
The doctors have long resigned themselves to shoving those dreaded pills down his throat.
They don’t understand, he thinks bitterly, they don’t understand the real situation.
Nobody does. Except Rei.
Days are now spent talking feverishly to Rei, and whispering plans to escape from this hellhole and return to reality.
“You’re the only one who understands me anymore,” he whispers to the boy on the other side of the surface.
His hand is flat on the glass - as is Rei’s - but instead of feeling human warmth it is just cold and smooth. He feels a tear trickling down his cheek, and looks up to see Rei crying silently on the other side.
“Why can’t I touch you? You, who are my only tie to reality?”
Rei cries even harder, and he feels his hand slowly slip down the glass and hang limply by his side.
~
I want to be with Rei.
Rei has evolved into a representation of the world, a manifestation of the voices of reality tugging at him. Being with Rei means rejoining with reality and escaping the madness of this nightmare.
But no matter how hard he tries, he cannot grasp Rei’s outstretched hand, his fingers always closing around empty air.
The doctors have given up trying to move him away from where he slouches on a high stool with one hand lightly touching Rei’s, crying tears of desperation and hopelessness.
Days and nights have long since melted into each other and he no longer has any sense of time, but eventually an idea comes to mind.
“If it’s this glass separating us from each other,” he whispers, “if I break it everything will be alright, won’t it?”
He smiles at the prospect, and Rei smiles back. For a moment, he thinks Rei’s smile looks sad, but the thought vanishes soon enough.
The stool will be excellent for bludgeoning, he decides.
“Step back,” he warns Rei, as he slowly lifts up the stool in his spindly arms.
Hope lends him strength, and the stool hits the glassy surface, and spiderweb-like cracks begin to form. Again and again, the loud sound miraculously not alarming the doctors, he swings his makeshift bludgeon.
“Almost there,” he tells Rei, “almost done.”
One last swing, and suddenly the shiny surface shatters and falls to the ground, like broken crystal shards. Excited, his eyes dart up, expecting to see Rei reaching out and welcoming him…
But there is nothing. Nothing at all.
Screaming in frustration, he falls to his knees, not caring as the small shards cut into his legs.
This is a dream, he tells himself frantically, only a dream.
The thought calms him down slightly, and he begins to think again. Unbidden, a tiny unknown voice speaks up in his mindscape.
When you die in reality, you die. But what happens when you die in a dream?
“…You wake up,” he whispers, realization dawning on his face.
~
It is the nurse who hears the earsplitting screams, and runs shrieking for help down the hallway. But by the time the doctors come and unlock all the locks on the thick wooden door, there is nothing they can do.
A twisted body, their young patient, lies on the white tiles, surrounded by mirror fragments with a particularly large piece jabbed into his chest. His hand is covered in blood, and the reason for that becomes apparent as the doctors see one last message scrawled on the floor in drying blood.
I’ll be with you at last, Rei.
I’ll wake from this nightmare.
And we’ll be together.
Forever and always.