Memory is Futile

Chapter XI: Nightmares about disease

   Again, though it may not have been often, the two of us did have nightmares and they usually weren't very pretty when we did. Then one night, about a year after our wedding, Kat had had a really bad nightmare.

   Shook him up so bad that he clung to his pillow for hours on end as he stared at our bedroom door in nothingless shock of what had apparently happened. When I asked him what was wrong, he refused to talk about it and just cried. I watched tears roll down his cheeks and fall into his lap. Watched him whimper as he was subtly rocking back and forth before his head crashed forward into his pillow and he started sobbing out cries and pleas. I couldn't understand what he was crying about and I didn't know what he muttering, but it was enough to know that something was wrong and that the last thing he needed was my prying questions and what he inevitably would end up having to answer those same questions with in the end of things. All that I could do, or, was left with the option to do, was comfort him and hope he was okay enough to go back to bed when he finished. To hold him, and to tell him that it would all be okay, and that he was alright and safe.

   Katsuki had finally calmed back down a little while later and his tears were finally slowing their continuous watery streams. Although he was still on edge, he opened up. Told me that he was fine one moment and then the next he could feel himself dying, fading away into dust. Obviously this had shaken him pretty bad in all generality. Katsuki's biggest and darkest fear, was death. He was terrified to die, or to ever even feel like he's dying. He hated the idea and would the change the conversation topic if someone were to bring it up around him. Hated the idea of going to sleep and not waking. Refused to believe that it was possible for him to be perfectly alert and conscious in one ever-precious moment, then not feel anything at all within the following moment.

   In his mind, death was as real as the monsters under a toddler's bed in the middle of the night. It was there solely to scare him and was never a plausible, feasible thing that could ever happen to him, regardless of whether or not it happened to those around.

   I hated not being able to fully console him then, but it wasn't possible no matter how hard I tried. He was still on edge for a few weeks afterward and was even more conscious and so careful about the little things and even started to worry about the way he got out of bed in the early morning hours.

   Eventually, he had realized he was still very much alive. Asked me if he was really okay, and wasn't dying. Told he was perfectly fine and was still here today. At that moment, everything just felt oddly and eerily peaceful.

   Never could I have ever prepared myself for the months that lay ahead of me and Katsuki.

No matter what.