Bits of Tin
On the wide floor of the world, a small tin toy laid on its side. It was a beautiful toy, with brilliant colors to its paint, un-chipped, un-faded. Not the slightest dent showed on its pristine surface and to all eyes, it was perfect... though appearances can be deceiving. As the toy was so very perfect, so very beautiful, and so very valuable, it had been placed in a case, forever watching the world through glass. Unhanded, un-played-with, never to be held by a person's hand, the toy had begun to rust in the inside. Its tiny gears thickened with dust, and its axel corroded with rust, the tin toy, now free of its case, would always clumsily list to one side, trapped moving in clockwise circles forever.
But on the floor, the toy was not alone.
Beside it stood another tin toy, quietly waiting for the other to get up. This other toy was not shiny and perfect, but rather its paint was scraped off in places and it looked as if it had been crushed beneath some unkind boot. Smashed and bent, its tiny parts refused to work just right and its one wheel was twisted up badly so that it was eternally, awkwardly circling counter clockwise.
It had fought hard to reach where the rusted toy lay, forcing its bent wheel to take it closer and closer with each circle to where the other laid, till it stood beside it, waiting.
It wasn't that it thought the rusted toy would be able to straighten its wheel or repair the twisted teeth of its gears, nor was it that it thought it could make the rusted toy's rust go away and the dust clear from its parts. Instead, its only hope on that wide, lonely floor was that when the toy got back up they could lean on each other. One pushing to the right, the other pushing to the left, if they stuck together maybe, just maybe, they could go straight and leave their worn in tracks forever. Together they might find something good beyond this empty floor...
Maybe, just maybe...
It was the broken toy's only hope.
So it waited, very quietly, on the wide floor, for its friend to get up.
So Idomu waited, very quietly, beside Nokoru's hospital bed, for him to wake up.
End
Closing notes:: This is a part of a roleplaying game. In the game, Nokoru has been struck down by spells set against Clamp itself. As its a roleplaying snippet, I doubt I'll continue from it, but once I'm done with my Tsubasa fic, we'll see. I could always spin it and switch the reason why Nokoru is out cold. shrugs.