[One-shot] The Lost Dollmaker (Prince of Tennis)
Title: The Lost Dollmaker
Characters: Tezuka/Fuji
Rating: Gen
Warnings: Grief as a theme. (I couldn't help it, the first sentence made it so. I tried to make it not as painful as it might have otherwise been.)
Wordcount: 692
Summary: Fuji teaches dolls to grieve.
Author's notes: Written for chain_of_fics, which requires the first sentence to be the last sentence of the last fic, taken verbatim. Perhaps one day I will flesh out the story with details. For now, short it shall be.
Between them they know just about everything there is to know, but they still don't know how to grieve.
Fuji contemplated this random thought as he studied the doll before him, and then patted its head lightly.
***
TezuFuji dolls were couples in love. If a Fuji doll was purchased together with a Tezuka doll, the dolls harmonized completely in every way, from behaviour to friendship to protecting the families that housed them. And because they were dolls and did not age, the love lasted a lifetime. When an uneven number of dolls were purchased, the TezuFuji dolls would somehow pair up and the odd-ones-out would play with other dolls and remain contented members of the doll family, but obvious outsiders until a counterpart was found. Two Fuji dolls and two Tezuka dolls simply did not interact.
No one had ever made paired dolls like this before, and though there were copycats, no other dolls matched the right-ness of TezuFuji dolls--for that was what dealers called them now, a brand of their own. There were other dolls--master and slave, and Rikkai dolls that worked in trios. But only the TezuFuji dolls complemented each other perfectly. Even the Golden Pairs (an Eiji doll and an Oishi doll, lively and happy creatures that played and gambolled) paled in comparison. Golden Pair dolls were happy neighbourhood children who would continue to be happy playmates forever. But they were not dolls in love.
Tezuka and Fuji had met each other by chance, craftsmen recognizing each other's care for trunks that felt too light to contain anything else but the masterpieces of a lifetime. Fuji's dolls, every last one of them, smiled with their eyes closed. Tezuka's dolls, every last one of them, never smiled. When the trunks were opened and shared in the comfort of Fuji's room at the inn, the Fuji dolls had approached the Tezuka dolls, and the makers had done the same.
It was an idyllic existence at first, dollmaking from sunup to sundown, pausing merely to take care of life's necessities. Dolls came and went. Most were well-made and would last years. Some broke with the first jolted trunk and would be discovered in pieces when Tezuka halted the carriage and Fuji checked on their wards. But Tezuka and Fuji merely saved the pieces and made more. They did not mourn the broken ones, even those that had taken months to build, that had taken years, that were narrow escapes and miraculous activations and never-would-be-again.
After all, the dolls were just that. Dolls. They could be made again. Grief was a foreign emotion. Neither of them cared for the dolls as much as they cared for each other.
Fuji knew that so long as this continued, their craft would stagnate. As the world grew ever-suspicious of the little forms they crafted that moved of their own accord, the dollmakers of the world hoarded their skills and their secrets, taking fewer and fewer apprentices. Some took their secrets to the grave. Eventually, they hoarded their identities as well. Sales of dolls remained, for even if the makers were viewed with eternal suspicion and avoided (even hated and persecuted in some places), the dolls themselves were things of beauty.
But one grew bored of everlasting love and other constants.
Even without prior knowledge of how to do so, Tezuka would grieve, Fuji knew. Tezuka dolls would do the same. Because Fuji had made every single Fuji doll to stop when Fuji did. And Tezuka had instilled in his own dolls the need to endure--
"They will be my legacy, and will persevere when there is nothing in them but the will to hold on. Just as I do, so they will."
--and Fuji knew Tezuka would succeed. He was sure the world would continue to marvel at Tezuka's masterpieces, and perhaps they would mourn Fuji's.
Even if the world did not mourn, Tezuka and his dolls would. That was enough for Fuji.
***
Poised on the edge, Fuji turned back and smiled at Tezuka. "Don't miss me too much," he said. As he stepped backwards into the embrace of progress and change and thin air and nothing-beneath-my-feet, there was a ghost of a smile on his face.
---
Please comment/critique, thank you! ^_^
Characters: Tezuka/Fuji
Rating: Gen
Warnings: Grief as a theme. (I couldn't help it, the first sentence made it so. I tried to make it not as painful as it might have otherwise been.)
Wordcount: 692
Summary: Fuji teaches dolls to grieve.
Author's notes: Written for chain_of_fics, which requires the first sentence to be the last sentence of the last fic, taken verbatim. Perhaps one day I will flesh out the story with details. For now, short it shall be.
Between them they know just about everything there is to know, but they still don't know how to grieve.
Fuji contemplated this random thought as he studied the doll before him, and then patted its head lightly.
***
TezuFuji dolls were couples in love. If a Fuji doll was purchased together with a Tezuka doll, the dolls harmonized completely in every way, from behaviour to friendship to protecting the families that housed them. And because they were dolls and did not age, the love lasted a lifetime. When an uneven number of dolls were purchased, the TezuFuji dolls would somehow pair up and the odd-ones-out would play with other dolls and remain contented members of the doll family, but obvious outsiders until a counterpart was found. Two Fuji dolls and two Tezuka dolls simply did not interact.
No one had ever made paired dolls like this before, and though there were copycats, no other dolls matched the right-ness of TezuFuji dolls--for that was what dealers called them now, a brand of their own. There were other dolls--master and slave, and Rikkai dolls that worked in trios. But only the TezuFuji dolls complemented each other perfectly. Even the Golden Pairs (an Eiji doll and an Oishi doll, lively and happy creatures that played and gambolled) paled in comparison. Golden Pair dolls were happy neighbourhood children who would continue to be happy playmates forever. But they were not dolls in love.
Tezuka and Fuji had met each other by chance, craftsmen recognizing each other's care for trunks that felt too light to contain anything else but the masterpieces of a lifetime. Fuji's dolls, every last one of them, smiled with their eyes closed. Tezuka's dolls, every last one of them, never smiled. When the trunks were opened and shared in the comfort of Fuji's room at the inn, the Fuji dolls had approached the Tezuka dolls, and the makers had done the same.
It was an idyllic existence at first, dollmaking from sunup to sundown, pausing merely to take care of life's necessities. Dolls came and went. Most were well-made and would last years. Some broke with the first jolted trunk and would be discovered in pieces when Tezuka halted the carriage and Fuji checked on their wards. But Tezuka and Fuji merely saved the pieces and made more. They did not mourn the broken ones, even those that had taken months to build, that had taken years, that were narrow escapes and miraculous activations and never-would-be-again.
After all, the dolls were just that. Dolls. They could be made again. Grief was a foreign emotion. Neither of them cared for the dolls as much as they cared for each other.
Fuji knew that so long as this continued, their craft would stagnate. As the world grew ever-suspicious of the little forms they crafted that moved of their own accord, the dollmakers of the world hoarded their skills and their secrets, taking fewer and fewer apprentices. Some took their secrets to the grave. Eventually, they hoarded their identities as well. Sales of dolls remained, for even if the makers were viewed with eternal suspicion and avoided (even hated and persecuted in some places), the dolls themselves were things of beauty.
But one grew bored of everlasting love and other constants.
Even without prior knowledge of how to do so, Tezuka would grieve, Fuji knew. Tezuka dolls would do the same. Because Fuji had made every single Fuji doll to stop when Fuji did. And Tezuka had instilled in his own dolls the need to endure--
"They will be my legacy, and will persevere when there is nothing in them but the will to hold on. Just as I do, so they will."
--and Fuji knew Tezuka would succeed. He was sure the world would continue to marvel at Tezuka's masterpieces, and perhaps they would mourn Fuji's.
Even if the world did not mourn, Tezuka and his dolls would. That was enough for Fuji.
***
Poised on the edge, Fuji turned back and smiled at Tezuka. "Don't miss me too much," he said. As he stepped backwards into the embrace of progress and change and thin air and nothing-beneath-my-feet, there was a ghost of a smile on his face.
---
Please comment/critique, thank you! ^_^