[center][img]https://67.media.tumblr.com/ec6cbcc69e53c6fb7575945fd26df206/tumblr_not0kmizZp1u6e6evo1_500.gif[/img][/center] [hr][hr] When King woke up, he was met with a flurry of colors. A blizzard of lights, swallowing him whole. His mind was his own for a millisecond, screaming out something about a cave and a tree and [i]don't drink the water, don't drink the water don't-[/i] and then he felt nothing. He sat motionless on a blank white plain, hopelessly tired. Too tired to move. His limbs were heavy with exhaustion and his mouth was full of cotton and his mind was swimming in a wave of nausea and anxiety and amnesia. [center][i]this isn't real[/i][/center] King hugged his knees and stared ahead, [i]blank[/i] eyed, [i]blank[/i] faced. [i]Blank[/i], [i]blank[/i], [i]blank[/i]. He wasn't real; he wasn't alive or dead, breathing or not. He wasn't [i]anything[/i]. This isn't real, no one said. This isn't real. King stared ahead, hugged his knees closer to his chest, and reveled in nothingness. [i]Blank[/i]ness. He was an outsider looking in on himself-- on his dreamscape and his nothingness. King felt his knees against his chest, but he also saw himself moving them closer, hugging them tighter. He saw his back clearly first, and felt eyes on him at the same time. When he turned around to see who was looking he found another Richard King, and beyond him another, and another. They were all [i]blank[/i]-faced, literally. None of them had faces. King looked forward again and sighed (and watched himself sigh), and when the noise reverberated in the blank air a curious thing happened. Colors formed around the various Richard Kings, glowing balls of warmth and feeling. Little pieces of King, emotions and thoughts and memories. They swallowed the nothingness in an instant, and King watched himself stand to reach for a particular gathering of colors. Blue, purple, orange, green. Suddenly, King was one and he felt a swell in his chest. Life chased away the blankness and he knew for sure that everything was okay. These fairylights were together and because of that they were stronger, more likely to live and feel happiness. The four colors swelled in his palms, warm, full of emotions, and suddenly he was aware of something about himself. King's eyes turned towards another color, not too far from the original four but just distant enough to seem like an outsider. It was red in color, and glowed brighter than the rest. It burned his fingertips when he attempted to coddle it over to the other lights. His mind whispered, [i]you never did know how to feel things half way[/i]. King nodded to the whisper, hands drifting down and away from the lights, and the four colors eventually grew closer to the blazing red one on their own accord, amplified by the heat the lonesome fairylight gave off. King smiled. He saw himself smile again. [center][i]this isn't real[/i][/center] The lights blinked out simultaneously and King was left alone in darkness. He felt nothing again, but the oddly welcomed kind of nothing. It was the nothing someone might feel as they settled in to their bed, late at night, surrounded by the warmth of a familiar blanket and the darkness of a familiar room. The only something that would dare to enter that nothingness would be a sliver of moonlight from the half-closed windows and the buzz of summer nightlife. King felt his head press against a pillow, sleep dragging at his eyelids, sleep dragging at his mind. A guitar glinted against the wall opposite to him, loose from recent use and shiny in the half-light. Beside him his cellphone burned, and in the room next door he heard the gentle strumming of a Beatles song. Everything was quiet and warm and familiar. He was home. There was the crashing sound of footsteps, coming up the stairs, coming to his door. He was home. There was the growling breath of a smoker. Deep inhale, soft exhale. Deep inhale, soft exhale. He was home. Three fists crashed against his door. Bang. Bang. Bang. [i]I KNOW YOU TOOK MY SMOKES, DICK. I KNOW YOU TOOK THEM, YOU FUCKING THIEF. I KNOW YOU TOOK MY SMOKES.[/i] [i]He[/i] was home. King was sitting up in an instant and, suddenly, his room was replaced with a distant and unfamiliar forest. His father stood over him with a gun in one hand and a lighter in the other. The lighter flicked to life and then as snuffed, again and again. His father smiled. King had recently been crying, but now he wasn't; his face felt hot and wet with forgotten tears and his jaw was clenched too tight. He was frightened. Henry King took a step forward, placed the barrel of the gun in between King's brow, and growled [i]Si vis pacem, para bellum[/i]. The gun fired. King woke up in a hotel room. Sweat dripped from every surface, shining in the morning light that just barely fought through the pulled-blinds. Arms were wrapped around his waist, lazy with sleep, and oh so familiar. This isn't real, his mind told him, but his body disagreed. This was perfectly normal. When he tried to move the arms tightened, and someone shifted beside him, mumbling incoherently. King turned his attention to the lump in the blankets beside him, trying and failing to utter a confused 'hello?' or 'who are you?'. His voice refused to work. The lump shifted again, and again, and before King could see their face the lights vanished once more. The room was gone. The bed was gone. The arms remained. They were back on the white plain. [center][i]this isn't real[/i][/center] King stared up at a shadowed face and he felt his lips quiver with emotions he couldn't decipher. A finger dragged across his jaw, feather-light and impossibly loving. It dipped into the hollow of his neck, trailed across his collar bone, explored the canyon between his chest and counted each rib. Down, down, down. King squinted and tried again to speak, but his words were missing and all that was left were fervent sighs. Dark hair moved above, darker eyes stared down, and he saw the faintest hint of a smile blossom across the face above his. King smiled back, and he watched himself smile back. And then King and the shadow were kissing, chaste and light. Warmth filled him, left behind lasting memories on his lips, and it was all too real. This had to be real. They were bodies electric, and the white plain once again twisted into a landscape of colorful lights and magic. For a moment, the dark eyes pulled back and turned yellow. The hands, so gentle and kind before, became razor sharp and clawed with an ache for murder. Fingers tickled back up his neck, dragging sharpness over every vein in sight, and then pressure eased down onto his throat, strangling him. A tease of red hair danced across his eyes as the figure leaned down to bury their teeth into King's neck, drawing blood, and King simply laid their and allowed the shadow to bleed them dry. Someone whispered [i]Tell me where Haven is[/i]. The shadow person was gone and King was left alone on the plain, completely unscathed. His knee lifted up, poking at a few lights, and his hands lay heavy and exhausted at either side of his head. Tears had started to spill, summoning more, bluer lights into the air, and he wasn't sure when or how they started. King sniffled silently and cried, feeling relief as an emotional weight was lifted from his chest. His back burned. Thunder rumbled. And he cried. He cried and cried and cried until the plain was bathed in blue lights and he was able to sit up and wander aimlessly through the field, moaning out more tears and lights as he walked further and further into the white nothingness. He felt lonesome. Alone-some. He felt sorrow and fear. Thunder rumbled again and he sobbed. Lonesome. Flashes of something stopped his wandering. He turned his eyes to the sky as various places flashed by a mile a minute. A golden desert, a gray ocean, an endless forest path, a tree-cave, a motel room, a cellar, a city. They were all familiar and, at the same time, they meant nothing to him. The faces appeared-- his sister, Aiden, Jess, Malcolm, a half-shadowed man with yellow eyes and red hair, a half-shadowed boy with pink hair, a trio with faces all blotted out by fire and water and wind, a girl with flowers in her hair and vines on her arms, a girl with wild eyes and a confident smile, two boys held tightly to one another, another trio but one of the figures was pale and almost nonexistent, and then finally himself. Richard King stared down at Richard King, eyes burning despite his apathetic face. He was filled with rage and love and [i]magic[/i], and he was alive. Behind him sat Verona, Washington, and it slowly faded into the distance. He knew the King above him had nothing left back at that town. He was meant to leave it and grow and discover a place where he would be able to live. The fire in his eyes burned holes into the sky, and the white plain turned into nothing but air. And King fell into nothingness, feeling full of something he shouldn't know yet. He fell for centuries, noiseless and exhausted and enlightened. Nothing was right. Nothing was real. He just wanted to wake up. Wake up. [center][i]wake up[/i][/center] And then he did.