A/N: Haven't done a oneshot in a while! This was written because I haven't updated Strangers Again in a while. In some ways, it's a bit like a companion to the story (though I'm not revealing just exactly how quite yet... xD). I love this song (Need You Now by Lady Antebellum) quite a lot and thought it wouldn't make for that bad of a plot line. Please enjoy~
Disclaimer: raindropdays does not own Cardcaptor Sakura, the characters or the plot. She also does not own 'Need You Now'.
The wine bottle was half empty as old photo albums and pictures they had never bothered to frame lay scattered across the floor, surrounding the girl in a reservoir of memories.
As if barely holding onto reality by a thin thread threatening to snap, a young girl sat on the edge of her cream-colored, ivory loveseat, wondering just where the love had gone.
On a better day, under better circumstances, she would have looked very pretty. With auburn-colored hair that flowed like honey around her innocent face, and eyes of spring-green, she had the potential to look quite attractive. And though her friends always knew her to entertain a smile, tonight she wore a pale shadow of a hollow look, complete with unshed tears in her eyes and regret in her heart.
And though it had been months, she couldn't help herself: that chocolate-eyed boy whose kisses were just as sweet as his eyes captured her attention wherever she went. Not outright, no of course not. Because to her body, he was dead to her.
After an argument not even worth mentioning in her memory and decisions that could never be undone, they had agreed that things were over between them.
That memories, in all of their glory were just that. Figments of the past that while entertained by the heart brought nothing but sadness, anger, regret and a sense of longing that could never be satiated for the boy she knew and the love they shared were gone.
Pictures captured by her unsteady hand as the two of them enjoyed the simple joys in life had been flashes to live in the moment and for the moment. They were moments with meanings meant to dissolve like sugar in water though the water was bitter when it all was said and done. And she was meant to believe that 'perfection' wasn't a word that could be associated with life or love.
That had become life. Memories of him, thoughts of him, dreams of him and even his name—it had all been pushed to the back of her mind to reside amongst old times gone by and old word associations that made little sense in the present day. Obsolete things, strange things, flitting away in the summer breeze, floating just out of her reach.
And only in the dead of night, well past the stroke of twelve, would she ever admit to anyone, even herself, that deep down she missed him.
Missed him more than the world—more than life itself.
Because being in love was the most beautiful form of dying. And she had been in love—was still in love with the man in the pictures that now lay dispersed across her living room floor.
Begrudgingly, she stretched out her hand across the leather sofa, reaching for an object she knew better than to want. But this was well beyond 'want'. This was 'need'. This couldn't be fought.
Pausing as her hand drifted over the phone, an idle thought winded through her mind, tugging on her thoughts and her heart's last reserves with a painful jerk.
"I wonder if I ever cross your mind."
And for a moment, she thought she felt his hand brushing against hers as if all she had to do was pick up the phone and dial the number she had once known (and always would know, no matter how hard she tried to forget) by heart.
Suddenly losing all strength born from an incessant nagging thought that things could return to as they once were, she let her hand slip past the phone, as she brought it back to her chest and hung her head in melancholy defeat. Tear-ridden sobs echoed through her small apartment and as though it were mandatory to answer her unasked question in her overwhelming grief her mind echoed sincere words.
"For me, you're always on my mind."
Whiskey never tasted so bitter as on nights when he couldn't stop thinking about her.
Months had come and gone, thoughts had been born and died, regret had edged its way into his heart along with a sense of longing and loneliness that he couldn't shake, even in the most crowded of rooms. Through all of that, he had come to rely on one thing and one thing alone: the taste of spiteful whiskey to wash away the taste of her lips that still lingered though they were long, long gone.
Arduously, the young man reached over the oak table and poured himself another shot, paying little attention to anything else in the apartment that was far too spacious for a party of one and seemed far too lonely so late at night. Perhaps if his chestnut-colored hair had not been tousled or his eyes so dark with suffering, he would have looked quite majestic sitting at his dining table. He was after all, a very attractive young man. No young woman had ever failed to mention that.
But tonight, he had allowed himself to succumb to the pain that so often haunted his shallow sham of a heart, broken by her words that, though months later, he still couldn't understand.
As if by force of habit, he found himself staring at the front door, with a look of want settling on his stoic features.
If only she would come sweeping in, carting her school bag or the weekly groceries or whatever it was that she loved to carry as she entered because she wanted to prove to him just how strong she was. And like old times, he would rush forward to help her with whatever her heavy items were this time and she would playfully swat him away with that gentle look of annoyance he loved so much.
Loved and lost.
But she was strong. Stronger than him. She had moved on and he still found himself wallowing in memories of her, though he showed the world a proud face.
He shook his head and downed the shot.
She was his everything.
Knowing better than to wonder about her feelings on the matter, he couldn't help it, as the whiskey had made his mind weak to overcome months of restraint.
"I wonder if I ever cross your mind."
A fleeting thought of doing the unthinkable suddenly passed through his mind, staying only long enough for him to slightly entertain the thought. Bitterly, he moved the cup away and glanced at the clock. It was about a quarter after one, far too late to try anything of that nature.
But he needed her. Because living was the most painful way of dying when he wasn't with her.
His eyes drifted to the empty picture frame that had once housed the picture she had clumsily taken of them on their first date. The same picture he had ripped up on a night very similar in emotion nearly nine months earlier in a fit of drunken rage.
He knew better than to wonder if she ever had any second thoughts, ever looked back on them...on him.
But he couldn't help it all the same.
He knocked the phone from the table and let it clatter on the floor.
"For me, you're always on my mind."
Eriol watched with quiet disapproval as the two ex-lovers fought so hard against fate.
After all they had been through—after the long battles and the drawn out wounds they had both endured on battlefields glazed with love—he couldn't stand to watch them suffer.
And he had watched them suffer. For nearly eleven long months.
And quite frankly, the whole thing was beginning to make him suffer.
He shook his head. Perhaps 'beginning' was not the correct term but that aside, something had to be done.
The quiet conscious that had been nagging him to 'stay out of their lives' and 'let them sort it out' because that was 'true love' was beginning to get old and annoying. And though he had been reminded many times (by a certain violet haired angel) to allow them to come to terms with the break up themselves, his meddling nature and desire for a resolved affair of heartbreaking events begged to make an appearance and help the two along.
"If he doesn't respect and trust her than he doesn't deserve her!"
The voice of his dearest suddenly popped into his mind accompanied soon after with half-hearted assurance from his best friend that he had 'moved on' and was 'doing much better'.
But Eriol had been watching from behind a thinly veiled curtain the entire time and though he respected the feelings of his three closest friends, this (whatever this odd, surely unnatural predicament that they currently found themselves in) was not working out in the least bit.
And it had been bothering him the entire time that he had the ability to fix it but was cursed to remain idle.
He sighed.
In actuality, really only those two could fix it. He knew that.
But not if the two of them were constantly so stubborn.
Eriol tapped his fingers on the desk as a star twinkled in the distance, briefly reflecting in his glasses.
Just a little help.
Falling in love is a lot like dying.
It hurts but in the end, it's just no good for you.
And when it comes to an end, as it inadvertently will, seeing his or her face again will break you.
No matter how far you've 'moved on' or told yourself 'it's over'.
Because even when the body forgets, the heart still remembers.
And then you begin to realize that living without them is also a lot like dying, only worse.
Because this time, you're doing it alone.
And even when you can choose to be filled with apathy or reopen wounds that have not yet quite healed, you'll probably choose the latter.
And you'll decide that you'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all.
And that, in reality, you still...
The young woman jumped so suddenly when the phone rang that she almost knocked the bottle of wine from the couch and onto the floor. Removing her hands from her sides, where they had been securely clutched in an effort to comfort herself and ease her deeply rooted heartbreak, she reached for the phone, half-expecting herself to be drunk out of her mind and hallucinating late night phone calls.
She paused before answering, wondering if they would speak first and shatter her hopes before they could become any more prevalent.
Halfway across town, the young man had also been startled by the sudden ringing. With effort, he leaned down to pick up the discarded phone, not bothering to look at the caller ID as it was a bad habit of his. One that Eriol was rather glad for at that moment.
"Hello," he half-answered, half-stated, moody from too many shots and hours of brooding.
"Syaoran?" The voice that answered back was one he had not heard in too long.
His heart nearly stopped.
"Sakura?"
Sakura paused on the other end of the phone. He sounded surprised. Maybe he had drunkenly called her again and all at once, grief and anger mixed within her, making her hate herself for ever wishing it was him on the other end of the line.
"Wrong number," she half-muttered into the receiver as she made to hang up, vowing to never answer late night phone calls again.
"Wait. I need to tell you something."
She stopped and held her breath. Just like that, she was hanging on his every word again.
Just like old times.
"What is it?" she asked slowly, almost afraid of what would come next, though his most painful words had already been uttered nearly a year ago. Since then, she had assured herself nothing could hurt worse.
Holding his breath on the other end, Syaoran frantically tried to decide whether or not to say it. He could hear it in her voice though. That gentle apprehension that had been so evident the last time they had met. That mild distaste that he knew could never be erased just like the scars he had cut into her heart.
He knew what he had to say. He knew what he wanted to say.
But did he need to say it?
Did he need to cause such grief for her yet again?
"Yes?" she asked again, waiting for his promised statement. As she waited for his response, her eyes drifted to the pictures lying around her floor. Those memories suddenly seemed so real now that his voice accompanied them and all at once she needed to tell him how she felt. If only to hang up and never look back.
"It's nothing," he started to say though she suddenly cut him off.
"Syaoran," she said slowly as his name in her silky sweet voice caused butterflies to flutter around his stomach anxiously.
In that moment, he knew he had to tell her. He needed to tell her.
"I still need you."
And as their voices echoed, mixed and blended together into one, Eriol smiled to himself, letting the curtain around them fall.
The rest, he would leave up to them.
A/N: So how was it? Am I awful at doing post-break-up angst? Was it confusing? Did it flow badly? Please tell as I wrote it straight through with limited editing and love this pair to death and would enjoy feedback. :)
Thanks for reading!