just as temza began and ended ten years ago, it all moves too quickly.
a haze takes his body and moves it when his mind can't, he watches the woman before him fall with glazed eyes; watching, but not recognizing what he's done.
everything comes in a wave; the eyes of faces he can no longer recognize bore in him like knives, all tight against his back, ripping into his stomach, drilling into his teeth. the blood forms intricate markings upon the walls, and washes upon his guise in an almost angelic warmth, in a mockery of the affection of a kind hand.
(i've done it, i've done it.)
she's dead. judith is dead.
yuri doesn't know what to feel. he never does.
at the moment of so-called "ascension", where he chose to become the law to protect what must be protected… he shouldn't be feeling this, right? judith had committed a crime, she chose to betray them all, so she needed to pay for it; merely the law of the guild, and the world.
that's what yuri tells himself, anyway.
he's not himself anymore, he knows that now. but if he's not himself, then what is he? he's not sure, maybe he just doesn't exist anymore.
that's fine. he doesn't want to exist anymore, anyway, not after what he's done to her.
ah, but the guilt, too, comes in waves. gentle at first, memories begin to reform whole, but yuri can't accept them as they come, merely for his own selfish sake.
they seep into his eyes soon enough, regardless; memories of a mysterious woman whose smile never reached her eyes, of rooms where light does not converge, but the darkness is warm as morning sunlight, of understanding silence, existing as the moon and stars do in the endless night sky… the pictures become more abstract, but he understands them perfectly, because his smiles also didn't quite reach his eyes either, and the night and the shadows were the only things that were his own, in so feeling a connection with her.
the memories feel never-ending, beating down the gates like strong waves. the great hot abyss of rage and shame, every emotion that went into the swing of his sword, they disappeared suddenly, leaving merely the cold imitation of victory in the crater where they once were.
there's more blood on the ground than he remembers. he can't bear to look at what he's wrought, the woman at the center of it.
everything's went cold. even the hot blood has cooled into a ghost on his skin.
yuri turns his eyes to her.
...even in death, she's still…
the gates come down in one final motion, there's nothing left of them now. so then, do the memories of judy come barreling, curdling down into hollow, bitter tears.
"i'm sorry, judy." yuri couldn't say.
☆
in the cold night, yuri awakes with his head spinning. he awakes with a wretched ache rattling inside his head, the pain wracks him.
…in actuality, that was more because he somehow managed to fall out of his own bed than because of the nightmare, but it's still not a very pleasant thing to wake up to after having that sort of nightmare.
yuri almost envied the people who didn't have life-altering experiences like he's had, who merely had nightmares about falling off of cliffs or being covered in spiders, he'd gladly take any of that over the very personal horrors that could haunt his dreams at any time.
he stands back up, there's no way he's getting any more sleep tonight. yuri's no stranger to nightmares, but a nightmare that vivid was something not even he could shrug off so easily.
so, what was he to do? it's probably still too late in the night to properly start the day (and also, he just didn't want to do that at ass o'clock in the morning), but returning to bed was similarly unappealing.
...where's judy?
yuri had long since regained his grip on reality, so he knew judy wasn't dead at his own hand, her body rotting in a cave on the peaks of mt. temza; she'd returned to dahngrest with him and karol, and as a matter of fact, it had been about a year after the incident on the mountains had occurred, a year after the adephagos crisis...
she was probably outside, taking walks in the dark like she always did. he'd joined her in that endeavor a couple times, finding it always soothed him for a little while.
yuri doesn't bother putting on any clothing other than what he wore to bed before he goes off in the night, stumbling through the dark.
he makes his way out of the door, the crisp air of dahngrest's night cooling him down from the intensity of his dream. the city's still plenty active, even for the time, but it doesn't really register to yuri's senses, because he's too busy looking foand there: leaning on the building's side, staring into the great expanse above…
judith takes notice, and her sharp eyes soften when she knows who's come for her. she doesn't open her mouth to speak to him, a great many hard nights make her able to tell what's happened just by looking at him.
she signals for him, saying everything's fine now, i'm safe without saying anything at all. it's a language she'd mastered long ago, and one yuri found easier to understand than any spoken tongue.
he approaches steadily, but not uneasily. those memories again pool in his heart, but he welcomes them warmly now, a calm tide of sentiment rather than a fierce storm of guilt.
a silent night with the other was always a nice way to spend nights they couldn't sleep, who knows how many he'd spent with judy when her past caught up with her? he didn't care to count, all that mattered was that, in this moment, she was there for him for however long she needed to be.
and now, the darkness feels warm again, as it should.