I wish…
T: Inspired by two stray thoughts which, after a week of nit picking, finally fused together into this particular story. Before I get into warnings and disclaimers I wanted to say that this is most defiantly a one shot and that there will be no more chapters! Right that done, this is a crossover with XXXholic and it really will make very little sense unless you've seen that series…also this fic deals, in part, with the thought processes of Sakurazuka Subaru and thus ANGST is at an all time high! Spoilers for X 16 onwards and for the most recent events in XXXholic. I own nothing here apart from the meagre plot!
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She reads the pristinely crafted note twice before she calls Watanuki to her. The boy appears a moment later, his traditional expression of resigned anger embedded already on his face.
"Such a look, if you keep it up you'll get wrinkles."
There is a chorus of "Wrinkles, wrinkles, Watanuki will get wrinkles." From Moro and Maru, then Watanuki is all but steaming from the ears.
"If that was all you wanted some of us have work to do!"
"Wait a moment." He has heard this tone from her very rarely and he freezes half way to the door, a vague worry over taking the indignation upon his face.
"I shall be receiving a very important visitor in an hour and I wish you to be gone before he gets here."
She sees the want to question her in his eyes and she promises herself that should he ask she shall tell him the truth.
However, the question is not posed and instead Watanuki merely bows, this a show that he has heard her, then leaves her to her thoughts.
Her 'visitor' arrives precisely an hour later and for the briefest of moments she believes herself in the presence of a fraudster. Then she catches a momentary flash of the green of his left eye and she knows this can be no other than he she had expected.
"It has been a long while since I last saw you, Subaru."
"I fear that my life has been a little…busy…of late, Yuuko, enough so that I have had to forgo the pleasure of your company. Something that I hope you will forgive me for." The formality of his manner is very much as it had been the last she had seen him and yet everything else…
She had known, of course, that Subaru's fate was to be a hard one and yet for it to have come to this…
"You are not as you were."
"No, I am not."
In the silence that follows her eyes catch the alien hazel hue of his right eye and the strength of the power within it…of the attachment that Subaru has with that eye…is of an intensity that she has seen only once before.
"Despite the words in your note I can not believe you have come here simply to exchange pleasantries, Subaru.
"For I sense a wish in you…a dangerous wish that might change the very fabric of destiny…"
"Such things no longer concern me, Yuuko. I wish only to…"
She raises a hand to stop him before he can voice the words and shaking her head she informs him,
"The price of such a wish, even for you, is high."
"Ask what you will of me."
"Give me that eye." She remarks as she points to the right side of his face.
His gloved fingers lift to touch the object in question and for the briefest of instants she believes that he will go back on his resolve. Then he is pressing the object into her fingers, the thing slick with blood that has been stanched already by her own magic.
"You can not again ask for such a thing as this, Subaru and should you find yourself unable to do as you wish destiny will continue on its set course."
"Then at least I shall have tried." He remarks, his form blurring already about the edges.
She stays in the room until the last traces of his presence are lost and then she carries her precious burden into the security of the treasure room.
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The sudden change in temperature, combined with the loss of the tree's strength and the poor care he has been keeping of himself, is as a sharp shock to his system and, but an instant after his feet touch the floor, he passes into unconsciousness.
When he again stirs he is encased in the oppressive warmth of bed covers, the smell of which stir a faint recollection from somewhere at the heart of him.
There is a soft click of a door opening and then the sound of two sets of footsteps. One soft and hesitant, while the other is heaver and somehow more confident.
Then, suddenly, he is looking into his own eyes, the intense green shinning with a sympathetic ache that he wishes desperately to erase.
"How are you feeling?" His younger self enquires and Subaru considers a moment before he replies,
"Much better…where am I?"
"About a mile from where I found you. You will forgive the liberty but I could not get you to wake up."
He had been near Shinjuku when he had collapsed, which meant that he was most likely wrapped into his own sheets…or at least the sheets belonging to his younger self.
"Thank you for helping me…" He trails and, as he had hoped, his younger self takes this as a cue to introduce himself.
"Forgive the belated introduction, I am Sumeragi Subaru." His younger self bows and at last he is given opportunity to see the other that had been with him.
Seishiro.
He finds himself drawn into those familiar brown eyes and the desire to touch him…to hold him and never let go…swamps him, yet, to fulfil his wish he must squelch this need.
Must blank away his heart.
His younger self notes the focus of his attention as he stands strait again and smiling he says,
"This is Sakurazuka Seishiro and he helped me to carry you here."
He can see the first beginnings of the boy's affection for Seishiro clear in his glass green eyes and the simple purity of it is enough to set his mind back onto the task in hand.
"I am Yuji Kimoru and I must thank you again, Sumeragi-san, for your kindness." The lie rolls with a practiced ease from his lips and serves as a reminder of how far he has travelled since the time when he was as the boy before him…serves as a show that even without the power of the sakura he is still, at the heart of him, Sakurazukamori.
"It was nothing." The boy responds, bowing once more before he remarks, "I have a job that I have to get to, Yuji-san, but Seishiro-san will stay with you until I get back."
"I couldn't impose, Sumeragi-san."
"You are not imposing, Yuji-san and it is better that you rest a little longer here, then leave and collapse again somewhere dangerous."
He thanks the boy one more time, is again brushed off with the modest assertion that anyone else would have done the same thing and then the boy heads out for his job.
The click of the front door is the signal that he is, at last, alone, with Seishiro and he regards the other a moment before he enquires,
"Do you know my true identity?"
He smiles that lazy smile of his and removing his glasses he responds,
"You feel almost exactly as Subaru-kun and yet I wonder how such a thing is possible."
He pushes himself out of bed and brushing his hair free from his blind eye he replies,
"I gave something of great worth to the Dimensional Witch and she, in turn, brought me here."
"Why?"
"Because of my wish."
"What is it that you wish, Subaru-kun?"
He can not recall how long it has been since he has been addressed as such…since he had heard this voice speaks its final words…and for the briefest of instants he freezes.
Then he allows the emptiness within him to take over and, but a moment later, he is again pulling his hand from Seishiro's heart.
Unlike the last he had been in this situation he can not find it in himself to cry, for he has become all but numb to the pain of death.
He presses a kiss to the other's forehead and, his voice emotionless, he remarks,
"I wished to be free of you, Seishiro-san…free of the life you have made me live…and this was the only way that I could achieve such a thing.
"My other self will cry for you, I think, and yet it is better that he spends his tears now, for one he does not truly know, than later in his life, for one who has betrayed him so completely."
He lingers with the body until he hears his younger self returning and then, not wishing to intrude on what would be a very personal moment, he leaves.
He walks a while about Tokyo, simply taking in the sight of the city in its prime, then he comes into the shadow of the sakura and performs, what he knows shall be, his final exorcism.
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When Watanuki had lost his eye she had entertained the thought of letting him have the one that Subaru had left her.
However, she had decided against such an action, both because the boy would never be able to pay her back for the favour and also because it had been more entertaining to give him half of Doumeki's
But a week after that the Sumeragi's grandmother had come to request the eye from her and her payment had been substantial enough that Yuuko had given the thing over gladly.
The Sumeragi had long ago bound the essence of her destiny tight to her, making it impossible for Yuuko to know things about the other before they occurred, and thus, because she was curious as to why the old woman would want something that was now all but useless, she was forced to enquire,
"What do you plan to do with this token?"
"I am going to destroy it, Yuuko-san and thus, at last, erase all trace of he that it belonged to."
She was not surprised that the elder Sumeragi knew of the eye's origins and yet the bitterness of her words were a little unnerving.
"Be cautious, Sumeragi-san, it will not do for you to hold to such hate, at least not when there is now no cause for it."
The elder Sumeragi had regarded her with a cool indifference and she had known, then, that she was also partly to blame for the ills that had befallen Subaru.
She would make sure to tell the boy to resist his grandmother the next he saw her, for it would not do for the other Subaru's effort to go to waste.
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T: A few things before I go…Yuuko asks Watanuki to leave because, as an Onmyoji, Subaru would be a strain on his gifts…or in other words the spirits surrounding the Sumeragi would unnerve our favourite errand boy! The other power that Yuuko had seen akin to the one in Subaru's brown eye is, logically, that of the Seishiro from Tsubasa. Think that's everything! R+R please!