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It's the same dream tonight, as it was yesterday, and the night before. He is holding someone in his arms--sometimes a young girl, other times a boy that looked a little like him, and very rarely a man with a scar halving his body--wading in clear water. There is always a crack in his skull, and his eyes are always heavy, almost half-shut. Something leaks from them, but he can never tell if it is blood or tears streaming down his cheeks.
Pucci knows this dream. He has had it since the moment he died, and he'd have it until the end of time. And yet, even in the familiarity, he always collapses into the water, whispering into the waves:
"Why am I still afraid?"
Usually, when he wakes, the first thing he will hear is the crickets and the first thing he will see is the moon. His bed is large and plush, and it sits next to a large, double-paned window, where moonlight floods into the room and paints the pale walls in shades of blue. His adolescent bookcases line the walls, and his writing desk sits across the front of his bed, where he often leaves the lamplight on to illuminate the notes and scribbles pinned to the wall.
In death, he finds strange company--Dio occupies the room downstairs, and some other fellows of even less savory demeanors take their space in the other quarters. But this room is his. It is a replica of everything he had known before his parents passed on, before he had to leave the mansion and find home in heaven. He never got to heaven, and he rarely got to attain any of the peace of mind he'd desperately needed, but this room is his, and he's memorized every nook and cranny by heart. It is the closest to heaven he'd ever get. Jolting from one nightmare into the other.
Something changed tonight. When he wakes, he does not see the moon. A hulking figure sits across his bed, blocking out the light. Pucci lets his eyes focus in the dark, but even from the silhouette of his mane of hair, he knows who it is.
"Kars?"
Kars's red eyes glow in the dark. It's more accurate to say that what little light reflects off of it, like it often does in predator's eyes--and Kars was nothing else if not the predator. Pucci opens his mouth, but shuts it again, weighing his words. "What are you doing here?" He decides to ask, though he doesn't expect a direct answer.
The predator doesn't move for some time. Pucci carefully sits up in his bed, and Kars finally blinks, shifting his head to the side. Pucci narrows his eyes at him. "You've been sitting here for some time," he guesses, "haven't you?"
Kars is thinking. His expression isn't threatening, like it would be if he were telling Kira to leave his experiments alone, or annoyed, like it would be if Dio were prodding him into another fight, or even mildly amused, as it usually was while he enjoyed whatever ruckus the tenants of the house got into. Rather, it's opaque. Unreadable.
"36," Kars says, finally.
Pucci blinks. He rubs his eyes, then, opening them again and mildly surprised he isn't currently hallucinating. "What?" He asks.
"36 times," the Ultimate Being repeats, "you've awoken at exactly 3:32 AM 36 times now."
The clock on the writing desk across the room confirms the time, though a minute passes in their silence. Pucci narrows his eyes, though already his mind is running through the possibilities. "How long have you been counting?" He asks.
Kars shrugs. "Perhaps a day or two since you arrived," he admits. Before Pucci can ask, he clarifies: "I read your heartbeat from outside the hall and deduce whether or not you're awake. It's not difficult. Humans tend to be loud and vibrant, even in their sleep."
"You've been keeping track of our sleep cycles?" Pucci arches a brow.
"No. Not actively, anyhow," Kars says, "just you."
He says it as if it were meant to comfort Pucci, but it's clear enough on his face that they both know it doesn't. But that's a small matter, anyhow. It's not like Pucci hasn't found stranger things at night. "I see," he muses, reaching out to his nightstand and turning his lamplight on. 36 times. It's a good number. He wondered if it was intentional--not that anything was ever an accident. "What piqued your interest? Or were you finding a reason to avoid Dio downstairs?"
Kars hums, crossing his arm and leaning on the bedpost. "Tell me," he says, "what did you dream about?"
Pucci squints at the Being, then considers the question. "Answer my question and I'll answer yours," he bargains.
"Later."
"I'd rather not wait."
"I do not care for what you'd rather do."
"The feeling is mutual," Pucci slides his legs off the bed, putting on the slippers below, "I'll see if Dio is awake, then. Good evening, Kars."
He expects the Being to pounce at him, perhaps eat him while he's at it. Instead, he hears a muffled noise, halfway between a suppressed chuckle and an exasperated groan. "You're stubborn. Strong-willed," Kars says, and Pucci looks over his shoulders to see the Ultimate Being lying on his side, an elbow propped up on a pillow with a hand holding his chin. "Were all humans like you? When you were alive."
Pucci wants to stand up and walk away from whatever conversation he is being roped into, but the air is strange, and the numbers are too whole. Curiosity gets the better of him. He slips out of his slippers and carefully slides back in bed, studying Kars. "I think we'd have a little more trouble around here if they were," he says, "but most humans have wills, yes. Strong ones, occasionally."
Kars furrows his brows. "It's strange," he ponders.
"It isn't, actually. Not really," Pucci leans down to meet Kars's gaze. "Surely the Pillar Men had run-ins with humans before. You've seen them. You know what they're willing to do to defend themselves."
A ghost of a memory runs past Kars's eyes, and he shakes his head. "That's not unique to humans. Every species has will," he says, "every species means to survive."
The pieces fall into his head, and Pucci lays his head back down on his pillow, as if he were preparing to jump into another dream. "Do you see us as closer to animals?"
"Lesser," Kars admits. "Animals are nobler. They ask for nothing but the present. They eat, and sleep, and one day, they will die. It is the lot assigned to them in life."
"Animals don't dream," Pucci concludes, bemused, "is that right?"
Kars looks at him incredulously. "Dogs bark and scratch in their sleep. I read once in your books that humans have mapped out the brains of mice, to the point where they can trace the mazes they have run through in life within their sleep," he says, "surely you would know--"
"I do, I do," Pucci chuckles, "but that's not what I mean."
It takes a moment for Kars to process his words, though it is brief enough that Pucci can barely make out the internalization on his face. He's unlike Dio, in that way. Dio takes no time to understand Pucci, and hours to disagree and make his own proposition. Kars is quiet. He's not there to postulate, only absorb. Adapt.
"I heard of the things you did when you were alive," Kars confesses. "When you first jolted awake, the night after you arrived, it was 2:43 AM. I thought nothing of it--the others dream, too, and they don't often dream well. But you woke up again the next night, and the night after that." He stops. "Sometimes you cry in your sleep."
Pucci feels his cheeks flush, but it isn't a surprise. He's woken up to bleary eyes and wet cheeks before. "I don't catch your point, unfortunately," he admits. "What are you doing here?"
Kars shifts his head, almost in an owl-like motion. "I wondered if there was some merit to humanity," he says, "that if, perhaps, humans dream differently than the rest of us. I thought it ridiculous when I saw the killer and the madman. All they dream is of death. Their own demise, as if the only thing that mattered in the world was them. But you don't dream of death. There's something else you're more afraid of, beyond anything else, and every night it comes back to you," he inches closer, ever so slightly, "or you come back to it."
He knows he ought to take the confession as it is and nothing else. He was lucky enough to get an answer to his first question, after the winding back-and-forth, and it was best not to push any further. Yet--
"Do you dream, Kars?" He asks.
Kars scowls. "You've got your answer," he says, "and you're already asking another question?"
"You didn't answer my question," Pucci admonishes, "you answered half of it, perhaps, but not fully. You've only described a curiosity. But you wouldn't come here out of curiosity alone."
"It's not beyond your imagination, surely," Kars jabs back, "you're indulging your curiosity right now, aren't you?"
Pucci smiles at the accusation. Touche. "I do not think I am purely here for curiosity alone," he says, "though I admit, I am still waiting to see what I'm looking for."
"Then perhaps," Kars says, "I am the same."
Give or take. He's pushed his chances far enough--it was time for him to provide, if only slightly. Pucci considers his dream again, lying on his back and staring at the shadows on his ceiling. "I dreamt..." his voice meanders, as he closes his eyes, grasping at blurs and smudges in water. "I dreamt of an ocean."
He describes his dream as best he can. He describes his sister, and Weather, and Dio in the dark. He tries to hold blood in words, and fails to capture the salt and iron on his tongue. It's all nonsense. It's a nightmare, after all.
But Kars listens, and absorbs, and doesn't interject. No, he isn't like Dio in the slightest--Dio's chest is cold, but he'd hold Pucci and breathe out words regardless, soothing, making him forget. Kars's body exudes warmth, but he is there only to help him remember. To relive.
When it is done, he turns to look Kars in the eyes again, and he finds the Being staring past him, remembering again. "What did you dream of before?" He asks.
"Tell me what you've dreamed first," Pucci challenges.
"I don't sleep."
"Not once?" Pucci moves forward now, close enough to feel Kars's breath graze his nose. "Not in your entire life?"
Kars blinks, and he can almost feel the memory surge into his hulking form, like an automaton waiting for electricity to speed through its wiring. "When I was younger," he says, and the tree branches beyond the window behind him seem to move with his words, moonlight rustling over his marble shoulders and carved face, "I dreamt of the sun."
"You couldn't go under the Sun," Pucci reminds himself.
The Being shakes his head. "That must have been an eternity ago," he says, "however long time takes in this place."
Dio doesn't miss the Sun. Pucci wonders if he had the opportunity to slot his fingers through the back of his mind, he'd find a little boy craving a mother and a warm bed behind all the vampiric majesty, a man who longs for the Sun of his youth instead of the immortal trapped in an eternal night. He's almost certain he'd never find them; Dio knows what he is too well to miss what he used to be. But Kars--
"You never knew the Sun, did you?" Pucci asks. "What enticed you to it?"
Kars smiles at the memory. It's not morbid or threatening, only quiet. Reminiscing. "I dreamt of a fire burning in the black sky," he says, "and I dreamt it painted the world in red. I dreamt of a world where the Pillar Men reigned supreme over the Earth, and we ate and went where we pleased, possessing a power beyond anything my elders could ever imagine. I dreamt we could conquer the Sun." He looks up, as if imagining that same Sun burning through the roof, before gazing absentmindedly to the moon outside. "And then that dream became real."
Pucci widens his eyes, his mouth open in quiet awe. "You dreamed of Heaven," he wonders aloud.
"My gods," Kars huffs, "I've had an earful of that fancy from Dio already--"
"You dreamed of a world you could have never known," Pucci props himself up, looking over Kars, "an era your people could only reach in their imaginations. What else could you call it?"
"A desire," Kars glares into him, "and now, a reality."
"A dream," Pucci affirms. "You dreamed. Not like an animal, nor like a god--you dreamed like a man."
Kars breathes out, and a flicker of rage passes through the creases by his nose, but he falls silent. "In any other moment I would have killed you for that," he says.
Pucci laughs at the Being's remark. "I'm surprised you haven't already. And you're right, anyway," he says. "It's not really Heaven anymore. Not when you've attained it already."
The thought doesn't seem to comfort Kars. "You had, too," he states, looking at Pucci, "haven't you?"
He remembers his dream again, and his spirits sink again. Pucci returns to his side of the bed, shaking his head. "I thought I was close," he says, "but I'm certain, now, it was never meant to be."
"What was your Heaven?"
Perla's dying face comes to mind, and Weather's blood and rage. "I wanted peace of mind," he whispers. "I would've mapped the history of mankind in everyone's memories. They'd all know their happiest moments, their worst tragedies. There'd be no uncertainty in the world, no more pain. Only a world where everyone can see the puppet's strings."
Kars hums at the answer. "And your dreams?" He asks. "From before tonight."
"The same as tonight," Pucci admits. "They're all the same. Small things will change, but it's all happened before."
"Then you got what you wanted, didn't you?" Kars muses. "You know it all before it could ever happen."
Pucci blinks. Then, reluctantly, he nods.
"So why are you still afraid?"
It's like a bulb switched on in his mind, a memory of someone he used to be. A child staring at a grave with his last name, from a boy who was born on the same day he was. So much had changed, but he felt, despite all his efforts, that child had never left him completely. "I'm not sure. I thought it would hurt less," he admits. "But I don't think it was what I wanted."
Kars nods in assent. "I don't think I got what I wanted, either," he says.
"You weren't happy to conquer the Sun?"
"I was. If only for a little while. But I don't think I would've been for very long. There was too much sacrifice for that. I was alone in my Heaven," Kars says. "I am alone, now."
Pucci turns to Kars, smiling. "I wouldn't say that. I'm here. We're here," he says. "Two fools in a facsimile of paradise."
Kars looks at him. He thinks that the Being would brush the comparison off, the way he often does when even loosely associated with humanity. But he does something much less forgivable, something Pucci was certain he couldn't return from: he smiles back.
"Enrico Pucci," he whispers, leaning forward, "what do you want, now that we've got everything we had ever asked for?"
The moon outside fades, the sky still dark, though the sun must soon follow. Pucci lays his head against his pillow, his eyes heavy--not with tears or blood, but a strange, almost pleasant exhaustion. "Right now, some sleep," he yawns. "When the Sun rises...a walk, maybe. I'd like to see the ocean again."
Something shifts at his side. Kars's arms morph from human limbs to scales, scales that seem to grow feathers from each limb. Pucci stares at the Being as he grows wings, wrapping Pucci's smaller frame inside. "If it's what you want," Kars whispers, in the warm dark, "then we can try."
Pucci thinks of a retort, or a small protest. But the feathers envelop him, and he feels something unfamiliar; calm. At peace. He lays there for a long moment, expecting some catch, another tragic surprise, but the only thing that accompanies him until the morning comes is Kars's steady heartbeat, and a dreamless sleep.