storypaint (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
storypaint) wrote2010-05-06 01:57 pm
storypaint) wrote2010-05-06 01:57 pm
[xxxHOLiC] There Was the Word (Clow/Yuuko)
Title: There Was the Word
Fandom: xxxHOLiC(/Tsubasa/Cardcaptor Sakura)
Length: 634 words
Prompt: Icon prompt for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
outou.
Pairing: Clow/Yuuko; mostly Clow gen
Other: General TRC spoilers.
Excerpt: Clow did not believe in the transience of life-- not really, deep down.
Clow did not believe in the transience of life-- not really, deep down. He saw the myriad worlds as dimensions that would last forever; universes were being born all the time, just as they died. And he believed in death, but it did not touch him like it touched most.
He grew up in a world where turning forty was old, and seven of his nine siblings died before their majority. (It was one of his favorite secrets that the relationship his parents had reminded him of his relationship with Yuuko-- his mother was tiny, an irritable Li with more dignity than could even fit in her small frame, and his father was laughing and teasing and indulgent. They loved each other as much as they fought, and died within a year of each other, when Clow was fifteen.) But he found himself at forty as youthful as he was at seventeen, and he watched as his sisters married, rocked their children on his knee, and then their grandchildren. When they were all gone, finally, it was as if he had become unattached to time. There was no one to measure it, no one aging. Not he.
He traveled, he learned, he worked, and he made. It started with a home and a garden, but when he had both of those he needed someone to be home with, and it did not occur to him to find another human being. Cerberus and Yue and the Cards would live as long as they could feed off his magic, and Cerberus longer besides (he was very proud of that). They spent years together as the magician perfected his craft and grew in power and took afternoons off to wrestle with Cerberus on his grassy lawn or to go flying with Yue.
He might have gone on like that forever, outside of time, in a place where the cherry blossom tree bloomed just a little longer every year, because he loved its blossoming, had Yuuko not come into his life. And even she, at first, did not change how he thought about life and its ending. She was younger than he, though less powerful, but strong enough that time had little pull on her age.
When he realized she would die-- soon, too soon, before they had drank away enough fall afternoons, before they had visited enough worlds, before he could convince her to marry him-- it flipped his world upside down, and suddenly he was looking at the universe in different eyes, as a man who might not be in it for an indefinite length of time. He was not scared of dying (though he suspected it would be boring), but he was depressed at the idea of losing her.
He pushed the depression away as selfish, and said nothing, as she made her preparations, as she told him goodbye and kissed his cheek and refused again to marry him (honestly, by this point, the proposals had become a joke, and he would offer to marry her for such reasons as she'd walked into a room or remembered where her emergency bottle of sake was located).
And so she would be gone, like all the other people he had known, besides the ones he had made. He couldn't believe it, didn't believe it, and the force of a magician's belief is strong enough for the greatest (and worst) of magics.
When she woke up, and she could move, the first thing she did was smack him. And then they both prepared for death.
(Maybe it was selfish again, but he hoped for something after; at least, a chance to spend enough time in apology to all of those he'd inconvenienced.
He just wasn't very good at this transience thing.)
Fandom: xxxHOLiC(/Tsubasa/Cardcaptor Sakura)
Length: 634 words
Prompt: Icon prompt for
outou.Pairing: Clow/Yuuko; mostly Clow gen
Other: General TRC spoilers.
Excerpt: Clow did not believe in the transience of life-- not really, deep down.
Clow did not believe in the transience of life-- not really, deep down. He saw the myriad worlds as dimensions that would last forever; universes were being born all the time, just as they died. And he believed in death, but it did not touch him like it touched most.
He grew up in a world where turning forty was old, and seven of his nine siblings died before their majority. (It was one of his favorite secrets that the relationship his parents had reminded him of his relationship with Yuuko-- his mother was tiny, an irritable Li with more dignity than could even fit in her small frame, and his father was laughing and teasing and indulgent. They loved each other as much as they fought, and died within a year of each other, when Clow was fifteen.) But he found himself at forty as youthful as he was at seventeen, and he watched as his sisters married, rocked their children on his knee, and then their grandchildren. When they were all gone, finally, it was as if he had become unattached to time. There was no one to measure it, no one aging. Not he.
He traveled, he learned, he worked, and he made. It started with a home and a garden, but when he had both of those he needed someone to be home with, and it did not occur to him to find another human being. Cerberus and Yue and the Cards would live as long as they could feed off his magic, and Cerberus longer besides (he was very proud of that). They spent years together as the magician perfected his craft and grew in power and took afternoons off to wrestle with Cerberus on his grassy lawn or to go flying with Yue.
He might have gone on like that forever, outside of time, in a place where the cherry blossom tree bloomed just a little longer every year, because he loved its blossoming, had Yuuko not come into his life. And even she, at first, did not change how he thought about life and its ending. She was younger than he, though less powerful, but strong enough that time had little pull on her age.
When he realized she would die-- soon, too soon, before they had drank away enough fall afternoons, before they had visited enough worlds, before he could convince her to marry him-- it flipped his world upside down, and suddenly he was looking at the universe in different eyes, as a man who might not be in it for an indefinite length of time. He was not scared of dying (though he suspected it would be boring), but he was depressed at the idea of losing her.
He pushed the depression away as selfish, and said nothing, as she made her preparations, as she told him goodbye and kissed his cheek and refused again to marry him (honestly, by this point, the proposals had become a joke, and he would offer to marry her for such reasons as she'd walked into a room or remembered where her emergency bottle of sake was located).
And so she would be gone, like all the other people he had known, besides the ones he had made. He couldn't believe it, didn't believe it, and the force of a magician's belief is strong enough for the greatest (and worst) of magics.
When she woke up, and she could move, the first thing she did was smack him. And then they both prepared for death.
(Maybe it was selfish again, but he hoped for something after; at least, a chance to spend enough time in apology to all of those he'd inconvenienced.
He just wasn't very good at this transience thing.)