Hi, dear readers! :D I'm feeling semi-alive again now that I'm back to doing what I do best- bitter, angsty one-shots. My flawed piece of fiction "Anyone Other Than Me" is basically almost 50,000 words of a bunch of Tomoyo and Meiling angst shorts… and I'm not even done with it yet. This ficcie is, well… in my opinion, it's some of the best mindless angst I've written in quite a while. No specifics- you'll see what it is!

DISCLAIMER: Card Captor Sakura belongs to talented people who deserve it. That is to say, not me.

Tell Me You Hate Me

April 1, 2005

I hate it when people don't understand the beauty of silence... and there aren't many things you could say I hate.

I love… I embrace… the sound of emptiness, and the feelings it brings to me. To be honest, I used to sing to myself just to chase away the voices in my head that came with silence; I sang to myself until I realized just how romantic those voices, those thoughts really were.

Weird little thoughts. They come with the high-pitched noise that creeps up on you when you're all curled up under the covers and twitching your toes at 2 AM. You've probably never heard that noise. Most people haven't. Nobody really listens anymore. Nobody closes their eyes long enough to hear what they need to.

Or at least that's what it feels like to me.

Who's to say what I feel is what's right? After all, what is the truth? It surely isn't my narrow-minded, tunnel-vision view of the world. No, I don't expect you to know the truth, or even to understand it. I just expect you to understand me. I would have understood if I was you. Well, maybe understanding isn't the right word. Pity is more like it. At least pity would have been some form of attention.

When did your laughter turn into mockery? When did everyone start turning their backs on me? When did the Card Captor die?

No, don't answer that, love. Actually, on second thought… do answer it. I just thought it would make me feel better if I could, on my own, somehow remember the exact moment everything went wrong. Not that I haven't tried. I've racked my brain trying, but all that comes up is some stupid, melancholic montage of moments in time. Moments past. Moments that only exist in our memories, now that I've scorched the film of my beloved videotapes.

But now all those moments will be gone. Lost, now, like drops of blood in the ocean.

And when they are lost, my love will fade away with them, to a place where little girls' dreams come true, and love is all we can hope for it to be. Or at least, a place where love is something you can learn to feel for me.

I used to be able to see that place. It was something worth dreaming about, anyway. But I soon learned that dreams are for people who have the courage to make something out of them. Those people wake up every day closer to achieving them. Unlike me. I wake up wanting to go back to sleep again so I can pretend I'm still living in yesterday. Or yesteryear.

Even now, I can feel you slipping away from me, like you have been a little more each day since we first met. And I've died a little more each day since then, chanting requiems for the kiss we'd never share, for the life we'd never have.

That's not to say there haven't been good times. Just that the moments I've felt alive are too far-between, too vague and tiny to mention, like the fluttering of your eyelashes, the way you always scratch the back of your neck or the how you reflexively knock your knees when you drink from a straw. Those were the things that made me happy. Happy. You practically live on that word.

Your happiness is mine, too...

I'm sure that phrase has been etched into your brain by now. Now it's my duty to inform you that it was only half-true. Your existential ecstasy inspired me. It made me believe I had a chance at happiness, too. Well, you can see how well that aspiration turned out.

Isn't it funny? You fake something long enough, and you want so much to pretend you're happy, you're strong… that you start to believe in it.

You believe in it until it becomes true. And when that happens, when your happiness is tied to another's, there's no distinction between your needs and theirs. You can't tell between what's real and what you want to be real. You can't tell where love ends and obsession begins. You start to cry at night. You cry until you give up on everything else. Even the crying itself. And every now and then, when you're dry-eyed and alone, you force yourself to cry despite the burning in your eyes, hoping that someone out there will find you.

That is, while you still have hope left.

I admit, it was hope that drove me on this far. Hope is an easy thing to cling to. Pull the petals off until you find a daisy that ends on 'she loves me'. And if it doesn't, then it's just a fluke. Make her a teddy bear and name it after her; that guarantees your true love will return your affections. Close your eyes and count to ten, then send the chain letter and hope that it brings you the true love it promises to. If this crumpled up costume blueprint lands in the trash bin, you'd tell me you loved me someday. Someday. Not today, but someday.

That's it… I remember now. The moment I doomed our chances together. It was the one I missed last week, I know it. I dedicated that crumpled piece of paper to the time we walked through the rain before the sunset and you let me rest my head on your shoulder. I can still feel your hair. It smells like apple shampoo.

And it will continue to after I'm gone. Life goes on, I guess. It's simply selfish of me to make such a scene out of all this. Oh, the hypocrisy…

And to think that all that will be left of our time together is what you remember of it… I would apologize for destroying the tapes and costumes, but you never liked them anyway. In fact, I don't think there's anything I've done or made for you that you actually did like, but let's not get into that.

Suffice it to say there were things we will never comprehend about each other. Case in point: Your big mouth. I never understood why you felt the need to talk more as we got older, as if there was something wrong with the way we used to walk home alone, and in silence, back when our eyes told one another all we ever needed to know.

I hate it when people don't understand silence.

But darling, darling, don't take that to mean I hate you. Believe me when I say if I had lived to be one hundred and one I still wouldn't have found a better reason to live than my nine years of passion for you. I just wish you told me you hated me before I discovered it myself.

I would only ask two things from my most special person: 1) Don't cry, and 2) Don't ask why. Forget what I said earlier; I never should have expected you to understand me. People do crazy things when they're in love. Sometimes they even make themselves sick just to see how many of their loved ones send them get-well-soon cards.

You see, I would check the mail, Sakura-chan, but I've been sick for far too long to care.

Love always,
Tomoyo Daidouji

Thank you for reading!!!

For those readers who are confused, yes, this was a suicide note. I chose 2005 because I'm assuming Tomoyo would be around 16-17 at that time… and April 1st because, of course, it's Sakura's birthday. Oh, and in case anyone gets that misconception, Tomoyo's speaking about being sick is just a metaphor.

I guess you could say this is set in an alternate universe to "Anyone Other Than Me". A bleaker one, at that (as if that's possible :P). At least AOTM will have a happy ending… I hope.

Now, do the author a big, big favor and please review. I gladly welcome constructive criticism and flames. All I hope is that any comments you give this story, you mean from the bottom of your heart. Thanks again!