Chapter Text
Po was dreaming. She was lying on one of the green hills surrounding their home, the grass waving and shifting around her like a thousand tiny hands. The sun shone down brilliantly, golden rays hazing her vision. To her side, Laa Laa lounged, the yellow tubby's eyes closed to the sun, her TV displaying a vague mix of dancing colors, bright oranges and pinks swirling and half-forming shapes that almost reminded her of something she couldn’t quite place.
Po was happy. Not really. It was some of that strange dream logic. She was lying there, thinking, I am happy, wondering at the tranquil beauty of the scene around her, even while something bitter and dark curled in the pit of her stomach. Fluffy white clouds drifted above, screaming with their every move. It was a low, pressing sound, something that could only be described as loud silence. It pressed on her ears and her heart, crushing fear deep within her, like a hand packing down sand, like some careless child making sure it was pressed deep into every crevice and vein of her body.
Terror coursed through Po's veins, her bones hollowed and shaky, and still she lay in the bright grass, and thought I am happy. Deep within, her waking self, the self that knew she must be dreaming, formed a shadow of the thought that that wasn’t true. But it meant nothing, as the red tubby turned to Laa Laa beside her. She was beautiful, and bright, practically glowing in the abundant sunshine.
Laa Laa reached towards her red lover, tracing a warm hand down her cheek. It felt unbearingly real. The smart part of Po, the conscious part, thought about memory, although whether she was thinking she hoped to remember this or that this touch could only be a memory was impossible to tell.
Her hand was warmer than it ought to be. Po basked in the beauty of Laa Laa’s gaze, softer than it had any right to be, and ignored how her wife did not cast a shadow on the grass surrounding them. The clouds droned on, louder than could be heard in the quiet meadow.
Po focused on Tinky Winky, on his warm purple hand caressing her cheek. The conscious part of her knew this had changed, that it hadn’t always been Tinky Winky, that this meant something important, and she whispered discontented screams to bring back Laa Laa. The dream part of her ignored this, pushed it under the sound of the clouds and the swaying of the grass, and looked into Tinky Winky’s brown eyes. There was a look in them that had never been there before, a kindness, a love, like Laa Laa’s shadow had seeped into the face of the purple humanoid, softening the corners and sharpening the curves, combining fantasy and reality between the two figures until it became something new entirely.
Deep within herself, Po felt a rising discomfort. Her dream conscious thought that this must be because of the love she felt. Too much love. Remember this, this is pure happiness. Po ignored the way this happiness made her sick to her stomach.
The dream changed. Almost imperceptibly, the grass had gone from mystical and soft, waving and caressing around her form, to scathingly scratchy, like long nails being raked across her body with just enough pressure to leave a mark. She was suddenly conscious of the dirt beneath her, the cold of the ground seeping into her skin despite the relentless scratching of the grass.
Tinky Winky’s hand was cool. It no longer felt real. Po closed her eyes as the pit in her stomach widened and stretched, a yawning cavern big enough to fall into, as physical a feeling as the ground beneath her but still as unreal as the purple hand on her cheek.
A barrage of sensations assaulted her as soon as she abandoned the peaceful scene. Her vision was double, as it often is in dreams, and she saw at the same time swirling dots of color under her closed eyes, and the unreal, threatening, lovestruck gaze of Tinky Winky beside her.
She thought she could see some haze of a memory or former dream that looked like Laa Laa or Dipsy about to do something awful. She might have been imagining it. The calling of the clouds shrieked and roared until she could hear nothing else, although in her half sight she could see her friends mouths moving in unison. The scratching caresses of the grass turned to a hundred needles pressed in her skin, a dozen hands groping and tracing her body, cascades of bubbles falling in lines down her back and front, TV and face.
The conscious part of her found this unbearable. She thought to herself that she should wake up.
It could’ve been seconds or hours or days or minutes or years or months or no time at all, but at some point she did. She couldn’t tell if it was gradual or quick, but the ebbing and flowing of pain abated, and Po knew for certain that the only feeling that remained from her dream was the sickly blackness in the pit of her stomach.
Her senses of reality had returned to her.
She could smell herself on the warm, sweaty mess of her sheets, pressed up against her face. There was a noise coming from downstairs, like someone in the kitchen. Without opening her eyes, she could feel the sun beaming in through her circular window, pressing against her and warming her bed.
She let the dream fade from her memory, like waves of her consciousness endlessly erasing markings in the sand.
Po lay still. She had slept for so long it had come around and made her tired again, but her mind was clear. Empty.
She didn’t want to sleep again.
She didn’t want to dream again. These days, dreams had so much more to say than the daytime.
She didn’t want to get up.
She was drained.
She wished someone would come in, crossing the threshold with quiet footsteps, shaking her shoulder gently, murmuring that it was time to get up, that they had something to do that day. That’s what someone would do if this was a dream.
She wished she could know that something would be waiting for her if she sat up.
She wanted wonder, adventure, something waiting for her at the edge of her bed, so that she could know all she had to do was reach out and touch it.
She wanted it so badly it hurt, a dull ache in her heart.
She opened her eyes, sick of the darkness pressing against them. Po turned over, groaning an “Uh oh” as she stretched half-heartedly. Something caught her attention through the morning blur of her vision - a shape, a yellow figure in the corner of her vision.
Po locked eyes with Laa Laa, hovering like a guardian angel in her doorway.
Something sparked like a crack of lightning through the blackness of Po’s insides, something electrifying and yellow as the skin of the former lover looking down at her. Everything Po wanted crashed down on her in a single wave, a tsunami of want, of need, of knowing that to have would mean healing, that everything could be okay again, if she could and Laa Laa could just be again, if she could have the yellow tubby’s fingerless hand on her cheek, have her golden skin just a step closer.
Laa Laa was what it felt like to dream. Or at least, that’s how Po remembered her.
“Laa Laa-” She croaked, desperation welling up and spilling out of her so quickly it felt like panic.
“Fuck off.” The yellow angel’s cold words hit like a slap in the face, like a plunge into ice water. Except, instead of making everything clear, they brought Po back to reality.
Laa Laa was gone. The red tubby didn’t see her walk away, she was just… gone.
Dimly, somewhere, everything Po wanted screamed agony against her temples, constricting her heart, but she stopped listening. Stopped thinking.
Her vision was blurry. Had she even seen Laa Laa? She decided, with the shadow of a thought, that she didn't care.
Pain was easier to bear when you didn’t have to think about why it was there. (Funny, how even in the shadow of a thought, dragged up from the yawning void she spent her days in, she could still lie to herself.)
Dully, her heart ached.
Not so dully, her head ached. Had she been drinking?
Her bones were heavy, her skin felt raw. Had she been with someone?
A dull, screaming silence pressed against her ears.
Sweat and the stench of however long it had been since she last showered filled her nose.
Po pressed her face back into the pillows. Deep within herself, she remembered times when she spent her entire days, her entire life, awake and up. Moving. Talking. Thinking.
Po didn’t think these days, she just felt. And she felt damn too much, in her opinion.
So, as the warm light of morning streamed in through her window, Po blocked out the sun with her little cocoon of bedsheets, enclosing herself in her own filth like if the blankets spent enough time stuck to her skin, they would start feeling like the comfort of someone else.
Sounds drifted towards her from outside her room, a conversation, a stove lighting, a door closing. They barely registered. The red tubby covered her ears with her fingerless hands until screaming silence was her only company.