napoleongonewrong:

“It’s a fascinating sight. To see him when he’s asleep, when he doesn’t know anyone’s there.

“My pretty little pet sniper. His hair slicked back, drying from the shower, from scrubbing stench from his locks. Skin taut and slightly bruised, muscles aching from a long day.

“His eyebrows furrow into an unpleasant dream, and he turns away, a quiet murmur on his lips. A request, a demand, a plea…for something.

“He seems to attempt to wrap himself up around his pillow, not cold, or he’d wake to don a shirt, pull the blanket across his shoulders.

“A facsimile of holding another body in his arms, unconscious or no. Someone soft, someone warm, someone that wants to be held as much as he wishes to hold.

“His lips curl, he frowns, not in distress, but discontent. He doesn’t like the night, he doesn’t like the lack of a body, he wishes for something different. And his dreams tell him as such. 

“What occupies his unconscious thoughts, I have many a times wondered, as he tosses, wrist curling inward to protect himself. Protect his chest, even without sensing a danger.

“Does he fear me in times like this, I do wonder. Does he lock his door because he fears I might creep in and slit his throat? Tie him to something, break his resolve?

“Does he dream of that? of me, of horrible me?

“Does he turn in his sheets wondering, desperate, for a way to escape, to run free of my captivity?

“Is it in moments such as these when his mind takes control, and tells him that it’s all right?

“Is that way he doesn’t always lock the door?

“When the beats of his heart win out from the thumping in his head, and his fingers falter on the lock, slipping away without moving it across its place.

“Is his smile…the single, soft one that crosses his lips for but a moment, is that for me? For some pleasantness, an idea of happiness, of joy with me at his side?

“Or is it at the thought of the life he would have had without my ever interfering?

“Perhaps his dreams escape him in the light of day.

“And that is why he looks at me when he wakes as if he doesn’t know that I watch him. As if he believes that I don’t admire the contours of his face, wishing to reach out and touch them, as if I don’t contemplate breaking him away from this childish feud he’s created.

“If that is true, then his nights are his only true escape from life. In the times he does not dream, does not feel, does not have to think.

“Oh, how I feel I should envy him that.”