Title: The Price of Ill Luck
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Indirect references to the Ceres arc.
Author's Note: This fic idea ended up being more of a xXxholic story than a Tsubasa story really, given how much time Yuuko stands around spouting philosophy.
The title of this story is a reference (a play on words, not a typo) to Susan Dexter's book "The Prince of Ill Luck." In that book the titular prince, Leith, goes seeking a sorceress for help in freeing himself from an incessent curse of unluckiness. It's a very good book, I recommend it!
As he crested another turn in the switchback trail, the wizard stopped a few minutes to give his horse a few minutes of rest. Grimacing, he took his feet out of the stirrups long enough to stretch his legs and his back, muscles worn nearly raw by the three-day trek up the mountain. It wasn't necessary, he supposed; he could have just ridden the wind and been here in a quarter of the time, or even simply teleported right to the mountain's top. But when approaching another magic-user's domain it was considered extremely rude to use such magical measures without permission; when coming to beg a favor from the most powerful witch in the world, it was not generally a good idea to start off the audience on the wrong foot. Besides - his hand stole back to touch the wooden box riding along in his saddlebags - he was transporting something more than a little fragile.
Still and all, he thought as he surveyed the view from the trail head, the view from here was more than worth the climb. The trail wound its way up the southern side of the mountain, bristling with greenery; flowering trees on the lowest slopes giving way to fresh-scented evergreens higher up. Right at the treeline, the view opened up to give a stunning panorama of the valleys below and plains beyond, the green and yellow landscape drenched in honey-gold sunlight as the sun began to sink in the western side. Far away to the south, the silver ribbon of a river gleamed in the setting sun.
It was almost a disappointment to turn his eyes away from the summer vista and back to the colder, more forbidding slopes of the mountain. Born and raised in just such a stark winter valley, he was quite familiar with cold mountain stone; but that didn't mean he had to like it.
As he turned his horse around the next bend, the trail leveled off on a rocky ledge as flat as a table. The clearly-marked gravel trail continued on until it abruptly terminated in a granite slope, a smooth unmarked cliff wall. The wizard dismounted from his horse, tying its reins to a nearby scrub brush and giving it a pat, before retrieving his saddlebags from the beast.
He walked up to the smooth grey stone face, bowed once, and waited. It would have been simple enough to dispel the glamor that disguised the cave entrance, but, once again, rude; his mere presence, which she could not fail to sense, was announcement enough and a request for admittance.
Sure enough, after a few moments his request was granted; the rock face opened up abruptly into a round, smooth cave mouth. Taking a deep breath, he gripped his staff in one hand and his pack in another, and walked forward.
After only a few steps that darkness resolved itself; the chamber beyond was well lit from a dozen lamps and sconces, fully furnished and decorated as elaborately as any palace receiving room he'd visited. Oddly enough, the further the chamber went back into the hillside, the less it looked like a cave at all; the walls and ceilings were of an even height, and lined with dark wooden timbers rather than stone.
Smoke drifted along the corridors and up along the shadowed ceiling, spiraling outward from a low couch where the woman lounged. She was dressed all in black, a silky fall of fabric that was more an ornament than a concealment to her lush figure; yet there was no seduction or enticement in his pose, merely the lazy confidence of a reclining lioness. Smooth, inky black tresses spilled over long white limbs; dark, hooded eyes regarded him through a curtain of smoke that wavered upwards from her pipe.
He bowed to her. "My lady," he said formally. "Do I have the honor of addressing the Witch of Many Worlds?"
"I have been called that, yes," she said, her voice a velvet-wrapped purr. "I believe I may have heard of you, as well; the Wizard Flowright, am I correct?"
He grinned at her, then bowed again, slightly deeper. Pale gold hair fell into bright blue eyes the shade of the summer sun outside, and he brushed his hair absently back from his face as he straightened once more. "I have some small skill in magics, yes," he admitted humbly.
She laughed languidly and pushed herself into a sitting position, placing one leg on the edge of the divan for balance. Her feet were bare. "You are too modest by far, sir," she said teasingly. "The many stories of your travels - legends I might say - have drifted up to me from the valleys."
Her smile faded, her voice lost its humor. "Yet for you to have come this far out of your way - for you to see the entrance to this cave at all - must mean that you have something that you desire. Some wish that you want granted."
"Yes," the wizard admitted, secretly relieved to get past the small talk and pleasantries.
"And do you have something to offer as your price?"
"I do." The wizard set his traveling pack on a raised, flat stone before the cave entrance, and flipped open the top. With careful hands he reached inside and took out a box. It looked plain, unadorned, made of light wood pegged firmly together at the corners; but it was heavier than such a box had any right to be. Especially when, upon opening it, all it had inside was a single cut rose.
Taking a deep breath, the wizard gingerly picked the rose off its padded wooden bed and held it out to the witch with both hands. "Here it is." His voice became pained. "Please don't drop it - there really isn't enough room in here."
Reluctantly, the witch abandoned her languid pose and rose from the sedan, stepping forward to take the flower from his hands and examine it closely. It had the shape and form of a large rosebud just starting to unfurl- indeed, the ragged leaves and tiny dewdrops adorning the flower could not have been faked - but it was a pure white, petals and leaves and calix all together, harder and sharper and more brittle than glass.
She scrutinized it intensely, then remarked, "There is an entire winter here, sealed into this rose."
"Yes."
"Your own work?"
"Yes. I did it to help some people in a valley - a different mountain from this one, of course." He smiled sheepishly. "It wasn't easy, but it was worth it."
She raised one sardonic eyebrow at her supplicant. "So you think to pay the price for a wish by pawning off the leftover residue from someone else's problems?"
The wizard pouted. "I have no particular use for a winter," he said stiffly, "apart from the ongoing problem of keeping it sealed. But I thought that one such as yourself, who deals with many different worlds and times, might find such a thing valuable."
She smiled, and lowered the artifact carefully back into its box. "You are correct. This is very powerful, very valuable. I accept."
The wizard let out a little breath and stood straighter, his demeanor brightening. Yuuko took the box from his hands and stood still for a moment, concentrating, her dark eyes losing focus for a moment as they stared unseeing past the bounds of reality. When she turned back to her guest a minute later, the box was gone.
She returned to her couch, draping herself across the divan cushions, and gestured the wizard to take a seat on one of the spindly-backed, plush-padded chairs that scattered the cave. "So what is this great favor that you would have from me?" she asked. her tone was lazy, but her eyes bore into him sharply. "Surely as powerful a magician as yourself can fulfill all of your own needs, grant your own wishes."
The wizard took the offered chair gingerly, and took a deep breath. Both hands gripped his staff, a tense gesture which betrayed the nervousness he kept out of his face and voice. "You said you knew of me," he said tentatively.
The witch tilted her head in acquiescence, but did not otherwise speak.
"Then you know... of the curse that was put on me. At birth."
"The curse of the twins," Yuuko murmured. "Yes. I know of it."
The wizard spread his hands, palms open in a gesture of frustrated powerlessness. "No magic-user, no matter how powerful, can break a curse placed on him from the outside. Especially one laid on him when he was too young and helpless to defend himself. Lady - I bring death and misfortune everywhere I go. Crops fail. Sickness breaks out. Storms come. I sealed that winter -" he gestured vaguely at the air, referring to the box - "because that village had been good to me, to shelter me through the winter months, but then winter lasted all through spring, and threatened to overtake summer as well. They treated me with kindness, and I nearly repaid them with starvation and death. I want you to break that curse. I'm tired of hurting people just by existing. I cannot change how I was born, but I don't want to go on like this any more, never able to stay in one place for more than a few weeks at a time."
He ran down, and waited in a breathless silence, hands clenched. The witch regarded him steadily from her divan, inhaling deeply on her pipe; smoke drifted around her in a lazy dance that made him dizzy to look at.
At last she said, "You have paid your price, so you are owed nothing less than the truth. I should warn you before we begin, however, that the answer you receive may not be the one you want to hear. Certainly, it's not the one that you've been telling yourself for years."
The magician's blond head came up sharply; his eyes widened in shock. "Are you saying that you cannot break the curse of ill luck?" he said, panicky.
"No. I'm saying that there is no curse of ill luck at all."
"There is no..." He was at a loss. "What about the ill fortune? Are you trying to tell me that it's just - just a coincidence, that it doesn't exist?"
The witch shook her head. "Certainly it exists. But it has nothing to do with any curse. The ill fortune is brought by you."
"By me?" he echoed, dismayed.
The witch nodded. "You have always had powerful magic, from the day that you were born. Over the years you have learned many spells, many techniques to make it carry out your will. But magic does not limit itself to incantations or pretty gestures. Magic responds to your heart and to the secret wishes of your soul. It is your own guilt and pain, your own sense of unworthiness and desire for punishment, that brings you ill luck in everything you do. Break that, and your 'curse' shall also be broken."
The wizard stood there, open-mouthed and dismayed. At last he swallowed, and said in a choked voice, "So - so you're saying that I'm the one causing all this suffering?" he whispered. "It's my fault?"
"This is not a helpful attitude to have," the witch observed detachedly. "The secret wish of a human heart is a powerful thing. Rest assured that if you continue to think that you deserve punishment, your magic will find a way to deliver it to you."
"Well, what do you want me to do?" he objected angrily. "If - if I could get rid of this curse just by, by wanting to, I would have long ago! Now you're telling me there is no curse at all, just my own stupid subconscious?"
"I didn't say that." Frowning, the dark-eyed witch rose once more, and drifted across the room to stand before a broad mirror, hanging over the fireplace and overlooking the room. She stopped before the mirror, just at the edge of the range that reflected her own image, and stood with her back to him. "How much do you know about the different universes?" she asked.
The wizard frowned uneasily, wondering what obscure magical philosophy could possibly have to do with his curse. "I... am familiar with the theory," he offered uncertainly. "That there are many universes, not just one. That our world is but one among multitudes. That endless possibilities are played out among infinite different timelines, infinite people reflected through endless possible outcomes of a single event."
She smiled absently, the expression ghostly reflected in the mirror. Ghostly, he realized, because the glass was no longer showing the dim smoky interior of the cave. Instead, a deep darkness was growing as if just on the other side of the pane of glass, faint images beginning to flicker in the depths. "That is not a bad introductory understanding," she said. "Although the worlds are many - uncountable by mortals - they are not endless, and neither are human beings. The same people - the same souls - are recast from one world to the next, but they are bound in each world by hitsuzen all the same.
"There is, indeed, a curse that was laid on you before you were born, the curse of the twins. But it has nothing to do with bringing misfortune to others. The curse was laid on you, on the two of you, much longer ago and by someone far more powerful than either you or I can envision. The twins are born in every world, every time, with enough magical power between you to shake the stars, to crack the world loose from its moorings. But that is too much power for any one world to bear. And so before the two of you reach eight years old, one of you must die, every time. It is not always the same way. It is not always the same one. But it is always the same ending."
The mirror's images flickered and danced to the rhythm of the witch's words, shifting fluidly through a dozen different scenes, times and places. Two boys, light-haired and blue-eyed and mirror images of each other, were born time and time again, to families rich or poor, powerful or humble, tundra and desert and forest and urban jungles. A dozen different variations, but each time tragedy struck, and one twin was left grieving and alone, incomplete and crippled.
He tore his eyes away from the flowing images to see that the witch had turned to face him; her expression was grave and closed, but her eyes were unutterably sad. "I cannot break the 'curse of the twins,' because for you, the curse has already been carried out. When next you die, your souls entwined will move on to the next world, where the cycle will repeat itself again - with children far too young to know to ask for my aid, or be able to pay the price for it."
The blue eyes were filled with tears, and the wizard bowed his head, pressing his joined hands fircely against his brow in an effort to block their flow. "So it was my fault, after all," he said, voice thick with grief.
"I said nothing of the sort. Get your head out of your ass," the witch said, sharply enough to jolt him out of his misery. "You said it yourself, no magician can break a curse put on him from the outside. It is completely needless to keep in blaming yourself for your brother's death - ' Yuui.' "
He jerked his gaze up again to met hers, shocked to hear that name from her lips. "That was your brother's name, was it not?" she said softly. "You took his name when he died, so that some part of him would live on, and let your own name die in his place. Your twin's death was not your fault, but the burden of grief and guilt you bear is yours alone - no one can take it from you. You will know that the time has come to put it aside when you can be "Fai" once more."
He looked down at the floor of the cave - woven reeds in a wooden frame, not stone at all - and his hands tangled to fists on the hem of his traveling coat. "So - there's nothing you can do for me, then?" he asked hopelessly.
She raised her own hands, empty of answers. "I've given you truths. I cannot grant you understanding. It takes more than magic, and more than wishes, to change a human heart. Perhaps what you need is another person to help you, someone who can stand by your side and support you as you change yourself. It's not an... easy thing, but it does help, having someone who loves you." There was a strange undertone in her voice as she said that, her eyes turning inward for a moment, back in her own past.
The wizard ground his teeth in frustration. "And how am I supposed to do that, when I can't stay in any one place for too long without the bad luck ruining them?" he cried bitterly. "How am I supposed to find someone to - to love me, when the bad luck means I have to keep everyone else away?"
"Have you been listening to a word I said?" the witch said tartly. "If you truly wish to change, you had better start being honest with yourself! There is no curse that forces you to hold yourself apart from others - that's merely an excuse. Isn't it you yourself who holds yourself apart, never letting anyone get too close - for fear that you will be hurt again if you lose them, like you lost your brother?"
For a long time, the wizard was silent, face lowered and his hair spilling over to shadow his eyes. The witch padded softly back to her place, bare feet making only a whisper of sound over the matting. At last her visitor sat up, pulling his cloak close about him and shivering, although the air in the cave was no colder than it had ever been.
"You said," the wizard said quietly, hope and uncertainty and challenge all in his voice. "You said that in other places... in other worlds... Yuui is still alive?"
"In other times, in other universes, yes," the witch confirmed quietly. "All worlds exists in their own time, and yet simultaneously, as well. We can see them, hazy like past memories or visions of the future, but we cannot touch. In another world, he dreams and remembers the brother he lost, and grieves for the twin that he will never again be able to touch."
The wizard stood up and walked over to the wide mirror. He reached out one gloved hand and placed the tips of his fingers on the smoky glass. From the other side, a dim silhouette looked back at himself; his own mirrored image of reached out and returned the touch.
"Yuui..." the wizard breathed. The shadow mouthed a silent word in return.
When he turned back to his hostess at last, the wizard's expression was troubled. "I... I thank you, Witch of Many Worlds," he said quietly. "I will leave now. I have much to think about."
The witch studied him narrowly, her expression closed and her eyes hooded, but whatever thoughts or advice or warnings were passing through her mind, she only nodded and sat down again, arranging herself back on her couch. "Safe journeys, then," was all she said, dismissing him from her presence.
When he emerged from the cave, the last lowering rays of the sun struck directly into his eyes, dazzling him and blurring all the landscape around with colored, faceted jewels. He lowered his gaze to the shadowed valleys below, and began his descent.
~end.