As if in answer, Claude de Alger Obelia receives one dream a week, of memories he doesn't remember making, of Athanasia dying over and over, and in one- he holds her in his arms as she breathes her last.
He always wakes with cold sweat, confused, and strangely, he doesn't think they were just dreams.
Why else would they linger on as he woke? He denied them, or tried to at least- and he ignores how they irk him throughout every hour, every minute, every second, and he lashes out at himself more than once as he growls at the sight of himself in the mirror.
It couldn't be true.
Those dreams were just dreams, they could never have been true. He was not a tyrant like Anastasius, he was magnanimous, benevolent to his people, so why would he not be to his- child.
What dreams would stay, dancing around him, even in his waking world, when all dreams should be forgotten once one woke up from them?
There was something amiss in the world of these dreams that made him question his sense of reality.
Something that made him sickened to the bones, and he wakes up one dawn, holding his hands so tight they turn paler than one who was not of the living.
But he was of the living.
So why was it that he was being tortured by those beyond the grave? By a person he had never experienced?
Perhaps that was why they taunted him.
Because he had ignored the only child he had, just as he was trying to ignore these fitful dreams, but he had done a much better job at ignoring the chi-Athanasia- than he was currently trying and failing at with these night terrors.
When had... Athanasia ever ran to his arms, with a delightful yell of, "Papa!"?
When had she ever been on a boat ride with him? When had he given her access to the Imperial vaults?
When had Felix ever gotten so close with her, enough for him to appoint him as her personal knight? When had they ever had afternoons drinking Lippe tea together in the gardens, gardens that did not exist here?
Had never been built. Had never existed. Had never come into existence before, at least not here, where it was different.
When had Diana, yes, that was her name, when had she stayed with him for her entire life? To grow old with him and Athanasia?
When had she cursed him to the very heavens when he allowed their daughter to be executed? When had he thrown her aside for Penelope Judith?
He hadn't. They hadn't.
But in those dreams that were like visions with their hidden messages of love and war? He had.
When had he abused Athanasia until she had died at his hand? When had he told her to go to war and never come back? When had he let Athanasia drown when they had gone on their first boat ride?
When had Athanasia gone to war and had come back? When had he executed her for poisoning Jennette, something of an unthinkable act for a princess like her?
When had he ever allowed black magic to consume his very being, planted by the elder brother he had killed for the throne?
He had. He hadn't. But he did.
But it never happened. Except until it did come to play and wring him of his sorrows, ones that he did not feel in those dangerous dreams.
Time passes before anything of note happens, or comes to his attention.
But he finds himself sitting in front of an easel in a room away from his own chambers, and with sunlight coming through the window, he can see every piece of dust that floats by his vision.
The paint streaks his fingers, and he lets himself go into the dreams again, taken away by their terrifying screeching, and he paints worlds where they are filled with roses, of shining guillotine blades, of golden mana, and gem blue eyes that are just like his own.
The paintings pile up around the room, each hidden from view with their own veil of velvet, but he still knows what stares out at him as he leaves them behind before returning to paint again.
The smell of the rich oil paints drown out the smell of blood that reeks in his dreams.
Wanting to get away from the smell that followed him, he opens the windows only to see the Ruby Palace in the far off distance, to which he closes them again, but doesn't dare to draw the drapes.
His robes are always spotless when he leaves it behind, and in the midst of painting out yet another scene of golden mana clashing amongst vibrant red roses, he wonders if he had liked roses in those worlds.
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He soon realizes another day that it wasn't he who had liked them, but her. It was always her.
Dying. Living. Executed. Poisoned. Dead. Alive.
Every single one, nothing he remembered, nothing except her.
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A/N: I've come back with a new cover(omg what!!?) cause I felt weird leaving this unfinished. Enjoy!!
