When your own mind is your worst enemy, everyone around you suffers. When you can't escape from your own memories, when you live with your guilt every day, everyone around you lives with it too...
Despite the title, not a smutfic. However, once again, heavy on the shounen ai, or male-male love; beware. 

Warnings are as follows:
Angst from hell.
Violence, some blood, plenty of disturbing stuff. No happy ending. However, no profanity.
Spoilers, especially for Dias' backstory. If you have not won the game with Dias in your party, proceed with much caution.
As I said above, same-sex relationship, although there's no actual sex depicted.
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     -- the early afternoon light is golden, the road is wide and dusty, the breeze is soft against his face and in his hair. He's lagging about ten feet behind his parents, and he can hear them laughing, softly, when the wind blows towards him. Off to his right, his sister races in exuberant circles through the waist-high grass, ripping up flowers. Every few minutes, his mother warns her not to stray too far, to stay close to her big brother, and she obediently comes over and slips her sweaty little hand into his for a few moments before she runs off again.
     A daisy bobs its head idiotically, tucked behind his ear, and he counts himself lucky to only be wearing one; his sister is festooned with them, and his parents wear at least five apiece. She's just brought his mother another armful of daisies, roots and all, when he hears the quiet footfall on the road behind him.
     A hoarse voice orders them to halt, and he spins around, and for a moment the world freezes. Behind him, his parents, his mother clutching his little sister close to her skirt; in front of him, five ragged dirty men. With knives --

     -- it always goes blurry at this point. And always, always, he hears his mother scream his name.

     He can't move. A terrible numb lassitude grips his entire body. Dimly he can feel the rough and sandy surface of the road, pressed against his cheek; equally dimly he can feel an awful heat, burning across his stomach. And he can't close his eyes -- he can't close his eyes --
     -- his father staggers and falls, trying to protect his mother -- a pair of dirty hands rips his sister from his mother's arms -- an awful scream, choked off abruptly -- white daisies, caught in the wind, bright red with blood -- his sister breaks away and tries to run, tries to run, but it's too late, and three of them catch her -- rise and fall of knives, of knives, of knives --

     -- and for the first time, the too-familiar nightmare takes a different path.

     A voice from out of nowhere, quiet but firm, orders the bandits to stop and drop their weapons. A length of blue-black fabric whips past his face like a banner caught in the wind. And a slender robed figure steps into his field of vision, two swords in its hands like shards of silver light --

     -- if his lips could move, he would mouth the name his mind is screaming. Ashton. Ashton. Please. No.

     Even here in the midst of nightmare, Ashton fights beautifully. He always has. The swords dance around him and he dances with them, blood-red Crests throbbing just under his skin. But the bandits are strong, and desperate, and outnumber him five to one, and one of them has a sword now, a long heavy ugly thing.
     It seems to go on forever. Ashton holds his own for what must be hours, spinning, ducking, blocking and striking, but none of the bandits fall, not one, and they're laughing --

     -- and he turns to block a wicked swipe with a knife that surely would have taken him in the side of the throat --

     -- and suddenly the one with the sword is behind him --

     -- and a foot of bloodied steel erupts from Ashton's chest.

     The world shatters and turns gray. Time slows to a crawl. Wide-eyed with shock and pain, Ashton arches forward, driven by the force of the blade -- blood explodes from his mouth, a spray of crimson mist against the gray sky -- his swords fall from nerveless fingertips to clatter on the ground -- his Crests fade, fade and vanish, abandoning him at last -- the bandit twists the sword, still laughing, and Ashton screams, a high thin despairing sound, as blood bursts from the wound --

     -- and Dias throws himself bolt upright in bed, sweating, gasping, his eyes wild.

     One hand flies to his stomach, clawing at the long twisted scar there, and for just a moment he mistakes his cold sweat for blood, fresh blood. After two gasping breaths, the dream's claws relax slightly, and Dias comes back to himself enough to notice the faintest blush of dawn stains the sky outside. The bedroom is warm with the onset of the summer morning --

     -- and Ashton's side of the bed is empty, and cool to the touch.

     For a brief, terrible moment Dias is convinced that he's dead.

     But sanity and order are quick to return, pushing the nightmare aside in favor of reason. Dawn, Dias thinks. Of course. It's dawn. Dias turns around in the bed, clutching at the windowsill, looking out over the stream that runs behind the small and rundown house that they share.
     And Ashton is there, dancing with his swords as the dawn tints the world pink, just as he does every morning. Sweat stands out on his bare skin, and blood-dark Crests burn underneath it; the dragons dart and snap in perfect syncopation with Ashton's swords. Dias watches for a moment, eyes wide, trying to drink in the sight, trying to memorize every touch of bare feet to grass, every shift of shoulderblade and rib under bare torso, every shift and flicker of the folds of Ashton's loose grey pants.
     Alive, Dias tells himself, watching Ashton's serene and distant face turn towards him, then away. He's alive. But Dias' mental voice is uncertain and faraway, and some part of Dias remains unconvinced. Every time that Ashton's back turns towards him, Dias can't help but imagine a sword blade punching through it, and he almost cries out with the pain of it --

     -- and a maddening compulsion overtakes him, sweeps away his reason in a red tide of insistence --

     -- and he throws himself from the bed, not bothering to grab his shirt, or his boots --

     -- but he does grab and unsheathe his sword, a long heavy ugly thing, as he reaches for the doorknob.

     Ashton's back is to him as he slips out of the house, bare feet silent on the porch. The swords flicker, and the dragons dart, and Ashton sways, not noticing as Dias slowly moves down into the grass. Dias stares at Ashton's back for just a moment, glistening with sweat even in the faint dawn's light, so slender, so vulnerable, so familiar, even with the addition of a pair of dragons --

     -- and he raises his sword and charges towards the unaware Ashton, silently, his eyes fixed on the line of Crests that trails down Ashton's spine.

     He gets within ten feet.

     Ten feet away, still silent as only Dias can be, and Ashton suddenly whips around, lithe and fast, always so fast, his swords flashing out into their ready position. He doesn't look afraid -- nothing frightens Ashton, nothing, when his Crests burn on his body -- but startlement and an awful resignation flash across Ashton's face as he recognizes Dias.

     As Ashton recognizes exactly who it was that was about to try and kill him, and resigns himself to that fate, in the space of a single rapid breath.

     A warrior first, to the very end.

     It almost breaks Dias' heart.

     The maddening compulsion leaves Dias as fast as it gripped him. His sword falls from his hand to thump into the grass, and Dias stops dead, swaying gently in place, his eyes wild in his face again. Ten feet away -- ten feet -- he knew I was here, he knew I was behind him, he'll never die that way, the dream was wrong, it was wrong --
     Ashton slowly lowers his swords. That awful resignation fades along with his Crests, replaced by a certain controlled fear --

     -- fear of Dias, who always promised Ashton that he'd never hurt him, no matter what --

     -- fear of Dias.

     Oh god, thinks Dias. What am I doing -- what have I done?

     Dias abruptly sinks to his knees in the grass. The morning dew quickly soaks through his pants. He doesn't notice. His eyes are riveted to Ashton's, to the confusion, the shock, the fear on Ashton's face. The swords are still held loosely in Ashton's hands; the thought that Ashton is now afraid to sheathe his blades rips at Dias' heart.

     Dias holds out one shaking hand towards Ashton in an unconscious gesture of supplication. He can't find his voice; instead he silently mouths the words I'm sorry -- I'm so sorry -- Ashton --

     -- and the world spins, and goes dark around him. Dias collapses to the ground, unconscious. 

     Ashton makes a tiny, strangled, keening noise in the back of his throat.

     Hours later Dias wakes, in bed, with the morning sun streaming in through the window. Somehow Ashton managed to get Dias back into the house and into bed, stripping off his sodden pants before tucking him in. Three sheathed swords stand in one corner, far away from the bed.
     Ashton himself is curled up next to Dias, one arm flung across his stomach and the twisted scar there, the dragons snuggled tight against his back. And Ashton is awake, wide awake, staring at Dias with just the faintest hint of his earlier fear sparking in the back of his eyes.
     Dias starts to reach for Ashton, as if to reassure himself that Ashton is real; but then he stops, ashamed and uncertain. The abbreviated gesture and the expression on his face are enough, however. With a tiny breathy cry, Ashton throws himself onto Dias, clutching him in shaking arms.

     Ashton cries on Dias' shoulder for several minutes. Dias holds him close and whispers an almost inaudible apology for every tear, his own eyes squeezed tightly shut.

     Half an hour later, curled around each other in the nest of blankets, Dias haltingly explains what happened, explains the insane compulsion that drove him out into the dawn. The sympathy -- the incompletely masked pity -- in Ashton's eyes is painful to see --

     -- but nowhere near as terrible as the fear that it has replaced. Ashton has forgiven him --

     -- perhaps eventually he'll forgive himself.

For those who care about such things, this fic stars the same Dias and the same Ashton as Warmth, Cool Air, and Art of the Triangle, and should be considered part of the same continuum. They are not, however, the same Dias and Ashton from the insanely wrong smutfic Blowing My Mind. Cough.

I might as well have subtitled this 'Angst, Now With Dashes'. Another one of my fitful efforts to do something stylish with punctuation. I'm so bloody artistic I don't know how I can stand myself. And now, I'll stop drooling sarcasm all over everything.

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