draco dormiens nunquam titillandus

[silvermists]

He's young and small again, a little scrap of a boy drowning in a sea of sickly green light. The smell of decay fills the air, choking him.

There's. A dragon. The dragon is source of the smell, rotten all the way through. He can feel the creature, made of greying meat, hating him with all its soulless might. He can't move his body. He can't release his magic to cleanse the thing to death. It's roaring words at him in a language he doesn't know and understands perfectly. Murderer. Dragon-killer. Mankind-killer, brother-killer, Dark Messenger, destroyer of all Terra's hopes, Angel of Death.

He laughs and laughs and laughs, for imagery of this little boy's future flash through his mind and it is all pain--

He sits up with a start, going from dreams to reality in a fraction of a second. This man never sleeps all that deeply, anyway. There's a shadowy figure in the corner of his room.

It grins at him, golden eyes glowing and meeting his blue. He grins back. Little boy fears. It hardly made his nightmares worse by lurking, and all of those things were real. Not fantasy.

It's going to die anyway. Again. Too stupid to have learned from the first encounter? How tragic. In the time it takes for the Nightmare King to open its mouth and say one word, the Angel of Death has already called up a spell and flung it, filling the room with deadly white light. Goodbye, Pitch.

The Boogeyman is flung out the door shrieking, already dying of the light that's meant to kill. The door wasn't open before he made his exit. A large jagged piece is snapped off by Kuja as he follows the shadow into the hall. Garland taught him to murder with more than magic and oh, does he have pent-up tension...

He finishes the gurgling creature by plunging the stake through its chest, sending thick black blood spraying. (But not far, for it's tarry stuff.) Then he seems to come back to his senses, straightening his back and inclining his head so his hair falls over his eyes...

Well. That just happened.

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[silvermists]

"I was. I dreamed of it. And so I woke up and killed the one forcing me to." He stands up from his crouch, shrugging and tilting his head slightly again. "That thing wouldn't be upset if you died. Maybe you should let it go."

[dustless]

"He might," they say. They think it could be the truth, but it's said more for the 'he'. Pitch isn't a thing, he's a person.

"...don't want people to die, or get hurt, when there's other...ways. To fix things." They flash back to swinging at the nightmare king and drop into another coughing fit.

[silvermists]

Person, hell. It barely seems like more than an animal... more because of behavior than anything else. A madman, at best.

"Alright. I understand that much, if not why. And?"

[dustless]

They're getting a headache. Stupid coughing.

"An' what?" they croak.

[silvermists]

And nothing. What can they really do to stop him?

"Forget about it. Him, if you insist. I'll clean up the mess and he'll be back in a few days."

[dustless]

They scrub at their mouth again, looking towards the corpse. If they were feeling better--

Actually.

Who cares.

"I can help. 'F you want."

[silvermists]

"You're not in any shape to do much of anything." he says, dryly. He is, for once. He reset the clock not too long ago, actually.

(And he doesn't want to admit he's only going to toss the body over the edge. That won't go down well.)

[dustless]

"Aren't you gonna be going back to bed?"

He's right, they know he is, but they're in an especially mulish mood.

[silvermists]

With a tad more irritation in his voice, a sliver more than in theirs: "Not yet. You couldn't carry that on a good day. Don't be an idiot."

[dustless]

"Could too." They're sticking their tongue out at him again.

...but whatever. As soon as they decided to argue, they decide to let it go. They're tired too. "Fine. Gonna...sit." They wave back towards the nearest stairwell.

[silvermists]

"Good." he says, not caring a whit, really. Behind him, Pitch's nasty corpse has already started to glow blue and levitate. There's no way in hell he's touching it.

[dustless]

They don't know what he's going to do with it.

...they should be getting upset, maybe. He might be setting it on fire or throwing it off the edge or all kinds of things--he doesn't care at all about burying him.

They feel guilty for not.

Frisk doesn't say anything when he leaves. But when he's back, they've somehow got a couple of glasses of chocolate milk. The Castle provides helpful rooms for them sometimes.

[silvermists]

Definitely over the edge. Burning... people would notice that. The heat, the light, the char left behind, that would be too much effort to hide.

He and the corpse wink out in a flash of blue. When he returns, he returns alone. And blinks at them. What is this, why are you still here.

[dustless]

Frisk holds one out.

It's too warm for hot chocolate, or at least they're too warm to bother messing with fire, and normal milk isn't that good. Hopefully this is a good substitute.

[silvermists]

The flicker of sheer bewilderment he shows once he realizes they're offering him one is probably very sincere. Not, for once, him putting on a perfectly calculated act. It passes in the blink of an eye.

"You're an odd little thing, you know that?" What a thing to do right after he's murdered their 'friend' and all but dropkicked him off the floating island.

[dustless]

They take a sip, once they're sure they're not going to cough it all out.

Frisk saw something, maybe, but there's no reaction.

They can't fix the Nightmare King's death. They might apologize for Kuja later, and maybe doing that'll keep him away for real this time. Getting mad would be useless, and exhausting, and they don't feel like they even can. Not a lot of people outside of Pitch can really get them feeling a lot of bad things.

"Kinda strange," they agree.

[silvermists]

He takes it. The thought occurs to him that they may have dumped an entire saltshaker into it, or something else obnoxious--poison wouldn't occur to them. Being an annoyance would.

And he sips it anyway. It's... chocolate. And sweet. That's nice.

Manners.

"Thank you."

[dustless]

"Welcome. Milk's s'possed to be good for sleep," they say seriously.

Of course, chocolate isn't, but what kid actually thinks about that?

[silvermists]

"I've heard."

So is having no Nightmare King around. And he's wondering...

"Does he bother you when you sleep?"

[dustless]

"Prob'ly. But he's good at hiding from me."

Frisk really can't be sure, since they already have nightmares a lot. They know they haven't found him looming in ages, though.

[silvermists]

It's looming that got the moron killed, really. If he'd stayed in the shadows... well, Kuja rarely has pleasant dreams. He wouldn't have suspected a thing.

"Enjoy a few nights of rest, then."

[dustless]

Their brow creases, and they lean back against the stairs. Kind of makes their back hurt, but it's fine.

"You will more," they say neutrally.

[silvermists]

"I'm used to nightmares. Him watching me, not so much."

Best not to do that without his consent if you want to live.