Title: Alive
Universe: XXXHolic
Theme/Topic: Why Haruka loves Watanuki
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: Haruka (with light DoumekixWatanuki in the background)
Warnings/Spoilers: UM, to be safe let's just say through Ch. 183. Because I don't remember the specific chapter numbers to ANYTHING in this series.
Word Count: 1,700
Summary: In the realm of dreams and spirits, Haruka watches those who are alive.
Dedication: beltenebra's request on the love meme!
A/N: Oh god I am finally done! FINALLY DONE. It is weird that this was the hardest out of ALL the requests I had to do. But I guess my brain is just wired weird. Sorry if it's all over the place, you can kind of tell where I was starting with one idea, went to another, and got lazy and just smooshed them all together. Whatever, I ARE DONE.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.

Emotions are for the living.

It's always been a little bit funny to Haruka that such a brief window of a soul's long existence should be the foundation for everything thereafter, for all the things that matter, but sometimes he thinks it's fitting as well, that everyone is only allowed a quick taste in the end, a very small portion of the best things they will ever have. Otherwise people would over-indulge, he supposes, or worse, they would cease to appreciate what a gift it is to know what it means to feel.

It is a delicacy reserved only for the living.

All of the things you learn come from that time you are alive. Experiencing emotions like love and joy, like anger and passion and fear only happen in a lifetime, as a living, breathing person. The eternities you exist in after that are for remembrance and remembrance only; you remember what it was like to be alive, you remember what it was to feel love and joy and passion and anger and fear. Once you are in the hereafter, in the realm of dreams and spirits, you can't really feel any of those things in the same way that you could while you were alive, but you can always look back and remember what it was like, what being alive was like.

It makes eternity bearable.

The only catch to the whole thing is, you have to make sure to live while you're alive.

You have an eternity afterwards to just exist.

Some don't realize that part until it's too late, until that tiny window of life is long behind them. Haruka has met many such people and many such creatures here in the realm of dreams and spirits; he can often hear whispers in the wind that sound like, "I wonder…" as he and others like him look on into the human world from where they are, watching the living feel their love and joy and anger and passion and fear while they themselves are only able to respond with the ghost of something that might have been envy.

For those spirits who went through life without experiencing anything, it is like they never lived at all. The regret is often strong enough that it prompts them to leave this realm, to forget who they were once and who they met along the way and everything they know and have learned at all, for a chance to try it one more time. Often, it is with the very same results.

Living is for those who are alive, but the catch is, sometimes the living don't know it.

Sometimes they need to be taught.

It is why Haruka is grateful for Watanuki, why he is glad to know that Watanuki has come into Shizuka's life now, while his precious grandson still has the time to learn what it means to live.

While he is still alive.

Haruka remembers all of the compliments he used to get when he himself was still alive, on what a good boy Shizuka had been. Friends and teachers and neighbors would always say such things over and over again, and meant them as praise. "Shizuka is always such a calm boy," friends would say, or "Shizuka is always so level-headed; he does whatever we ask him to without a single complaint," teachers would report. "Shizuka has the most even temperament," the neighbors told Haruka time and time again, "I don't ever think I've seen him get angry once. I wish my own grandson was so well-behaved."

Haruka had often smiled at the compliments and thought that some people's idea of what is good is not always what is actually good. "One day perhaps," he'd told those myriad admirers, "Shizuka will learn how to be a little less well-behaved."

The responses were usually ones of denial or disbelief. "No, such a good boy? I can't see it."

Haruka's answer had always been the same, always mysterious to his friends. "Well, I suppose I can only hope."

But despite those hopes Shizuka was always calm, always such a level-headed even-keeled boy. "Shizuka is like a great sage who has discovered all the mysteries of the universe over a hundred years," Haruka's contemporaries had chortled. "He is as steady as a rock."

"It would be nice," Haruka remembers saying, "if my grandson would live a hundred years, discover all the mysteries of the universe, and still be as capricious as a child."

But even with the strength of Haruka's wishes, such things cannot be forced—everything has a purpose after all—and all he could do was wait and see what would happen next.

But then his life, his window of living, had come to an end, and he moved on to eternity, to the realm of dreams and spirits.

It is often said that when one journey is over, another begins.

It is the truth.

Because not long after Haruka's time to live ended, Shizuka's finally, thankfully began.

Haruka remembers the moment it happened, watching from his new place within the realm of dreams and spirits. Nearly seventeen years after Haruka had witnessed Shizuka's birth into the human world, he was given the chance to witness the beginning of Shizuka's true life as well.

It happened on a rainy, miserable day, on top of a hill by the river. It was because of a boy standing by himself down by the riverbank, holding the body of a dead dog against his chest. The boy had been contemplating death and what it means to be truly alone, and he had been very resigned to both.

The moment Shizuka had truly come to life was when he first felt something a lot like anger.

And some might say that anger is a negative emotion, a negative beginning, but Haruka knows there are no such things. There are only beginnings, and the things that come after them.

Shizuka's beginning had been angry, but from it sprang determination.

In that beginning, he vowed—angry and determined— that the sad-faced boy he found standing at the edge of the riverbank should never be alone ever again.

And from there Shizuka has lived.

Haruka has seen his grandson learn what it is to be passionate about something, as Shizuka is holding an invisible arrow to an invisible bow and desperately seeking to save the person who matters to him, even against that person's will. Watanuki protests, Shizuka acts anyway— with no regrets— and in that moment, Shizuka discovers what is truly important to him. He learns that his own desires exist in this world as well, and that they are strong. They are worth fighting for.

A moment of life leads to another and another and another.

After passion comes Shizuka learns fear as well, such great fear that it is almost painful to watch. It happens when Shizuka is looking down at the ground from his school's open second story window one afternoon, as the screams of classmates and the sounds of sirens in the distance blur together all around him into a meaningless, empty mass. His universe as he has come to know it is suddenly down on the ground below, lying in a pile of broken, bloodied glass shards.

A terrifying moment, to be sure, but there are no good or bad beginnings; everything that matters are the things that come after them. That day, Shizuka learns what it is to almost lose something more precious than your own life.

In the moments that follow, he learns what it was to be in love.

From there, in a little shop that grants your every wish, when Watanuki's eyes flutter open again, voice weak but there—alive— Shizuka might experience something that Haruka would dare to call joy. It comes to Shizuka in the form of a silent wave of relief that shudders through every inch of him as he sits, quietly crouched in the hallway of a place that hadn't existed to him until a few hours ago.

A life of anger that leads to determination, of passion that leads to action, of fear that teaches love and love that offers joy. How something begins doesn't matter, all that matters is what comes from there.

There is much, much more, Haruka is certain, yet to come.

Grief, loss, regret, shock, and peace all lie ahead. Haruka can see this, because in the realm of dreams and spirits, as oppose to the realm of the living, time is not in a line. The future and the present are the same in his eyes, because he is dead, because the emotions he'd felt while alive will not cause him to alter things here for the benefit of the living. He cannot feel like he could when he was alive. Here, things simply are.

To feel is the responsibility of those who are alive.

It is their brief, brief time to experience everything that matters, so that after that, they can watch and understand without interfering.

All Haruka can do is continue to watch, and with the ghost of something like hope, believe that Shizuka continues to live in every moment of every day within this brief window called life.

Because Haruka knows that one day his grandson will be just like him one day, will be here in this place, looking back on his life. Haruka wants him to be thankful for everything he has been able to experience, grateful for all the emotions that he can only remember the faint taste of in the afterlife. Shizuka will be grateful that he got to hold each and every one of those feelings at one point, even the ones that caused him pain, because all of it means that in his life, he had truly, honestly lived.

One day, from this realm of dreams and spirits, Shizuka will look back on his life and be glad.

But for now, all he has to do is live.

In the realm of dreams and spirits, Haruka is happy to see that his grandson—with Watanuki's help— is finally learning how.

He thinks it will prepare Shizuka for all the things yet to come.

END