#6, the space between dream and reality, YnM - Tsuzuki/Hisoka

Title: Metropolis, Part I
Author: Hana shiroibara
Pairing: Tsuzuki/Hisoka
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Theme: 6. the space between dream and reality
Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Matsushita-sensei. Hisoka POV. Dialogue from manga from Theria.net. Title from a Dream Theater song, which is subtitled 'The Miracle and the Sleeper'.



Four months, eighteen days, nine hours and thirty-seven minutes.

That's a long time to carry a single recurring dream, time after time, night after night. Okay, I've carried the memories of that night longer, but a good portion of that time I didn't know what it was; it meant nothing more to me than any other annoying, tangled skein of subconscious that occasionally caught around my ankles and tripped me flat onto my face.

In fact, until I met him again, I wasn't remotely aware the chills that paralyzed me when the moon rose full and round had anything to do with actual memory. Selenophobia, after all, is a documented disorder. Yeah, I admit I looked it up at one point, just to make sure 'afraid of the full moon' wasn't a symptom of a larger problem. All my research was for nil, though. To my knowledge, I had no bad associations with the moon, no crutch to adequately support my stupid neurosis. It simply terrified me for no discernable reason.

Even after I learned the truth, those seemed more dreams and less memories, as if I was merely a spectator watching the events unfold and feeling sorry for the poor dumb kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only the marks that appeared on my skin make what had transpired truly real for me.

Four months, twenty days, seventeen hours and four minutes.

This dream, however, and the memories that spawn it...I know. Intimately. There is no seal tucking it somewhere deep inside. I close my eyes and the world is on fire again, burning, the unforgiving black of despair. I taste fear--it's harnessed and directed by anger, because anger is more comfortable and less weak than fear, but still fear nonetheless--and it freezes me, so like the dreams of that night. Freezes me, until I look deeper with that other sense I've always had. In the face of soul-dark flames the fear now makes me move, for the subtle whisper of what could be if I stand still frightens me far more than taking action.

Four months, twenty-four days, twenty hours and fifty-one minutes.

I jump. Into the fire. Into fear and ancient anguish and bottomless pain, emotions so sharp and vast I've no way to measure their true span. Into my own anger, frustration, and shameful, shameful need, need that pours out of me in frantic words I never thought I could say.

"I...don't want to be....alone..."

"my place to return to is here...."

I won't be separated from you

I won't let go of your hand a second time

The world collapses on us over and over as my heart whispers, I will go as well with you, Tsuzuki....

Four months, twenty-nine days, ten hours and forty-three minutes.

I wake up again, peering at my dim ceiling through a haze of consciousness darkly. In this frozen time, it can be hard to separate fact from fantasy, actuality from possibility. I've heard it said that men can become forever lost on the bridge between what is and what could be.

I always know when it is the dream and when it is the memory, though.

Only the dream-me is unafraid to kiss the tears off your face as our world ends.