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Story: [Cardcaptor Louise]

Summary: Louise finds Clow's book at the academy. Things get a bit out of hand.

Fandom:(Zero no Tsukaima) / (Cardcaptor Sakura)

Genre: Friendship?

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Louise had arrived at Tristain's Academy of Magic with a great many hopes and dreams.

All of her magic up until that moment had exploded, but the professors of the school were sure to be able to easily point out the solution to it to her. A slight delay in mastering her Element in comparison to her peers, but certainly nothing she wouldn't be able to make up for with hard work and determination.

The truth was... that they didn't know any better than her mother had.

They were just as stumped, as confused. A few seemed honestly willing to dismiss Louise as a bastard from an affair of her mother's with a commoner, since clearly she didn't have any actual magic in her whatsoever.

Or, if she did have magic in her, then it was the Founder's will that she should never be able to reach for it properly, which said equally bad things about her parentage.

Back straight, tearing eyes violently suppressed, Louise disappeared into the school's library.

She should've known better than to assume that a bunch of academics would know magic better than the legendary Karin of the Heavy Wind. But the school's library was massive. Much bigger than any they had at the Valliere estates, so surely there would be something there. Something that could show everyone that she could do magic.

Louise honestly lost count of how long she walked between the shelves of the library, desperately searching after titles she hadn't already read through, titles she didn't recognize, books on magical theory that might've been carelessly 'disproven' by an overzealous academic centuries ago.

Her search brought her deeper and deeper into the library, away from the more commonly perused shelves and into the labyrinthine corridors of books lost in time, deeper and deeper, until the book-titles all seemed to float together in her head, deeper and deeper still.

A brownish red, elaborateness faded by time, a title that made no sense, and without an author. The Clow. A worn picture of a giant cat and wings, chained to a sun. A clasp that fell open in her hands, and a text that-... wasn't.

Louise blinked stupidly down at the strange card as she picked it up from the hollow of the book. The sun, the waning moon, stars, a woman who looked more like a spirit than a human, and a name.

"The Windy."

A pressure that had been slowly building, a tension that had clung to her for long enough that she hadn't even been aware of its presence, suddenly released. A wind springing to life in a corner that should've been completely separated from the weather of the world.

It sounded like tinkling bells, like the laughter of playing children, like a gryphon stretching its wings after having spent a bit too long cooped up in the stable, and every single card in the ancient book took flight all at once. Scattering every which way too fast for Louise to even stand a chance of catching them.

And then silence, warm and strangely curious, a kind of wakeful fondness.

Leaving Louise to stand there, alone, with an empty book, and a single card in her hand.

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XXX (Yuki's Test) XXX

"How long have you been awake?"

The guardian raised an eyebrow at her, a cold kind of expression. "That's irrelevant-..."

"No it isn't!" Louise glared at him. "Being alone like that, watching other people, of course it matters!"

Because that was the whole point. What Clow Reed had done to his cards, he'd done a lot worse to his guardians.

Kero was emotional, always bright in every sense of the word, but he was the kind of person who'd cry bitter tears over a piece of spilled cake. And yet... not even once, had Louise seen him shed a tear for Clow Reed. Let alone mention him in casual conversation.

Louise's family situation wasn't the best, she could admit that much. Her mother was ridiculously strict and utterly terrifying. But if she were to die, Louise would-... It'd be like a piece of her world was missing, a reference point that guided her way that she'd always have to keep in mind, and though she'd probably stop crying after a few years without her it'd be more due to tired resignation than a lack of pain.

But if Louise understood Kero's explanation properly, then the guardians hadn't had years. They'd been sleeping, sealed away much like the cards. They didn't have centuries to come to terms with their grief, for all that those centuries had actually passed. And yet-... Kero almost never mentioned Clow Reed.

There were the occasional references when talking about particular cards and their usefulness and their uselessness, but daily things?

At first, Louise had simply thought that they'd had time to mourn. Then she'd started to excuse it with Kero putting on a brave face, but-... She'd seen Kero react to anyone bringing up Clow Reed and it wasn't really grief that kept him from crying.

It was bitterness. A jaded kind of betrayal, coupled with a strictness of habit.

Louise's best comparison was that of a bastard child unofficially brought into the family, only to be left with duty after duty, and never a single acknowledgment. The resigned bitterness of a child never allowed to call their parent as such.

And if that was the kind of person who'd designed Yuki's test for a 'Master of the Cards' then Louise wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

The cards might never feel as strongly, as humanly, as herself. They were more nature-spirits than anything, in truth, and so likely considered Clow Reed's existence more as a passing weather than something worth growing more than absently fond of. The guardians on the other hand felt every bit as human as herself. Distorted perhaps by their seeming agelessness, but desperately human nonetheless.

Yuki being alone, forced to watch as the cards were gathered by someone they weren't allowed to form an opinion of, to conduct a test that were more for the sake of a parent who'd willingly discard them than himself-...

Of course it mattered. Of course it mattered how long Yuki had been awake, how long he'd been forced to watch from the shadows. That kind of lonely existence was far too cruel.

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XXX (Summoning Clow Reed) XXX

Louise hadn't exactly been looking forward to the Springtime Summoning Ritual. It wasn't just a matter of it being one of those tests that she couldn't really 'fake' with her cards, but that she wasn't even sure what she wanted from it.

She already had her cards, and her card-guardians, she didn't really need more dependents in her life. She basically already had a menagerie of familiars at her beck and call, adding another to the mix could easily tip the scale in a weird direction.

Then there was the way that the ritual was phrased. Designed by Brimir during his later years, it was supposed to tie a creature's destiny to that of a mage.

Which sounded romantic and all until Louise remembered that 'destiny' was a different way of saying 'fate', and she was quite sick of people trying to push the inevitability of fate down her throat.

Yuki was a nice person, and for all that Kero was a bit of a slacker and a terrible glutton he was nice too. The cards were a bit more of a mixed bag, their personalities differing from each other every which way. Their sense of morality were more in line with spirits than humans, and needed to be treated accordingly. And she loved them for it.

In that sense, Louise couldn't help but be thankful of Clow Reed, who had created them. However, that didn't mean she wasn't painfully aware of Yuki's feelings on the matter.

They'd been abandoned, tossed aside by their creator as he went on to die, left with the supposed comfort that another master of the cards would come. That it was fate.

Louise wasn't Clow Reed, no more than she was her own mother. But though she was willing to admit that her life was unlikely to last for as long as the cards, the idea of simply leaving them adrift to be picked up by 'the next master' was infuriating.

No, before it ever came to that, Louise would find a way to transform the cards into proper spirits, so that they might roam the land unhindered. As it should've always been.

Oh, Yuki and Kero might not be entirely happy with that option, seeing as they were more human in nature than they were spirits, but Louise was sure she could figure out some way for them too to become happy. A way that didn't condemn them to remain hidden away for centuries or millennia, waiting for another reckless mage to accidentally release the cards and capture them once more.

So no, Louise's feelings on fate were perhaps not the most charitable.

Which didn't make her all that fond of the idea of tying another soul to her own. Especially not a soul that would be chosen by fate and the supposed will of their distant founder Brimir. Louise had had quite enough of meddling old men for a lifetime.

Still, there were traditions, and she was a Valliere. She couldn't exactly opt out.

Taking a deep breath, Louise began the chant.

An explosion, stirring up a cloud of dust that faded quickly, revealing a young man standing in the circle. Clothes that looked more like robes than anything else, glasses, and a staff with a very familiar kind of stylized sun on it.

Louise blinked stupidly at him for a long moment, before the dots properly connected in her head. "Oh. It's you."

Of course it'd be him. A ritual designed to draw on the fate of the one performing it? Of course this man would somehow manage to get himself involved in it.

"Hmm?" Clow Reed's face was different from the guardians' memories, but something about his expression was exactly the same. "Ah, the Cardcaptor. How interesting-..."

"Begone." Louise very carefully didn't aim her wand at him, even as she knew that her knuckles were whitening. "I would rather tie my soul to a worm than to a man like you."

Clow Reed blinked at her, looking for a moment stunned. Then his face softened into a wry sort of smile. "I see. You will protect them from further heartache then?"

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