tampered | log; in progress

When; October 4 - 5, in the hours around midnight
Rating; PG
Characters;

i_themagician
Summary; Oh, just your standard creepy ritual.
Log;

He hadn't worn robes like these in a long time, but for some reason felt the need to drag them out of the back of his closet. It just seemed right, being October and misty in the cool evenings from the steam coming up off of the hot springs. Besides which, they were a little warmer than his regular robes, being heavier, bulkier, and having a hood and longer sleeves. He was sure Yuuko would say something about it, and she was wearing something low-cut and revealing with lace and the whole nine yards. He reasoned that she was wearing black so that he wouldn't see her shiver.

They meandered through the area where the springs were, managing not to trip and fall into any, until they came to a little-used one off by itself at the far end. It was sizeable and throwing off quite a bit of steam, but also secluded and set enough apart from the others that they would have some privacy in what they were doing.

"How does this one strike you?"

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There was a mist in the water, in the other world, but it was clearing, focusing on Syaoran's horrified gaze but then following the trail of magic to where Sakura stood, wings bright, casting a spell, falling. Yuuko watched as the girl was caught carefully by a dark-haired boy with glasses. The boy was saying something, his golden staff shining bright in the dark, but Yuuko wasn't listening. She didn't drop the spell in her surprise at seeing Eriol. She'd known he would have had to be there. But it was still just incredibly odd, and not at all pleasant.

This wasn't what they were looking for, though. This was simply the moment Syaoran had left. And his world had diverged long before then, or perhaps long after. With the twisted nature of time in their dimension, it might be difficult to determine.

She pressed on the spell, refocusing it, feeding in more power, waiting for Clow to do the same. Given it was his relative they were working with, he might have a clearer idea of exactly where to head with this.

Clow did the same, remembering at the same time that he intended to look in Syaoran's future first because he suspected that to be the most likely place they'd find what they were looking for. After all, from what the boy had told him there were only minor differences in the past and present. He and Sakura were unlikely to miss anything that big.

So, he took a mental step back - out, rather - and forwards, the boys future unfurling and stretching out before him like a long ribbon of silk to end at some indeterminate point far in the future. Clow hoped they wouldn't have to go that far, if for no other reason than because he didn't want to be burdened with the knowledge of what waited there if he didn't already know. He studied the timeline from afar, but comparative futures on individuals were difficult and, if there were any real differences at all he might not notice without having both world's versions of Syaoran right in front of him. Besides which, Syaoran could well have nothing to do with whatever was keeping the temporal split open. Indeed, it was likely that he didn't, but it seemed wise to concentrate on him at first to make sure that he was in fact different and that Clow's mind didn't go wandering off into other worlds as it may be wont to do.

Clow was considering the timeline, but there was more than one dimension to work in, after all. Yuuko broadened the spell to include more space, the area around Japan and China, since those seemed the likely locations for the break. That was where space-time was at its most uncertain, due to their past actions and the actions of that awful man. The ribbon was more of a cloth, now, or perhaps a tapestry, glowing with the threads of hitsuzen that traced along the lives of people influential to the timelines here.

She left Syaoran's glowing brighter, though, as an anchor for their vision.

Leave it to Yuuko to find a more effective way of doing what he had intended to get around to. There were so many people to consider now, and although he had originally intended to look into the future he felt as though something was pulling him towards Syaoran's relative past as though there were some familiar 'landmark' that he should look for. He wasn't sure if it was narcissism or something else that made him want to look for his own line, but it seemed a sensible enough idea. After all, there were some unanswered questions with that, also.

"I'm going to try looking in the past for a moment," he says, before dumping a little more energy into the spell and trying to trace back to where his line was, while still keeping Syaoran's in sight. Other than the line itself, however, and the fact that it was well intertwined with Yuuko's at that point he didn't see much of the obvious landmark he was looking for. The two lines twisted around each other a bit, hers ended, and then his split off into two - it was subtle, really, to the point where he almost missed it at first. Clow was left wondering what he had been expecting to find, exactly.

If this wasn't a serious magic they were conducting, she would have paused to accuse him of narcissism, but there wasn't room for just playing around in another world's timespace, even if it wasn't a patent space they could actually get into and affect. He must have been going somewhere with it. So her eyes followed his along the line, seeing as her own line tangled in his (too close, too close, she almost sighed, what a mess it had been), but then--

Her thread stopped, simply, as it should have. As hers hadn't. In Syaoran's world, Yuuko was dead. There was no snarled knot, no tangling of futures, no unraveling. Where was Fei Wong in this universe? Had he not come into being at all?

She gasped, but caught the spell and held it there. She was a professional, after all.

"Look!"

Clow, for his part, was looking but hadn't been quite sure of what he was looking at. Not that he hadn't been aware of the effects of his actions, but he had never taken the time to see what they would look like from this particular perspective.

"It is much smoother than you'd expect, isn't it?" he observed calmly.

Then she did roll her eyes. "Yes, and wouldn't you call that a significant deviation? Here, you--"

But no, she found that hard to say, somehow. "This Clow let this Yuuko die. And no one interfered."

That would change a lot of things. No Watanuki, for a start. No Mokona. No shop, not anymore. And no time-space ripping.

He looked again, a little harder. "... So you're right."

Clow's side of the spell... wobbled a little, for lack of a better word, as he grappled with the consequences - but, wait, no, listen. We're professionals here, we do not let a spell of this size fall apart just because we're confused by something we saw. They had found what they were looking for, hadn't they?

"Then I think that might be..." enough to maintain that kind of divergence. He looked up and at Yuuko. They might look in the future for anything else of note, but that might just be it. It was both disturbing and oddly comforting.

"So here's a world where you're a little less impulsive," she said, but her tone was gentle. It was comforting on some level, sure, but strange to see. She'd grappled with her nondeath and found peace with it. She'd had the opportunity to meet some wonderful people and creatures, after all. She'd lived, for lack of a better word, after the mess had began, until it had been fixed.

Here, her death had been a little less complicated. She would have been there first, waiting for him. And why had that thought crossed her mind? She pushed it away. There was no way to change how that had worked out in their universe, so this would surely be a strong enough difference to maintain a divergence between their worlds.

"This must be it," she nodded, meeting his eyes.

Clow nodded. "Shall we call it a night, then?"

He was about ready to, to be honest. As much as he didn't want to risk having missed something else important and having to wait another few months to try the spell again, he felt somewhat spent at this point and didn't think he could do a very thorough job if he forced himself to keep looking.

It was a mental strain to hold onto a complicated spell like this for any length of time, no matter your power level, or so Yuuko thought. She wasn't unhappy with his suggestion.

"Let's," she answered, fighting back a yawn and beginning to fold up the spell, watching the threads of lives fade away, out of their field of vision.

Edited 2009-10-06 17:23 (UTC)

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