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She misses him. Lyta feels him pass her by.
She barely knows him now, the thing that he's become, but she misses everything she never had the chance to learn. Existing in a daze between minutes to hours and half-hearted hallucinations, innocently hoping to be stuck in nothing short of a dream again. Little voices bicker in her head, as she drifts around her apartment. She doesn't leave much.
"He's a pillar of the universe now. He's more than you ever were," the scratchy one would say, harsh and critical, a whisper full of spit, "Who do you think you ARE?"
The second voice, meek and childlike, would chime in arguing something along the lines of: "He took your son. He took your son. He took your husband. He took your son—" It repeated and repeated. It would get quieter, then louder (then LOUD), much too prominent, and Lyta would get nauseous. Despite its soft tone, that voice always rang like an interrupted radio frequency, with different colors and notes she couldn't understand.
The third was polite. It never said anything. It was her voice, the sound of when she pulled a twitchy smile. She liked that one the most, because it didn't spark at untapped senses. It was always there, but only listening. The calmness made the calamity of the others more jarring.
Her head wasn't center stage for an argument all the time, despite the sounds' permanent residence in the backtrack of her voice of reason. Their silence is a sigil of absence most days, giving Lyta some false idea of clarity.
But they would whisper. They pick, and nag at her until she fumbles, and the buzzing would fall on sensitive ears.
Lyta thinks herself proud to not hear it on good days— only feel them, through that slithering, detached feeling in her skin. She is reminded humbly by the fuzziness of her thoughts.
They pull her along with thin red cords, dancing her at the end of strings, overwhelming her to a degree of blindness. And somehow, moved by compulsions deep, deep in the basement of her consciousness, Lyta's wandering would always drag her to the dust filled nursery.
It was always dim and dry in the infant's room. Lamps and nightlights unplugged ages ago, now rotting away in the continuation of stillness and immobile grief. The sheets on the crib were still fresh, as if in a singular moment of relief, they had been neatly replaced and promptly forgotten about again. It smelled of sand, and the staleness of a hospital. Her head was deathly silent in this memory graveyard of a room. She felt only herself, and the sickness that came with it.
Lyta curls onto the rocking chair full of late Daniel's stuffies, her face wet with restlessness and despair, calmly drifting off to sleep— And there, she would see him.
A smoky pale figure haunting her dreams. With soft, cotton-like hair and eyes far too inhuman for comfort. An icy darkness, staring through her with dimly burning stars for pupils.
He would look so nervous to see her, waiting in preparation for their song and dance of obituaries. This mournful recollection of moments that never were, this testament to childhoods cut short, was becoming a painfully common pastime. And every time, her lines rehearsed well, she called for her son who would never answer.
"I'm sorry," He'd always say, "But I'm not Daniel. I'm sorry."
And Lyta would frown with reoccurring disappointment, as if she were looking for a different answer each time.
She sees Morpheus in his eyes, she thinks— that's why they look so cold.
But on his face, she would see Hector's child. That is the cruelest part of the dream. And oh, how it would ache to hear the way he talked through a thin awkward smile. Sounding just like him.
She noticed after the third reoccurring dream, that his nose hooks the same way. His chin had the same notch in it. And yet the pale figure would say, every time, "I'm sorry. I'm not Daniel."
Perhaps not. But she fears she would've forgotten what her late husband looked like, had she not recognized the traces of him in Dream's face.
The white figure would entertain these dreams, whether out of pity or his own subconscious need for the humanity she inspires. When he is with her, he feels the memories of a little boy, smart but sheltered, and the memories of a stubborn king, victim to his pride. It causes a sense of dissociation, he must admit, but furthers the unification of himself. In a way, she helps define him, by defining what he isn't.
He is not that sheltered boy, with his blond curls too messy to be controlled by the comb she bought specifically for him. He doesn't have a fear of the dark anymore. He's gotten taller, overlooking those gray roots of hers.
Daniel has become something outside of her world now, gazing in from a distance. Something new, which shakes the little foundation she created. A jarring comparison to her imagined stability of the past. She clings to the few things she still knows for certain (and even then, she can't be certain).
The warmth of her tears were too realistic. They would spring into her eyes with each apology. She would run her fingertips along the ghostly figure's sad expression. Her index outlining his familiar jawbone. The bittersweetness of his compliance, with his snowy hand overlaying hers. He would mumble his apologies, tender but distant, while Lyta's face would twist with mourning. She'll never stop mourning, but every now and then, her chest hurts a little less.
She is grasping at what she'll never have back. She knows that, at least. Acceptance is sour, and leaves her flinching at the pain of isolation. It burns her to let go. She finds herself nurturing her wounds in the obsessiveness of a mother.
The dream always ends too fast— The bad ones never end fast enough. When she wakes, she is alone, the white figure holding her in its arms is gone, and she is uncomfortably crunched in a firm rocking chair. She is frigid, and she shivers in her own company. Her face was decorated in tears that dried only a handful of minutes ago. She feels more understanding of herself in these moments, than any other time.
Tiredness takes a hold on her, but her eyes are wide, colored by baby blue irises and bloodshot. She stares at nothing. Her quickened heartbeat pressing a rhythm in her ear canals, yet perfectly synchromatic with the stillness of the room.
Eventually dusk arrives outside of the window's blinds. Thin orange bars of light create a shadowed contrast against her pale face. Her statue-like stillness turns to numbness, the numbness turning to static pain in her fingertips. She does not move, excluding the slight drooping of her head. She thinks of nothing, and wishes to think more about her sense of self. She thinks of nothing.
When the room is finally pitch black, Lyta is unable to see the choir of untouched children's toys that stare back at her. She flees the husk of a nursery, calling for a cold bed.
At the same time consistently, triggered by a cue only she can read, she crawls into a dull set of plain white sheets. Hushed by the dread of personal responsibility, her mumbles are akin to the silent screaming of dreams.
The little humming of her head would swarm and smother her in the night. She lays idle, her limbs flinching in rebellion of rest.
Perhaps she'll look at the ceiling for a few more hours, neutral to the night invading her eyes. Perhaps she'll be greeted by familiar terrors and blank moments that are vividly unrememberable. Exhaustion picks her like a sore, one way or the other.
Tired eyes are tricked to see shapes in the inky darkness of her room— with little flickers of paleness and red hair in her peripheral. Lyta checks the baby monitor throughout the night, in a bitter force of habit. She never sleeps easier, knowing that it will always be quiet.