Uploaded: 2012-05-31
Edited: -
Type: Oneshot
Tomoyo held Sakura as the brunette sobbed.
Damn Clow.
Damn those men.
Damn Keroberos, for making me keep it a secret.
And damn me for getting us into this mess.
When the two men in the black van had grabbed her, Tomoyo had thought she was going to die.
When Sakura had smashed through the door of the hotel room they were keeping her in, Sealing Wand in hand, she'd thought she was saved - that it was all over.
When she'd seen the still-bleeding corpse of one of her kidnappers, cut down by Sakura's The Sword Card, she'd realized it was only just begun.
Sakura's sobs died away, but soon she started to twitch and moan. A nightmare, then. But Tomoyo didn't wake her from it - Sakura was getting so little rest, even fitful sleep was better than none now.
She wasn't supposed to do this. She wasn't qualified, she knew that. Her own parents wanted her to see a psychologist for her 'ordeal' of being held captive for 4 hours before her 'lucky' escape.
But no one could know Sakura had been there.
No one could know she'd killed a man.
And so Tomoyo rocked her best friend to sleep for the 12th time in as many days, and silently cursed the names of everyone who had done this to her.
... damn Clow.
Author's Notes:
This ficlette was the result of a plot bunny that bit me a while ago: Okay, so a magical girl is fine fighting the Forces of Evil. They're monsters: unambiguously and inherently evil, totally unsympathetic, obviously non-human. But what happens if she has to fight human opponents? How does a ~10-year old girl handle killing a person? Especially when she can't even talk about it to anyone except those in on the secret - a group containing only other kids and a non-human mascot character?
I wrote it up as a CCS fic because the setting fit: A sidekick who could plausibly be threatened by purely human bad-guys, a magical girl whose powers could be used to rescue her and kill someone in the process, and a normal run of enemies that did not include killing human-like opponents. Also, it's probably the second best-known example of the Magical Girl genera, after Sailor Moon. (Sailor Moon was out because they routinely fight youma, which, while monstrous and unsympathetic, are humanoid and obviously intelligent, and Dark Generals, who are human opponents in every way that matters except for the lack of a corpse.)
However, I haven't actually seen or read any CCS in about a decade, so if I got anything wrong please tell me. I've looked up what I could on the CCS wiki, but there still could be mistakes. Did Sakura's parents/guardians find out about her magic before she got the The Shot card? Is Keroberos not the one who told her it had to remain a secret?
Note: One thing I don't want to hear is 'Why didn't Sakura use the [whatever] card to save Tomoyo without killing anyone?'. Her best friend was kidnapped. She wasn't thinking clearly. She's never fought normal humans before. Whatever it is, she either didn't think of it, couldn't use it for some reason not mentioned in the fic, or never got a chance to do it. Unless it's something that could clearly save the day (an unrestricted time-stop ability, an attack card that would reliably and non-lethally put down an armed man, etc.) and that she couldn't possibly fail to think of in a crisis (it's her primary attack, she habitually uses it at the start of every fight, etc.), then you may assume that there was some good but unwritten reason she didn't use it.