Iris

17 | shopping

     FOR THE first time in so long, my fosters didn't haunt my dreams. 

None of them had appeared in the few hours of sleep I had gotten or even attempted to remind me of the horrific memories they had left me with. The blurred images from the days I had spent with them seemed to listen to the pleas I had made the other day; they perhaps pitied me after I had admitted how exhausted they made me feel and decided to disappear and vanish. Or they were perhaps held a captive by the peaceful darkness that accompanied my sleep. 

Whatever the truth was, I chose to believe that it had been the darkness who forbade the images from lashing out at my mind and fuelling the fear that had encased my heart. That it had been the one who truly understood how terrified my fosters made me feel even after their death—how their memories made me feel so weak and helpless; incapable of doing anything to save myself or to stop them from hurting me any further. 

And just like always, it had stepped up to save me from the pain awaiting me. Its invisible figure shielded my mind and blocked it out of the memories' reach. It didn't care about the terrors accompanying their images or about the mercy they lacked. Because, in the end, it was all nothing in comparison to the power the darkness had spent too long to gather. And it was all nothing but a tiny fragment of the horrors it had previously witnessed.

The ones it had worked so hard to shield me from. And the ones it didn't even bother sharing with my mind whenever I sank into its comforting embrace and clung tightly onto its safety. It was very well aware of what they held and decided to keep them all away from me. After all, it was a faithful friend who only wanted to protect me the way it had always done—the way I had always so desperately asked it to do. 

It remained by my side all night, weakening the horrific demons that befriended my memories and draining all the power they owned so that they never hurt me again, and it only decided to leave when it made sure that I was safe within the warmth my brother's embrace had provided me with. 

It flickered for a few moments as my eyelids fluttered, repeatedly dropping and peeling open in my miserable attempts to adjust to the blinding lights that had illuminated my oldest brother's room. And it completely perished, a few moments later, once my blurred vision focused on a pair of hazel eyes.

It didn't take long for me to realise that Roman must've stayed by my side all night, using his work as an excuse to remain awake. He had been doing the same thing for the past three days—ever since Atlas had told him that my nightmares hadn't stopped.

He had come to my room the next night and noticed the tears tainting my gaze; they weren't a result of another nightmare, but they were a result of the fear that had encased my heart and spread throughout my entire chest. The fear of having another one when I least expected it. And it had been so heavy that for a moment, it suffocated me. 

I had told my brother that. I had said that I was afraid of having another one; that they were so, so terrifying and that no matter how hard I tried to, I couldn't stop them or lessen their intensity. That I couldn't do anything to avoid the fear that came with them or to stop the walls from closing up and trapping me within them. Cutting off my supply of air.