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when the dawn broke, a cool hush swept across the narrow balcony where li zayne sat, his boots unlaced, shirt wrinkled from sleep he hadn’t planned to have. blood all over his body, dried as the ink etched on the olden pages scattered on his table.
he liked to think that the taste of strawberry macarons still lingered faintly on his lips. it was sweet, artificial, out of place at this hour. he didn’t even like macarons. but you had laughed and insisted.
“just one more, zaynie!” you’d said, pressing the pastel pink thing into his palm like it was a gift that meant something. "it's so good!"
he hadn't expected it. not the laughter. not the dream. not the way it clung to him, even as the light stretched long across the wooden floorboards and birds stirred in the trees beyond the terrace rail.
dawnbreaker had fallen asleep for the first time in what felt like years. truly asleep. not just the empty, guarded resting his body endured. this was different.
this had bright color and warmth and the terrible, aching clarity of something too kind to be real. everything about this was too good. and that's why it was a dream. he knew it was. it was too good for him to ever deserve.
in the dream, you’d held his hand. not in the way people usually did, out of formality or pity or fleeting affection. you held it like it mattered. like you knew what it had done.
and still....still, you wanted to hold it. you wanted to hold him. his bloody hands. his dirty hands. he could feel himself swallowing the bile down back his throat. you smiled at him.
he remembered the weight of your head resting against his shoulder, the way your smile pressed into the edge of his jaw, soft and full of quiet trust. he remembered your arms wrapping around him. it was not hesitant, not fragile, but whole. fierce, even.
there was nothing strange about the man in the dream. nothing exaggerated or off. he looked like himself. worn around the edges, a little older, quieter than he used to be. just... softer, in ways he didn't know he could be.
but he knew, even while dreaming, that it wasn’t him.
and it never will be him. at least, not really.
that's just how it was, in this bitter world.
the man you held belonged in a world where his hands hadn't torn down cities. where his name wasn’t carved into stone as a warning. the man you loved in that dream didn’t flinch at softness. he didn't forget how to sleep.
dawnbreaker, no....his name is zayne .
zayne breathed in sharply. the air was sharp with morning and the vague, floral scent of the tea you left behind. the dream had been hopeful. deceptive.
he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, tasting sugar, faint and fading. he didn’t know what stung more that it hadn’t been real. or that a part of him wished it had been. in the dream, in this dream, he was not in his body. not at first.
he stood at a distance, behind the columns of a sunlit veranda that never existed in waking life, watching two figures seated in a garden below.
the air shimmered faintly, golden with afternoon light. everything was too soft, too tender around the edges. it was like memory, or illusion. he knew even then: this was not the world he lived in.
you were there, barefoot on the grass, your skirt trailing like smoke behind you. you looked up at him. no, not him, the other him, the version untouched by fire and ruin and guilt and you smiled like nothing in the world had ever hurt you.
dawnbreaker watched the man in the garden, his mirror, his ghost. this other self sat beside you, knee to knee, his hand resting lightly over yours in a gesture so natural, so unthinking, it made the real him ache.
they were talking. not about anything grand, dawnbreaker observes. it was just small, sacred nothings. the kind of talk that comes when two people already know each other by heart.
you were saying something about strawberries, about how they always reminded you of spring, of the little roadside market your aunt used to take you to as a child.
you laughed, embarrassed, when you admitted you'd once believed they only grew in glass bowls, already sugared. he remembered this. from all his dreams, though you'd never told him. he knew it like a secret passed from one world to another.
and the other him.....gods, the peace in his eyes. it was a sight for sore eyes. a feeling for heartbreak. a grief for the living. a memorial for a life he could never live. everything about it all, about his other self. about you, overwhelms him.
he leaned in and murmured something that made you laugh so freely, you reached up without thinking and touched his cheek. his hand came up to hold yours there. it wasn't the touch that undid him. it was the look.
the unguarded, soft-lit gaze of a man who had never learned to fear love. at least not in dawnbreaker's eyes. his other self, the man he is, is someone who had not flinched from it. who had not buried it beneath blood and silence. someone who is not the god of death. of your death.
dawnbreaker felt something stir in his chest. it was pain, perhaps, or longing. something like grief, but slower, gentler. the dream didn't force him to join them. it let him watch. that was its cruelty. that was its gift.
he watched as the other him whispered something else, something only you could hear. you shook your head fondly, leaned against his shoulder. the sound of your breath, steady and safe, reached him like a lullaby sung through water.
the moment stretched on, slow and golden, suspended in the air. and then you turned, as though you'd sensed him there all along. your gaze met his. not the him in the garden. him. dawnbreaker.
you didn’t speak. you didn’t have to. your eyes said it all: you could be him. if you wanted. if you weren’t so afraid to stay. he woke to morning light slanting across the floor, to the lingering taste of strawberry on his lips, to silence.
the dream was over. but its echo remained, quiet and bright behind his rib. dawnbreaker could feel his lips brutishly bllow in a flat line. he could feel it all inside of it. all that warmth. all that hope. all that cruel kind of hope.
"why aren't you real?" he whispers under his breath, grievous. "why couldn't you be mine?"