He'd started to sleep a bit more evenly, in the long months since coming to Earth. Somewhat fewer nightmares, more nights actually spent sleeping. He rose later than he'd like, perhaps, but he was also spending time out in the city, chasing down youma and belligerent officers and doing his best to do right by people. He'd failed to do that before, but he could try, now.
Ever since the battle on Dagon's planet, ever since the fog had crept in and brought back everything that happened, ever since he'd sworn he felt real, flesh hands grasping him instead of desperate skeletons, all of that progress had been undone. He didn't think he'd slept a single night through, and more often than not ended up simply sitting by his window, staring out into the night and waiting to feel even the slightest bit tired again.
He'd felt so brave, standing up and fighting, struggling against that fog and the monsters and the darkness. And they'd won. They'd all fought so hard, and they'd done it, and it should have filled Tianyi with hope. And yet, somehow, it didn't. Somehow, it just made things feel...worse.
It was impossible for him to envision what his planet might be like, cleared of Chaos. He'd never seen it, and no one had ever really spoken of it near him--not even after. None of the people holding him prisoner had been particularly given to nostalgic reminiscing of the time before the eclipse came, or at least they hadn't done it where Xiulan could hear.
And the idea of struggling against some massive monster like that, trying to fight it, to bring back a world he didn't even know...
Tianyi wasn't sure he could do it. Tianyi wasn't sure he wanted to do it.
He'd lost everything on that world that mattered, really. Saving it wasn't going to bring his family back. And honestly, if they were out there somewhere, they probably had no idea about what had happened to them. They wouldn't remember anything about whatever they had suffered.
(Everyone had told Xiulan that his family deserved what they got. Maybe they did. Maybe they'd lied to him, kept him in the dark, prevented him from seeing the world how it really was. But they'd done it to keep him safe. Done it because they loved him. And maybe he wished he'd stayed ignorant. Maybe he wished he'd died ignorant. Maybe he didn't want the truth.)
(Maybe he wanted his life back.)
(Maybe he very well knew that his life was never going to come back.)
Xiulan stared out the window, at the dark and silent city, and briefly considered powering up. But, honestly, it felt....like he didn't want to. Like he didn't want to do a lot of things.
Maybe he just wanted to go back to sleep, though it seemed that it was back to eluding him. There were likely more nightmares waiting, if he tried; it was a fruitless endeavor, in the end.
As always, what he wanted hardly mattered. So he would simply have to endure.
[wc: 538 words]
