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storypaint) wrote2007-01-29 06:24 pm
Customer Loyalty (Clow/Yuuko)
Title: Customer Loyalty
Day/Theme: 30 // customer loyalty
Series: Cardcaptor Sakura/xxxHOLiC
Character/Pairing: Eriol and Yuuko (Clow/Yuuko pairing)
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.
Summary: Eriol goes to visit Yuuko with an unusual request-- he wants to borrow Watanuki...
When he entered the shop, Yuuko took a moment to compose herself before she spoke.
"There's much to be said for customer loyalty, Clow," she said, "but I cannot help you."
"I am not Clow," the newcomer said, waving a hand in dismissal. "And if you could not help me, I wouldn't have been able to find this place again, would I?"
"True, true," Yuuko mused, dragging on her cigarette. He wasn't Clow, exactly, but he liked to put holes in her arguments in the same way. She didn't like this.
"I'd like to borrow Watanuki, actually," Eriol said casually. Glancing around, he could see no evidence that Watanuki had been to the shop today (that is, bottles were scattered everywhere and no one was scolding Mokona for stealing from the sugar jar).
Yuuko's eyes narrowed. She knew no one could See her in the matter that Clow had Seen-- she had blocks up against that. And yet this Clow-not-Clow boy (his reincarnate, she assumed, he had been trying to tell her about that while she was yelling at him to leave her alone if he was going to die, and to do it already) knew about Watanuki. She lifted an eyebrow.
"Clow sent Watanuki to you. As part of the price for his wish, remember?"
Yuuko remembered.
It had not been Clow's nature to take without giving, and when Yuuko asked him for something he could not give, he offered more.
"The power to create life is worth all the magic you have," she said coldly.
"Teach me," he said, "and I will send you someone to take care of you when you grow weary and the journey is not complete."
She asked him why-- his offer was more than generous-- and he smiled and answered that he had been raised as a gentleman.
"I won't need someone else," she protested, and he nodded. In the end, Watanuki came anyway.
Yuuko turned away. The memory choked her a little bit. She hadn't realized how much she had been holding onto the stupid magician. And here he was, bothering her from beyond the grave.
"What do you want him for?" she asked, her voice harsh with repressed tears.
"I thought maybe I would solve his problem, and by doing so, solve one of mine," Eriol said steadily. She studied him from the corner of her eye.
"And you would do this why?"
"Yue is fading," Eriol said quietly. "I don't know... if Sakura can handle it."
All the planning Clow had done (alone, because she wasn't going to help him plan for his death) would be for naught if he lost Yue. And Watanuki had enough magic to sustain Yue for a little while. She could see hurt in Eriol's eyes, but the fact that he was coming to her again with such a request gave her the strength to be angry.
"I can't. I can't. This isn't the way his wish is supposed to be fulfilled."
She meant it to be a solid statement, but it sounded much more like pleading. Yuuko hated her weakness.
Eriol looked away. "Yes, I know. I shouldn't have..." He sighed. "I guess I messed with hitsuzen enough, ne?"
He spoke the last statement in Clow's voice and she dug her nails into her palms.
"Yes, you did," she said coldly. He turned to go, muttering under his breath, "Possibly Touya..." Then he looked up at her again.
"If it means anything, he was very sorry to leave you," he said.
"It doesn't," Yuuko lied, and watched her lover go in the form of a twelve-year-old boy.
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