xxxHOLiC/Tsubasa post apocalyptic AU (draft) - Part 3
I never had much interest in X fanfic back during my early days in the fandom - it seemed like one of those CLAMP series which just didn't work in a way where fanfic would be able to capture the same mood. In fact, I got that impression with so many of my early big CLAMP obsessions that it was quite disconcerting to find myself getting so hooked on xxxHOLiC fic so quickly.
But finding the excuse to write some old favourite X characters into an AU like this? Worth everything. =3
Quick links to the other parts so far:
The ficlets that started it all
Plot notes and background info
Day 1
Day 2
On the third day after Watanuki joined their camp, the weather forecast turned bad suddenly. Doumeki awoke before dawn to find Sakura was urgently prodding him awake. Watanuki rolled over and stared at them sleepily, but accepted Doumeki’s insistence it didn’t concern him with no more protest than his usual glare.
The other three were already up when Doumeki met them outside.
“How long?” said Kurogane, all the cold tension of the scene mirrored in his face.
“Only a matter of hours,” reported Fye. “Chi only got the message minutes ago, there was nothing about it yesterday. This storm must have blown in out of the blue.”
“There’s time,” Doumeki concluded. “Barely.”
“Either way, we’re taking a risk,” said Kurogane. “Either we take the chance of one of our own getting caught out when it hits, or the reputation we’ve kept up this long goes to waste.”
“We could spit up - go separately,” Syaoran suggested. “I could take the spare bike and go to the Tower, and Shizuka could…”
“I’m not sending anyone to the Tower alone,” said Kurogane.
“And that’s even if we had a spare,” said Fye helplessly, “but the battery still hasn’t recharged from the day before yesterday.”
“Then we need to go now,” said Doumeki. “We can’t waste time.”
No-one had a better suggestion.
***
Watanuki was only too glad not to have been given any reason to get up when Doumeki started moving around. Anything that got people out in the cold hours of the early morning was bound to be best kept far away from. It had never been all bad being considered too valuable to be risked in a fire fight. Hiding in corners until it all went away was what he did best.
He would have liked to get some more sleep, but those bruises had woken up again soon after he did. After a few fruitless minutes of trying and failing to get comfortable, he gave in and got up properly. At the doorway he hesitated. He couldn’t hear anything that suggested things were getting unpleasantly exciting out there, but when he wasn’t sure whether he was allowed to be wandering around or not, he’d always found it paid to err on the side of staying put. Still, even if he was wrong, it didn’t seem like these people would do worse than glare or yell at him. Surely it couldn’t hurt to at least take a peek around the doorway.
On doing so, he found himself face to face with Kurogane on his way in.
“There’s an acid storm coming,” said Kurogane, apparently oblivious to the way he’d made Watanuki nealy jump out of his skin. “You can make yourself useful and help us get everything covered up.”
Well, that was a fair leap from what he’d been expecting to hear. As he followed Kurogane out, Watanuki couldn’t help but sneak a glance up at the sky. It looked as clear as it ever was to him, but he choked down his protest before he’d gotten past the “But…” at the beginning. If the man with the gun said there was a storm coming, there was a storm coming. It surely wasn’t Watanuki’s part to argue.
Outside, the tech guy and the girl were dragging large sheets of fabric out from one of the storage buildings. Watanuki recognised it vaguely as one of those synthetic kinds people used to be able to make once upon a time, though he couldn’t have told anyone its name. No-one remembered how it was made anymore, but it was safe to say that any remaining bits that had survived the last twenty or more years would survive just about anything else that could be done to them.
“Ah, Kimihiro, a hand over here?” Fye called to him. “We need to get these over all the solar panels before the rain hits.”
They were serious about the storm then. There hadn’t been even a light acid fall in months as far as he could remember - and it was the sort of thing that stuck in your memory when it happened. Maybe he’d travelled far enough that he’d hit a part of the country where they were still common. It sounded just his luck.
There was no sign of the angry kid today though - or Doumeki.
“They’ve gone to spread the word,” said Kurogane, noticing the way he was glancing around.
“…the word?” Watanuki echoed, not understanding.
“In the interests of good community relations,” said Fye There was the faintest trace of a nervous edge to his voice this morning, but if Watanuki hadn’t heard him speaking so much the night before he would never have caught it. “Not to mention the more material value that sort of information is worth in trade to our friends at the Tower and the Diet Building.”
For a moment, Watanuki nearly lost his voice in shock. “Tower… The Tower? And the Diet Building? The ones’ everyone’s afraid of? They’re near here?”
“Nearby,” said Fye lightly. “We’re well inside their territory here. But as long as we make ourselves useful now and then, they’re happy enough to keep us.”
“‘Happy’ isn’t how I’d put it,” said Kurogane.
“Well, content not to murder us in our sleep, then,” Fye amended. “But it never hurts to be polite.”
Watanuki briefly entertained the theory that these people were not people at all, but some new kind of spirit here to torment him with the impression that he was - for the first time ever - the most sane and normal person present.
“Anyway, as long as our boys make good speed, they’ll be back well before it hits,” said Fye. “But there’s no sense in dawdling here either. We’ll need these tied down in as many places as we can tie them - we’ve got strong winds coming in too.”
***
The Diet Building, closer to their camp than the Tower by a good few hours of travel, was the first stop on Doumeki and Syaoran’s way.
It was usually the two of them who got this job these days, now that Kurogane had lost all taste for dealing with Fuuma if he could possibly avoid it. This had the advantage that between the two of them and the vehicle, they should have been easily recognisable even from a distance, which made the whole exercise much safer. Doumeki himself was level-headed enough not to think about that much or let it worry him, but whenever they got near the Diet Building’s defence perimeter, he could feel Syaoran tense up in the seat behind him, and the boy’s heart rate quicken.
They never were given the chance to forget that the Diet Building’s security watch was good enough to spot them well before they arrived. By the time they were in sight of the entrance, there was a black-clad figure waiting for them a dozen paces outside.
When they swerved to a stop a short distance in front of him, Shiro Kamui did not offer them any greeting.
“Take your hand off your weapons,” he instructed. “You should know by now they’re no better than show here.”
“You never seem happy to see us,” said Syaoran, complying. It would have sounded more argumentative coming from him usually, however the boy viewed both Kamui and Fuuma with the sort of reverence even Kurogane barely enjoyed, and there was always just the edge of that awe cropping into his voice at times like these.
Syaoran wasn’t easy to impress as a rule, but this was hardly unjustified. Even had he never see how formidable Kamui could be in battle for himself, the fact a boy who appeared barely Doumeki’s age could keep a whole giant colony under his word and a continent in fear of his name would have been enough.
“It’s never good news we have to look forward to when you appear,” replied Kamui, closing his eyes tensely.
“We don’t get the kind of good news you’d pay us for,” said Doumeki.
“We have another storm on the way,” Kamui guessed, barely making it into a question. With Doumeki and Syaoran here in protective wet weather coats, there was nothing else it could have been.
“Only a few hours away,” Doumeki confirmed.
“I see,” said Kamui. The strain of all the preparations that would need to be made in that time made its mark even on his face. “As for payment…”
“You can owe it to us,” said Doumeki.
“Huh?” said Syaoran, even as Kamui blinked in surprise.
“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Doumeki clarified. “We need to keep moving. We don’t have time to waste.”
In the interests of diplomacy, usually they would have left the Diet Building in the direction of their own camp until they were well out of sight. Even if Kamui was fully aware they would be bringing the same information to an enemy camp, there was no need to advertise it. Today though, there was no time to be wasted on polite pretence, every minute could make a difference.
***
Every body part Watanuki was aware of ached with a dull throb. That was what you got for letting yourself be dragged through so much physical exertion when you were still one giant bruise, he knew that only too well, but as long as they weren’t kicking him again in this state he didn’t feel that he had much call to complain. It stood to reason that in a camp this size, even a barely able-bodied seer would be expected to pull his weight around the place. The unfamiliarity of it all was near dizzying to him, and more than half convinced it wasn’t going to last, but as an alternative to being left somewhere out of the way and kicked around intermittently, he decided he might as well make the most of it.
There’d been no great need to rush to get everything covered, as it had turned out they’d had ample time to spare after they’d finished, but there was no sense in dawdling when even these people seemed unsure exactly when the storm would hit. When the dark clouds had started rolling in overhead and finally convinced Watanuki this was all for real, Fye had still been busily double and triple-checking the connections which secured the covers over his precious solar panels. Now, everyone had retreated to the sturdiest of the buildings to wait for the rain to start. There was a tattered but serviceable spare mattress here for him, but lying down wasn’t actually helping much just at the moment, so Watanuki found himself giving in to old habit and curling up in a convenient corner instead.
A noise made him look up to find Sakura leaning over him to peer at his face, looking concerned.
“You’re still hurting, aren’t you?” she said softly. “You seemed so much better yesterday evening that we didn’t even think about it today, I’m so sorry.”
“No - it’s not that bad,” Watanuki told her, just wishing his appearance could have given that claim a bit more credibility. “Just a little tired and sore. I didn’t mind helping out, I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” Sakura asked, and the sincerity of her concern almost broke him up right there, going straight through his guard like nothing else he’d dealt with in a long time. Although he’d change his mind about what he thought of this camp a dozen times in the next couple of weeks, right then all he could think was that surely any people who could protect and raise a child as innocent as this one could be forgiven all other faults.
“I’ve had worse, this is really nothing,” he told Sakura, trying to imitate her sincerity with moderate success. Attempting to change the subject, he asked, “Any sign of the others yet?”
The way Sakura hung her head almost made Watanuki regret asking. “Nothing. But - there’s still plenty of time, right?” she asked, directing the question over her shoulder to the other side of the room, where Fye was lounging as close to Kurogane as he could get away with.
“Oh, certainly,” said Fye, without any discernable hesitation. “Why, even if they’d pulled off a record run they’d barely have been back half an hour ago - we’re sure to have plenty of time left to mooch around in here before we’d really need to be inside as it is. As long as they’re back before the rain starts they’re back in time - and even if they’re running a little late, they’ve got their coats to keep them cosy.”
No-one asked how long a raincoat would last against the assault of a full scale acid storm.
Watanuki decided that if that infuriating Doumeki bastard got himself lost out in the rain barely two days after meeting him, he was going to be very displeased. Doumeki would probably insist on sticking around to haunt him for the rest of his days - and he was bound to turn out to be one of those weird ones who still wouldn’t believe in ghosts even after they became one.
Nothing he’d ever done could have made him deserving of that kind of punishment. They’d damn well better be planning to get themselves back in one piece.
But ten minutes later, when the first heavy drops of rain began to fall outside, there'd still been not the slightest sound or sign to herald boys' return.
Random Unrelated Edit: I just discovered that fanfic.net will not let you post fic containing a % symbol. As in, I have just had to write '100 per cent' instead of '100%'. I would ask how the hell these rules are supposed to result in, oh, better quality writing or whatever the idea is, but I don't even want to know. >
But finding the excuse to write some old favourite X characters into an AU like this? Worth everything. =3
Quick links to the other parts so far:
The ficlets that started it all
Plot notes and background info
Day 1
Day 2
On the third day after Watanuki joined their camp, the weather forecast turned bad suddenly. Doumeki awoke before dawn to find Sakura was urgently prodding him awake. Watanuki rolled over and stared at them sleepily, but accepted Doumeki’s insistence it didn’t concern him with no more protest than his usual glare.
The other three were already up when Doumeki met them outside.
“How long?” said Kurogane, all the cold tension of the scene mirrored in his face.
“Only a matter of hours,” reported Fye. “Chi only got the message minutes ago, there was nothing about it yesterday. This storm must have blown in out of the blue.”
“There’s time,” Doumeki concluded. “Barely.”
“Either way, we’re taking a risk,” said Kurogane. “Either we take the chance of one of our own getting caught out when it hits, or the reputation we’ve kept up this long goes to waste.”
“We could spit up - go separately,” Syaoran suggested. “I could take the spare bike and go to the Tower, and Shizuka could…”
“I’m not sending anyone to the Tower alone,” said Kurogane.
“And that’s even if we had a spare,” said Fye helplessly, “but the battery still hasn’t recharged from the day before yesterday.”
“Then we need to go now,” said Doumeki. “We can’t waste time.”
No-one had a better suggestion.
***
Watanuki was only too glad not to have been given any reason to get up when Doumeki started moving around. Anything that got people out in the cold hours of the early morning was bound to be best kept far away from. It had never been all bad being considered too valuable to be risked in a fire fight. Hiding in corners until it all went away was what he did best.
He would have liked to get some more sleep, but those bruises had woken up again soon after he did. After a few fruitless minutes of trying and failing to get comfortable, he gave in and got up properly. At the doorway he hesitated. He couldn’t hear anything that suggested things were getting unpleasantly exciting out there, but when he wasn’t sure whether he was allowed to be wandering around or not, he’d always found it paid to err on the side of staying put. Still, even if he was wrong, it didn’t seem like these people would do worse than glare or yell at him. Surely it couldn’t hurt to at least take a peek around the doorway.
On doing so, he found himself face to face with Kurogane on his way in.
“There’s an acid storm coming,” said Kurogane, apparently oblivious to the way he’d made Watanuki nealy jump out of his skin. “You can make yourself useful and help us get everything covered up.”
Well, that was a fair leap from what he’d been expecting to hear. As he followed Kurogane out, Watanuki couldn’t help but sneak a glance up at the sky. It looked as clear as it ever was to him, but he choked down his protest before he’d gotten past the “But…” at the beginning. If the man with the gun said there was a storm coming, there was a storm coming. It surely wasn’t Watanuki’s part to argue.
Outside, the tech guy and the girl were dragging large sheets of fabric out from one of the storage buildings. Watanuki recognised it vaguely as one of those synthetic kinds people used to be able to make once upon a time, though he couldn’t have told anyone its name. No-one remembered how it was made anymore, but it was safe to say that any remaining bits that had survived the last twenty or more years would survive just about anything else that could be done to them.
“Ah, Kimihiro, a hand over here?” Fye called to him. “We need to get these over all the solar panels before the rain hits.”
They were serious about the storm then. There hadn’t been even a light acid fall in months as far as he could remember - and it was the sort of thing that stuck in your memory when it happened. Maybe he’d travelled far enough that he’d hit a part of the country where they were still common. It sounded just his luck.
There was no sign of the angry kid today though - or Doumeki.
“They’ve gone to spread the word,” said Kurogane, noticing the way he was glancing around.
“…the word?” Watanuki echoed, not understanding.
“In the interests of good community relations,” said Fye There was the faintest trace of a nervous edge to his voice this morning, but if Watanuki hadn’t heard him speaking so much the night before he would never have caught it. “Not to mention the more material value that sort of information is worth in trade to our friends at the Tower and the Diet Building.”
For a moment, Watanuki nearly lost his voice in shock. “Tower… The Tower? And the Diet Building? The ones’ everyone’s afraid of? They’re near here?”
“Nearby,” said Fye lightly. “We’re well inside their territory here. But as long as we make ourselves useful now and then, they’re happy enough to keep us.”
“‘Happy’ isn’t how I’d put it,” said Kurogane.
“Well, content not to murder us in our sleep, then,” Fye amended. “But it never hurts to be polite.”
Watanuki briefly entertained the theory that these people were not people at all, but some new kind of spirit here to torment him with the impression that he was - for the first time ever - the most sane and normal person present.
“Anyway, as long as our boys make good speed, they’ll be back well before it hits,” said Fye. “But there’s no sense in dawdling here either. We’ll need these tied down in as many places as we can tie them - we’ve got strong winds coming in too.”
***
The Diet Building, closer to their camp than the Tower by a good few hours of travel, was the first stop on Doumeki and Syaoran’s way.
It was usually the two of them who got this job these days, now that Kurogane had lost all taste for dealing with Fuuma if he could possibly avoid it. This had the advantage that between the two of them and the vehicle, they should have been easily recognisable even from a distance, which made the whole exercise much safer. Doumeki himself was level-headed enough not to think about that much or let it worry him, but whenever they got near the Diet Building’s defence perimeter, he could feel Syaoran tense up in the seat behind him, and the boy’s heart rate quicken.
They never were given the chance to forget that the Diet Building’s security watch was good enough to spot them well before they arrived. By the time they were in sight of the entrance, there was a black-clad figure waiting for them a dozen paces outside.
When they swerved to a stop a short distance in front of him, Shiro Kamui did not offer them any greeting.
“Take your hand off your weapons,” he instructed. “You should know by now they’re no better than show here.”
“You never seem happy to see us,” said Syaoran, complying. It would have sounded more argumentative coming from him usually, however the boy viewed both Kamui and Fuuma with the sort of reverence even Kurogane barely enjoyed, and there was always just the edge of that awe cropping into his voice at times like these.
Syaoran wasn’t easy to impress as a rule, but this was hardly unjustified. Even had he never see how formidable Kamui could be in battle for himself, the fact a boy who appeared barely Doumeki’s age could keep a whole giant colony under his word and a continent in fear of his name would have been enough.
“It’s never good news we have to look forward to when you appear,” replied Kamui, closing his eyes tensely.
“We don’t get the kind of good news you’d pay us for,” said Doumeki.
“We have another storm on the way,” Kamui guessed, barely making it into a question. With Doumeki and Syaoran here in protective wet weather coats, there was nothing else it could have been.
“Only a few hours away,” Doumeki confirmed.
“I see,” said Kamui. The strain of all the preparations that would need to be made in that time made its mark even on his face. “As for payment…”
“You can owe it to us,” said Doumeki.
“Huh?” said Syaoran, even as Kamui blinked in surprise.
“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Doumeki clarified. “We need to keep moving. We don’t have time to waste.”
In the interests of diplomacy, usually they would have left the Diet Building in the direction of their own camp until they were well out of sight. Even if Kamui was fully aware they would be bringing the same information to an enemy camp, there was no need to advertise it. Today though, there was no time to be wasted on polite pretence, every minute could make a difference.
***
Every body part Watanuki was aware of ached with a dull throb. That was what you got for letting yourself be dragged through so much physical exertion when you were still one giant bruise, he knew that only too well, but as long as they weren’t kicking him again in this state he didn’t feel that he had much call to complain. It stood to reason that in a camp this size, even a barely able-bodied seer would be expected to pull his weight around the place. The unfamiliarity of it all was near dizzying to him, and more than half convinced it wasn’t going to last, but as an alternative to being left somewhere out of the way and kicked around intermittently, he decided he might as well make the most of it.
There’d been no great need to rush to get everything covered, as it had turned out they’d had ample time to spare after they’d finished, but there was no sense in dawdling when even these people seemed unsure exactly when the storm would hit. When the dark clouds had started rolling in overhead and finally convinced Watanuki this was all for real, Fye had still been busily double and triple-checking the connections which secured the covers over his precious solar panels. Now, everyone had retreated to the sturdiest of the buildings to wait for the rain to start. There was a tattered but serviceable spare mattress here for him, but lying down wasn’t actually helping much just at the moment, so Watanuki found himself giving in to old habit and curling up in a convenient corner instead.
A noise made him look up to find Sakura leaning over him to peer at his face, looking concerned.
“You’re still hurting, aren’t you?” she said softly. “You seemed so much better yesterday evening that we didn’t even think about it today, I’m so sorry.”
“No - it’s not that bad,” Watanuki told her, just wishing his appearance could have given that claim a bit more credibility. “Just a little tired and sore. I didn’t mind helping out, I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” Sakura asked, and the sincerity of her concern almost broke him up right there, going straight through his guard like nothing else he’d dealt with in a long time. Although he’d change his mind about what he thought of this camp a dozen times in the next couple of weeks, right then all he could think was that surely any people who could protect and raise a child as innocent as this one could be forgiven all other faults.
“I’ve had worse, this is really nothing,” he told Sakura, trying to imitate her sincerity with moderate success. Attempting to change the subject, he asked, “Any sign of the others yet?”
The way Sakura hung her head almost made Watanuki regret asking. “Nothing. But - there’s still plenty of time, right?” she asked, directing the question over her shoulder to the other side of the room, where Fye was lounging as close to Kurogane as he could get away with.
“Oh, certainly,” said Fye, without any discernable hesitation. “Why, even if they’d pulled off a record run they’d barely have been back half an hour ago - we’re sure to have plenty of time left to mooch around in here before we’d really need to be inside as it is. As long as they’re back before the rain starts they’re back in time - and even if they’re running a little late, they’ve got their coats to keep them cosy.”
No-one asked how long a raincoat would last against the assault of a full scale acid storm.
Watanuki decided that if that infuriating Doumeki bastard got himself lost out in the rain barely two days after meeting him, he was going to be very displeased. Doumeki would probably insist on sticking around to haunt him for the rest of his days - and he was bound to turn out to be one of those weird ones who still wouldn’t believe in ghosts even after they became one.
Nothing he’d ever done could have made him deserving of that kind of punishment. They’d damn well better be planning to get themselves back in one piece.
But ten minutes later, when the first heavy drops of rain began to fall outside, there'd still been not the slightest sound or sign to herald boys' return.
Random Unrelated Edit: I just discovered that fanfic.net will not let you post fic containing a % symbol. As in, I have just had to write '100 per cent' instead of '100%'. I would ask how the hell these rules are supposed to result in, oh, better quality writing or whatever the idea is, but I don't even want to know. >