He would most likely sleep more if his dreams were blank. That he wouldn’t remember them. Oh, how he’d give almost anything for that.

He sees nightmares. A lot. They’re always either about Luffy, Luffy’s mother, both of them, Garp, Dragon’s mother, a certain war that he accidentally walked into when he was nineteen, people who generally died because of him, people he fears at that time will die because of him, Akita, Sabo, a certain malicious man who destroyed his life, Cynthia, and well, usually these mix together.

But there are dreams that are not bad too. They are few and that’s why he remembers them.

But there is a very vivid and animate one that keeps recurring. It’s a nightmare.

It always starts with him running. That’s the first thing he feels - his heart beat, rapid panting, weariness, the wold under his feet as he dashes forward. His vision goes constantly from blurry to clear and he distantly picks up blood seeping on the side of his head.

Then he feels that he is pulling someone from their hand with him. He glimpses behind him, and seeing the maroon brown hair is confirmation enough. It is her. His son’s mother.

He smells burning hair, even though there are flames nowhere. There are only coal-like shades surrounding them, most of them dark.

They are in a forest and keep stampeding through it, branches scratching and whipping them on the way. They’re both out of breath, and gradually confess they have to rest a moment or else they’ll both fall and stumble and might hurt themselves in a way that running away will become way harder.

They find a mould and hide behind it to pacify their heart rates.

He tells her it’ll be alright, that they’ll get through this. He tells her neither of them will die, to save goodbyes and averments of their love to another time, that they do not need them now. He tells her to trust him.

The thing is, neither of them believes him.

Then the dream hops to the moment when he’s face to face with a man. Their attacker. He sees the man’s features, hears his voice. He receives the blows and slashes, and remembers every single word he used to damn the man to the seventh hell in his mind.

He experiences the levitating feeling one undergoes just before falling to the ground. He hears the echo of her cry but does not see where it comes from.

It is here that the forest is permitted its natural, ravishing colours so green and so bright it blinds.

The blindness lasts only for a second though, as soon it is revealed to be night.

He comes back then, laying there, in the field of his own blood. He finds he cannot move and his head feels light, labile although it rests solidly against the earth. He opens his eyes, only for them to be forced shut from the unexpected languid pressure. When he opens them next, and allows them to adjust to the darkeness, he sees the flash of metal against the moonlight.

He sees her, he sees him. He sees the blade, and her frozen state of footing away.

The shear of flesh conquerors any sound otherwise heard.

She collapses as the blade is violently withdrawn. He smiles at him.