protected - dnf

sixteen, pt. 2

a/n : it's tommy time, baby !
(plus some other stuff)

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Clay was awake before George arrived to drag him out of bed, for once. It was early – still dark outside, though the sky was slowly starting to lighten in the east. Clay pushed his blankets off and swung his legs over the side of the bed, where he sat for a long moment, staring into space.

His dream from last night played on a loop in his head.

It was a recurring dream he had been having for years. More of a series of images and words than anything. There was golden light all around, and the feeling of warmth, total warmth and security.

His mother was there, though he couldn't see her face. It was always either hidden behind her waves of blonde hair or obscured in the glare of the sun, as though her face was the source of the light itself. When she spoke, her voice sounded like a woman's voice, but it also sounded like the wind, or maybe the sound of a harp.

"You will be a great knight, Clay, and a greater King," she had said, as she always did, and he had felt the ghost of a touch on his head, on his cheek. "So long as you always follow the true path, and not the easy one."

"How will I know which is which?" he heard himself ask, his voice wavering and unsure, both a child and himself at the same time.

"You know truth," she responded simply. "It is your gift. Trust it." There were a few more lovely sounds he could never make out – like wind chimes. And then the light fell away.

She spoke no more than a few dozen words. He had committed them all to heart many years ago. He thought it must be a memory of his mother. It was the only way to explain the consistency – how the scene never changed. Yet when he tried to conjure up the memory in his head, independent of the abstract unreality of the dream, it slipped away elusively.

It was so different from what always followed.

The second part of the dream, the bad part, was undoubtedly a memory. Clay knew because he could see it in detail by closing his eyes, even while awake. Himself, a child, cowering in a closet, holding his breath so as not to make a sound, peeking through the cracks in the door. His mother, slammed against the wall by some unseen force. The sorcerer, a dark-haired woman dressed in black, demanding something from her. Her refusal. And then...

Clay shook the vision from his head and rubbed his face, bringing himself back to reality. The dream didn't scare him anymore, like it had the first few times. But it did still give him a strange, deep feeling in his chest. A pulling, or a calling towards something. It was difficult to articulate, though he felt it more clearly every day. That dream held the key to something. It was a clue pointing him towards the feeling in his chest that never left, the feeling he was never able to fully explain.

His purpose. He had one, even though he didn't know what it was. It felt secret and unspeakable, too personal to tell anyone, too vague to even try. It was more than the fact that he would be King. It was something he felt sure nobody would understand.

It was why he had taken so long to speak to George about his feelings regarding the Tournament. His friend had ultimately taken it well, all things considered. Clay knew his reasoning wasn't sound – that his motives weren't purely logical. But he felt convicted, sure that he had to prove himself today without aid, even if meant knowingly entering an unfair fight. It was an act which held greater importance to him than he could properly explain.