Electric Blue Eyes Always Be Near Me
Title: Timepiece (p4) (p3) (p2) (p1)
Author: smokexscribbles
Rating: I'm gonna say PG-15 for this one.
Warnings: Violence.
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. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WATANUKI! SORRY I DID THIS TO YOU!


Watanuki and Doumeki run, and yes, they’re both fairly fast and light on their feet, but it isn’t quite fast enough. Anyway, they’re trapped. The vines all around them are twisting lazily into horrible, vicious life, and they have no idea where the exit is. They run, creepers nipping at their ankles. They are about to be consumed –

They burst into a clearing, and time stops abruptly. There is a difference between the vines ceasing to move and the total end of the passage of time that occurs. The air feels stale and dead. The grass does not move. A raven is frozen above their heads, mouth open wide in a silent but somehow menacing caw.

There is a woman in the clearing. She looks as though she has been waiting for them. She is a magnificent and intimidating person: Tall, beautiful, coldly pale and aloof. Her black hair is up in a complex arrangement of decorative chopsticks that probably took a team of hairdressers hours to do. That, or she did it herself by pure power of will. That is the aura she gives off, that this is someone who can do anything she wishes. Her ballroom dress would have looked too magnificent on a queen, and somehow she overshadows it.

“Watanuki Kimihiro and Doumeki Shizuka,” she says. “I have been waiting for you.”

“Who are you?” Watanuki asks. “Did you do this?” he gestures around, “Did you stop time? How do you know our names?”

“I may have,” she says. “You may call me Yuuko. That is not my real name, but it is an extremely convenient lie. I know your names because names are an important part of a spell like this one.”

“This is a spell.” Doumeki does not sound like he is asking a question. He sounds like he knows the answer and wants a different one.

“A spell I set up a very long time ago,” she says. “I am the Witch of Time and Space. This is a closed universe, I’m afraid. I saw you two had woken up and came as soon as I could. You’ve been here quite a while. It might be time to let these people go.”

“The people dancing? What’s going on here?”

Yuuko waves an imperious hand. “If someone offers me a wish and proper compensation, I am honor-bound not to refuse. This universe was created from such a wish. However,” she sighs, “There is a limit to how long you can live in a fantasy.”

They both desperately want to know more, but she smiles at them in a terrifyingly toothy way and says, “What do you want me to give you?”

“W-what?”

“I’ve taken a lot of your time,” she explains. “I owe you compensation. A wish. Make one.”
“Tell us how to get out of here,” Watanuki says instantly.

“It’s a secret,” Yuuko says, putting a finger to her lips. “But I can tell you one thing. The clock is important. What does your friend want? I’m afraid he doesn’t trust me very much.”

“Not as far as I could throw you,” Doumeki says. “Why are you helping us?”

“I thought I said I owe it to you,” Yuuko says.

“Not an answer.”

“Does it matter so terribly much? Tell me your wish and I will grant it.”

“Protection,” he says after a long pause. “A weapon.”

“Would you like something specific?” she asks, a thin smile on her face.

“A bow and arrows. I remember that much; how to shoot.”

The woman reaches behind her and produces from apparently thin air a bow and quiver. “My debt is gone. Good luck, both of you. Time will start when I leave.”

She vanishes. The raven caws. The vines crash forwards as if they’d been waiting. There are several seconds in which time and feeling are, once again, frozen. There is absolutely no pain. Watanuki thinks: I hope this doesn’t hurt as much as it looks like it will.

And then sensation comes back and fills his head and body and the shoulder the thorn pierced with roaring pain. It blots out sound, he might be screaming, he can’t tell. Doumeki takes a few steps back and draws the bow. Watanuki wonders, through the haze of agony, why he is drawing his bow with no arrow in it. He has to stop thinking about it, because his fingers are cold, he’s so cold, and there’s something liquid-red and burning running over his arm. It takes a second for him to remember it’s his own blood. It feels so strangely hot.

Doumeki’s bow seems, for a second, to be loaded with a shining white star. When he fires, ignoring the creepers that twine around his wrist and rip ruby bracelets into his flesh, it severs the vine in two.

As it falls to the ground, the thorn is twisted out of Watanuki’s shoulder. He goes pale as the pain redoubles, and then faints.

Doumeki picks him up and runs. The vines have moved in their rush to consume the two and now there is an opening that he can jump through. Watanuki wakes up for a moment, eyelids fluttering open. He says, “I remember now. You used to be in so many of my dreams…”

Then he’s gone again. They’re safely far away from the killer thornbush by now, so Doumeki sinks to his knees, shaking. He holds the unconscious Watanuki close to his chest. Doumeki Shizuka cries.