This was written 7/25/2011. I started writing around 12 am and I finished at 4 am. Why? Because I couldn't get to sleep, even though I went to Chattanooga the next day, and I had just finished a double hostess shift that night (that's about 10 hours, 5 hours a shift). My feet were killing me and I couldn't sleep -_- Grrr….
Anyway, I figured I might as well write this down if I wasn't going to get any sleep—I'd been meaning to for a while ever since I saw the anime episode.* *This is a 2nd person (I think it's 2nd…) POV from Doumeki's perspective as Watanuki fell from the school's 2nd floor. It is rated T for teen just to be safe, though it is more likely to be K+. Though it is DouWata, if you want to look at it as simply a very strong friendship it's possible (Kinda).**
Something I think I may want to mention, I wrote Doumeki dialing for an ambulance, but to be honest, I have NO clue what Japan's emergency number is, soooo I kinda just skimmed over it with a 'dialed the first number'. Just something I thought I'd point out.
R&R please people!
***DISCLAIMER*** PAH-LEEZ, if I owned anything CLAMP-ed created, every world would have Kurogane and Fai and they would be much more than just canon. Much, MUCH more *smirk*
Doumeki Shizuka did not easily express his emotions in public. Even to those who had known him for most of his life, his feelings were hard to decipher on the day to day basis. His parents, who were often gone on business to other temples, found it hard to interact with their own son the few times they were home.
So for Doumeki Shizuka's face to drain of color, for him to freeze with horror and fear, for him to scream a desperate denial, one would think one would have to torture the stoic boy. As it was however, Doumeki found the hard way that there was one other cause that could effect such panicked emotions.
He discovered it only then as an important person to him fell from two stories high, only to land on the broken glass of the window pane he had fallen through.
As he fell, double eyes wide open in surprise, then terror, Doumeki unfroze from his momentary paralysis, panicking, and tore out to the ground below Watanuki Kimihiro.
Too late.
Glass crashed, a scream was heard (he distantly recognized it) along with his own, blood splattered. He fell to his knees beside him, heedless of the glass shards slicing him, and his head fell to his hands in a desperate bid with himself for denial.
NO You can't you can't you can't YOU CAN'T!
A yell—Himiwari, it was she who screamed earlier—shouted for him to use his cell to call an ambulance, she was coming down. As a shaking hand took out the device, the other, almost hesitantly, hovered a hand over the broken body's face.
Breath! There was still hope!
The shaking hand dialed the first number—
As a butterfly, unnaturally large and glimmering a deep violet and velvet black and blue, landed on the palm of the hand with the cell. A voice, majestic and commanding, spoke, though he thought it was only for his mind to hear. "Bring him to the shop. There will be a price to pay, but he will die any other way."
The butterfly silently exploded to a shimmering, disappearing dust.
Modern medical knowledge warned not to touch an injured person waiting for help. But this person could not wait, and no help was coming to him. With desperate hope reigning, his face straightened to determination, he lifted the shattered form of his precious person in his arms, and ran, shouting to the girl only as an afterthought. He wished he could have stopped as a pained moan was torn out of those lips, as mismatched irises' opened for a brief moment, as a delirious hand clutched his shirt weakly. He wished he could have, if only to relieve the pain of this much-needed soul for even a moment. But the body in his arms would not live through that, and the soul needed that body, so he kept running.
He was headless of the water tracks that marked his face, and paid no mind to the blood that soaked his clothes.
He met no one as he ran the short distance—in fact, no one before going to or at school either—and he vaguely wondered if there would be a price on the lack of disturbance as well. He thought he heard a strained laugh echo in his head.
The shop appeared for him, the gate itself seemingly ushering him in with urgency. The Wish-Granter stood waiting, turning with quick footsteps and a curling finger, moving farther into the house. He followed without hesitation. The room was close, the transparent bed veil pushed aside. He hurriedly, but still gently placed the body of his closest (Ally? Companion? Friend? He wasn't sure what to call him now) down on the sheets. As he moaned painfully, he silently wished he could make the other's pain disappear.
"Alone, the price to save him would be too great to pay. But between the two of you…" The Wish Shop's owner spoke, almost without a trace of interest, but her hand, hovering over her pupil's barely moving chest, and her eyes, a women's blood color, daring them to deny the exchange, betrayed her distress and anxiety.
His acceptance is immediate and without hesitation, and he can almost hear the hard, determined nod of the girl behind him.
"Doumeki-kun, your price will be the amount of blood he has lost." An easy price to pay for what he silently begged to save. "Himiwari-chan, you will bear the scars he would have gotten otherwise." His head turns, for the first time, away from the bloodied form, to stare at his only other true friend. He wonders why her price is harsher, why it seems to be more than his, but it is not important at the moment. Though her face pales, her jaw clenches and a hardness sets in her eyes. Her acceptance is only a moment behind his.
"Turn around, both of you, sit on the floor, and for no reason are you to look. It will be painful—for all of you." Her sympathizing eyes turned back to the boy beneath her hands, looking for just a moment like a mother who wished she could take his pain away as much as he himself wanted to.
The three of them together though could never pay the price for that.
Yuuko's eyes meet his with a look that had heard and grudgingly agreed. He nodded, turned on the spot with his back against the bed's bottom plank and sat—
And at the last minute grabbed the boy's hanging hand from behind him, all the while keeping his price to not look. Blood steadily poured down their arms—
Don't let him die.
Himiwari sat, though farther away, and clenched her hands with her head bowed over them, and Yuuko began, power surging through the room in the form of warm air that caressed him gently, as though in apology, then suddenly slicing an unseen wound on the side of his neck.
He almost screamed. He thought he heard Himiwari do so. His was not from his own pain though—though he could feel the blood from his own body leave, it was merely a feeling of uncomfortable heat. No, this pain came from the bond that had erected between the giver and receiver. He felt everything the other boy was silently screaming for, unconscious no more, and there was no telling the difference between himself and they one who's hand he was gripping so intensely. Together their backs arched in agony, lips parted in an imaginary scream. Eyes opened wide and stared at everything and nothing all at once, and they both felt someone hold them down.
Doumeki could not stop his tears. A part of his soul was in this much pain, and he could do nothing –nothing!—but try to share it. In his mind, it was a measly offering at best.
They couldn't tell how long it lasted. It may have only been a minute. It felt like a day. But finally, finally, it stopped. The blood bond faded, and he could move himself again. He found Himiwari crying, sobbing really, on top of him—she must have been the one holding him down before, keeping them both from reneging their prices—and he was gulping air like a starving man. A twitch in his hand—he was still clinging to the other's. He one-handedly pried the girl off of him and slowly set her to sit on her own, checking to see that she was all right. She was, besides the crying, and she ran out the door once she saw he had control of himself, black twists and curls of hair flying madly in her wake. He stood shakily and returned his focus to the other on the bed, glancing with gratitude at the woman who saved the one whose hand he still held (She stood protectively over her charge, but even she looks weary. He wonders if she didn't pay a price as well). Unconscious once more, he was sweating and breathing hard (they both were), his heart beat is fast, and his skin is at a million degrees.
But he was alive, unbroken and whole.
He falls to his knees again, but this time, with blood loss and a relief that wall-slams him so hard he wants to cry again. But he enough tears had slipped away from his control already, and the other boy would be shocked if he could see him.
He's not gone, he's not lost, he didn't disappear.
Yuuko bids him to move, at least outside the door if he won't rest in a different room. In return, he gains a promise though to not tell the boy the price he and the girl had paid. He concedes to move that far away from the other, if only because the blood loss makes him ill-fit to argue, and he really wants to just close his eyes, even if it's only while sitting on the hardwood floor.
He supposed it was a good thing he wouldn't be in the room. He didn't want the other to flail long, slender limbs around in distress, in the way only he could, and hurt himself at the sight of his bloody clothes when woke.
As an uneasy doze settled upon him, he had the sudden wish that he knew what to call the other, besides an important person. It did not seem to completely fill the meaning the other had to him. Before glazed eyes slid closed, he thought he saw a smile forming on a blurry Yuuko, felt gentle fingers tapping his forehead, and a thought slip into his mind. Your "other" is safe. Sleep child, the price for this wish can be paid later, and you will know after it has been paid.
