@wildkaart said: ( Mèng Yáo for Liu'er! ) NIGHTMARE: for one muse to comfort the other after a nightmare.
too lazy to find the meme // it's open anyway
Even if he's come to accept these as pieces of a forgotten past, they never let up in the way they haunt him. Despite his best efforts, he can't avoid sleep forever either-- it catches up to him eventually. Like now, when he's kept himself awake for days on end, but left alone for long enough, he's fallen asleep on the couch in the middle of the day.
This particular memory is not a new one to rear its head. In fact, it's one of the most common in his nightmares-- an impostor stood proudly before copies of friends that were never his to begin with, boasting the prospect of a stolen journey before Sha Wujing. Right up until the former celestial flies by him to destroy his own double, true form of an ordinary monkey revealed after its death in a way that had Liu'er seeing red even back then.
But isn't it more disgraceful, what you did next? The Wukong of his nightmares taunts him with such logic when the scene shifts to another common nightmare, Liu'er pinned under the merciless attack to what's left of his eye. He's kicking and screaming, desperate to escape, but doing all he can to retaliate all the while. There is no plea for mercy, as Baigujing led him to believe-- the only thing driving him back then had been kill or be killed.
He had really forced his brother's hand, hadn't he?
Still, even knowing all of that, Liu'er wakes with a thrash and a jolt, already prepared to drop into his own shadow and portal himself somewhere he knows will be far away from ANYONE, but most especially Wukong and his friends. A habit he has come to feel guilty for, but sometimes he needs a bit of solitude to ground himself back in reality.
Before he has a chance to make his disappearance, however, he's stopped by the feeling of arms tightening around his waist. Which startles the macaque at first, but his gaze then falls upon Mèng Yáo, and almost immediately he releases the tension in his body. His heart still pounds in his chest, adrenaline still running high, but he knows for a fact he's safe and okay if Mèng Yáo is really here with him. His presence alone is enough to remind Liu'er that things ARE okay now-- otherwise, he wouldn't be here with his friend, clearly having fallen asleep in the middle of a movie they were meant to be watching together.
"...Sorry," he mumbles in a voice too shaky for his liking, though he does settle against the other's side once more, coalesced shadows behind him returning to their normal state as the portal closes. "Guess I'm more tired than I thought. I, uh... Didn't hurt you though, did I?"