Title: Tokens of Memory
Day/Theme: November 9 // "the proof of living that you gave me"
Series: xxxHolic
Character/Pairing: Clow/Yuuko
A/N: I should be studying for my bio test. Anyways, this is dedicated to all the Clow/Yuuko fics floating around the community. Because of them, I can't look at this prompt without thinking CLOW/YUUKO!
...Cluuko? Yuow? why can't this shipping have a nice mix name? D
Oh, and Yuuko might seem like she's in denial, but it's really anger. Resentful anger.
Excerpt: She watches her lily white hands disappear, the lips that used to kiss him, the black rivers that ran down his shoulders.
...
...
She does not consider herself alive. No, even with her too-warm skin and her constant sake cravings, she can't consider herself as a part of this world.
(She shouldn't be, having given up that right a long time ago, but stupid boys make stupid wishes and she can't do anything about that.)
Mokona sits to her right, Watanuki dashes in and out, and Yuuko takes a careful puff, streams escaping her parted lips. Her body is an illusion, she almost wants to tell the silly boy feeding her. You don't need to work that hard.
She doesn't, of course, that sadistic side of her unable to stop. He barges in with another plate, mumbling threats and curses under his breath.
He looks so much like Clow, with that selfish streak and those all-too dark eyes. His skin is just as pale, the sun bleaching it a bone white.
Something in Yuuko growls in irritation, at this not-Clow, and she orders another sake.
-x-
She doesn't miss Clow. Not really, just in the way a pupil misses her master. She misses the instruction, the lazing about, the quiet chuckles. There were Sunday afternoons with her head in his lap, a hand stroking her hair, and the feeling of safety.
She misses those things, the comfort that came with being with him, but she doesn't miss the man himself.
At least, that is what she tells herself when Watanuki lies asleep on the bed and she runs a hand through his hair.
-x-
It is not enough, really, to just keep memories. Memories are nothing compared to the real thing, but they are all she has of a wizard that no one remembers.
When he told her he was leaving—to fix a mistake that cannot be undone, to fix something on his own, as usual, because the world is his mantle and the problems are his buttons—she yelled at him once, shut the door in his face, and spent the rest of the day in a drunken haze.
She arrived promptly the next day to watch him leave, and if he left with a momento of hers, then it was because he really was a selfish man.
-x-
They drink together, creation and creator side by side on the bench. Mokona blends in with the night and she fades in the moonlight. Watanuki is being pulled around by Maru and Moro and she closes her eyes to listen to the yells behind her.
"It's soon." Not as much a question but a statement. She thinks Clow give this to Mokona, a sense of perceiving the truth. The truth and the future are not always the same thing, but if one knows the truth then one often can tell the future.
"Yes." She inhales, the cool night streaming into her constantly dying lungs.
Mokona turns to face her, a hand still on the cup. "He will be devastated."
She nods. There is too much of Clow in that boy for her to not notice that, especially when she keeps seeing it in every movement. "It will be as it should."
Mokona remains silent, taking another sip. She mimics Mokona and life itself and knows it will be for the last time.
-x-
This is what disappearing feels like: a loss of feeling, detached limbs swallowed by darkness, a sense of self fading.
It is everything and nothing like what she expected. She accepts it all the same, her time finally coming, the clock finally ticking.
She does feel a pang of sorrow, though, as she watches her lily white hands disappear, the lips that used to kiss him, the black rivers that ran over his shoulder.
This is the last token of remembrance she has of him.
Yuuko quietly watches the pieces of her vanish and thinks she has lost him again.
...
...
...