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He can’t even remember the reason he was standing alone, looking in the mirror that night. All he could remember is that she felt such a heavy sadness over him. It weighed down on his shoulders, hunching him over and forcing him to hold himself up with the sink’s edge. Swiss was exhausted, but they couldn’t sleep. The bed in his room hadn’t been touched in days, thoughts invading his mind to the point where he couldn’t relax correctly. Despite his tiredness, she shook intensely as if they hadn’t felt his eyes burn into his skull from the lack of sleep. Everything felt so heavy and cold around them, yet their body was somehow warm.
And then that thought. The thought that had filled his mind for weeks.
I wanna sleep forever.
There was a way, something in the back of her mind said.
After all their struggle, his long fight to get rid of it, Swiss couldn’t stand it anymore.
She remembers the sound of the rain pouring outside as he reached for the bottle of pills hidden underneath the sink.
The multi-ghoul remembers dying in a small town in Spain, having killed himself for a reason that was still foreign to him. His ghost stood over his body, still in shock from the moment, before his spirit was drug down into the abyss. Before he was made into a ghoul.
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A nightmare had awoken him once more. The horror of his death lurked in his mind years later. It had been haunting him for months, appearing every night as he lay asleep. Weed wouldn’t even keep the dream at bay and it made him feel as though he was still that twenty-year-old standing in the bathroom.
His arms pushed him off the soft bed, making his feet hit the floor before he could register it. Swiss was tired, but he couldn’t die like that again. Ghouls don’t die like humans do and he didn’t have the strength to go through the process right now. All he wanted was a break, anything to get his mind away from this place.
The ghoul sighed and quickly threw her coat on. Snow was flowing down outside and perhaps the cold would finally allow him to relax.
Fluffy slippers were the only thing he could stand to put on his feet right now, so they would just have to work. Even if it might make him freeze, he refused to put anything else on right now.
Swiss opened the door and allowed his feet to carry him through the dimly lit halls. At this time, the abbey was finally quiet. Laughing and fighting were no longer present and all he could hear were his quiet steps. None of Dew’s loud laughter that echoed through the building, none of Rain’s rants about poetry and odd literature, no lectures from Aether, no books being read aloud by Mountain, and no gentle singing from the ghoulettes. Nothing at all. It felt eerie almost, she was used to everything being loud. Even on other nights when they took a walk through the halls, there was always someone awake.
The wind blew in his face as he pulled open the door to the gardens. Snowflakes stuck themselves to him as she sat down on the steps. For a moment, the cold allowed them to focus on something else, returning the steady air to his panicked body.
“You know, it’s really cold for you to be sitting out here.” The voice of another made them tense up and look back quickly. Seeing that it was only Mountain, she sighed and relaxed a bit.
“Needed to get my mind off something..”
Mountain sat down next to her, leaning back on his hands. He let out a breath of air before looking at Swiss.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“It’s just a nightmare..” They leaned on the other slightly, taking in his calming scent of wildflowers.
“Well, if it’s affecting you this badly, then it must be pretty terrible.” Mountain slowly wrapped an arm around him, not wanting to make her uncomfortable when they were this upset. Swiss wrapped his arms around Mountain and held him close.
“It was about my death.. it’s been bothering me for months all of a sudden.”
Saying those words brought tears to his eyes, making his face sting against the bitter cold. He dried his eyes in Mountain’s shirt and sniffed quietly.
“It’s over now, hun.. you’re okay.” His hands ran through her hair soothingly, brushing through the red carnation petals. Swiss laid their head on his shoulder, gazing at the falling snow as he spoke.
“I still feel like that sometimes though. It gets stuck in my mind and I can’t get rid of it.”
“Well, you can talk to me anytime you need to. Any time, I swear. I like to talk to my partner, you know.” Mountain kissed his head gently, smiling softly out of view.
“Another time.. just hold me right now.”
“I have no problem with that, Swiss.”