okitactless | catch-all

[SO HERE THEY ARE all aboard the nightmare train... honestly, this whole "needing to sleep" thing kind of sucks in general?? It was always a nice indulgence, but now that he needs to do it, it's no longer quite so fun.

To say nothing of dreams, another new experience for him. Memories, though, and nightmares... those are another story.

His rattling breaths have grown shallow. Yasusada hears them constantly now, even when Okita isn't in the room with him. In, then out, over and over, and despite how hard he's fighting, it's obvious he's losing strength by the day. Yasusada knows, intrinsically, that human bodies are fragile, and prone to breaking. He knows this, but he doesn't get it, not when Okita is a mortal god in his mind.

Okita's body is failing him. But Okita is meant to die in battle. These two things are facts, to a young sword enamored with his very first master. He doesn't understand.

Why won't Okita reach out for him anymore?

How, Yasusada wonders, can he fix this? How can make Okita's body as strong as his soul, so he can die a warrior's death?

...

In the end, Okita does reach out for him. He takes his sword in hand, stumbling into the garden, ready to slay the black cat that's been lurking nearby for days. But try as he might, Yasusada's spirit and Okita's soul simply aren't strong enough, even combined, to win out against illness. Nothing can stop him from collapsing, blood on his lips, deaf to the screams and pleas of the blade in his hand.

The cat watches until Okita grows cold.]

[ dreaming is a new experience to him..... not to mention the dreams he's getting are completely unfamiliar to him. ]

[ she's just stood up to her mother --- no, the woman who'd kidnapped her and tricked her and used her for her hair, and was chained and gagged. just as gothel's about to drag her away again - they hear a voice - his voice - calling on her to let down his hair. it's a trap, and she tries to warn him, but he can't hear her muffled screams. by the time he climbs up, it's too late --- gothel's stabbed him.

Just let me heal him, rapunzel pleads -- she'll do what gothel wants, she'll go with her, she promises (a word that equals meaningfully as rapunzel never ever breaks a promise) as long as she can heal the man she loves. gothel considers it, relents, while eugene begs for her not to do it.

i can't let you die, she tells him tearfully as she wraps her magic hair around his wound.

if you do this, you will die, he chokes back.

he pleads for her to wait, leans in for one last kiss --- but in reality, what he's doing is raising a broken piece of glass so he can slice off her hair. it turns completely brown, the magic evaporating --- gothel screams in the background, covering her rapidly aging face and stumbling backwards --- eugene's hand falls back down, on his very last moments of life, and as gothel trips out the window and to her death, rapunzel reaches for her automatically - -- a futile effort. she's losing both people she loves in the same span of five minutes, and there's nothing she can do, not anymore. ]

[ on the other hand.... nightmares are nothing new to rapunzel. she's been having them intermittently ever since her hair grew back. but the dreams always circled back to her hair, or the rocks, this is an entirely new situation for her. for once, she's not seeing it through her own eyes -- but someone else's entirely. what's happening is familiar though --- watching someone die while she (he?) is helpless to stop it. desperately wanting to fix it with her-- his --- own power, and it all being for nothing. death is inevitable. love can't stop it. ]

[ rapunzel wakes up gasping, her eyes wet with tears. ]

Okita --- no --- please, don't! Let me fix it, I have to fix....

[ it was so immersive it takes her a moment to realize she isn't a sword, and that she's now awake. pascal hugs her cheeks, patting her to try to get her to calm down. ]

[The dreams are unfamiliar, and dreadfully confusing. He's her, but he isn't, all at once. He sees what she saw, feels what she felt--but what is a family? What is this sort of love? It doesn't make any sense--and it hurts, on top of that.

Helplessness against loss, though... that much he intimately understands. But comprehension, it seems, doesn't make the pain any easier to bear. If anything, this strange form of love makes it even worse.

It's her voice that rouses him, and he jerks into consciousness without realizing his hand is already on his vessel. He sits up, and nearly overbalances, half-expecting the weight of all of that magical hair--he catches himself at the last moment, but he still looks a little disoriented when he looks at her.]

Eh-- Rapunzel-kun? What...?

Okita.....

[ she sobs, again, still stuck in the moment, grabbing the skewer yasusada gave her -- which is the closest thing that she physically has to a vessel (and yeah, it's near the bed. she has been taking it seriously after all. ]

He's gone, he wouldn't use me, and then he couldn't---

[ okay, now it finally dawns on her. ] Wait, I was.... dreaming? But that wasn't my.... that wasn't me.

Eh-- you dreamt about Okita-kun?

[Predictably, that's what his attention is drawn to first. Memories of his own--dream? Memory? What was that?--still swirl around inside his head, but even half-awake, his mind automatically focuses on his master.]

What did you see?

He was dying. I saw him dying. He was sick, and then...

[ a beat as she tries to get herself together. ]

Yasusada... you served him, didn't you? He was your master?

[Something in Yasusada's face seems to shift, at that--he looks away, covering his face under the guise of rubbing sleep out of his eyes.]

Yes... that's right.

Then.... did I....

[ was it a dream? memory? ] This is going to sound crazy, but.... I think I was seeing things through your eyes.

...Then that was...

[Finally, Yasusada forces himself to shift his focus, reviewing the strange things he'd seen in his own nightmare.

He certainly didn't recognize either of those people, though his emotions at the time had been so intense that he'd clearly dreamt otherwise. But try as he might, he can't concentrate on that--he needs to know what she saw.]

Wait, you... said you saw him dying?

Yes. He-- it was slow at first, because he was sick, and he wasn't --- he wasn't using you, and then..... he wanted to use you to ... kill a cat...

[ frankly, what the fuck. ]

And he didn't have any more strength left.

catch-all - Rapunzel

week 2 day 1

1/2

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