A/N: Hey, readers! It's time for a little bit of Yuuko/Clow, an OTP of mine I will support no matter what wacky direction the ending of xxxHolic takes! I mean, Yuuko's farewell speech from the Tsubasa perspective is clearly directed at Clow, and the fact that Watanuki isfrom the same bloodline as Clow makes that pairing kind of squicky to me (plus I ship DouWata like a boss). Regardless, since we never really get a glimpse at the young Yuuko in either manga, I wanted to look into the sort of person she would be as she grew into her powers. Enjoy!

Rating: T

Timeline: Before the events of Chapter One

0o0o0o0o0o

Free

So many people in the world were looking for answers, and asked themselves why they were not blessed enough to know. Back in the days when she left the house more frequently, Yuuko could hear them bemoaning their lack to one another in the streets, adding yet more questions to their seemingly endless list of things they wanted to know. Why doesn't that person love me? Why doesn't my child behave in this particular way? Why are prices going up and quality going down? Why does it rain so much in the spring?

Yuuko believed them when they said they wanted to know, because they believed in it themselves. But she did not believe that knowing would make them happy. She knew the answers to all they questioned and had divined their fates from the actions they took and what was shown to her in dreams. She knew nearly everything and had no questions left to ask, but she was not happy. If anything, her ability to know so much was a burden, something which isolated her from being able to be curious and in awe of other people. She looked like them, but she was beyond them in so many ways, and though they needed her and relied on her insight, they hated her for her otherness and endless stream of knowledge that they were not privy to.

She did not hate the people who lived in the capital. She did not like them, but she did not hate them either. They had their own sets of wishes, concerns, and fears, and she was simply an agent meant to help them open their eyes to the nature of the lives they were living. They were always grateful for her advice and willing to pay her due compensation, but the moment they left her and her smoky room behind, the whispers would begin. Such an odd girl, isn't she? A dream seer and a fortune teller at such a young age, sold off to the shrine by her parents as soon as her talents began to manifest. It's a bit creepy when you think about it, right? I mean, being able to do something like that is just... unnatural...

Yuuko wasn't bothered by what they said about her. They did not know. To them, the world was limited to their city, to the neighboring villages, to their family and friends. They did not worry or care if their souls existed elsewhere. They simply wanted what they wanted in the moment they existed in, and if she could, she helped them find their way to having it. If that was 'unnatural,' then they had participated in the unnaturalness just as much as she had.

But she did somewhat enjoy the fact that they thought she was crazy. To appease their view of her, she sequestered herself in her room and slouched around half-naked, drinking and smoking to keep herself entertained. Whenever a visitor arrived, she would behave like a depraved seductress, running her hands along their face and leaning in closer and closer until they squirmed in discomfort. When she did leave her rooms, she popped in and out through the windows, showing a healthy bit of leg as she wiggled through. Her behavior quickly promoted her status to that of a local legend, making her clients a bit more forgiving of the fact that she hoarded the knowledge they so desired.

She was not happy. She was not unhappy. She simply was. Her clients all had people in their lives they wished happiness upon and loved to the point where all they sought for was that person's contentedness, but she as of yet treasured no one. It did not worry her. The moment she'd set foot in the capital, she knew she would leave again before she turned twenty. Yuuko was not yet completely certain of the exact place she would go, but she knew someone was waiting for her. The right moment had not yet come, but that did not mean she was not preparing.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

She saw him for the first time in dreams. He was sitting in shadowy, undefined space, staring at the very spot she had appeared as if he had been patiently waiting for her. His lips were smiling, and his eyes were closed, displaying laugh lines already digging into the corners, even in spite of his young age.

"Here," he said, tossing her a kimono patterned with butterflies. She had not even noticed herself that she was naked, but he seemed to have anticipated this as well. "Although the way you are right now isn't half-bad, really."

"Creep," she muttered. She pulled the kimono over her exposed skin, but did not fasten it in the front. "You aren't the celebrated wizard I've heard so much about."

"No, just the son of landowners, I'm afraid." His smile grew wider. "And you aren't the dimension witch."

"No, just a simple teller of fortunes."

"I'm glad. I've been waiting for you."

"Have you, Clow Reed?" She sat down beside him, studying his carefree expression. "Can you tell me why?"

"Because in this life, I do not wish to lose you."

"You do not know me yet."

"No. But I do not wish to lose you before I have the chance to." He met her eyes, the smile never seeming to go out of them. "May I call you Yuuko?"

"If you insist."

"I do. Now that this fated event of meeting you has happened, we are bound together by this moment. I would like for us to be able to speak together openly and honestly." He tented his hands and pressed them against his lips. "I'm surprised we've never met sooner than this. I've been to the capital several times with my family, but you were already occupied with someone else whenever we came. I've heard quite a bit about you, though."

"I'm sure you have."

"I've heard it's not only fortunes you tell. You also have an eye for what people desire and what obstacles stand in the way of them having it."

"And?"

"I wonder if you know," he said. "I wonder if you know just by looking at me what it is I want."

She tilted her head, sizing him up. "You are able to travel through dreams. That is evident. You were able to find me here, so surely you are just as familiar with this realm as I. And as one who understands the world of dreams, you know that this place is boundless, that it is the meeting place of the souls and worlds that stretch out about us endlessly. But as much as these worlds and other lives fascinate you, the world you love is not here or anywhere other than the place where your body now sleeps. What you want more than anything is to be worthy of that land, and the people who live there."

Clow shook his head in a show of amazement. "I'm an open book to you, Yuuko-san. But that's not exactly everything, is it?"

"It isn't."

"Then you're aware of what else I want?"

She frowned. "I am not caged. There's nothing here for you to set free."

"I know that. I told you, I've heard about you and know your story as well as my own. I know all about the beautiful woman sold by her family as a child, blessed with magic and a sight that can unveil fate, but kept apart and alone. I do not wish to set you free. You have every power to come and go exactly as you please, and I would never have you move a moment sooner than you choose to move. But I think... I think and feel with all my heart that it could only be a happy thing for your future and mine to come together once again." His smile had momentarily slipped from his face during this speech, but soon returned as bright as ever. "I may not be able to tell the future on my own or figure out the true heart of the people I meet, but I know something you are missing. May I tell you a story?"

She nodded, not certain of what he would say. He clearly had many things he wanted to tell her, but she was left wondering as to which he would see as the most essential to explain.

With no further preamble, he began to speak to her of the village and a little bit of the history to his ties to it. The land had fallen into the hands of the Reed family a few generations back when his great-grandfather had overturned some foreign ruler in a territorial war, and Clow's father had been the one to improve its potential as rice farmlands, dramatically increasing its revenue and population. Clow himself had been raised since birth to oversee the lands, although he admitted that as a child he had enjoyed playing practical jokes on the workers more than he had researching the farming and sale of rice. All the same, he had not wished to be born for something else; he loved the land, and understood that the crops it produced maintained the lives of many people beyond even his family and those in the village itself.

His childhood was happy, but somewhat lonely. As the landowner's son, everyone had been a bit nervous around him in the beginning, but he'd grown tired of keeping aloof from everyone else and had started hosting get togethers in the manor with the workers and their families. He made an effort to learn everyone's names and figure out who and what they held as most important to them, and started to grow very much attached to everyone he met.

He told her of each of them one-by-one. She learned of the priest who served the shrine and the beautiful miko who had a young son named Kurogane, and of the two twins from foreign lands whose mother had died and were now being raised by a man named Ashura, who Yuuko had met briefly when he'd lived in the capital. The stories he told of them were relatively simple, but it was the way he told them that enchanted her. He spoke with such love and feeling, desiring with all his heart that these people whom he respected would be happy and safe. He did not know their futures, but he wanted them to be blessed with good fortune and live in comfort in the village he loved so much.

Yuuko had never felt that way in all her life. Perhaps that was what he had meant when he'd said she was missing something.

Clow talked for hours in this fashion, and Yuuko listened attentively. He, like everyone else she'd ever met, had so many things he wished to know, but never once did he pause his story to ask for clarification or insight. He seemed in many ways content with his own uncertainty, and content with the fact that though her awareness was greater than his own, there was only so much she could reveal and explain. She was unused to this sort of conversation. Nothing was expected of her other than to listen to his words and consider the love that he bore in his heart.

"And here I am, going on and on and on," he said finally. "Next time, you'll have to tell me more about yourself. I can't allow myself to get too carried away in trying to get you to think well of me."

"And yet you have spoken very little of yourself. I know almost more of some of the young people in your village than I do of you."

"That is because who they are is a part of who I am." He reached out, placing a hand above her heart. "And because even those who know the world well need to be reminded that though things are endlessly vast, they are also quite small."

"Creep," she said, swatting his hand away. "How forward of you to try and grope me after knowing me for so little."

"Is that a privilege I'll have to earn, then?" He smiled at her. "Then I hope to see you again, Yuuko-san. In fact, nothing makes me happier than knowing that I will."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Every night following that, he sought her out in dreams. Though he did manage to get some information out of her in regards to what little of interest she had to say about her clients and life in the capital, she was more content to allow him to be the one who spoke. He was just an ordinary man on his own, but it was the way he looked upon everything that existed as extraordinary that she liked. Even though she lived in the heart of the capital, a place that anyone else would have found incredibly diverting, she had somehow lost the magic of it and failed to find anything intriguing in the lives of the people she helped. She had regarded their troubles with a cool detachment, and extended herself on their behalf simply to witness how they would behave and see if their hearts held the capacity to rise above their weaknesses as humans. They were experiments whose results engaged her interest momentarily, but in no way moved her.

But the more she spoke with Clow, the more she realized that it was not their differences in location that made the way they experienced the world so separate from one another. There were Kuroganes and Fais and Ashuras and Yuis in her own city, and many more besides. She had simply forgotten, somewhere down the line, how to be moved enough to care.

"I wonder," Clow mused at the conclusion of one of their meetings, "if the universe seems hopeless to you."

"Why do you say that?"

"It's because I noticed that when you speak of your clients, they always seem to act in the way you expect them to. And since their souls exist elsewhere, they must often make the very same mistakes in one life that they do in another."

Yuuko lifted an eyebrow. "I won't deny that it does happen."

"That must make you sad, in a way. Though I doubt you're the kind of person who would ever admit it when she's sad." He smiled gently. "But even if they make the same mistakes, that can also mean they will repeat their successes. If the world is cruel, than it is kind as well."

Yuuko sighed. She knew this already. Perhaps she had stopped thinking of it long ago, but she knew.

"Why are you interested in me?" she asked suddenly. "In another world, you may have tried to halt the universe for me, but the souls these bodies possess do not belong in that world. What about the me right here interests the you beside me?"

"You've shut yourself down from caring," he said simply. "But that doesn't disguise the fact that you have a heart, one that is very beautiful to me. And when that heart starts caring again, I want to be a person it cares for. Perhaps that is selfish of me."

"It doesn't matter if it's selfish or not," she muttered. "If that's what you want, you have every right to want it."

"I know," he said softly. "But it's going to be a wish that won't come true if you don't learn to want it, too."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The client sitting in front of Yuuko was a nervous sort. She kept ringing her hands and avoiding Yuuko's pointed gaze, even though she had come to her of her own volition. Yuuko liked to maintain patience when she was entertaining her guests, but today it was being worn thin. She wanted to drink more than anything, but the woman didn't seem like the kind of person who would enjoy her digging into the liquor stash mid-conversation.

"I know that I should be happy that my family made such a good match for me," the woman was saying. "But I don't want to marry anyone else other than the person I love."

This was a problem Yuuko had dealt with any number of times. The only thing to do was to ask them ruthlessly whether or not they felt they needed to make decisions based on their own desires or the desires of someone else, and then get them to crack to the point where they at last felt obligated to act one way or another. She could do this in her sleep, if she wanted. It was only more of the same.

I wonder if the universe seems hopeless to you...

She grit her teeth. "Why?" she demanded all of a sudden. "Why do you love that person?"

The woman dropped her tea cup in surprise. "W-Why? I suppose... I suppose it's because he makes me happy. We're well-suited for each other."

"Yes," Yuuko said. "But the person your parents want you to marry is well-suited to your finances and position. What makes the person you love any different? Why does it have to be him?"

"Because..." The woman clenched her fist, suddenly looking firmer. "I don't want to be with anyone else! It's hard enough not to be with him the way it is now, but if we were separated any further than this, I'm certain that even if I lived through it, I would never truly be happy with my life!"

"Then why are you still here?" Yuuko pressed. "If you're so certain, then isn't it rather weak of you to let something stand in your way at this time in your life? Go if you wish to go. Stay if your love of your parents drives you to stay. But if there's somewhere you need to be, don't wait around thinking you'll end up there while waiting for it passively. Until you make that choice for yourself, you'll stay exactly where you are."

The woman's mouth fell open, and she looked confused for a moment. "Alright, then," she said finally, pressing her hand over her heart. "I will. I won't doubt myself any more. I don't want the person he fell in love with to be a person who is weak." She grabbed her belongings and started to head for the door, but paused at the last moment. "You know, I'd heard you didn't really care about what happened to anyone, Yuuko-chan, but for a moment there, I think you actually looked angry because of me. I don't know if I was imagining it or not, but it made me happy. It made me want to change and become better so I wouldn't have to see the same face on the person I love."

With that said, the woman extended a swift bow and took her leave, ready to make her choice.

Yuuko dug around for a bottle of sake and took a deep swig. "What do you know?" she mused to herself, looking out the window. "Perhaps it's time for me to leave as well."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The truly dramatic thing to do would be to leave everything behind and simply disappear without telling them, leading them to believe she'd been spirited away or simply vanished from the world itself. But for once, Yuuko resolved to be practical. She had grown attached to the gifts given for her services, particularly the collection of kimono she'd amassed over the years. The kimono in particular needed to come along with her, she felt. One of the twins Clow spoke of seemed to have an affinity for fabric, even though he had yet to be exposed to anything as exquisite in quality to what she had. She knew too little of him as of yet to tell how her own collection would affect him, but she had a feeling that it would somehow influence him towards one end or another.

Instead, she scribbled out letters to the people who owed her favors and asked that they ship her belongings after her. She was certain they would do it; the talent she possessed which they had bought her for, after all, had never been theirs to own.

She placed her best kimono on, downed the last bit of sake in her stash, and stepped towards the window, sliding it open. Both of her feet hit the ground, delighted by how nice and cool the grass felt against her skin. It had been too long since she'd been out. She had almost forgotten how good it felt.

Yuuko had never before used the roads leading out of the city, but somehow she knew which one was the correct path. Most branched off into other places, heading a variety of directions, but the marker nearby this one indicated that it only went to one place. That was how she knew it was right, she realized; there was only one place she needed to go.

She arrived in the afternoon, while the village was still quiet. All the workers were in the fields, and the children she knew so much of were indoors. But he was waiting for her, standing in the middle of the road and watching her approach with a smile on his face. She wanted to belittle him and tell him that she had known all along that she would leave and that it had nothing to do with him, but she couldn't diminish the person who had become so big a presence in her mind. There was no point in lying or pretending that he had nothing to do with the fact that she was here. He knew the truth. To him, her heart was an open book.

He reached out a hand to her. "I've been waiting here for you," he said.

"Creep," she shot back, but there was now a smile on her face to match his, and for the very first time, she surprised herself with how natural, how meaningful it felt.

0o0o0o0o0o0o