A/N: I originally started writing this story for a friend, but… not so much now. Anyways… I wanted to put this up, and letting anyone who read my other xxxHOLiC stories that Happiness will be off of the un-informed hiatus soon. Hopefully... augh... Anyway, this is short, I know, but it's a prologue. Sets you up for the plot.
WARNING(s): This story will have a really angsty, really sucky ending. I'm letting you know before hand, and now I'm telling you the light. There will be a sequel called "Rehab for the Heart".
Spoilers up to volume 10 of the published manga.
Side Note: Watanuki and Doumeki are an established couple in this story. I will maybe post background as to how they got together as a one-shot. Maybe.
Prologue: The Doll That Feels/ Truest Dreams
If my feelings are enough to cause these wounds, then they will be enough to remove them. If absence of the heart is what is needed, I will cut it out myself and sell it away just to keep you near... so please understand...
Watanuki curled under the covers, shivering. It had been months since he had shared his apartment, yet he still expected for Doumeki's strong arms to hold him close and keep him warm like the heater could not.
Hot tears rolled down the teen's cheeks, but quickly dried in the eyes...
Heartless dolls did not cry.
He had given it up; given it all up. But it had been worth it, just to keep him alive.
But he sometimes wondered if he really had paid what he thought he had.
Sometimes, he would double up as something so heart-wrenchingly painful would shoot through his body, igniting a yearning that he no longer had a name for. Pain was the only thing left in Watanuki's bare heart...
What had he really paid?
Doumeki rubbed his eyes, frowning slightly in the dark. He looked around; trying to find what had awoken him.
Seeing nothing, he closed his eyes, trying to recall the dream, but details slid away, like water through fingers.
This was not the first unsettling dream he had experienced these last few months... But as unnerving as they were, he preferred them to reality, and welcomed their coming.
They all had to do with Watanuki. Doumeki learned things from these dreams that he never thought he'd ever want to know; Watanuki crying, laughing, smiling in earnest... the sound of his name as their bodies melded together in heated passion...
These dreams seemed like memories, so close to the heart that sometimes Doumeki would wake almost in tears as he realized what he had lost by going back into wakefulness.
He would give almost anything for those dreams to be real, because the Watanuki of his world unnerved him.
Watanuki would never say a thing anymore, he wouldn't fawn over Himawari like an idiot, he wouldn't get mad... there was nothing to him anymore...
It made Doumeki want to shake him until something broke inside, until Watanuki screamed or cried or begged... but then something inside told him that it would never happen, because somehow, Watanuki no longer felt a thing.
Doumeki could almost remember Yuuko's voice giving that price; the price of emotions... but...
That was in a dream, wasn't it?
Yuuko sighed softly, exhaling smoke across the clear night air. "I hope that those children will be happy in the end..." she murmured, fingering a long strand of woven, silver strings. "From pain... blooms happiness..."
Pain was the only thing left for Watanuki to feel.
