TRANSLATION: When the Moon Kissed the Night  TW: Abuse 

A desperate grip awakens me. "No, please." It tightens around my wrist like a snake. "No, no, no. No!" My body jerks forward, and I quickly turn to see Grimm trembling—no—I was looking at Grimm having a nightmare. "Brother, please." Is his last attempt at a plea. His fingers are locked on my wrist and black smoke is curling around it like binding knots. His poisonous self is out with beads of sweat covering every inch of his face.

I place my other hand on his chest, an abnormal heart rate again. He begs as if his life were about to end, "Brother, don't." His eyes shut like a scared child. I push my hand firmly against his heart and start uttering the same calming spell I used on him earlier. "Wake up, Grimm. What you're dreaming isn't real. It's not real." I said to him, but he keeps squeezing me. If I don't do something else, he is going to break my wrist.

The shadows are crawling to my arm, aiming for my neck.

I turned his chin away and brought my lips near his ear. "This is going to hurt, but it's going to wake you up." I inhaled, then released an airy scream. The shadows undid their knots and his grip fell off my wrist. But in a quick move, I was pushed down and somehow was caged beneath him.

His eyes were like the dead of night. Empty. "The nightmare is over." I rasped out.

Grimm pants heavily as he blinks cautiously returning to some normalcy. He moves his frame away from my body, and I can finally breathe. For a moment, I thought he couldn't see me. I sit up pull my robe together, and look over to him. His shoulders are slouching and his eyes are closed as if he was trying to erase the nightmare at once. But it seemed more like a memory than a nightmare.

He speaks so quietly, I can barely hear him. "Did I—did I hurt you?" I look down at my wrist, marked in red. I've dealt with worse and he hadn't done it on purpose. It was nothing that couldn't be healed.

I start to say, "I'll be fine—"

"Don't pretend. Not with me. Not ever." He cuts his gaze to mine, raw and intense. "I hurt you and I promised you that I would never hurt you." It feels as if he is talking about something entirely different but I don't know what it is. He believes he has truly hurt me. The guilt and shame in his eyes is clear.

I stretch my throbbing wrist to him, "Fine. Then give your hand so I can bite it. Or your arm so I can break it." He looks a little stunned. "It would be fair that way, wouldn't it? You hurt me, and I hurt you back. Is that what you want?" His jaw clenches. I drop my hand back to my lap.

"Grimm," I said as I held his gaze and spoke clearer than the ocean. "You did not hurt me. You have done nothing to hurt me. I don't care what you believe or think, but I know when I'm in pain. I know when I'm hurting." I swallowed for my next words as they wouldn't be so kind to him. "This—it's because you're hurting. You're the one in pain." He looks away as if he's been caught in a crime.

The room is filled with silence, slowly becoming darker.

I'm starting to get more alarmed by the way Grimm is acting. His seriousness with zero flirtatious comments or his sly smirk was worrying. I always knew their part of his facade but I needed them just as much as he did. The more he looked at the wall, the more he looked as if nothing ever lived inside of him. Maybe I should call for Hans. Although I didn't know where the demon had gone, I knew where he lived. I had read in my father's books on how to summon a demon. I've never done it before but I could try. It doesn't hurt to try.

As I get up from the floor, Grimm speaks up. "I can't hurt. I'm a God, I don't hurt. I healed all those years ago, and I have the scars to prove it but why—" he faces me with a desperation of needing an answer, "But why does it still hurt?" And I wish I had the answer. I wish I knew too.

As if he knew, he then asked. "Can I tell you about him? Would you mind if I spoke to you about my brother?" The Capturer of Souls whispers fainter than a dead man full of regrets.

I walk to him and kneel in front of him. I give him the appropriate response as The Crier of Souls. "No, I don't mind at all. I'm all ears." Fate might've said he had to open his heart to me, and what other way was letting someone in than to tell them your greatest heartbreak. But I wish Fate hadn't forcefully merged our paths. I would've liked to know him without her involvement.

I wonder about the first time we met. I wonder about him often.

With barely any light in the room, a strange emotion crosses Grimm's eyes. He looks fragile and invincible all at once. Grimm reaches for my face, his fingers skimming down my cheek and my head slightly turns at his touch. "But I don't want you to cry. No tears for me."

I frowned and pulled myself back, crossing my arms. "I know I cry a lot but do you honestly believe I would cry for you so easily? You're too arrogant for your own good. As if you're worthy of my tears. I know my value." I snapped.

Grimm finally cracks a smile, "I knew you wouldn't. I'm just reminding you that your precious tears aren't worthy of anyone. And that I'm not above them either." It felt like he was telling me what to do. I didn't like that. So what if I did cry for him, what happens?

But Grimm begins his story before I could ask him.

"I have seventeen siblings, and long ago we were eighteen in this world. Everything was perfect. Everyone got along, hardly any disagreements. We would've never harmed each other. Even my mother was much kinder. But I had a brother and he was—" he pauses briefly as if he is trying to conjure an image, "He was the king of all of us—and the kindest soul to ever exist. He took our hands and matured our powers, he made us into what my mother wanted us to be, gods. But he wasn't like her, he never pressured us or lost his patience. He saw us as more than immortal beings to be divine." He turns over to look at me, his eyes shining like he is telling the story of a fallen hero. "Fate wanted gods and goddesses. My brother, ruler of the gods, wanted brothers and sisters. He made a family. And I broke it."

He swallows. "I told you before, the reason I lost my wings was because I killed someone who was dearly loved. I'll tell you some of it. My brother fell in love with a mortal. So for a while, my brother neglected his duties. There is nothing more Fate hates than someone not following their path. Despite my brother being her favorite son, even he couldn't stop her cruelty. The mortal died." 

Dread starts to fill my stomach. 

"My brother came to me on all fours, begging me to bring her back but I couldn't. I wasn't strong enough to do it, and he hated me for it. So the brother I once knew, vanished. Vicious and brutal are words I never thought I would use to describe my brother. He was good, he was kind. He was my king, my friend, my—" he stops a moment as if a knife had been wedged between his chest, "my brother."

Then his tone changed from the loss of a loved one, but a man so cruel that he should remain forgotten. "He ruled like a tyrant instead of like a king. He was no longer patient with us and pushed us to exert our power. Then he found a way to control us, and it was much worse than Fate's puppeteering. Sometimes we would try to fight him, and it made things worse. Lucky for me, I received most of his lashings as he blamed me for everything. His hate was forged by me. All it ever felt like was as if I didn't exist. That's when I started to hate being a god. What's the point of being powerful and immortal if I'm only meant to suffer, and no one could ever know it." 

I think he doesn't want to cry because he thinks I'm going to pity him and find him weak.

But I never thought of him like that. I hold my breath and then swallow the knot inside my throat. I will not cry. "Did Fate do something?" I asked, although his face said it all.

"She watched. She said, 'He was building my pain tolerance." My eyes burned and my blood was boiling. How could she ever say that? Why did Fate ever become a mother if she only saw her children as gods?

Grimm raises his hand, and a puff of black smoke swirls at his palm. "I suppose it worked," he muttered. "Would you believe me if I told you I used to have light and it burned brighter than the sun?" He stares at it, achingly so. "He came at me one day, harder and stronger than any other day. That same day I chose to have enough of his anger. We fought like never before, and the whole world felt it too. The end of something. I thought I was going to die when my brother took hold of my power. He said, 'All you know how to do is take what isn't yours, your first lesson should've been how to suffer a loss' and I don't think he meant to include himself but I mourned him anyway when he died. He burned my light away until it became dust." 

He closes his hand into a fist, the smoke cutting through his fingers. "My brother believed he eradicated my power but he gave me an unknown poison that ultimately killed him." he finished.

He was the burning sun until he exploded into the darkness with pieces of shine left, he became the night. If only he knew he was still beautiful.

I keep thinking about what Grimm must've gone through under his brother's reign. All he had to endure. All he never spoke about until now. And I hate Grimm mourning his brother, he doesn't deserve it. This was his first time sleeping, and in his first dream, his brother was haunting him. He didn't deserve to have a hold on him like this, not after everything he did to him.

"And he took your wings." I quickly corrected myself. "He severed your wings." It must've happened when he was taking away his power as if that wasn't enough for that mother—

"You're shaking," Grimm says as his gaze turns to my trembling hands and places his hands over them. He tries to soothe them but then stops. "I forget I'm a bit colder than—" He starts to pull his hands away but I grasp them firmly, wanting to say, I don't mind the cold if it's you.

But I reminded him. "You said not to cry for you. But I can get angry for you, can't I?" I don't care that it happened a long time ago, I wanted to kill his brother even though he was dead. If he told me where his brother was buried, although he doesn't even deserve a burial, I would march into whatever cemetery he was laid at and dig his bone-dry corpse and cut each bone until they were nothing but pure fucking air. Maybe I shouldn't do that. I can't let people breathe shit.

Still, quite frankly, I believe I would be doing everyone a service. Such a waste of space for the garbage of a being.

He laughs softly, his eyes starry and bright like a summer night. "You care about me, don't you, raven? You care a lot."