— haunted dreams, of a should-be ghost, of bygone feelings
CONTENT WARNING:
SOME visceral description, implied unhealthy dynamic/dependency, mentions of death, adler being narratively haunted by bell, fem!bell, bell reader, adler suffering (yippee)
author's note: definitely not the proudest of this but i do love the idea of adler being haunted by bell, as an inversion of the fandom popular trope of bell being haunted by adler. because i think adler should rightfully suffer! as he should!!
———
A shuddering breath leaves him. Cold is the air that caresses his chapped lips, brushing tauntingly against the raw flesh that throbs and radiates with flashes of hot agony. Somewhere…somewhere…
If Death be a shadow…
His finger twitches against the freezing metal trigger of his 1911. Its weight rests against his hand — clutching it tightly to ensure it won’t slip from his hands as warm blood does from his torn-opened flesh. His arms grow heavy with the weight of blood, or the lack thereof, and his vision grows dimmer. The dark silhouettes before him are but blurry masses of eigengrau that looms overhead. With his legs sprawled on the ground, and a wall behind him.
Urgency should be pulsing through his veins. Urgency should be seeping from every pore, every wound. Where is his urgency, but overridden by a sense of dull languidness his entire form is slowly submerging into.
In the shadows he lay, he rests on; leaning against it. And from the shadows behind slips a hand.
Cold. Clammy.
The hand covers his eyes. Gloved. The somewhat coarse nature of its fabric brushes against his brow. It cups, and presses against his face like a blindfold, but through the minute cracks of the fingers he sees light. Concrete-colored light. Seeping through like the trickling of light.
Warmth presses against his back. A body. One he leans against.
Soft caresses of her breath bates down his neck, brushing against the shell of his ear as she leans in.
“I will be your eyes.”
Her other hand traces down his arm, until their fingers touch. Covering his hand, she lifts the gun. Guiding the nuzzle to point at a direction he cannot see.
“You shoot when I tell you to.”
He cannot see where.
All he can feel is her.
Oh the irony. He failed to be her death and yet…here she is.
Death, as her constant, unwavering companion. Death, as the sole notion of sovereignty of her fate. Death, as the very shadow he had ripped from her.
As she will rip from him.
Dig her nails into his eye sockets.
Gouge out his eyes.
He’d give her his sight and gun like a poor fool blinded with trust and faith (even if she were to shoot him dead and paint the walls with his flesh the next second).
A dead merlin. A dead doe. A dead body, a corpse-like figure lying limp in the cell. Her, her, her—
———
He wakes with a jolt. A gasp torn from his lips.
No more is the warmth of her. Just…the sticky, damp warmth of his sweat-soaked seeks and the nauseating sensation nestled deep in his throat enough to prickle his skin with dotted goosebumps, amidst the quickly cooling sheen of sweat on his arms and back.
No more is the concrete-colored light that trickles from the crevices between her fingers, but rather signs of dawn that paints his room in bluish hue.
He could still feel the touch of her fingertips, her lips that brushed against the shell of his ear, her icy yet emotionally detached voice— Oh-so vividly.
His hands tremble.
A year. A year of these nightmares haunting each of his nights. No more of Vietnam or other atrocities. Just her. And the familiar phantom touches of her cold and clammy hands (like a corpse, like a cadaver—).
Night after night of him willingly giving her his sight and guns.
Taunted by the tragic reality where he could not, he cannot do so. For she has already rejected his offer.
At least in his dreams, she takes.
And takes.
And he’d let her.
———
fin. | do not plagarize, steal, modify or translate my works without explicit permission
(This will probably be a vent, so be warned that my wording might not make sense)
I feel regret for being a proshipper now (even though I still consider mysekf as one), because the more I start to accept that fiction is fiction and reality is reality, more I feel the sensation that I'm taking less serious some issues both in real life (like in cases of someone being a predator towards minors) AND problematic parts of fiction (like stereotypical characters).
I know that most proshippers might not feel this way, but I just feel bad for myself for feeling less serious towards this situations
