Fic II: Entropy
Title: Visions of Sugarplums
Fandom: xxxHOLiC
Series: Entropy [for lack of a better title]
Wordcount: 681
A/N: This is one of my AUs that hasn't been developed outside of a few notes. I may take it up after Code Blue ends, or more likely I may get impatient and work on it on the side ala flakedice. I think you can figure out the situation, though...
The Dreamscape was nothing but a nightmare these days. Swirls of colour muddied and separated, like a backwards fire, like the entire world was melting away. It was getting harder and harder to move around without being sucked the wrong way or underneath, and while one could not die in the Dreamscape it was easy to become lost. Shizuka typically stayed away, even during the time of relative normality that had ended rather abruptly about a month ago.
But he had a task and an important one, so he returned every night and bore the many consequences with the same resigned determination he felt for the task itself. And it didm’t matter in the end what the task was - he would succeed. Because while he really didn’t mind what state the Dreamscape was in so long as it maintained and did not cave in, there was something more important to him at stake than that. Something far more important.
Shizuka gripped the glass box tighter and pressed forward against the viscous substance that was the only stuff left in this part of the Dreamscape. If he could get to an area of less entropy he would know he was closer to his goal and more importantly be able to travel much more efficiently, but for now he could do nothing but wade until he found solid ground or the remnants of a portal that he could use to escape. The night was without a doubt getting on, though, and Shizuka knew better than to try to deal with the daytime of Dreamscape. Especially in this state of chaos.
Then over a swell of matter he caught sight of the point of constancy that was all that marked a portal these days. Within about five minutes he was within reach, and after another five had managed to climb up onto it. Blood dripped from where the glass box had cut his hand as he felt himself drifting, and then slowly he woke up.
It was still dark, but the yet-lit candle stubs on the table and the glowing embers in the fireplace revealed that much time had passed and that the daylight would not be long in coming. The figure that had usurped the bed was still asleep, and Shizuka glanced mournfully at the couch and tried only to be mildly disappointed. It was not as if he had succeeded yet in the aim of his travels in the Dreamscape, and to expect that there would be change now was delusional and silly.
He had hoped that he might have got the holiday off, perhaps even some real sleep unplagued by journeys and tasks, but now his life was taken up by the all-encompassing search. Night after night was made of strain and minimal progress. It was not his payroll but his sanity that depended on the work he was doing now, and so he could not stop. Not even for the rest he so desperately needed, nor for the holiday he never really acknowledged. It had been others in the business who threw parties Shizuka never really wanted to attend, and others who had instigated gift and card exchanges, and still others who spent nine nights out of commission with family. The only reason he missed it now was that he was not the only one to suffer its loss.
Snow dashed the windows, and Shizuka stared through it as if it spelled out the answer he so desperately needed. But all he could see were flurries of white and the glow of the streetlight that announced the lingering presence of nightfall. Downstairs someone had begun to make waking noises, but Shizuka did not leave his seat on the couch. Today would be no different than any other, and he was beginning to tire of the pattern.
One candle went out. He didn’t re-light it. Outside the wintry weather continued. Downstairs neighbors began to wake up.
But Watanuki, unmoving but for the faint rise and fall of his chest that had not yet ceased for his months of slumber, slept on.
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