( At a glance, this darkened inn room belongs to no one - it seems overall unoccupied. Instead, there are children in it, laid out in futons, asleep. Some Solomon has seen; some he has not.
Two children - the ones speaking - are not yet asleep, and as they continued their hushed conversation, the other children seem to meld into the dark, as if the lights growing dim on a stage.
"I mean it!" insists the dark-haired child, with green eyes as bright as his voice. "If that's what your greatest happiness is, I'll make it happen. No one's gonna die, Mika. You don't have to be scared anymore. I'll be with you always."
The dark-hair child pushes up from where he lays, taking the other boy's hands in his. The other boy, Mika, with his blonde eyes and blue hair - his is his the familiar voice.
"Yuu-chan... You aren't going to leave me?"
"Nope! Never!"
"And nobody's going to die?"
"'Course not. Not here." He squeezes Mika's hands. "C'mon. Want it. Please. All you have to do is want it, and you can be here forever. And if you're here forever..."
"But this isn't— real!" Mika pulls sharply on Yuu's hands, tears rolling down his cheeks. He gestures broadly to where the children had been in their futons. "Everyone died! It was my fault! I was useless! I couldn't save anyone— I couldn't even protect you— I—"
The room is empty, save the two children and their futons. Yuu pulls Mika into a warm embrace, soothing - his voice drops lower, and he says kindly: "It's okay, Mika. I'm here. As long as I'm here, you'll be okay."
"... Yuu-chan... I'm tired."
"I know. But we'll always be together, Mika. For a thousand years, ten thousand years... forever. Don't you want to be with me?"
A soft, wet exhale. Gently, Mika's fingers curl into Yuu's back, as he buries his face into Yuu's shoulder.
"... Yeah... I do."
A cool wind like a shiver rolls through the room, the desire spoken, accepted, acknowledged, and the scene punctuates here. Solomon then sees two things, strangely distinct now in the dark:
There is a bed - the inn's bed - that had seemed otherwise otherwise unoccupied in the room's dark shadows, but plainer now is that there is a humanoid shape beneath the covers. With Mika on his mind, it may seem reminiscent, even, of how Mika had seemed to be entirely hidden under the covers before letting Solomon into his room the other night.
And then there is a young, horned boy's figure against the wall, just by the bed. The demon hadn't been here before, but he had found his way in now that he had been invited into Mika's heart.
Eyes narrowed as a cat's might be, he seems to smile directly at Solomon, as if to welcome him to the show. The demon steps from the wall toward the two boys - who had, in that dream-like way, made it to the kitchen in this brief amount of time. Yuu had led Mika there, it seems.
"Watch out, watch out," says the demon, in near a whisper; but Mika seems to hear it, and Mika startles, pale. It continues, its fanged smile wide: "A monster's coming to get you." )
[It's the chill that speaks the loudest, even before the form of the demon shapes and shifts along with the bed and the more familiar sight of a more familiar young wizard tucked in tight beneath the covers.
How this was morphing... was this like the incense? The boy looks so similar to Mika, and Yuu... Yuu was the one Mika had spoken about at the ball. Yuu was the one Mika had felt he had given up.
The eyes of a predator meet ones that reflect, the creature in the room taking his full attention. To draw in on weakness, to tempt and trick, to find exactly what a soul wanted and dig their claws in... the staples of a demon playing with their power cross the bounds of worlds even this far out, it seems.
His wand slips into the warmth of his palm as he fully enters the room. If this is truly a dream, he shouldn't interrupt. But his attention stays viciously drawn to the demon, and only the demon, as though eyeing a fly that needed a good swat against the wall.
What in the world was something like this even doing in Mika's mind?]
Yuu doesn't seem to get it. (He never does.) But Mika's tense in the kitchen, the cup noodles they'd been sharing abandoned, and he whips his head around at every shadow— until the demon steps out. Its posture is exaggerated; ghoulish, in how it raises his hands into claws and hunches, still taller and a little older-seeming than the other boys despite his theatrics - an adult trying to scare children.
It works. Of course it works. Mika's just a kid. (And Yuu's...)
"Look out, look out! I'm going to kill you!"
At once, Yuu and Mika tell each other to run - but Mika is a little faster, and he shoves Yuu hard away with a feeling that ripples through the room - a sense of déjà vu.
"Get the kids outside!" - Mika's voice, sharp. Yuu begins a protest, but screws his eyes shut tight and scampers - rushing past Solomon, no wind or movement in his wake; only an apparition, only a dream, as he disappears.
"Fear and desire," begins the demon, as it approaches Mika, "are two sides of the same coin. Now, what does it take to bring out the deepest desire in your heart?"
Mika's taken up a kitchen knife. He isn't listening. Wide-eyed and terrified, but with an almost bestial determination Mika still holds - his abrupt threats toward Solomon at the slightest sign Solomon might have been a danger to Ginger - he stabs at the demon: first in the chest, and then he knocks it down and climbs over it, and he brings down the knife again and again, the demon's face bloody mess. The sick sound of knife ripping flesh runs in repeat.
And the demon smiles that much wider, and it laughs.
"So that's what you fear," it says, "The thing you fear from the bottom of your heart..."
"Shut up, monster!"
And the stage ripples, and bubbles, like blood; there's a sanguine scent, thick and iron at the back of Solomon's throat, and the kitchen melts away, and there appear again the children in the futons - there lay there the children without their futons - there lay there the bloodied bodies of these children, torn limb from limb in cold and gothic halls.
And there is Mika, his arm cut clean off, a hole ripped in his torso, and he stands over them. His shadow falls over Yuu, the only one unharmed, who holds the body of another child tight. And he turns to Mika, eyes overflowing with tears: "This was your fault! It was your stupid plan that you pushed way too fast! Now everybody's dead! You killed them!
"... is that you're too weak to protect your family."
Wide-eyed and startled and eyes welling with tears, Mika falls back - the knife falls from his hand, and the demon pushes itself up.
"... And so your deepest desire is to have someone blame you for that."
And so gently, with all the affection of a puppet master for its marionette, it takes up Mika's hands from behind - it has him pick up the knife, and it forces him to stand.
"Let's recreate that then, shall we? You killed your family back then, so let's have you do it again in all its gory detail."
"S-stop..."
"Nope. This is what you want! These last eight years, you've desperately wanted to blame yourself, berate yourself, excoriate yourself as your family's killer."
"Stop— Stop! Yuu-chan—"
"Aren't you listening to me? This is what you want."
The demon runs its tongue along its teeth, as if a hungry beast - an impatient beast - and yet one that delights in playing with its food. Mika, though, doesn't see this; terrified, his voice a sob. )
cw: brief mention of mutilated children's corpses; children being killed
That same sanguine scent fills the air - that bitter iron, but now overwhelming; now enough to choke on, now enough to nearly make the eyes water from the thick scent of the dead, as if something had been left here to rot.
The demon fades, as does Mika. But there is a familiar sound that fills the air: the sound of a knife coming down into a small body over, and over, and over.
Solomon finds blood at his feet - a clean pool of red that fills the room, as if it had begun to flood. The knife comes down again, and again. This sound is the loudest, and it echoes in the room. There is the sound of children's screams, and whimpers. mika why? mika i trusted you, (their voices gurgle, their windpipes sliced.) please, why? please, don't kill me,
There is the sound, behind Solomon, of Mika's protests: no, no, no, please help me, i don't want to kill them, please, yuu-chan, help me, please, please,
And should he turn to look:
There is Mika, in tears, blood spilt across the whole of him, surrounded by bodies piled in pieces - more bodies than there were at the start, his sin multiplied. And he stabs Yuu, he stabs his Yuu, who seems so terribly betrayed, whose eyes fill with tears.
"Yuu-chan—"
"—This is your fault—" Yuu snaps, his voice a wet and twisting gurgle. "You did this— you always do this— It's all your fault!"
And then something seems to snap in Mika, too, with a raw and rasping sob.
"Yeah—" The knife comes down. The knife comes down, and he can't stop it. He can't stop, because this is what he is - a creature of harm. "I do— It's my fault— It's all my fault— I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I always fail! I can never save anyone! I—"
And there is the demon, standing in the doorway, as if it means to make a point in blocking off the exit, and it stands there with its arms crossed, and an expression pleased with a job well done.
Whether Solomon ends it here or not, tries to dispel the magic or wake Mika, this is where the dream will begin to fade - the vision receding back like a wave, leaving behind the miserable scent of iron, and tears.
And what replaces it, what leaves them alone in this dark room, is the cold and unwelcome grasp of death - the cold dread; a sense of absolute.
And for a moment, the room goes dark completely - soundless, and without sensation. Silent as the grave.
But soon this vision passes, too - returning them finally to the quiet room, with just the two of them. )
[It's a brutal, twisting mess of subconscious, making it difficult to tell what is reality, what was reality, and what is the cold misshapen fire that melts this nightmare. The actions of the demon toying with a child, pulling out of their utter despair and fear, of a need to internalize such intense blame, and changing their memory entirely.
Was this what had happened? Was this what Mika wished had happened, or what he'd overthought into a shell of what was real? But why would his hate be so focused towards himself, if that was the case, and not towards the demon who tortured him so...
...
As the darkness fades to a familiar, deep, unforgiving silence, Solomon makes a beeline for the bed. If Ginger's in here somewhere, then he'll handle that separately. No one else needed to see something so brutal. Not without Mika's knowledge.
A hand grips for Mika's shoulder where he sits curled beneath the blankets, shaking firmly once, twice.]
( Fortunately, Mika awakens quick; less fortunately, he awakens startled, eyes snapping wide and snapping upright, his blade summoned to his hand with a quick mutter of his spell—
But his perception is quick and he sees well in the dark, and so he stops short of a concerning muscular reflex, recognizing the intruder is Solomon - and recognizing a lack of hostility in the air. The tension on Mika's half holds for a few moments longer before he ... does not dismiss his blade, but he does lower it some.
He looks exhausted - like he'd have been better off not sleeping at all. )
It takes him a second to even think about what Solomon could've seen - dreams exist in that nebulous space if memory until called upon, and this is not one Mika would enjoy recalling.
But it's clear when the familiar images cross his mind, because he pales - eyes widening - his face snapping away - then he looks back to Solomon, swallowing hard.
I'm not sure I'd call them a vampire. They didn't look anything like you are now.
But they did feel very much like a demon. They watched you and asked what you desired, and as soon as you gave in, they moved you like a puppet.
[He keeps his words calm and careful. But his eyes show pain, a sight of so many young dead and the panic of one who only wanted them to live being riddled with so much guilt, wanting only the one he felt close to to be happy and safe, and for the depths to snap that desire up into their mouths and swallow it whole, regardless of what happened to Mika.]
( Mika... grimaces at that description. That does sound like a demon, but... )
... I don't. I remember a monster, but...
( He shakes his head, exhaling sharp - he just. rubs his face. Was that a demon? And if it was - why? )
... A vampire doesn't have enough desire to feed a demon. So they don't... usually bother with us. ( He doesn't know all the details, but he knows the basics, considering vampires and demons are intertwined. ) ... I don't know why one would visit me. Especially not... That dream—... It's what I saw when I died. Just before I came here. I just... figured the monster was me.
( Mika is such an easy target, in this way. He can logic out the chance of a visitor and guilt himself into taking on responsibility for the rest. )
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opens arms for grandpa
Two children - the ones speaking - are not yet asleep, and as they continued their hushed conversation, the other children seem to meld into the dark, as if the lights growing dim on a stage.
"I mean it!" insists the dark-haired child, with green eyes as bright as his voice. "If that's what your greatest happiness is, I'll make it happen. No one's gonna die, Mika. You don't have to be scared anymore. I'll be with you always."
The dark-hair child pushes up from where he lays, taking the other boy's hands in his. The other boy, Mika, with his blonde eyes and blue hair - his is his the familiar voice.
"Yuu-chan... You aren't going to leave me?"
"Nope! Never!"
"And nobody's going to die?"
"'Course not. Not here." He squeezes Mika's hands. "C'mon. Want it. Please. All you have to do is want it, and you can be here forever. And if you're here forever..."
"But, Yuu-chan—" Mika's voice cracks. "Yuu-chan, this—"
"You want this, don't you?"
"But this isn't— real!" Mika pulls sharply on Yuu's hands, tears rolling down his cheeks. He gestures broadly to where the children had been in their futons. "Everyone died! It was my fault! I was useless! I couldn't save anyone— I couldn't even protect you— I—"
The room is empty, save the two children and their futons. Yuu pulls Mika into a warm embrace, soothing - his voice drops lower, and he says kindly: "It's okay, Mika. I'm here. As long as I'm here, you'll be okay."
"... Yuu-chan... I'm tired."
"I know. But we'll always be together, Mika. For a thousand years, ten thousand years... forever. Don't you want to be with me?"
A soft, wet exhale. Gently, Mika's fingers curl into Yuu's back, as he buries his face into Yuu's shoulder.
"... Yeah... I do."
A cool wind like a shiver rolls through the room, the desire spoken, accepted, acknowledged, and the scene punctuates here. Solomon then sees two things, strangely distinct now in the dark:
There is a bed - the inn's bed - that had seemed otherwise otherwise unoccupied in the room's dark shadows, but plainer now is that there is a humanoid shape beneath the covers. With Mika on his mind, it may seem reminiscent, even, of how Mika had seemed to be entirely hidden under the covers before letting Solomon into his room the other night.
And then there is a young, horned boy's figure against the wall, just by the bed. The demon hadn't been here before, but he had found his way in now that he had been invited into Mika's heart.
Eyes narrowed as a cat's might be, he seems to smile directly at Solomon, as if to welcome him to the show. The demon steps from the wall toward the two boys - who had, in that dream-like way, made it to the kitchen in this brief amount of time. Yuu had led Mika there, it seems.
"Watch out, watch out," says the demon, in near a whisper; but Mika seems to hear it, and Mika startles, pale. It continues, its fanged smile wide: "A monster's coming to get you." )
no subject
How this was morphing... was this like the incense? The boy looks so similar to Mika, and Yuu... Yuu was the one Mika had spoken about at the ball. Yuu was the one Mika had felt he had given up.
The eyes of a predator meet ones that reflect, the creature in the room taking his full attention. To draw in on weakness, to tempt and trick, to find exactly what a soul wanted and dig their claws in... the staples of a demon playing with their power cross the bounds of worlds even this far out, it seems.
His wand slips into the warmth of his palm as he fully enters the room. If this is truly a dream, he shouldn't interrupt. But his attention stays viciously drawn to the demon, and only the demon, as though eyeing a fly that needed a good swat against the wall.
What in the world was something like this even doing in Mika's mind?]
cw: brief mention of mutilated children's corpses
"Yuu-chan, there's something wrong."
Yuu doesn't seem to get it. (He never does.) But Mika's tense in the kitchen, the cup noodles they'd been sharing abandoned, and he whips his head around at every shadow— until the demon steps out. Its posture is exaggerated; ghoulish, in how it raises his hands into claws and hunches, still taller and a little older-seeming than the other boys despite his theatrics - an adult trying to scare children.
It works. Of course it works. Mika's just a kid. (And Yuu's...)
"Look out, look out! I'm going to kill you!"
At once, Yuu and Mika tell each other to run - but Mika is a little faster, and he shoves Yuu hard away with a feeling that ripples through the room - a sense of déjà vu.
"Get the kids outside!" - Mika's voice, sharp. Yuu begins a protest, but screws his eyes shut tight and scampers - rushing past Solomon, no wind or movement in his wake; only an apparition, only a dream, as he disappears.
"Fear and desire," begins the demon, as it approaches Mika, "are two sides of the same coin. Now, what does it take to bring out the deepest desire in your heart?"
Mika's taken up a kitchen knife. He isn't listening. Wide-eyed and terrified, but with an almost bestial determination Mika still holds - his abrupt threats toward Solomon at the slightest sign Solomon might have been a danger to Ginger - he stabs at the demon: first in the chest, and then he knocks it down and climbs over it, and he brings down the knife again and again, the demon's face bloody mess. The sick sound of knife ripping flesh runs in repeat.
And the demon smiles that much wider, and it laughs.
"So that's what you fear," it says, "The thing you fear from the bottom of your heart..."
"Shut up, monster!""... is that you're too weak to protect your family."
Wide-eyed and startled and eyes welling with tears, Mika falls back - the knife falls from his hand, and the demon pushes itself up.
"... And so your deepest desire is to have someone blame you for that."
And so gently, with all the affection of a puppet master for its marionette, it takes up Mika's hands from behind - it has him pick up the knife, and it forces him to stand.
"Let's recreate that then, shall we? You killed your family back then, so let's have you do it again in all its gory detail."
"S-stop..."
"Nope. This is what you want! These last eight years, you've desperately wanted to blame yourself, berate yourself, excoriate yourself as your family's killer."
"Stop— Stop! Yuu-chan—"
"Aren't you listening to me? This is what you want."
The demon runs its tongue along its teeth, as if a hungry beast - an impatient beast - and yet one that delights in playing with its food. Mika, though, doesn't see this; terrified, his voice a sob. )
cw: brief mention of mutilated children's corpses; children being killed
"Guys! Get up! We have to run! Hurry!"
That same sanguine scent fills the air - that bitter iron, but now overwhelming; now enough to choke on, now enough to nearly make the eyes water from the thick scent of the dead, as if something had been left here to rot.
The demon fades, as does Mika. But there is a familiar sound that fills the air: the sound of a knife coming down into a small body over, and over, and over.
Solomon finds blood at his feet - a clean pool of red that fills the room, as if it had begun to flood. The knife comes down again, and again. This sound is the loudest, and it echoes in the room. There is the sound of children's screams, and whimpers. mika why? mika i trusted you, (their voices gurgle, their windpipes sliced.) please, why? please, don't kill me,
There is the sound, behind Solomon, of Mika's protests: no, no, no, please help me, i don't want to kill them, please, yuu-chan, help me, please, please,
And should he turn to look:
There is Mika, in tears, blood spilt across the whole of him, surrounded by bodies piled in pieces - more bodies than there were at the start, his sin multiplied. And he stabs Yuu, he stabs his Yuu, who seems so terribly betrayed, whose eyes fill with tears.
"Yuu-chan—"
"—This is your fault—" Yuu snaps, his voice a wet and twisting gurgle. "You did this— you always do this— It's all your fault!"
And then something seems to snap in Mika, too, with a raw and rasping sob.
"Yeah—" The knife comes down. The knife comes down, and he can't stop it. He can't stop, because this is what he is - a creature of harm. "I do— It's my fault— It's all my fault— I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I always fail! I can never save anyone! I—"
And there is the demon, standing in the doorway, as if it means to make a point in blocking off the exit, and it stands there with its arms crossed, and an expression pleased with a job well done.
Whether Solomon ends it here or not, tries to dispel the magic or wake Mika, this is where the dream will begin to fade - the vision receding back like a wave, leaving behind the miserable scent of iron, and tears.
And what replaces it, what leaves them alone in this dark room, is the cold and unwelcome grasp of death - the cold dread; a sense of absolute.
And for a moment, the room goes dark completely - soundless, and without sensation. Silent as the grave.
But soon this vision passes, too - returning them finally to the quiet room, with just the two of them. )
no subject
Was this what had happened? Was this what Mika wished had happened, or what he'd overthought into a shell of what was real? But why would his hate be so focused towards himself, if that was the case, and not towards the demon who tortured him so...
...
As the darkness fades to a familiar, deep, unforgiving silence, Solomon makes a beeline for the bed. If Ginger's in here somewhere, then he'll handle that separately. No one else needed to see something so brutal. Not without Mika's knowledge.
A hand grips for Mika's shoulder where he sits curled beneath the blankets, shaking firmly once, twice.]
Mika.
no subject
But his perception is quick and he sees well in the dark, and so he stops short of a concerning muscular reflex, recognizing the intruder is Solomon - and recognizing a lack of hostility in the air. The tension on Mika's half holds for a few moments longer before he ... does not dismiss his blade, but he does lower it some.
He looks exhausted - like he'd have been better off not sleeping at all. )
... Why are you here?
no subject
I believe you might have been enchanted.
Take a second to collect yourself. I'm not here to hurt you.
no subject
... What kind of enchantment?
no subject
[He carefully lowers to a seat on the bed, hands both visibly in his lap. He's not here to do anything, Mika. You're okay.]
I figured it was not something you would want shared. But as far as I know, I was the only one who spotted it.
no subject
It takes him a second to even think about what Solomon could've seen - dreams exist in that nebulous space if memory until called upon, and this is not one Mika would enjoy recalling.
But it's clear when the familiar images cross his mind, because he pales - eyes widening - his face snapping away - then he looks back to Solomon, swallowing hard.
He doesn't seem sure what to say, at first. )
... Forget about it. It's...
( ... )
... How much did you see?
no subject
[Though he wonders what of that, if any, Mika even remembers as truth.]
no subject
... Someone taking advantage...? Ferid...?
( He... doesn't think he remembers Ferid in his dream, but it is a dream - there's bound to be things he doesn't remember. )
... I just... remember the orphans. ( :') ) I don't remember any vampires.
no subject
But they did feel very much like a demon. They watched you and asked what you desired, and as soon as you gave in, they moved you like a puppet.
[He keeps his words calm and careful. But his eyes show pain, a sight of so many young dead and the panic of one who only wanted them to live being riddled with so much guilt, wanting only the one he felt close to to be happy and safe, and for the depths to snap that desire up into their mouths and swallow it whole, regardless of what happened to Mika.]
I suppose you don't remember that either, though.
no subject
... I don't. I remember a monster, but...
( He shakes his head, exhaling sharp - he just. rubs his face. Was that a demon? And if it was - why? )
... A vampire doesn't have enough desire to feed a demon. So they don't... usually bother with us. ( He doesn't know all the details, but he knows the basics, considering vampires and demons are intertwined. ) ... I don't know why one would visit me. Especially not... That dream—... It's what I saw when I died. Just before I came here. I just... figured the monster was me.
( Mika is such an easy target, in this way. He can logic out the chance of a visitor and guilt himself into taking on responsibility for the rest. )