Chapter Text
He knows he’s dying.
That’s probably for the best. He has been hoping to die for years now. He can’t be sure for how long though.
Time doesn’t flow in this hell. Time stays stagnant. It lingers, on and on mixing with this permanent state of agony until he’s not sure he even exists anymore as something that is not pure pain.
There was a before though. He knows that because sometimes when he can no longer take it, when he’s sure he is long past his limit but can do nothing other than endure, when it happens.
He dreams.
The dreams aren’t kind to him. They are also filled with pain, just like his reality.
Sometimes the pain is physical. Just as he can feel the stake in his heart and the marble under his arms and the pool of blood surrounding him and the bitter cold that envelops him, he can also feel pain in the dreams.
He can feel the sword plunging at his body again and again until he is nothing but a disgusting pile of flesh, destroyed by the mob he wanted to protect.
Other times, he can feel the silk on his neck tightening.
Sometimes the pain in mental. Misery at the sight of his friend pointing a sword at him.
His closest companion thinking he lost his mind and oh so easily leaving. It’s better that he left, he thinks. He will only hate me a little if he leaves now.
Grief at the sight of two bodies, once adorned in gold and fine silk, now in little more than drags, hang from the ceiling.
Raw agony when that man in the smiling mask looks at him, raising his sword at the sky and gathering that awful cloud of resentment all around him until not even his mask remains .
Bitterness piles up at the sight of his ruined temples that used to gather so many of his people.
The darling of the heavens. What a cruel joke.
Dreams are hardly ever kind. But they remind him that he used to be something. Someone who wasn’t trapped down here, unable to move, unable to breathe or feel anything other than the pain or the cold sticky blood.
Dreams serve as reminders.
Reminders are not a good thing.
But he can only endure. He cannot escape. He tried.
He also remembers how it felt when his arms broke after hitting the lid of the casket. He can’t break marble. Not in his current state.
The silk trapped in this hell with him tried to wrap itself around his broken limbs. The thing cannot escape either, not even from any small openings between the coffin and the lid. It stays with him. It tries to comfort him.
He cannot remember what he used to call it.
Moving hurts. Breathing hurts. He can only dream.
He dreams of dying.
He dreams of being rescued. Of his old friends whose faces he can no longer remember finding his coffin and oh so gently removing his freezing body from that small hell and helping him walk out.
He dreams of being reunited with his parents in death. Sometimes he cries in his mother’s arms as she rubs his back, whispering soft nothings to her son.
Sometimes he yells at them through his sobs, demanding an explanation. Asking why they left him when all he needed was to be loved. To be believed in.
He wakes up in tears that fall from his eyes down to his ears, down to his hair where they mix into the puddle of blood that envelops his every inch.
Twice, he dreamt of that unnamed soldier opening the coffin.
The first time, the man helped him get out. He called him “Your Highness” again. He helped him remember he used to be called that.
He remembered when that man called him that and he, the fool, hated him for it.
“Your highness will always be your highness”.
The second time he got inside the coffin with him. He even had that sword with him. And as he lay on top of the body in the coffin, he stabbed them both with it.
“Come with me, your Highness. It’s the least of what we deserve.”
He hates seeing the soldier in his dreams.
Trapped and forgotten by all, unable to escape or call for help, he can no longer make it up to him. He died for him- the least he can do is stay alive, even in this hell. But he wanted to find him again.
He can’t.
He used to be able to defeat monsters and armies. He can barely lift his arm now.
It hurts.
Worse than the dreams are the hallucinations, because they are always of Him. In his white funeral garb, the monster mocks him.
“Sad, how sad. Look at what they did to you.”
He hopes he can die just so he can stop seeing that mask so close to his face.
“Silly boy. You know you cannot die. Try asking me for help.”
“Agree to come with me and I will help you. I’ll get you out of here, just like in your dreams”
He knows this is a hallucination. That is why he remains silent, waiting for the dreams to claim him again.
What a pitiful existence.
The shackles on his neck are tight. He can feel them get tighter every time he wakes up from the dream. Dimly, he wonders how long this thing can keep him on the verge of death for. There must be a limit. Is he finally close to that limit?
Maybe he will finally see his mother again. She will fuss about the state of him, his tangled hair and tattered robes and tell him to go clean up before his father comes and sees the mess and he will laugh and tell her not to worry about it, his friend is distracting the king so he will have more time.
Not that his friend would still do that.
Maybe he will see the soldier again with his beloved. He separated them twice already. He will apologize and leave them be.
He hopes he doesn’t see the monster, if he is still allowed to hope.
He can’t breathe again. Are the dreams going to claim him, or is it death?
He wishes he could see the sun again if it’s the latter. He can only see darkness ahead of him.
The silk, will it die with him? It’s part of him after all. He hopes it will. He doesn’t want to leave that poor thing alone.
Tighter and tighter and tighter, the shackles pulse again and again as if they’re alive.
This is it.
He hears something. The first sound he hears in…a long time. And then he can no longer feel a thing.
The pain is gone.
The agony and the ache are gone.
The cold remains.