Nothing But Lie (Clow/Yuuko)

[storypaint]

Title: Nothing But Lie
Day/Theme: Nov 1 // the heart asks pleasure first
Series: xxxHOLiC
Character/Pairing: Clow Reed/Ichihara Yuuko
Rating: G
Disclaimer: xxxHOLiC belongs to CLAMP.

Summary: When Clow died, Yuuko was done with magicians. They did nothing but lie. For hadn't he said he'd never leave?

He wasn't the first man she'd ever fallen in love with, but he seemed to matter the most. In fact, he was the fifth, but perhaps he mattered most since he was last.

After Clow died, Yuuko looked for nothing but to kill her suffering. She drowned it in drink, suffocated it in smoke, ignored the past in favor of manipulating the future. She buried the Mokonas in the storeroom-- carefully, because they were her children, of sorts-- but the faces that had cheered her so in the days after their making were now still and cold.

The Mokonas were not dead, but they looked dead, and Yuuko was tired of death.

She drew the restrictions and the wards after he left, and not just anyone could wander in anymore, looking for simple potions or reassurance or a good hit on the head for senselessness. Only the ones who needed her came.

Sometimes that was worse.

Years passed, centuries passed, and all magicians who came to her door were turned away. She held no truck with magicians anymore, she would complain at them through the wood. Magicians did nothing but lie.

For hadn't he said he would never leave, and hadn't he taken the opportunity when it came?

The time she spent with him was nothing compared to the length of her life (for ever since there were people to dream, there was One to grant wishes), and yet, it was the best part of her life. She was swallowed up in his ideas and aspirations, his kisses and his smile. As one century melted into another, she began to hope that mortality, which had hung over her other lovers like a suffocating blanket, would ignore Clow and she could keep him with her forever.

There had always been One to grant wishes, but not every wish was granted.

So when he died, she packed her heart away with the Mokonas (and in that storeroom, who knew if that was a figurative statement or not?), and for almost a century there was nothing to remind her of him, and then the princess came, and it began again.

Watanuki didn't notice when she became just a little quieter, just a little sadder. He hadn't been around long enough to notice the subtle change, and she certainly wasn't going to tell him. And she handled the incident with the Clow wand quite well, she thought, even though she had wanted to break it into a million little pieces (he had died for that, and now they were mass-producing it in plastic, with flashing lights and irritating noises).

Sakura came back, full of confidence and smiling, and Yuuko sent her home and then sighed, looking at the Mokonas.

"Sakura's Clow is gone too," Soel said (he had taught it how to read her too well, damnit!). It looked crestfallen. "Is our Clow ever coming back?"

"I think someday we will have to go to him," Yuuko said, feeling the truth and the age in her bones.

"Soon?" Larg asked, bumping its head against her foot, and she leaned down and put her hands on their heads.

"I hope so," Yuuko said, wondering if her heart would ever stop dying (knowing it wouldn't).