Title: The Price
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None
Word Count: 262
Warning/s: None really.
Summary: The realization that Clow Reed had paid a very high price.
Dedication: Lisa, the LibraryCat who threatened me with vampires and Lucius Malfoy to keep me writing.
A/N: Celeste1 who wrote the best collection of Bleach drabbles. Ever. She's the reason I'm starting this.
There is nothing free in this world.
A truism, and one that had never failed him throughout the long years. The immense power he wielded with enviable ease was paid with loneliness and the grief of watching loved ones leave him, lost to age, infirmity, to mortality.
Of which he was immune to.
Ironic, that the most powerful magician of the time wanted nothing more than to die.
There is a price for everything.
He tucked the heavy, leather bound and gilt-edged book back on the shelf, giving it one, last fond pat.
What do you wish for the most, Master?
To not know the future, he had answered, and it saddened him to cause such pain in his creations. His immense power gave him foresight, and it extracted payment with inability and inevitability.
To what lengths would you go to, to achieve your dreams?
He sat back in his favourite armchair, the velvet worn in places but that, in his opinion, made it all the more comfortable. Made it his. He arranged his robes with fastidious care, carefully aligning the edges together and neatly tucked his hands inside the opposite sleeves.
What would the most powerful magician in the world pay, to be rid of his power and the ability to see the future?
Everything.
Anything.
As the fat moon rose high, high enough that he could no longer see it from his chair and through the tall windows, Clow Reed closed his eyes, smiled a little smile that would have made Cerberus' hackles rise, and tore his soul apart.
End.