When you lose someone you love, you die too, and you wait around for your body to catch up.

The first year was the hardest, unsurprisingly. He missed her greatly (hugely, truly, completely), a deep sort of sadness that couldn't even be called sorrow, not exactly. It wasn't that sharp and hard and fast and fleeting. Just a bone deep feeling of sad that never left, lingering always in his heart.

It still lingered, but Watanuki had gotten better at pushing past (through, around, over) it.

He missed the outside too. Some days he stood at the edge of the fence and just watched the world pass by, Moro and Maru at his side, clinging to his legs. They watched the world they could never be part of.

And it would have been easy, so, so easy. One of the easiest things in the world to do. To take that one step over the threshold and leave all this behind. He could forget Yuuko, forget Moro and Maru and Mokona, forget Mugetsu and all the spirits he ever knew. Pretend they didn't matter and for once in his life just be selfish. Except he wasn't. Selfish that is. Watanuki didn't think he was even capable of being selfish like that.

So he waited in that place, removed from the world and yet still part of it. He waited and he did his best. His best to care for Moro and Maru. To keep the shop clean. To grant people's wishes.

That last one was the hardest of course.

Watanuki could still remember that first woman who had come during the depths of his grief. She was beautiful and foreign and so, so sad. Her sorrow rolled off her in waves and nearly choked him where he stood. Her long dark hair was wild and her deep blue eyes were wide and she looked like she hadn't eaten in weeks. And she was utterly, utterly gorgeous.

"Hello." she had said. It wasn't Japanese but he could understand it all the same. This was a place of understanding. No words were unknown here.

"Hello." Watanuki had said back, not at all concerned she wouldn't understand his Japanese. "Would you like some tea?"

She smiled at him wanly and Watanuki was struck with the thought that she'd be hard to look at if she truly smiled. Beauty such as that could be hard to look at.

He guided her into the shop and down a hall. The room he lead her into was Japanese styled and he wondered if Western might have been better, but the woman swept past him into the room, taking a deep breath as though the surroundings comforted her.

He sent Maru off to get the tea, and Moro followed because that was their way and Mokona leapt into his lap the moment he sat down. The woman sat down too, collapsing gracefully onto the floor.

"You are sad." she told him, voice soft, tone kind.

"Yes." Watanuki agreed. "You are too."

"And tired." she added. "I am sad and tired."

"Why?" Watanuki asked as he poured the tea Maru had brought. The set he was using was delicate and western and he knew without ever being told that someone had traded it for a gold pocket watch. He could even tell you why.

"I lost somebody, and now I don't know what to do with myself." The smile she gave him this time was confused, as though she couldn't even imagine being so lost.

"You loved them, very much." Watanuki stated. That much at least had been obvious.

"Yes, more than I should have." The laugh that spilt from her lips was broken, dissolving into a sob mid way through.

"You really think so ma'am?" Watanuki asked, doubtful.

"No... yes." Tears slowly made their way down her cheeks, following the contours of her face to drip off her chin into her lap. "How can you ever love somebody too much? But when it hurts so much, how can you ever love at all?"

They were sad, desperate questions. And Watanuki just didn't have any answers.

"What do need?" Watanuki asked eventually when her tears had slowed into dry, heaving, sobs.

"I don't know." She shook her head, long hair whipping around her face, sticking to damp cheeks.

"Then what do you want?"

"I want to be able to forget." The woman wrapped strands of her long hair around her fist and tugged. A nervous motion that seemed to suit her too well.

"I could help you with that." Watanuki told her, knowing, only as he said it, that it was true.

"How?" The desperation, thick in her voice nearly choked her. The hope mixed in with that desperation nearly made Watanuki cried.

"I'll be right back." He told her without replying. "Moro, Maru." The children followed him as he walked through the elegant halls of the house, into the storage room and past heavy shelves.

"Do you know where it is?" Watanuki asked them. He didn't need to explain what as the children ran away, hand in hand. They came back in a few minutes with a small wooden box. Flowers had been carved into it, perfect in their immortal beauty.

Watanuki carried it carefully to the sad, beautiful, lonely woman. She was staring into the cup of tea in her hand as though she might find all the answers to all the questions of all the world in it's depths. Watanuki moved to sit in front of her again and she didn't even acknowledge him, too wrapped up in her own mind to notice anything outside of it.

"I have something for you." He broke into he reverie. He opened the box, displaying a old fashioned comb with a hyacinth carved on top. It was meant to sit in the folds of ones hair and be lovely and nothing more.

"What is it?" She asked, setting her cup down and twisting a diamond ring on her left hand, another nervous motion, this one awkward and sad.

"If you wear it, you can forget him." Watanuki told her kindly.

"But..." She stared at him with her wide, blue, foreign eyes.

"But you have to give me something too." Watanuki said. "Your ring."

She shifted her eyes to the ring she was twisting so desperately, almost looking surprised to see it there, as though she had forgotten about it's existence.

"He gave me this. It.. it was the last thing he gave me." She choked on a sob that tried to make it's way up her throat and out her lips to hover uncomfortably before them.

"Was it?" Watanuki asked practically. The woman laughed again and shook her head.

"No. I suppose the last thing he ever gave me was grief." She pulled her hand close to her heart and doubled over it.

"I think the only things those we love ever really give us are heartache and joy." Watanuki smiled at her with soft eyes.

The woman sat hunched over her ring and there was silence for several minutes.

"Okay." She said at length, straightening slowly. "Okay, I'll... I'll do it." She pulled the ring hesitantly off her finger. It came easily, not catching on the knuckle. She dropped it on the floor between them. The sound it made as it landed seemed too loud for what it was.

"Then this is yours." He handed the comb, box and all, over to her. She took it with trembling hands.

"That's all?" She asked.

"It's up to you to actually wear it." Watanuki told her. "The moment you put it in you'll forget everything about him."

"And, if I take it out?" Her voice cracked oddly mid sentence. "Will I remember again?"

"No." Watanuki stated. "Forgetting is forever. Just like remembering."

As she left, she didn't thank him, but then Watanuki didn't think he wanted her too. He wondered idly what had brought him too this country in the first place, and where she would go from here, but gave up those thoughts when Mokona proclaimed his hunger.

In the end she was just one sad woman. And there was nothing more Watanuki could do for her. Whether she used the comb or not, whether she realized that the joy of remembering would always outweigh the joy of forgetting, this was left solely to her.

The ring was taken by Moro into the storage room to gather dust and wait for the one who truly needed it to come. And they would. Because everything was Hitsuzen after all.

Author's Note: I just can't do happy with this fandom can I? xxxHolic just doesn't lend itself to happy really. This story originally was meant to go in a completely different direction, but I'm still entirely satisfied with how it turned out.

Title from John Scalzi.

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