Red eyes flick over a black landscape.

He exhales. Sighs, almost.

And keeps staring up at the ceiling, not seeing the ancient embellishments or the beams keeping them up.

He doesn't see the beautiful room around him, its air icy and murky in its blackened corners. He sees no cobwebs and no dust that has accumulated since he began this. This practice of endless, unproductive reveries.

He doesn't smell the sickly-sweetness of outside like he used to. Fancy potpourris and perfumes seem to cover it up enough for everyone else, but he always felt like he could smell the outside air. The hot, thick wind with the hint of smoke and blood.

He doesn't hear the silence. The air so empty and devoid of noise that it leaves room for his deepest thoughts to escape until they're screams, screams that keep him awake at night. The heavy emptiness of it doesn't penetrate the tangled web of his mind.

He doesn't even taste the caked blood in his mouth. He knows it will go away if he stops biting it open again, but he does it when he isn't paying attention to what's going on. When he's lost in ideas that shouldn't be anywhere close to existing. When he's doing this.

For the moment, it doesn't even irk him that it's a wound from that boy. That … brat, that foolish, insolent little brat he should've killed when he killed the boy' father.

He sees none of it. Hears none of it.

The voices whispering in his head are provoking enough, haunting enough, to build a thick carpet around him. He is comatose. His fingers arching from his upturned hand move of their own accord and he exhales heavily without realizing he does it.

For the longest time he was untroubled. And as the stakes climb; as the obstacles grow bigger and the opponents grow stronger and the storm builds toward the climax he knows is coming, he wonders why now of all times it decides to emerge from the filing cabinet of his brain. Why now, the time of chaos and uncertainty, it chose to step forth, looking down and clearing its throat self-consciously. Maybe it's the masochist in him, the piece of him that wants him to be too overwhelmed to function properly.

It was always there, lingering. Like the shadows in the corners of every room in the fortress.

He wished it had stayed there.

The concept had made itself known, but he hadn't quite grasped it yet. He wrestled with it; fought with it. And every night, as he sprawled himself on his bed to decipher it more, he edged forward. He wasn't jumping off the cliff yet; wasn't anywhere close.

But he was beginning to acknowledge that the cliff was there.

That it was calling him over the jagged, coarse edge.

He hadn't even joined this side when she was in power. He'd joined for his own reasons. He wanted to be feared.

He wanted to be obeyed.

He wanted everyone to know his name. To shudder every time it slipped from a tongue.

Funny how the opinions he concerned himself with were those across the enemy line.

Now, though, it no longer was that simple. For though he wanted respect, though he lusted after the power he gained with each blow and every clash, he had begun…

…well…

…concerning himself with more opinions.

Of course he wanted to do his master's bidding. He hated disappointing her. The hardening in her deep pupils as he trudged into her room in defeat, dropping to his knees and coughing up blood and spit. Though any disappointment with him was infinitesimal compared to the rage she poured forth toward all other underlings. She was what held him to this power. She bestowed it upon him. And what was wrong with being loyal to your master?

What was wrong with having a fondness toward her?

It would seem only logic to be fond of the person who gave you that which you most wanted.

Yet it was becoming … complicated.

Perhaps it was her age. With every day, she grew taller. Her hair grew longer. Her features seemed more pointed and elongated and her long cloak seemed to, well, conceal less of her shape. She is standing on a fine line he doubts she is even aware of, one that is inevitable.

Is it also inevitable in his mind?

He sighs again, unknowing.

Never before has a woman troubled him so.

Indeed, they are complicated creatures. Perhaps he simply has never bought into the complication.

Perhaps that is because they seem to ... de-complicate around him.

And it never troubled him, one then another without the chance of seeing each face again. He loses nothing to each one. His soul has atrophied inside of him while his ego and his body go hand-in-hand.

So why has she re-awakened this feeling?

This trivial little emotion?

Not to say that she has. He shifts on the silk sheets as he squirms around the thought in his head. Love doesn't exist. Love is nothing.

If love is nothing, then, why does his breath catch in his throat when she turns toward him? Why does he get a high from her amethyst eyes locking with his every few days? Why is he afraid she'll notice if he is in her presence too much or too little?

Her opinion is beginning to matter to him.

Irrationally so.

Why can't he get her out of his head? He lies awake at night, knowing if he thinks about her he'll dream about her. And he does. Nightly.

They come in waves; unstoppable.

The low, calm vibration of her voice is explored. He dreams of making her laugh. A little, girlish laugh sometimes. At others a low one. A glimpse of her in a few more years when her voice is sweet and deep and rounded in her throat.

He dreams of her words cracking, tumbling from her mouth and shattering shamefully. Each one feels like a solid, heavy object, and he hovers between marveling at seeing her composure in shreds and at how he can almost see the things she's confessing.

He dreams of darkness. Of feeling her whisper against his neck; of the low, throaty way he is certain her voice could go if she wanted it to. His sturdy frame is racked with tingles at the memory of them, and he pulls in a sharp breath.

He explores her feel.

He dreams of resting a hand on her shoulder. His gloves aren't on and he doesn't know why. He feels exposed in her presence without them. But her shoulder is bony and fragile – so unlike her hardened illusion of a shell she builds around herself. A shell he foolishly likes to think he could break.

He dreams of her nails. How they would feel against his arm in a comforting gesture, like little, rounded pieces of stone. What a pretty shape they are, he muses. As are her beautiful, long fingers.

He has no idea how deep he's in.

He dreams of her skin. Her cheek against his face as she collapses in his lap and sobs. It's smooth and cold and soft. It's such an uncommon shade of alabaster. He suspects his imagination embellishes, though, when it tints her cheekbones with red. She would never blush.

He dreams of her mouth.

Flashes of moments his subconscious is too cruel to allow him to explore fully.

She murmurs softly against his neck as the warmth of her small body fills the space before his.

She smiles against his face as he wraps his arms around her.

She kisses him. Hard and open-mouthed and with teeth.

The silence is snapped apart as a small moan escapes his parted lips and wafts into the air. It hangs there, a betrayal of his mind's inner workings.

This is the middle; the deepest part of his reverie. The part where he is the most active; the part where his hands barely stop clenching and he never stops swallowing. His molars grit against the cut inside his mouth, and once again it begins to seep red liquid onto his tongue.

But it will wane.

He will get a hold on himself.

He will begin to bottle the thoughts away.

And he will begin to believe, once more, that he isn't in love with his master.

Though he is already falling; falling too far to find the surface, his resolve is a strong one and his convictions are solid. He can fool himself into believing that he's still on dry land. That he's still peering into the distance and wondering, where did that cliff come from?

Red eyes flicker across the blackness above them.

He breathes out. Sighs, almost.