"Silly boy, you're like a son to me. I only want you to be happy..."
Are those fingers he feels on his cheek, long and ice cold and sharp, pointed nails trailing over his skin?
"But of course. After all, your heart is steeped in darkness. You can only see those who exist in that same darkness..."
No...!
"Be grateful you have someone to keep you company. Your heart is empty. Were it not for the darkness it contains, you would be completely alone."
Dante wakes with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed. His eyes are frantic as he sweeps the room, looking for someone who isn't here, who was never here. He sags, running his fingers through sweat-slick hair, tugging the t-shirt he's sleeping in away from his chest in an attempt to cool himself as his heartbeat begins to slow. The clock on his bedside table reads 4:24, the dead of night, and there's a hint of moonlight that filters through the blinds to cast the room with a dim light.
He swings himself out of bed, padding across the room in bare feet to the hall and down to the kitchen for a glass of cold water. The moonlight seems to follow him, falling through the uncovered windows of the living room, lighting his way. Dante tries not to think about how cold it feels, casting the room with bright light and sharp shadows, isolating each plane in a way that sets it apart from anything else.
He'd been feeling despair, before he woke up. Dante doesn't know how a dream can evoke such potent emotions, but it feels like it's still caught somewhere in his chest, a feeling of despair and shame and hopelessness and fear all tempered by some sort of determined anger. This other him--the him that he once was, as all the proof seems to say--had ended up alone in the end, with only this witch of a woman to keep him company. He isn't sure how he knows, but it feels right: he's remembered dying, struggling along in this dark afterlife with no idea what had happened to the people he left behind, and then he runs into her, only too happy to tell him that he'd be completely alone if his heart weren't filled with darkness.
"I don't think you need me to point out that there is an on-going theme of 'darkness' with your experiences."
The silence is broken as Dante snorts, shaking his head. Yeah, he's certainly figured that out.
But the worst part is that he thinks she might have been right, talking about his heart being empty. After all, isn't that what he strives for now? Locking his emotions away, refusing to let anything get to him. It's something he has in common with his other self. Maybe this other him just didn't want to be hurt by anyone, either.
And in the end, he still ended up alone. In the end, he still struggled through the darkness, trying not to let himself fade away, tormented by only this strange woman who in one memory, tells him that she wants him to be happy and that she thinks of him as a son, but in another tells him that "of course" she'd be the one he'd meet in this afterlife, almost as if she's taunting him.
Dante puts the glass in the sink, wanders over to the couch and faceplants into it, letting out a groan of frustration.
He doesn't want any of these memories. He'd been doing good up until now, making connections tenuous enough that he wouldn't care when they were broken, yet strong enough that he has a number of people that he can hang out with from time to time. People he doesn't have to care about, people that are replaceable. But these memories... even that first one had warned him that this was going to hurt, from the moment he'd seen those two people and realized how light his heart felt, determined to leave their island and yet happy to be sharing the experience with... friends.
Friends.
Friends are a danger. He knows that. He's tried to make friends so many times, tried to get to know so many people in the years he was touring with his parents. He tried meeting the sons and daughters of other rich and famous figures, he's tried using the internet to meet people he could then meet in person, he's tried crawling the cities himself to meet people of his own accord. None of it works. The friends he makes are always left behind, left to their own lives as he and his parents moved on to the next city, the next event, the next rehearsal. So many promises of keeping in touch, of texts, of letters, of video-chatting and meeting in person again, broken. So many pieces of himself left scattered around the globe. Dante rests a hand against his heart, the movement made awkward by the cushions of the couch beneath him, feeling all that regret and broken hope trying to find a foothold in his heart to make him despair. He takes a deep breath, pushing the emotion away again. It's an old hurt by now.
Life is much easier when you've wrapped your heart in a layer of snark and barbed comments. It's easier when people know not to look to you for emotional commitment or support, when all they expect out of you is sarcasm and arrogance. And he's very good at that. Dante's had several years of practice now, letting people only close enough to collide against his prickly personality, limiting those he lets any deeper. But now...
Now it looks like he's had the right idea all along. If his other self ended up alone in the end, even in spite of how close he'd been to those two on the beach, then what does that mean for him, cold and standoffish and rude in the best of situations? How could anybody care enough to see past that, to break past his thick outer shell and not use the weaker parts of himself against him? He's already dug his own grave; in protecting himself from the pain of people leaving him, he's also ensured that they won't hesitate to attack him should he ever show his own weaknesses.
And then there's the problem of the people he's met through the network. God, isn't he an idiot? For some reason he'd thought that maybe with common ground between them all, there'd be potential there. Maybe, since he won't be leaving Recollé for at least a couple years, it would be okay to let a couple people get closer to him than he normally might have. Maybe trying to look out for them wouldn't be the mistake it's always been in the past. But now Dante knows he was just kidding himself: his other self apparently managed to fuck it all up, even when he had a perfect setup, so there's no way in hell he isn't going to fuck it all up as well. Eventually he's going to drive them all away.
Eventually he's going to fuck everything up and drive everybody away from him, and it is going to hurt because he's already fucked up by thinking that maybe for once he could do this right, that for once maybe he could have an acquaintance somewhere between the areas of "drinking buddy" and "friend."
His mind keeps racing, running in circles as he drifts back off into sleep, dragging a blanket over his body and arms wrapped around a throw pillow, holding it to his chest. But as he's falling back asleep, there's one thought that overshadows all of the rest, reminding him of his eventual fate:
You'll be alone in the end. Alone, forgotten--just like him.
He isn't ready to deal with anyone the next day. The stress and the worry have only gotten worse since the night before, a constant refrain reminding him that he can't escape the inevitability that awaits him. How do you deal with that knowledge? How do you handle remembering an afterlife of solitude and isolation?
Your heart is empty.
It might as well be; it wouldn't be worse than feeling like he's being pulled in conflicting directions. A part of him's already resigned to it, but there's a smaller part of him, a more childish part, that wants to complain that it isn't fair and that he won't let it happen like that. But Dante knows what his child self did not, and that is that you can't control what other people do and what decisions they make. It isn't up to him if they want to throw him away.
Prompto texts him, and he doesn't know what to do. They're supposed to hang out, but there's no way he can handle that today. Not now, maybe not ever--Prompto's already made him feel guilty once, just by opening up to him. Somehow just by being himself he's able to disarm Dante, to make him care if he's being a dumbass getting himself into trouble. He managed that in less than a month and a half; how bad will it hurt when Prompto realizes that all Dante's got to offer is sarcasm and bad ideas and leaves him behind for people that aren't a waste of his time?
But Prompto just won't take a goddamned hint, and within minutes Dante is scrambling around his apartment, throwing together everything he'll need for the next few days. He can't do this, he can't stay here. People know where to find him here; they know how to get a hold of him and even if he turns off his electronics, Retrospec stays active. People know his address and could come and knock on his door if they chose to. And in Dante's eyes, if he's going to be alone anyways, he might as well start the process now. He'll escape out of here and run away, run to the woods and figure out what he's going to do. How to approach things. He just needs time away from everything, right?
He just needs to be alone.
He leaves Prompto lying on his back in the alley, simultaneously disgusted with himself and resigned to his options. Prompto hadn't even been able to defend himself, and he'd beaten him into the ground without even giving him a chance to throw a punch.
I warned him, he tells himself, navigating streets he doesn't truly see. I told him to quit. I told him what I'd do if he didn't. He didn't listen. And now he'll realize that he shouldn't waste his time with me.
He'll leave him alone.
Nobody can find him in the woods. Nobody will think to look for him in the woods--he's certain that the warehouse isn't a safe hideout, not this soon after the party, but the woods are quiet, a reprieve from the busy life of the city. Dante sets up camp, then drives back home, abandoning his car in its usual parking spot and changing into running gear to head back out. He's already abandoned his phone, left to run out its charge slowly on his bed. He sees the light indicating he's got new messages, but Dante can't bring himself to check them. If it's Ardyn, he might be tempted to unload everything that's bothering him, and if it's Ari, he's worried he might not be able to hold on to what little composure he has left. So he leaves the phone untouched, leaves his house, and sets off at a sprint toward the woods.
Dante isn't sure how long or how far he goes, trying desperately to outrun the anxieties weighing him down. The exertion does him good, pushing his body to go farther, just a little bit farther until at last he has to drop to a walk, gasping for breath. And then he pushes himself again, trying to run every last little bit of nervous energy out of his body before he finally starts back to camp.
He's exhausted by the time he gets back, the sun beginning to drop low in the sky and the temperature to drop. He builds a fire as night falls and reaches into his bag, pulling out one of the two bottles of whiskey he's brought with him. It's a dangerous, slippery slope, Dante knows, treating emotions with alcohol, but he doesn't know what else to do in this moment and if nothing else it will give him a reprieve for the night. So he drinks, the first couple shots doing little to ease what is rapidly becoming a spiral of self-deprecation and bitterness, the later shots warming in his veins and bringing a smile (at last) to his face.
He stands in the night, pacing and swinging and talking to himself as he circles the fire, laughing as he stumbles over his own two feet and watching the logs crackle and send up sparks into the night air. He stares up into the night sky, thinking about Ari and the time he's spent with her looking up at these same stars, and in that moment his heart doesn't hurt--Dante's too warm for his heart to hurt, too full of an artificial happiness that will eventually fade away.
When morning comes he's alone again, the morning dull and gray. Dante groans from his pile of blankets and sleeping bag, not ready to face the day, but soon enough nature's call brings him staggering out of the tent, up.
Monday is a bust by anyone's standards. He spends a lot of it sleeping, trying to avoid thinking about his problems by retreating to the safe world of dreams. But his dreams are now full of places he's never been and people he's never met, people who wonder how far a raft might take them and who ask what he'd do if he made it to a new land, places where he fights a darkness as black as night, an island he's only seen in his mind's eye and dark room he instinctively knows is in a castle, where a green-skinned woman tells him time and time again that his heart is empty, is full of darkness, that he'd be alone if not for her presence. "Silly boy," she says, "you're like a son to me. I only want you to be happy..."
His hand reaches for the bottle again and again, but each time Dante stops himself, some part of him recognizing the danger and refusing to fall prey to the temptation. The world is brighter when he's drunk, more vivid, a world where things are chaotic and messy and things aren't meant to fit together in perfect uniform order. That world is where he's safe to be himself, where he can laugh and grin and tease and play and not worry that anything he says will be taken as a sign of weakness or something to be used against him later. When he's drunk, he feels freer.
But Dante knows it's fake. And so he refuses to be swayed.
Eventually something drives him out into the open, and he brings with him the rapier he'd shoved into his bag. There's still a reluctance to engage with the memories that have been barraging him, but he can't deny that he likes the feeling of the sword in his hand. He wonders again what he used to fight with, letting his instincts guide him as he imagines the enemies before him. The Darkballs, the Invisibles, the looming Behemoths. Darksides, so human in their appearance and yet so alien with their heart-shaped holes. Why hearts...? Instinctively he reaches for her own, glancing down as though he might yet unravel the secrets of these monsters. But nothing comes to mind, and Dante's practice continues.
It's surprisingly relaxing, almost a form of meditation on its own. Dante falls into stances and forms, testing his explosiveness and remembering with a shout of exhilaration a powerful swing that perhaps he once used, an attack where he throws himself bodily over his right shoulder, letting his spin build up the force behind his strike. He works until the sun begins to set again, and this night is spent deep in thought, munching on the food he's brought with him and considering everything that he knows so far. There's a part of him that's surprised he isn't as conflicted as he was the night before, but he seals that thought away and refuses to touch it.
It's a quieter night, a night of reflection, and Dante turns it over and over again as he lies awake in his tent, staring unseeingly into nothing but darkness.
Your heart is empty. Were it not for the darkness it contains, you would be completely alone.
3/26 - 3/29
Are those fingers he feels on his cheek, long and ice cold and sharp, pointed nails trailing over his skin?
"But of course. After all, your heart is steeped in darkness. You can only see those who exist in that same darkness..."
No...!
"Be grateful you have someone to keep you company. Your heart is empty. Were it not for the darkness it contains, you would be completely alone."
Dante wakes with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed. His eyes are frantic as he sweeps the room, looking for someone who isn't here, who was never here. He sags, running his fingers through sweat-slick hair, tugging the t-shirt he's sleeping in away from his chest in an attempt to cool himself as his heartbeat begins to slow. The clock on his bedside table reads 4:24, the dead of night, and there's a hint of moonlight that filters through the blinds to cast the room with a dim light.
He swings himself out of bed, padding across the room in bare feet to the hall and down to the kitchen for a glass of cold water. The moonlight seems to follow him, falling through the uncovered windows of the living room, lighting his way. Dante tries not to think about how cold it feels, casting the room with bright light and sharp shadows, isolating each plane in a way that sets it apart from anything else.
He'd been feeling despair, before he woke up. Dante doesn't know how a dream can evoke such potent emotions, but it feels like it's still caught somewhere in his chest, a feeling of despair and shame and hopelessness and fear all tempered by some sort of determined anger. This other him--the him that he once was, as all the proof seems to say--had ended up alone in the end, with only this witch of a woman to keep him company. He isn't sure how he knows, but it feels right: he's remembered dying, struggling along in this dark afterlife with no idea what had happened to the people he left behind, and then he runs into her, only too happy to tell him that he'd be completely alone if his heart weren't filled with darkness.
"I don't think you need me to point out that there is an on-going theme of 'darkness' with your experiences."
The silence is broken as Dante snorts, shaking his head. Yeah, he's certainly figured that out.
But the worst part is that he thinks she might have been right, talking about his heart being empty. After all, isn't that what he strives for now? Locking his emotions away, refusing to let anything get to him. It's something he has in common with his other self. Maybe this other him just didn't want to be hurt by anyone, either.
And in the end, he still ended up alone. In the end, he still struggled through the darkness, trying not to let himself fade away, tormented by only this strange woman who in one memory, tells him that she wants him to be happy and that she thinks of him as a son, but in another tells him that "of course" she'd be the one he'd meet in this afterlife, almost as if she's taunting him.
Dante puts the glass in the sink, wanders over to the couch and faceplants into it, letting out a groan of frustration.
He doesn't want any of these memories. He'd been doing good up until now, making connections tenuous enough that he wouldn't care when they were broken, yet strong enough that he has a number of people that he can hang out with from time to time. People he doesn't have to care about, people that are replaceable. But these memories... even that first one had warned him that this was going to hurt, from the moment he'd seen those two people and realized how light his heart felt, determined to leave their island and yet happy to be sharing the experience with... friends.
Friends.
Friends are a danger. He knows that. He's tried to make friends so many times, tried to get to know so many people in the years he was touring with his parents. He tried meeting the sons and daughters of other rich and famous figures, he's tried using the internet to meet people he could then meet in person, he's tried crawling the cities himself to meet people of his own accord. None of it works. The friends he makes are always left behind, left to their own lives as he and his parents moved on to the next city, the next event, the next rehearsal. So many promises of keeping in touch, of texts, of letters, of video-chatting and meeting in person again, broken. So many pieces of himself left scattered around the globe. Dante rests a hand against his heart, the movement made awkward by the cushions of the couch beneath him, feeling all that regret and broken hope trying to find a foothold in his heart to make him despair. He takes a deep breath, pushing the emotion away again. It's an old hurt by now.
Life is much easier when you've wrapped your heart in a layer of snark and barbed comments. It's easier when people know not to look to you for emotional commitment or support, when all they expect out of you is sarcasm and arrogance. And he's very good at that. Dante's had several years of practice now, letting people only close enough to collide against his prickly personality, limiting those he lets any deeper. But now...
Now it looks like he's had the right idea all along. If his other self ended up alone in the end, even in spite of how close he'd been to those two on the beach, then what does that mean for him, cold and standoffish and rude in the best of situations? How could anybody care enough to see past that, to break past his thick outer shell and not use the weaker parts of himself against him? He's already dug his own grave; in protecting himself from the pain of people leaving him, he's also ensured that they won't hesitate to attack him should he ever show his own weaknesses.
And then there's the problem of the people he's met through the network. God, isn't he an idiot? For some reason he'd thought that maybe with common ground between them all, there'd be potential there. Maybe, since he won't be leaving Recollé for at least a couple years, it would be okay to let a couple people get closer to him than he normally might have. Maybe trying to look out for them wouldn't be the mistake it's always been in the past. But now Dante knows he was just kidding himself: his other self apparently managed to fuck it all up, even when he had a perfect setup, so there's no way in hell he isn't going to fuck it all up as well. Eventually he's going to drive them all away.
Eventually he's going to fuck everything up and drive everybody away from him, and it is going to hurt because he's already fucked up by thinking that maybe for once he could do this right, that for once maybe he could have an acquaintance somewhere between the areas of "drinking buddy" and "friend."
His mind keeps racing, running in circles as he drifts back off into sleep, dragging a blanket over his body and arms wrapped around a throw pillow, holding it to his chest. But as he's falling back asleep, there's one thought that overshadows all of the rest, reminding him of his eventual fate:
You'll be alone in the end. Alone, forgotten--just like him.
He isn't ready to deal with anyone the next day. The stress and the worry have only gotten worse since the night before, a constant refrain reminding him that he can't escape the inevitability that awaits him. How do you deal with that knowledge? How do you handle remembering an afterlife of solitude and isolation?
Your heart is empty.
It might as well be; it wouldn't be worse than feeling like he's being pulled in conflicting directions. A part of him's already resigned to it, but there's a smaller part of him, a more childish part, that wants to complain that it isn't fair and that he won't let it happen like that. But Dante knows what his child self did not, and that is that you can't control what other people do and what decisions they make. It isn't up to him if they want to throw him away.
Prompto texts him, and he doesn't know what to do. They're supposed to hang out, but there's no way he can handle that today. Not now, maybe not ever--Prompto's already made him feel guilty once, just by opening up to him. Somehow just by being himself he's able to disarm Dante, to make him care if he's being a dumbass getting himself into trouble. He managed that in less than a month and a half; how bad will it hurt when Prompto realizes that all Dante's got to offer is sarcasm and bad ideas and leaves him behind for people that aren't a waste of his time?
But Prompto just won't take a goddamned hint, and within minutes Dante is scrambling around his apartment, throwing together everything he'll need for the next few days. He can't do this, he can't stay here. People know where to find him here; they know how to get a hold of him and even if he turns off his electronics, Retrospec stays active. People know his address and could come and knock on his door if they chose to. And in Dante's eyes, if he's going to be alone anyways, he might as well start the process now. He'll escape out of here and run away, run to the woods and figure out what he's going to do. How to approach things. He just needs time away from everything, right?
He just needs to be alone.
He leaves Prompto lying on his back in the alley, simultaneously disgusted with himself and resigned to his options. Prompto hadn't even been able to defend himself, and he'd beaten him into the ground without even giving him a chance to throw a punch.
I warned him, he tells himself, navigating streets he doesn't truly see. I told him to quit. I told him what I'd do if he didn't. He didn't listen. And now he'll realize that he shouldn't waste his time with me.
He'll leave him alone.
Nobody can find him in the woods. Nobody will think to look for him in the woods--he's certain that the warehouse isn't a safe hideout, not this soon after the party, but the woods are quiet, a reprieve from the busy life of the city. Dante sets up camp, then drives back home, abandoning his car in its usual parking spot and changing into running gear to head back out. He's already abandoned his phone, left to run out its charge slowly on his bed. He sees the light indicating he's got new messages, but Dante can't bring himself to check them. If it's Ardyn, he might be tempted to unload everything that's bothering him, and if it's Ari, he's worried he might not be able to hold on to what little composure he has left. So he leaves the phone untouched, leaves his house, and sets off at a sprint toward the woods.
Dante isn't sure how long or how far he goes, trying desperately to outrun the anxieties weighing him down. The exertion does him good, pushing his body to go farther, just a little bit farther until at last he has to drop to a walk, gasping for breath. And then he pushes himself again, trying to run every last little bit of nervous energy out of his body before he finally starts back to camp.
He's exhausted by the time he gets back, the sun beginning to drop low in the sky and the temperature to drop. He builds a fire as night falls and reaches into his bag, pulling out one of the two bottles of whiskey he's brought with him. It's a dangerous, slippery slope, Dante knows, treating emotions with alcohol, but he doesn't know what else to do in this moment and if nothing else it will give him a reprieve for the night. So he drinks, the first couple shots doing little to ease what is rapidly becoming a spiral of self-deprecation and bitterness, the later shots warming in his veins and bringing a smile (at last) to his face.
He stands in the night, pacing and swinging and talking to himself as he circles the fire, laughing as he stumbles over his own two feet and watching the logs crackle and send up sparks into the night air. He stares up into the night sky, thinking about Ari and the time he's spent with her looking up at these same stars, and in that moment his heart doesn't hurt--Dante's too warm for his heart to hurt, too full of an artificial happiness that will eventually fade away.
When morning comes he's alone again, the morning dull and gray. Dante groans from his pile of blankets and sleeping bag, not ready to face the day, but soon enough nature's call brings him staggering out of the tent, up.
Monday is a bust by anyone's standards. He spends a lot of it sleeping, trying to avoid thinking about his problems by retreating to the safe world of dreams. But his dreams are now full of places he's never been and people he's never met, people who wonder how far a raft might take them and who ask what he'd do if he made it to a new land, places where he fights a darkness as black as night, an island he's only seen in his mind's eye and dark room he instinctively knows is in a castle, where a green-skinned woman tells him time and time again that his heart is empty, is full of darkness, that he'd be alone if not for her presence. "Silly boy," she says, "you're like a son to me. I only want you to be happy..."
His hand reaches for the bottle again and again, but each time Dante stops himself, some part of him recognizing the danger and refusing to fall prey to the temptation. The world is brighter when he's drunk, more vivid, a world where things are chaotic and messy and things aren't meant to fit together in perfect uniform order. That world is where he's safe to be himself, where he can laugh and grin and tease and play and not worry that anything he says will be taken as a sign of weakness or something to be used against him later. When he's drunk, he feels freer.
But Dante knows it's fake. And so he refuses to be swayed.
Eventually something drives him out into the open, and he brings with him the rapier he'd shoved into his bag. There's still a reluctance to engage with the memories that have been barraging him, but he can't deny that he likes the feeling of the sword in his hand. He wonders again what he used to fight with, letting his instincts guide him as he imagines the enemies before him. The Darkballs, the Invisibles, the looming Behemoths. Darksides, so human in their appearance and yet so alien with their heart-shaped holes. Why hearts...? Instinctively he reaches for her own, glancing down as though he might yet unravel the secrets of these monsters. But nothing comes to mind, and Dante's practice continues.
It's surprisingly relaxing, almost a form of meditation on its own. Dante falls into stances and forms, testing his explosiveness and remembering with a shout of exhilaration a powerful swing that perhaps he once used, an attack where he throws himself bodily over his right shoulder, letting his spin build up the force behind his strike. He works until the sun begins to set again, and this night is spent deep in thought, munching on the food he's brought with him and considering everything that he knows so far. There's a part of him that's surprised he isn't as conflicted as he was the night before, but he seals that thought away and refuses to touch it.
It's a quieter night, a night of reflection, and Dante turns it over and over again as he lies awake in his tent, staring unseeingly into nothing but darkness.
Your heart is empty. Were it not for the darkness it contains, you would be completely alone.
Tonight, he's okay with being alone.