[ Shen Qingqiu wakes from a nightmare, his heart pounding, the landscape of these dreams too familiar and too foreign at the same time. He finds he's not covered in blood as he struggles to sit; is, in fact, pristine in white, his hair falling in heavy waves over his shoulders. Strands of it stick to the sweat on his face, cooling as he sits there, the details of his flat coming into sharp relief in the light of a purple moon. How it manages to refract through the whole level is a question his mind acknowledges and turns away from, still seeing blood so dark it's black, and this night, finding himself standing in a dark prison cell, staring down in horror at the image of a too familiar person held up in chains. The thick one around his torso, and the thinner but utterly inelegant one wrapped around his throat: this Luo Binghe, without limbs, with one eye lost to darkness, the other one half open; an inarticulate gurgle coming from his open mouth, where even now, blood trickles out, and he can remember with uncomfortable clarity the way that blood tastes.
Like liquid, cloying metal across his lips and teeth and tongue.
There's no logic to nightmares, nor to the way Luo Binghe's hair hangs longer in that liminal space than it ever did outside of it; how he could envision a torture that was reserved for Shen Qingqiu pressed into the flesh of the protagonist who'd carried it out. That he can't identify if it's terror, or horror, or sadness pouring through him alongside the grief, but that he knows all of this is wrong, and then he'd lurched into wakefulness, gasping.
That's where he is now in his rooms, feeling no more alone than usual, but tempering a loneliness of his own crafting against the rejection swirling in his mind. Luo Binghe had not been tortured; he was dead, and Shen Qingqiu knew it was through Luo Binghe's own stubborn, stupid actions.
But nightmares are not about logic, and his fears are so stark there, and loss is loss is difficult to frame even when he knows, rationally, that nightmare could never be true. For one, Luo Binghe is already dead. For another, there doesn't need to be a second reason. The first is answer enough.
He shifts to the side of his bed, fingers skating over the bedside dresser he uses instead of a table, skating over the surface of his communication device and pressing down, sliding it toward himself. He hasn't missed the internet now that it's back, but he has made use of it in distraction, playing immersive games to stave off sleep that never seems to go deep enough to escape these nightmares.
He's been messaging a device that will not answer every day. He doesn't even know where it is; had it been on Binghe? Was it encased in crystal along with the rest of him, not even properly dressed, but in that fusion of past and present? It's a thin line to anything like absolution, but it's a connection, and when he doesn't know how or when to say things, the pressure's gone now.
Speaking to the dead is best left to mediums and the insane. Yet he speaks anyway, not because he knows he's not insane, but because he's always questioned it, and always found he's not the most crazy person in the room.
His fingers know the way even with his eyes closed as they are now, a series of taps to pull up icons and apps and then what should be the messenger, recent contacts understandably few. A message sent to Luo Binghe the day before, and now he can add another to that unbroken line of text bubbles, or send an image, an emote, a sticker.
His eyes catch on the words of the poem he'd typed out, deleted, typed again, then stopped reading over to pretend he didn't know what admission lay buried within it. His fingers curl, clutching at the communicator, tucking it toward his chest as his eyes gazed down at the rumpled fabric over his legs, rendering his blankets into an unfamiliar landscape of mountains and valleys and far reaching, smooth plains. He doesn't realise his fingers are stroking the screen until he hears the whirring sound of a connection, a call placed through a mistouch, a misdial.
There's no one to pick up on the other side, no custom message, just the strangely bright tone of generated voice instructing him to leave a message after the tone. It's louder than anything else in here, and when the tone chimes, it cuts through the quiet of the night with piercing finality.
Leave a message after the tone. It's already recording, and he swallows, because he doesn't know what he'd even say. He should hang up, disconnect, be data left to be purged from a forgotten system just like his letters are. He should.
Shen Qingqiu sinks down, a controlled roll toward his side, pulling his knees up a touch until he's curled around the recording communicator, the slide of sheets on sheets and sheets on robes and sheets on skin a soft susurration in the quiet. His mouth opens, but nothing emerges, and the vice around his chest tightens, the itch in his heart burns, and he slams his eyes closed.
Silence is golden, yet there's nothing to be worried over here, not now. Not in a message he never meant to record, not to a man who died, not to anything. It's enough of a reminder that his breath catches in his throat, a sort of almost-but-not-quite gasp, and he breathes in more forcibly around it. One strained, soft, pleading word with the world: ]
Binghe.
[ Is all he gets past his lips before he grits his teeth and tries, tries, tries to ignore how he feels, wishing he were numb to this.
It's still so wrong. Two weeks have passed like a blinking eye, like millennia, and it still feels impossible.
Shen Qingqiu rolls slowly to his back, the communicator against his chest, the microphone almost muted by the fabric there. Sightless, he gazes up at the ceiling, and the audio records on: picking up a faint, heavy heartbeat, and the broken rhythm of breaths that don't come easily.
There's no warning when the recording ends. Shen Qingqiu didn't bother ending the call, so its when the recording hits its maximum allotment of time that it simply dies. He doesn't notice, and can't bring himself to care, because the call hadn't been meant anyway, and his urge to type has disappeared along with the rest of his words.
He doesn't know why he's so torn up by this, but he is, and he's trying to figure out what he's supposed to do to move forward when it feels like he's fooling himself into functionality day to day. He knows he'll get through this. He knows it'll hurt less, with time. Whatever time he has, he supposes, but it doesn't make it easier.
Not two weeks out. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
He falls back into fitful dreams, communicator still pressed against his chest. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
12th, warning for graphic depiction of injury
Like liquid, cloying metal across his lips and teeth and tongue.
There's no logic to nightmares, nor to the way Luo Binghe's hair hangs longer in that liminal space than it ever did outside of it; how he could envision a torture that was reserved for Shen Qingqiu pressed into the flesh of the protagonist who'd carried it out. That he can't identify if it's terror, or horror, or sadness pouring through him alongside the grief, but that he knows all of this is wrong, and then he'd lurched into wakefulness, gasping.
That's where he is now in his rooms, feeling no more alone than usual, but tempering a loneliness of his own crafting against the rejection swirling in his mind. Luo Binghe had not been tortured; he was dead, and Shen Qingqiu knew it was through Luo Binghe's own stubborn, stupid actions.
But nightmares are not about logic, and his fears are so stark there, and loss is loss is difficult to frame even when he knows, rationally, that nightmare could never be true. For one, Luo Binghe is already dead. For another, there doesn't need to be a second reason. The first is answer enough.
He shifts to the side of his bed, fingers skating over the bedside dresser he uses instead of a table, skating over the surface of his communication device and pressing down, sliding it toward himself. He hasn't missed the internet now that it's back, but he has made use of it in distraction, playing immersive games to stave off sleep that never seems to go deep enough to escape these nightmares.
He's been messaging a device that will not answer every day. He doesn't even know where it is; had it been on Binghe? Was it encased in crystal along with the rest of him, not even properly dressed, but in that fusion of past and present? It's a thin line to anything like absolution, but it's a connection, and when he doesn't know how or when to say things, the pressure's gone now.
Speaking to the dead is best left to mediums and the insane. Yet he speaks anyway, not because he knows he's not insane, but because he's always questioned it, and always found he's not the most crazy person in the room.
His fingers know the way even with his eyes closed as they are now, a series of taps to pull up icons and apps and then what should be the messenger, recent contacts understandably few. A message sent to Luo Binghe the day before, and now he can add another to that unbroken line of text bubbles, or send an image, an emote, a sticker.
His eyes catch on the words of the poem he'd typed out, deleted, typed again, then stopped reading over to pretend he didn't know what admission lay buried within it. His fingers curl, clutching at the communicator, tucking it toward his chest as his eyes gazed down at the rumpled fabric over his legs, rendering his blankets into an unfamiliar landscape of mountains and valleys and far reaching, smooth plains. He doesn't realise his fingers are stroking the screen until he hears the whirring sound of a connection, a call placed through a mistouch, a misdial.
There's no one to pick up on the other side, no custom message, just the strangely bright tone of generated voice instructing him to leave a message after the tone. It's louder than anything else in here, and when the tone chimes, it cuts through the quiet of the night with piercing finality.
Leave a message after the tone. It's already recording, and he swallows, because he doesn't know what he'd even say. He should hang up, disconnect, be data left to be purged from a forgotten system just like his letters are. He should.
Shen Qingqiu sinks down, a controlled roll toward his side, pulling his knees up a touch until he's curled around the recording communicator, the slide of sheets on sheets and sheets on robes and sheets on skin a soft susurration in the quiet. His mouth opens, but nothing emerges, and the vice around his chest tightens, the itch in his heart burns, and he slams his eyes closed.
Silence is golden, yet there's nothing to be worried over here, not now. Not in a message he never meant to record, not to a man who died, not to anything. It's enough of a reminder that his breath catches in his throat, a sort of almost-but-not-quite gasp, and he breathes in more forcibly around it. One strained, soft, pleading word with the world: ]
Binghe.
[ Is all he gets past his lips before he grits his teeth and tries, tries, tries to ignore how he feels, wishing he were numb to this.
It's still so wrong. Two weeks have passed like a blinking eye, like millennia, and it still feels impossible.
Shen Qingqiu rolls slowly to his back, the communicator against his chest, the microphone almost muted by the fabric there. Sightless, he gazes up at the ceiling, and the audio records on: picking up a faint, heavy heartbeat, and the broken rhythm of breaths that don't come easily.
There's no warning when the recording ends. Shen Qingqiu didn't bother ending the call, so its when the recording hits its maximum allotment of time that it simply dies. He doesn't notice, and can't bring himself to care, because the call hadn't been meant anyway, and his urge to type has disappeared along with the rest of his words.
He doesn't know why he's so torn up by this, but he is, and he's trying to figure out what he's supposed to do to move forward when it feels like he's fooling himself into functionality day to day. He knows he'll get through this. He knows it'll hurt less, with time. Whatever time he has, he supposes, but it doesn't make it easier.
Not two weeks out. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
He falls back into fitful dreams, communicator still pressed against his chest. ]