InsaneJournal

374 ♫ shared dream
Warning: Cut for descriptions and linked images of (child) abuse and violence.
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[The scene that plays out is more of a memory than it is a dream. Still crystal clear thirteen years later.

Jae-Ha is standing within a small room made of stone. The door is made of wood and there are no windows; he's almost too tall for the low ceiling. A boy is against the wall, wrists and ankles bearing thick, heavy shackles which are bolted to the wall and down on the floor via equally thick and long chains. It's obvious who that boy is: Jae-Ha, himself, around 12 years old. He's battered and bruised before another man in the room. His hair is a vivid emerald green, like Jae-Ha's own, long and wavy, like seaweed.

The man - Garou being his name - holds no reservations in laying kick after kick, punch after punch, upon the young Jae-Ha. In near-desperation he fights back, but Garou always seems to one up him. Soon he's fallen to his back, and Garou grips his right leg tight— the very leg which bears dark green dragon scales and razor-sharp claws for toenails. He sneers to the boy how the outside world would never accept someone with such a leg or the power it holds; how someone so monstrous shouldn't exist in the first place. How there's no use in continuing to try and escape.

The beating continues until Garou finally leaves, as irate as he had originally come. The boy slumps back against the wall. He fights against his chains and pulls them taut, to the point where they cut into his wrists which begin to bleed. At some point he gives up, and the tears he always bites back spill, anyway.

Jae-Ha can only watch on the entire time, his younger self and Garou obviously unable to see him. He doesn't have the energy to try and force the dream away. It happens all the time; he's grown used to let it simply play out. Maybe even apathetic.

What Jae-Ha doesn't seem to immediately notice is there's someone else in the room, having witnessed the entire thing.]