All right, here's the updated (after over a whole year, no less!), edited and less cringe-worthy version of Anyone Other Than Me, my very first (but not my last) CCS fan fiction (for more information about what has changed in this new version, check out chapter 11). There are a lot of shoujo-ai elements, and some pretty dark angst in some of the later chapters, but I believe this is a story anyone with an open mind and heart can enjoy. And I hope you do. XD
DISCLAIMER: CCS, and all its characters, locations, signature items and trademarks, are owned by CLAMP. I own this fan fiction story, please do not reprint it anywhere (or print it out and chew on it) without my permission. That is all.
Anyone Other Than Me
Chapter
One
Pictures
of You
Tuesday, 12:43 PM
Meiling Li checked her watch, not so much out of a desire to know what time it was, but rather because there was too much on her mind for her not to check her watch. She took a quick glance around the Mall of America before her; Minnesota was a nice place, she thought, but she'd hate to have to live there.
Thirty feet away and closing, Madison Taylor checked her watch. She, on the other hand, had good reason to. She was running late for class again. And for some reason she was actually worried. Strange behavior, especially for a Tuesday. Then again, she remembered a time (or at least thought she remembered) when she was never late for anything. Or when her socks matched, she added, stopping to inspect her inappropriate inner footwear before realizing she was losing precious seconds doing so.
Picking up her composure, Madison tossed her long wavy hair about, and turned around to continue down the path that would take her to the parking lot, and the elevator in the corner that would lead down to the bus stop. But in that rare moment of turning around and thinking she knocked shoulders with another girl, and consequently stumbled onto the tiled floor.
Meiling caught herself from the fall, and quickly offered her hand to help up her latest victim. She was klutzy enough to be labeled a menace to society.
"I- I'm sorry... I wasn't looking," the other girl said, taking Meiling's hand.
"No, no, I'm an expert at getting into trouble."
Madison looked up at the Collision Expert, whose eyes began to bulge.
Meiling studied the fallen one's face awkwardly.
"AHHH! Daidouji-san!"
"Wha- what?"
"Daidouji-saaaaan! It's really you!"
At this Madison raised an eyebrow, adjusted her hair and picked up her bag, thinking that this helpful stranger was a little too kooky for her taste.
"OkaythanksIhavetogoI'minkindofahurry…"
"AMAZING! Where have you been all these years! What are the chances---"
Meiling stared in shock as Madison walked briskly away, as if hoping to get out of this one without a quarrel. But it was not to be. Meiling piped up in Japanese.
"Daidouji-san! DAI-DOU-JI-SAN! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"
Upon hearing this strange girl speak to her in her native language, Madison sweatdropped and tried to make some sort of peace.
"Um... Oh, I'm sorry. Were you talking to me?"
Meiling put her hands on her hips commandingly and looked straight into Madison's eyes. But instead of ignoring her, the latter found herself trying to place a name for the former's distinct face. She had ruby-red eyes, long black locks and needed a serious change in wardrobe. Madison should have known. She was taking courses in fashion at the Arts Institutes International Minnesota. But as the deep-blue-eyed girl guessed correctly, fashion was the last thing on Meiling's mind.
"Who ELSE would I be talking to? C'mon, quit messing around! It's me, Meiling!"
The verdict was in. Nope, she didn't know a Meiling, and she didn't think she wanted to have to know one.
"N-no... I'm sorry. Look, you must have me confused for someone else."
"Daidouji-san!"
Meiling didn't have time for this. Or the patience. Actually, she had less patience than she did time. She ran after the girl she knew and loved as Tomoyo Daidouji.
Madison didn't have time for this either. There were precious minutes slipping away from her here, and she hated missing her History of Women's Fashion Design class.
But there was something about this strange girl, she thought, as Meiling cut her off once again, standing with her arms crossed over her chest and staring at her like she'd just broken her heart. Perhaps they HAD met before. Either that or there was seriously wrong with her, because she was starting to tear at the eyes.
Meiling wanted to be angry, to shake her up and down. Instead she let her arms fall to the sides, then brought them together to plead.
"Please, Daidouji-san! I don't know what happened, but don't... Don't do this."
Madison went up to Meiling and offered her a handkerchief from the breast pocket of her denim jacket.
"Don't do what? I'm sorry..." She struggled to find the right words to say. "Look, I really didn't mean to bump your shoulder, I was just---"
Frustrated, Meiling pushed Madison away from her.
"STOP IT! This isn't about that!"
Madison cried out in a moment of shock.
Everyone walking within 20 feet of the two must have heard Meiling's scream. Embarrassed, and thinking everyone must have assumed they were a seriously troubled lesbian couple, Madison made a peaceful hand gesture and whispered "Come" into Meiling's ear. She then pulled the other girl aside, leading her to the parking lot entrance. Whoever this was, she couldn't afford to waste any more time with her.
"Look... I'm sorry, but I don't know you, okay?"
"Yes, you do."
"Who are you looking for again?"
"Daidouji! Tomoyo Daidouji!"
At this Madison paused. That name... She knew it. There was something wrong here. Definitely.
"Daidouji? Wait. That's my mom's last name," she continued.
"I know, I know! And it's YOUR last name too..." Meiling gave Madison a look of concern. If she wasn't just being difficult, there was something seriously wrong with her. "D-don't you remember?"
"She had my last name changed to protect me," Madison said, though she never thought of what she was being protected from. "But I've always been Madison."
"You're Tomoyo," Meiling said with a tone of finality that echoed deeply among the hollow concrete before fading into Madison's consciousness, where it would stay forever.
The ashen-haired girl turned away from Meiling, and before long took a deep breath, looking down once again at her mismatched socks. No doubt about it. The weirdest Tuesday since the time she found the instinctive need to buy a video camera and smash it into tiny bits the minute she brought it into her apartment. But that's another story.
"You're wrong. You've got the wrong person." But now even "Madison" wasn't so sure.
Biting her lip, Meiling took her wallet out from her little red purse. Madison recoiled a little, half-knowing she was going to be treated to a photograph collection. What was going on here?
"Here, have a look."
Madison took the pile of pictures with shaky hands. Here she was... A little younger, in clothes that looked like something she'd worn in a dream, at a place that she could hear but not see. She was about fifteen or sixteen, a video camera in one hand, an ice cream cone in the other, leaning on the rail of a small stone bridge. And beside her was this red-eyed Chinese girl, winking at the camera. Trying to get away from the picture, she flipped to the next, which saw the two joined by a third party. Meiling was evidently taking an unexpected piggy-back ride on a disgruntled boy while "Tomoyo" stood laughing with her hand over her mouth. Only that wasn't "Tomoyo". That was her. And she was speechless. And overcome by a sudden migraine. Without even thinking it, Madison put one hand on her temple, and her left eye twitched painfully as she tried to hand back the pile of incriminating photographs to the other girl.
"This is... Impos---"
Meiling scanned her friend nervously, and ultimately found herself lunging forward to catch her as she fainted.
(Spinning-Card commercial goes here)
Tuesday, 2:52 PM
The sound of a car door closing. The glare of the noontime light shining in between buildings. The soft caress of hotel bedsheets. Madison felt all these seemingly at once, as one feels such things as if they took place over an eternity in a dreamlike state, only to lose all recollection of that feeling upon waking.
Madison hadn't had a good dream in a very long time, and she never knew why. Not that she remembered her dream, but this time – somehow she knew - was different. She woke up to a smile, cuddling a pillow to her face, and somehow the fact that she was 3 hours late for her course on the influence of World War II on modern fashion didn't bother her a bit. In fact, she didn't even seem to take in that she was in someone else's hotel room as she stood up to look for a bathroom.
"This IS important! I've got her daughter here with me! And what? And, uh... I'm holding her hostage! For five billion Yen! So you'd better go get her, mmmph?"
Madison's eyes bulged out of her sockets. She picked up a large wine bottle and waited outside the doorway.
"All right, all right, I'll connect you to her cellphone. But don't tell her it was me who did it... I'm new here, see?"
Meiling Li paced around the bathroom, telephone (stretched from the bedside table) in one hand, guide to hotel expenses in the other. She looked up the international call rate and cringed, biting her lip in sheer frustration when she finally stumbled upon it.
"Agreed. And could you HURRY IT UP, PLEASE?"
The hotel room expenses guide landed in the toilet.
"Waitaminute... If you really kidnapped Ms. Daidouji's daughter, shouldn't you just ask her what her home number is?"
"No! She was, uh, screaming, so I, umm, put something over her mouth... Hey! Who's the kidnapper here, huh? Who's telling who what to do! Just GET HER ON THE---"
"Sonomi Daidouji speaking."
Meiling flushed the toilet, drowning out the following curse words.
"--- TELEPHONE LINE, OR ELSE I SWEAR I'M GONNA GO OVER THERE AND---"
"Hey! Tone it down, will you! I'm in the middle of a freeway! Now who is this?"
Meiling nearly dropped the phone.
"Ahh... Um... Sorry, Daidouji-sama. It's Meiling Li, calling from, uh, Minnesota."
"Meiling? Hmm... The Chinese girl, right?"
"Hai. I'm calling about Tomoyo."
"Oh, no. Did something happen to Madison?"
"Madison?"
"That's her name now, live with it... Listen, did something happen to her?"
Meiling looked at her face in the mirror, rolling her eyebrows back and forth in a wavy fashion.
"Well, not really. I just bumped into her at the mall, and then I told her her name was Tomoyo. The weird thing is that--"
"WHY DID YOU DO THAT? WHY DID YOU CALL HER TOMOYO?"
"Um... Sorry, Daidouji-sama, I---"
"ARGH! Look... is she with you?"
"Yeah. She's sleeping."
"I'll need you to do me a favor. In her wallet there's a business card for a Doctor William Haueser in St. Paul. When she wakes up I want you to tell her she has an appointment with him, um... What time is it there? Umm, better make it tonight – your time - at nine."
Meiling frowned. She closed the toilet top and sat down on it. This was evidently going to be a long conversation.
"Wait... What's going on here?"
"Meirin... you're Madison's friend, right?"
"I'm TOMOYO's friend, yeah."
"And you're willing to do something if it's in her best interest... right?"
Meiling did not like where this was going. Not one bit.
"Right."
"Okay... Three years ago Tomoyo told me she wanted to leave Japan. She said she wanted to start her life all over again, that she couldn't go on living here."
The Chinese girl's eyes widened.
"And?"
"And so I did what any rich, caring mother would do. I helped her find the best brain-wiping expert money could hire... And he just happened to be in Minnesota."
"You're saying she went to some guy to erase her memory? That's insane! She would never do such a thing!"
"No, no. He didn't erase her memory. I had him replace her memories with better ones."
"You mean memories she never had!"
"Well, what she doesn't know can't hurt---"
"Let me get this straight- you set her up in a country she didn't want to live in, with people she didn't know, just to get her away from... From, whatever it was! AHHH! And I'm sure she wouldn't have wanted it if she knew it would mean giving all of US up! The point is, Tomoyo isn't living her life anymore! It's like, someone else's life! Except... It's not! Argh!"
"It may not be the life she was used to. But it's a happy one. Look, there's no price too high for peace of mind, you know! She's happy where she is, but NOW, thanks to YOU, she's going to need to be hypnotized AGAIN! For the fourth time... Sigh... Look, the last thing I wanted was for my daughter to turn out like... Well, like her mother."
"What are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with you."
Sonomi sighed as she pulled off at her exit, thoughts of Nadeshiko crawling back into her head. 'There's nothing wrong with me', she thought. 'If only it were true.'
Oblivious to this (and being on the other side of the world), Meiling continued.
"I can't believe you just gave up on Tomoyo like that."
"You don't understand. I didn't give up on her. I gave her a chance to start all over again. You don't know what she's been through, Meirin. Now you just make sure she gets to that doctor tonight, okay? And tell her to take the pills in her purse! Two after dinner! Because if she calls me up asking who she is again... Well, it's your head. "
Meiling opened her mouth to protest, but her brain was still compiling all of this sudden information.
"And don't think I won't send people over there to make sure everything is all right. So do what you're told. And don't tell her I called."
Meiling hung her head low as she heard the click of the phone. With a worried look she stood up and retraced the phone line out the bathroom door, but as she pushed it open and turned right she came face-to-face with Tomoyo, leaning against the wall outside the bathroom, at a complete loss for words. Meiling dropped the telephone on impulse, and calmed her anxious hands on her friend's shoulders, not sure of what she would say when her friend finally lifted her head to face her.
But she never did.
Doing what she would never have done three years ago, Tomoyo (as she will be known as from here on) forcibly broke away from the other girl's gentle hands and stormed over to the balcony to think.
The Chinese girl looked at her friend worriedly. Her hotel phone bill was definitely not the issue to worry about anymore.
(To Be Continued sign goes here)
