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The sky is wrong. It’s painted with blood, a deep, dark, withering crimson seeping into the clouds and pouring onto the ground below. It consumes everything in its path, devouring, destroying, until one figure remains. Until it remains.
Standing in a sea of ruins, it glances over at him. Bored. Uninterested. Revolted. A single step roots him in place, a fear he knows intimately yet comes from an unknown depth of his mind rears its head and shrieks. It’s a primal fear, instinctual, one that gnashes and tears at the bars he tries to hold over it, screaming at him to run.
But he can’t. His legs won’t move, he can’t even turn his head away, eyes locked with that utterly emotionless, unforgiving, cruel gaze as it stalks closer and closer. He loses his breath as it leans over him, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and picking him up like some pathetic stray before slamming him back down into the ground.
“I will kill you. Over. And over. And over again. Until there is nothing left of you to come back and taint this world I’ve built.” It’s not a threat. It’s a promise. One given with glee as its eyes sparkle with a hint of life and it tosses him into a mountain range like a ragdoll. One given with a shimmer in its eyes of absolute delight as his blood spills over the countryside, into the tainted waters of what used to be his home. One given with absolute certainty as its blade drives deep into his chest, piercing his heart all the way through to the rock below.
“You’re the one reincarnating. You decide. How many times do I kill you?”
~*~
He wakes with a sharp gasp, lashing out wildly as he scrambles to sit up. His breath comes in short and shallow pants as he pushes himself up to the headboard — his back is protected now — and looks around the room with wide eyes. Only the faintest sliver of moonlight creeps through the cracks of the curtains, casting the bedding in a silvery glow.
But the dark corners, the dark corners, what’s there? And that– no, no he can sense it, he feels it, its presence is tainting his room. His room, his refuge, but it's here. How did it get here? How did it find him?
“I will kill you. Over. And over. And over again.” It whispers to him, sickeningly close and quiet, slipping underneath his skin like that vile poison from centuries ago. He tries to push it off, away, anything, but all he’s met with is empty air. Where is it? Where is it?
“You decide. How many times do I kill you?” In the shadows. It’s in the shadows, in the safe darkness that blankets his room. It turned his safety against him, hiding and waiting yet again for his guard to be down. It knows where he is, it knows what he looks like, it knows, it knows it knows it’s everywhere everywhere everywhere–
“Neuv?” His breath stutters. “Sweetness, what’s wrong?” A gentle voice, followed by a hesitant touch to his wrist. Soft. Careful. Sweet. But he cannot turn to face that voice, no, he absolutely cannot, it’s still in his room, it’s still hiding in the darkness, it’s still here it’s still here it’s found him it will kill him it– “Hey.”
The bed shifts under moving weight until bright blue eyes are in front of him, the hand on his wrist brought carefully up to his face. Blue eyes, like ice, like the summer sky, like the shallows. Familiar. Comfortable. Safe.
“Oh, my love…” His breathing starts to slow. With the silver moonlight, he can make out the pained expression, the worry and concern that Wriothesley doesn’t bother to stuff away plain as day on his face. Oh, no, that won’t do, that can’t do, no, it’s…
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you or make you worry.” A fond sigh escapes Wriothesley’s lips as he gently caresses Neuvillette’s cheek with his thumb. Soothing. Kind.
“Please don’t apologise for that.” He can only manage a small hum in response. “Really, I mean it. I’m not upset.” This time, a nod. They fall into silence, the only sound in the room being the occasional rustle of sheets as Wriothesley shifts so his legs don’t go numb. But always, always, he makes sure to stay in Neuvillette’s line of sight, always makes sure his focus is on him.
Neuvillette isn’t sure how long they stay like this. He’d like to enjoy it, often he would, but that presence, Celestia’s presence, is still here. It’s still hidden somewhere in his room, and he thinks it’s going to drive him mad. Maybe he should move, find a new place to call ‘home’. ‘Home’ isn’t a static or stable concept anyways, he wouldn’t be losing much if he were to move. But still, the idea tugs at his heart, slowly undoing the seams of it. Why does it do that?
“Do you want to talk about it?” Wriothesley asks, breaking the silence.
“It was just a nightmare. A childish thing, really, I shouldn’t have been as–” He cuts himself off. He refuses to admit to the feeling still thrumming through his veins even now, refuses to speak it into existence and let it become real.
“Nightmares are terrifying by their nature. It’s not childish to react to them accordingly.”
“I suppose not…” They fall into a lull, one that pulls what little comfort Neuvillette had found away from him. One that changes just as quickly when Wriothesley shifts again and starts looking around the room.
“Is something here still reminding you of it?” Observant as always.
“I’m not sure what it is, so I don’t believe you could help me find it.” It’s hiding in the shadows anyways. It’s everywhere and nowhere, it cannot be found.
“Do you have any sort of description for it?” Wriothesley asks, turning back to him. “I might be able to piece an idea of it together even with your most abstract explanation.”
“I don’t want to ask too much of you.”
“It’s not asking too much if I’m offering,” he says with a gentle smile. And… well, Neuvillette can’t really argue with that.
“‘Celestial’ is the best description I can give.”
“‘Celestial’…” Wriothesley gets up and starts slowly pacing the room, searching through shelves filled with books, trinkets, and seashells.
“Please don’t worry yourself if you can’t find anything. It very well could just be a feeling.” Neuvillette does his best to peel himself from the bed, still keeping his back to a wall — just in case — as he tries to help search his shelves for anything unwelcome. The Celestial presence winds itself around his limbs, slowing him down until he freezes in place. A chill creeps down his spine and steals his breath away from him, and it takes everything in himself to not collapse right where he is in… in…
“My Vision.” What?
“Huh?” Neuvillette responds rather inelegantly.
“Visions are given by Celestia, right? Or are Celestia adjacent in some way.” Oh. Right. Of course.
“Y-yes, right. You are right.” Wriothesley glances back at him, and quickly his expression falls from a pride at figuring it out to concern at Neuvillette’s current state pressed up against a wall.
“I’m gonna try something.”
“Try something?”
“I won’t bring it closer to you, I promise. You can watch me the whole time if you want.” He doesn’t need to. He knows Wriothesley, trusts him to not willingly do something to hurt him. He gives a small shake of his head and motions for Wriothesley to go ahead with whatever he plans.
Even knowing Wriothesley won’t hurt him, that this particular Celestial presence can’t hurt him, he can’t help the shaky gasp he takes when Wriothesley picks up his coat, Vision still hanging by a chain. It casts a pale, sickening glow on everything around it, and to Neuvillette, it promises death. It can’t, he knows it can’t, but he still shuts his eyes tight against its faint light.
The pure darkness doesn’t give him a respite. No, instead it heightens the sound of his pulse until it drowns out even the usual cacophony in his head, brings out the whispers that haunt only his memories, plunges him into an abyssal freefall.
“I will kill you. Over. And over. And over again.”
“You’re the one reincarnating. You decide. How many times do I kill you?”
He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. It’s going to kill him again, it’s going to kill him again he’s going to die again oh stars above he’s going to die again and again and again and again and again and–
Gentle hands on his wrists pry his own hands from his hair, the touch pulling him from the darkness and back into the dimly lit room. His room. Without Celestia tainting it with its presence.
“Hey, sweetness, are you okay? Do you still feel it?”
“Do I– no, no, I don’t.” A small smile finds its way onto Wriothesley’s lips.
“That’s good.” He lightly tugs on one of Neuvillette’s wrists, and he wordlessly follows Wriothesley back into the warmth of their bed. Wriothesley pulls the blankets close around them as Neuvillette nuzzles his face into his neck, his chest, curling into him as best he can. He feels Wriothesley’s arms wrap snugly around his waist and back, holding him close as he places a kiss to the top of his head.
“What did you do anyways?” Neuvillette asks, a hint of curiosity keeping him from falling asleep right then and there. “Put it in a box?”
“I just hung my coat in the foyer.” Neuvillette snorts at that, an ungraceful and absolutely unbecoming sound, but Wriothesley huffs a laugh as well. “An easy fix, yeah? Although, if that didn’t work, I probably would have put it in a box and put it down in your office.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to trouble yourself like that.”
“No trouble if I’m offering.” Sleep starts to creep into Wriothesley’s voice, slowing and slightly slurring his words. “Told you that already tonight, didn’t I?”
“You did. But still, I don’t want you to go too far out of your way for me.”
“I won’t. Only as far as I want.”
“You are far too kind.”
“Mm. Maybe. But ‘s worth it.”
“Truly?”
“Mmm.” Neuvillette feels as Wriothesley’s breath beneath him becomes slow and even as he falls back asleep. He can’t help smiling against the warm skin beneath him, relishing the comforting weight of those arms still wrapped around him, still holding him as if he is something precious.
It makes him feel small. Small in the way of something cherished despite the cracks within that make it weak. He is cherished. And isn’t that such a wild thing? He is loved, cared for, held with affection. He is the precious something that Wriothesley holds onto at night and wants to keep safe. That he does keep safe, even when the only danger is a nightmare. And this moment, wrapped in warmth with the person he loves pressed against him, is perhaps the safest he’s ever felt in this life. This is safety.