Title: In the Absence of Seasons
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Character(s) or Pairing: Yukimura (/Yanagi/Sanada, Fuji, Tezuka, Oishi)
Rating: PG
Warnings: It's a fairytale - so improbable happenings, some violence, probably lots of OOCness
Word Count: 2342
Summary: Yukimura's under a curse.
A/N: Written for a friend, after she gave me the prompt: Using any lyrics from Jimmy Eat's World 'Futures' album, write something. Supposedly from 'Shame', 'The World You Love', and 'Futures', but not really. The idea took me and ran.
----
"Can you sleep at night, with what you have done hanging over your head?" The words echo in the silence of the forest, even though they are quiet words, whispered to the air, instead of directed to someone.
Not that it could be different - there's no one there to hear the words. There is only the boy and the forest, which is how it has always been.
Yukimura's gotten used to it, over the years that have come and gone. Even gotten used to the sound of his own voice, echoing back to him. Sometimes, he wishes he could remember what the sound of another voice was like, but the memories of other people have escaped him.
There is no answer, but he doesn't expect one. The trees can't talk - and they are not responsible for the curse, either. They are simply part of his sentence, not the reason for it. Yukimura knows he is protected in the depths of the forest: the curse protects from the harshness of winters and the unrelenting summers, even time, but it is the trees that provide him with shelter and food and the only companionship he has.
He likes it this way - the guilt has long since faded. Yukimura doesn't even remember why he would feel guilty for the trees in his forest.
"It's almost dawn," Yukimura whispers, and turns his gaze from the sky, with the last of its fading stars, to find the tree he sleeps beneath, or in. It's almost fall - there are enough leaves on the ground to make a good bed, and it will always be warm enough that sleeping on the ground did not guarantee he would catch cold. Yukimura thinks that it is impossible for him to get sick, anymore, while under the constraints of the curse.
-
"Seiichi," Sanada says in his gruff voice, any attempts to soften it not doing much beyond lowering his tone. Yukimura wants to giggle, but doesn't, and just looks up at Sanada.
"Yes?"
"You're it," he says, and reaches out to touch Yukimura on the shoulder, looking as serious as if he were knighting his friend, and this time Yukimura does giggle.
"Wasn't my hiding spot good enough?"
"Your hair stands out against the bushes," Sanada tells him, looking frightened for a moment, almost afraid to admit to Yukimura that yes, his hiding spot was that bad , although the look disappears quickly and is replaced by his usual serious countenance.
Yukimura giggles again and nods. "I know." He shimmies out from beneath the bushes and stands up. "Renji, you can come out now. I'm it," he calls, and a moment later, Yanagi is there, and Yukimura is smiling at them. "Go hide again. I'll count."
The boy covers his eyes and hears Sanada and Yanagi depart as he begins to count. It's not hard to hear the directions they are walking in, even Yanagi can't help but make noise as he walks away. Yukimura's smiling before he even gets to fifty - the number they agreed on - because he knows exactly what he'll do.
"Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty-"
But there is something wrong. The hands he pulls away from his face don't belong to an eight year old. They're too big to be his, but he knows they are, for there is that scar-
"We have to go now, Seiichi." It's Yanagi who is whispering in his ear, and Yukimura can feel Sanada's hand on his arm.
"I can't leave," Yukimura says, although he's trembling and struggling to move away, but damnit, his legs aren't working.
"You have to get to safety," Yanagi says. "Genichirou will carry you out of here, and once I am sure you two are in the forest, I'll come back in hopes I can-"
"You can't come back," Sanada whispers, and it's so odd to Yukimura to hear Sanada object to anything Yanagi says that it surprises him; it doesn't help that he's confused. For once, he has no idea of what is going on around him, and he hates it.
"What's going on?" he says, but the two are arguing above him and he's in bed? How did he miss that, before? He opens his mouth to protest again but then the doors to his room are opening and-
-
Yukimura wakes with a jolt, as if something had startled the eternal boy from sleeping to awake, but he can't identify what it is that had done it.
His cheeks are damp, and Yukimura raises his hand to his face, to carefully touch the wetness on his cheek. It's one thing he doesn't understand, why his cheeks are wet so many days in a row. He sleeps during the day, so there is no dew on the ground to justify his cheeks being wet
He's been in the forest, away from humanity, long enough to forget what crying means; he doesn't even think about it.
The sun is still in the sky; not very high, close enough to the horizon to indicate that sunset is quickly approaching, but the sky is still blue - it's the third time since the curse was placed on him, the third time in three days, that Yukimura has seen such a color.
The trees aren't providing enough shelter anymore, to keep the sun from waking him, and for some reason, it's disturbing. Especially when he thinks about the tree he sleeps under. But there isn't any point in thinking too much, or too hard, and he knows he'll not be going back to bed that day.
It's odd to be up before the sun is down, but not too strange, until Yukimura hears something.
His forest is silent, all the time, even when he is moving, except for the times he talks to himself, and hearing something - Yukimura doesn't know what it is - makes him freeze in his spot, eyes wide and uncertain, almost afraid. But he doesn't know what fear is, anymore, just like he doesn't know what tears are.
"There's a person here." Yukimura hears someone yell - the sound of another voice sets his heart to racing - and then there is a person there: someone taller than him, with short black hair and smiling eyes, who reaches out to him. But it's been such a long time since he had seen anyone, touched anyone, been touched, that he edges away from the person, wary.
"There's no need to be afraid," the person says, and calls over his shoulder, "Tezuka, you should come here," before looking back at Yukimura. "I'm not going to hurt you."
It's almost hard to figure out what he's saying, and it makes Yukimura thankful he's kept talking to himself all this time, because although it takes time, he figures out what the person means.
"I'm not afraid," Yukimura says, although everything in his stance and about his face indicates the opposite. But to be suddenly accosted by a person - and then someone else joins the first person, and Yukimura isn't sure what to feel anymore.
"Who are you?" asks the first person - the second is too busy staring at him quietly, in a way that makes Yukimura even more nervous.
He debates, mentally, wondering if he should tell these strangers who he is - he has not said his name aloud since he could remember, and then he has to wonder how long he could remember: was it only a season ago that he entered this forest or a thousand?
He's not sure about that anymore, either. It's worrisome.
"Yukimura," he says, finally. It startles him when the two look at each other, a look he can't describe passing between them, and then turn to stare at him once again.
-
Yukimura is invited out of his forest, and to Tezuka's castle; just from watching the interaction between the men, which he finds oddly familiar, he knows it is Tezuka's, and Tezuka is not simply lord and master over them, but their king, and Yukimura isn't entirely sure how he knows such a thing. It seems almost instinctive to him.
The castle is spacious but comfortable: he has a room, and a shy, sweet boy to wait on him, and is treated with a deference he doesn't entirely understand. Whispers follow Yukimura, sweeping behind him to infect everyone, but he never hears them.
His own mind is lost in the clouds that are his dreams.
Months pass, quickly but not quickly enough, because the seasons don't meld into one, and for the first time, Yukimura faces winter. On the first snowfall, he doesn't entirely know what to make of it, until Oishi - the first one to find him, and the one Yukimura trusts probably the most in the castle, with the exception of Tezuka - answers the unspoken question Yukimura knows is in his eyes.
"Snow," Oishi tells him, and starts to ask another question, but stops - Yukimura hasn't spoken much since his arrival in the castle and doesn't seem open to questions. But Yukimura knows what he wants to ask, and responds to it.
"My forest kept it out. If I have seen it, it has been long enough for me to forget." The forest, or the curse, one of the two kept the snow from him, kept him sheltered and protected and... loved.
Yukimura feels a pain in his chest and his cheeks are damp again - he doesn't know why again, but there is a look in Oishi's eyes that offers too much of an emotion Yukimura doesn't like.
-
The first snowfall of the winter also brings with it people seeking shelter in the castle - entertainers, arms men, and one more importantly, the magician who was once Tezuka's but had left the past spring to parts unknown.
"You have a guest," the magician says, as he approaches the dias where Tezuka and his closest companions eat. Yukimura has the place of honor, each night, at the king's left, and he sees the magician quite clearly - the blue eyes, the soft smile, and something inside of him stirs.
"Aa," Tezuka responds. "We found him in the forest. Your legends were true, Syuusuke."
"My legends were always true," the magician says, but Yukimura doesn't hear it: instead, he is repeating the magician's name in his mind, silently, the voice building up until he can't resist it anymore.
"Fuji Syuusuke," he says, and his voice is different than any have heard, more forceful and powerful, and everyone is turning to look at Yukimura, but it doesn't matter, everyone else is fading from his line of sight. It's him and Fuji in the hall, just like it had been all of those years ago.
"You've deserted your companions," Fuji says softly, a smile creeping to his lips. "Do you not love them anymore?"
It's his voice that breaks the curse, or whatever had held Yukimura's heart in iron chains, and he's moving from the chair, a knife in his hands before he realizes it and plunging it into Fuji's chest without thinking. It doesn't plunge into his heart, like Yukimura wishes it had, but just beneath his collarbone. Fuji's face crumbles with pain, but he still speaks.
"They are dying without you. Are you going to let them die again, for your sake, Seiichi?"
Fuji's words are like splinters into Yukimura's chest; he stumbles away from the magician, clutching his chest and the table, on the verge of collapsing and he remembers his dreams now, but instead of ending, it continues.
Sanada and Yanagi, arguing, not with each other, but together, about him, about his stubbornness to leave. And the intruders, the door crashing into the wall, and the arrows. There had been no chance to escape them or fight back, not at such a close distance, but Yanagi and Sanada had done their best to protect him, like they always had. The promises afterwards, the plea, and the demand he extracted from Fuji.
-
When Yukimura comes to, he is in his bed again, and there is a candle burning on the nightstand, and Fuji is sitting next to him in a chair, bandages peeking through the clothes he wore.
He's asleep, and Yukimura moves silently, climbing from the bed to replace his clothes and slip from the room. The halls are deserted, but Yukimura still moves silently - he's grown up in a forest, he knows how to move without making a sound. And his instincts serve him well - it's not long before he's making his way back to the forest.
And likewise, he's moving through the forest quickly, letting his instincts guide him, until he reaches the spot where he had slept all those seasons - so many he had lost count.
Yukimura thinks his heart is about to break when he realizes Fuji's words are true: the tree is dying. But his heart was already broken, broken by his actions before and the deaths of the people who he had loved best of all.
-
"Yukimura will be back."
"You speak as if you are sure."
"I am, Tezuka. It is time - he knows now, what to do. He'll be back."
"How did you know the legend, Syuusuke?"
"It was I who placed the curse on him."
"Did he deserve it?"
"He wished for it, more than anything."
-
"You can't die," Yukimura whispers. He stands as close as possible to the tree, his fingers clutching the bark - now, he sees the two different shades of bark, the interwoven design in the tree, and knows who is which. "You can't. I love you. Love you both."
Yukimura's cheeks are wet, again, and he understands why this time. Pressing his cheek to the tree, he lets his tears flow freely, silently begging for them, or barring that, for death.
He's still crying when two sets of arms wrap around him, and the tree is no longer solid and unmovable, but warm and alive.