Work Text:
Anxious, decorated fingernails drummed against cold wood as sharp teeth ground together audibly in awful crunching. Dark, teal eyes stared blankly at a particular spot in the dark of his room, Reala’s mind far too preoccupied to look at anything meaningful he had strewn about.
How dare he. How dare that damned Maestro.
Reala rose from his chair with a huff, crossed arms coming together over his chest to cover a magenta ideya that shone and pulsed in the bleakness. Heeled rouge boots clacked against the floor as he began to pace.
He would not let this be a distraction for any longer. How he could ever be so foolish as to let some outsider even have a remote effect on him was ridiculous, and frankly dangerous. Reala had no business allowing such matters to plague his mind as if he were naught but an adolescent - it was sickening. He should have dug his thick claws deep into the Maestro’s skin when he had the chance, ending him quickly before he’d had the chance to open that awfully loud mouth.
The image of that wide, bright grin seeped into his mind’s eye, viciously mocking him.
Gods, Reala was better than this! Never in his life had he spared a second thought for something like this. Though, never in his life had he also been trapped somewhere winding and endless, knowing Nightmare was but a twist of a doorknob away, but conjured only by the Maestro that kept him.
Kept was a strong word.
Reala sat heavily onto a crimson bed, hands coming to hide his face as he leant on his elbows. He knew Balan would let him go if he asked, and yet there was something, something other than Wizeman’s plan keeping him here.
Reala had been tasked with collecting intel about sister worlds, after having slipped through many a Nightopia with still no sign of NiGHTS. And yet, he was doing nothing of the sort. In fact, he had completely ignored a telltale sparkle found littering the hall not a few hours ago as he returned to his new bedchambers. He couldn’t find it in him to care, not while he was here.
The maren had no idea of how time was passing in Nightmare. He had no inkling of how long he had been here truly, aside from Balan having come to collect him in the “mornings” for sessions to speak with him.
Wizeman could be planning anything, he could be sending some sort of team here to collect Reala - to tear this damned Theatre asunder and have it rendered down to nothing but a relic, an artefact of some forgotten era for having trapped its greatest general and eventual heir for as long as it had.
…Why did that thought scare him?
Why, why did Reala’s blood run cold at the thought of this very room being ripped apart, plank by bloody plank and burned to cinders beneath his feet? Why did he shiver at the image of the Maestro - no, Balan, collapsed against a wall, bruised and surrounded by the Nightmaren army?
And why did Reala’s heart quicken at the thought of holding him like that? Holding his face against his chest, guarding him-
He furiously rubbed at his eyes, aggressively smudging carefully placed makeup and scratching the delicate skin of his face with those harsh claws of his. A growl was let loose in the air, those claws suddenly burning to rip into something.
There was something so disgusting to him about all this. A pit in his throat had been stuck there all the time he had been furiously brooding about his situation. He felt pathetic , and he felt predatory in a way that he couldn’t quite describe.
Balan was not a bad person, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Reala knew that. The Maestro was bright and headstrong, wickedly clever and awfully shrewd when he needed to be. And yet, he was never manipulative. Reala was not kept here under any harsh conditions, he was not once told not to alert Wizeman, he was never instructed not to go somewhere within the Theatre, and he was certainly not forced to stay. He was being fed regularly, given whatever items of comfort or stimulation that he required, and he was never spoken down to by the Theatre’s Maestro. Balan had only asked of him that they spoke at least once for an hour daily in the mornings, and then he was free to go and do as he pleased.
And that infuriated Reala to no end.
For the gods’ sake, he wished Balan would get mad just once. He wished that those large hands would grab him and force him into some distant room to scream at him - he needed some godforsaken reason to hate the man, and he was being given nothing . Why had he not hurt him yet? Reala had been plenty aggressive and distasteful not only to the Maestro, but to his staff, to the very Theatre herself by clawing into the furniture in rage, slamming doors and sending his own items crashing down to shatter against the floors.
Reala slumped over, hugging his arms tightly around himself.
He had no right to be here. He felt weak, trying desperately not to fall to his knees and sob; keeping his lips tightly pursed and his chest tight as he’d learned to do very early in his life. Reala was not allowed to bear such weakness. He could not let this Theatre break him down, to some pathetic shell of his former self. What would Wizeman think of him now? His greatest general sat here in a room that was never his own, reduced to tears at the thought of leaving not only this place, but the face he had grown attached to.
That face that he saw each and every morning, offering him a bright smile no matter what had happened the day before. That face that had contorted with him, hurt and pity evident as Reala had sobbed silently into his hands, relaying information he had no right to tell. That horribly gentle voice that had come from him, gently coaxing him out of that spiralling, awful guilty feeling. Those long arms that had spread before him - he had never, not once in his life, been given the offer to be held.
He wished he hadn’t run away. Deep down in his ideya he felt he should have clung to Balan as though he were the only thing keeping him above water. As much as he hated the thought.. he couldn’t hate it. Not really.
A sudden knock on his door tore him from his thoughts, eyes widened in panic shot toward the sound.
“Reala? Are you in there?” a sickeningly familiar baritone rung out.
Reala covered his mouth quickly, determined to not make a sound. This situation was so miserable, so disgustingly inadequate of the general of Nightmare. Had Wizeman been behind that door, Reala would have been shaking with fear, rendered to illness at the anticipation of what would become of him if his Master saw him snivelling like some petulant child.
Balan was not Wizeman.
Reala hiccuped slightly as his hand slowly lowered, voice shaking as he called out to the Maestro, letting him in.