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theknightmarket · 3 months ago

Note

Knight, knight, knight- a somewhat wholesome idea popped into my mind. The da is stuck inside the mirror right? What if they gained powers that allows them to travel through dreams? In a sense they have their adventures depends on the host person/enity and they just go along with.

and okay what if dark knew what the upsidedown world is capable? And its what drives dark to never fall asleep (aside not needing one) and also why is he so hellbent chasing and taking revenge on mark so when its all over, he'll take his rest, be with the da for eternity

"Good morning, sunshine."

In which Dark and the DA interact through unconventional means. Tw: death mention Pages: 17 - Words: 6,500

[Requests: OPEN]

The first time, you weren’t sure what had happened. You weren’t sure if it was good or bad. You weren’t sure whether it was because of something you had done, or it was just a random event, some miracle that had gotten you out of that mirror. Hell, you weren’t sure what was actually happening. How you got to some kind of bank or museum was pushed to the back of your mind, but so too were the events occurring right in front of you. It was embarrassing that this was the happiest you had been in decades, even if it was understandable.

To hear the distant whirring of inefficient streetlights, to see something other than a boundless sky of complete blackness that wrapped around you, under, above, disappearing into the floor and reappearing from the ceiling – it was enough to push you close to tears.

But confusion overruled that, instead, making you wonder why that was all you were given, why you couldn’t smell, or feel, or even taste.

And then horror rattled your senses as you watched a body step out from where you were standing.

Your initial idea was inaccurate.

Because you did not exist here.

Because you were not standing at the edge of a row of bushes, shaded by the night and staring into the doors of a building.

Because you were not out of the mirror.

Never mind being close to tears, you felt a few stray drops link up at the base of your jawline. You were scared to wipe them away for fear of finding yourself without hands.

So, what was this? If you hadn’t suddenly escaped from the mirror without your knowledge, why could you see a pair of criminals decked out in all black somewhere that was distinctly not a similar shade of void?

You asked yourself this, knowing fully well that you couldn’t give yourself an answer, and you wouldn’t get an answer for the foreseeable future. There were, however, some things that you managed to deduce over the course of the next hour or so – an indistinguishable period only because time seemed to be ever-so-slightly off.

That was the first of your clues; over the course of the adventure that you watched play out in front of you, each move from room to room took only the flick of a wrist, while the people you were following stared at each other for minutes at a time in complete silence. It was anyone’s guess as to when the clock would leap forward or jam its own mechanisms.

The second clue required no experimentation. It was simply that they didn’t acknowledge you at all. They didn’t make any indication that they could see or hear you. You were lost to them, worse than lost, they didn’t know you were there in the first place. They just sneaked around the museum, completely unaware of the person staring them dead in the eyes.

Had this experience happened any earlier, you might have felt more than a distant sting, but, as it was, it didn’t bother you too much. You were used to being ignored, cast away, forgotten. At least this was by people that you didn’t already know, people that you hadn’t survived the worst with, people that you didn’t trust with your very life, people that you once cared about and who you once thought cared about you.

Maybe it did bother you, just a little.

The third clue came a lot later than the others, but it spearheaded the theory that you were constructing in the back of your mind. Or, rather, the theory that you had constructed because the thing that gave it away?

It was when it all ended, and you were dumped unceremoniously back in the darkness, alone and uncertain of everything. That was one of the worst parts. Having occupied that space for nearly a century, you had been so sure in your knowledge of the place. You were in a mirror – there was nothing else there but you – you were stuck there. The most comfort you could find in the situation was that it wasn’t going to change.

But then it did, and you were pushed back to square one, taking tiny steps around the void, constantly worrying that a single foot in the wrong position would send you crashing through the ground. It was torturous to have your safety ripped away from you again, but what were you supposed to expect? Fate wasn’t kind, and it treated you like its personal plaything, only the game had morphed into something a little crueler.

Your theory, as unstable and undeveloped as it was, was that it was just a dream. In your state between life and death, your oh-so-generous master Fate had designed little shows for you. Entertainment was rare in the void, so what was kinder than giving you some? Never mind the fact that it drove you insane, you should have been grateful to get a glimpse of a life you could have lived had you not gone to that forsaken party. No need for you to lament your cruel undeath. The dreams were a kindness.

You didn’t know how it happened, how you had magically appeared somewhere else, so you didn’t know how to get there again. The outside, if that was what it was, quickly became a distant memory. It was fleeting, a whisp of smoke that intertwined itself between your fingers and then disappeared. It faded, just as the adrenaline and hope did as the seconds ticked by on a clock you couldn’t see.

And then it happened again.

By the end, you were on the edge of a breakdown. The shambles of your mind repulsed each shard of itself, trying to escape from the impossibility you were trapped in. You felt each crack that spiderwebbed across the surface. You felt each tap-tap-tap of tiny splinters falling. You felt it fighting the scenarios you were forced into.

This dream had the same people, but they acted completely different. They traded out their heist gear for formalwear, but their date didn’t last long. It devolved, like the other situation had, into weirder and weirder ends. Body doubles, a proposal, a prison much like you had seen before. Neither of them seemed to notice the similarity, though, and they went along through their routes without a care in the world. It might have been cute had it not made you sick to your stomach.

Regardless, though, you were distracted in the very final moments.

You had to admit, you were interested in how this one would end. It was a 50/50 with one of the original pair holding the gun, between two men who looked the same, both promising they were the one to be trusted. You weren’t paying attention, not initially. You had been tagging along behind the two for the better part of the entire day, and, at some point, you got bored enough to find more entertainment in the scenery than in the dilemma they were facing.

You missed nature more than you missed manslaughter cases.

You didn’t know who they shot in the end, but one of the men was laying on the ground when you snapped back to the ‘present’. You supposed you were meant to feel some kind of sympathy for him, the way that he crumpled to the ground, but it was difficult to find any emotion here. Instead, you leaned against the building that the two who were left ended up at. It was another of those jumps in time, not that any time could be wasted in a dream.

Was it bad that you were apathetic to all this? You knew it wouldn’t have consequences; you would return to the void again when this was all over, alone, and easily forgetting the events of the dream – but it still felt wrong to be so nonchalant about it. If you were any other sort of person, the kind who hadn’t been left alone for a century, being dragged into another scenario might have borne excitement. Seeing people, whether or not they saw you, might have given you hope.

But you weren’t that kind of person, and you weren’t excited or hopeful. You were a ghost, sent adrift in a house too new for you, ignored by the living who now inhabited it, and why shouldn’t you have been? They had no reason to care about you, they didn’t have to acknowledge you, they weren’t—

A spark of electricity like a bullet shot through you when you noticed the man sitting at the table. Not only had he not left yet, like the person you had been following, but he was staring straight at you.

The rising of your stomach made you think you were going to throw up. The quickening of your breath made you think you were going to pass out. The widening of his eyes made you think he felt the same. Neither of you acted, not for the first moments that it took for you to assess the situation, assess him.

Dark suit, dark hair, dark eyes. The only color about him were the rings of red and blue that waved off him like watercolor paints added to a canvas. They resisted one another but equally drew closer to the man’s edges. Regardless of the fight between them, he sat perfectly still. If there hadn’t been a certain look in his eyes – the glaze of someone who was both relieved and terrified – you might have mistaken him for being calm, however, there was that glaze, and it was a combination you were knocked breathless by because it was him. You recognized him.

And a similar sense of fear and comfort fired off in the chambers of your heart, hitting the walls as though they were a batting cage.

You took the first step, physically, and metaphorically. You didn’t think you would remain upright if you didn’t latch onto the empty chair for support as you muttered, “Dark?”

Your voice was rough in your throat. It felt more like you’d spat up a coat of oil than a real word. Years of disuse, the silence of the void that bid you follow suit, years of misuse, screaming into the pitch blackness for just a chance of an echo.

Hearing your own name sent back at you had you stumbling. Suddenly encased by your lost reality, you didn’t notice Dark jolt forward in his seat, hand barely outstretched and mouth semi-parted. Neither of you knew what he intended to do, but you acted first, dropping into the chair.

“How,” came his next words, slow, quiet, gentle like he was soothing an animal or someone he found dying on the road, “how are you here?”

Only his first question, and you couldn’t answer it. Not perfectly accurately, anyway, so your rough estimates would have to do. “I don’t know, I-I followed… I followed someone here.”

His fist clenching on the table caught your eye, but you were stopped from asking about it when he tried to clarify for you, “Mark.”

A myriad of other curiosities appeared – a frigid tone, bitter but unsurprised, and the warbling of the blue and red lines around him, among others – and yet they dissipated just as fast when he met your eyes. The search for something apparently proved fruitless; he leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and cocked his head to one side. A silent question.

Why weren’t you angry?

Because you were completely fine upon hearing that name. In Dark’s mind, he considered it impossible that you should stay draped in the chair after the man that caused your demise was mentioned. No malice surfaced, no anger, no sadness, just a blink that was nothing more than an instinct.

Maybe it had something to do with the years you had spent alone, or maybe you never held it against him in the first place. The actor had been unstable for months leading up to your reunion. The events weren’t expected, of course, and in no way would you have chosen to go through that if you had the ability to go back – but they were what happened. Resignation softened your body language and your mind, prompting you to pay more attention to the present than the past.

Right now, Dark’s comment only served to add to your theory.

“Why does it have to be Mark?” you asked, knocking the man across from you out of his stupor. “Why can’t I have followed the other person?”

His brow furrowed, and it made you wonder how much he knew about the situation, the thought that followed being how much he would tell you.

“Because they—” Dark drew into himself as soon as the words escaped his mouth, “—are not the one dreaming.”

It was your turn to look curious. You were a person of fact by nature. Magic and demons and expansive, blank voids, they were fairytales used to scare children back into their beds at night. Simply put, they weren’t real. And the power of dreams? What stock were you supposed to put in that?

So, without another option, you said, simply, “Explain.”

And explain Dark did.

Having one third of your form come from the void had its perks, especially in describing its powers, the influence it had, what it could do. And, as you proceeded to hear, it could do a lot – more than you had ever imagined it capable of, given the absolute nothingness of it – but the thing that interested you the most was the accessibility of it.

Things like the entities, the ones that made up Dark and took over Celine’s body, were able to use the void like a hub. It allowed them to jump from place to place within seconds. Without a physical form, it would have otherwise been difficult to move around. Hell, it was difficult to move around, because getting out of the void was much harder than getting in. It required one very specific ability.

One that you did not possess.

“And you put me in there.”

“I did.”

He said this with no emotion. It wasn’t an apology, nor was it a threat; it was a simple statement of fact, an admission without the guilt. You didn’t know if he had the ability to feel it. As far as your knowledge went, the inhumane entity within Dark took away the chance of it, leaving only the reality behind, as unbelievable as it sounded.

“Did you know I wouldn’t be able to get out?” was the only thing you asked.

This time, there was a short pause before he answered. The memory unwound in his mind while he processed the question. You had asked if he knew, and he asked himself the same thing. Objectively, yes. There was no way that a human – flesh, bones, blood – would be able to leave the void, and Dark understood that. He had never believed otherwise.

And yet, there had been something else behind his actions, because it wasn’t his intention to keep you locked up inside the mirror.

Slowly, tasting the words in his mouth, he repeated, “I did.” The response felt right, he wasn’t lying, but…

You watched as Dark leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table and head resting on his clasped hands. Everything was deliberate. His suit jacket didn’t crease if he didn’t want it to, and his tie stayed flush against his shirt where it was meant to be, but the look in his eye made you think he was anything but conscious of the present. This seemed to be affecting him more than you, and you were the one with the vitamin D deficiency.

The confirmation that yes, he knew kept repeating like a broken record in Dark’s mind. However, it wasn’t because that puzzled him. Really, it was the only thing that made sense. What actually threw him through a loop was the simple fact that it hadn’t mattered. Trapping you in the void, keeping you away from the real world, was not the logical option. If he had been looking for the best way to carry out his pledge of revenge on Mark, getting rid of Damien would have been the best option. He had the obligations of the mayor of a city, he had an awkward relationship with the actor – both too distant and not far enough – and he was so, so painfully emotional. Painfully human.

Celine hated Mark so much that she thrived on the plan’s progress. The thought of revenge nourished her and made Dark stronger. She had the determination he needed to go through with it all. She was the obvious choice to keep in that amalgamation of souls. The entity was staying, and that was that, no deliberation required.

That left just you and Damien.

Dark had seen you work, or, rather, Damien had the memories of you in the court room. To surmise, you were good, very good, and you were able to separate your emotions from the case. While the witness on the stand was hurling profanities, you made eye contact and stood your ground. If the prosecutor started floundering, you pounced on the opportunity to tear about their words. You were exact, efficient, and a force to be reckoned with.

But poor, sweet Damien? He was always at the back of Dark’s mind, his best excuse for a conscience that constantly reminded him what the moral choice was, regardless of whether he had taken the last one, or the one before that, or the one before that. He was persistent. He was a liability. It wasn’t a shock that he turned out to be the only thing stopping him from latching on to Mark in one of his dreams and killing him when he woke up.

So, the question was: why did Dark push you out and keep Damien?

As if sensing the answer was in arm’s reach, something – and he said something, but he knew what, who, it was – forced him to look up and at you.

Well, that explained it.

Dark’s inner monologue took no more than thirty seconds, even with the strange tick-tock of the clock in a dream, and you watched him and nothing but him in that time. You were still looking at him when he snapped back to the present. As though someone had snapped their fingers, you saw the calculating cold, the pressing tension, the rampant search for an answer melt away in layers to reveal the truth behind it all. As he leaned back into his seat and laid his arms out on the sides, the creases at his eyes softened and a faint smile pulled at his lips.

“The mirror was not meant to be a prison,” Dark started to explain before he was overcome with the pointless need to take a deep breath. Your expression of pure curiosity pulled at his unmoving heart, squeezing it in a grip that he didn’t describe as uncomfortable. Gently and unable to look away, he continued, “And I’m sorry that it was one. I intended it to be a sanctuary, of sorts.”

A flash of confusion darted through your eyes, and Dark rushed to continue before it could turn into suspicion. “I wanted to keep you away from Mark, away from the consequences of everything.”

It was at the end of that sentence, with perfect timing, that his neck was snapped to the side. The bones popped and the nerves twisted. He tried to play it off, but you clearly noticed. Your concern made his heart clench just as painfully as his neck, so he brought a hand up to show that he was fine.

You didn’t believe him, and he didn’t make it any more convincing when he said, “You would have died.”

You knew that; your body was dead on impact, but that wasn’t what he was talking about. Instead, because of him, your soul was alive, even if it only existed in the confines of a metaphysical world.

A question about the integrity of your survival died on your tongue as you registered the strange frown on Dark’s face. It twitched at the sides, threatening to pull further down, but he kept it as straight as he could. The same couldn’t be said about the few tears brimming in the corners of his eyes. He almost succeeded at containing his emotion until one betrayed him and slid to his jawline with a mutter of, “I had to save you.”

“Thank you.”

His breath caught in his throat at your response. For all his monologues and explanations, he hadn’t expected you to be grateful. You, of all people, thanked him, and it wasn’t a joke. He had never seen as genuine a smile on anyone’s face, him not having met more than four people notwithstanding, to the point that it almost lit up the gray of his skin to a normal tone.

And you did mean it. The man in front of you – the one currently tearing up at the mere possibility of losing you – wasn’t malicious. Being the district attorney had given you the almost magical ability to tell when someone was lying. It had served you well in court, and it served you well here. The conclusion you came to took no longer than a few seconds. Personal history did have its benefits, after all, and you had learned long ago how to not be impeded by a pretty face. From all the evidence in front of you, Dark was trustworthy.

You trusted him.

“Of course,” he replied as his hand darted to the lapel of his jacket to sturdy himself. The attention was almost too much, and he found his mouth moving before he understood what he wanted to say. “You said you followed Mark here?”

You nodded, disregarding the fact that Dark had told you that you had followed Mark, for his sake. You also didn’t mention his shaky attempt to compose himself and waited for his next words. You weren’t in any rush to speed things along; for all you knew, talking to Dark was the only thing keeping you in this dream. It surprised you that you hadn’t been dropped back into the void yet, but you didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Besides, it had its other advantages.

You hadn’t seen Dark since the first time on that fateful night, and it took everything out of you to not see him, or anyone else, again. When you were in the pitch black, you imagined that you would get attached to the first person you saw, and it was a shock to you when that wasn’t the case. The nature drew you in before Mark or his partner in crime could, but you had still tried to talk to them. During your experimentation, you had whispered in their ears, yelled at them, said all manner of things to get their attention, but none had worked, so you quickly moved on. Nothing kept you around them.

But there was something with Dark. The space around you shifted, as if the dream itself recognized the moment and gave it a wide berth. Out of respect or fear or nothing, you didn’t know, yet it was undeniable that it happened, and you were glad it did. You wanted to preserve the bubble of safety that had molded around you. There was a part of you that bargained with the dream, as inane as that sounded, to get more time with Dark. The clock worked differently here, so why couldn’t it grant you a slower pace?

Unaware of your mental bartering, Dark pushed on with his questioning. It came as a surprise to you, having not been focusing at all on the present.

“How?”

You had to take a second to remember what you were talking about, but, when it came to you, you realized you weren’t able to give him much.

“I don’t know. I’m normally stuck in the void, but lately it’s been tossing me around. I went somewhere else before, a heist of some kind. It was much more complicated than this, though.”

You hadn’t paid much attention to the paths this time. There was much less to explore, and the hope of having escaped had worn off. You were fairly certain they were the same people, too, so any contact was old news. You weren’t interested in the heist dream either, not after the sixth time you ended up outside that museum with the pair of thieves.

Despite that, Dark appeared to make up for your lack of enthusiasm; he practically lunged, one hand steadying his body on the back of the chair as he leaned forward, so much so that he was half bent over the table between you.

In a breathless voice, he asked, “Where?” It was more of a demand, really, colored so from the unfamiliar want. It took a moment for him to realize himself, and he then sat back down in the seat. One hand went to card through his hair, throwing it about haphazardly as he amended, “Where were you? I… I was there, but, evidently, we didn’t see each other.”

As you thought through your response, Dark took the time to reprimand part of his mind for his outbursts. He couldn’t afford to break down right now, there were far more important things at stake that made getting distracted too risky, no matter how much the voice in the back of his mind begged to be let loose.

Before you opened your mouth, he managed to similarly berate his general self for thinking it a semi-appealing idea.

“I was distracted,” you said, voice barely above a whisper. “It all felt so real.”

When you stared down at your hands, the outlines of your fingers shimmered, and the veins on the undersides of your wrists pulsed with white light. How were you to know you weren’t alive? Were you a fool for thinking you had escaped, for being tricked, like an owner who had thrown a ball for a dog but just held it behind their back? You went off chasing it, of course, not noticing the stranger things around you. You were too obsessed with the mundane and the possibility that you had a body when you should have known that you didn’t.

Hearing that Dark had been in the same place, maybe, at one point, right under your nose, a deep sense of regret unfurled in your stomach. You had lamented not being able to talk to anyone, but you had ignored the one chance you had at it. If you had just paid more attention, your heart wouldn’t be trying to destroy itself.

As if sensing your spiraling discomfort, the red and blue lines around Dark flared and spasmed. They whipped out at places and curled in at others, mimicking radio waves with their peaks and troughs. It brought your attention to the current moment, and you were glad it did because you became acutely aware of the expression on the face of the man opposite you.

In the midst of the cold, calculating cover he tried to pull, there was a hint of desperation peeking through the weak spots. His eyes, ever the window to the soul, were still glossy with unshed tears, and his mouth, no matter how much focus he put towards smirking, dipped for seconds at a time. You wanted nothing more than to lean forward and comfort him, but the dream was an unkind thing; your legs didn’t cooperate, you were unable to move an inch to brush the drops away.

You offered him the most you could, saying gently, “This feels different.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I think so.”

Any reason you had in mind was wiped away when a tingling sensation danced at the tips of your fingers. It was something like a limb falling asleep, but it was spreading fast. Your heart rate sped up to a dangerous speed as it got faster and faster, turning into a wildfire that stopped you feeling anything, and it only got worse when you looked down.

Your hands had completely disappeared, the space empty where they had been before. Looking to the ground, you saw nothing but a neon white, which likewise surrounded you when you glanced around you. This hadn’t happened before, and it was terrifying you.

“It’s okay,” Dark said. Thankfully, he didn’t sound panicked – you didn’t think you could handle it if he wasn’t as calm as he was – and he even went so far as to start explaining. You had always liked knowing things. A smile snuck onto Dark’s face as he remembered the singular time that you had been forced to explore negative capability in university, which ended with you throwing the textbook out of the window. In any other situation, he might have teased you for it, but you didn’t have the time.

“The dream is ending,” he started, trying to sound confident despite the fear of not seeing you again nestling itself in his heart. “I suppose you’ve never strayed this far from the start before.”

You shook you head; at the end of the heist, before you were dumped back into the void, you had been standing just where you began, in front of the museum. Now, you didn’t know where you were, but you calmed yourself with Dark’s clarification. Well, his clarification and the pressure of his hand against your upper arm. The contact was inches away from empty air, and you feared for a moment of irrational indulgence that it would speed up and you would lose the feeling.

Your attention snapped back to Dark as he continued talking, “It works outwards. Everything will disappear eventually, but we’re on the edge. We have time.”

He refrained from telling you exactly how much time you had left here, all too aware that it would make you flounder. He had watched the environment disappear before. It wasn’t comforting and it wasn’t pretty, so he preferred staying in the darkness, where it wasn’t as obvious that everything was gradually fading away. Finding you in the daylight was a stoke of luck, a miracle. The only reason why he was out there in the first place was because…

“Mark is around here, too.”

You nodded, a simple confirmation or more complicated agreement, he wasn’t sure, but he stood from his seat, nevertheless. Your torso was gone, now, nothing but a shimmering outline that was gradually disappearing itself. You were close to completely returning to the void, and there was a part of Dark that was unimaginably frightened it would be for the last time.

Another part reminded him of what he was supposed to do, told him it would help you if he adapted to this, convinced him that it was the right thing to do. It surprised him when the resistance that normally came with that simply didn’t.

His legs moved on their own towards the parking lot, where he knew Mark still was, but your voice stopped him before he passed you.

“Come back safe, alright?”

How was he supposed to say no to you? When you were looking at him with such trust and belief, it was impossible.

He leaned down to press his lips against your forehead. Your skin was surprisingly warm, considering your situation, but that might have come from his natural coolness. Still, it was nice. A good contrast that had the back of his mind focused entirely on the feeling.

“Of course.”

The shimmering was gone, and you along with it.

Dark stepped back, registered a strange satisfaction in his heart, and took a deep breath.

The actor was dead within the hour.

It didn’t take much, surprisingly. In fact, it was quite easy. As Dark stood above Mark’s finally vacant body – returned once and for all to the state it should have been in – he found no burst of adrenaline. No anger, no sadness, no passion. Nothing but the dull hum of satisfaction, just the same as the one from when you had disappeared. It was done, and that was that.

Mark was dead. Damien and Celine were appeased.

His job was complete.

He dropped the bloody axe to the floor, the clatter and thud not reaching his ears. Someone else would bury the body. Another would open an investigation into his death. A deep cut, like one from felling a tree, wasn’t going to be described as natural. It didn’t matter, though; arresting someone who should have already been dead was as difficult as murdering one. Dark had nothing to fear.

He also had nothing to do. There were no more plans to be made, no more vengeance to be enacted, and you had told him to come back safe, right? Maybe taking a rest wasn’t such a bad idea.

The manor, Dark’s base of operations that he loathed to call his base of operations, was quiet when he arrived back. It didn’t bother him, he had never appreciated the bustle and boom of all the parties once hosted there. It had prompted one part of him to find a safe space in a spare bedroom at one end of the house, and that was exactly what he needed – somewhere to be that didn’t come with the strings of tracking down Mark.

The door creaked as he pushed it open and groaned as he closed it again. Despite the confines of a tailored suit, he didn’t stop himself from falling onto the untouched sheets of the bed. It had been so long since he had laid down; for the past century, he had either been ramrod straight or sitting in his chair, and laying sideways across a desk hadn’t done him any good.

This position was much better. Was this the kind of ‘different’ you had spoken about? He hoped so, with the relaxation that ran through him. It was enough to coax him to close his eyes and let it all go, like a siren at the edge of a boat on stormy seas.

And then came the voice of one, too.

“Good morning, sunshine.”

Slowly, Dark opened his eyes again, with the distinct feeling of trust firm in his heart. A new voice in the manor would normally be cause for concern, but he knew the voice. He knew you.

The only thing he didn’t know was what was happening.

When he knocked himself out of his sentimentality, Dark was greeted by the sight of you against the backdrop of the moonlight. He was still in that room, resting on the bed, but everything seemed altered in some way. You were the most obvious difference, and he was half sure that you were behind the softness of the scene, as if, in the time he was out, you had painted over the furniture, the walls, the light itself.

You dropped down on the edge of the bed as Dark pulled himself into a sitting position.

“I’m not,” he started, but he was forced to trail off. He didn’t know how to verbalize a single thought, and yet that wasn’t as frightening as he thought it would be. With you, he didn’t think it possible to be scared. Still, he tried again, “You’re…”

You shook your head and reached to place your hand over his. This was the first time you had made contact with him, and he quickly found he never wanted it to end.

“No, I’m not alive,” you answered his silent question, “and neither are you, by the looks of things.”

“I don’t understand.”

You didn’t expect him to. When he had sat across from you, he radiated a certain poise and manner that only came with certainty. You had seen it in witnesses, prosecutors, clients. They all acted the exact same when they were on their home turf, and when they were moved away from it.

Luckily, Dark was taking it better than they did – there was less yelling and cursing and threatening – but there was still the undercurrent of concern.

It was your turn to explain as you said, “You killed Mark. You did what you needed to do.”

“Exactly, he’s gone.”

He said it with a small smile, but his downturned eyebrows and deeper breaths betrayed the confusion.

You brought your other hand over his unattended one and collected the two into a grip. “Oh, my dear, he’s not the only one who can dream.”

Taking advantage of his lapse in troubled thoughts, you dipped your head to lightly kiss the exposed skin of his knuckles. They were weathered by time, a statue left outside too long, and you hoped to sooth some of the damage the elements had done.

“You look tired,” you muttered.

“I am.”

“Go on, then.”

You tried not to return your hands to his when you saw the flash of fear on his face as you took them away to gesture vaguely at the headrest. A trio of fresh, fluffed pillows lay there, and, although you wondered just how comfortable his suit could be, you wanted him to relax some. This wasn’t the waking world, after all.

While Dark shifted to remove his jacket, you drifted towards the fireplace along the wall opposite. The burst of flame calmed down quickly, blending into small embers behind the grate.

“From what I’ve been able to figure out, it’s a replica of the manor from its better days. I think it’s empty but sometimes I hear…”

In a case of excellent timing, the distant squeal of childish laughter came from down the hallway. It was followed by footsteps, quickening, and then sliding into another room. You never saw who exactly was out there, but based on the man staring at the door, you were safe to assume the possibilities.

“Better days,” he repeated, nodding to himself, and then looked back at you. You always were so smart.

You returned to Dark’s side after securing more logs in the hearth, though you hesitated, standing awkwardly with a hand to your chest.

No words were needed for him to realize your thought process, so he offered a hand of his own, which you took without further deliberation. It took another soft tug for you to relax against him, at which point he curled an arm around your shoulders and brought you as close as possible, but it was solely your decision to reach up and undo his tie, draping it over a post once it was fully removed.

“I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

You were content to leave it at that. Hell, you had been content to stay standing beside him while he slept, but this was much better.

Dark, however, pressed a kiss to the back of your head, sighed, and mumbled, “How do I know I won’t wake up?”

You twisted in his hold to look at him. For all the love and trust his eyes held, it wasn’t enough to completely mask a genuine desperation.

“Do you want to wake up?” you asked, simply and plainly.

He responded in the same fashion. “No.”

“Then you won’t. It’s your dream, after all, and I think you deserve to rest.”

That was all it took for the fear to melt away. Dark’s eyes fell shut, and he knocked his head against yours for a moment, just to savor the feeling, before he fully leaned forward and connected your lips.

It was a tired, late-night kiss that you shared. You wouldn’t lie, you had imagined you would have one after a rough day at the office, pressing cases and pressing clients that got on your nerves, instead of finally relaxing with a man you had never thought you’d see again – but it still served the same purpose. It made your heartbeat slow and your shoulders drop. The slow dance between the two of you brought smiles to your faces, tender and loving. It was a silent agreement that this was the ending you had hoped for.

What a dream this was.

[Thank you so much for requesting, and I'm sorry for the delay! I thought that I’d be able to get more done over these past weeks, but college projects have taken up a lot of my time, unfortunately. On the other hand, if anyone wants to take about British witchcraft in the 1600s or mental health post-World War 2, hit me up, because I’m about to knock my teeth out over this :D! On a lighter note, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed <3]

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dangans-ur-ronpas · 4 months ago

Text

Chapter 23

ohhh baby we back in it now

SEE HERE FOR GENERAL WARNINGS AND FIC SUMMARY

Some pre-chapter notes:

byakuya pov finally

bonus headcanon coming into play here: byakuya being Wasian

shoutout @digitaldollsworld for helping me conceptualize byakuya's mom! both of us are Sick about her

Content warning tags: wall-punching, grieving/mourning, unreality (dreaming)

< previous - from start - next >

There’s a woman standing in his office.

Byakuya stands behind the cracked-open doorway, peeking through - though, part of him does rile up with the indignity of having to spy into his own office - at the intruder, standing in front of his desk, back facing the door.

He can’t see her face. But he can see her flax-yellow hair, tied back with a wrinkled, silken scarf that’s probably the most expensive thing she’s wearing. Her cotton jumpsuit is so stained and faded that hardly any of the original blue is still there. Her canvas shoes are discolored with mud.

She would look more out of place, if the shabbiness of her hadn’t seeped into her surroundings. The carpet is splattered with crusted clay, and shards of stone stick out of the plush threads like thorns. The mahogany surface of his desk is creaking and bent under the weight of a large cube of fleshy, white marble, splintering under the lacquer.

As he watches, she lifts her bare hands - ugly, roughened, thickly muscled fingers, nails cracked and filthy - like a conductor before an orchestra. She pauses, head tilted like a bird, thinking, and Byakuya inexplicably finds himself holding his breath; and then, she places her palms against the stone.

The surface of it warps and distends beneath her touch, first like a swollen balloon, and then like clay, twisting and following her hands like a swimming fish. And he watches, fascinated despite himself, as she bends and shapes it, twisting pieces off, smoothing edges down. She pinches out a piece in the middle for a nose, smoothes down a sharp edge for a sloping curve of a cheek, flicks her nail sharply beneath the brow to pull out a crease for an eyelid.

It’s magic. In seemingly no time at all, there on his desk is a bust; the head of a man brought to life, caught in a soft, gentle expression. The sculptor pauses, and steps backwards to take in her work.

There’s something reverent about it, and Byakuya suddenly has the feeling that he’s witnessing something not meant for him to see.

But he creaks the door open slightly more to get a better look, finding it strange how he was more curious than angry, even despite the intrusion. As he approaches, the bust’s eyes suddenly flick towards him, and immediately the serenity is replaced by a solemn, pinched brow, the smile replaced by a severe slash of a frown. And Byaukuya realizes he recognizes this face.

The marble-wrought head of Kijo Togami is sitting on his desk, scowling at him.

“Byakuya?”

He turns to the woman. She’s facing him now, though she has no face to speak of - it is blurred and unfocused, like a distant background character of an impressionist oil painting, the features mere shifting smears against a flat plane - but he knows her. He knows her.

“Byakuya,” She repeats, the syllables awkward on her tongue. She’s speaking French, and she sounds distant. Muted, underwater. But her voice still has the same, oddly musical quality to it that he remembers, making everything she said sound like a lullaby. “Bijou. Did I not tell you to stay out of my studio?”

Her studio?

“This is my office.” He protests back. He can’t tell if he’s speaking Japanese or not; every word feels clumsy and foreign, like he’s just learned how to talk. “What are you doing here, Mother?”

She just sighs. Shakes her head, her featureless face. There’s no anger in it, no loving exasperation either; just a neutral disapproval of his presence. His unwanted existence in her space. “Bijou,” She says again, and the nickname irritates him. A sweet-sounding endearment that was ultimately empty, a placeholder for her to refer to him by, because his own name was too clumsy to speak with her accent. “When did you become so grown? When will you stop being so cold?”

The stone Kijo Togami is still frowning at him. In this instant, both the man he calls ‘Father’ and the woman who had birthed him - one painfully-detailed stone, the other indistinct flesh - stand before him. One silent and forever displeased, the other sweet but hollow-sounding and entirely uncaring that they shared any blood at all.

“How strange it is, that you look so much like me,” She sighs, raising a hand to his face. He flinches away from it, the sandpaper sharpness of her palms, the filth that stains the creases of her skin, the heat that comes off of it like a kiln. “And yet, you are so much like him.”

—

He wakes up with a gasp, eyes snapping open.

He’s greeted with the pitch darkness of his ceiling, cut through with a thin slash of white from his bathroom light, streaming through the cracked-open door. A reminder he had taken to preparing for himself before he went to bed, that his eyes were still there, and he sighs and presses a palm to his chest as he stares up at it. Feeling his heart pounding beneath his fingertips, then slowing, in time with his breaths.

A dream. He can’t remember the last time he dreamed so vividly, but he had been subjected to some unpleasantly…shocking events the last few days (he won’t call them traumatic, he’s witnessed far worse in his life). The details of the dream are already slipping away as he tries to recall it, like sand between his fingers. It’s hardly important.

He lies in bed a moment longer, trying to see if sleep will come, but even with the adrenaline fading he’s wide-awake. Annoying, but not surprising, considering how he had spent much of the day before napping in short, fitful bursts. He pushes himself upright, reaching under his pillow for his handbook; may as well make use of the time.

The clock on his handbook reads: three AM. His neglected stomach gurgles as he squints at the dim glow of the screen, and he sighs. He hasn’t eaten since Celeste’s little tea party the day before, and he might as well go to the kitchen now. There likely wouldn’t be anyone wandering around to disturb him. And with Ishimaru gone, there was no one left to seriously uphold the nightly curfew; he drags himself out of bed with a grunt, grabbing his bathrobe off the end of his bedpost as he goes.

He’s not expecting the trap that he finds when he opens the door, however. The first step he takes past the threshold is accompanied by a loud, startling crunch, and he jumps backwards, just barely stifling a shriek. He throws his hand against the light switch, digging it into his palm as he flicks in on, and at once the yellow glow streaming from his room illuminates the something round, brown, and somewhat deflated sitting in the hallway.

For a moment, he thinks it's some kind of rodent, dead and trodden under his foot. But closer inspection reveals it to be packaged bread, only slightly crushed in its plastic wrapper. There’s no note, but he can guess who the offering is from.

He sighs, picks it up by the corner, and tosses it behind him towards his trash can as he leaves.

The hallways are dim, and almost silent if not for the dull hum of the school’s inner machinery. The whoosh of air conditioning, the muffled clang of pipes. None of the construction that Hagakure had reported days ago, not even when he strains his ears.

But he does catch the quiet murmur of conversation as he passes the bathhouse, and he pauses, staring at the light that streams from behind the curtain, the quick-flicker of shadows moving from inside.

“It wasn’t your fault!”

He freezes, standing just outside. That was Chihiro’s - no, Alter Ego’s - voice.

“I know Master wouldn’t resent you.” It continues, earnest and bright. “And based on my data…I don’t think Kiyotaka would blame you either!”

“But it was my fault,” Mondo’s voice is strained and hollow, grieving still. “If I hadn’t left them alone - if I’d tried to just talk to him -”

Byakuya shifts slightly. He doesn’t want to be here, to have to witness Mondo’s continued breakdown. He still hasn’t forgiven the other boy, but having to see him stuck in the depths of misery was…unpleasant. And he’s not so petty to want retribution while the target of his ire was in such a state.

He tiptoes past, giving the bathhouse entrance a wide berth. From inside, he hears more indistinct voices, one low and gravelly from crying, the other electronic and gentle. And then-

“Brother, what are you looking so down for?” This one was new, but chillingly familiar. Loud and overeager and belonging to someone who was supposed to be dead. “You-”

Crash.

The sound of crunching metal. In the quiet of the hallway, it’s as loud as an explosion, and it makes Byakuya jump. Before he can reconsider, he’s sprinting into the bathhouse, throwing aside the curtain.

It takes him a moment to process what he’s seeing. Owada is standing, partly-hunched, one hand punching against the wall of lockers hard enough to warp the thin metal door. Someone is standing beneath him hands raised in self-defense - it takes Byakuya a moment to recognize that it’s Makoto, dressed in the white and dark blue of his pajamas, lacking the signature green of his jacket - and from somewhere behind Makoto, there’s a dim, neon-green glow, and a confused, worried voice.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-!”

“Don’t do that,” Owada snarls, drowning out Alter Ego’s stuttered apology. The locker door rattles where his fist is pressed into it. “Don’t just- wear his face, don’t you dare-”

“M-Mondo, it didn’t mean to! It was just trying-” Makoto breaks off, apparently noticing Byakuya. “B-Byakuya-?!”

Byakuya was immediately beginning to regret his decision to involve himself in the first place. “What is going on here?” He demands, crossing his arms and glaring imperiously.

Instead of replying, Owada pulls away, withdrawing his hand and retreating to slump over on the bench, despondent and unresponsive once more. Makoto twitches, turning between Owada, then Alter Ego, and back to Byakuya. “Um…”

“It’s not their fault!” Alter Ego pipes up hurriedly, its voice echoing tinnily from inside its locker, and Byakuya could feel a corresponding vibration from the handbook tucked in his shirt pocket. “It seems Mondo wanted to ask me a question, and Makoto was just helping to convey that-”

“I don’t care.” He snaps, and Alter Ego falls silent. “Neither of them are supposed to be here in the first place, and especially not after hours. Are the two of you trying to draw Monokuma’s suspicion? Endanger Alter Ego?” Makoto flinches a bit at that. Owada doesn’t even move. “Don’t you care about getting out of here at all?”

He’s not really expecting a reply, so he’s surprised when Owada speaks up. “ ‘Course not.” He rasps, so low and hollow that it was like he was speaking from the depths of a pit. Or maybe he was the pit, swelling with black-matter misery. “I…don’t care about anything anymore.”

Well. That’s to be expected. But even despite that, he finds himself a bit rattled. He’s been at the receiving end of anger, venom, screaming anguish and even vehement hate at this point. But this emptiness Owada is exhibiting was new; It seems like this school is insistent on teaching me new things, he thinks, and feels his lip curling up with the bitter irony.

“So you’re content to waste away? Throw away that anger that you were so proud of?” He raises a scathing eyebrow. “Go ahead and do that, then. I won’t stop you. But at the very least, spare the rest of us the dramatics of your little episode.”

“Byakuya!”

He twitches a bit, irritated. Makoto’s voice is shrill despite being hushed, and laced with anger; he’s standing stiffly next to Alter Ego’s open locker, hands trembling at his sides.

“What, Makoto.” He snaps, and only belatedly realizes that this was the first time he’s actually spoken to the other boy since the trial; in his irritation, he went and broke his own self-imposed vow of silence against him.

He doesn’t respond immediately, but doesn’t immediately shrink away either at the acidity of Byakuya’s tone. If anything he stands up a little straighter. “It’s only been a day since…you know.” He says, and his words are slow and careful, meticulously chosen. Like he’s in a trial again, trying to soothe skittish tempers - though Byakuya feels the exact opposite of ‘soothed’ by it - “Mondo asked to talk to Alter Ego. I went with him. It got a little heated-”

“A little? Is that what you call this?” He points at the locker next to his head; the one that Mondo had punched, the dent a clear, dark blotch of shadow in the middle of the flat green surface.

“That -” Makoto winces slightly. “We weren’t really expecting-”

“No, clearly not. And not thinking either, I imagine.”

“I-”

“I suppose safety and logic took second priority over trying to be helpful, hm? Since that’s all that’s important to you?” He’s not sure where these words are coming from, filled with acid. But it feels good to talk, to spit out every miserable thing that he’s feeling, that he’s felt because of Makoto. “You were so very kind to help me during that trial, after all.”

“Okay, that’s not-”

“That must be why you’re here now, I imagine. Sneaking out at this late hour past Kyoko, just so you could babysit this useless mess.” He sneers. “Did you decide to make Mondo your next pet project, trying to be his little assistant like you were mine?”

“Oh, for-” Makoto takes a deep breath, presses his hands to his eyes. “Can you shut the fuck up?! For one second?”

Whatever else Byakuya was about to say, dissipates like smoke out of his slack-jawed mouth. Even Owada seems to twitch up at this, the only sign of surprise he could give, compared to Byakuya’s shock.

Makoto is quiet for a few seconds, and the only sound is the quiet hum of pipes, and the sound of his breathing, shaky but slow. He pulls his hands away from his face after one more shuddering breath. “Okay. I’m okay now.” He says this part quietly, as if it were more for himself than anyone else. Then:

“It’s not fair,” He addresses Byakuya, and his voice is almost steady. “I’m trying my best, I’m trying to keep us all alive.”

“Yes, and you’re doing-”

“No! Shut up! Just listen!” He snaps, and Byakuya’s teeth click as he shuts his mouth, effectively cutting off the rest of his sarcastic remark. “Right now, the best thing we can do is to survive together. We’re just going to play into the mastermind’s hands if we can’t trust each other. Why doesn’t anyone get that?!”

His voice actually cracks on the last syllable, and he sounds close to hysterics. Byakuya simply stares, dumbfounded for a moment, before:

“...You’re going to say that? After what just happened?” It’s so ridiculous he could almost laugh. Trust? In this school, in this game? After everything that’s happened? “We all trusted Ishimaru. Where did that get us? Where did that get Chihiro?”

No sooner has that name left his mouth, does he try to bite it back. Feeling all at once mortified that he would stoop so low, that he would let himself be pushed to such a level. But it’s too late to take it back - at the sound of those names, Owada jerks again, and Makoto actually takes a step backwards, as if struck - so Byakuya keeps going. “This isn’t some-some fairy tale where everyone can learn to get along by talking about our feelings. None of us have any unity left - if even Ishimaru can snap, then there’s no telling who might strike next.”

“Stop,” Makoto grits out. “Taka - it was an accident. Just a stupid accident.” And that was the worst part, wasn’t it? That none of this was supposed to happen at all; if the coincidences hadn’t lined up terribly, horribly perfectly. “He didn’t mean for Chihiro to die!”

And Chihiro didn’t mean to get killed either. But he manages to swallow that thought, bitter and heavy in his throat. “His intentions didn’t change the outcome.” He says instead, cold and flat and utterly, completely empty.

Silence falls on the room. The lights buzz, the pipes hiss; the old, outdated screen of Alter Ego’s computer hums softly, contemplatively. There’s the muted, metallic thump of the water heater, somewhere inside the wall.

And then Owada speaks up.

“What should I do?” He asks hollowly. He’s looking up now, directly at him. His hair is limp, pompadour undone and falling over his face, obscuring it in streaks of dirty yellow. “I…they’re dead. I couldn’t-” He takes a slow, shuddering breath. “It was my fault. But I don’t know what to do.”

His words are pleading and genuine, as if Byakuya could give a proper answer; he hesitates, still uncertain of what to do with this…empty shell of a punk.

He glances towards Makoto, and then the dim green glow still emanating from the open locker. “Do you care what you do with your life at this point?”

“Byakuya…” Makoto starts warningly, but Owada interrupts him.

“No.”

“Then use it to protect Alter Ego.” If Owada has any sort of misgivings or protest about this, Byakuya ignores them. “That’s Chihiro’s last work, after all. It’s the least you can do to guard it.”

“Is…” Owada’s head turns towards the locker, then back. “Is that…okay?”

His hesitation is understandable. Even if Alter Ego was nothing more than a clever program, it did still wear the face of the boy who Owada’s friend inadvertently killed, and whose corpse Owada had tried to conceal. And that wasn’t even considering if Alter Ego would be cooperative in being protected by him, though there wasn’t much it could do about it.

But Alter Ego is the one who speaks up. “I hope we get along well, Mondo!” It chirps, a smile clear on its voice. And Mondo simply stares for a moment, before burying his face in his palms, and begins to cry.

“Are you going back to your room?”

He stops, and turns. They’ve left the bathhouse, Mondo departing first after sobbing his eyes out, and Makoto insisting he go rest in his room - though he probably would’ve ended up staying in the bathhouse all night if he could’ve gotten away with it - and Byakuya, having ended up spending an hour more than he wanted to dealing with it all, is tired once more..

“Where else would I be going?” He scoffs. Makoto is standing just in front of the bahthouse curtains, his face entirely concealed by shadow.

“I…” He takes a deep breath, as if steeling himself. “I noticed you didn’t really…eat a proper meal yesterday. I could go make you something?”

It’s tempting, for a moment. Byakuya clenches a hand in his robe, pressed against his stomach to stifle any unwarranted growls. “No.” He says firmly. “I’m going to sleep.”

“Oh…are you sure? Because-”

“Makoto.” He falls silent. “I told you that there’s no need for us to uphold the deal we made. Your assistance is no longer needed.”

“...But, this isn’t because of the deal, I just-”

“I’m not so low that I’d need charity from you.”

He goes quiet again. Quiet and still, and there’s something off-putting about how he looks. Outlined by the yellow lights of the bathhouse but otherwise completely in darkness, his silhouette sharpened without his jacket. “...Is it really that hard, trusting someone?”

For as angry as he’d been in the bathhouse, now he’s more like his usual self. Quieter, and unsure. The one person out of place in this school, designated unremarkable and then made remarkable because of that.

An unremarkable life. No wonder he couldn’t understand.

“You’ve never had to worry about it before,” He says. “I imagine your life is like a sheep’s. Completely oblivious to the danger around you, as long as you stay inside the fence.

“But the world isn’t as kind as you think it is. And people can always be swayed, no matter how much you trust them, or how much you think they trust you.” He’s seen it happen. He’s exploited it himself, even. “At this point, it would be safest to stop associating with anyone. If you had any brains at all, you would do the same.”

Makoto lets out a sigh that’s almost a laugh, though it’s bitter and mirthless. “Kyoko said the same thing,” He mutters, half to himself. “So you won’t feel safe unless you’re alone? Even though there’s only ten of us left?” He shakes his head, and the motion is a little dizzying, the messy shape of his hair blurring into a dark mass. “How many more people need to die for you to feel safe?”

He sounds angry again, but it’s a colder kind of anger. Resentful and resigned. When did you become so cold?

“...I won’t be safe until I’m out of here.” Byakuya replies steadily, though the hand clenched in his robe tightens slightly. “Even if I could keep everyone in my sight, it’s not like it’d be easy to tell if they were holding a weapon.”

Silently, he adds: And thanks to you, they know that as well.

Makoto doesn’t say anything in reply, so Byakuya leaves. Quickly, in case his stomach threatens to grumble again; his hand doesn’t leave his robe until he’s safely inside his room, door locked behind him.

He almost treads on the bread again, stepping on a corner of the packaging and jumping at the sharp, crinkling sound. It takes a little bit of fumbling in the dark until he finds it, squeezing it through the plastic.

He’s tempted, for a moment, his fingers already searching for the serrated edge to tear it open. But the image of Makoto standing at the bathhouse entrance jumps to his mind; still and shrouded in darkness. A strange, statuesque parody of his usual self.

He throws the bread across the room and climbs back into bed.

< previous - from start - next >

#thpff #thpff chapters #another ten page chapter LET'S GOOOO #hope ppl enjoy mommagami she really is so much fun to write. even as a dream specter #wondering how i should post the mommagami side special bc it really is a lot of text for just a tumblr post...#i dont think mondo would get torn up to the same degree as taka over his friend's death. hence the diff reaction to alter ego's method acti #byakuya u say you dont want to get involved but you ended up sticking around to help with mondo's breakdown so what's the truth #poor makoto really out here suffering. hey man do you think maybe you could take a break #congrats to him for sticking up for himself though. the 'shut the fuck up' he threw in there was kinda hard to write around #but it was too good to get rid of #also. gonna be posting later in the day (et for me) on sundays now #danganronpa fanfiction

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