storypaint (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
storypaint) wrote2010-08-15 01:48 pm
storypaint) wrote2010-08-15 01:48 pm
[Inception/xxxHOLiC] plaything of his memory (Clow/Yuuko; Watanuki gen)
Title: plaything of his memory
Fandom: Inception/xxxHOLiC
Length: 3879 words
Prompt: request post: Clow/Yuuko; Inception tie-in; Clow as Cobb, Watanuki as his architect, and Yuuko as his dead wife for anon
Pairing: Clow/Yuuko; slight Doumeki/Watanuki; primarily Watanuki gen
Other: Spoilers for xxxHOLiC and Inception both; familiarity with both canons is necessary. Rated PG-13 for non-graphic violence and a moment of eyescream.
Excerpt: "Do you like dreaming?" she whispers, pressing him down onto the divan, resting her hand, fingers splayed, on his chest like a promise. "Do you like it, Watanuki? Do you want to do this for Clow?"
The first time Watanuki sees her, Yuuko smiles at him. She has a piercing red gaze and she cocks her head to one side, reaching out and taking his chin in her hand, tipping him up to look at her. He stares. She's beautiful, tall and pale and angular, with generous breasts and long hair that trails like a raven river down to her knees, but somehow she gives him an impression of danger. She isn't like the other projections he's seen so far. He forgets to breathe as she gazes into his eyes.
"He found a cute one," she purrs, and then she snaps his neck, the swift crack echoing in Watanuki's ears even as he gasps and comes out of the dream, flailing for the IV and a woman who is no longer there.
Clow comes out of the dream a few seconds later. He looks sidelong at Watanuki for just a moment. Watanuki thinks that he almost seems embarrassed.
"Who's she?" Watanuki asks, his voice raw.
Clow shakes his head and gets up from the chair. Watanuki watches his measured steps as he crosses the warehouse and opens the door. He wonders, not for the first time, what exactly he's gotten himself into.
*
"Her name is Yuuko," Doumeki says. They are sitting in a cafe in a city that resembles Tokyo, and Watanuki has a half-drank cup of tea in front of him. Clow has remained mute on the subject of the woman who killed Watanuki, and after a few days of furious inner debate, Watanuki decided to ask Doumeki. The point man, as Clow calls him, is quiet and fussy, precise in mannerism and dress. He doesn't do small talk and he manages to offend Watanuki at least three times in every conversation. He hasn't offered any information that isn't directly related to the mission before, so though Watanuki asks, he doesn't expect an answer.
"Clow's wife," Doumeki continues. He finishes his tea before saying anything else. "He can't keep her out."
"What do you mean?" Watanuki asks. His fingers itch to make and change, but he can't forget the sound of his neck breaking, the feel of her hand on his neck.
"She's dead," Doumeki says, "but he can't let her go. He won't."
"Why would you keep someone like that in a dream?" Watanuki demands furiously. He smacks his fist on the table and the other people in the cafe turn to stare at them. It's a bit unnerving. Clow and Doumeki keep saying that he'll get used to it, but the projections all creep him out, like ghosts following at his heels.
Doumeki shakes his head. "She wasn't like that when she was alive." He stands up, reaches into his pocket for his wallet, and then stops, turns abruptly, and begins to walk away. Watanuki scrambles to follow, turning back over his shoulder to regard their abandoned cups. He knows this world isn't real and payment isn't strictly necessary, but it still feels strange.
"Show me what you can do," Doumeki says, as he's said to Watanuki every day this week, and Watanuki sighs and pushes his irritation away. He starts to build.
*
Anytime Clow takes Watanuki into his own dreams, Yuuko shows up. Sometimes it takes a while, and Clow dares to laugh and joke and tease. He seems to have adopted his little architect as someone fun to mess with (and Fai, the rumpled forger Clow brings to them in the second week, seems to agree, though he also spends his time irritating the grumpy chemist that Clow has added to the team).
Clow's mind is a circular room, rimmed with portraits, each portrait a window into his psyche. The room is large and Watanuki tries not to stare too closely at any picture he is not invited to appreciate, but there's one that he's curious about, covered over with a heavy curtain. The light above it is burned out.
And so when Clow's attention is on one of the projections in this art gallery, Watanuki rips away the curtain and stares, and he falls into a dim room full of heady smoke. The walls are paper screens and an ostentatious couch is the focal point of the room. The floor is littered with empty bottles that roll away with a harsh sound when Watanuki steps forward curiously.
"This place is a mess," he mumbles under his breath.
"I don't have a housekeeper," Yuuko breathes in his ear, and he screams and whirls around. She's half-dressed in a red kimono sliding off of her shoulders, obi loosely tied to show off her long, bare legs. She has a pipe in her hand, elaborately carved, and as she looks at him she brings it to her lips, draws, and then blows smoke in his face. Her breath smells like alcohol and his nose wrinkles.
"You're not supposed to be in here," she says to him, and puts her hand on his chest, pushing him further into the room. He is helpless to resist the curl of her lip, the annoyance in her eyes.
"Do you like dreaming?" she whispers, pressing him down onto the divan, resting her hand, fingers splayed, on his chest like a promise. "Do you like it, Watanuki? Do you want to do this for Clow?"
"I," Watanuki begins. He gulps. "I like creating. I like--"
"It's just a dream," she whispers, grabbing him roughly by the front of his shirt. She shoves the lit end of his pipe into his eye and when Clow arrives, a little out of breath, all he can hear is Watanuki's endless keening scream.
He doesn't hesitate to shoot his architect. Yuuko lets the body drop to the ground. Then she is in Clow's arms, her breasts pressed against his chest, her arms wound around his neck. She doesn't seem to care about the pistol he's holding out to one side. Her breath is warm on his neck.
"He shouldn't have been here," she says. "You don't let anyone see that you keep me here."
Her fingers are wandering down his chest, as affectionate as her tone is angry. He reaches for her hand, grabs, squeezes.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry."
She throws a bottle after him when he turns to go, but he's already pressed the gunbarrel to his head and the shatter of glass is drowned out by the gunshot.
*
Watanuki stays away from the warehouse for a week after that. Clow is silent and drawn. Doumeki sees the hope lingering in his eyes, and spends his time being efficient, preparing for their job as if their architect isn't missing, as if the plan isn't falling apart before it's even set in motion.
He's setting up the briefcase to go in to a patchy dream, full of holes from Watanuki's unfinished plans, when the boy walks in, his footsteps defiant, his face demanding Doumeki to ask. Doumeki doesn't. He just unwraps a new needle and offers it to Watanuki, who stabs himself angrily.
"Your totem," Doumeki says to Watanuki, his eyes widening just a little. Watanuki reaches into his pocket but does not remove what he keeps there.
"Clow told me," he answers with a scowl. "I made it this week. I'm not showing you, so don't ask."
Doumeki shakes his head, lifts a hand. Watanuki's trembling annoyance stills as Doumeki rests his thumb on Watanuki's cheek, right below his eye. The pause only lasts a moment before Watanuki's arms come up and he starts shouting irritably about getting work done and what does Doumeki think he's doing, being so familiar?
The episode unsettles him, though, and he lets Doumeki be the first to leave the dream. He turns to the street and gazes into a puddle, straining his neck to see what Doumeki saw.
One of his eyes is blue, and one of them is golden - the eye that Yuuko stabbed. He changes it back, and for a moment, the matching blue seems off.
"It's not a totem. Stupid Doumeki," he grumbles. "Stupid Clow, stupid Yuuko. All I wanted was--"
To build dreams. What a wish.
*
Doumeki doesn't stick around after training. He has other important things to do. But Watanuki always lingers, amped up on the adrenaline. Clow sits in the other room, head bent over plans, his eyes lined with weariness. Clow is always, always here - occasionally he goes out to buy them greasy takeout or to talk to someone they don't want to bring here, but he always comes back as soon as he can. Watanuki thinks that he even sleeps here, when he bothers to sleep.
Instead of going home, Watanuki pours over plans for another few hours, pushing his glasses up on his nose and redrawing a line here, erasing one there. He comes out of his concentration like he's emerging from a trance. A glance at his watch reveals the unforgiving numbers of 2:13AM and he sighs and prepares to leave. He has to be back here in the morning at eight for another briefing.
He grabs his schoolbag (and school feels so far away now, even though it's only been a few weeks), and he strides toward the door, but there's a pool of light slipping from underneath the door of the dreaming room, and he's always had a dangerous sense of curiosity. He's not surprised when he sees that it's Clow in the chair.
He surprises himself with the pricking of the IV. He shuts his eyes and opens them, and then he's there, in the dimness of Yuuko's parlor, and he knows without looking that his eye is golden again, because she looks up from the man who has his head in her lap and she smiles.
"You're interrupting a tender moment, Watanuki-kun," she says, her tone mocking. Clow's head is pressed into her stomach and she's holding him almost more like a mother than a lover, her arms around his shoulders. Watanuki has come to know Clow quite well in the past few weeks, but the sight makes him uncomfortable. Still, he knew that he would be stumbling upon something intimate, and he came anyway.
Clow mutters something against the dark velvet of her dress. He lifts his head and twists around to look at Watanuki, wearing that same almost-embarrassed face that he had the first time that Watanuki had met Yuuko.
"You need to tell me what this is about," Watanuki says firmly, with more confidence than he feels. He stares at Clow, his mismatched eyes glittering.
"You are a feisty one, Watanuki-kun," she says in the same sing-song, and it bothers him that she knows his name, even though he knows intellectually that she's just pulled it from Clow's mind. Clow leans up and kisses the shade on the cheek, and she turns the other, pouting, as he untangles their limbs and approaches Watanuki.
"Not here," he says.
"You can't do this in front of me," Yuuko says, reclining back on the couch so that her figure is at its best advantage. Watanuki coughs on phantom smoke.
"No, I can't," Clow says, and he opens the door.
It leads out onto a balcony that looks out on a place that resembles the city of Hong Kong, only two hundred years ago. Watanuki has been told that Clow used to be their architect ("Before," Doumeki said dryly, and he doesn't have to explain any more than that), and now he sees why. There's a vibrancy of color and life in the scene that makes him feel like he's stepped back in time in the real world. Clow mentioned something once before about a love for history, but now Watanuki sees it. He's momentarily distracted by the scene below, but then Clow approaches, clutching at the balcony railing and daring to smile.
"She's an amazing lady," he says.
"She's a murderer!" Watanuki bursts out. "Several times! She - this thing with my eye!"
He points to it as if Clow hasn't noticed, but Clow just shakes his head. "That's not Yuuko," he says softly, mournful. "That's only a projection. A tiny imitation of a vibrant and fascinating woman."
He shuts his eyes. On the ground below them, vendors call out to attract sales, their speech patterns familiar even if their words aren't quite clear. Clow explains.
*
Clow's father developed the dreaming technology first. Jack of all trades and master of none, he taught his son to manipulate the sleeping world with the same ease as one draws a picture. When the technology was officially developed by an independent company, and the world began to recognize the power of dreams, it didn't matter to either of them, nor to the buxom Japanese woman that Clow had fallen in love with.
"We thought of it like magic," Clow says. He lifts a hand and for just a second, a spark hovers in his palm, so bright that Watanuki squints. Clow closes his fingers and it's gone. Slowly, the city sounds creep back. The projections stop craning their necks to look at them. "We were magicians with the power to bend and build and change. And we always wanted to go further. When you give someone that much power, they often become reckless."
So they went deeper. And eventually they found a place that didn't exist yet, a place beyond the third level of consciousness. Clow explains the time-dilation.
"We couldn't leave," he says, as night falls over his crafted city. "She didn't want to. She convinced herself that it was real. She liked the idea of a world that revolved around us." He smiles, just a little. "She's always been somewhat self-centered."
"Doumeki said that she was dead," Watanuki says after a moment.
Clow sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose. "Eventually, I managed to convince her that Limbo wasn't real. That our real children were waiting for us out there. But she's stubborn, Watanuki-kun, you have to understand, so I had to--"
Yuuko's totem was a favored fan. In the world of dreams, a butterfly flits across it when it's opened. Watanuki has been wondering why Clow keeps it in his pocket at all times. Now he knows. It's because he reached into Yuuko's secret places and made the butterfly dance, and so she agreed to die with him. And live, presumably.
"But not long," he says, pulling the fan from his pocket, staring hard at the butterfly. "She drank herself to death. She wanted me to come too."
The last bottle had been poisoned. The police found the poison in his dresser drawer. He had refused to drink with her, that one last time.
"She wasn't herself at the end," Clow says, his voice low with grief. "She couldn't believe in her totem. She couldn't tell reality from dream."
"And you can't let her stay dead," Watanuki answers. It's a horrible story and he isn't sure he's happier knowing it, but now he knows why Yuuko is always here. That isn't Yuuko: it's Clow's guilt, and Clow's guilt is all-consuming.
"You have to tell the team!" he says, voice rising. "They have to know that she's out there! You can't let them go into this without knowing."
"Don't show me the blueprints," Clow answers, trying to return to calmness. He hasn't looked at one, Watanuki realizes. "She has a hard time getting in if she doesn't know how."
The door behind them creaks open. Clow whirls around, eyes widening, but he's too slow to stop Yuuko from pushing Watanuki off the balcony. She does it easily, one-handed, ignoring his scream as he falls. She leans against the railing.
"It's almost as if he wants to die," she says with obvious satisfaction.
Clow jolts out of the dream a few long seconds after Watanuki does, while the boy is still trying to recover his breath. He can never get used to being killed. He's too preoccupied in his gasping to notice the tears on Clow's cheeks. As far as Clow is concerned, that's a good thing.
Clow doesn't tell the team. Watanuki can't understand why, but he doesn't either.
*
Convincing the smiling green-eyed girl to trust them is an exercise that goes off without a hitch. Sakura, the "princess" of her father's company, is the most trusting person Watanuki has ever met. He feels bad for manipulating her so thoroughly. But now she trusts Clow and her projections aren't attacking. They have a goal. They'll make it. Clow will be able to go home to his children.
It hasn't been easy, by any means, but the team is competent and it really does seem to be working. She wants to reconnect with her parents; she wants to change. Syaoran watches her with wonder from a certain distance. Watanuki doesn't ask. He isn't being paid to ask, even if he burns with questions.
And then Yuuko is there and Clow's hand wavers on the trigger. Yuuko stares, predatory, at Sakura, and Sakura's eyes are so wide with fear that Watanuki is running before he even registers what he's doing. Pain blooms across his chest and Yuuko holds his head in her lap as he bleeds out, stroking his hair.
*
He's stumbling down the street with death at his heels (always, always, his entire life is running) when he grabs the fence and the thing disappears. He has hardly had a chance to breathe before his feet are walking him in, before children are greeting him with eerie twin smiles and a crazy woman is lecturing him about destiny. He yells and complains but the outcome of this meeting is foreordained.
And so Watanuki becomes the witch's servant and apprentice, though he doesn't know what that means yet.
All he knows is that his life is slipping away from him, that his memories are uncertain and he's apparently been giving them away with abandon. It's all for Sakura's sake and he does not regret the choice, but still he folds himself into Yuuko's arms and asks her if he's real.
"Of course," she answers. "Of course you're real."
There are things that she will lie about (or omit, that is her greatest sin), but Watanuki doesn't think that she would lie about something so important. And even if this world exists only in his head, it is worthwhile. It is a life he likes and wants to keep, for all of his shouting at Doumeki and pining after Himawari, for the danger and the brokenness and the truth.
And so even when she dies, he lives.
*
It is Doumeki Shizuka's son who brings Watanuki groceries now. He resembles his father in an uncanny way and Watanuki rails about it sometimes, when he's drunk enough; Hisoka knows that it's the shopowner's way of missing his father, and he doesn't rise to the bait. He keeps the egg his father has given him, and watches the teenage boy who is no longer a teenage boy. Watanuki has old, old eyes and a certain resigned way of walking, as if he's absorbed the aches and pains of age. He's looked just the same since Shizuka first brought Hisoka to meet him (and that had nearly been the last time Hisoka had visited; the argument lasted long into the night, shouting about duty and its limits, while Mokona got Hisoka shamefully drunk and they all ended up sleeping in the shop).
Hisoka's daughter is nine and he is already beginning to plan how to introduce her to their family's secret. They keep a shrine and they keep a shopkeeper; even Hisoka's great-grandfather took care of Watanuki in his own way. It would not occur to them to be resentful. They are fond of Watanuki, each in their own ways, no matter how strange and bitter he becomes. Hisoka wears the egg in the pocket that his wife has sewn into all of his clothes, and he wonders when the boy will have finally paid enough to move on.
Watanuki usually shoos him out before a customer comes, so when the bell chimes, he's somewhat surprised. He glances over at Watanuki, who seems confused as well. Maru and Moro abandon the garden hose to answer the door, but they are oddly silent when they return flanking a tall man with little round glasses and an apologetic smile. Watanuki is unsettled; he gapes for a moment before turning away deliberately, sniffing and adjusting his kimono.
"If you could give us a moment?" the man asks Hisoka, bowing quickly in apology. Hisoka glances at Watanuki, who does not move or betray any sign of agreement or disagreement. But Hisoka has noticed that the glasses that this man wears are nearly a perfect copy of Watanuki's - or perhaps it's the other way around. He gets up and goes into the shop, taking bottle and cup with him.
*
Clow sits down easily next to Watanuki on the porch. Watanuki glances at him over his shoulder.
"I don't care if it isn't real," Watanuki says. His voice cracks a little.
"If you didn't care, you could have sent me away and saved me the trouble," Clow answers with a chuckle. He withdraws an old-fashioned fan from his clothing and unfolds it. Watanuki twists around despite himself and watches the butterfly flutter. He reaches out and Clow doesn't move, even when Watanuki's fingers are hardly half an inch from touching it. Watanuki pauses and drops his hand.
"She's not out there," he says.
"No, she is not," Clow says carefully. "I must point out, however, that she is not here either. She's gone to a place far beyond dreams. And it is time that I let her be there."
"She-- I--" Watanuki shakes his head fervently, tears dripping down his face. "But if this is a dream, then none of it--"
"Didn't you tell her that it didn't matter if it was a dream? It was worth fighting for." Clow's voice is low, but he is still smiling. He reaches into the magician's robes that Watanuki's unconscious has supplied him with, and he produces a gun, which he sets on the porch between them. It is large and ugly and does not fit into this world at all.
"You know," Clow says, "I could use a babysitter. Single fathers have to work, unfortunately."
"I'm not your servant!" Watanuki snaps with an old fire he'd thought long gone. "First Yuuko-san, and then you--" He bites his cheek.
"What I can't figure," Clow continues, as if Watanuki hasn't interrupted at all, "is why you made Soel and Larg into such strange little creatures. Adorable ones, but they certainly don't resemble the traditional kind of children. Was it so hard to predict our offspring?" Mokona is in his lap. He strokes its ears and it nuzzles warmly into his hand.
Watanuki scowls.
"My children look rather like you, to be honest," Clow says. "Except for the eyes."
"If I shoot myself," Watanuki grumbles, "will you shut up?"
"Come back to reality with me," Clow says.
Watanuki picks up the pistol, which is heavier than he expected. He shuts his eyes and cocks the trigger against his temple, smelling gunpowder, listening to his heart pound.
My wish is for you to go on existing. That's all I want, he hears her say, a small voice in the dark.
Watanuki wakes.
Fandom: Inception/xxxHOLiC
Length: 3879 words
Prompt: request post: Clow/Yuuko; Inception tie-in; Clow as Cobb, Watanuki as his architect, and Yuuko as his dead wife for anon
Pairing: Clow/Yuuko; slight Doumeki/Watanuki; primarily Watanuki gen
Other: Spoilers for xxxHOLiC and Inception both; familiarity with both canons is necessary. Rated PG-13 for non-graphic violence and a moment of eyescream.
Excerpt: "Do you like dreaming?" she whispers, pressing him down onto the divan, resting her hand, fingers splayed, on his chest like a promise. "Do you like it, Watanuki? Do you want to do this for Clow?"
The first time Watanuki sees her, Yuuko smiles at him. She has a piercing red gaze and she cocks her head to one side, reaching out and taking his chin in her hand, tipping him up to look at her. He stares. She's beautiful, tall and pale and angular, with generous breasts and long hair that trails like a raven river down to her knees, but somehow she gives him an impression of danger. She isn't like the other projections he's seen so far. He forgets to breathe as she gazes into his eyes.
"He found a cute one," she purrs, and then she snaps his neck, the swift crack echoing in Watanuki's ears even as he gasps and comes out of the dream, flailing for the IV and a woman who is no longer there.
Clow comes out of the dream a few seconds later. He looks sidelong at Watanuki for just a moment. Watanuki thinks that he almost seems embarrassed.
"Who's she?" Watanuki asks, his voice raw.
Clow shakes his head and gets up from the chair. Watanuki watches his measured steps as he crosses the warehouse and opens the door. He wonders, not for the first time, what exactly he's gotten himself into.
*
"Her name is Yuuko," Doumeki says. They are sitting in a cafe in a city that resembles Tokyo, and Watanuki has a half-drank cup of tea in front of him. Clow has remained mute on the subject of the woman who killed Watanuki, and after a few days of furious inner debate, Watanuki decided to ask Doumeki. The point man, as Clow calls him, is quiet and fussy, precise in mannerism and dress. He doesn't do small talk and he manages to offend Watanuki at least three times in every conversation. He hasn't offered any information that isn't directly related to the mission before, so though Watanuki asks, he doesn't expect an answer.
"Clow's wife," Doumeki continues. He finishes his tea before saying anything else. "He can't keep her out."
"What do you mean?" Watanuki asks. His fingers itch to make and change, but he can't forget the sound of his neck breaking, the feel of her hand on his neck.
"She's dead," Doumeki says, "but he can't let her go. He won't."
"Why would you keep someone like that in a dream?" Watanuki demands furiously. He smacks his fist on the table and the other people in the cafe turn to stare at them. It's a bit unnerving. Clow and Doumeki keep saying that he'll get used to it, but the projections all creep him out, like ghosts following at his heels.
Doumeki shakes his head. "She wasn't like that when she was alive." He stands up, reaches into his pocket for his wallet, and then stops, turns abruptly, and begins to walk away. Watanuki scrambles to follow, turning back over his shoulder to regard their abandoned cups. He knows this world isn't real and payment isn't strictly necessary, but it still feels strange.
"Show me what you can do," Doumeki says, as he's said to Watanuki every day this week, and Watanuki sighs and pushes his irritation away. He starts to build.
*
Anytime Clow takes Watanuki into his own dreams, Yuuko shows up. Sometimes it takes a while, and Clow dares to laugh and joke and tease. He seems to have adopted his little architect as someone fun to mess with (and Fai, the rumpled forger Clow brings to them in the second week, seems to agree, though he also spends his time irritating the grumpy chemist that Clow has added to the team).
Clow's mind is a circular room, rimmed with portraits, each portrait a window into his psyche. The room is large and Watanuki tries not to stare too closely at any picture he is not invited to appreciate, but there's one that he's curious about, covered over with a heavy curtain. The light above it is burned out.
And so when Clow's attention is on one of the projections in this art gallery, Watanuki rips away the curtain and stares, and he falls into a dim room full of heady smoke. The walls are paper screens and an ostentatious couch is the focal point of the room. The floor is littered with empty bottles that roll away with a harsh sound when Watanuki steps forward curiously.
"This place is a mess," he mumbles under his breath.
"I don't have a housekeeper," Yuuko breathes in his ear, and he screams and whirls around. She's half-dressed in a red kimono sliding off of her shoulders, obi loosely tied to show off her long, bare legs. She has a pipe in her hand, elaborately carved, and as she looks at him she brings it to her lips, draws, and then blows smoke in his face. Her breath smells like alcohol and his nose wrinkles.
"You're not supposed to be in here," she says to him, and puts her hand on his chest, pushing him further into the room. He is helpless to resist the curl of her lip, the annoyance in her eyes.
"Do you like dreaming?" she whispers, pressing him down onto the divan, resting her hand, fingers splayed, on his chest like a promise. "Do you like it, Watanuki? Do you want to do this for Clow?"
"I," Watanuki begins. He gulps. "I like creating. I like--"
"It's just a dream," she whispers, grabbing him roughly by the front of his shirt. She shoves the lit end of his pipe into his eye and when Clow arrives, a little out of breath, all he can hear is Watanuki's endless keening scream.
He doesn't hesitate to shoot his architect. Yuuko lets the body drop to the ground. Then she is in Clow's arms, her breasts pressed against his chest, her arms wound around his neck. She doesn't seem to care about the pistol he's holding out to one side. Her breath is warm on his neck.
"He shouldn't have been here," she says. "You don't let anyone see that you keep me here."
Her fingers are wandering down his chest, as affectionate as her tone is angry. He reaches for her hand, grabs, squeezes.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry."
She throws a bottle after him when he turns to go, but he's already pressed the gunbarrel to his head and the shatter of glass is drowned out by the gunshot.
*
Watanuki stays away from the warehouse for a week after that. Clow is silent and drawn. Doumeki sees the hope lingering in his eyes, and spends his time being efficient, preparing for their job as if their architect isn't missing, as if the plan isn't falling apart before it's even set in motion.
He's setting up the briefcase to go in to a patchy dream, full of holes from Watanuki's unfinished plans, when the boy walks in, his footsteps defiant, his face demanding Doumeki to ask. Doumeki doesn't. He just unwraps a new needle and offers it to Watanuki, who stabs himself angrily.
"Your totem," Doumeki says to Watanuki, his eyes widening just a little. Watanuki reaches into his pocket but does not remove what he keeps there.
"Clow told me," he answers with a scowl. "I made it this week. I'm not showing you, so don't ask."
Doumeki shakes his head, lifts a hand. Watanuki's trembling annoyance stills as Doumeki rests his thumb on Watanuki's cheek, right below his eye. The pause only lasts a moment before Watanuki's arms come up and he starts shouting irritably about getting work done and what does Doumeki think he's doing, being so familiar?
The episode unsettles him, though, and he lets Doumeki be the first to leave the dream. He turns to the street and gazes into a puddle, straining his neck to see what Doumeki saw.
One of his eyes is blue, and one of them is golden - the eye that Yuuko stabbed. He changes it back, and for a moment, the matching blue seems off.
"It's not a totem. Stupid Doumeki," he grumbles. "Stupid Clow, stupid Yuuko. All I wanted was--"
To build dreams. What a wish.
*
Doumeki doesn't stick around after training. He has other important things to do. But Watanuki always lingers, amped up on the adrenaline. Clow sits in the other room, head bent over plans, his eyes lined with weariness. Clow is always, always here - occasionally he goes out to buy them greasy takeout or to talk to someone they don't want to bring here, but he always comes back as soon as he can. Watanuki thinks that he even sleeps here, when he bothers to sleep.
Instead of going home, Watanuki pours over plans for another few hours, pushing his glasses up on his nose and redrawing a line here, erasing one there. He comes out of his concentration like he's emerging from a trance. A glance at his watch reveals the unforgiving numbers of 2:13AM and he sighs and prepares to leave. He has to be back here in the morning at eight for another briefing.
He grabs his schoolbag (and school feels so far away now, even though it's only been a few weeks), and he strides toward the door, but there's a pool of light slipping from underneath the door of the dreaming room, and he's always had a dangerous sense of curiosity. He's not surprised when he sees that it's Clow in the chair.
He surprises himself with the pricking of the IV. He shuts his eyes and opens them, and then he's there, in the dimness of Yuuko's parlor, and he knows without looking that his eye is golden again, because she looks up from the man who has his head in her lap and she smiles.
"You're interrupting a tender moment, Watanuki-kun," she says, her tone mocking. Clow's head is pressed into her stomach and she's holding him almost more like a mother than a lover, her arms around his shoulders. Watanuki has come to know Clow quite well in the past few weeks, but the sight makes him uncomfortable. Still, he knew that he would be stumbling upon something intimate, and he came anyway.
Clow mutters something against the dark velvet of her dress. He lifts his head and twists around to look at Watanuki, wearing that same almost-embarrassed face that he had the first time that Watanuki had met Yuuko.
"You need to tell me what this is about," Watanuki says firmly, with more confidence than he feels. He stares at Clow, his mismatched eyes glittering.
"You are a feisty one, Watanuki-kun," she says in the same sing-song, and it bothers him that she knows his name, even though he knows intellectually that she's just pulled it from Clow's mind. Clow leans up and kisses the shade on the cheek, and she turns the other, pouting, as he untangles their limbs and approaches Watanuki.
"Not here," he says.
"You can't do this in front of me," Yuuko says, reclining back on the couch so that her figure is at its best advantage. Watanuki coughs on phantom smoke.
"No, I can't," Clow says, and he opens the door.
It leads out onto a balcony that looks out on a place that resembles the city of Hong Kong, only two hundred years ago. Watanuki has been told that Clow used to be their architect ("Before," Doumeki said dryly, and he doesn't have to explain any more than that), and now he sees why. There's a vibrancy of color and life in the scene that makes him feel like he's stepped back in time in the real world. Clow mentioned something once before about a love for history, but now Watanuki sees it. He's momentarily distracted by the scene below, but then Clow approaches, clutching at the balcony railing and daring to smile.
"She's an amazing lady," he says.
"She's a murderer!" Watanuki bursts out. "Several times! She - this thing with my eye!"
He points to it as if Clow hasn't noticed, but Clow just shakes his head. "That's not Yuuko," he says softly, mournful. "That's only a projection. A tiny imitation of a vibrant and fascinating woman."
He shuts his eyes. On the ground below them, vendors call out to attract sales, their speech patterns familiar even if their words aren't quite clear. Clow explains.
*
Clow's father developed the dreaming technology first. Jack of all trades and master of none, he taught his son to manipulate the sleeping world with the same ease as one draws a picture. When the technology was officially developed by an independent company, and the world began to recognize the power of dreams, it didn't matter to either of them, nor to the buxom Japanese woman that Clow had fallen in love with.
"We thought of it like magic," Clow says. He lifts a hand and for just a second, a spark hovers in his palm, so bright that Watanuki squints. Clow closes his fingers and it's gone. Slowly, the city sounds creep back. The projections stop craning their necks to look at them. "We were magicians with the power to bend and build and change. And we always wanted to go further. When you give someone that much power, they often become reckless."
So they went deeper. And eventually they found a place that didn't exist yet, a place beyond the third level of consciousness. Clow explains the time-dilation.
"We couldn't leave," he says, as night falls over his crafted city. "She didn't want to. She convinced herself that it was real. She liked the idea of a world that revolved around us." He smiles, just a little. "She's always been somewhat self-centered."
"Doumeki said that she was dead," Watanuki says after a moment.
Clow sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose. "Eventually, I managed to convince her that Limbo wasn't real. That our real children were waiting for us out there. But she's stubborn, Watanuki-kun, you have to understand, so I had to--"
Yuuko's totem was a favored fan. In the world of dreams, a butterfly flits across it when it's opened. Watanuki has been wondering why Clow keeps it in his pocket at all times. Now he knows. It's because he reached into Yuuko's secret places and made the butterfly dance, and so she agreed to die with him. And live, presumably.
"But not long," he says, pulling the fan from his pocket, staring hard at the butterfly. "She drank herself to death. She wanted me to come too."
The last bottle had been poisoned. The police found the poison in his dresser drawer. He had refused to drink with her, that one last time.
"She wasn't herself at the end," Clow says, his voice low with grief. "She couldn't believe in her totem. She couldn't tell reality from dream."
"And you can't let her stay dead," Watanuki answers. It's a horrible story and he isn't sure he's happier knowing it, but now he knows why Yuuko is always here. That isn't Yuuko: it's Clow's guilt, and Clow's guilt is all-consuming.
"You have to tell the team!" he says, voice rising. "They have to know that she's out there! You can't let them go into this without knowing."
"Don't show me the blueprints," Clow answers, trying to return to calmness. He hasn't looked at one, Watanuki realizes. "She has a hard time getting in if she doesn't know how."
The door behind them creaks open. Clow whirls around, eyes widening, but he's too slow to stop Yuuko from pushing Watanuki off the balcony. She does it easily, one-handed, ignoring his scream as he falls. She leans against the railing.
"It's almost as if he wants to die," she says with obvious satisfaction.
Clow jolts out of the dream a few long seconds after Watanuki does, while the boy is still trying to recover his breath. He can never get used to being killed. He's too preoccupied in his gasping to notice the tears on Clow's cheeks. As far as Clow is concerned, that's a good thing.
Clow doesn't tell the team. Watanuki can't understand why, but he doesn't either.
*
Convincing the smiling green-eyed girl to trust them is an exercise that goes off without a hitch. Sakura, the "princess" of her father's company, is the most trusting person Watanuki has ever met. He feels bad for manipulating her so thoroughly. But now she trusts Clow and her projections aren't attacking. They have a goal. They'll make it. Clow will be able to go home to his children.
It hasn't been easy, by any means, but the team is competent and it really does seem to be working. She wants to reconnect with her parents; she wants to change. Syaoran watches her with wonder from a certain distance. Watanuki doesn't ask. He isn't being paid to ask, even if he burns with questions.
And then Yuuko is there and Clow's hand wavers on the trigger. Yuuko stares, predatory, at Sakura, and Sakura's eyes are so wide with fear that Watanuki is running before he even registers what he's doing. Pain blooms across his chest and Yuuko holds his head in her lap as he bleeds out, stroking his hair.
*
He's stumbling down the street with death at his heels (always, always, his entire life is running) when he grabs the fence and the thing disappears. He has hardly had a chance to breathe before his feet are walking him in, before children are greeting him with eerie twin smiles and a crazy woman is lecturing him about destiny. He yells and complains but the outcome of this meeting is foreordained.
And so Watanuki becomes the witch's servant and apprentice, though he doesn't know what that means yet.
All he knows is that his life is slipping away from him, that his memories are uncertain and he's apparently been giving them away with abandon. It's all for Sakura's sake and he does not regret the choice, but still he folds himself into Yuuko's arms and asks her if he's real.
"Of course," she answers. "Of course you're real."
There are things that she will lie about (or omit, that is her greatest sin), but Watanuki doesn't think that she would lie about something so important. And even if this world exists only in his head, it is worthwhile. It is a life he likes and wants to keep, for all of his shouting at Doumeki and pining after Himawari, for the danger and the brokenness and the truth.
And so even when she dies, he lives.
*
It is Doumeki Shizuka's son who brings Watanuki groceries now. He resembles his father in an uncanny way and Watanuki rails about it sometimes, when he's drunk enough; Hisoka knows that it's the shopowner's way of missing his father, and he doesn't rise to the bait. He keeps the egg his father has given him, and watches the teenage boy who is no longer a teenage boy. Watanuki has old, old eyes and a certain resigned way of walking, as if he's absorbed the aches and pains of age. He's looked just the same since Shizuka first brought Hisoka to meet him (and that had nearly been the last time Hisoka had visited; the argument lasted long into the night, shouting about duty and its limits, while Mokona got Hisoka shamefully drunk and they all ended up sleeping in the shop).
Hisoka's daughter is nine and he is already beginning to plan how to introduce her to their family's secret. They keep a shrine and they keep a shopkeeper; even Hisoka's great-grandfather took care of Watanuki in his own way. It would not occur to them to be resentful. They are fond of Watanuki, each in their own ways, no matter how strange and bitter he becomes. Hisoka wears the egg in the pocket that his wife has sewn into all of his clothes, and he wonders when the boy will have finally paid enough to move on.
Watanuki usually shoos him out before a customer comes, so when the bell chimes, he's somewhat surprised. He glances over at Watanuki, who seems confused as well. Maru and Moro abandon the garden hose to answer the door, but they are oddly silent when they return flanking a tall man with little round glasses and an apologetic smile. Watanuki is unsettled; he gapes for a moment before turning away deliberately, sniffing and adjusting his kimono.
"If you could give us a moment?" the man asks Hisoka, bowing quickly in apology. Hisoka glances at Watanuki, who does not move or betray any sign of agreement or disagreement. But Hisoka has noticed that the glasses that this man wears are nearly a perfect copy of Watanuki's - or perhaps it's the other way around. He gets up and goes into the shop, taking bottle and cup with him.
*
Clow sits down easily next to Watanuki on the porch. Watanuki glances at him over his shoulder.
"I don't care if it isn't real," Watanuki says. His voice cracks a little.
"If you didn't care, you could have sent me away and saved me the trouble," Clow answers with a chuckle. He withdraws an old-fashioned fan from his clothing and unfolds it. Watanuki twists around despite himself and watches the butterfly flutter. He reaches out and Clow doesn't move, even when Watanuki's fingers are hardly half an inch from touching it. Watanuki pauses and drops his hand.
"She's not out there," he says.
"No, she is not," Clow says carefully. "I must point out, however, that she is not here either. She's gone to a place far beyond dreams. And it is time that I let her be there."
"She-- I--" Watanuki shakes his head fervently, tears dripping down his face. "But if this is a dream, then none of it--"
"Didn't you tell her that it didn't matter if it was a dream? It was worth fighting for." Clow's voice is low, but he is still smiling. He reaches into the magician's robes that Watanuki's unconscious has supplied him with, and he produces a gun, which he sets on the porch between them. It is large and ugly and does not fit into this world at all.
"You know," Clow says, "I could use a babysitter. Single fathers have to work, unfortunately."
"I'm not your servant!" Watanuki snaps with an old fire he'd thought long gone. "First Yuuko-san, and then you--" He bites his cheek.
"What I can't figure," Clow continues, as if Watanuki hasn't interrupted at all, "is why you made Soel and Larg into such strange little creatures. Adorable ones, but they certainly don't resemble the traditional kind of children. Was it so hard to predict our offspring?" Mokona is in his lap. He strokes its ears and it nuzzles warmly into his hand.
Watanuki scowls.
"My children look rather like you, to be honest," Clow says. "Except for the eyes."
"If I shoot myself," Watanuki grumbles, "will you shut up?"
"Come back to reality with me," Clow says.
Watanuki picks up the pistol, which is heavier than he expected. He shuts his eyes and cocks the trigger against his temple, smelling gunpowder, listening to his heart pound.
My wish is for you to go on existing. That's all I want, he hears her say, a small voice in the dark.
Watanuki wakes.
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You did a great job! :)
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I'm also rather enamoured with Watanuki becoming babysitter/nanny/older brother to human!children Mokona. Again. You seem to like that situation. Not that I'm complaining, as it's an absolutely adorable image.
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lol I do love it, I just can't help it. They're hard enough to corral as animals! :D
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I love that you made angst-flavored crack. I love how you portrayed the characters and their place in the story. I love that it worked so damn well.
I fling confetti in your general direction.
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