Arkay woke up a little too suddenly, claws extended, tail swishing dangerously. Thankfully, he had been in bed alone, right? Clearly not. His tail thwacked quite hard against something, and that something retaliated by wrapping their arms around Arkay.
“Shush, my dear, it was just a dream.”
It took a moment for Arkay to stop fighting. He finally worked out where he was. Sharing a bed with one of his partners.
“I scratched you…” Arkay eventually muttered.
Litvir shrugged and continued to hold Arkay. “It is fine. You had a bad dream. We have all had weird reactions to bad dreams.”
“Yeah but… I leave scars… My claws are horrible. I am horrible…”
“You are being very mean to yourself. You are not horrible. You just had a bad dream. And you know that us Rethans do not care about scratches and scars. What is more important is that you are safe.”
Arkay sighed, then allowed Litvir to hold and hug him. He did settle down, doubly so as Litvir nuzzled up to him. He could tell that Litvir was slightly horny though, both he and Retvik (and it seemed, a lot of older Rethans) did that same thigh-rubbing thing whenever they wanted something specific. Arkay didn’t want that though. Not yet.
Thankfully, Litvir was a telepath and picked up Arkay’s unease, so he quickly stopped and went back to normal hugs.
“Do you want to talk about your dream?” Litvir asked.
“My… my nightmare…” Arkay frowned. “I don’t know.”
“It might help. Dreams are there to help our brains reorganise and clean themselves after a long time being used to keep us alive.”
“Maybe for mortals. For me, dreams are just a mishmash of memories and nightmares crushed together to make me sad.”
“Still… Maybe talking can help anyway?”
Arkay sighed, then relented. “The problem is, that… that nightmare? It was more like sleep paralysis. And… I don’t know if I can dream alternate timelines or something. My dreams don’t feel like dreams. They feel real.”
“That just means you have a powerful imagination…” Litvir paused briefly. “Have you ever tried lucid dreaming?”
“No. Can’t do it. I try sometimes but then I end up doing parallel and alternate path stuff and make myself miserable…”
Arkay trailed off, then nuzzled up closer to Litvir. Litvir was always oddly cold and no one really knew why. But right now, Arkay felt overly warm and a bit clammy, so Litvir’s coolness was appreciated.
“Understandable. I assume most Time Drakes would have similar issues.”
“Yeah. Elksia says she does her best to just not have dreams any more. Do you have dreams, Litvir?”
“I do, yes. I have nice dreams, mostly. And I can lucid dream if I am drunk. Not too drunk though. I have written down a nightmare I had from getting too drunk on alco-pops, that was an indescribable mess of suffering.”
“You have a dream journal too.”
“I do, yes. Separate from my diary and my online shared blog.”
Arkay paused. “Your what blog?”
“Um…” Litvir hesitated. “Well… I met… new-universe me, briefly. I wanted to get to know them. So I gave them a blog they could write in. They are… um… infatuated with their little sibling, and I do enjoy reading about how this child version of myself is living a good life, the life I should have had. But that is beside the point! Let us talk about your dream!”
Arkay grunted. “It was bad.”
“So bad you cannot tell me?”
“Potentially.”
“It cannot be that bad.”
Arkay fell silent, sniffing. He was hiding tears. Litvir immediately noticed and held Arkay some more, gently stroking his cheek.
“Ugh… Sometimes I dream about being stuck in a loop and trying to break out of that loop. I also routinely dream about the day I died, bleeding out in that alley. I don’t know if they ever got me to a hospital or if I died in that alley, I don’t remember leaving the alley, but I may have just lost consciousness and died at the hospital… Either way… sometimes those dreams merge and I get… nightmares.”
“Why was this one so bad though?” Litvir asked.
“Because… I dreamed I was in the hospital, in a coma, with Vick trying to persuade the doctors to keep me alive. And apparently he had been doing so for… for six years…” Arkay sniffed. “He was trying to stop Kinisis from claiming me. Because Kinisis could only claim me if I was dead and Retvik was pouring everything into keeping me alive. But I was trapped, unmoving, silent, in pain and quite clearly dying, unable to tell him that I had accepted my fate and that he could let me go. But… what makes things worse is that the dream ended with someone convincing Vick that I couldn’t be saved… I mean, the way I had been shot, my internal organs were completely destroyed… Anyway… in my dream, the doctor convinced Vick that I was gone, Kinisis was going to claim me no matter what. Then Vick turned to the doctor, tears streaming from his eyes, giving in and he said “thank you, doctor Litvir”… and then the dream ended.”
Litvir blinked, then tightened his hug around Arkay. “I can understand why such an awful dream would bother you. But I am going to make this clear, it was just a dream. And dreams are based on people we know and love. Even if all of that did happen, your brain will fill in the missing gaps with what I tend to call ‘garbage data’, memories taken randomly from elsewhere. And as I am often on your mind, I am going to assume that my name is routinely in the random garbage data in your brain.”
“I… I guess…”
Arkay fell silent, sniffing and hiding tears. After a moment of quiet, he snuggled up as close to Litvir as possible.
“I love you, Litvir.”
“I love you too, Arkay. You suffered, you suffered a lot, but you are safe now. I will keep you safe however I can. Because I love you. We love you.”
Arkay sighed, and allowed himself to cry properly. Litvir held Arkay gently as he slowly settled down.
“Thank you.”
“No worries, my dear. Anything for you…”