Work Text:
He was tired. Very tired. And.. scared?
He’d always been really exhausted with life in general, but today, he felt as if something bad was going to happen. Whether it’d happen tomorrow, or today, or in an hour, he knew it wasn't going to be good.
It’s like that feeling you get when you’re watching a horror movie, and you see the main character walk towards the basement door. You don’t know what you’ll see, or what’ll happen, but you always know it’s not going to be good. That's exactly what Nagisa was feeling now. Except it was constant . Like the scene is replaying over and over again, and you can never get used to the unsettling feeling in your chest.
That’s why Nagisa was here, hugging his knees while he tried to push himself further into the wall next to his bed. He knew it wasn’t going to do anything. But the feeling was just starting to bother him more every second. It’s like he needs to run away. To escape whatever it was. It felt as if he was walking on literal eggs , and if one of them breaks, he will too.
It didn’t help when he heard his mother come home from work. He thought that maybe he had done something wrong, and his mother wasn’t going to like it. But the thought only confused him. If he had done something wrong, wouldn’t he remember it? He's tried many times already to try and recall everything that has happened the week before, but overall, everything was perfectly normal.
He flinched at the sudden break of silence
“I’m home!” His mother announced.
That’s normal, right? It happens everyday. There's nothing to be scared of. Nothing is going to happen to him. He answered back with a simple ‘Welcome back.” And went back to rummaging through his brain. If he had done something wrong, then his mother would’ve called him out on it by now. Unless she wanted to make things difficult, or just seemingly unfair.
The rest of his day went.. normal.
He did his homework, talked to some of his friends, ate dinner with his normal mother, showered, and got ready for bed. Pretty boring, but at least nothing terrible happened. He cursed himself for worrying about it so much before. It turns out he really was stressing over nothing. He finally shut his eyes and let himself rest, peacefully, and confident that nothing was going to happen to him in his sleep. He was fine. Perfectly fine.
As he shifted into dreamland, he tried to ignore the growing guilt once again, the same guilty feeling he felt this morning, but it was far too late. He'd already remembered.
The same dream, or rather a memory, replaying over and over again. He feels like he’s fully conscious whilst he's asleep, which makes it even worse. It's like he's in the dream, experiencing everything again and again, and he can never escape until he wakes up naturally. The screams of that poor man still ring in his head even when he wakes up. The squelches of his blood against Nagisa's knife still make him nauseous. And the guilt he recognizes creeps back up for the rest of the day.
He really shouldn’t have killed that man that night. It wasn't like he had a choice after all, but if he knew what he’d be getting into beforehand, he would’ve much rather have killed himself .