A Study In Clow

Preface: Do you ever love a series so much, yet dislike one of their main messages? CLAMP universe believes that there is no such thing as coincidences, only the inevitable. Sakura appears to be the way they try to break that cycle of inevitability, but the universe itself still holds steadfast to this recurring destiny. It's difficult to have a self-made province, if the entire universe leads right back to the idea of predestined fates.

So I thought, to hell with it, I'll just write about it and see where it goes. This one's for these kids, who try so hard for the ones the love. For the little magician that is so powerful, he is tied to inevitability. And for the young woman who has so little power, that she accepts her fate. And I'm going to undo that for them.

There will be spoilers for XXXHOLIC, Tsubasa Chronicles and Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc.

"Everything will be alright" was, and always had been different from the messages left to him in spools of sunlight, woven through the panes of glass. Different, from the wayward tides of the moon. Sure. He had his soul divined to him by the sense of inevitability, of fate falling into place. But never like her. Not like Sakura.

With fingers curled around his teacup handle, Eriol sipped as he mused— unprovoked, yet uncontained. His soul constantly overflowed onto the earth and the cyclic nature of energy wounded its way, again, through him. Such powers never consumed him but rendered him so powerful, he was powerless.

Powerless to the inevitability of it all.

"And that's no fun at all." Softly. His voice reached no one. The study, empty.

"Nothing in this world is coincidence. Everything is inevitable."

When those words are uttered in his head, Eriol pressed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. There are moments where there are the lips of two women, the eyes of two women, the voices of two women— all ringing inside his head like bells. Their mannerisms are so vastly different and the power fastened to their souls were nothing alike, but their words— Those words.

"Everything is inevitable" is much different than "Everything will be alright."

A flash of midnight black hair rolls over his knees. Not his. His. Over Clow's knees came raven locks in listless waves, carpeting the old cherry-wood floors. Eriol does not recall a thing about her. Just that she is fun. She is dangerous. And she was never his to begin with.

Yuuko Ichihara[1]. A name that meant nothing to him. And everything to Him.

His memories were incomplete, and perhaps it was better that they were. Clow Reed would never appear on this Earth again. But, his memories still walked the face of the planet, within Eriol himself. It wasn't annoying as one would say, because while Eriol was not Clow, he wasn't not Clow.

Acceptance of the things to come and of the things that were… both were inevitable.

Porcelain clinked gently as he rested his cup atop its saucer, gilded in hand-drawn gold from an artisan Clow had met on his travels in 1906. Clow had personally watched the man drift his hands across the ivory plate just once, all the way around, his brush meeting each rounded divot with ease.

Eriol had reacquired the tea set in a small mom-and-pop store in North America, about a year ago. He had overpaid for it, naturally.

A smirk ran across his lips, as he recalled the store owner's own astonishment render her entirely speechless. While Ruby Moon made a laughing fuss about how Eriol was just "...showing off now!" Sure, sure. He had a penchant for putting on airs and chuckled it off quite easily, but Eriol knew it wasn't that.

He loved it. The surprise of it all. How one so vacant in magic could be delighted, could be shocked, could be utterly spellbound by something they could not see coming.

That's why he loved his cute little descendant so very much. Syaoran could get cherry red for the slightest tease. Eyes wide as the moon at a lie Takashi Yamazaki crafted. As furious as the blighting daylight, for love. Always for love.

Sakura was the same, in both brilliance and color. Cherry red was always their color, wasn't it?

However, when he left behind a hefty tip for that tea set, and his whole entourage had made a ruckus of it (Spinel Sun frozen in Kaho's arms as she laughed daintily into her hand), one voice subtly made its way into his head. To Ruby Moon, he was showing off. To Spinel Sun, he was being excessive. To Kaho, he was biding his time. To himself, he was having fun.

"You're always doing that. Watching Sakura-san with kind eyes."

"The same as you, Hiiragizawa-kun." She said so easily. So easily.

His eyes widened. [2]

To Tomoyo, Eriol was kind.

Eriol leaned back on his armchair, awaiting the predictable THUMP-TWACK-OUCH between Ruby Moon and Spinel Sun roll closer and closer. He was back in his study, counting the uneven thumps against the hallway walls bounce near. In a thunderous landing, they CRAAAASHed right through the door, slamming it wide open. Ruby Moon, in peals of laughter, was trying to dodge some chocolate Spinel had been trying to stuff down their throat.

"Takes one- to know one!" He struggled valiantly, trying to get Ruby a taste of their own medicine.

"Ooomnyum!" Ruby stopped entirely, biting straight into the chocolate bar with a cheshire smirk on their mouth. Eriol laughed at the futility of it all, considering that Ruby had no vulnerability to chocolate in the least. "Thanks Suppie!"

"Rrrggggh!" Spinel growled in utter frustration, before hopping off Ruby and retreating to Eriol's side. "I have nothing to do with you or that sugary time bomb. Leave me alone."

Delicately bringing Spinel up to his lap, Eriol rested his other hand beneath his chin, simply staring a hole into his brunette-haired creation. Why they insisted on covering up such beautiful scarlet locks was beyond him. Did they prefer Nakaru Akazuki, in all her disruptive, anarchic glory?

"Ohh? Are you going to scold me, Eriol?" Ruby batted their eyes, attempting to foil his plans with a bit of faux-philandering.

"No."

He smirked.

Eriol Hiiragizawa was feeling especially kind, today.

"I have to make a call."

Something was extraordinary in the ordinary.

There were many times Tomoyo stood by her window, letting the draft roll in like whispers she could not understand. Many times, she clasped her fingers together, fastening a song to her heart like she was trying to bring a dream closer to her. Closer to her.

The stars were so far away, but she never reached out to them. Because she knew they were indefinite, and if she had her hands outstretched, the light would slip through her fingers like silk.

But she was not discouraged, her heart didn't ache.

Because she was— She was—

"Tomoyo-chan! You can use magic!" Sakura's small hands gripped her own.

"When I wear the costumes you make for me, I can really do my best! Much, much, more than usual!"

Oh, how the stars spoke in her eyes.

"Because it feels like you're protecting me! That's why—"

"You're like my magician, Tomoyo!" [3]

She was Sakura's magician. And no amount of ordinary was going to render her silent.

Tomoyo wove her needle through her Georgette fabric, stringing pearl beads along the ruffled collar. Her voice hung in the air like feathers, softly careening side to side, as she recited her new routine in a swell of quiet emotion. She always took to the needle when she was inspired, when she was thoughtful, when she had no other thoughts on her mind.

Today, she felt powerful. Even in her lack of power, she was doing enough. Enough to make a dress for her dear Sakura-chan, and weave a little spell of good luck in every stitch of its sheer, silvery sleeves. Enough to be enough, she supposed.

Ohoho! She hoped Sakura would like it!

Tomoyo played over her day, with a smile resting on her face. Her eyes caught the light of the sky, like a warm home with the door ajar. Waiting for the people she cared for to answer to the sound of her voice. Her mother, of course, was always the first to call. In her wonderfully shrill voice, she bemoaned just how far her daughter was.

"Alllllll the way in America, where your poor Okaa-san cannot see her darling baby girl everyday! Oh, I'm beside myself!"

Tomoyo giggled softly into the speaker, pressing the tiny earphone closer in hopes to capture every little intonation change her mother cracked through. Distance had made the heart grow fonder, of even the little things. Her chest throbbed a little, thinking just how silly it was that she even missed her mother's crackling tone, now that she had been away from her for a year.

She had even missed the last couple of holidays, too busy with graduate work to be away from her apartment. Twenty-five and apartment-bound wasn't a good look, was it?

"Well, Okaa-san," Her voice sweetly considered a compromise. A clever grin, small but oh-so present, curled thoughtfully. "Remember, if you do happen to link your flight to England, you'll be able to see me there for the next month."

"Oh! Oh! That's right!" Just like a star drop on her head, her mother's mood sounded infinitely brighter. "Ohh, my baby… Thank you for doing this for me. I hope the arrangement won't interfere with the last of your graduate school work, right?"

"Mhm!"

"Even if Okaa-san doesn't make it, know that my heart is with you." She paused, as they sat in comfortable silence together over the phone. "You can always tell me when you need help, okay, Tomoyo-chan?"

"It's okay, even when things are hard, to ask for help. Okay, Tomoyo-chan?" Tomoyo's mother instilled a resilience in her that only surged stronger with each reminder.

"Okaa-san…" Tomoyo's voice swelled, just a little.

"Thank you."

With that, the call fell into a gentle lull, and they both had clicked off with their loving farewells. It wasn't often that her mother would refer back to those times in elementary school, when Tomoyo lost her voice without an explanation. [4] But during lapses of vulnerability, Sonami Daidouji could drop everything to get to Tomoyo's side. And that truth stood, even today.

Even near the end of her Music & Performance Masters Program, which Tomoyo attended in order to further hone her skills. Even after her daughter had spent most of her high school and undergraduate years collecting accolade after accolade as an independent ballad singer. Even after all this time, she had to remind Tomoyo that it was okay to take the hands offered to her.

Because there were too many times where Tomoyo used "I'm okay" to be someone for others. And never herself.

While the rest of the day fell to routine, she had actually reunited with Naoko-chan for a couple of hours after. It was lovely to hear each of Naoko's tales, painting out long landscapes in Switzerland and the beautiful mosaics of Saudi Arabia. She recounted story after story of her research trips, occasionally slipping hints of her playwright scripts into her real life encounters. Naoko-chan was always so intricate with her details, scrawling lines of ink to make her plays captivating and believable.

What was always fun with Tomoyo was catching her right as she slipped between the cusp of reality to something fictional, which Naoko clapped in delight to.

"Oh, you always catch me when I'm slipping, Tomoyo-chan!" she said, scribbling down that fictional idea before she lost it amidst conversation.

"Why, of course, hehe!" Tomoyo's laughter was muffled behind a polite hand. "You're always creating while you're on the go, there's no wonder why you'd get caught up in the details while trying to recall last year's vacation."

"So, about England…"

Naoko continued, retelling her experiences of the everlasting presence of rain and Stonehenge, to the bustling Birmingham Palace and Hyde Park. Before she could finish her theories about the Stonehenge, Naoko took one glance at her watch and had to take off— taking her theories with her.

Which was a shame, because she was just about to ask about Akiho-chan [5] and Hiiragizawa-kun. England was brimming with magic users, after all. It was only a matter of time, before coincidence brought them together again.

Though, according to Hiiragizawa-kun, of whom she hadn't seen for some time now, there was no such thing as coincidences. She glanced up to the moon, since her day had been eaten up by the velvet sky. And she wondered about that.

About the fate that she had accepted where she only watched the stars from afar.

Pricking her finger brought her back down to earth. "Ow!" She coveted the lack of company she had at the moment, since Tomoyo had never been caught once with a pinprick in the wrong place.

Moving in, away from her view of the moon, she wrapped herself up and sighed. Shoulders slouching, for just a couple of moments. And again, the sewing engine started up once more, as her fingers slipped in another pearl, threaded into the collar.

Her finger didn't ache as much as the nostalgia did.

Flattening out the dress evenly, she folded it onto her lap and picked up her phone. When her needle could no longer suffice, her phone was the next best option.

Speed-dial, straight to the one she yearned for the most. And the other line picked up immediately.

"Tomoyo-chan!"

Sakura smiled through her voice and Tomoyo swore, for a moment, that each star trembled with emotion.

Afternotes: There will be spoilers for XXXHOLIC, Tsubasa Chronicles and Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc.

[1] Yuuko Ichihara: Powerful dimension witch. One of the main characters of XXXHOLIC. Implied to have a deep relationship with Clow Reed.

[2] This scene was never in the original anime, but it was in the manga!

[3] This scene was in CLEAR CARD arc, chapter 36. Clear Card seems to make Tomoyo's behaviors a little more comedic, but this scene definitely addressed something the original anime didn't.

[4] The original anime episode where the Voice Card took away Tomoyo's voice. It was the first time I genuinely saw Sonami as Tomoyo's loving mother, instead of someone who only doted after Sakura.

[5] Akiho Shinomoto: One of the main characters of CLEAR CARD arc. She was originally from England, but I highly doubt she'd stay there for long if she had the choice.

Thank you for reading!