Chapter Text
Leonardo dreams. He always had but his recent dreams are different. Much different from the visions that he used to have after smoking what happened to be at the moment in the pipe. This time no bloodshed, no memories of his mother and no demons. Those he has now are rather ‘re-dreams’ as Da Vinci tends to call them.
Each night brings new dream - or nightmare rather - where he re-lives events, re-meets people, re-has conversations.
They haunt him. Showing possibilities that would await him if he had enough courage to take action. All of them haunt him for cowardice. Because even if he may seem a brave man, this applies only to his inventions and as a human being he always had been a coward. He was taught that. He was taught that very painfully by his father. He learned to believe and then became a coward. But he also learned - this time for himself, without any discussable help given - how to hide it. How not to appear to be one. But those are just lies and lies and lies. This cowardice haunts him.
In those ‘re-dreams’ he has the whole palette of ‘what-ifs’ of life. And possibilities are so tempting that he regrets not choosing the path. Any of the paths to be precise. Most of them does not end well but the thrill, the emotions - they would be so much worth it. And the only thing he can do now is to weep that there was not enough strength in him to choose the desired path and keep to the track. He sometimes even wakes up screaming, tears still on his cheeks. He almost never cries. In his life it happened so rarely he had forgotten how is it like to do so. At the time Leonardo wakes up he is truly scared. That also happens rarely.
And most of his dreams contain Riario - like his life choices depended on the relation with this particular man. He wonders why, because it simply doesn’t make sense. Yet, each meeting with him is re-dreamed and Leonardo thoroughly experiences each of the endings of various roads. There are not many people who Leonardo dreamed about in the past - there had always been his mother. More recently the Turk. And now there is only Riario. Of course more people appear but the focus is always on the person of that man - he is always there, at the back of his head if not anywhere in sight. Always.
From time to time, when Da Vinci wakes up reality and the dream are stirred together and he is not sure where, what and who. Not to mention that dreams are too realistic for him to not be mistaken for reality. Sometimes he just wishes he could stay in the dream forever because it seems so right to be there, to enjoy the right company, to feel (sometimes guilty) pleasure of being for once in the right place in the world. Things are perfect there. Right.
Only sometimes it is more of a nightmare where death is as common as air and corpses lay in heaps ready to be buried or burned. He would gladly be woken up.
Only once Nico decided to watch over him in sleep, Leonardo didn’t protest.
“Maestro, you were screaming.” - was the only thing he heard in the morning as Nico hurried to leave the place as quickly as possible.
The fantasy makes him lose his mind but he is not sure he want to come back to reality.