Disclaimer: This will only be stated once. The following story is a fan work derived from the manga/anime series XxxHolic, which was originally written by CLAMP. I do not profit from this work of fan fiction. I do not own the characters who I am borrowing from XxxHolic. I do not write canon, I twist, change, and play with what is canon. Questions? No? Didn't think so...

This story comes after another fanfiction of mine, "In the Eyes of Doumeki Shizuka" and comes before its sequel "Shall Your Wish Be Granted."

| Prologue |

You hear footsteps on the porch, and march out, imperiously holding out one hand for the groceries, sending one last glance at the shop from over your shoulder, thinking only of what you are going to say to him now—he was a week late for your birthday, and how does he find that in any way acceptable? You haven't had a good talk in weeks, and now that he has lost your patience in showing consideration for his grief, you are finally angry enough to give him a good piece of what's really on your mind—

And then you stop and look, and everything you had gathered up to say simply falls away. You freeze in your tracks and snatch your hand back, your breath expelled in one sharp, painful, involuntary exhale. You cradle your hand, curl and twist it protectively against your chest.

As soon as Doumeki stepped through the door, you knew something was wrong.

He looked as hale as ever. No one else would ever suspect. You stared at him in horror, transfixed, knowing what you felt and yet utterly unable to understand what you knew—what you felt—how could this be—

"Watanuki, you know I am going to die." The stoic old man with silver balding hair lifts a cigarrette to his mouth and breathes out, and then he scrubs it out quickly. He's been smoking tobacco since Kohane died—you could smell it on his breath before, but this is the first time he's done it in front of you. It probably seems unnecessary to fear its slow, stealthy ill effects in his old age, when everyone is dying around him anyway. It is probably a comfort, to him. His smoke wafts the same scent that his grandfather Haruka preferred all those years ago, or as close to that scent as modern brands of tobacco can come: eighty years after Haruka's death, he still remembers the exact musty smell. Doumeki's face has hardly changed, but now he looks older than Haruka does in your dreams these days. Older than Haruka...

You don't say a word, pinching the sleeve of your kimono between your fingers as great fear crashes over you like a wave. You might be having trouble breathing.

So this is the end.

Something must have shown on your face. "Watanuki—" Doumeki reaches out in concern. It feels like his hand is moving in slow motion, swimming towards your shoulder. Then it reaches, and the moment crashes back into the present.

"Hey...what...?" you say weakly, uncomprehending. In your confusion and shock, you can't find the words. "Doumeki?"

"Watanuki? Are you all right? Watanuki?" Doumeki's face wavers before your eyes. You can't move, can't speak. Just—just barely, you manage to twitch your head from side to side. With both hands now, he shakes you by the shoulders. Physically you are young, and he is old and slightly weakened by age, but he is still the stronger of you both. "Watanuki, it's all right. It's all right. You can see it on me, can't you?" He looks at you, brow furrowed. "As soon as I walked in, you knew. That it's my time."

He holds you upright by both shoulders as you sag backwards, chin dipping until it touches your collarbone, lost in misery. You knew what you saw, but it couldn't be true. It was not sickness, an overshadowing of ill health, or any ailment of the body. There was no accident waiting to happen. There was nothing to explain why the cold, icy, vacuous aura of death dogged the footsteps of a pure one such as Doumeki. There was no cause. As such it was a thing contrary to the concept of natural hitsuzen, a perversion of fate, and it was irreversible.

Unless it was a thing he had chosen, of his own accord.

Doumeki— If he knows— This is not nothing.

He gingerly sets you back on your feet, and releases you cautiously, watching carefully for any waver or sign to threaten that you are about to fall again. "Are you afraid?" Doumeki asks, hesitant to breach the distance between you.

Yes.

It's all you can feel. Your hands clench. But your fear will make no difference to what is going to happen. "I can't—I can't stop you," you say haltingly.

Doumeki briefly makes a face that is both cranky and impatient. "Of course not," he says, dismissive. His cold expression says, like I would forget what you pulled after the Spider's Grudge incident. I'm not so stupid as to give you an opportunity to sacrifice yourself, even to save me.

"But this isn't natural, you know," you say, in a faraway monotone. "That is...I know."

He squints.

"Something's not right, but I can't stop it." You shiver. "This isn't—you didn't—"

"Didn't what?" Something in his voice sounds resigned. Waiting for you to catch up.

"You didn't ask me...didn't ask me to do any..." The words won't come. You shudder again. "Why? How could you?" you whisper. This isn't some thing you should decide yourself! "You know I...I could have..."

"There wasn't anything you could have done." Meaning it was on purpose. "I made a deal," Doumeki continues.

Your face bleaches of color. "What." He didn't! "What deal?" Sick dread, worse than fear, seeps into your stomach.

"There is only one way to ensure that someone takes care of you." He glances away. Doumeki lifts the cigarrette to his lips, then lets it drop; he looks into your eyes. "It is a family matter, Watanuki," he says, at his most direct. "A bit of family knowledge passed down." His eyes look soft, but also wary.

"That's a spirit—" you start. "But what did you offer— But how—"

"If the liaison is one of choice, and the bargaining terms of the exchange is sufficient, then there are circumstances that will allow what is necessary to take place, even though I am a purifying exorcist. My instructions were specific, and they worked only as they would for one with my ancestry."

"But—"

"Watanuki, trust me." As if. Doumeki sighs. "I cannot tell you any more. Before she passed, Kohane told me this was the way things had to be. It was her last dream of the future. So that I could come back. That was the plan."

"What?" you say faintly. She—she—Kohane did? This feels like betrayal.

"It won't be long, Watanuki. I'll be back," he says, ever-patient.

"But you're dying...except you're...I mean, you're going to die..." you blubber.

"While you're waiting for Yuuko. I'm the only one left. I'd be dying soon, anyway, of old age, or cancer. Only a little while ago I learned that my eldest grand-daughter is having a baby boy. You can't or won't take care of yourself, so I'll come back for you." He says it matter-of-factly. "Surely you can see it is better this way, for the old to make way for the new."

"You can't," you insist, uselessly.

"But you are doing this, and so I have done," Doumeki growls, and for a long moment he outright glares at you with undisguised anger and frustration—and then he visibly calms. It is eerie to watch. How long has he held these feelings inside of himself, while you never suspected? "My part. I've decided." He said it with such dark, deadly firmness that it immediately ruled out all possibility of compromise. Don't you understand? I did this because of YOU.

There was nothing else to say, because you never could convince each other. And you never saw eye to eye. That was the one thing that never seemed to change. Right now, there's nothing you can do, yourself, to change this. If it was by his own will, then the change is irreversible, and he will not allow it.

At a loss for knowing what else to do, you bring out the wine from your stores and open it for Doumeki. Out on the front porch, the two of you sit and drink it in silence. It doesn't feel like either a commemoration or a farewell, nor like anything else. The aftertaste of the bottle tastes sour, empty of meaning, holding nothing but the dry taste of alcohol. You didn't check what you grabbed from storage but you suspect that even if it had been your best vintage, it wouldn't have mattered. Neither of you say anything for a while.

"You will never be left alone," Doumeki says suddenly, his voice oddly clear; it has to be on purpose. But you don't know why. This has to be a lie. "Not again." Yes, yes, it is a lie. It must be.

The wind whuffles past your ears, blocking them from sound, blowing away all of Doumeki's next words, the ones that are probably intended to be conciliatory, explaining. Your heart is busy breaking. Your mind is too full to take in anything but the fear and darkness that has engulfed your future. You struggle to put your feelings in some kind of order, to prioritize them in some kind of noble hierarchy, but it is impossible because each one, once examined, stems from selfishness at its root, feeding your neediness, your greed, your insecurity in this moment in a vicious, tainted cycle.

Dimly you realize that you should be angry at Doumeki on principle for daring to take his own life, but there is no fire in you to summon on that score. All your energy is concerned with your own well-being. There is no question— If he does this it will surely kill you. The threat clings to your weak survival instinct, pinches and pokes it until flares into desperate life. It is a despicable, a horrible, hateful thing; the panic it presses down on you looms so large in your head that you can come up with no other logical reason for why what Doumeki has done is so wrong. Only that it is wrong because it hurts, and it hurts you, and right now that is the only thing you can see.

For whose sake has he done it? How can he claim that he has done this because of you, for you? This is not what you wanted! Doesn't he know that? Clearly it is not for his own sake, but who else could it be for? This is pain, this is pure agony, what he has done. Old and familiar, bitter anger clangs the bars of its cage in your skull and lets them ring: How can he claim to know what I need and yet do this to me? If he could think of doing this then he must never have known me at all! If this is the way he deals with me, let him rot with his choice!

But the truth. You lift your head, flick your tongue over your chapped lips, and your mouth opens: I will miss you. The brittle words won't come out, like all the times you wanted to thank him and couldn't. This is the same, in some strange way. Except this time, instead of confusion holding you back, it is a choking despair. Your head lowers under the weight of the words you should say, but they will not come. All of your coaxing and pleading and begging has no power. Silent tears flow without cease as you rock back and forth on your heels. Don't do this, don't do this, don't die, don't leave me—

Late that night, unable to coax another response from you, he leaves.

A week later, he dies of a mysterious illness that you know was explained away by his family as a freak heart attack. He was eighty-five, and ailed of no known diseases.

For fifteen years, that's how it was. He must have made arrangements. Just as before, food arrived on your doorstep once a week, and not a soul but customers and spirits came. Those fifteen years were lonely, and you don't like to remember them. They felt like one long, long, long day that never seemed to end, that never felt better or different or even any worse. That day went on, and on, and on, while you slept. Yuuko was still a wish made on the wind. You'd almost forgotten the reason why you were still there, waiting; forgotten about the world outside. The shop shrank, constricted, and the garden walls grew thicker.

You never saw the end in sight. One day it was over, and you were still waiting. The kid perched on your doorstep was fifteen; and his name was also Doumeki Shizuka. From then on, he was with you. You didn't know how he got there, but he was there. Doumeki's promise, the one you never even asked him to make, that you didn't want him to make—whether knowing or not, Shizuka was the one who kept it.

Things changed. The timbers of the shop didn't creak or moan as they had, and the rafters didn't seem to loom so low, nor the rooms feel as dark, damp, and cramped as before. Your world expands inch by inch, little by little. Someday you will see the face of the sun again. Someday, you will re-enter Time.

Author's Note:

Although Doumeki knows something has to be done to change the path Watanuki is on, he doesn't know what to do. Finally the opportunity presented itself to do something—not to solve anything, but to work towards a resolution without resorting to the use of the egg which isn't needed yet. He chooses to trust in his "future self" and the catalyst of his own death (rather like Akira Takizawa's decision to erase his memories at the end of Eden of the East and trust in his soul knowing what to do, now that I think about it). So he did it. And the plan succeeded—in a way.

Watanuki will be struggling to understand this decision for a long time. Doumeki gave Watanuki a taste of his own medicine. Watanuki doesn't really grasp the "medicine" part of it, nor does he realize that he did nearly the same thing to Doumeki, and that hurt would remain toxic to them both. This was by no means the perfect solution to the dilemma of Watanuki (but Watanuki would find a way to counter methods that were kinder; he does makes things hard for himself).