Title: Dreams of What Was
Ship: Durbe x Nasch
Chapter: One||Words: 500
Genre: Romance, Angst||Rated: G
Challenges: Diversity Writing, Zexal canon, A91, at least one divider; ZexalWeek 2020, day #3: songbird
Notes: There's a song I know where two people have broken up but one still feels they can feel the other around regardless. It's not a perfect match for Durbe and Nasch but it struck me and I went with it.
Summary: Dreams can be very disturbing things, whether you know what they are or not.

Durbe. Durbe. Durbe. Wake up. You're having a nightmare.

Durbe jerked up, stone fingers clutching at the soft blanket he'd pulled over himself when he'd retired for sleep.

Sleep wasn't necessary for Barians. But it gave them time to rest their minds, which they did need now and then.

His eyes darted this way and that, hoping against hope for that voice to sound again, to hear Nasch as he had so many times. Then there would be an amused laugh and Merag would enter from somewhere as well.

Then the real nightmare, the one where they'd vanished and not been seen or heard from in over ten human years, would be over.

But they didn't come. He heard nothing at all. Slowly Durbe let out a deep sigh.

I know I heard him. It wouldn't be the first time. In the first handful of months after their disappearance, he heard and saw them everywhere, only they were never there.

A silent sigh, then he did what he always did when he woke from these dreams. He closed his eyes and extended his Barian senses, those that went beyond what sight or sound were. Try as he might, there wasn't a hint of anything there. Nothing and no one.

No Nasch. No Merag. Just the castle that held only the other Barian Emperors.

Durbe sighed and pulled himself to his feet. There remained work to be done, and he was the one to do it.

Whatever he'd heard, it was just a dream.

Just a dream and nothing more. Kamishiro Ryouga peered out at the world, decided he didn't want to deal with it today, and tucked his head under his pillow.

It wasn't the first time that he'd had that dream. At least he didn't think it was. He couldn't remember the dream itself and most of the time he didn't even think about it. It simply existed in the back of his head, a vague sensation that there was someone out there who he missed and who missed him.

Someone who wasn't Rio. She was the only one that he'd ever told this to. She didn't have any more answers than he did – and now she had no answers at all. He wondered sometimes if the dream had been a warning about what would happen to her.

Probably not. The dream wasn't a warning dream. He remained certain of that, at least.

He pushed the thought out of his head and tried to get back to sleep. A tiny part of him thought about doing his homework before he decided he couldn't be bothered. Going through his deck was a lot more attractive – even if he didn't really want to do that, either. Dueling didn't have the spark it once had, not since – well, not since that whole mess with IV.

He wished he could remember the dream. Whoever that person was, they had to be a lot more interesting than anyone he knew now.

Who wouldn't be?

The End

Note: You know, looking back at this, I now have this idea for a soulmate AU, one of those where the soulmates share dreams. Just imagine that for Durbe and Nasch. Anyone interested?