*** Contains forced puking.
Word Count: 488
Sometimes, late at night when her dreams were at their most frightening, Paris awoke screaming.
She did not always remember what prompted it. It could have been anything; she had enough memories to feed her nightmares for a lifetime. Often she heard voices that weren't her own, and screaming that came to her from a distance. She saw faces she'd learned to hate; she felt the cold burn of a starseed down her throat. She saw the ghosts of the dead—pale, motionless forms that wore the faces of her loved ones.
She dreamed of darkness and graveyards. She dreamed of Laurelite, and the faceless counterpart that orchestrated their capture and torture. She dreamed of chains and metal bars, locked doors and cages. She dreamed of those she knew to have been taken. Valhalla. Acrucis. And she dreamed of those who had not. Ida, Europa, Kallichore. Pasiphae, Athene, and Oberon. They bled from phantom wounds, and stared at her accusingly as their blood pooled beneath her feet.
She sank into it, first to her ankles, then to her knees. Up her thighs and over her hips the bloody lake rose. Up, up, up until it covered her shoulders. Then it was at her chin. Paris tilted her head back to breathe, but it was hopeless. Soon she was submerged. Blood filled her nose and mouth until she drowned in it, gasping for air and thrashing about, screaming at the top of her lungs for no one to hear.
Like she'd screamed before in her cage, with no one to hear her but those who could not help her, and those who did not care.
Always, when she awoke, she fumbled for the light. It flared to life in the darkness like a tiny beacon of hope. But there was no one beside her to offer her comfort, no one to thread a soothing hand through her hair. At night, when the world was shrouded in darkness, it was easy for the wrong memories to surface. She did not see herself sending Chris off to spring training with a last lingering kiss. She saw a hand in Valhalla's chest. It pulled his starseed and crushed it before she had the chance to stop it.
Paris stumbled from the bed. She fought against her blurry vision and made it to the bathroom, where she fell onto her knees on the hard tile floor in front of the toilet. She remembered the cold pain in the pit of her stomach like it'd never stopped, except this time she imagined it belonged to Valhalla instead of some poor Senshi whose name she did not know.
She felt ill, and the pain persisted until she forced it away. She stuck a finger down her throat in desperation, and heaved the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl. Then the pain eased and the cold faded.
And Paris waited for the sun to rise.
