Pairings: Yogi/Gareki of sorts

Setting/Timeline: semi AU

Prompt: Alice in Wonderland

Summary: Yogi allowed Gareki to bury his head against his velveteen coat, speaking soothingly as he examined a sky that had been, not a moment before, the vast and endless blue of the memory of summer days long gone by.

1/10 out of selected prompts that I meant to post during the Week of Hiding Seek in yogi_x_gareki LJ. Although I want most to be drabbles to be grouped together, this one expanded farther than I intended, which is currently the same for another one I'm working on.

A HAND GONE COUNTERCLOCKWISE

Gareki winced in his chair before a table of coffees and an assortment of sweets, his teacup of freshly-brewed café au latte clattering against its plate, against his trembling fingers.

"Why, what's the matter?" cried the Mad Hatter. A young man whose tresses shone the sweet glow of morning sunshine, springing amply from the roots and spread apart in a mess, whose gaze caught his, concern glinting amidst violet, and whose air gave way too much sincerity, his lips worrying, body halfway standing from his place at the front of the table. The girl who sat to his right, who observed Gareki (across from her) more-so quietly, had called the blond "Yogi" at one point, only to be shot a glance warningly.

"The Cheshire Cat," he answered noncommittally, setting his plate down in haste, interest dully piqued by the smashed and twisted instruments that littered the table, amidst broken glass and crumbled biscuits. He grabbed a watch continually winding counterclockwise from nearby, beginning to disassemble the piece as he continued, "He wanted a kind of…compensation, for delivering me from the woods."

The tea lurched, the cup shattering upon the table; the mouse-like girl's hands still hung in the air. She stood abruptly, throwing her stool back to crash against a tree and storming off down the hill, jumping over the ruins of architecture waiting serenely for eras never to come—until her figure became tiny and lost, disappearing into the fog-laden meadowlands ahead.

When Gareki turned his gaze back to the table, he met a sickly white face mere centimeters from his own.

"Hirato?" whispered Yogi, disbelievingly. "No." His fingers, clammy and cold, dug apprehensively into Gareki's scantily-clad shoulders as he chuckled, "N- no… Surely not! What…whatever could he possibly take from you, little Alice? He's…he's too gentle-hearted a cat, especially to little brothers."

Gareki stared into the man's distressed features for a long while after those words had spilt from his flitter-fretting lips, as if judging and ultimately deciding against a choice. ( He took my— )

Instead he brought the corners of his shirt up around his jaws, to give Yogi a full view of what Hirato had done.

The man then collapsed suddenly against Gareki's shoulders, leaving the boy to gasp, to squirm uncomfortably against the body.

"Oh!" came the muffled sob against the bare skin of his nape, before the Mad Hatter pulled his bulk back to observe the wounds against the stomach again, a quivering smile on his face and happy tears streaming down his cheeks, "Oh, all right! He took the 'fatal blow' away from you!"

"Y-yeah," Gareki mumbled uneasily into Yogi's embrace, a little dazed, "He took me to the March Hare so that the bastard could heal me…"

A microscopic shudder coursed through Yogi's body. "Now I see! So that was why Akari didn't barge in this mor—come and have tea with Tsukumo and me—"

"Yogi-" Gareki tried.

"—this morning, since he usually checks up on my condi—ah, no, visits—"

"Yogi."

"—visits Tsukumo and I—that is, the Mouse and I for cream and lime sherbet—"

"Yogi!"

"—It tastes delicious! Someday, when you come aboard our—"

"Can't…can't just one of you admit to me that I'm dead?" Gareki cried out.

The smile stayed frozen on the Mad Hatter's face as he continued on his rant, staring past Gareki to the fog-laden meadowlands.

Eventually, Yogi fell silent, holding Gareki even tighter in his arms. He allowed the boy to bury his head against his velveteen coat, speaking soothingly as he examined a sky that had been, not a moment before, the vast and endless blue of the memory of summer days gone by. "You're…not yet dead, Gareki. You're, how should I say…impaled inside a backwards clock, stuck in between a future that is real, and another that will never be."

When Gareki raised his head again to stare, he met the warm smile of a man who wore a crooked top hat upon a head of wayward, golden hair, and a fog that had clawed its way about the wide, sloping hill on each side, and through the woodlands that he could no longer perceive.

"How old are you, Gareki?" Yogi queried.

Gareki hesitated.

"Eight," he said.

"Eight," repeated Yogi. "What a big boy you are."

At the instantaneous wrinkling of the bridge of Gareki's nose, Yogi burst out laughing, shakily. His gaze did not leave the boy's as he smiled again. Then, bearing no trace of the heaviness that had lain upon Gareki's body before, the man bowed down, pressing a soft, nearly imperceptible kiss against battered red lips.

"And yet too young," he murmured.

Eyes half-lidded, he watched anxiety thoroughly overtake Gareki's features.

"Will I—" the boy paused, faltering, before struggling through. "Will I…ever see you again?"

Yogi's face was almost entirely shrouded by the fog when he replied (a minuscule echo, ringing all around), the warmth that had once radiated from the firmness of his body all but fading away.

"Follow the white rabbit," he'd said, "Gareki."

Gareki awoke in the house of a stranger a moment after, his dreams long scattered away like petals to a far-flung unconsciousness. He breathed heavily, encased a little beneath boiling temperature from the forty blankets dumped onto his figure, with (what he supposed were) two little girls bouncing on top of him, peering eagerly and somewhat suspiciously down upon his sweat-soaked face and the flailing skeleton that he called a body.

A woman, he noticed, his eyesight hazy—napped tiredly in the corner.

END