344. Season of night, 1

(Bleue)

When did it really began I wonder... How?

The deeper I reach and go inside the mind of Rose, and the more darkness resurfaces as if it was bottomless.

My beloved Rose...

In another life, I admired you as the lovely and kind, composed person you always were on the surface.

But deep down, you've always been a mess, far beyond my salvation.

The new world didn't make you what you are inside.

It only allowed it to rise and reveal itself. Deep down, you were already eaten by hatred and resentment...

With all the pain I forced you to accept, to evacuate and to vanquish, I thought freedom and relief could be at hand.

I believe I could make you find out what you really wanted for yourself in this life.

I believed you would reach the end of your sorrow... With me.

I may have... We tried.

The hand I caught, and the person I pulled away from this storm, I thought it would be you.

Realising my mistake, I had a realisation of how immense was the pain and sorrow still left inside of you...

How much of the wounded little child you suppressed in a previous life was left inside of you is terrifying.

I thought I helped you clear the caves of your mind.

I'm witnessing an abyss beyond my own nightmares.

To remain the kind Rose I've known for so long...

How painful has it been for you?

Has my impatience really helped you? I'm afraid of what my role really has been in your torment.

~

I caught the hand and pulled the body I thought yours to me. I managed to flap our brusque escape from that place. I quickly noticed it wasn't you in a shiver, but if I wanted to fly away before the storm seriously hit me, or the sap lost all strength, I had to go.

I didn't have the time to think, and we escaped.

The skinny body, to a morbid level of skin and bones, it was far too light against me. I was holding someone I never met, utterly panicked.

She looked as confused and scared as me when our gaze met. Her skeletal limbs barely had the strength to hold onto me. I yelled in the sky to cover the ruckus of the storm.

B - Who are you? Where is Rose?

N - I...

Close to me, Ana shrieked as a double warning call. I avoided a rock flying, and realised what I held against me was the lord in the flesh. Another painful shiver of realization ran along my back, my spine and my wings.

The lord of nightmares being there and powerless meant that the storm, this violent weather, was most likely the expression of wrath from someone else.

That dreadful rain of dusts and sparks was the blind wish of destruction from someone else...

Rose...

It was awful. It wasn't Nightmare against Rose, but the opposite.

I felt awful, as we flew outside the torment.

I landed fast nearby, and left the handicapped body of Nightmare by the side of the path. I let Ana watch over her, and turned back on my heels, watching the dark land.

I went back inside the torment, scared.

I'm coming for you Rose. Fear may have replaced my anger, but my actions are still obsessively driven by my love for you.

I enter the overturned land of nightmares, now ruled by yours.

~

I yell your name in the clouds.

I look for you on the ground. I can't find you.

Rain, wind and dust erode the city in a strong music of chaos. I can't hear anything else.

Though now it resonates in my ears as if it was an endless scream from you.

I call for you louder and louder, breaking my voice.

I'm burning my mind and my eyes looking for you.

Each step and second without answer becomes another needle through me.

Where are you Rose?

I'm flying as best I can through the dusty streets, looking for anything. I'm losing time and I won't be able to fly anymore very soon.

I will crash if I'm not careful.

Finally my eye about to burn inside of my head spots something.

A vein of particles in the distance.

I flap harder and rush ahead.

I fly through the clouds, softly revealing one of Grimm's dungeons.

A building ahead, covered with sprawling brambles. Briars growing from within, in a random manner through the building and its openings. A monstrous vine, with thorns everywhere.

Thorns... You're the one always mentioning your thorns growing back when you have to fight.

Now it's not a metaphor. So you've made a step further into becoming a being-like-her...

No... Not like that.... Rose, please, not like that!

I dive inside the building through the largest opening to the street I can see in the higher levels, folding back my wings as I set foot on a crumbling floor.

Ahead of me, the dark jungle of growing and living brambles, sheltering my sleeping love.

My fairest...

I yell so hard your name that my voice breaks and my throat hurts.

But the briars surrounding me reacted clearly to the sound of it.

You heard me!

I run further inside, toward you, whatever you could look like now.

~

My voice has changed, but you still recognise it and react to the sound of your name.

Each time I say it, it acts like a spell in these shady rooms and corridors.

It makes the briars shrink and recede away, opening me the way.

They are mostly shades, not real materials, or too little.

Illusions you cast to defend yourself...

I'm entering your inner domain.

I'm stepping inside your heart, in more ways than one as you'd say...

I'm trembling at that thought, and carefully tread as the walls become redder, and the brambles more physical.

I can feel your heartbeat through the remaining, now thin, brambles crawling against every surface, and even through the stained walls themselves.

I can hear the despair in your thoughts, now becoming tangible around me.

Your voice and thoughts are echoing between the walls and me.

I've stepped inside of you...

We're so close...

I feel your fears entering my head. Your anguish is invading me with the air I'm breathing. I feel your nightmares spreading inside of me.

My tears begin to flow as your past screams of panic are repeated inside my head and memories. Your memories pop into my head more and more abruptly.

Your worst dreams appear inside of me as if they'd been mine.

I'm about to collapse. I'm swamped inside that despair, the hopelessness of your past existence, our first existence, as you were looking for me. It scarred you more than you ever admitted.

I swim and crawl through some of the violence and downpour of blood you had to go through in this world, and the previous as well.

The corpses of our sisters and mother I never saw. The faces of the other children.

The sight of your own dead self... I don't understand how and when you were able to look at your own dead body. It's illogical, but it's still is a disturbing sight and feeling.

I see the terrifying monsters that came to torment you, pulling you into that inner torment at times.

And in the final steps, I get shocked as I see myself.

I look at me, through your feelings and memories. And it crushes me.

You're afraid of me...

You love me as much as I love you. But my behaviour has repeatedly terrified you...

I'm crying. I've hurt you far more than I ever thought I would be able to. Far more than I ever wanted to.

I feel as if all I'd done and tried backfired now, and it's my fault that you fell...

I cry your name and painful apologies as I reach the heart of what you've become.

Your body has turned into a shape that scatters no light, inside a room covered from ceiling to walls with scraps of meat and clothing.

I swallow my saliva with a pain strangling me.

I reach out to you, trembling more than ever. My heart is lead.

Your crying dark shape notices me.

She's trembling too. Her translucent fingers are scared, but accept to meet mine softly.

I keep whispering that I'm sorry, and that I love you.

Please. Please. Return to me Rose.

I'm begging you... I'm at your knees, in sorrowful apologies.

I would do anything for you...

My whispers are lost in the turmoil of raw emotions in here and the wind outside.

I'm afraid I can't reach you. I hear a whisper.

It's cold, but I raise my head, holding my breath.

R - I... love you...

~

The noises of the storm gradually get muffled, more distant. Eventually, they cease. Inside, pieces of the meat and fluids covering the walls and the brambles themselves keep receding toward the dark silhouette.

The blood covering the walls slowly flows back inside of her.

Her shape slowly recovers colours and consistence. Mass and density reappear as flesh gathers over the rhythm of fading heartbeats.

I keep her hand in mine as her body returns slowly to the living as if it was a normal metamorphosis. I will not ask nor complain.

The land of nightmares disappears. The night is gone.

Soon enough, even some daylight manages to reach us through the cracks in the walls and the broken windows.

After maybe a few hours of slow gathering of tissues and fluids, Rose has reappeared.

She's lying there unconscious on the ground, her hand still held by mine.

She's way more skinny than before she left, and paler. As if she had spent months jailed in a dark dungeon...

That's... probably how she will say this time she spent here felt like.

Rose's eyes reopen, alive.

I can't help myself and begin to cry.

I'm crying loudly as I hold and clutch onto your frail you.

~