[May 25, 2007] [Princess Tutu] Out of Sight

[haleysings.livejournal.com]

Title: Out of Sight
Day/Theme: May 25: force majeure
Series: Princess Tutu
Character/Pairing: Johanna (OC), Autor
Rating: G


One of the first things Johanna had noticed when she first arrived home was the lack of decorations in her old house. There were a few things—a couple of pillows tossed onto a sofa in the living room, a painting or two, some fairly nice curtains. But the overall feeling of the house was very bare, except for the large amounts of clocks.

The clocks were something she knew well, although they had seemed to somehow multiply during her ten year absence. They were everywhere. There was a large grandfather clock in the entryway, two clocks in the living room on opposite ends, the kitchen, the hallway, more than she wished to count in the bedrooms, even the bathroom had a clock. No matter where she went in the house, she could hear them—tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock. That sound was everywhere, and was joined every hour on the hour by a cacophony of chimes and chirps and bells signaling the time. The constant ticking made time feel both excruciatingly slow and unbearably fast—you could never keep up with it, and at the same time nothing ever got done.
She couldn’t imagine living in a house like this for so long, particularly when she realized with a pang of regret that Autor had lived here alone since he was fourteen. (Fourteen! At that age she barely knew who she was as a person. How could you expect someone to live on their own in a house like this at fourteen? How could she let this happen?)

The house had not been this way when she left it. It had been filled with knick-knacks and brightly (perhaps garishly) colored decorations. (Admittedly, she was rather fond of useless, impractical things—a quirk of hers that was accepted, albeit grudgingly.) At times she could have found a child’s toy left carelessly in the middle of the hall. It had been disorganized and at times a tad messy, but it was a home. Her home. But she didn’t come back to that home, what she came back to was…

A museum of time. A giant hourglass. An empty shell punctuated with the more-than-occasional clock.

The first night she had spent in the house was probably the worst. The constant ticking ringing in her ears served only to keep her awake and to constantly remind her that the space in the bed next to her was unoccupied. No matter which direction she looked, all she could see were blank walls and bare furniture. It felt like a tomb.

So the next morning when Autor had awkwardly asked if she had slept well and if everything was comfortable, she wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Logically, everything should have been fine—there was nothing that Autor could do to make the room more comfortable, at the very least. She hesitated, then slowly admitted that the room seemed “a bit stuffy.”
“Oh,” was all Autor could say at first. He stared off at nothing in particular and pursed his brow, then spoke again. “I would’ve aired that room out first if I had been thinking about it. It hasn’t really been used since…in a few years. I can help you fix it up—“
“No, no, there’s no need. All I need to do is open a window.”
The boy adjusted his glasses, his face morphing into a smug mask. “It’s alright to ask for my help. I don’t mind. Everyone needs it sometimes.”
The effect was a rather jarring one. Autor had, in general, soft features—but the expression on his face at that moment had been nothing but harsh. It didn’t make him look handsome or pleasant, certainly.
“Sometimes, perhaps,” she responded, doing her best to not let her annoyance show through her voice. “But that doesn’t mean now. I can take care of the room. I believe you need to get ready for school.”
He crossed his arms. “I’m mostly ready. Let me—“
“Get ready for school,” Johanna said, her voice taking on a tone that showed that was an order, not a request.
“I think I know when I need to get ready, and when I have free time.”
“Then go enjoy your free time.”
“I will. By fixing the room.”
“I can do that.”
“This is my house!” Autor quickly snapped, squaring his shoulders.
“Just because I haven’t been here recently doesn’t mean that this isn’t my home!”
Autor’s only response was to turn and walk away, although she could hear him mutter “what do you mean recently?” as he walked past her.
He really is just a child, Johanna bitterly thought to herself as she watched him walk away.

After Autor had left for school, Johanna marched into the bedroom and started to work. She opened up the window, swept the floors, put a new set of sheets on the bed, dusted the furniture...Really, she did whatever would keep her feeling busy, and would keep those clocks out of her mind.
But by afternoon, she had enough. It was time to get rid of the clocks, at least the ones in her bedroom. She pulled down the clocks off the wall, and picked up the one on the dresser. (Three clocks. Who in the world had three clocks in their bedroom?) For a moment she stood in the middle of the room, unsure of what she should do next. Then, as she turned, she saw the answer staring her straight in the face—the closet. Yes, she’d stop all of the clocks and put them in the closet. That would keep them out of sight and out of mind.

But when she opened the closet, to her surprise it was full of boxes. Large boxes, small boxes, chests and trunks and even jewelry boxes. They were neatly organized by size, the largest trunk on the bottom shelf and the higher shelves containing smaller and smaller boxes, with the highest shelf containing boxes so small they must only have one or two things inside. She set the clocks on an empty part of a shelf and examined the boxes more closely.

…The jewelry boxes were hers. That music box, there—that had been a gift from her mother when she had first gone off to school. And that box…that was a gift for Christmas from…
She turned her attention to the large trunk on the floor of the closet. It had a lock on it, but it had been kept unlocked. It was very heavy—it must have been full. She grasped the handles and pulled the trunk forward with a tug, dragging it out into the center of the room. She crouched down in front of it and opened it.

At first, she wasn’t sure what was inside—everything had been meticulously wrapped in several layers of tissue paper. She pulled out one of the objects and carefully unwrapped it. It was a perfume bottle made of bright green glass. She frowned and unwrapped another, this time discovering a porcelain vase. She used to keep fresh flowers in it on the entryway table.
She pulled out of the trunk and unwrapped item after item. They were…knick-knacks, really. Brightly colored—some even garishly colored.

They were all hers.

She was halfway through the trunk when she heard a thump behind her and turned to see Autor setting down his bookbag nearby the door. “Well…it looks like you’ve been pretty occupied all day.”
“You could say that,” Johanna said as she put the figurine she had been unwrapping on her lap.
Autor half-heartedly smirked, then carefully stepped over a hand mirror to reach the empty spot on the floor next to her.
“Autor, when did you pack all this up?” she asked as he sat cross-legged on the floor next to her.
“I didn’t do it. Father did.”
“Uhrmacher?”
He nodded, picking up a porcelain dog and turning it around in his hands.
“When?”
“About a week after you disappeared.”
“…He didn’t have much faith in me coming back, did he?”
Autor winced, silent for a moment. He took a deep breath before he spoke. “I can’t blame him.”
“I suppose it must have looked like I was dead.”
“Not that,” he said with a shake of his head. “I couldn’t write.”
“What?”
“He told me to write a story about you coming back, but…I couldn’t do it. What I wrote wasn’t good enough. After a while, it just got…worse. I can’t even write a word now. I’ve tried several times, but…I could never do it.”
“He tried to get you to do what?” She quickly set down the knick-knack she had been unwrapping and turned to look at Autor.
“Don’t be mad. He only asked me to do it once. I was the one that asked him to help me the other times.”
“Why? Why would you try to do something so dangerous?”
“I missed you. We both did.”
Johanna reached up and rubbed her temples. Autor, she could see doing something like that. He was only a boy, after all. But Uhrmacher…Uhrmacher should have known better than to try to do something so dangerous. Those powers were dangerous, he would have known that. A boy’s parents had died, and the story she had written…
Well, regardless, he should have known better.
Of course…if she had known better than to try to challenge the story controlling her town in the first place...she wouldn’t have disappeared, and then Uhrmacher wouldn’t have tried to bring her back.
“…Autor?”
“Yes, Mom?”
“Do you resent me?”
“What?! For what?”
“For leaving.”
“No! What gave you that idea?”
“This morning. You indirectly mentioned how long I had been gone.”
Autor sighed and crossed his arms. “…I shouldn’t have. I was just upset. I know you didn’t try to leave.”
“But I should have been there for you.”
“Should have? You couldn’t have. You were outside of the story.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m your mother. I was supposed to have been there.”
“Oh, really!” Autor snapped. He straighted, adjusting his glasses and snorting. “Sometimes outside circumstances can prevent us from doing what we ‘should have’ done. Contracts always have some sort of clause that says you’re not responsible, you know. Illness, ‘acts of God’—even wedding vows are only ‘until death’. Anyone would be able to tell you that.”
“’Until death’, hm?” She sighed, looking at the half-unpacked box. “I suppose that’s all anyone could ever ask for.”
“…Wait a moment.”

Autor stood up and walked over to the closet, pulling out a small box. “You should probably see this,” he said, walking back over to her and holding it out.
She opened up the box. Inside were several objects, but this time instead of being carefully wrapped in tissue it looked as though they had been quickly placed into the box without much thought. They looked like more of her things, mostly—except for a pocket watch that she knew was Uhrmacher’s. He had a miniature painted of her and put it in the watch.
“What’s so important about this?” she asked, pulling out a single earring. This had been her favorite pair, once—why was there only one?
“That’s…what he had on the bedside table next to him when he was sick.”
“When he died?”
Autor nodded. “That’s right. …I have the other earring.”
“You do?”
“I found it stuck between two floorboards, once. I recognized it as being your favorite so I kept it as sort of a good-luck charm. I’ve had it in my pocket for every recital.”
“Recital?”
“Piano recital. I’m in the music division.”
Johanna couldn’t help but smile. “You’re a pianist?”
Autor shrugged. “I’d rather be a writer.”
“Nobody said you couldn’t be both.”
She was pleasantly surprised to see that the expression on her son’s face was a smile—not a smirk or a smug grin, but a genuine smile. “Maybe. I should probably leave that to Fakir, though. At least for the time being.”
“Mm…Autor?”
“Yes?”
“You said you wrote a story once?”
“….Yes.”
“What was in the story?”
Autor frowned, once again adjusting his glasses. (Johanna was starting to realize that it was a bit of a nervous habit for Autor.) “Actually…I don’t really remember.”
“…It’s alright. I suppose it was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”
“Mm…say, it’s getting late. What do you want for dinner?”
“I can cook.”
“I know, but I’d like to. What would you like?”
“Hm…surprise me.”
He laughed. “Fine, fine, I’ll choose, then. You can even help, if you’d like.”
“In a moment. I think I have to hang some clocks back up.”
Autor tilted his head a little, silently asking what she meant. Johanna simply shook her head. “I’ll tell you later. Go on.”

It was after Autor had left the room that she remembered it…there was a hidden door in the pocket watch. Out of curiosity she opened it, not expecting to find anything. Inside, however, she found two things—a lock of her hair…and a neatly folded piece of paper. She took it out and unfolded it. It was what appeared to be a story written by a child.

“Once upon a time there was a Nightingale. The Nightingale had a treasure that she didn’t want her master to find, so she hid it. But soon the Nightingale was afraid that her treasure would be found, so one night she escaped from her cage, leading her master away from the treasure. However, the Nightingale flew too far and flew beyond even the borders of the story, and then…”

And there the story cut off, with a short squiggle that may have been the beginning of a new word.

Johanna’s hands shook a little. If this was what she thought it was…then that meant…
…No. It was best not to deal with it right now. It was best to think about it later. She hastily folded up the paper and slipped it back into the watch, then after a moment she decided to put the watch into her pocket.

“Autor, I changed my mind. I can come help you now.”