Cleansing Memories in Ғɪʀᴇ

[Chapter 9] Trapped

"It's not the future you are afraid of. It's the fear of the past repeating itself that haunts you."

~T.W.W

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Herobrine's eyes were half-closed as he completed his nightly ritual of closing the windows and locking his door. He barely managed to make it into bed and pull the sheets over him before he fell asleep. For a few hours, his mind was too tired to dream, but they visited him eventually. They always did.

He was on a small plain; a clear spot among the trees from which you could clearly see the brilliant sunset that turned the sky pink and orange. But he couldn't take in the scene because he was fighting, locked in a combat to the death with his own brother. Steel clashed on steel, both stained with family blood that littered the grass as well.

Anger and reckless rage filled Herobrine, a boiling mix of jealousy and hate. His strikes were full of it, his sword hummed with it, ripping blood time and time again from his brother's body. His own body bled but he was blind to the pain. Separately, tossing and turning in his bed, Herobrine felt himself filled with terror but the emotions of the past fueled him, controlled him. He was in the past without control, forced to relive it.

He saw the move coming. He deflected it over his shoulder but it bit for his neck. He hurriedly ducked and swung his sword, confident in his own skill. But the sword came back a third time, cutting a deep gash along his chest, blood instantly spurting forth. He stumbled, his strike going wide, his hand clutching his wound. His brother stepped back, breathing heavily, face pale from blood loss.

"Just stop this fighting," he pleaded. "You don't have to come home if you don't want to, but you're ending innocent lives!"

"I don't care!" he yelled, his sword diving forward. He tried to wake himself up but the dream, the memory had him captured. He watched helplessly as his brother hurriedly deflected his sword and drove his own forward. The point stabbed into his shoulder. At the time, he had barely felt it but now the pain burned as his sword flipped back, using the split second to drive the metal deep into his brother's chest.

Fresh blood splattered the grass. His brother collapsed, the sword point leaving Herobrine's shoulder as he let his brother slide off his blade. He watched as the other huddled on the ground, his shirt turning a darker and darker shade of red by the second. His hands shook as he tried to push them against the wound but the blood made his hands slick.

"Hero," his brother coughed. "Help me... please."

He looked through cold, hard eyes. They both knew that he would die from this wound if the blood loss didn't kill him first. He looked into his brother's pleading eyes.

"Please," he said again.

"I hope you burn in hell," he replied, spitting in Steve's face. He spun on his heel, walking away with bloodied blade swinging in hand.

"You can't just leave me here!" Steve screamed out after him.

He turned, slowly and deliberately, his face showing no remorse. "Watch me."

Steve had screamed again, and now he was screaming and thrashing in his sheets which tangled him, suffocating him. The moonlight was streaming through a split in his window curtain and someone was banging at his door, asking repeatedly if he was okay. His eyes flashed open. He was shaking badly, taking ragged breaths but at least he had enough self-control to stop the screams.

The sheets tripped him up and he fell heavily out of bed. "I-I'm coming," he called to the knocker. The banging stopped for a moment and he lurched out of his little room, making his way to his door. His knees felt weak and they shook as he walked, making it halfway across the room before they gave away altogether, sending him to the floor, trapped once more in his own mind.

Fire warning, same as a few chapters ago.

He knelt in the central street of the city, flames licking around him. They burned the buildings and stretched into the street itself in long, flickering fingers. He could hear people screaming but he couldn't move. Figures disappeared into the flames which roared up to devour them. His hands were on the hot stones of the road, people pressing around him, their panic fusing with his. The heat of the flames and of the road burned his skin and cracked his lips, making him squint his eyes in an effort to protect them from the furnace that surrounded him.

Fresh screams came from in front of him and the crowds dispersed like flies. Down the street, visible by the fleeing crowds; Notch lay on the cobbled ground, soot covering his face and arms, his simple brown cloak scorched, his leg bloody and black. Vito stood over him, sword in hand, a twisted sneer on his face.

He tried to yell out a warning, a distraction, anything, but his voice wouldn't work. The sword came down, easily piercing through the arm Notch threw up in a feeble attempt to protect his vital organs. And now he was screaming, yelling in anger and fear and loss and there was something painful on his arm and a sharp pain hit across his cheek.

Okay, fire warning over, you may return.

The sting of the slap made him gasp and he was jerked from the burning scene. He was taking ragged gasps, kneeling on the floor of his dark room, the moonlight being blocked by the curtains. He was shaking and he knew it was from fear and shock, but he couldn't stop it. Something was gripping his right arm, painfully so. He looked that way out of the corner of his eye, already knowing who it was.

"Are you okay?" Notch asked.

He wasn't hurt and his clothes weren't burnt. His eyes were full of concern as he looked at Hero, who looked away, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths to steady his pounding heart. Behind his closed eyelids, the scenes burning houses and people screaming filled his mind so he forced them open, staring resolutely at the grey carpet.

Notch shook his arm. "Are you okay?" he asked again, more forcefully this time.

Herobrine went to shake his head but hurried footsteps distracted them both and their heads flicked up. Steve rounded the doorframe, barefooted and his hair a mess. "I heard screaming," he said as a way of explaining his presence.

The youngest looked down and away and Notch nodded his head towards Hero, indicating that he was the source of the disturbance. Steve frowned and moved towards them, kneeling on Herobrine's other side. "What happened Hero?"

"Just- Just a bad dream," Herobrine mumbled.

"Bad dreams don't make you collapse on the floor and become unresponsive for a few minutes," Notch said quietly.

"It's nothing, just a nightmare," Herobrine repeated. "I-I get them sometimes."

Notch and Steve looked at each other over Hero's back, both thinking the same thing. Herobrine may not have been lying about having nightmares, but the reason why he was kneeling here shaking and not looking at either of them wasn't because of a nightmare.

It was something much more serious.