Disclaimer: I don’t own Tsubasa R.C. or xxxHolic.

Present:Yuuko

Posted December Second, 2007

Yuuko drinks because, and she won’t lie, the alcohol is good. It’s even better in the company of delicious food and nice people, people from other dimensions and worlds and times and places and things she doesn’t want to have to care about because if she’s lucky the drink will cloud her senses and she won’t have to remember any of it anymore. Sometimes she has to close her mind, the seal being this intoxicating drink that she loves so dearly, and sometimes it will be the foundation for a mask that shows the world that she doesn’t really care. That whether she does something or not the world will still turn around the sun, that everything will still be able to evolve. There is such a thing as knowing too much, and she tries to avoid that at all costs.

She’s seen too much even at her young age, a date of birth which she is not willing to admit, and seeing too much is even more harmful than seeing too little. She doesn’t like pain or the knowledge that there is nothing that she can do. Hitsuzen is the inevitable, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that whatever the outcome, even of trying to prove it wrong, that also the inevitable. There is destiny and there is free will and in the end the two seem to be nearly the same. But if you think too much on that then you might just go insane, and she likes to stay on the sane side of insanity, thank you very much.

She’s not a selfish woman. She gives just as much as she takes - she’s made an entire business, reputation, and general livelihood off of that - and it’s completely fair in her opinion. If someone gives her their time and idle chatter as they sit with her on her porch, she will give them a drink and the occasional laugh in return. If someone gives her their friendship and ideas, she will do the same. It is a circle of give and take, one that is repeated in all aspects of life and one that can never truly be broken.

But she also knows that something cannot come from nothing, and she takes that to heart. That is why she only grants wishes to people who honestly want them to come true. Watanuki is no exception, but at least now he might be able to understand his own position a little better than he did when he first came to her. Sometimes all your wish really needs in order to be granted is a little work on your part, and she also likes to take the easy way out when it comes to those.

The same thing works for all sorts of relationships, romantic or not. If you love her, she will give back that same amount of love as much as she is able. If you hate her, the same is true. That way there are no broken hearts or grudges that go on for far too long, because she knows when someone is sincere and she knows when to let go of old truths and wrong impressions. That way no one is hurt, and that way no one lets their expectations get too high. None of this is any surprise coming from her, at least not for anyone besides Watanuki, and she isn’t going to change her ways just for the rantings of a school-age boy. And everyone is equal in the eyes of a woman who realizes just what fate really means.

Yuuko drinks because maybe this time around, she won’t wake up to remember what it is that's going on and why she isn’t able to prevent it. It’s not up to her, nothing is up to her, and she is like a mirror that can reflect things but never touch them. She has to keep all of this locked up inside her as if she was a retainer for this sort of thing, because maybe in the end she is, and if she were to write of them or speak of them or even think of them for too long it might change something and to change something is to change the world.

Every time she grants a wish it serves no purpose other than to show her how the world really looks like. As if she’s been seeing through rose-coloured glasses and all of a sudden she takes a break, removing them by their delicate frames and placing them on the table beside her with a flourish. She wants to help people, but she cannot help everyone because there are some people that simply help themselves. Those are the people that she loves the most, because she knows that they will continue to function perfectly well once she has long gone and broken.

But when her mind is fuzzy and the taste of alcohol is still on her tongue like the sweetest of elixirs, she doesn’t need to worry about any of that. All she needs to think about is now, not about Watanuki or Doumeki or Syaoran or Sakura or anything, except how the wood feels on her bare skin and the temperature of the air on the porch where she sits with her bottle and dish to eat.

The insects that fly around her head are annoying. The blades of grass and the scattered stones on the ground are cold, or maybe they’re warm, she isn’t quite sure which because it doesn’t really matter and she isn’t sure it ever really will. The food is warm but not hot, and it tastes exactly the way it should because Watanuki cooked it and complaints don’t spoil the end product of a meal. The sky is bright and seems to stretch on into infinity, but that isn’t possible because she’s been there and been back and infinity isn’t really infinity after all. But maybe she can enjoy life now, when it isn’t weighed down with whispers of what is to happen and warnings of not to forget, and what had already been done isn’t crowding upon her thoughts like the past so often does in the minds of mortal beings such as hers. Because regardless of what anyone else might think about her, she is nothing if not mortal.

Watanuki, furiously cleaning the storage space with a sponge and bucket of hot water in his glove-covered hands, wants to know everything he can in as little time as possible. He wants to show off to Himawari, and break the indifference of Doumeki, and he wants to be somebody that he doesn’t yet have the potential to be. No, she thinks sadly as she listens to him complain about the stoic boy to himself and as he scrubs items that have probably been sitting there for years untouched, based on all the dust and dirt that comes off of them. You really don’t want to have the burden of knowledge. No one wants that, after all.

Sometimes it’s better to remain a fool. And she drains another cup.

She hums a song, and the song reminds her of another song, and that other song reminds her of a person, and it goes on and on until she realizes yet again that everything is interconnected and that there is no escape. The drink isn’t working tonight, just like it hasn’t worked any other night, and just like it won’t work any night in a future where up is up and down is down and the dead can’t walk the Earth. And she sips from her bottle because she’s completely done with the cup at this point, and she makes a wish that won’t come true, and she swallows, and then she hums another song.

End. I need to catch up on both Tsubasa and Holic...