before the dolls, a rozen maiden fanfic

disclaimer: If I owned Rozen Maiden's anime rights, I would have hardly called it to such an inconclusive and puzzling halt in the series.
notes: Some idle speculations on the nature of Father's life before the dolls (thus the creative title!). I haven't seen the anime in a while, so if I draw any uncanonities (things in the fic that directly, or even sidelong, contradict the facts presented in the anime), kindly correct me immediately. Please and thank you!

before the dolls

(Fire burns the shape of her face into his eyes; fire sweeps his veins at night with desire beyond desire; fire leaves his thoughts scorched with the eternal clinging thread of her.

From where did that first glimpse of her come? From what nightmare or dream or terrifying reality did the slow curve of her features, that gentle wicked movement, spark power from his crafty hands? He cannot summon that first trembling thread to mind, and his eyes are drooping with ice. He has no time to think of her, and yet he does.)

Opening his eyes, he is blinded at first by the light stronger than steel or wine. The snow presses heavy on his cloak; he shudders, draws it closer about him. He pins it back beneath his throat, moves on. The city lights glimmer behind him, a promise in the dark.

(Fire, power; only a game, he says, a game, but they know, now.

Witchcraft. She has broken an honorable man and turned him to a--)

There's a long way to go yet.

In the city before this one, he remembers a workshop. He toyed with the mechanisms of clocks there, the fine and delicate springs that promoted movement. He doesn't remember when the gift came, only that he did, and he created because he could.

The first doll was born there, amidst that which is now wreckage and ash. He wrapped the limbs in cloth before he began to run, but the dark, the trembling hands, robbed him of her missing piece. (He can guess what came after that; crushed beneath a meddling boot, reduced to dust by flame.)

In this new shop, this cobwebby place, all corners and shelves, he's placed her on the highest ledge. So that you can watch me, my darling, my first, he tells her, but her eyeless face answers: so that you will not face me every day, so that you will forget what you tried to create, so that you will not be tempted again.

He knows.

He dreams of the other dolls, though they were voiceless, giftless.

In the shadowed corners they say, Father.

Father.

Senseless, their eyes, without the logic that could pad the undeniable fact of his abandonment. There is nothing but loss, and he knows it better than any of those shattered, scorched mannequins what they have suffered.

One by one, he shapes them out of clay and desire, memory and enchantment.

It eludes him, the power that works by the edges of his mind, drifting and demanding, calling for something he doesn't recognise.

Alice, he says to the dark, but nothing can hold her name.

She opens her eyes.

"Sugintou," he says; touches her smooth cheek, the languid line of her jaw. He's worked dark wings into her design - they sag heavily at her back, against the bones, the flesh, the porcelain she does not have.

He closes his eyes against the imperfection, and knows that she sees it with her clockwork eyes.

Of that first instant, she will remember nothing but that he knew what she was not.

His fingers work steadily under firelight, half-day, sparks of electricity.

One by one by one...

This place is not like the last. It is safe.

The first lady who swayed into his shop, examining the glass counters and the filigree lace that cost the last of his money, told him what he needed to know as he saw her eyes widen with interest but no disbelief of a moving doll, a speaking doll. He knows: the rich will believe what they like. They will marvel to themselves of delicate alchemy, of uneasy springs and gears, and never dream of spells. What spellmaker, after all, could be content to sit in a shop, churning out toys?

(What enchanter cannot tear her name from his memories, her face from his thoughts?)

Even so, he hides the gold in bags, buys half-finished tables and rough foods, leaves heavy boots and a cloak by the edge of his bed in the workshop.

He won't leave them again.

He works on; in dark and day and all the hours between. Sales happen as if by coincidence, money materialising in his accounts through a sly alchemy whose process he fumbles every time.

He never sells the keyed dolls. No quantity of gold will translate their value, he tells those laughing ladies who pause by his shop, and they accept his eccentricity with a friendly, wary eye before turning on.

When the last is made, he closes his hands against the dust before he reaches for the dial. (Snow and storms and all of the immortal things that cannot touch him now; he has been placed outside of time, a promise, a gift, a reward.)

"Let the game be set in motion," he says to the empty clouds, the rain thick silver against the rattling glass.

And turns the final key.

end

feedback: is always lovely, though never expected.