𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 // Akaza x reader (+18)

Chapter 34 | The Fever Part II

You wake, gasping for air.

Akaza is beside you, wiping your forehead with a damp cloth. You don't speak. You can't. The shame lingers too thick in your throat. You don't know where you are ... on the floor, somewhere outside. Your katana lies by your side.

For the first time, you wonder what it would feel like to use it against him.

Your eyes flicker to Akaza. You drift off again, your body still fevered. But this time, the dream is different.

You're standing on a frozen lake. Akaza kneels before you, his head bowed. Your blade is already red. He looks up at you and whispers, "You did well." And then, his head rolls off his neck.

You wake screaming.

Akaza flinches. Just slightly. His hand tightens on the cloth he's wringing out. He doesn't speak - doesn't ask. But he doesn't look away either.

The next dream rolls over you like a wave, suffocating you underneath. You see Makio in the trees. Tengen reflected in murky puddles. Rengoku in the clouds - always watching. Silent. They don't speak, but you feel their presence. Disappointment, maybe. Maybe sorrow.

"They're not angry," you murmur aloud once, unsure if you're speaking to yourself or to Akaza. "They're waiting."

You wake up - or maybe you don't. You don't know what's real anymore. Yellow eyes mirror the moonlight. You're gone again.

By a stream, you see her - yourself. The you from before. In uniform. Upright. Whole. The light of fire radiates around her. She walks across the water like it's nothing. The surface doesn't ripple. Her reflection stays perfect.

"You look tired," she says. "You don't even know who you are anymore, do you?"

You reach for her - she vanishes.

Then suddenly, you and Akaza are standing at a cliffside. A rare moment of peace.

"If anything ever happens to me," he says, "you don't have to carry it."

What an odd thing to say. Especially coming from him.

When you look at him, you see it - the last day. The sword. The blood. The guilt. You look away. Your hand clenches around the hilt of your katana just a little tighter.

Then: flames. He's gone.

You jolt awake, breath shallow. A fire is burning beside you, and Akaza is there, watching quietly.

Maybe he knows.

You curl inward, feeling your own body failing - but worse is the cold in your chest, blooming where certainty used to live.

The dream returns - twisted now.

You stand in a field buried under ice-thin frost. The silence is unnatural, strangled. Akaza kneels before you, but he's wrong - his limbs bent at strange angles, like someone had broken and reassembled him without knowing how bones are meant to go. His head hangs low, too low, neck stretching like it's unraveling. Blood pulses up from the snow, thick and black, as if the earth is trying to bleed him out.

Your sword drips. Not with blood, but something darker - like memory turned rotten. Your hands don't tremble. The blade hums in them like it knows what's next.

You wake with a scream lodged in your throat, your hand gripping your sword's hilt as though your dream-self had passed you the weapon.

Akaza doesn't stir. He must have heard it all. But he doesn't speak of it.

You shift. The world feels slightly tilted, like waking inside someone else's memory. The air tastes like rain that never falls.

You sit up, muscles trembling, and wipe the sweat from your arms with the edge of your sleeve. Your breathing is ragged, uneven - like something trying to claw its way out.

The fire beside you sputters, throwing shadows across Akaza's face. His eyes flick toward you, unreadable. You gasp for air, needing something real.

The sky is split with moonlight. Cold. Patient. Unmoved.

You try to stand - don't make it.

You collapse in Akaza's arms. You cry for the first time since you left the village. He says nothing. But he holds you like he knows the pieces of you are starting to slip.

The stars come out - shy, soft. The fire crackles. You sit beside him, wrapped in silence.

"I saw him again," you whisper, not meeting his eyes. "Rengoku."

Akaza doesn't look at you. His voice is low.

"What did he say?"

"That I should kill you. If I have the heart for it."

Silence.

Then, Akaza says quietly, "Do you?"

You don't answer. You can't.

But the silence between you isn't empty anymore.

You already know how it ends.

In dreams. In echoes. In blood.

But for now, you lean your head against his shoulder, and he lets you.

And above, the sky stretches wide and cold, full of stars that don't care who's right or wrong.