Memories

My ears rung and all I could hear was the ragged breathing of myself. But it sounded so far away. The total exhaustion had me on my knees, holding my throbbing head in my hands. I waited apprehensively for it to happen again.

It wasn't two minutes that it did.

I could physically feel myself being dragged into my deep subconscious. I couldn't hear my scream as it ripped from my throat. And then everything was black.

Slowly, like before, a scene eased into view. A memory I had all but forgotten. I watched a small figure, not much more than a toddler, reach on tip toes for a door handle. I recalled, somehow, that the memory was during the depth of night, in a castle that was once home. The toddler opened the door, and eased it open slowly. She peaked inside, her eyes round as she tried to see into the even darker room. She called out in a whisper.

"Saix!"

There was no response. There was a twinge of fear and frustration from the girl, then she called again, a bit louder.

"Saix!"

Apprehension, and fear that she had called too loud into the engulfing silence. Then something stirred in the room and moaned a grunt of a question.

"Saix," the toddler said, easing the door open enough for her to fit through. She stood in the doorway, framed by the pale light of the hallway. "Can I sleep with you? I... I had a nightmare..."

There was no response, then the sound of someone shifting under some sheets. Saix sat up and loomed a silhouette in the dark room.

"Why don't you go bother Demyx?" was his ill-tempered reply, only worsened by his abrupt awakening.

The girl hesitated a moment, then moved a few unsteady paces into the room on her chubby baby legs. "But I want to be with you..."

Something in the cold depths of Saix melted for the girl, and he rolled onto the other side of the bed, not agreeing to her requests or denying them further.

There was no hesitation now as she covered the distance to the bed in hurried strides, made faster by the constant fear of monsters popping up behind her. In the toddlers eyes, the only safe place was beside Saix.

She grunted in exertion as she tried to pull herself onto the bed, her legs suspended in the air and only her chubby arms clinging to the bed that held her up.

After listening to her struggles, Saix rolled over and pulled her up, then rolled back over so his back was to the girl.

Even though Saix was on the very edge of the bed, and there was a vast sea of flowing white sheets and a fluffy mattress at her disposal, the toddler huddled in a ball against Saix's back and pulled the sheets off of Saix, huddling in them for comfort and protection. Saix lay with his golden eyes open, aware of the theft just committed against him. He turned stiffly as not to disturb the toddler, and was about to demand his sheets back. Yet again, as he saw the scared expression on her chubby face, he couldn't bring himself to be harsh.

"A nightmare?" he asked again, in a rather motherly voice for one so stoically cruel.

"Mnhm," she said, trembling besides the many sheets wrapped around her. She released her grip on them to hug Saix's arm. "But I know I'm safe here... you'll scare away the big bad nightmares, won't you?"

Saix stared at the girl clinging to his arm, and drew her into a hug. "Don't worry Max..." he whispered as the child drifted into peaceful slumber. "I'll protect you."

And just as abruptly as it happened, Max was yanked back into consciousness. She lay gasping on her hands and knees, her body shaking with the immense effort of drawing her back out again. All day she had been drawn into her childhood memories, and each time it was becoming more and more difficult for herself to draw back out again. Something was trying to drowned me inside myself, she thought. This has never happened before!

And then once more she screamed as she was immersed into another nearly-forgotten memory.