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storypaint) wrote2007-04-10 07:56 am
Granted (Watanuki gen)
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50fantastic
Words: 838
Title: Granted
Prompt: 22. xxxholic, the main character being Watanuki. Yuuko left him the shop and now he's the Dimension Wizard. As he can't stay in the shop a lot of the time, write about those with Wishes going to find him as he tries to live normally. Don't mind what pairings you put in, if any.
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we_waken
Genre: gen
Rating/Warnings: G, no warnings
Disclaimer: xxxHOLiC belongs to CLAMP. All fanfiction archived here is a derivative of canon material that is not my property. I do not profit from these writings. The opinions and actions expressed in these stories are not necessarily the views and beliefs of the original author or me.
Excerpt: Surely her informant was crazy, she thought; this was nothing more than a normal high school boy with glasses falling of his nose. Then he looked up and met her eyes, and his were blue and piercing and saw through her. They glittered, alien and ageless.
The first one interrupted him during P.E.: she looked entirely normal but Watanuki knew a customer when he saw her.
"Someone told me..." she said, edging closer to the place where he was stretching, "someone told me you could help me."
Surely her informant was crazy, she thought; this was nothing more than a normal high school boy with glasses falling off his nose. Then he looked up and met her eyes, and his were blue and piercing and saw through her. They glittered, alien and ageless.
"What is your wish?" he asked gallantly, rising to his feet. He traded a smoldering look with the neutral-faced boy beside him. The boy nodded in a way that made the customer wonder if he was a bodyguard, but he didn't follow as the Dimension Wizard led her away so they could talk.
Ten minutes later, Watanuki rejoined the group, shaking his head a little.
"Yuuko is so irresponsible... She knows I'm still in school. Why couldn't this have waited?!" The last words he shouted to the sky, but his tantrum went unheeded by his classmates; they were used to Watanuki's random fits of anger.
The Dimension Witch didn't answer Watanuki's call. She wouldn't later, either, even when he called the special number she gave him (it turned out to be connnected to one of the seven circles of hell, to a pizza place there, actually, and even though the pizza was good Watanuki was still pissed). It was as though Yuuko had disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Somehow Watanuki was unsurprised.
*
The Incidents, as Watanuki liked to call them, the capital letter evident in his tone, continued on an increasing basis until the school system was fed up with him. He told every lie he could think of-- they were aunts, uncles, long-lost cousins, zombies. There was nothing else to do. Watanuki left high school.
He signed the paperwork, cursing under his breath, especially when Himawari walked past the office and gave him a cheery wave. What excuse could he find to talk to her now?
After a couple of months, Himawari faded into a pleasant memory. Of course, Doumeki didn't. He came by the shop almost every day to "check in," and Watanuki's efforts to convince Doumeki that he was doing well went unheeded. After a while they began to take tea together. Watanuki wouldn't admit it, but it was lonely in the shop between customers. He could see why Yuuko had created Maru and Moro, even though the two weren't stunning conversationalists.
One day during tea, a frustrated Watanuki demanded that Doumeki tell him how exactly it was that he could still see the shop, since Watanuki's wish had been "granted" by Yuuko and he wasn't in danger anymore. ("It's a safe place here, and you won't see any spirits that haven't come as customers. And no one will mess with anyone piggybacking on my reputation," Yuuko had told him cheerfully the day she'd left, drunken and smiling.)
"I made a wish once," Doumeki said, his face impassive as usual, and he would say no more. Watanuki let it go. He was beginning to learn how to play his role as the Dimension Wizard. He developed a neutral listening face and a sharp insight into the needs of those who stood before him. Like Yuuko, he often found those who wouldn't recognize those needs, but he did what he could.
There were clients, and cleaning, and tea; there would probably be for years to come. Decades even. Centuries? Watanuki sometimes wondered, especially after he came across letters written by a man named Clow Reed that crinkled with age. There was a storage room to organize and warashi to placate.
Still, the fourteenth customer he had interrupted him in the grocery store, a young boy with slightly pointed ears and shifty eyes (he called himself Pan, but that really meant nothing to Watanuki). The twenty-ninth caught him leaving Doumeki's shrine and the thirtieth almost ran him down that very week.
Watanuki sighed a little and helped them the best he could, just like Yuuko did. But the one (the thirty-second, to be exact) that interrupted his bath was just too much. He barely paused to put on a towel before he threw the interloper out of his house, screaming like he hadn't done since before Yuuko left.
The next day he moved into the shop. In his cleaning he had been unsurprised to find futon and a cozy room on the back that must have served as Yuuko's bedroom; he was very surprised in the night to find Maru and Moro curled up beside him (but he didn't protest).
And when Yuuko finally came back to visit (he had lost track of days, of years, and Doumeki's hair was beginning to gray, though he hadn't noticed), she told him he had done a good job. He had become a good Dimension Wizard.
"It wasn't my wish," he said, sulking.
"It wasn't?" she said innocently, and smiled.
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I also like the ending.
Cool!fic ^__^
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