no excuses
Title: Code Blue Part III (7/?)
Fandom: xxxHOLiC
Wordcount: 4,254
A/N: Okay, I really have no excuse for how late this one is. And I dislike the ending. :/
All Previous Chapters | Part I Beginning | Part II Beginning | Part III Beginning | Previous Chapter
The sound of wind didn't wake Watanuki up, but when he finally opened his eyes it was loud in his ears, amplified by the cave's acoustics. Outside the storm had picked up, and was it just him or did the entrance look a great deal smaller? He sat up quickly, and only then realised that he had been sleeping on Doumeki's shoulder, and Doumeki was still asleep but slumped where he sat.
He'd better not mention this to anyone ever, Watanuki thought, though without the customary horror that normally would have accompanied such a thought. Well - with less of it.
When Watanuki climbed up to the opening from which they'd entered, it was to discover that not only was the storm still raging outside, they were also trapped inside. The snow had built up in a rather formidable wall, blocking their exit and barely leaving room to see out of. Panicking, he dug at the top layer, trying to clear a bit more room but only succeeding in dumping a fair amount of snow on Doumeki's head.
Doumeki started awake, pushing snow out of his face and turning to look up. "What are you doing?" he asked, somehow completely calm.
"We're trapped in here!" Watanuki yelled down at him, wincing as his voice bounced off the cave's walls and reverberated in the cold air. More snow fell into the cave, though this time Doumeki stepped out of the way. "The blizzard kept blizzarding while we were asleep and now we're stuck, and - and - this was your idea!"
Instead of answering straight away with another of his annoyingly reasonable one-liners, Doumeki climbed up to inspect the opening and the snow that clogged it. "There's nothing we can do until the storm stops," he said eventually, giving Watanuki one of those various looks that this time Watanuki interpreted as an indication that he should descend first. At least - he thought that was what it meant. Would it kill him to say it for once? he wondered as he carefully lowered himself back down to the cave floor.
That day seemed to last forever. They had little food and less water, though with the snow above it was easy enough to acquire more of the latter. Still, Watanuki was more than a little perturbed that he was the only one who seemed to be worried about their impending death by starvation, or perhaps hypothermia.
He paced nervously for a while, until Doumeki pointed out that by doing so he was actually wasting energy. Too annoyed to admit aloud that Doumeki was right, he leaned against the wall and fumed silently, which lasted him all of ten minutes before he found that the cold stone had just sucked all the warmth out of him.
"And don't you say anything," Watanuki snapped at his companion, who only looked a little smug about the whole thing. Even that could've been the effect of Watanuki's overactive imagination, but even so, it wasn't on at all. And now he was cold.
Visibly cold, apparently. "You're shivering," Doumeki observed.
"You're very astute," Watanuki spat. "Really, it doesn't take a genius to spot that, does it?" A very small part of him cringed a bit; for once, Doumeki had actually done nothing wrong. But he was cold and he was afraid and he didn't have anything else to do but get worked up or colder.
In any case, Doumeki did not seem particularly affected. He simply watched Watanuki for a long, uncomfortable moment before closing his eyes, briefly, as if in resignation.
"Get over here, idiot," he said.
Watanuki blinked, and after a momentary blankness comprehended what was intended by those words. "You -” he began before losing his offended indignation. "But -” he tried again. Then he thought about it. He had absolutely nothing to gain by standing here but his pride, and better to lose some pride and stay alive, right?
"I'm not the idiot here," he snapped as a sort of consolation prize, and walked over and sat down behind Doumeki on the small pile of battered blankets, so that they sat back-to-back. To his utter disgust, it was warmer, and after a few minutes of pronounced silence he stopped shivering quite so badly. At least Doumeki refrained from making any remarks on the topic; in fact, he didn't say anything at all.
Not that he ever said much, anyway.
But silence did get rather awkward after a while, since they were sitting next to each other, not quite back-to-back but still at a much closer proximity than they would normally have found themselves, outside of caves and large swamps filled with angry ghosts. "How is it you know so much about this kind of thing?" he finally decided upon. "I mean, I'm not a big fan of religion, so I'm not going to buy the explanation that you were put on this earth to annoy me. But it is kind of unlikely that you always know everything about what's going on. Not that I'm saying you know everything, because you definitely don't. But…"
Realising he was definitely babbling now, he promptly shut his mouth with a faint click.
Doumeki shrugged, which was a much more marked gesture when his shoulders pushed against Watanuki's and the shifting of the fabric of his clothes was audible in the cave's silence. "I traveled with my grandfather when I was young,"
Watanuki had not expected to get an answer, necessarily, though this was maybe because he was so unwilling to tell of his own past. So he had no reply beyond a rather unintelligent "Oh".
"He also taught me to shoot a bow," Doumeki elaborated.
"What about a gun?" asked Watanuki.
"I learned that later."
Thinking back to his own childhood, Watanuki persisted, "So you didn't live in one place for long?"
Doumeki shrugged again. "Not really."
This was all very strange; Watanuki hadn't really contemplated the fact that Doumeki had once been a child at all. He hadn't really contemplated much about his rather annoying companion, which wasn't a horrible vice or anything; life hadn't exactly been easy since the two of them had joined forces. But it made sense, now that he thought of it, that Doumeki had moved around a lot as a child. He seemed a bit too comfortable doing so now, especially after all the close scrapes they'd had.
It was an interesting mental image, a young Doumeki following some old man around across the uninhabited countryside. Maybe they'd had a vehicle, or maybe they'd traveled on foot. Watanuki wondered why they had traveled so much. There were plenty of reasons - in this chaotic age, it was sometimes safer and often more lucrative to be left uncatalogued as a citizen of any given place. If Watanuki had possessed the means to travel, would he have ended up as he was now? It seemed unlikely.
He wondered why he was suddenly so concerned about Doumeki's past. It wasn't as if he cared about the guy in any way. Except - well - to be fair, he'd come to this conclusion before. Doumeki could be extremely useful sometimes. And despite his awful personality, he wasn't a bad person. He'd never tried to kill Watanuki, which was much more than a great deal of fairly agreeable could say. In Watanuki's books, at least, this was a reasonable mark of favour.
And when it all came down to one, Doumeki was one of the few people Watanuki knew that he wouldn't have minded being trapped in a cave with. Not that he enjoyed it at all, and he'd really just like to be out of the cave entirely, but still… at least it wasn't Kyle.
And they'd got out of worse situations than this. So there wasn't too much to worry about. As soon the storm quieted some, they'd dig themselves out and continue on their way.
Watanuki felt something relax within him, some muscle in his shoulders he hadn't noticed had tensed. Following its example, he slowly relaxed, allowing his spine to unstiffen.
"Oi," Doumeki said after a moment. "Are you asleep?"
"No," Watanuki retorted. "Why would I be asleep? It's the middle of the day!"
There was another moment's pause. "You relaxed," Doumeki said, finally.
"And? Is that not allowed?"
"You're leaning against me."
Watanuki froze, realising that this was true, and sat up in a hurry. "Well - I - don't think it means anything! I'm just tired!" He could feel his face heating, which was at least a welcome relief from the cold.
"But it's the middle of the day," Doumeki deadpanned.
It was too cold to leave the sanctuary of the blankets, but Watanuki made sure to sit bolt upright. He might be useful, but he's still a complete ass, he thought irritably.
The day passed at an aggravatingly slow rate. Four times Watanuki stood up halfway before remembering why he was sitting down in the first place and returning to his former position, but his restlessness was growing more difficult to ignore. They'd been in here a day, or close to it, and the storm was still raging, and they weren't going anywhere. They needed to keep going. They needed to leave here. Unable to do anything about it, he chased these thoughts around in his head, growing frustrated and ever more restless.
But somewhere along the line he must have drifted off, for he woke with a start. For a moment he felt compressed, unable to breathe, staring at walls that were far, far too close together for comfort. I'm suffocating, he thought wildly, and this is it, we're going to die-
A hand on his shoulder shook him once, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Turning around, he exhaled shakily; it was only Doumeki, looking (for a change) vaguely concerned. "Don't do that!" Watanuki snapped, curling in on himself again. The walls had returned to their proper positions, looking innocently away as if they'd done nothing wrong at all. He suspected they were conspiring against him. Maybe this cave was possessed, or maybe it wasn't a cave at all but a tomb, or a prison. Maybe it just drew a lot of spirits.
Maybe he was finally going crazy.
"Calm down," said Doumeki, as if that would solve everything. Watanuki opened his mouth to retort, and then choked out a laugh. Suddenly he couldn't stop, though he wasn't sure what was so funny, and he was laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing. We're going to die in here, he thought again, despondently, and I'm going to go crazy first. For some reason, this only made him laugh harder.
Doumeki watched him carefully throughout his laughing fit, holding him as still as possible, waiting until at last Watanuki regained enough control to breath properly. For a while the cave was full of the echoing noise of rhythmless inhalations and intermittent giggles. Eventually Watanuki calmed down, utterly spent of both energy and capacity for emotion. He felt dull, leaden, and as if he would be unable to hold himself upright should Doumeki let go of his shoulders.
"I'm okay," he mumbled anyway, more as a reflex. "I'm just tired."
--
The cave was completely silent once Watanuki fell asleep again. Occasionally he would twitch or mutter something, but beyond this, silence reigned. After a while, Doumeki left the blankets to his sleeping companion and climbed back up the rock to clear out what was left of the entrance. Outside the snowfall was steady but not in a fervor; the wind had died down as the sun set. Doumeki fancied he could see lights, somewhere in the distance. He contemplated going to investigate, but eventually decided against it. There was no telling if the break in the storm would last long enough for him to leave and return, and he didn't have the proper equipment for traversing this sort of environment. They'd made it before - but during the day, and only by sheer luck.
He descended back into the cave and opened his makeshift pack, mind racing as he tried to think of what their next move would be. He wasn't at all sure what had just happened to Watanuki, but he was willing to bet that it related to the reason Watanuki had been so driven to keep moving these past days. Coercion, perhaps; Doumeki had seen it in action before, with similar effects. A bit of suggestion, repeated daily, driven home by seemingly random events, perhaps forgotten until suddenly Watanuki subconsciously felt a need for it again. But that wasn't going to help them now - clearly Watanuki was in no condition to be directing them.
He paused as his questing fingers discovered the cold plastic grooves of the land-wave radio he'd taken off the aircraft. Very likely it was a monitored connection, but at this point capture was better than death by hypothermia. And they had the fortune to not have an obvious connection to the previous owners of the aircraft. Kurogane and Fai were long gone, chasing after Fuuma. The only connections Doumeki and Watanuki retained to them were the items they had looted from the crash, and anyone could have done that. So discovery wouldn't put them in too much harm - unless Seishirou were to be the one to discover them.
Still, uncertain chances were better than certain death, so Doumeki flipped the switch on the radio and watched as it flickered into life. Then he climbed back up to the entrance, cradling it away from the snow and ice, and expanded the transmit range to the widest setting possible. With another glance out into the snowy mountain night, he announced his existence to the connected world.
Then he climbed down once again, radio still in hand, and sat down upon the small unoccupied area of blankets. And he waited.
--
Watanuki woke to an odd light shining into his face. Upon opening his eyes, and subsequently suffering from temporary blindness, he discovered the source to be sunlight from above, reflecting off the ice and into his eyes. The storm had apparently ended sometime during the night.
Adrenaline surged; he disentangled himself from the pile of fabric as quickly as he could, accidentally kicking Doumeki in the process. Once free he scuttled up the rock face and up the opening, to discover that the snow had frozen around it and now neither he nor Doumeki would fit through.
Before he could properly work up a good panic, his eyes adjusted to the brightness outside and he saw something moving not too far away. It seemed to be some sort of vehicle, with wide rotating belts instead of wheels. As Watanuki watched, it pulled to a stop on the side of a snow drift, and several human-shaped figures emerged from within. They seemed to be searching the snow for something, though Watanuki had no idea what. He didn't really care; all he could think was that these people could no doubt help them on their way again.
"Excuse me!" he called as loudly as he could - which, after just waking up and having spent a good thirty-six hours in a very cold environment, was not particularly loud at all. "We're stuck in a cave!" he tried again, voice cracking toward the end. "Over here! Can you help us?"
Movement to his side startled him, but as ever it was only Doumeki, who looked very much the worse for wear. "How long have they been there?" he asked.
"They just got here," Watanuki told him, before shouting again. "Can you hear me? We're stuck here!"
One of the nearer figures paused, and then gestured at the others. Then the entire group began climbing toward them. A tense five minutes passed as they made their cautious ways up the treacherous snowbanks and hidden rocks. Watanuki could hardly sit still, though beside him Doumeki was tense and unmoving.
Finally the first of the group reached the shelf where the cave opened upon. Watanuki could not determine the sex of this stranger, for ze wore bulky cold-weather gear and a mask over hir nose, mouth, and scalp. Only the stranger's eyes were visible. They were the strangest shade Watanuki had ever seen - brilliant violet. Perhaps they were contacts, defense against ultraviolet rays this high up.
"That was stupid," snapped the stranger in a voice light in tambour but distinctly male. "Giving yourselves up like that. You must have been really -”
He stopped, catching sight of the two in the cave. "You're not who I thought you were," he said after a moment. "All right, who the hell are you, and what are you doing with a radio belonging to two of the biggest prices in the archipelago?"
"We're travelers," Doumeki said before Watanuki could respond. "And we're going to Freye."
Watanuki had never heard of Freye, but he supposed that was the idea. Maybe it was in the direction they had been heading. Maybe Doumeki was simply bluffing because he didn't trust these people either. Watanuki didn't trust them - but he didn't trust anybody, ever, so that really said very little.
"And the radio?" asked the man with the strange eyes, as the rest of his team made it up the slope. "How did you get that?"
"We found it in a crashed aircraft," Doumeki replied.
"Could it have belonged to the people you're looking for?" Watanuki put in, making a mental note to ask about this radio later. Once they were out of the cave, and hopefully out of the cold.
Violet eyes narrowed. "Anything's possible," snapped the man. "I think you know more than you're saying."
One of the other team members hesitantly tapped the first man on the shoulder. "Hey, boss, what's going on?" he asked. "Karen says another storm's coming and we should get back soon." He wore goggles that obscured the otherwise uncovered portion of his face entirely, but Watanuki got the feeling he was being observed. "Who are they?"
"Dig us out," Doumeki suggested.
"Then we'll tell you," Watanuki added, and then promptly had a small, entirely mental fit about the fact that he had just for all intents and purposes finished Doumeki's sentence.
--
"What I don't understand," Watanuki said later, in the back of the ice barge, "is how they found us in the first place. I mean, what were the chances that they would pick up a signal from some bit of shrapnel you brought with you? That's some coincidence."
"It wasn't," Doumeki replied.
"What?"
"It wasn't a coincidence," he repeated, and told the indignant Watanuki about the radio.
Their rescuers had been highly interested in the previous owners of the radio, so much so that they had agreed near-instantaneously to extract the two travelers from their unexpected prison of ice. Once out in the open, both were instantly struck by the cold, and so explanations had been put off until they returned to the base - wherever it was. They were bundled into the back of the barge, given spare coats and a small portion of dried meat to share between them, and left to their own devices for most of the trip.
Watanuki's restless agony had dissipated once they were free of the cave, and now they were moving in the right direction anyway. Now he was only tired - and hungry, and thirsty, and still reasonably cold. He huddled under layers of borrowed coats and tried to nap once Doumeki's brief explanation was made, though the uneven conditions of the terrain made this rather difficult. As he lay there, occasionally bouncing with whatever turbulence they were passing, he wondered just how Doumeki had known to take the radio.
Somehow he must have dropped off while bumping about in the back of the ice barge, for he when he awoke it had stopped moving. His arms felt stiff and sore, his face tight and dry. His head ached with thirst and cold. Sitting stiffly up, Watanuki found the back of the ice barge open. Nearby, Doumeki was speaking with a stranger - not the man who'd been in charge, but one of those who had followed him. Watanuki caught the phrase "four hours by barge" and then the name "Ichiro" before giving up straining his ears.
"Slept well?" asked an unfamiliar, female voice to his left. Watanuki turned and found himself being observed by one of the team members who'd dug them out. He hadn't realised any of them had been girls at the time, but his watcher was definitely female - and beyond that, about his age. She grinned at him as he met her gaze. "Your friend said to let you sleep, because you'd been through a lot. Actually, you look pretty awful. Though," she added, voice dropping at the last to a conspiratorial whisper, "I think he looks much worse off than you do."
Watanuki glanced back over at Doumeki, who nodded back to him before returning to his conversation. He did seem to look rather the worse for wear, though nothing that couldn't be explained away by exhaustion and exposure to the elements. "We've survived worse," Watanuki muttered. Which was actually quite true: after Kyle and Seishirou, a bit of exposure seemed like nothing.
The girl looked intrigued at that. "Worse?" she asked. "Really? I can't think of anything worse than being stuck out on the mountain in a blizzard, but hey, I've been pretty sheltered here. Do you know, I've never actually left this mountain?"
"Really?" Watanuki responded, thinking it must have been nice to grow up in such stable conditions.
"Really," the girl replied. "And it gets boring, let me tell you. By the way, my name's Yuzuriha - what's yours?"
Watanuki thought fast. He was accustomed to giving out his surname because it was more formal, more distant, and also far more familiar in his own head - but Seishirou had recognised it somehow. And what Seishirou knew, others potentially could as well - a situation which historically had proved to bring only trouble.
"I'm Kimihiro," he replied awkwardly.
On the other side of the room, Doumeki and the unknown man had apparently wrapped up their conversation, for they were both approaching the two by the ice barge. The stranger, Watanuki observed, seemed a much more cheerful man than any they had encountered thus far, laughing as he made some comment or another to his taciturn companion. Then again, Yuzuriha was not precisely solemnity incarnate herself, so maybe it had something to do with the locale. Perhaps living out in the middle of nowhere and only fighting Nature to survive bred that kind of cheerful nature.
"Kamui said you two have clearance to be here as long as you don't leave the rooms you're assigned to," said the man with an apologetic grin. "Yuzuriha and I have been assigned to make sure you stay there, but don't worry. Kamui's a hardass, but he wouldn't hurt a guest."
Neither Watanuki nor Doumeki said anything, but they exchanged a glance that clearly read, that's a change. "Where are these rooms?" Watanuki asked politely, figuring that if they were going to be kept somewhere, he would rather it be somewhere comfortable.
Yuzuriha and the other, who introduced himself as Kentarou, guided them up a flight of stairs to a well-lit hallway lined with doors. Though the walls were stark, the floor beneath was hardwood and not industrial-strength corrugated steel, and Watanuki got the sense that this was a home first and a fortress second. And the way their escorts casually joked around as they gave the tour of the building seemed too natural and relaxed for them to have been completely on their guard. This wasn't a contingent of soldiers ready for war; it seemed more like a residential base. Perhaps it was dedicated to research of some kind, even.
They climbed a second set of stairs as Kentarou waxed eloquent about the area in which the base was situated. When Watanuki reached the top, he found himself faced with wall-to-floor windows that lined the outer wall and showed a view of a snowy courtyard, where people walked to and fro, and in some cases had stopped and were talking. Watanuki even saw a few dog-shaped creatures wandering about. Residential base indeed, he thought in amazement. He hadn't seen anything so… domestic in a long, long time.
"Right this way," Yuzuriha proclaimed, setting off down the hallway. "Room 318, just down this way a bit. Are you all right, Kimihiro?"
Watanuki shook himself mentally from his amazement, and smiled at his escort. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I'm just a bit tired."
"That's completely fine!" Yuzuriha replied. "You've been out in the elements for ages. You can sleep some more now; we'll come and fetch you two when it's time for dinner. You'll probably be really hungry, too."
"Dinner?" Watanuki asked.
"We're not going to starve you!" Kentarou objected. "What kind of hosts would that make us? Besides, you can't go snooping around if we're watching you at the dinner table. The only reason you're being watched like this is that some years ago some guys stole one of Kamui's personal projects. The mere fact that we must resort to these measures now is an affront to my very soul!" He looked quite dramatic and tragic as he said this, and Yuzuriha patted him on the shoulder.
"You'll have to excuse Kentarou," she told the other two. "He can get… emotional."
"I see," Doumeki said, voice dry as paper.
Fandom: xxxHOLiC
Wordcount: 4,254
A/N: Okay, I really have no excuse for how late this one is. And I dislike the ending. :/
All Previous Chapters | Part I Beginning | Part II Beginning | Part III Beginning | Previous Chapter
The sound of wind didn't wake Watanuki up, but when he finally opened his eyes it was loud in his ears, amplified by the cave's acoustics. Outside the storm had picked up, and was it just him or did the entrance look a great deal smaller? He sat up quickly, and only then realised that he had been sleeping on Doumeki's shoulder, and Doumeki was still asleep but slumped where he sat.
He'd better not mention this to anyone ever, Watanuki thought, though without the customary horror that normally would have accompanied such a thought. Well - with less of it.
When Watanuki climbed up to the opening from which they'd entered, it was to discover that not only was the storm still raging outside, they were also trapped inside. The snow had built up in a rather formidable wall, blocking their exit and barely leaving room to see out of. Panicking, he dug at the top layer, trying to clear a bit more room but only succeeding in dumping a fair amount of snow on Doumeki's head.
Doumeki started awake, pushing snow out of his face and turning to look up. "What are you doing?" he asked, somehow completely calm.
"We're trapped in here!" Watanuki yelled down at him, wincing as his voice bounced off the cave's walls and reverberated in the cold air. More snow fell into the cave, though this time Doumeki stepped out of the way. "The blizzard kept blizzarding while we were asleep and now we're stuck, and - and - this was your idea!"
Instead of answering straight away with another of his annoyingly reasonable one-liners, Doumeki climbed up to inspect the opening and the snow that clogged it. "There's nothing we can do until the storm stops," he said eventually, giving Watanuki one of those various looks that this time Watanuki interpreted as an indication that he should descend first. At least - he thought that was what it meant. Would it kill him to say it for once? he wondered as he carefully lowered himself back down to the cave floor.
That day seemed to last forever. They had little food and less water, though with the snow above it was easy enough to acquire more of the latter. Still, Watanuki was more than a little perturbed that he was the only one who seemed to be worried about their impending death by starvation, or perhaps hypothermia.
He paced nervously for a while, until Doumeki pointed out that by doing so he was actually wasting energy. Too annoyed to admit aloud that Doumeki was right, he leaned against the wall and fumed silently, which lasted him all of ten minutes before he found that the cold stone had just sucked all the warmth out of him.
"And don't you say anything," Watanuki snapped at his companion, who only looked a little smug about the whole thing. Even that could've been the effect of Watanuki's overactive imagination, but even so, it wasn't on at all. And now he was cold.
Visibly cold, apparently. "You're shivering," Doumeki observed.
"You're very astute," Watanuki spat. "Really, it doesn't take a genius to spot that, does it?" A very small part of him cringed a bit; for once, Doumeki had actually done nothing wrong. But he was cold and he was afraid and he didn't have anything else to do but get worked up or colder.
In any case, Doumeki did not seem particularly affected. He simply watched Watanuki for a long, uncomfortable moment before closing his eyes, briefly, as if in resignation.
"Get over here, idiot," he said.
Watanuki blinked, and after a momentary blankness comprehended what was intended by those words. "You -” he began before losing his offended indignation. "But -” he tried again. Then he thought about it. He had absolutely nothing to gain by standing here but his pride, and better to lose some pride and stay alive, right?
"I'm not the idiot here," he snapped as a sort of consolation prize, and walked over and sat down behind Doumeki on the small pile of battered blankets, so that they sat back-to-back. To his utter disgust, it was warmer, and after a few minutes of pronounced silence he stopped shivering quite so badly. At least Doumeki refrained from making any remarks on the topic; in fact, he didn't say anything at all.
Not that he ever said much, anyway.
But silence did get rather awkward after a while, since they were sitting next to each other, not quite back-to-back but still at a much closer proximity than they would normally have found themselves, outside of caves and large swamps filled with angry ghosts. "How is it you know so much about this kind of thing?" he finally decided upon. "I mean, I'm not a big fan of religion, so I'm not going to buy the explanation that you were put on this earth to annoy me. But it is kind of unlikely that you always know everything about what's going on. Not that I'm saying you know everything, because you definitely don't. But…"
Realising he was definitely babbling now, he promptly shut his mouth with a faint click.
Doumeki shrugged, which was a much more marked gesture when his shoulders pushed against Watanuki's and the shifting of the fabric of his clothes was audible in the cave's silence. "I traveled with my grandfather when I was young,"
Watanuki had not expected to get an answer, necessarily, though this was maybe because he was so unwilling to tell of his own past. So he had no reply beyond a rather unintelligent "Oh".
"He also taught me to shoot a bow," Doumeki elaborated.
"What about a gun?" asked Watanuki.
"I learned that later."
Thinking back to his own childhood, Watanuki persisted, "So you didn't live in one place for long?"
Doumeki shrugged again. "Not really."
This was all very strange; Watanuki hadn't really contemplated the fact that Doumeki had once been a child at all. He hadn't really contemplated much about his rather annoying companion, which wasn't a horrible vice or anything; life hadn't exactly been easy since the two of them had joined forces. But it made sense, now that he thought of it, that Doumeki had moved around a lot as a child. He seemed a bit too comfortable doing so now, especially after all the close scrapes they'd had.
It was an interesting mental image, a young Doumeki following some old man around across the uninhabited countryside. Maybe they'd had a vehicle, or maybe they'd traveled on foot. Watanuki wondered why they had traveled so much. There were plenty of reasons - in this chaotic age, it was sometimes safer and often more lucrative to be left uncatalogued as a citizen of any given place. If Watanuki had possessed the means to travel, would he have ended up as he was now? It seemed unlikely.
He wondered why he was suddenly so concerned about Doumeki's past. It wasn't as if he cared about the guy in any way. Except - well - to be fair, he'd come to this conclusion before. Doumeki could be extremely useful sometimes. And despite his awful personality, he wasn't a bad person. He'd never tried to kill Watanuki, which was much more than a great deal of fairly agreeable could say. In Watanuki's books, at least, this was a reasonable mark of favour.
And when it all came down to one, Doumeki was one of the few people Watanuki knew that he wouldn't have minded being trapped in a cave with. Not that he enjoyed it at all, and he'd really just like to be out of the cave entirely, but still… at least it wasn't Kyle.
And they'd got out of worse situations than this. So there wasn't too much to worry about. As soon the storm quieted some, they'd dig themselves out and continue on their way.
Watanuki felt something relax within him, some muscle in his shoulders he hadn't noticed had tensed. Following its example, he slowly relaxed, allowing his spine to unstiffen.
"Oi," Doumeki said after a moment. "Are you asleep?"
"No," Watanuki retorted. "Why would I be asleep? It's the middle of the day!"
There was another moment's pause. "You relaxed," Doumeki said, finally.
"And? Is that not allowed?"
"You're leaning against me."
Watanuki froze, realising that this was true, and sat up in a hurry. "Well - I - don't think it means anything! I'm just tired!" He could feel his face heating, which was at least a welcome relief from the cold.
"But it's the middle of the day," Doumeki deadpanned.
It was too cold to leave the sanctuary of the blankets, but Watanuki made sure to sit bolt upright. He might be useful, but he's still a complete ass, he thought irritably.
The day passed at an aggravatingly slow rate. Four times Watanuki stood up halfway before remembering why he was sitting down in the first place and returning to his former position, but his restlessness was growing more difficult to ignore. They'd been in here a day, or close to it, and the storm was still raging, and they weren't going anywhere. They needed to keep going. They needed to leave here. Unable to do anything about it, he chased these thoughts around in his head, growing frustrated and ever more restless.
But somewhere along the line he must have drifted off, for he woke with a start. For a moment he felt compressed, unable to breathe, staring at walls that were far, far too close together for comfort. I'm suffocating, he thought wildly, and this is it, we're going to die-
A hand on his shoulder shook him once, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Turning around, he exhaled shakily; it was only Doumeki, looking (for a change) vaguely concerned. "Don't do that!" Watanuki snapped, curling in on himself again. The walls had returned to their proper positions, looking innocently away as if they'd done nothing wrong at all. He suspected they were conspiring against him. Maybe this cave was possessed, or maybe it wasn't a cave at all but a tomb, or a prison. Maybe it just drew a lot of spirits.
Maybe he was finally going crazy.
"Calm down," said Doumeki, as if that would solve everything. Watanuki opened his mouth to retort, and then choked out a laugh. Suddenly he couldn't stop, though he wasn't sure what was so funny, and he was laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing. We're going to die in here, he thought again, despondently, and I'm going to go crazy first. For some reason, this only made him laugh harder.
Doumeki watched him carefully throughout his laughing fit, holding him as still as possible, waiting until at last Watanuki regained enough control to breath properly. For a while the cave was full of the echoing noise of rhythmless inhalations and intermittent giggles. Eventually Watanuki calmed down, utterly spent of both energy and capacity for emotion. He felt dull, leaden, and as if he would be unable to hold himself upright should Doumeki let go of his shoulders.
"I'm okay," he mumbled anyway, more as a reflex. "I'm just tired."
--
The cave was completely silent once Watanuki fell asleep again. Occasionally he would twitch or mutter something, but beyond this, silence reigned. After a while, Doumeki left the blankets to his sleeping companion and climbed back up the rock to clear out what was left of the entrance. Outside the snowfall was steady but not in a fervor; the wind had died down as the sun set. Doumeki fancied he could see lights, somewhere in the distance. He contemplated going to investigate, but eventually decided against it. There was no telling if the break in the storm would last long enough for him to leave and return, and he didn't have the proper equipment for traversing this sort of environment. They'd made it before - but during the day, and only by sheer luck.
He descended back into the cave and opened his makeshift pack, mind racing as he tried to think of what their next move would be. He wasn't at all sure what had just happened to Watanuki, but he was willing to bet that it related to the reason Watanuki had been so driven to keep moving these past days. Coercion, perhaps; Doumeki had seen it in action before, with similar effects. A bit of suggestion, repeated daily, driven home by seemingly random events, perhaps forgotten until suddenly Watanuki subconsciously felt a need for it again. But that wasn't going to help them now - clearly Watanuki was in no condition to be directing them.
He paused as his questing fingers discovered the cold plastic grooves of the land-wave radio he'd taken off the aircraft. Very likely it was a monitored connection, but at this point capture was better than death by hypothermia. And they had the fortune to not have an obvious connection to the previous owners of the aircraft. Kurogane and Fai were long gone, chasing after Fuuma. The only connections Doumeki and Watanuki retained to them were the items they had looted from the crash, and anyone could have done that. So discovery wouldn't put them in too much harm - unless Seishirou were to be the one to discover them.
Still, uncertain chances were better than certain death, so Doumeki flipped the switch on the radio and watched as it flickered into life. Then he climbed back up to the entrance, cradling it away from the snow and ice, and expanded the transmit range to the widest setting possible. With another glance out into the snowy mountain night, he announced his existence to the connected world.
Then he climbed down once again, radio still in hand, and sat down upon the small unoccupied area of blankets. And he waited.
--
Watanuki woke to an odd light shining into his face. Upon opening his eyes, and subsequently suffering from temporary blindness, he discovered the source to be sunlight from above, reflecting off the ice and into his eyes. The storm had apparently ended sometime during the night.
Adrenaline surged; he disentangled himself from the pile of fabric as quickly as he could, accidentally kicking Doumeki in the process. Once free he scuttled up the rock face and up the opening, to discover that the snow had frozen around it and now neither he nor Doumeki would fit through.
Before he could properly work up a good panic, his eyes adjusted to the brightness outside and he saw something moving not too far away. It seemed to be some sort of vehicle, with wide rotating belts instead of wheels. As Watanuki watched, it pulled to a stop on the side of a snow drift, and several human-shaped figures emerged from within. They seemed to be searching the snow for something, though Watanuki had no idea what. He didn't really care; all he could think was that these people could no doubt help them on their way again.
"Excuse me!" he called as loudly as he could - which, after just waking up and having spent a good thirty-six hours in a very cold environment, was not particularly loud at all. "We're stuck in a cave!" he tried again, voice cracking toward the end. "Over here! Can you help us?"
Movement to his side startled him, but as ever it was only Doumeki, who looked very much the worse for wear. "How long have they been there?" he asked.
"They just got here," Watanuki told him, before shouting again. "Can you hear me? We're stuck here!"
One of the nearer figures paused, and then gestured at the others. Then the entire group began climbing toward them. A tense five minutes passed as they made their cautious ways up the treacherous snowbanks and hidden rocks. Watanuki could hardly sit still, though beside him Doumeki was tense and unmoving.
Finally the first of the group reached the shelf where the cave opened upon. Watanuki could not determine the sex of this stranger, for ze wore bulky cold-weather gear and a mask over hir nose, mouth, and scalp. Only the stranger's eyes were visible. They were the strangest shade Watanuki had ever seen - brilliant violet. Perhaps they were contacts, defense against ultraviolet rays this high up.
"That was stupid," snapped the stranger in a voice light in tambour but distinctly male. "Giving yourselves up like that. You must have been really -”
He stopped, catching sight of the two in the cave. "You're not who I thought you were," he said after a moment. "All right, who the hell are you, and what are you doing with a radio belonging to two of the biggest prices in the archipelago?"
"We're travelers," Doumeki said before Watanuki could respond. "And we're going to Freye."
Watanuki had never heard of Freye, but he supposed that was the idea. Maybe it was in the direction they had been heading. Maybe Doumeki was simply bluffing because he didn't trust these people either. Watanuki didn't trust them - but he didn't trust anybody, ever, so that really said very little.
"And the radio?" asked the man with the strange eyes, as the rest of his team made it up the slope. "How did you get that?"
"We found it in a crashed aircraft," Doumeki replied.
"Could it have belonged to the people you're looking for?" Watanuki put in, making a mental note to ask about this radio later. Once they were out of the cave, and hopefully out of the cold.
Violet eyes narrowed. "Anything's possible," snapped the man. "I think you know more than you're saying."
One of the other team members hesitantly tapped the first man on the shoulder. "Hey, boss, what's going on?" he asked. "Karen says another storm's coming and we should get back soon." He wore goggles that obscured the otherwise uncovered portion of his face entirely, but Watanuki got the feeling he was being observed. "Who are they?"
"Dig us out," Doumeki suggested.
"Then we'll tell you," Watanuki added, and then promptly had a small, entirely mental fit about the fact that he had just for all intents and purposes finished Doumeki's sentence.
--
"What I don't understand," Watanuki said later, in the back of the ice barge, "is how they found us in the first place. I mean, what were the chances that they would pick up a signal from some bit of shrapnel you brought with you? That's some coincidence."
"It wasn't," Doumeki replied.
"What?"
"It wasn't a coincidence," he repeated, and told the indignant Watanuki about the radio.
Their rescuers had been highly interested in the previous owners of the radio, so much so that they had agreed near-instantaneously to extract the two travelers from their unexpected prison of ice. Once out in the open, both were instantly struck by the cold, and so explanations had been put off until they returned to the base - wherever it was. They were bundled into the back of the barge, given spare coats and a small portion of dried meat to share between them, and left to their own devices for most of the trip.
Watanuki's restless agony had dissipated once they were free of the cave, and now they were moving in the right direction anyway. Now he was only tired - and hungry, and thirsty, and still reasonably cold. He huddled under layers of borrowed coats and tried to nap once Doumeki's brief explanation was made, though the uneven conditions of the terrain made this rather difficult. As he lay there, occasionally bouncing with whatever turbulence they were passing, he wondered just how Doumeki had known to take the radio.
Somehow he must have dropped off while bumping about in the back of the ice barge, for he when he awoke it had stopped moving. His arms felt stiff and sore, his face tight and dry. His head ached with thirst and cold. Sitting stiffly up, Watanuki found the back of the ice barge open. Nearby, Doumeki was speaking with a stranger - not the man who'd been in charge, but one of those who had followed him. Watanuki caught the phrase "four hours by barge" and then the name "Ichiro" before giving up straining his ears.
"Slept well?" asked an unfamiliar, female voice to his left. Watanuki turned and found himself being observed by one of the team members who'd dug them out. He hadn't realised any of them had been girls at the time, but his watcher was definitely female - and beyond that, about his age. She grinned at him as he met her gaze. "Your friend said to let you sleep, because you'd been through a lot. Actually, you look pretty awful. Though," she added, voice dropping at the last to a conspiratorial whisper, "I think he looks much worse off than you do."
Watanuki glanced back over at Doumeki, who nodded back to him before returning to his conversation. He did seem to look rather the worse for wear, though nothing that couldn't be explained away by exhaustion and exposure to the elements. "We've survived worse," Watanuki muttered. Which was actually quite true: after Kyle and Seishirou, a bit of exposure seemed like nothing.
The girl looked intrigued at that. "Worse?" she asked. "Really? I can't think of anything worse than being stuck out on the mountain in a blizzard, but hey, I've been pretty sheltered here. Do you know, I've never actually left this mountain?"
"Really?" Watanuki responded, thinking it must have been nice to grow up in such stable conditions.
"Really," the girl replied. "And it gets boring, let me tell you. By the way, my name's Yuzuriha - what's yours?"
Watanuki thought fast. He was accustomed to giving out his surname because it was more formal, more distant, and also far more familiar in his own head - but Seishirou had recognised it somehow. And what Seishirou knew, others potentially could as well - a situation which historically had proved to bring only trouble.
"I'm Kimihiro," he replied awkwardly.
On the other side of the room, Doumeki and the unknown man had apparently wrapped up their conversation, for they were both approaching the two by the ice barge. The stranger, Watanuki observed, seemed a much more cheerful man than any they had encountered thus far, laughing as he made some comment or another to his taciturn companion. Then again, Yuzuriha was not precisely solemnity incarnate herself, so maybe it had something to do with the locale. Perhaps living out in the middle of nowhere and only fighting Nature to survive bred that kind of cheerful nature.
"Kamui said you two have clearance to be here as long as you don't leave the rooms you're assigned to," said the man with an apologetic grin. "Yuzuriha and I have been assigned to make sure you stay there, but don't worry. Kamui's a hardass, but he wouldn't hurt a guest."
Neither Watanuki nor Doumeki said anything, but they exchanged a glance that clearly read, that's a change. "Where are these rooms?" Watanuki asked politely, figuring that if they were going to be kept somewhere, he would rather it be somewhere comfortable.
Yuzuriha and the other, who introduced himself as Kentarou, guided them up a flight of stairs to a well-lit hallway lined with doors. Though the walls were stark, the floor beneath was hardwood and not industrial-strength corrugated steel, and Watanuki got the sense that this was a home first and a fortress second. And the way their escorts casually joked around as they gave the tour of the building seemed too natural and relaxed for them to have been completely on their guard. This wasn't a contingent of soldiers ready for war; it seemed more like a residential base. Perhaps it was dedicated to research of some kind, even.
They climbed a second set of stairs as Kentarou waxed eloquent about the area in which the base was situated. When Watanuki reached the top, he found himself faced with wall-to-floor windows that lined the outer wall and showed a view of a snowy courtyard, where people walked to and fro, and in some cases had stopped and were talking. Watanuki even saw a few dog-shaped creatures wandering about. Residential base indeed, he thought in amazement. He hadn't seen anything so… domestic in a long, long time.
"Right this way," Yuzuriha proclaimed, setting off down the hallway. "Room 318, just down this way a bit. Are you all right, Kimihiro?"
Watanuki shook himself mentally from his amazement, and smiled at his escort. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I'm just a bit tired."
"That's completely fine!" Yuzuriha replied. "You've been out in the elements for ages. You can sleep some more now; we'll come and fetch you two when it's time for dinner. You'll probably be really hungry, too."
"Dinner?" Watanuki asked.
"We're not going to starve you!" Kentarou objected. "What kind of hosts would that make us? Besides, you can't go snooping around if we're watching you at the dinner table. The only reason you're being watched like this is that some years ago some guys stole one of Kamui's personal projects. The mere fact that we must resort to these measures now is an affront to my very soul!" He looked quite dramatic and tragic as he said this, and Yuzuriha patted him on the shoulder.
"You'll have to excuse Kentarou," she told the other two. "He can get… emotional."
"I see," Doumeki said, voice dry as paper.