(no subject)
Title: The Children's Wood
Chapter: Oneshot.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Not mine in any way, shape or form.
Summary: An experiment in surrealism scribbled down in a few hours when I realised how close the deadline was. Thanks to gloomy_sunday for the beta.
The Children's Wood was an ominous place, a strip of dry, dead land that had never been remotely a wood. Children avoided the place, fearful of something they couldn't quite explain. Occasionally rumours would surface, stories of young boys, and it was always boys, who had wandered into the Children's Wood late at night never to come home.
Parents hurried to dismiss these tales, reassuring their sons and daughters that the stories were just that, urban legends made up by older children to scare them. Still, there was something inherently sinister about the Children's Wood...
---
It is oppressive under the trees, dark, damp and immensely humid. Shadows shift over and around him, almost tangible in their density, making his skin crawl. Something to his left screams, but he cannot tell whether it is human or animal. Leaves brush together above his head, slithering across his face, arms, and shoulders as he passes.
He does not know where he is, but at the same time it is strangely familiar. His feet follow a path the rest of his body is unaware of, as if someone else is using them, controlling them. There are people around him, crowding him from behind, from either side, but the area before him is clear. Wherever he is going, he is the first.
The further along the invisible trail he goes, the denser the trees become, branches reaching out to clutch at him, tangling finger-like shoots in his hair and pulling. It feels almost as if the trees are trying to drag him off the track and into the undergrowth. The sodden rustle of windswept foliage does little to muffle the whimpers of those who fall by the wayside.
A voice calls him on, compelling his body to make a journey his mind tells him not to. His name whispered, mingling with dozens of others in one harmonious, deadly chorus as a clearing opens before him.
For some reason the clearing is bathed in light, not the pale mockery of the moon but a brilliant vitality from the ground itself, illuminating a slender figure. He wonders who this person is, even as he steps forward into an embrace that is intoxicatingly familiar. At his side, completely in step with him, is another boy, the only other survivor of the forest's grasp.
"Kunimitsu," the voice whispers, but at the same time it sounds like "Keigo", and he falls to his knees before the creature, for there is no way that it is human, hearing the soft thud as his... companion falls beside him. He risks a glance up at the creature: “Syuusuke” a voice crawling through the inside of his head tells him, “Fuji Syuusuke”, and can only see a smile. A pale, slender hand brushes though his hair and runs across his cheek, warm and cool, dry and damp. It is not a feeling he likes, like something insidious and dead-clothed in the body of a man.
"My boys," the Syuusuke creature purrs, pulling away, and every one of his instincts is telling him to run. Run now and escape back to his own world, his own place. To the realm of childish tales and late summer afternoons spent playing tennis with his classmates. Then the light shifts once more, and he gets his first look at the creature's face: delicate, beautiful and eternally misleading.
"Where are we?" the boy at his side asks, voice arrogant and too loud in the sudden stillness, "I demand to know." And the creature chuckles in response.
He does not know why, or how, but the words are suddenly there, "The Children's Wood." And he understands the name now. Understands the stories. This place of shadows and danger, of unnatural light, this is the real Children's Wood, the reason nothing grows on the land hiding it. For what life could survive in a place so tainted?
The creature's smile widens, something hard slipping in at the edges, and he knows it isn't happy with his realisation. No one, he thinks, is meant to know the secrets of the place, not until they are too lost to ever go back.
"This," the other boy whispers, almost to himself, realising the truth, "is where the missing children go. And they," from the corner of his eye he watches a hand indicate towards the trees surrounding them, "are what's left once you are done."
The creature's eyes open suddenly, and it knows that tonight his prey is lost, the minds are too sharp for his manipulations, the wills are too strong.
He feels the eyes piercing through his soul, learning him and marking him, and he knows it will come for him again. One day. But for now he is free.
The journey back is surprisingly easy, the trees parting before him, before them, the sighing of the wind almost words in the darkness. Safe. Free. Alive. Glad. And somewhere along the way he finds a hand in his own, warm and strong.
And in his mind the words form, "Atobe Keigo". "Tezuka Kunimitsu" he echoes as forest gives way to empty, dead land.
---
Sometimes he wakes in the night, Keigo's arms wrapped tightly around him, to hear that voice again, to feel that compulsion. A trick of the moonlight makes that face appear in the window, that enigmatic, beautiful, dangerous smile and he moves to go to the vision.
Then Keigo will move, a comforting warmth at his side, bringing him back to a world where the Children's Wood is just a strip of dead land. Strong arms will pull him closer and warm breath will brush across his skin and the vision will fade. Fuji Syuusuke, if he ever existed, is just a shadow in his memory, a childish nightmare brushed aside upon adulthood.
---
And somewhere nearby the nightmare begins anew as another small boy walks through a strange, grasping forest...
Chapter: Oneshot.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: PG-13.
Disclaimer: Not mine in any way, shape or form.
Summary: An experiment in surrealism scribbled down in a few hours when I realised how close the deadline was. Thanks to gloomy_sunday for the beta.
The Children's Wood was an ominous place, a strip of dry, dead land that had never been remotely a wood. Children avoided the place, fearful of something they couldn't quite explain. Occasionally rumours would surface, stories of young boys, and it was always boys, who had wandered into the Children's Wood late at night never to come home.
Parents hurried to dismiss these tales, reassuring their sons and daughters that the stories were just that, urban legends made up by older children to scare them. Still, there was something inherently sinister about the Children's Wood...
---
It is oppressive under the trees, dark, damp and immensely humid. Shadows shift over and around him, almost tangible in their density, making his skin crawl. Something to his left screams, but he cannot tell whether it is human or animal. Leaves brush together above his head, slithering across his face, arms, and shoulders as he passes.
He does not know where he is, but at the same time it is strangely familiar. His feet follow a path the rest of his body is unaware of, as if someone else is using them, controlling them. There are people around him, crowding him from behind, from either side, but the area before him is clear. Wherever he is going, he is the first.
The further along the invisible trail he goes, the denser the trees become, branches reaching out to clutch at him, tangling finger-like shoots in his hair and pulling. It feels almost as if the trees are trying to drag him off the track and into the undergrowth. The sodden rustle of windswept foliage does little to muffle the whimpers of those who fall by the wayside.
A voice calls him on, compelling his body to make a journey his mind tells him not to. His name whispered, mingling with dozens of others in one harmonious, deadly chorus as a clearing opens before him.
For some reason the clearing is bathed in light, not the pale mockery of the moon but a brilliant vitality from the ground itself, illuminating a slender figure. He wonders who this person is, even as he steps forward into an embrace that is intoxicatingly familiar. At his side, completely in step with him, is another boy, the only other survivor of the forest's grasp.
"Kunimitsu," the voice whispers, but at the same time it sounds like "Keigo", and he falls to his knees before the creature, for there is no way that it is human, hearing the soft thud as his... companion falls beside him. He risks a glance up at the creature: “Syuusuke” a voice crawling through the inside of his head tells him, “Fuji Syuusuke”, and can only see a smile. A pale, slender hand brushes though his hair and runs across his cheek, warm and cool, dry and damp. It is not a feeling he likes, like something insidious and dead-clothed in the body of a man.
"My boys," the Syuusuke creature purrs, pulling away, and every one of his instincts is telling him to run. Run now and escape back to his own world, his own place. To the realm of childish tales and late summer afternoons spent playing tennis with his classmates. Then the light shifts once more, and he gets his first look at the creature's face: delicate, beautiful and eternally misleading.
"Where are we?" the boy at his side asks, voice arrogant and too loud in the sudden stillness, "I demand to know." And the creature chuckles in response.
He does not know why, or how, but the words are suddenly there, "The Children's Wood." And he understands the name now. Understands the stories. This place of shadows and danger, of unnatural light, this is the real Children's Wood, the reason nothing grows on the land hiding it. For what life could survive in a place so tainted?
The creature's smile widens, something hard slipping in at the edges, and he knows it isn't happy with his realisation. No one, he thinks, is meant to know the secrets of the place, not until they are too lost to ever go back.
"This," the other boy whispers, almost to himself, realising the truth, "is where the missing children go. And they," from the corner of his eye he watches a hand indicate towards the trees surrounding them, "are what's left once you are done."
The creature's eyes open suddenly, and it knows that tonight his prey is lost, the minds are too sharp for his manipulations, the wills are too strong.
He feels the eyes piercing through his soul, learning him and marking him, and he knows it will come for him again. One day. But for now he is free.
The journey back is surprisingly easy, the trees parting before him, before them, the sighing of the wind almost words in the darkness. Safe. Free. Alive. Glad. And somewhere along the way he finds a hand in his own, warm and strong.
And in his mind the words form, "Atobe Keigo". "Tezuka Kunimitsu" he echoes as forest gives way to empty, dead land.
---
Sometimes he wakes in the night, Keigo's arms wrapped tightly around him, to hear that voice again, to feel that compulsion. A trick of the moonlight makes that face appear in the window, that enigmatic, beautiful, dangerous smile and he moves to go to the vision.
Then Keigo will move, a comforting warmth at his side, bringing him back to a world where the Children's Wood is just a strip of dead land. Strong arms will pull him closer and warm breath will brush across his skin and the vision will fade. Fuji Syuusuke, if he ever existed, is just a shadow in his memory, a childish nightmare brushed aside upon adulthood.
---
And somewhere nearby the nightmare begins anew as another small boy walks through a strange, grasping forest...