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Since a very young age, Lea had always had some bizzare dreams. He would find himself in a desolated train station, a lampost over his head, waiting for a train he could faintly hear in the distance without ever actually seeing it. Sometimes it was a room: no doors or windows to get out from and on top of his head just a single, dancing light hanging from the ceiling. There was a nagging thought in the back of his mind that he couldn't put into words, like the moment you enter a room and forget the reason you walked in.
Now Lea stood in a long corridor, white neon above his head and he couldn't remember how he got there.
The corridor wasn’t exactly narrow, but if Lea was to open his arms he would’ve been able to touch the walls. On both sides there were so many doors he couldn’t see where they ended or exactly how many there were. He tried the first one: it didn’t budge. The second had the same problem, and so the third and the fourth. Every step forward could take him minutes to make and soon enough he felt tired like he had been going on for miles. Slightly up ahead, there was a door ajar; the only one actually opened. He edged closer with the same, eternal slowness of before, but when his hand touched the handle, he felt like the metal had just burnt his skin.
The lights went out.
Lea felt his heart beating faster, thumping in his own ears. He tried to reach for the wall, a fixed point in chaos, but he couldn’t feel the surface. His breath was coming in short puffs. His mouth shaped around a familiar word but wasn’t sure if the sound came out.
When the lights came on again, the white was almost blinding and it took him a while to get used to it. The doors had disappeared and in front of him, in the distance, there was a hooded figure. Lea couldn’t see his face, but somehow he knew his eyes were fixed on him. When the figure spoke up, Lea heard in his ears the sort of sound a glitching computer would do. It was so loud and sudden tears formed at the corner of his eyes.
What?
As if hearing his words, the figure seemed to give out a sigh. Another sound came, different but loud all the same. Lea felt his head breaking in two.
I can’t understand you.
When Lea raised his eyes again, the figure had removed his hood. If Lea had a headache before, now he felt almost nauseous. In front of him, there was a man, his face completely blank – no eyes, mouth, nor nose. The only striking feature was the long, red hair, so similar to his own colour.
Who are you?
Lea was keeping his hands around his ears, the constant fear that the man was going to “talk” like before. But he wasn't saying anything. Instead, he took a pen out of the pocket of his coat and brought it to his face. Shakily, he drew an upward smile, the lines all imprecise. The figure spoke again and Lea gaped at seeing the line actually move, exactly like a mouth would do.
If you do decide to follow him , you will lose something.
I trust him. I know what we're doing and there's someone that needs our help. I heard the screams. No sound came out of Lea's lips, unmoving, and yet the man seemed to understand what he tried to say out loud. He remained silent for a long time, pen still in his hand.
You don’t want to know what you will lose? And with that said, he proceeded to draw something that looked like a tear on his left cheek.
Lea should've been scared and yet he felt hollow, like his heart had started to shed his essential components and kept losing pieces one by one until nothing but an empty space was left.
Whatever it is, I can live without.
The man drew another drop on the right cheek. And then another. And another one. Tiny tears spread all over the skin, right under where his eyes should have been. Lea felt shivers crawling on his back, spider legs walking up and down his spine. There was something so off about that figure and it wasn’t the blank face or the lines moving like they had a life of their own: it was the red hair; that colour so striking, a loud contrast against the black of his robe and the white of his skin, the purple marker that kept going and going and going.
Why are you crying? Lea asked.
When he tried to approach the man, he found himself frozen - like someone was grabbing his ankles. The man in front of him let go of the pen and the line of his lips took a downward stroke - it felt a mockery and yet it could still break what remained of Lea's heart.
Because before getting what we want, we will lose something.
___
There was a dream that Axel would constantly have during his time in the Organization. His brothers and sister were laughing downstairs. Maybe he had a bad dream the night before but he couldn't be sure; nonetheless, he woke up shaking. When he went to join them for breakfast, his father brought him in for a bone cracking hug as soon as he spotted him and his mother called him by the name she had chosen for her son the very first time she cradled him in her arms.
In this dream, he wasn't wearing black, his hair was shorter and the clothes he wore weren't tight around the shoulders yet. He was leaving the house, eyes already catching a familiar blue outside the window. He didn't even say goodbye.
When Axel woke up, he could taste ash in his mouth.