Epi-prologue II -- New Moon

"Despite your best intentions, you didn't die, Clow Reed. You transcended."

"Oh, damn."

"Come now. Surely you don't believe that one such as you, one who was such a creator in life, could achieve anything by an act of destruction?"

Clow let the despair of his existence, knowing everything that would happen, no matter how trivial, to the most minute detail wash over him. Transcended. Even more powerful, now. And, with no way to try to escape the tragedy, now.

"Are you done feeling sorry for yourself?" Suzaku asked. The words were harsh, but the tone wasn't. "It is hard to get used to. The ones who learn to see the world and themselves clearly survive here, the ones who don't -- well, it's not pretty. Now is the time for you to start looking at yourself clearly. With how strong your creative drive is, it's no wonder you made such a mess of trying to annihilate your spirit to escape your torment. But, before you sink too deep into the despair that stripped the happiness from your life, I have a few things to tell you."

Clow merely looked at the phoenix-god in bemusement.

"You aren't the most powerful in the world, anymore. You aren't in the world, and, I am far more powerful than you."

"Semantics," Clow spat out. "It's not so simple. Especially now, if I have really 'transcended' as you say, I've become even more powerful. What am I now? I'm not merely a magician, any longer. Look at what I did with this new power already... Possessing Fujitaka to change Yue... What am I? Some sort of god?"

Suzaku smiled at Clow's outburst. The magician angry was better than despairing. He could work with anger. "No, not a god. Not even a godling. Maybe a pre-godling. Yes, a little pre-godling, just taking the first baby steps of power..."

"I don't want any more power! Power is what drove me to despair, before!" Clow exploded.

"Tough. Blame you creator soul. Blame your tender heart. Would you rather that little girl dies, destroyed by one of the Cards you crafted? You, yourself realized that Kerberos won't be powerful enough to protect her -- that's why you decided to enter the world again and transform Yue to be her protector as well. I can take that action back for you, if you wish. My power is not bound by time."

Clow's heart, or whatever passed for it in this spiritual plain, thudded painfully within him. He didn't want to be the most powerful...

"No. I don't want Sakura hurt, other than the hurt she has to sustain to become stronger than me. It is in motion now -- Eriol will suffer as I did unless Sakura can outstrip his power and split it. I don't want to meddle with the plan any longer... I don't want Sakura, or Kerberos, or Yue or my Cards to suffer any more than they have to. Leave it be, please."

"An important realization to make. Sometimes, despite the power that we have, the best thing is to leave the world be and permit those who are living in it to shape what is to happen. That's why you can't see the future of what happens clearly -- that's why there are grey areas that are blank. Those are for Sakura, and your Guardians, and Cards, and the people around her to fill and solidify. Your ability to see the future clearly, when you are no longer part of it, dims. Is this enough to make your existence bearable, Clow Reed?"

"It will have to be, won't it?" Clow smiled up at the phoenix-god hovering over him like a mother hen.

"I could always destroy you. As I am far stronger than you," Suzaku offered off-handedly.

"I think I'll pass."

"Are you sure? Just let me know, if you ever change your mind."

"You'll be the first to know."

"The second," Suzaku corrected. "That expression has always annoyed me. The person who realizes what needs to be told to another person is the first to know."

"Semantics!" Clow laughed.

"Do you want to take a look at how your new plan is shaping up?" Suzaku offered. "I can show you the variable that is making so much of it appear grey and uncertain to you."

"Please."

It took only a moment for Suzaku to show Clow how he'd been observed after he'd possessed Fujitaka, and by whom.

"Sakura's brother? He saw? He knows?!"

"Touya is very perceptive to matters of the spiritual plane. He knew. And, if you look closely at his heart..."

Clow saw it then. A quickening of something both implacably fierce and infinitely gentle. If Yue, under his guise of Yukito, were ever to hurt Sakura, Touya would make him pay. But, if Yukito, and by extension, Yue, did guard and watch over his little sister, Touya was willing, in a way, eager, to accept the young man, and the being he contained, into his life.

"I see. And, Yukito -- Yue's dream -- is destined to fall in love... I suppose, it doesn't matter to the plan, in the end, who he falls in love with. It's just without Sakura's power I don't think Yue can survive to the end. And, without Sakura's power, there is no way for Yukito to survive at all..."

Suzaku pointed, shifting the vision to view Touya in a different way.

"He's powerful enough to sustain both the dream and the dreamer, don't you think? Love is the one force that always trumps magic, no matter how powerful that magic, or the magician, might be."

Clow nodded slowly. "So that's the power that overmasters mine..." he realized.

Suzaku nodded sharply, once. "'Surely everything will be all right!' Sakura makes it so -- with the power of her love. As her brother has seemingly learned this lesson, too, I'd say the knowledge was in you all along, just brought forward enough to be active when..."

The scene shifted to show Fujitaka Kinomoto, the one who possessed the bulk of Clow's emotions, sleeping peacefully in his bed. This gentle man, the softer aspects of Clow's soul, free of the insidious chaos of his magic, had raised these two children, Touya and Sakura, with enough capacity to love that...

Love.

Love could break his magic.

Something so direct, something so simple...

And he'd never even considered it.

Love.

"Oh, damn." Clow breathed as the realization took root in his soul.

Suzaku laughed. "Oh, it's not that bad -- transcending, that is. You'll get used to it!"

"So, all is right in the world, and..." Clow looked around him. Even as he watched, details and form took place around him. Working his magic in the world again, accepting that oblivion was not yet going to touch him, had opened his perceptions of the place he now inhabited.

"...and endless possibilities unfold around you. Is it enough, Clow Reed?"

Sakura would be protected until her own strength and magic could sustain her. His earthly power, too potent for one to bear was destined to be split. Yue, as Yukito, would protect Sakura; Clow could sense her surprising brother would, too; and Kerberos -- Kero-chan? -- would guide her. He'd be able to watch as this altered plan ran its course to ensure himself that the matters of his life ended well, but he could already sense that they would. Somehow, this sense didn't fill him with his usual sense of despair.

He looked around him. A new reality, a new existence, an entirely new sort of power to learn; his pulse quickened.

-end?-