Work Text:
Luca’s fantasies are almost as vivid as his dreams.
Sometimes, when he’s lying awake, counting stars and listening to Spada snore, he remembers the Raito soldiers, and the humans they had been for one brief moment. He remembers the sounds of their bones snapping and cartilage popping, remembers the positions their bodies took with their back bent all the way back until their spine touched the backs of their knees, their flesh bubbling, boiling, sliding off their bones and then coming back with different colors and textures and scars –
He pictures, perfectly in his sleepy head, the happy smile on their faces. Because they’ve finally left the life they were never comfortable in, and gone back to being the real them. And what, Luca wonders, turning on his side and hugging his arms tight, would that feel like when it happened to him.
The images come in fast into his head, like they were always meant to. Its slow for him, begins with his hands trembling (and not from nerves or fright, this time), and when he steadies them he sees his nails grew long and black and clawed. They fit around his sword better too, now, and since they’re stronger they make it easier to swing the blade around like it was just a sharpened twig.
And then it’ll be the worst, because he wouldn’t be able to hide them with gloves, after he clutches his head and falls to his knees and feels his skull split open, because Asura’s horns will have grown back, still covered in blood and brain matter from where he emerged. His hair will grow longer and whiter and Iria will tell him how handsome he looks now, and mean it.
When, he asks because even Luca can’t picture it, will be the day when his eyes turn red and his teeth fall out and grow back in sharp and white as whalebone knives? When will he forget to answer to Luca Milda – only a few times at first, like he just didn’t hear it – and then every time?
And it isn’t just his imagination, as mother would have scolded him, because when there had been a Garam soldier at his toes he had whispered, “How insignificant.” And Iria told him he was getting stronger, and Luca Milda could never be stronger - only Asura could.
And then, Luca wonders, his body weak and aching and hungry from all the walking and war, curls tighter into a ball and tries not to dream tonight.