A/N: Well, this oneshot was influenced by the philosopher René Descartes' (Cogito Ergo Sum); I came to think of it while watching Ergo Proxy, though. Somehow, I thought that maybe you could turn the Cogito Ergo Sum sentence into a Fragile Dreams oneshot.

If you feel like it, tell me what you think about it! I'm thankful for any review, especially for tips!

- Black As The Night -

Slowly, one after the other, moments of my life are slipping through the growing holes in my conscience.

And by now, I can't even tell anymore what really happened to me. Even though I know what had happened, a sense of knowing that feels like looking into a tarnished mirror and seeing mere shadows and contours of moments – moments that were supposed to have been there, to have been real – but now, I start doubting their existence. What is it now that I can hold on to?

Looking down into the depths of dark glass, blind from scratches and flaws, I knit my forehead, trying to make out the blurry figures of my so-called memories.

I'm supposed to have been living with that old man, my grandfather, for the last years. And I'm supposed to have met other people, people who visited us – my mind tells me that there was a woman, an aunt who came to drink tea with us.
But when I try to recall it – all I can gather are the facts. Nothing more, no emotions attached to them. How is it possible that this had been real when I didn't even feel anything?

Even the faces aren't clear. What did that old man really look like? His face, his eyes, his clothes – everything is just a guess, like a hand searching in damp mist, like the memory of a long forgotten dream.
Because you can't remember what you dreamed in the same way you would if it had been real. Those 'memories', the ones you've got from a dream, are nothing more than fading shadows, pale and dispersing into grey dust when you touch them.

It's because no one of them is around anymore. It's because there has been no one at all for too long. I've been wandering, searching in a blank world, abandoned from every human soul, so long that now, I even wonder whether there have been other human beings at all.
Now, that I let my eyes sway over broken ruins and shadowy landscape, full of wrecks and remains of an old world, everything broken and destroyed, rotting – is it really possible that this once had been the world I believe to remember? Could it really be that, just like that, from one day to the other, all of this had turned into a forgotten world – or had this world of my memory never existed?

I can't say for sure what was there. All that I can say for sure right now is what I can see with certainty – a broken world in front of my eyes, shadowy, one single never-ending dawns; this is what I can be sure of now.

I am only sure of myself. Me, who is thinking, is definitely there.

And there is still Crow.
The other person of which I can say with certainty that he exists. Crow is here, right in this moment. He's around me, just like the dark blue and grey contures of ruins and remains, all the shadowy, misty forms my eyes get to see…

But Crow isn't like them. He's like another me.
He's living, in some way – even if he's not living the way I do, he's still alive at some point. He's changing, and talking to me, he's moving.

And he's the only thing, out of the whole world left by now, that is able to make me feel. Feel, not in the way of a reminded emotion, out of a dusty memory, like an old copy that can only hold half of the colour after all the time that had passed.

When I'm reflecting the memories I still have, let it pass in front of my eyes, it is nothing more than a tearing sensation in my guts, a feeling of longing melancholy – melancholy for a blurred memory, an washed-out image in my head.

But when I'm with Crow, there's life. It's like he can make me feel my breath, as if I'd forgotten to feel it – while I had been surrounded by nothing but unsure landscape, until I almost doubted my own being.

Crow can't give me any certainty of my previous life. He doesn't belong to that life. But he can give me absolute certainty of my own existence, and the existence of himself.

Only because he's here, with me. Just like I am here.
He's real, something I can hold onto when I feel like drowning in haze

Since the time I first met him I have felt complete.
My mind became peaceful in a way, as if I had found my destination. I could smell the air around me, I could feel the grass and the stones on the floor; all of my nerves had become alive again, because Crow made me feel again.

Now, I can breathe without fearing to suffocate – suffocate from the uncertainty of knowing nothing, being sure of absolutely nothing in this shattered world.

And that is why I love you, Crow. The machine that keeps me alive.

I open my eyes and look up into the huskily illuminated sky above me – glowing softly with violet and blue. The dawn is beautiful, though I know that it will never cease.

When I turn my head, I see him lying next to me, on his back and with his head resting on his crossed arms.

Crow's face is smooth in sleep – without any fear or sadness. It's just so much like him, the fearless and brave one.
I stretch out my hand towards him and brush over his chin gently – the skin is smooth and soft, and it would've felt even human if it hadn't been so cold. Too cool for a skin that was streamed by blood.

I look down at my own hands, small and soft. There's a dark cut over my finger, and the wound is stinging dumbly, a mark of dried blood.

What is the use of blood and a heart that's beating now? It doesn't make a difference to me whether he is made of blood and flesh or not.
Because to me, Crow is exactly what I need. The way he is seems to be just what I am.
He's like the completation of myself.

Maybe he actually is. Maybe he's not made of flesh and blood because I am made of it; because we're like matching pieces of a puzzle, completing each other so that the sharp and uneven edges turn into rounded curves.

That's why he is the only one I'm able to love. Because he completes me.