Fic: Ever After (8.1)
Title: Ever After
Characters/Pairings: KuroFai, AshFai, SyaoSaku and DoumWataHima(ish?) Basically, anything implied (or outright stated in recent chapters of the manga with some pairings) in CLAMP canon that my mind stumbles across.
Rating: T
Summary: ‘Fairytale’ is a very trying place. Children get abandoned; loves fall under evil spells, and various members of royal families get abducted on an almost regular basis. Even with a witch on-hand all ills can’t simply be wished away - but then, if it’s really the ‘happy ever after’ you’re looking for, it’s quite obligatory to start with ‘once upon a time…’ AU, with heavy reference to canon.
A/N: Long update again, broken up into pieces because it’s taken/taking me so long to write as well.
Chapter I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII |
Chapter VIII
Once upon a time, a few years ago, there was a child of neverwhere and nothing, pale, dark-haired and blue-eyed, an oddity in Nihon, the kingdom in which he was raised. He was called Watanuki Kimihiro, named by parents he’d never known, an impossible life sheltered from destruction by a change in kanji. He wrote his family name the same way he wrote the day of his birthday, and his given name proclaimed he was a prophet, one with Sight.
Watanuki Kimihiro didn’t want to see anything. His looks were strange enough without him jerking back and flinching at what appeared to be thin air for most of the populace, doing strange dances in the middle of the street. The couple that looked after him despaired of his strangeness - not its existence in itself, but the loneliness it caused for Watanuki, the fact no-one wished to be the child’s friend. The neighbourhood whispered cruel things behind their hands about the boy, and Watanuki paled, grew thinner, quieter, more withdrawn. He was plagued by spirits, demons - and he didn’t dare to tell a soul. Everyone thought he was mad enough, without that being added on top of it.
Watanuki met a girl one day, shortly after his fifteenth birthday. She was a tiny thing, staring at a sakura tree where Watanuki knew the spirit of a deceased woman resided, and at Watanuki’s approach she looked at him, solemn-eyed.
“Don’t you think she looks sad?”
Watanuki thought the question could work just as well for the girl as for the ghost in the tree - he looked at the stranger thoughtfully, hesitating before speaking. If this little girl could see spirits too -
“The sakura tree is dying - she’ll have to find a new home soon.”
“She’s been here a very long time…” The girl approached the tree, laying one hand on the bark. Her expression never wavered. “Moving after so long can be very scary.”
“Have you come from far away?” Watanuki had never seen the child before, never even heard of her before, and everyone knew everyone’s business in the town where he lived. Someone would’ve mentioned another strange child before then had the girl been around.
The strange girl didn’t answer, still looking up into the branches overhead. “…I heard her worrying, so I came to see her. She sounded so sad…”
“About the tree?”
“About you.” The child’s solemn eyes finally looked down, meeting Watanuki’s and looking right through him. “She sees you come by every day, and wonders when it is you’ll be going to where you need to be.”
Watanuki looked confused, glancing up at the spirit overhead, the ghost with sad, kind eyes. “…I am where I need to be.” He didn’t sound very certain - but then, why would he need to be? He’d always simply been there, the idea that he was needed somewhere else was totally foreign to him.
The little girl continued to look at him. “…Don’t you have a wish?”
Life went on. Watanuki stuck to his daily routine, helping the couple that looked after hm, doing his chores, avoiding the spirits that chased him down and clung to him. The people in the neighbourhood continued to whisper, continued to avoid him. He passed by the sakura tree each day, seeing the tree wither, slowly die, seeing the sad dead woman sitting in the branches looking down at him, waiting.
“…I’m sorry.” He approached her tree one day, placing a hand on the drying bark and looking up at her. “But where is that I’m supposed to go?”
She didn’t answer him; she didn’t speak; she never spoke. Her long hair moved with the branches in the wind, and still she was sad.
…Watanuki went back to the home where he’d lived as long as he could remember - but if asked to remember, he couldn’t tell anyone anything about it, or the people that lived with him. Life for Watanuki was vague scenes between dreams, the idle knowledge that he somehow knew how to cook, how to clean, but didn’t know who’d taught him, who’d bought the clothes he wore. He couldn’t recall the names of the ones who’d cared for him, their smiles… Occasionally, if he really tried, he could remember someone whispering goodnight to him, hands in his hair, a kiss on the forehead.
Watanuki could never, however, remember how it was he ended up in the enchanted forest, however much he strained his mind trying to dredge up the fleeting past. The first thing he could recall was the shade deep under the trees, the dead silence all around him save for the quiet rippling of the lake before him, large and wide and just touching the edge of one of his shoes.
He rowed himself across the lake, not quite knowing why, finding a boat with oars further along the banks. The pier on the island at the lake’s centre creaked when he stepped onto it, rhythmic as his own footsteps as Watanuki moved from wooden boards to the firmness of soil once more.
He wasn’t to know it until later, but Watanuki had found the home of the legendary Witch of the Forest, the one who granted the wishes of those with burning hearts as long as an equal price was offered up for trade. No-one could find her abode unless they had a true need of her services - but of course, Watanuki didn’t know that, didn’t understand that, and was very rightly confused when two strangely hyperactive young girls burst out of the front doors of a building he’d just found, and dragged him into the smoke-filled depths.
The woman they took him to reclined on her couch like a Queen in state, lips tilting up into a lazy, satisfied sort of smile when the girls dragged Watanuki before her, her long body covered with the barest minimum of decency. A little embarrassed by her attire Watanuki didn’t know where to look, fumbling out answers to whatever question the woman set him, falling neatly into trap after verbal trap. When she told him she granted wishes he told her that was impossible, so she took the watch he kept in his pocket and granted him his little wish, to know a little of his fortune. She read it for him and Watanuki suddenly believed -
“I wish,” Watanuki Kimihiro told the woman, this woman, this witch, this person calling herself Ichihara Yuuko in one breath and telling him everything was a lie in the next, “to not - to not -” his wish was so difficult to phrase!
Yuuko caught his chin, holding his eyes with her depthless red. “You wish to not be burdened by your Sight?”
Watanuki nodded. “That is my wish.”
Yuuko smiled at him - catlike and smooth, and Watanuki suddenly found himself feeling like he’d just agreed to be a feline’s lunch. “Then you’ll work for me, until such a time as your labour equals the price of your wish.”
And so it was that Watanuki Kimihiro, the boy who could barely remember anything, the child he knew nothing of his past, became the indentured servant of Ichihara Yuuko, the wily, wicked and just plain weird Witch of the Enchanted Forest.
He complained about it constantly. Yuuko ignored him.
#
“Kuro-taaaaaan~!!” The warble came from the upstairs of Kurogane and Fai’s shared home, a cheerful lilt that came from the bedroom and floated its way down the stairs, to where Kurogane sat reading some more of his mangayan. “Someone’s at the door!”
“It’s Kurogane!!” Kurogane was sick to death of the nicknames and yelling back about them. It had gotten to the stage where he usually let them slide by in a fit of apathy - but he drew the line at ‘Kuro-tan’. He was not six years old; he wasn’t the slightest bit ‘cutesy’, and if the mage for one instant continued to imply that the shinobi was in any way, shape or form female - “And answer it yourself!!”
“But I’m making the bed…” Fai’s whine drifted down from the bedroom, the scent of the fresh air caught on sheets, curving billows of white catching the noon-time sun that came in through the window - or had come in through the window, anyway.
Glancing up, Kurogane could see the weather outside looking a lot cloudier all of a sudden. “I don’t have hands.” Turning a doorknob was always a little bit of a problem. And talking of the door - “Nobody knocked!” He should know - being canine had its advantages in the hearing department.
“I never said anyone knocked!” Fai was still lilting, his words edged with palpable amusement that had Kurogane gritting his teeth, stalking out into the house’s corridor.
“Then how do you know anyone’s there?”
There was only laughter from upstairs. “Answer the door, Kuro-chan! It’s not nice to keep a lady waiting~!”
Growling, Kurogane went to the front door, fumbling for a long while to twist the knob before finally succeeding. A flurry of rain hit him directly in the face the moment he did so and without even looking as to who it was on the other side of the door the shinobi grumbled out a curse about the weather -
And then got promptly smacked over the head with a black umbrella.
“The rain isn’t here to solely inconvenience you!”
Kurogane back-pedalled a few paws out of umbrella-range, glowering up at the frothy black ensemble the strange blue-haired girl was wearing at the door -
“Ame-warashi!” Fai breezed down the stairs (and he couldn’t have done that a few minutes ago?), all smiles as he nudged Kurogane out of the way with one leg and pushed the door open wider to admit the glaring faerie on the other side. “What a pleasant surprise.”
The Ame-warashi continued to scowl past him, gaze locked with a snarling Kurogane. “Your husband could do with some lessons in manners, bochamma.”
“Kuro-tan’s a lost cause, I’m afraid.” Fai continued to smile, ignoring the hissed ‘we’re not married’ from the wolf behind him. “Would you like to come inside?”
The rain sprite consented to being ushered inside, propping her umbrella up in the hallway before sweeping through to the lounge after Fai. The blond, to his credit, didn’t bat an eyelash at the water that trailed in in the Ame-warashi’s wake - but then, he was probably used to such oddities from faeries. (Kurogane, on the other hand, was a little distracted by it, wondering where all the water was coming from. Did the Ame-warashi keep a rain-cloud up her skirt, or something?)
Fai served up green tea and cake he’d made himself to their guest, and Kurogane sulked in the corner as his fiancé played housewife. The mage chattered like a woman - and when Kurogane passed a comment saying such, the little rain-cloud that Kurogane had decided had to be the Ame-warashi’s twisted version of a pet took it upon itself to float gaily over the wolf’s head to give Kurogane an impromptu shower.
Fai’s laughter - and the stormy little rain-cloud - chased Kurogane out of the room.
The blond was still smiling when he turned to his houseguest, his eyes still bright with the laughter of seeing such affront on Kurogane’s face when faced with indoor rain. “Mou…Ame-warashi-san, was there any particular reason for your visit, or were you just hoping to improve neighbourly relations?”
“There was a reason, as you have already rightly guessed.” The rain-spite shook out the curls of her hair, reaching down to her waist to pluck open the purse she wore slung over her shoulder. From there she withdrew a pendant glowing white and periwinkle blue, the piece set at the end of a fine silver chain. “You associate with the forest witch, don’t you? And know of her apprentice.”
“Watanuki-kun?”
The Ame-warashi sniffed. “The black-haired boy that flails far too much.”
Fai smiled. “Watanuki-kun.”
“Could you see to it that this is given to him?” The rain sprite extended the jewellery she held. “It is a gift from the Zashiki-warashi, as thanks for the food he gave her. She is too shy to deliver it herself, and I have no business at the witch’s island.”
Fai’s fingers closed around the necklace, the blue charm on its end warm in his palm. “I’ll see that Watanuki-kun gets this.”
“See that you do,” the Ame-warashi sniffed, clearly put-out at having the Zashiki-warashi so (widely, in the rain sprite’s opinion) distribute her favours.
“Kuro-pyooooon~” Fai breezed about the house looking for the wolf once the Ame-warashi had finished her business (and her cake) and gone, the pendant left in his care by the faerie tucked safely away in one pocket. He poked his head into the kitchen, the library, the bedrooms, but failed to see the brooding canine anywhere. Eventually he went to the bathroom, seeing a shadow behind the shower-curtain. “Kuro-wan-wan?”
The shadow spoke. “Go away, mage.”
“And leave Kuro-wankoro in such obvious distress in the bathtub?” Fai shook his head with a smile, pulling back the shower-curtain - and then he trailed off into surprised laughter again, seeing the extraordinarily soggy wolf sitting glowering up at him. Clearly, the Ame-warashi’s rain-cloud had done its work well. “Saa, did Kuro-chan decide to have an early wash?”
Kurogane bared his teeth. “What part of ‘go away’ do you not understand, idiot?”
Fai ignored the shinobi completely reaching to pluck up a nearby towel. “Kuro-pon will catch a cold if he just sits and drip-dries like that; I’ll help you get dry.” Kurogane backed up against the side of the bathtub, snarling, trying to get out of the way of the approaching blond. “Just…sit still -”
“Like hell!”
“Kuro-pu -”
They struggled. Fai attempted to catch Kurogane with the towel and Kurogane attempted to scramble away, both of them slipping on the wet surface of the bath. Kurogane was hard to hold onto and Fai was blocking the wolf’s exit, and somehow the entire escapade resulted in Fai sprawled in the bath halfway across Kurogane’s struggling form with his arms around the wolf, and Kurogane’s wet nose pressing rather unpleasantly on the side of his exposed neck. They were both soaked through - Kurogane from the magical rain-cloud, and Fai from grappling with one who had been drenched by a magical rain-cloud.
Kurogane was, obviously, none too happy with the situation. “Get off of me!”
“Ugh…” Fai wrinkled his nose, feeling the dampness from his companion’s fur seep through his shirt, “Kuro-wanko smells like wet dog.”
The urge to bite the blond for his forwardness was strong but Kurogane somehow restrained himself - the only place within biting range at that time was Fai’s neck, and crunching his teeth down there would probably kill the idiot. (Much as murder would undoubtedly be both fun and satisfying, their current positions would leave Kurogane with a bleeding - heavy - corpse on him should he carry through with his plans. That, and Fai was still necessary for curse-breaking, damn him.)
Kurogane settled for growling, wriggling and trying not to get floaty bits of gold hair stuck in his mouth. “Get. Off.”
Fai continued to ignore him, disregarding the wriggling entirely and finally managing to use the towel he’d picked up, rubbing the fur of the wolf’s back with absolutely no heed paid to the curses spewing from Kurogane’s mouth. Fai’s touch was brief but firm, towelling what he could of Kurogane dry, careful around the wolf’s ears and eyes, hearing the chain around the enchanted creature’s neck with the engagement ring on it jingle in time with their movements.
Kurogane hissed and cursed and snarled and skittered around trying to be free every second Fai was drying him, the whole process made entirely more awkward by his own protests.
Fai poked and pushed and prodded and squished him into submission, scrambling back himself after the ordeal was over and done with to clasp his hands together - ignoring his sopping shirt - and coo over the now exceedingly mussed-up and disgruntled wolf before him.
“Kuro-tan looks so cute when he’s fluffy!”
Kurogane’s resolve snapped then (as it always seemed to around Fai), and the wolf abandoned his previous reasons for not ripping the mage’s throat out and leapt for the blond. Fai dived out of the way with his usual laugh, dashing out of the bathroom with his fiancé in hot pursuit.
The chase - yet again - was on.
#
“You’re heading out again?”
Watanuki caught Syaoran just as the other boy was at the door, the brunet with his cloak over his shoulders, that determined set in his expression that usually meant he was off to do some training, or run an errand for Yuuko. Judging by how Watanuki didn’t think Yuuko had been in any fit state to give out any errands - she was in her bedroom groaning about her aching head again -, it had to be the former option.
“To Kurogane-san and Fai-san’s,” Syaoran laid a hand on his waist - the place a sword would usually be buckled, although there was no blade there at the time, “training again.”
“Your wish…” Watanuki was always hesitant bringing up such a delicate topic, but a question plucked at his mind, silver-bright and inquisitive in its presence, but hazy in definition. A question that didn’t really know what it was asking, but felt a pull to this other boy with fire in his blood and heat in his eyes whilst its owner’s gaze caught only the reflection of never-ending nights and lakes and dreams. “Sometimes Syaoran-kun seems like the sort of person who could answer his own wishes.”
Syaoran considered that a moment, the silence pulling between them peacefully, the pets of the household all elsewhere, probably attending their hungover mistress. “I do not think…” Syaoran eventually began, hand still where his sword should’ve been, seeming a warrior, older, wiser, “all payments are granted to Yuuko-san. So logically…” the silence became thread-thin, a high string lightly touched that hummed in the air, just out of hearing, “all wishes are not made to Yuuko-san either.” He couldn’t stand back and do nothing himself.
“Sometimes some wishes have unforeseen prices…” Watanuki trailed over the words, paraphrasing a comment Yuuko had made, hearing the echo in Syaoran’s sentiments. “The costlier the wish, the more you have to pay.”
Conviction. “Sakura-hime is worth it.”
“‘Sakura’?” It was the first time Syaoran had mentioned the princess to Watanuki.
“Sakura,” Syaoran repeated, smiling slightly at the memory, a pink tinge in his cheeks. “Like the flower. Sakura-hime.”
Watanuki smiled in return, a blissfully happy expression that clouded his eyes. “She has a flower name, just like Himawari-chan. Where I come from, the sakura flower represents life - brief but sweet. Himawari represents warmth, nourishment.”
“Really?” Syaoran stored that little bit of information away. “…Where I come from the sakura flower represents women…power.” He didn’t mention the meanings that were attached to the sunflower in Clow. He couldn’t - not when Watanuki was smiling like that.
‘Unhappiness in love’ was such a cruel thing to have associated with your sweetheart.
#
One clearing. “Here?”
“No.”
Another clearing. “…Here?”
“Nope.”
And another. “What about here?”
“No~.”
That was it. Kurogane ground to a halt, digging his claws into the grass of the forest beneath him and glaring at the unconcerned back of his fiancé waltzing along before him, Fai’s hands tucked behind his airy head in a show of utter nonchalance.
“What,” the wolf enunciated clearly, “is wrong with this clearing?” ‘And the other twenty dozen we’ve walked through’, hung heavily in the air.
Fai had announced - sometime after Kurogane had finally stopped chasing him (the blond had shut the bedroom door on the wolf’s nose) and he’d changed into a dry shirt - that since today was such a lovely day (the clouds had disappeared alongside the Ame-warashi) they’d be teaching Syaoran in a different area of the forest than usual. It was, after all, such a terrible thing to be stuck in one place all the time, and Kuro-chan should just shh and be a good boy for Fai-mommy because mommy really knew best about these sort of things. Kurogane had bared his teeth and began trying to kill the other about that point and Fai had run off - giving chase had led them deep beneath the trees, and only after ten minutes running did Kurogane realise he’d been essentially tricked and he was doing what Fai wanted anyway.
…Bloody mage.
Fai turned slightly to regard the wolf with his bright - and, once more, far-too-amused - eyes. The two of them had long-since settled into a walk. “Does Kuro-tan not enjoy going walkies with me?”
Kurogane bared his teeth. “Do I really have to answer that?”
Fai only laughed. “Kuro-pu-pu -”
“It’s Kurogane.”
“Kuro-pon,” Fai really did have selective hearing, “we need to do more couple things together. Or,” he stopped walking, suddenly bringing the memories of a conversation on a rainy night into the sunshine afternoon of the forest, “do you prefer me when I’m ‘faithless’?”
Silence.
Fai twisted away again, his face hidden by his hair as his voice took on its usual fake cheer. “Well, when this year is done Kuro-chan won’t ever have to see or hear from me again.” He started walking again.
Kurogane kept to just behind him, grumbling his complaints. “And we can call off this farce of an engagement.”
“Aw, Kuro-sama doesn’t want to marry me?” Fai adopted the pose of one who had been deeply wounded, clutching his heart with one hand and flinging the other palm overdramatically across his brow. “Kuro-pipi will be leaving me in a state of sin! Used and abandoned, left at the altar in shame -”
“There is no altar!” Kurogane rose to the bait every time, but he was determined the conversation wouldn’t be Fai’s win alone. “…It would take more than another ring on your finger to make you an honest man, anyway.”
There was more silence, Fai’s feet slowing, stilling, coming to a halt. “Kuro-sama -”
“Fai-san!” There was a pleased shout from across the clearing, a familiar brown-haired boy waving and coming into view. “Kurogane-san!”
“Syaoran-kun~!” Fai leapt across to the boy in bounds, his usual inane chatter spilling from his lips again as he greeted the boy.
Kurogane watched him go, whatever the mage had been about to say lost to the wind, to whimsy. Again.
#
“Good afternoon.”
He turned when she called to him, the strands of his fair hair catching the breeze of their dreamscape, sunshine contrasted with those eyes of his, that beautiful colour that matched the summer skies.
“Good afternoon.” His voice was soft, refined, his smile politely inquiring as he looked back at her, wondering who she was, why she had brought him wherever it was he was. He walked in dreams, yes, but only specific ones. Anywhere outside his usual sphere was the work of someone more powerful than him. “This is your daydream?”
“It is,” Tomoyo looked contrite, approaching her guest. “My apologies for disturbing your rest, but I was asked to speak with you. People have questions…but first - manners.” She smiled, welcoming, and extended a hand. “I am Tomoyo-hime, the Tsukoyomi of the kingdom of Nihon.”
Her companion smiled in return, taking her hand and raising it to his lips to kiss it. “I am Yuui-ouji, child of a dead kingdom and an adopted son of the Faerie Court. It is my pleasure to meet you.”
Tomoyo looked at him, suddenly wide-eyed. “You’re a prince?” Kurogane was engaged to -
Yuui looked at her. “…I can see this is going to be a long conversation.”
Tomoyo sat down, the bells on her headdress chiming at the motion. “Yes,” she stretched a hand out to her guest, pleased when Yuui sat down opposite her. “Yes, it is.”
Second part is here.