Fates Entwined (A TodoBaku ff) ✔

XXXVII

Sleep never came easy to Shoto, not anymore, not since the accident all those years ago. At first his body would trick him into a peaceful slumber, letting him rest his bruised and aching limbs and leaving his mind barren of any thought or dream that could desert him. A couple of hours at most would he be allowed to rest peacefully, until the nightmares came. And they always came. 

Shoto, as always, knew that reading his siblings' letters would allow the curse that plagues his mind to draw up some old memory, long faded but never fully gone, or create a new horrid incident to torture him with as he slept. As he grew older, he was able to tell whether his dreams were memories or from his own imagination, the slight blurriness in the edge of his vision, or the faint black lines like sketch-work around the people present. Yet sometimes they were blended together. Memory and imagination colliding and colluding in a way that would ensure Shoto felt nothing but exhaustion when he woke up, usually with choked breaths and tight muscles...

He was in the training room. It was a grand space, almost the same size as the ballroom that occupied the main floor of the castle. It was a private space where only the two of them had the power to enter. Floor to ceiling arched windows with golden lattices gave a view to the garden outside. Now, the flowers were in full bloom, a flowing river of rainbow colours that circled around the castle. Warm rays of sunlight bounced off the crystal clear glass, sending refractions of light dappling across the ornately-painted walls and marble floors. 

If he tried, if he reached into the farthest depths of his memory, he could recall his whole family spending afternoons here, together. There used to be a grand piano in the corner that Touya was learning to play, one of the only things he took seriously and that was able to calm the ever-present humming energy that he carried with him. A harp sat next to it, strings like flowing water that harmonised beautifully when his mother's delicate hands would play it. He would sit by his sister who read to him from the soft armchair by the fireplace, his mind imagining all of the fantastical worlds and epic romances she would speak of. Natsuo would be trying his hand at painting, eyes squinted in focus as he blended paints and chalks together. Yet his hands would never be able to hold a paintbrush with the same care and precision they would hold needles and medicines. In the summer they would have the balcony doors open, the veranda covered in ivy vines climbing the stone walls of the castle, and in winter the fire would roar and light up the room whilst casting the most magnificent shadows above them, flickering like dancing figures across the roof. 

Their father rarely joined them, his duties as king would occupy him for most of the day. They mainly saw him at dinner, or on the rare occasion he would watch Touya play or their mother pour tea. It was impossible for Shoto to see his father like that now, as something other than evil and cruel and full of burning rage. His hands that hurt were once able to be so delicate, patting their shoulders or hugging their mother. That man was a vanishing figure of the past, the few and scattered good memories so obscure and faded Shoto could tell himself he had made them up in a desperate attempt to see good in the man. 

The room was quiet now, barren apart from him and the few weapons that lined the racks across one side of the room. The fire was out, the mantle collecting dust that floated in the air whenever light hit it. Despite the sun the room was cold, and Shoto could see his breath form in a light mist in front of him. It looked to be mid-afternoon, the summer sun tipping in the sky; that meant it was time for training with his father. And just as he thought it, booming footsteps came closer and closer down the hall, and it was like he was a child all over again, where those footsteps would send him running, stumbling, falling back and over himself in a desperate attempt to escape the inevitable. He would stare at those looming doors with wide, shaking eyes until they were flung open and Shoto would be the victim of his father's rage until the moon came to rescue him.