Nightmare
When I was young, I lost my mother. We'd been taken to a special aquarium, and I was lost in the crowd. Eventually, I extracted myself from the crowd by finding a service corridor, and I followed it to the end. The stench there was horrid, and I covered my mouth and nose with one hand, breathing in my mother's perfume as I fought my way. Only, there was no exit. Instead, there were two crude men, taking fish I'd never seen before and crushing them in this odd sculpture.
I was never a very strong person, but my heart couldn't let the torture go on. I grabbed the end, trying to hold it away from the fish as the men laughed at me. It didn't take long for the one doing the crushing to push past my attempts, and bits of fish spattered my scrawny legs and knees. I sat there, near the sculpture with my hand held over my nose, for a long time, the smell of my mother's perfume mingling with the stench of dead and rotting fish. But when I finally heard my name called, it was not my mother who stood there. It was, instead, my father holding his arms out to me and looking very grim. I didn't run into his arms because, at the time, I thought that he must be angry to find me so filthy in such a place. It was not until later that I learned about my mother's murder.
Even now, I see the grim expression on his normally gentle face, and I reach out with one hand, my mother's scent leaving my nostrils as I try to comfort him only to jerk awake. A dream. The dream, really, as it follows me everywhere. When Father died, I dreamt it. When Kaneda's family took me in, I dreamt it. When I moved with Kaneda, I dreamt it. Her scent, abused by the stench of fish, and cold, aching eyes watching me.
"Did you dream again?" Soft words, and I shift in bed, peering out into the gloom from where I lay. The hall light has caught his features, making him golden in the cool silver of my room, but that expression is as cold as the ache in my heart. So I lift one hand, offering it to him as I shift again, settling back into the covers.
"Ah... yeah." Only those words. I don't like giving him any more of myself than I have to. He's so cold all the time, so distant, that it feels like he steals those pieces away, hoarding them somehow. But fingers that bear the warm of his coloring close around mine, and he sits on the edge of the bed, ruffling my hair. So cold, and so distant, and yet somehow dependable in all this. He really is a mystery to me.
"Sleep. I'll stay." There's never a need for him to, but he always stays after the dream, sitting on the edge of my bed with one hand stroking through my hair lightly. That sensation always lulls me to sleep, giving me the rest that memories have stolen away. Kaneda is a man of contradictions, distant and dependable... cold and warm... selfish and giving. Someday, I intend to figure him out.