She Needs a Wristwatch, Baccano! (Eve Genoard)
Title:She Needs a Wristwatch Author/Artist: shiegra Rating: PG13 Word count: 1028 A/N: Honestly, this turned into a mishmash of fairytale scraps and introspection and a tea party scene, the only part that I really pulled from Alice in Wonderland, coming out more like something out of Jan Svankmajer's Alice. Prompt: Baccano! - Eve Genoard - dreaming/character study - falling down the rabbit hole
The grass is slick and near-black under her feet, slender blades prickling her soles. Clouds hung low in a silvered sky, and the silence was a weight on her skin, a soft caress of blackness.
She was walking down a long pathway, and the trees arched above her in strange tempting patterns, their leaves whispering with a song, and with voices that laid just beyond the edge of her hearing. Sometimes she heard her brother’s name, or her own, but nothing else ever became clear.
Sometimes she thought she saw something red through the trees, or the gleam of gold like eyes, but nothing that gave her a path. After a time she began to run, her feet slapping hard earth, picking up speed as she careened around tree roots and mossy rock.
The trees broke open with a suddenness that could only occur in dreams, spreading into rolling hills gilded silver in the moonlight. Deep in the valley between two—
There was an incongruous table, spread with a soft cloth that look more like an overgrown shawl than a tablecloth, and with uneven groups of chairs ringing it.
Candelight enveloped it, a strange piece of a warmer world. Eve paused, then began picking her way down the slope as her heartbeat slowed, steadying out. Her heels sank into wet grass and then didn’t; as she approached the table she became aware that her nightgown was gone, that instead soft red velvet began to curl around her limbs, stroking up her arms and belling over her legs, laces pulling snug at her ribs. Lace tickled her throat and something weighed down her ears.
Heavy, tawdry finery. She looked down at it and thought nonsensically, such a waste of funds—
But the thought slipped away. “Eve-chan!” Someone called merrily, and she lifted her head and hurried eagerly towards the table.
“Elean-san?” She began, peering around the high back of an armchair, then checked herself sharply. Sure enough, the man sitting there had Elean’s broad smile and light glinted strangely off of similar glasses, but soft clotted shadows gathered around head and hands, and black smoke seemed to trail from his mouth.
“Tea?” He asked, and she hesitated and then slowly accepted a small china cup, hoisting herself into a white wicker chair that left her toes barely touching the ground--unable to touch the grass even with the tips of her black boots, out of touch. Unanchored.
“Sugar?” Elean asked helpfully
“No, thank you.” Eve said gravely, sneaking a glance at him. “I’m looking for my brother. Can you tell me anything?”
Déjà vu, a split second’s uneasiness, and Elean’s smile froze, rewound, and opened to let his voice rattle off, “sugar?” once more.
“No.” Eve said impatiently, turning to the other inhabitants of the table. “Please, sir, have you—” Her voice faltered and died, uncertain. “Dallas?” She whispered.
The tall man looked like him, even if his head and shoulders were draped in subtle folds of shadow. She could see his eyebrows, and the line of his nose and jaw, and the faintly sarcastic curl of his mouth—and his hands, his hands were very familiar.
“Dallas? Onii-san!” She lunged out of her chair, reaching to catch at his hand, and her fingers closed on mist. Eve gave a sharp, pained gasp and withdrew her hand.
“No one’s sitting there, Eve-chan.” Elean said, standing. His features became clearer as he leaned forward, filled with worry as he reached for her wrist. “No one’s ever sat there.”
Eve looked at the plate with its half finished cake and the cup of tea, half drunk and still steaming, and tore her wrist free, taking in a furious gasp of air. “I’m looking for my brother!” She cried, and turned to Elean, who had frozen.
After a moment he settled back in his seat. “I’ll help you if I can, Eve-chan, you know that.” He said kindly, and she looked down into her teacup, watching the ripples.
“I cut away the blackberry vines.” She said, voice wounded and small. “There are no more at the base of the tower, I’m sure of it. Why won’t he come home?”
“I’m sure he would if he knew you needed them.” Elean told her, voice still very gentle. “Sit, Eve-chan—eat.”
She picked up her teacup and then put it down again. “I asked for no sugar.” She said, dismayed as she watched white grains settle at the bottom of the cup.
“Oh—” Elean frowned, distress settling and passing over his face. “I’m sorry. I must have forgotten, I’m so used to putting it in mine. Won’t you have a little anyway?”
“No...” Eve pushed it away, gently but firmly. “If he doesn’t know, then I have to find him.” She said aloud. “I can’t just let him go on alone. He doesn’t have the shoes for it.”
“Iron shoes are hard to find these days.” Elean agreed wisely. “You’ll never make the journey if you don’t have your own pair.”
“Of course I do.” Eve told him, a little offended. “I have them in my bag. I always make sure to prepare properly...” She trailed off again, staring into the wide bowl of the sky, indigo filled with sharp glass points of stars. If one fell, she’d find it and ask it, she thought determinedly. She’d go right now. Surely a star would know.
Elean reached out and took her hand, very gently and hesitantly. His glasses gleamed. “You won’t find it that way.” He told her firmly, and pointed between the two hills to his left. “You’d better hurry.”
A bright flashing point hurtled down, burning through the air. Eve snatched up the bag she had surely forgotten on the grass and ran, feeling heavy velvet peel away in screeching shreds as she hurtled through the table like mist, over the ground, feet striking the earth—bare again—and wind plucking at her hair.
She’d put on the iron shoes when she reached the glass hill; she knew the star had fallen there, and all she had to do was run hard enough, and never look back at the dawn.