Chapter Text
RECORDING START
“Bella. Why are you recording."
“For the memories, silly. I don’t want to forget this week. We’re not busy, so I figured: why not keep a few videos of us spending time together, before we’re kept apart again by work?”
“..fine.”
The revenant and witch were on a small hill in a plain, sitting on a plaid blanket, having a picnic. The grass stretched infinitely into the horizon, no other signs of life in the camera besides plants and fauna. The birds, robins, chipped too loud, too frequently— sounding almost choked, like a warning to get out, to run. What? Behind the two, in the background, pastel cotton candy skies had fluffy, radiant white clouds strewn across its entirety, but with seemingly no sun to speak of.
Gates of other worlds were all around them, and- was that KADE? Besides that, the others weren’t too much of interest; one going to Hell, one with another endless plain, one going to what seemed to be a castle, and the rest out of sight. Whenever he’d look at someone, something, it or they would stare right back with a piercing gaze, burning into his soul.
The landscape was so uncanny, it didn’t feel right.
Presently, the black-and-white haired one was absently chewing on ______? whilst the other was trying to find a good camera angle.
“Hello future us~ We’re currently outside right now having a nice Sunday lunch.”
“Rev here-“ Bella flips the camera towards him. Rev shows it the middle finger.
“— is having a great time, don’t be fooled. Anyways, that’s really everything happening today. Cya!” A quick wink, alongside a peace sign, is given by her before she stops the recording.
RECORDING STOP
Heaving, coughing, throat going dry, Mark slams the coffin cover to the floor, panic seizing his brain and lungs, trying to stabilize himself with a hand on the edge of the wood. It felt like there were things stuck inside his throat, something small. He kept coughing into his hands, not even registering that he put them up in the first place, as he keeled over and flopped on his side again, a fetal position, cushioned onto the plush velvet mattress.
I can’t even breathe. I feel like I’m suffocating. I barely ate or drank anything yesterday, I don’t sleep with my mouth open. Why am I choking on something if there’s nothing to choke on?
Bile, sour and twisted, rose up from his stomach. It crawled up, acid burning the inside of the vampire’s neck, threatening to overflow his mouth, push through the hands desperately trying to cover it, and stain the velvet.
No, no, I have to get to the bathroom now. I really don’t wanna stain my bed with vomit of all things. What would Dad think?
With one palm tightly shut against his lips, the other moving to grasp the coffin’s edge, legs quivering as Mark forced himself to stand up, he tried making his way to the bathroom. Which was difficult, considering he was coughing every second and holding back the urge to puke right then and there every other.
One leg out of the coffin, the other, then putting one foot stepping closer, he was so damn close. He felt rough, hard pellets scratching against his tongue, his throat. His eyes stung so bad, everything was so blurry, was it so bad that Mark started tearing up?
A blind right hand instinctively reached out for a knob, twisted it, and opened the door to the bathroom. Finally. It slammed the door behind it as the vampire opened the toilet lid and puked. He couldn’t make out anything at all in the unlit room, especially with the tears distorting his vision, but he felt the smooth porcelain that he pressed down on and the smooth flooring he kneeled on, alike to that of a hospital.
Mark’s tears joined his vomit as his stomach lost the little food he’d eaten the day before, the disgusting taste of bile, normal food, and burning acid tainting his mouth, pouring out inside the toilet. The vampire felt his throat free, for only but a moment, as whatever the heck was in it unstuck, free, and joined the rest of his stomach’s contents.
Dazed and somewhat exhausted from the utter chaos that took place the past few minutes, a quiet thud rang throughout the room, Mark’s head against the cooling glass slider blocking him from laying on the floor, body completely limp. For a moment, he was able to simply close his stinging eyes, calm down, and rest.
What was even in my throat? I barely eat any food at all, and I'm sure as hell I didn’t eat anything like that. Why were my eyes hurting so much? God, they sting so much. Mark could barely even focus on his on thoughts now that the existence of the pain flooded his mind.
Really, nothing was making sense right now. Absolutely nothing.
Blinking his burning eyes awake from the brief pause taken to think, the first thing he noticed was that something inside the toilet was glowing. More capable of standing up now, his legs cooperated smoothly and allowed him to see what it was, getting him up from his kneeling position.
A star. So much stars, swirling amongst the toilet water mixed with..
Mark tried to ignore the distaste welling up on the taste buds of his tongue as he thought about the vomit inside the toilet, and instead shifted his focus to what else was inside it. It looked like.. dog food pellets?
…
“What?” A confused chuckle came from the vampire.
Nah, he was still dreaming. A dream within a dream. This happened plenty of times before.
It always ended once he slept inside of them.
For good measure, he tells himself, Mark shuts the lid and flushes the toilet. For good measure, of course. As he exits the bathroom, however, something catches his eye in the reflection of the mirror. Or rather, the fact he could see a reflection in the mirror was what caught his eye.
Tears, star shaped in miniscule clusters, ran down his pale face, never-ending in their descent, leaving behind trails of stardust in their wake.
Huh.
The throbbing pain behind his eyeballs and the blurriness made it hard to focus, to keep them open, but he just couldn’t close his eyes.
Shimmering in colors of green, red, blue, and black, they cascaded from his tear ducts, letting out little pings whenever one hit the floor, and when Mark looked down on them, he could see how they shattered into stardust. It was like glass breaking, clanking against the floor before it dissolved.
Moving on, the vampire opens and shuts the door, before walking smoothly back to his coffin. Well, as smoothly as someone with blurry vision could walk. Purely muscle memory steered him in the right direction.
The sun had begun its rise in the horizon while he was inside, sky only faintly brighter in the window than when he’d first woken up from the other dream. It didn’t usually do that, the time stayed static in all the previous lucid dreams Mark dreamt.
Finally laying down in the plush softness of his coffin, he relaxed instantly. The velvet was so damn comfy, like in real life. God, he was already falling asleep. Weakly getting up to pull the wooden cover over his bed(?), Mark realized Rev was awake. Very awake, in fact. The revenant looked at the trail of stardust leading from the bathroom, then at the vampire and his coffin where the trail ended, with a face looking.. concerned?
Mark couldn’t believe it. He didn’t need to, anyway, because this was a dream, and the real Rev would not care that much about him. The upyr ignored the sharp pain in his throat that arose with that thought. He also ignored the way his heart clenched.
“..V-“
Just as Rev seemed like he was about to speak, he closed his coffin shut. If it was a dream, Rev was probably gonna say something either really funny or incomprehensible. Both of which he did not need right now. Going into his usual sleeping position, body straight, hands folded on his chest like how he was taught to, Mark blinked once, twice, and then succumbed to the throes of slumber.
The last thought he had, before waking from this absurd dream, faded into the abyss, never to be seen again.
What if this wasn’t a dream?