Down the rabbit hole
Disclaimer:
Pet Shop Of Horrors, the characters (with the exception of my made up OC's) and neither the manga do belong to me in any way or form! They belong to their rightful owners by law and the artist. I make no money from it and neither plan to do so in any kind of the future!
Seems I cannot write one shots anymore, goody! Dunno why thought. It originally was one but turned this afternoon into 23 pages?! I was just checking it over and correcting and before I knew it, it had already grown to that length! Aaaargh!
Oh, hit me please! Suryallee
Chapter one, formally the mentioned One-Shot…oh hell!
"Hey, granny, are you sure you are alright? Nothing broken or so, Yeah?" Leon peeled himself from the sidewalk he had fallen onto with the old lady in his arms when he had earlier just barely rescued her from being smashed flat like a pancake under a car. The driver was long gone and her carried bags lay in a heap next and around both. A man picked up some apples that had fallen out of one of them.
Thanking him, Leon carefully set the old woman back onto her feet when he had stood up.
The old woman gave him a pat on his arm. "Oh yes, my dear boy!" She smiled beatifically and benevolently up at the two heads taller officer. "Don't you worry so much! I am fine… oh dear! My groceries!" Leon, despise feeling a bit hurt from him taking the worst of their fall, bend to help the elderly Chinese woman to pick up the goods and to put them back into the bags.
Finally finished he turned with a barely muted sound of pain while grinning like a boy at the small Chinese woman that gave him a look that told Leon clearly that she had heard him wince.
"Oh poor boy, you got hurt because of me."
Leon shrugged it off. "Isn't the first time I got hurt on my job, don't ya worry, m'am. Here, your groceries… you live far from here?" He told and asked her with another beam. The elderly woman smiled gracious up at the tale and in her opinion handsome police officer before she shook her head. "No, just two houses from here." In the end, Leon helped her home while carrying her bags under the weird stares of the people of Chinatown.
He shrugged it off.
He had heard the mutters of some in the department of her being an eccentric and very eerie old woman that the community seems to adore and fear all in one. He had never given anything about rumors or about stupid people before and would not begin with it now, Leon decided. That car driver on the other hand, he had his number memorized and would visit that asshole once he was finished here! To hand him his damn ass, for nearly driving over the petite old lady and him!
Also, there was the animal related latest case about that Leon needed to ask the Count about still.
His original goal for being here in Chinatown in the first place. He stole a glance at the old Chinese lady that walked slowly next to Leon. Seemingly, she was fine. He secretly heaved a sigh of relieve. Leon had been worried that she had been injured or maybe shocked. Again, his keen eyes checked her covertly over before he let it slide.
Why had no one of her family gone and bought her shit for her? Didn't they care about her living next to the strongly used road right before her door?
He felt miffed now. Maybe she was like Miss Unger, from the flat next to his and had no relatives? Leon often went to buy her groceries along with his. He would look if he saw the old lady walk around alone again and if she had no one, he would find someone for her to help her. Moreover, D still tried to avoid his questions, darn it! Back on track again, he noted wryly. The Count was always on Leon's mind in the late. Almost as if the two of them were an old married couple with issues, this time Leon snorted.
Unknown to Leon, next to him the *old Woman* listened into his thoughts.
The weird looks she received came only from those who did not know what she was. The others greeted her with deep respect bordering on open fear. Miss Wu was one of the protecting spirits of LA's Chinatown and actually, she just looked like a human being. In reality, she was a dragon but the poor child next to her did know nothing of that luckily or else, Leon would have run screaming already that she figured with mirth.
Since a while now she had seen D and Leon tiptoe around each other like cats onto a hotplate, she snorted softly.
That young Kami needed a companion and the human next to her had now two times saved one of her kin without to get anything in return, or even thanked for it. Neither had he ever asked for anything else as the truth and a bit of trust. Leon had such a hard life, she never saw him with a girl or boyfriend either. Miss Wu thought about that a bit. He also had no clue that he had a daughter… this time she grinned a bit. Well, she thought, she would no longer stand by and watch just because the Kami's were equally stubborn as the detective next to her. And in her eyes, Leon needed a keeper as much as the young D needed one.
A blind man could see the goodness and the big heart in Leon: she made up her mind when he turned to go on her doorstep. She had right the right thing to fix the dilemma of both, Miss Wu thought. It would help the boy surely, she was certain of that.
"Thank you, detective. I would like to give you something in return, please?" She gave Leon her best puppy dog look along with weaving a little spell around him to follow her request. She knew how immune the man seems to be to those. Had seen him more than one time escape one cast on him without to even notice it!
Leon was something else, all right. However, she had already known that since a while, so, nothing new here.
He nodded after a while reluctantly. Not feeling well with it at all. "B..but I only did what is right and my job and…!" He tried to back out, no avail the old lady gave him such a wounded look that Leon melted instantly. "Ohhh alright! But I really need nothing in exchange for helping one in need, Ma'm. I like helping those who need it, honestly." He ended up with suddenly holding a weird looking stone on a small necklace. It didn't look expensive to Leon but one never knew with Chinese people.
"It is just an old talisman of my late husband", she told him with a small smile, seeing his questioning look and inwardly laughing madly at his barely concealed mistrust.
"Nothing of worldly worth for me but I believe in its power to help its wearers. Please do me the honor and wear it? I would sleep easier if you do." That did the trick along with her begging look. Leon took it with a grumble and let her put it around his neck after fumbling with the uncommon lock on it. When he finally went home, Miss Wu watched Leon go with a wide smile on her elderly features.
Unknown to Leon, she did know very well about the magic of this specific amulet.
It was made of a rare grey-green piece of Jade. Worth a lot more as Leon's old and battered car and most likely the rest of his possessions together. However, its real worth lay in its powers to help one find the best possible future and happiness that ones heart deserved. When she had laid it around Leon's neck, she heard the answering echo of the stones powers to the pureness of Leon's heart and soul and the secret wishes he did burry under all of his rough exterior and gruffy words all the time.
He so feared to get hurt again all the time that it almost made her cry.
All the sorrow about his brother, his life and about his stubbornly ignored attraction to the youngest Count slowly ate away on the poor boy. The stone would fix that, and it would fix Leon. Miss Wu was sure. With a whistle, she went inside to make herself something to eat so she could later hunt down that driver. He would have a nightmare of the different kind this night, one, out of that he would never wake again. The nerve of that man! To nearly run her over…
The closing of her door made it vanish from the wall it had been in.
Leon went home not much later that day. He had a badly set of sprained rips, a big bruise on his ass and was off duty for the rest of the week to heal it out. His low curses filled his rooms out while he changed clumsily into his pajama pants. He hated it when he was forced on sick leave! His chief had taken one look at him and had send Jill off with Leon to the hospital after reading his report. With another curse, he sat gingerly onto his bed and stared at the wall across him with unseeing eyes. The stone necklace already forgotten hanging around his neck. He finally put out the lights and went to sleep.
This night, Leon had the weirdest dreams ever in history!
He saw different ways how his next year would run for him as well as what his live would be if the visions played out. They usually ended with him chasing D hopelessly over the world and never finding him. In some of the dream futures, he ended up killing the Count, in others, he was killed and in others again, he killed himself. In all of those dark futures, he never told D what he felt or denied his attraction to the Count.
Then there were some dreams that did not end that badly.
One particular scared Leon a bit. It was as if it was showing him what could be if he did not do a few things in the future and would accept instead what the Count always seems to do in his dreams. With him as Leon's lover and friend. In the next morning, he could remember what he had dreamed about, and it scared him shitless. Leon awoke less refreshed as hoped and went on with his day in a sore mood and much to mull over.
He called D to tell him that he was off duty due his *slight* injury's and that he would get his brother from D the next evening.
Staring at the receiver, Leon wondered why he had felt so glad to hear D's voice and why the hell he had feared for a second that D could be gone and the line dead?! A new wave of pain ended his musings and Leon took two of the pills he had become against the pains and went back to bed. Hopefully, he would feel better when he woke the next time around!
This time, he dreamed of animals that turned into humans and back. Saw the goat thing of D as a young man with red hair and than as the tiger sheep again. The entire night he dreamed of things that his brain could not fully understand and yet begun to accept as normality that was not reality. He knew somehow that he dreamed this all but somehow he also begun to understand that he did not in a way.
The scenes were all featuring past events between Leon and D.
At one time, working on the rabbit case he had thought he had seen babies instead of rabbits, his brain chose to remember this in his dream. Now dreaming about it again, he only saw them as such for the entire dream memory along. Creepy, little baby's that had a murderous intent in their inhuman eyes. He also saw what had lead to them multiplying so fast in the first case and now suddenly he did no longer pity the woman and her husband but the beast rabbit that they had bought.
He dreamed of the chef and D again.
Of the man named Wong, who in his dream now looked… odd to Leon. More like his body was hiding another one inside, a ghostly presence within of it that seems to overlay that of the Chinese man all the time. He saw something that he couldn't have in reality, the man in jail while he killed himself. The form seemed to blur and then there was suddenly a red head with ram horns standing in front of the madman. Slicing the body free of it's restrains with his claws and then he helped the insanely babbling man to rip his own heart out of his chest to eat it in the end!
Even asleep, Leon shuddered at the sight, feeling nauseated from the entire thing.
He saw the man with the horns and the red hair turn into the favorite goat pet of D and stroll off to the shop. The times seemed to change and Leon saw it bite him sometimes and then play with his brother. Play and protect his little brother, take a bullet for him and cuddle up contently with Chris.
In the meanwhile, the boy/beast went out at some nights and hunted down thieves, murders, and drug dealers to eat them after killing them, until nothing much was left.
To then return to the shop to sleep at Chris feet in his bed. Somehow, his anger at it slowly went down when seeing this over and over again and somehow he slowly understood that it was merely a beast that ate humans as humans ate cows. That he somehow saw it as a human being as well as a beast. Why thought, Leon was clueless about. As if something wanted him to understand something or to make him see a reason?
It wasn't something that Leon could understand or accept easily.
When he awoke, this time he was hellish confused and it was barely three in the morning. He took another load of pills, used the toilet and ate something before his eyes grew heavy again and he fell asleep on his couch to which he had emigrated too in avoiding his bed and the weird dreams of these last two naps.
Right in front of the still running TV.
This time he dreamed of the many cases he and Jill had to take on in the past months. Each time he saw what lead to the demise of the humans in the end. Saw why they had died, what darkness's had lurked inside of the, oh so innocent, people. In the most cases, he soon found himself pitying the beasts that went with them as much as he wanted to shake the humans until they would see their stupidity and wanted to make them see reason, to change their ways for the better.
Sometimes the humans and pets seem to work out; in one case, he saw D and the girl with her dog or the other girl with her horse. The latter had him cuss up a storm at D. He had known that that damnable Chinese guy had used him somehow to cheat!
He also saw his friend, the boxer and his bird and was glad that those two had worked out.
He slowly got it, that D was dealing out punishments to the humanity in a way. That the pets not necessarily were meant to kill their humans every time but that the humans broke the contracts repeatedly. Even Leon soon felt angry with the buyers for being so thickheaded to not head three simple rules all the fucking time!
Could not even understand why the most broke their contracts in the first place!
He awoke, cussing up a wild streak at them all this time. Sitting up from the floor he had fallen onto Leon made his way to his bed under groans of pain. Once there his eyes told him that it was now six in the morning and much too early for him to be up and about. He fell back asleep before he had ended that thought.
This time he dreamed of that Alexander person and his life. What made Leon feel regret to not have known the vampire better but also glad that his odyssey was over.
Then later the dream changed and showed him an unknown man named Vesca Howell. The agent seem to hunt down the father of his D and he could only stand by and watch Chris leave with Josie and Sam and then later D vanish from him as he had done in other dreams before. He saw the scenes two times more before he finally screamed in his dream in his frustration what seem to put the entire thing to… a… stop.
Suddenly he stood in a kind of vortex, a kind of grey nothingness.
Shaking his dream head, Leon tried to make sense of all of this and failed. He sat down in the grey mist and rubbed his dream face. He did not want D have to leave because of that Howell guy, did not want the old agent to die, did not want to have to shoot D's father because he had gone nuts! He slowly realized that he did not want to see the beast cry because Chris was gone, that he did not want to lose Chris ever again or D to flee them both and him to have to chase him all over the world.
Nevertheless, to what did that lead him then in the end?
What was this? A kind of bad remake of the three ghosts of the past, present and future and the old scrooge?
Alternatively, was it a kind of supernatural warning, help, whatever?
Hell! Leon thought, this all was soo weird in the first place that he could not get his brain wrapped around it all!
So, what did he want? Because this all seem to want to make him to think about that.
Leon slowly realized it, that something wanted him to make a decision. He sighed and stared around in the grey around him as if searching for a kind of idea, help or a pointer. Unsurprisingly, he found none. Sighing again, Leon rubbed his face anew and cursed. This was all too much! He went once again through the memories of his odd, foreboding dreams.
If he had understood it right, this all was about his dreams, wants and wishes.
So, what did he want? What did he wish for? What were his deepest desires and dreams?
This time he screamed in his anger. Wasn't that what D always told him that his shop sold? Yeah, suure! He saw that this night and how that usually played out in Technicolor, all right. Leon scowled at the thought. He had to give it to D, he had in a way, sold them just that, love, dreams and happiness. What they had wanted and sometimes even more than that. The most were just never content with what they got, that was it!
They had usually wanted more and had often such twisted dreams, wants, desires and secrets that even Leon had to shudder and become angry with them.
Leon scowled and upgraded that to, they never truly wanted what they told and always had wanted something else in their hearts instead of the said and that taint in them, D had sensed somehow and sold to them in the end. Like those two senate men who had wanted to buy a Kirin, not even understanding what that actually was or implied. One of them still lived and Leon had the hunch that many innocents would die because of his wish granted by the Kirin in the end. Their blood would be the payment for the wish of the owner, of the chosen sovereign of the beast. So much, he had understood from that weird dream.
What brought Leon back to his own dilemma of having to come to terms with what he wanted in here?
He crossed his arms and scowled at the endless grey above him that seem to mock him. He had always thought that he lead a simple life. That he had reached what he wanted and such. He had his dream job, earned enough money to live a halfway problem free life. Had friends, occasional one-night stands with cute woman… Leon really thought he had been contend until he met D.
From that moment on, his life had been turned upside down.
He scowled again, so what did Leon really want and wish for? Not much Leon soon realized himself, just a few basics and since a short while he realized, he had developed new wishes, wants, and dreams. That he had learned to love different things and persons in his life again. The death of his mother had scared him off of everything remotely loveable and had made him close up to his brother even, Leon realized slowly.
What he wanted, dreamed and hoped for was simple, really.
He loved his little brother and did not really want to give him back again. Leon realized that he would have to get a bigger flat and more stable work hours and that he would have to stop drinking and smoking if he wanted to keep Chris with him and sighed. No longer thinking of it to send him back to his aunt and uncle.
What else?
Howell came again to Leon's mind. He did slowly get aware of the similarities between his obsession with his D and that of the older agent with what seems to have been, D's father. Scratching his head, Leon grunted at that revelation in annoyance. In his eyes the two older ones needed their heads bashed together for their stupidity to fail in simply accept the other. He growled when he realized that he too did that in a way with his D and cussed again.
They had much in common and yet… nothing at all, Leon realized.
The older D had a serious psychological problem and needed to get his mental state checked, Leon thought and Howell? He did need a reality check just as bad as the older D in his eyes. He and his D had no mental problems like these two, but for that, others to solve out that were just as bad. D with his sore focus on what the dreams showed Leon to be his task in this world. To deal out punishment to his fellow humans for their crimes at Mother Nature and the animal kingdom and D's believes that all humans were bad. Leon on the other hand, he had a problem with his emotional scars. They prevented Leon from getting too close to another being again in his fear to be hurt again.
To loose someone important to him again.
However, if he was honest here, had he not already grown too fond of D? With a grunt, Leon angrily accepted that he had and that he did fear to loose him already too damn much! D was one of the few beings in this world Leon really cared about. Maybe, even more then cared… Leon scowled at his own trail of thoughts and scratched his nose in his unease.
If the dreams were right, he would lose him soon anyways, wanted or not and he did Not want that!
He wanted to keep his friend for as long as he could with Chris and himself. Wanted to be his friend, really and truly. In addition, maybe, a little more even? Yeah, Leon thought, as if D would ever let him near him! Hell would freeze over before that happened if he had understood the dreams right. It all saddened Leon in so many different ways that it hurt him. What was wrong with it to befriend… whatever the Count and his family was?
The animals came to his mind; they too would not accept that, Leon was sure.
The memory of Pon Chan, snuggling up to him all the time he was in the shop came to Leon's mind. As well as the various animals, that did always do the same. Suddenly he wasn't so sure anymore about that. Still, Leon was a human and as such a taboo as he understood it. This was pointless; he complained in his mind and groaned.
He wanted to keep his closeness with D, wanted to keep his brother, wanted them all to have a happier life, even wanted the damned goat or whatever T-Chan was happy and what?
Stay together?
He reviewed his dreams and found that they had built an odd family with the time. Somehow, they all had ended up being a very odd family… Leon stared wide eyed into the grey mists. Now that was a funny thought, he mused. Or not at all. There was some truth in this odd revelation. He wondered if D sometimes saw it the same way and concluded that D must fear that nearness of them all. Fear to become too attached to Chris, Leon and humans in general.
He scratched that out of his mind for, too attached to Chris and Leon only.
Somehow, he realized it that the family of D would never come to love humans in any way in the future to come… but why was that this way?! Because humanity constantly destroyed the world and killed animals? He was not really sure here, but thought it could be that and maybe something else Leon had no clue about yet. D valued the life of an animal over that of a human any day. He had gotten that much in his past dealings with the Chinese shopkeeper. Leon suddenly felt depressed, as he saw it, there was simply no way for his wants and dreams to ever come true.
Just like the poor Howell and the elder D, they would never find happiness? He felt suddenly like crying. He did not want that! Leon wished he could change fate, that of his D and him as well as that of Vesca and his D. Unknowingly to Leon, the stone around his neck glowed one time when he came to his startling conclusion.
The mist dispersed suddenly and his awareness slipped away from Leon.