Are You Good People? Bad People? Guess-it-doesn't matter, people.
Title: Timepiece (p3) (p2) (p1)
Author: smokexscribbles
Rating: PG, will probably go up to PG-15 at the most.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I am not CLAMP.
Summary: I was trying to capture the creepiness that is Holic. This is an AU mystery which takes place in a ballroom. Points if you guess what’s going to happen!


The hallway that they run down is long, with nothing to tell them where they are or how far away from the dancers they have run. An endless plane of white marble. It would be pretty, if they cared at the moment. Watanuki finally has to sit down. They’ve been walking for a long time, and whether it’s hours or days they have no way of knowing.

“Is it just me,” he asks, “Or is it getting colder?”

“It’s getting colder,” Doumeki confirms.

It’s also getting harder to walk. Harder to breathe, now that he thinks about it. It’s like walking through water.

They walk until even Doumeki is having trouble pushing forwards. If it was like wading through water before, this is like walking in mud. Watanuki feels like there’s pressure on his skull, like he’s drowning on dry land, like he’s going to die…

They’re back at the clock. People are dancing. The ticking is like a deep and booming heartbeat. It’s seven minutes and ten seconds to midnight.

“What just happened?” Watanuki asks.

“Dunno.”

“What do we do now?”

“Dunno,” Doumeki is not really paying attention to Watanuki. He’s walking around the clock, slowly, looking at the two hallways that lead away from the ballroom. “That’s the one we took before,” he says, pointing. “Where does the other one go?”

“Probably the same way the other one did. You know. Horrible pain, suffocation, and then back here,” Watanuki says irritably. “Who cares?”

“I can smell fresh air,” Doumeki says.

They exchange a look, and within seconds both men are running down the hall, racing towards the light of the full moon. This hallway is anything but endless; In seconds they have burst out onto a balcony. The moon is so bright it is hard to believe that it is night.

“Holy hell,” Watanuki sucks in a breath. “This is…”

“It looks like the rose garden,” Doumeki finishes.

The air is warm and soft, scented with roses and something else, something sickly-sweet and too far away to identify. Someone is singing.

It’s like a dream, the way they walk down the stairs to the velvety green grass. They take off their shoes, because they don’t want to break any of the delicate blades. How many people have wished for this? A perfect, idyllic night, stars twinkling, full moon, walking along with your truest –

Watanuki is, once again, the first one to wake up from the spell. It happens because his arm brushes against a thorn, drawing blood. He jerks away, his arm touches Doumeki’s, and suddenly they can both see.

They’re in the rose maze. They don’t know how they got in. They have absolutely no idea how they’re getting out.

They can hear a buzzing sort of drone. There is a raven above them, nestled in the thorns. Something has gone seriously awry. Watanuki notices that Doumeki has a tight hold on his arm; he notices that he has a tight hold on Doumeki’s jacket. He doesn't even remember reaching out to the taller man.

The sickly-sweet smell is stronger here, and the buzzing is louder. They take tentative steps forward, and then, suddenly, Watanuki remembers what he associates that smell with, but it’s just a little too late to turn tail and run.

There’s a dead body in the rose bushes. It’s half-decayed, the face is rotting away, but the bright blue eyes are perfectly intact. Both of them have heard that even in death, hair continues to grow, and they can see it now, the foot-long blonde hair matted around the thorns.

There is a fifteen-inch-long thorn sticking through the body’s exposed ribs.

Watanuki and Doumeki hear a rustling behind them. The wind picks up. The rose bushes’ vines are moving like lazy snakes.

They don’t bother to look back. They just run.