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There is smoke filling Oliver’s lungs.
Deep and desperate, clawing its way through his airways as he stares at the scene before him, mouth agape, frozen to the spot. Dark clouds billow into the sky, the smell of burnt hair and ash thick in the air, embers flickering around him. Faint screams echo around him, from far off, away from the worst of it all; the only ones still here are the culprits, and the dead bodies littering the streets.
Motorville is burning.
He stands in front of his family home, fire raging in the windows, greedily devouring everything he once knew. Books, furniture, photo albums gone in a flash of light, rising up into the sky like a victory cry. The heat, intense on his face, contrasts with the cold air on his back, his shadow cut out on the ground behind him. Everything he has, everything he was, is swallowed by the blaze.
All he can do is stare up at it, eyes glazed over in shock, desperately flicking between points to see if he could find anything, anything salvageable. There is no wand on the belt of his blue jeans; there are no sirens of distant help, coming to save him. Anyone nearby is either dead, already murdered, or... Or...
A baton hits the back of his knees, and he collapses to the ground as the pain shoots through him, blunt and dull. He hits gravel, the grit digging into the skin of his palms, and he clenches his jaw and tries to breathe. It hits again, on his upper back this time, and he crumples further in on himself as the cold steel drags its way up his spine to rest on the back of his neck; a warning against trying anything. He swallows the bile in his throat and shakily raises his eyes back to the burning building in front of him, obscured by his sweaty bangs.
The people behind him bark laughter in his direction, but he can’t quite make out what they’re saying, their voices muffled beyond his hearing. He wants to open his mouth to cry, to sob a demand for an explanation, but he tries and it only comes out as a faint whine from the back of his throat. A hand grabs him by the hair, jerking his head up to the sky to find a man towering over him. His face is fuzzy in Oliver’s vision, obscured by metal, sharp edges forming the very vague shape of a helmet. Darkness peers at him through the slits in the mask, cold and empty, stark to the burning sky; yet somehow, despite being unable to see it, Oliver is very, very sure that this man is grinning at him.
“This is your punishment,” he purrs, voice deep and reverberating through Oliver’s skull. “Your actions saw this through; don’t forget that.”
He drops Oliver’s hair, shoving his head down and away from him. His boots echo on the concrete as he steps back, the ground blurring beneath Oliver’s hands, flames roaring in his muffled hearing. He shakily raises his head, staring at the collapsing building in front of him, and fears that his suspicions have only been confirmed; he could have stopped this, he knows—he is at fault as much as anyone here. This fire may as well have been lit by his hands, the match thrown from this very spot.
There are no more screams echoing from far away. There is only the crackling of the fire, ripping apart his home, and the knowledge that there is blood on his hands beneath the grit. He watches, eyes dull, as the fire catches the grass—and suddenly, like it’s on a path of gasoline, it zips towards him, and—
Oliver gasps awake, surging up like he’s coming up for air, fighting blankets until they’re halfway off of him and until he realises he’s staring up at stone walls and wooden support beams, the cool mountain air of Perdida wisping in through the wooden slats of the window. He gulps down a few deep breaths, feeling the tiny breeze cool the sweat on his face, and puts an arm over his eyes as he tries to calm his heart rate.
He’s no stranger to bad dreams—he doesn’t think any of them are, as he wearily sits up and glances around to check he didn’t wake anyone. What is strange, however, is that said dreams have been coming more often, getting worse, as they inch ever closer to Nevermore.
Drippy, on a particularly bad occasion where Oliver had tearfully shaken him awake long before sunrise, had told him that it was likely just stress. They’re so close to the end, so close to the Soulsnare, so close to Alicia—it only makes sense that the building tension would manifest like this. Oliver had hesitantly nodded, and pretended to ignore that Drippy’s brow had furrowed in worry the second he told him about the content of the dreams. Strange scenes, melding with sections of real life—dark, spiralling corridors leading to places Oliver knows, destroyed; magic lessons he never took resulting in devastation; and, the most prevalent theme, fire.
He’s never had any issues with fire before. If anything, he welcomes it, revelling in the burning determination that bursts and crackles out when he touches a gold glim. But now, every night they’ve spent in Perdida, he’s caught glimpses of it at the back of his eyelids, destruction prevailing no matter what he does.
Multiple times, now, he’s found his mother in the middle of the flames; multiple times, he can do nothing but watch as she’s swallowed.
He breathes in. Drippy, sprawled out at the end of his bed, somehow didn’t stir through his theatrics, and Oliver would like to keep it that way; the dreams leave him shaky and a little scared, yes, but they mostly just leave him confused. He doesn’t need to be worried over, or interrupt anyone’s sleep, which is why he carefully extracts himself from the blankets to get up and tiptoe past Esther and Swaine’s beds, slipping out of the room as quietly as he can.
The floors are freezing beneath his bare feet as he walks through the hallway outside, and he shivers as he passes the purrprietor, who races to offer him an extra blanket. He takes it gratefully, wrapping it around his shoulders as he walks outside.
Cold air hits him as he leaves the building, and he takes a long breath in and out, letting some of the tension in his shoulders leave him as he stands on the stone patio. Perdida is silent at this time of night, with only the sound of the grass rustling in the wind to keep him company—so unlike Motorville, where he could stand outside his house and hear cars rumbling their way through the main street, or faint shouts and laughter from the people still out.
The stars aren’t nearly as clear in Motorville, though. Oliver stares up at them as he breathes, tracing shapes he’s not sure are constellations with his eyes, trying to wipe all thoughts of the dream from his mind. It’s just a dream, after all; nothing like that has ever happened to him, no matter how real it felt, no matter if he can still feel gravel digging into his hands.
No matter that if he closes his eyes, he can feel the steel on his neck; it’s a dream, after all, not anything more.
Right?