The Other

Summary: Meiling recollects the past of her husband's adoring mistress, and how she arranged her husband's happiness and her own in a complicated game of pretend. A love triangle can't form if the one does not love the other the same way. (A short story.)

AN: I do not own Card Captor Sakura

I knew this illusion would last, I am no fool. It was all pretend from the start, why should it not be pretend at the end? We played this game well, this game of pretend. We played it well when we were children, but when we grew older… We flourished in this pretend game. No one could beat us, we were simply put the best. Even now when all have left but one player…

At the end when I sit here alone, watching them… My lovely children. They never knew about what really went on. I know Xiao-lang had his suspicions, he is after all as bright as his father was. But my lovely Ami… She is as loving and giving as her…

It was so many years ago, so many years have passed already. My children are all grown and married. I am growing old, my black hair is turning grey little by little everyday. I am becoming the stereotypical grey grandmother my grandchildren always jokingly make me out to be. I do not have to pretend anymore…

How many years have passed…

I was still young then. Still filled with life, but even then I knew about the harsh reality that we were thrown in. Syaoran and I. When we turned of age our parents kept to their words and forced us to marry. I did not want him and he did not want me, yet we were thrown together whether we liked it or not.

We had discussions… Syaoran and I and we agreed to play pretend. We will pretend when we are faced with family, friends and the public, but when we are in private we would not pretend. When we were in private we turned back to the people we really are, just two friends.

The pretend game went well for a number of years. We could pretend really well, but he was becoming restless. His heart belonged somewhere else. His heart belonged to someone else, but he did not follow it out of respect towards me. I would watch him at night, sitting in his study with his hands in his hair and tears in his eyes.

I could still pretend, he could not. All the pretending was tearing him up inside. So I devised a plan and I called her. I talked to her over the phone for many hours. It was always wonderful to talk to her. She could make you laugh in even the most despairing of moments. That is why he loved her so much, why he longed for her so much.

I invited her over for tea the one day. We talked like we always do, like old friends are supposed to. She told me that she felt lonely, but optimistic. After all there were so many fish in the sea. She would like a stable marriage like mine. I laughed. And then I told her.

I told her about our game of pretend and how it was slowly falling apart. I told her how we could not let it fall apart, our families relied on this so-called union too much. I told her everything. I even told her that I do not love him, not in the way a woman should love her husband and that he feels the same about me. She was shocked. Who wouldn't be? After all, for five years we played the pretend game so well.

And then I told her about my plan. She ran off, telling me that I am mad and that she will not have any part of it. I kept phoning her, begging her. She did not respond for months. I kept trying, never giving up hope.

Then our neighbours sold their apartment. I seized the moment and bought it and modified it without anyone else's knowledge. I told the agent that it was a surprise for a friend. She needed a home close to the people she loves. Rumours never lifted to the air and I was pleased.

I phoned her again. I told her about the apartment, I told her about my plan again. I begged her to come over, to come and see. She responded… a month later, but she came none the less. She fell in love with the place and said that it was her dream home. I showed her my modifications. She understood now that I was serious about what I said. She understood now that is was desperate to make my plan work.

I invited her for dinner that night and she accepted. Syaoran was surprised to see her there. I could see his heart racing in his chest when he first laid eyes on her in our living room. She smiled brightly at him and greeted him with the warm smile she always carried for him. She asked him to sit next to her and he obliged, like he always did when faced with a request from her.

I can still remember my words, they still ring clear in mind. I can still see his shocked face and her knowing nod. "Sakura is moving in next door to be close to you Syaoran." His dark eyes darted from mine to hers. "We live a lie that is slowly eating you alive. You love Sakura, you told me so before this whole thing was arranged. Sakura agreed to stay close to you and me. She will stay my friend as she has done for so many years and she will become your lover as you have desired for too many years."

He opposed it, told me that I was ridicules. "Our families will never know. You will be happy this way. All I ask is one child. It is all I want Syaoran, just one child to call my own."

He agreed.

And so the mistress that came from the days of old was reborn in our home. The mistress I willingly sought out for my husband. And she became my best friend. She confided in me and I in her. In public Syaoran and I looked like the married couple who reached out to a young woman who seemed unable to find a love of her own. In private she is the one who kept our seemingly happy marriage going.

The mistress played her part well. The husband played his part well and I, I played my part better. I too was happy. Odd, I know, but I was filled with bliss. Syaoran kept his end of the bargain and he gave me a child of my own. I called him Xiao-lang, after his proud father and I swore that no one will ever force him the same situation I was facing.

He grew up and believed Sakura to be his aunt. I've never seen Syaoran so happy. In his life he had his one great love, his best friend and his son. Ideally the love would have been the giver of a son, but we lived in pretend. And our pretend game was heaven.

Then everything started to fall apart. Sakura became ill… The same illness her mother had. She became ill and pregnant. I stayed by her side all the time. Her father and brother questioned her about the father of the baby, but she never told them. They only found out after… She gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. My little Ami.

She had her mother's eternal beauty, her soulful green eyes and caring smile. But Sakura… Sakura died holding her baby for the first and only time in her short life. The birth had claimed too much strength from her body leaving the illness to take over and choke her. But I do believe that it was one of the happiest moments of her life.

Syaoran was heartbroken, yet he kept going for his children, for his best friend. I too had lost someone incredibly important to me that day. I too lost my love and my confidant. She was and will always be my best friend.

We almost fell back into the sad game of pretend, but Ami kept us from doing that. Her soft gentle voice was too much like her mothers. But she would never know that… All she knows is that she looks a lot like her much beloved and deceased aunt Sakura. Ami became my own child. Syaoran and I played the parts of parents well.

Xiao-lang was seventeen, my dear Ami only twelve… Syaoran was pulled from the world of pretend. He was reunited with his lovely Sakura after a drunk driver climbed behind the steering wheel and ran into him.

I didn't have to pretend anymore. I realised it when I stood at their graves. I had them buried next to one another. A fitting end for the earthly bodies carrying an eternal love. I spoke to Sakura and to Syaoran in my own why and I asked them if I may stop pretending. Yet I could not, not really.

I had to pretend when someone asked me about my marriage with Syaoran and his and my relationship with Sakura. What was she to me and to him? She was a wonderful friend and someone we both could go to if we needed to talk. After all, we both have known her since we were teenagers. Why not confide in someone you know you can trust?

Rumours never surfaced.

Never.

I smile at my daughter's gentle laugh. She is so much like her mother. "Mother?" I look up at my son as he stands next to me in the kitchen. "Tell me the truth mother, I won't tell Ami. But she's aunt Sakura's daughter, isn't she?" I watched the gold in his dark eyes and like so many times before I could see his father in him.

"Yes dear, she is. Sakura is the only woman your father really loved with all his heart. I was his best friend, so he did love me. Just in another way. And you were consummated in love, just not the kind one would expect. But your father's heart… His heart always belonged to Sakura. I knew that from the beginning…"

She would always be with me. She will always stay in my heart and my mind like all mistresses do. Like all friends do.

She is the other.

AN: I watched this programme on mistresses on Discovery Channel. It as really interesting and got me thinking as to how a wife who was forced into a marriage would handle it if she arranged the mistress herself. A bit of bitter-sweetness.

Thank you for reading.