drabble ask - Illusion + castor and pollux
He'd feared it was all an illusion. That he would wake up, and Castor would be gone. Or, worse -- locked up, somewhere deep beneath Mythag's campus, in the Black Pool. (Pollux had felt it, stepping onto the campus, past the mist and fog -- the pull. The way that the dissolution making up that pool tugged, the way his Heart had seen the sheer presence of it.
And Pollux had seen, too, the exact second that Castor had felt it, that great pool of dissolution -- freezing, absolutely still to the point where Pollux feared he wasn't even breathing, nothing but a deathlike stillness.)
It's a small comfort, that Mythag had arranged accommodations, so as for Pollux and Castor to share a room as they had all their lives. It. . . soothes something within him, to be able to wake from a nightmare and carefully, carefully pad over to where Castor sleeps -- to watch the rise and fall of his brother's chest, to carefully press his ear against that same chest and hear the beating of his brother's heart. (It becomes easier, to convince himself that this is real, that the worst of the pain is done and over with. That this isn't an illusion, that he and Castor are truly free now.)
He'd feared it wouldn't last, at first, but now. . . Pollux thinks he has hope, now. That he'll feel truly safe here.
