storypaint | Pet (Clow/Yuuko) *repost?*

Comm: 30_cracks, 31_days
Words: 518
Title: Pet
Day/Theme: Nov 19 // god's lioness; 28. tensai or baka?
Series: xxxHOLiC
Character/Pairing: Clow/Yuuko
Rating: PG
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: He learned after a while that all of the stories were true. She helped him as he spilled the blood and etched the diagrams.

He didn't know how old she was, or how many of the stories were true. All that he knew was that she had the key to his desires. She knew how to create life.

And thus, Clow sought out the Dimension Witch.

She looked in his eyes and said no, but he saw the hesitation there and pressed. He stayed on.

"I'll be your apprentice," he said.

"I don't need an apprentice," she said.

He stayed anyway, and discovered that she didn't need an apprentice, but she did want a lover. She was such a passionate woman. The little experience he'd had with household maids and cheap hookers hadn't prepared him for this woman who looked for pleasure most of all, both for herself and for him.

The night he asked her again for the key to creating life, she climbed out of the bed, wrapped a blanket around herself, and slept in the shop, curled up in a ball. When he found her in the morning she was shivering, but he didn't touch her. He thought perhaps she would express her displeasure by scratching, biting, striking. He'd seen her angry; she growled like a lion.

He was reminded that she was the Dimension Witch, age unknown, with the power to grant the wishes of anyone in the world, and he was just Clow Reed, a man with a wish. He had no right to her flesh or her knowledge.

He wondered before he slept what she had done to gain that knowledge, and the thought made him shiver. Everything has a price. (She taught him that.)

When she woke, she found him in the shop, sorting through the mess of objects, both magical and mundane. If she had it her way, she would throw everything in a pile and search through for the right thing. He had a need for neatness and he usually sorted through Yuuko's treasures about once a week.

"I will teach you," she said.

He learned after a while that all of the stories were true. She helped him as he spilled the blood and etched the diagrams. Everyone else had told him it was impossible to create as he willed, but under her guidance Cerberus and Yue came to be.

He pretended not to notice when she curled her back to him and cried, the night before the final creation was done. He pretended not to notice, because Yuuko was iron-willed, and she had the claws a woman has when she has lived long alone.

He never forgot how he felt in that final moment when his creatures came to be: heady, full of power, like a god among men. He never forgot the look on her face, a look of such utter loss, as she shut the door behind him.

"We can never again be as we were," she said to him as she closed the door. And though they came together to create the Mokonas, much later, it was never the same. A wounded lion never trusts again, and there is no reason to pray to a god who ignores.