A/N: Major downer warning. The scariest thing is that I was listening to
'Catch You, Catch Me' when I came up with the idea.
Coward.
Idiotic, romantic, lazy coward.
Sakura shook with rage at the sight before her eyes. Tomoyo would have been furious. The blood seeped into her pale carpet and covered her beige skirt. It was everywhere. She clenched the star wand in her hand, fingers itching to bring it down over the head of someone who was already dead.
The whole thing was very poetic, of course. Eriol-san would only do things in a poetic sense. Tomoyo lay on the bed, still perfect, still beautiful. And Eriol, on his knees beside the bed, head resting on Tomoyo's stomach. One bleeding wrist draped across Tomoyo, the other hanging toward the floor. His eyes were closed, his face content. And Sakura was so angry she could not stand it.
"How could you do this Eriol?!!!" she screamed. "Dear God, how could you do this and leave me alone?!!! Did you expect me to do that as well? Did you want me to just die?!" She beat the blood-stained carpet with gloved hands. She was still wearing that ridiculous costume. "Tomoyo-chan...." She began to sob. "Tomoyo-chan...."
Kero moved foward to help his mistress. She quickly put up a hand to stop him. "Both of you. Leave." Keroberos looked at Yue and both padded their way out of the silent Daidouji mansion.
"Eriol.... If you weren't dead, I would kill you. Why? Why?" The tears started afresh. "Help me Eriol-kun. Help me. I can't do this by myself. Please. I'm just.....I'm just Sakura." 'Yes,' a little voice in her head began, 'you're just Sakura, the most powerful sorceress in the world.'
"Shutup!!!" she screamed. For now, there was really no reason to not talk to herself. She stood up slowly and considered herself in the mirror. Typical 18-year old Japanese girl. Wearing a superhero costume and covered in blood and tears. Typical.
Sakura made her way out of the mansion, after locking the door and flinging the key as far out of the window as possible. Seeing that once was more than enough for her. She met Kerobero and Yue outside. "Where are Spinel Sun and Ruby Moon?"
Yue looked down. "They no longer exist. Their existence is linked to their masters. I felt their auras wink out at the same time I felt Eriol-sama's leave."
Sakura gasped. Of course, that idiot would choose death, but taking the lives of his guardians too? 'No, they had to consent. Eriol would never do that to them.' Still, she couldn't see Ruby Moon choosing death under any circumstances. She nodded her head gravely at Yue.
Now the question came: where to go? Not home, they'd been there and hadn't the heart to move Touya or Fujitaka. Tomoyo's house was definitely out of the question. Sakura heard her stomach rumble and was immediately ashamed and angry at her body for continuing to function in such a manner. It had been nearly a day, and she hadn't eaten anything. The silence of the streets was almost deafening and when her stomach rumbled again, it echoed slightly.
Kero looked at her with not-quite-hopeful eyes. Sakura looked at him and nodded. Kero really did not need to eat, as she had tried to remind him over the years, but she knew that right now he was looking for a distraction. "Let's find the nearest place with some strawberry Pocky!" she tried to say in a cheerful voice. This time she heard the echo for several seconds afterward.
Stepping into the convenience store, Sakura tried to step lightly around the bodies and their pools of excrement. 'Oh, how terrible. Eriol's put Tomoeda to sleep again.' she willed herself to think. 'I'll go defeat him as soon as I eat some Pocky!'
Twilight found the three of them in Penguin Park. Sakura, on the swings, blood covered gloves in the sand, munching on strawberry Pocky. Kero lay in the sand in big form, also munching in strawberry Pocky, staring straight into the sky. Yue, also on the ground, staring at the grains of sand. They had decided to stay in the park, as it was a nice, warm summer night. Quite beautiful, really.
Thus ended the first day of the end of the world.
None of them had even suspected, least of all, Eriol, for the magic was far more ancient than Clow's. The last pureblooded member of an ancient civilization put a curse on the world that had destroyed his people. When the last person with even the slightest bit of their blood died, then the world would end. Simple as all that. Although Sakura would never know how she knew this, the last person had been a little old lady in Buenos Aires. She died lonely, because she was the last of her family, and full of regrets, for she'd wanted children.
When the dark clouds began to gather over the planet, Sakura felt the malicious energy and was about to leave, when Tomoyo showed up with a battle costume. "For luck." she'd said. Sakura had of course put it on. Syaoran had insisted on coming, perhaps he'd felt what lay ahead. So she set out, with guardians and boyfriend in tow. Eriol had popped out of nowhere, wheezing, and toting his guardians, explaining the curse and apologizing like crazy. They had combined their power, along with the guardians and Syaoran and tried to block the entity. Fought it with every card, ball of fire, ruby beam, diamond and ruby shard and ofuda they had. It wasn't enough. Not even Hope could dent it.
The dark clouds had broken through and destroyed the world. Not with fire and brimstone. Every, single living person had simply dropped dead. It was eerily similar to the darkness spell Eriol had cast to test Sakura. That had been easily broken because it was not malicious in intent, and the caster did not really want everyone to remain asleep. The biggest difference, was that then, you could feel pulses.
The magic protected Eriol and Sakura, and of course, the guardians, being composed of magic, were fine. Syaoran was dead. His magic was not nearly strong enough to keep him alive. Sakura had screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed, while Eriol had stared in disbelief and sank to the ground, blaming himself for not finding it sooner, blaming Clow for not being more powerful and blaming the universe for allowing magic to exist. Sakura finally calmed down and they managed to collect Syaoran's body and return to Tomoeda. Sakura had run from house to house, discovering bodies and screaming and crying, even though she knew what she would find. A few more hours of that. Then she had run to find a globe. Find a random dot on it and willed herself there, trying to find somewhere that hadn't been affected. Somewhere where children were still playing, adults were still at work and life went on. She found nothing but death and chaos. Lights on, flooding, barking dogs, God knows what else. Eriol went a few times, but after a while had returned to Tomoeda, bereft of hope, to wait for Sakura's return. She came back from Africa, meaning to shake Eriol by shoulders and scream, "What do we do now?!" to find her guardians pointing to the Daidouji mansion and the horrible scene within.
A thought occured to Sakura. 'Oh no, those poor animals in the zoo. no one to feed them. And they're in cages! How awful!' And for one terrible second, she thought she heard Syaoran say, "How can you care about that at a time like this?" And all her hopefulness and resolve broke. After she thought she could cry no more tears, she began to sob, on the swing.
Suddenly, "Return card!" Sakura said sharply. The Return obediently sprang from the glowing pack and floated in front of her mistress. "Return to your true form, Return." A woman with long hair, long ears and a blue hourglass leapt from the card.
"Yes, mistress?" The card bowed politely.
"Return, is it possible to change things in the past that you send me to?"
The Return's eyes went wide. "Yes, mistress, but with consequences. You see, if you change the past and then return to the future, you return to an alternate timeline from the one in which you began. Things could be totally different there."
Sakura considered what she could do. Stop the civilization from being destroyed, stop the man before he could lay the curse, hand the woman a bottle of fertility drugs when she was younger, or even go and lend the magical power of an extra Sakura to the battle. The further she went back in time, the more different the alternate timeline would become. Anything would be better than this silent hell, but she also wanted her friends and family back.
Choices, choices.
"You may return to your card." Sakura stretched out on the grass and looked into the stars. Finding her own, she stared at it for a long time. Perhaps she was expecting it to suddenly wink out or some such thing. It continued to shine it's pale pink light, as Sakura fell into a fitful sleep, full of screams and Syaoran's voice and finally, a crushing silence.
She woke abruptly the next morning to the sound of quiet sobbing. She carefully rolled over to see who was crying. Yue was crying into Keroberos' golden fur; somehow the sound seemed to fit into the regular morning noises. Sakura stared, numb and fascinated at the sight of her cold moon guardian crying. "Yue."
He looked up, pale eyes cloudy. "Yes, mistress?" he choked. Sakura walked over to the tree they were under and hugged Yue for all she was worth. Then she bent down and hugged Keroberos.
"Even though everything may not be absolutely all right, we still have each other, okay?" Kero blinked. He'd never heard Sakura doubt her 'invincible phrase', ever. 'Although now,' he reasoned, 'might be the time.'
"Yue, where is Yukito?" Yue looked away.
"I cannot transform, or Yukito will die, as well as I. I cannot leave you." The way he said it made Sakura think that he'd thought about it. Kero looked horrified at this, realizing that his brother might have decided to leave them.
Sakura stood in the middle of the field. "Time, Return, return to your true forms!" The two cards sprang from the deck and materialized in front of her, the Time looking like the father of the Return, with the same robes and pointy ears. They both bowed.
"What do you wish of us, Mistress?" Sakua had never seen any of the cards look so worried. Did she look that bad? Her short auburn hair was tangled and singed in places from the fight with the curse. She was covered in cuts and scrapes, grass from the park and Eriol's blood. Her face was dirty, tear-streaked and set with a fierce determination.
"Help me."
"Yes Mistress?"
"Help me fix this. How can I fix this?" Her voice was low, and deadly. Yue and Keroberos looked silently from behind. The Time looked flustered.
"Mistress. We were not created to interfere with the timeline. Our purpose was to alter the present." Sakura snapped.
"I don't care what your goddamn purpose is! I am your Mistress and you will do what I say! Now, help me figure out how to change this!!" Sakura was livid again.
"Mistress. Do not blame them." Yue's cool voice said behind her. "Clow did not want to drastically change the future, only manipulate here and there."
She couldn't believe it. Had Yue given up all hope? "Hope Card!"
Before the Hope card had even fully materialized, it had it's arms around Sakura. "Oh, Mistress! I don't know what to do! Every minute I can feel myself turning back to Void. Is there nothing we can do?" The Hope card was crying and looking at Sakura with wild eyes. The Hope Card.
A/N: Er, how did you like my first published CCS fic? Was the characterization okay? Don't worry, there will be more, but probably only one more chapter. I just posted this to motivate me to finish. Reviews are nice, thanks!
Coward.
Idiotic, romantic, lazy coward.
Sakura shook with rage at the sight before her eyes. Tomoyo would have been furious. The blood seeped into her pale carpet and covered her beige skirt. It was everywhere. She clenched the star wand in her hand, fingers itching to bring it down over the head of someone who was already dead.
The whole thing was very poetic, of course. Eriol-san would only do things in a poetic sense. Tomoyo lay on the bed, still perfect, still beautiful. And Eriol, on his knees beside the bed, head resting on Tomoyo's stomach. One bleeding wrist draped across Tomoyo, the other hanging toward the floor. His eyes were closed, his face content. And Sakura was so angry she could not stand it.
"How could you do this Eriol?!!!" she screamed. "Dear God, how could you do this and leave me alone?!!! Did you expect me to do that as well? Did you want me to just die?!" She beat the blood-stained carpet with gloved hands. She was still wearing that ridiculous costume. "Tomoyo-chan...." She began to sob. "Tomoyo-chan...."
Kero moved foward to help his mistress. She quickly put up a hand to stop him. "Both of you. Leave." Keroberos looked at Yue and both padded their way out of the silent Daidouji mansion.
"Eriol.... If you weren't dead, I would kill you. Why? Why?" The tears started afresh. "Help me Eriol-kun. Help me. I can't do this by myself. Please. I'm just.....I'm just Sakura." 'Yes,' a little voice in her head began, 'you're just Sakura, the most powerful sorceress in the world.'
"Shutup!!!" she screamed. For now, there was really no reason to not talk to herself. She stood up slowly and considered herself in the mirror. Typical 18-year old Japanese girl. Wearing a superhero costume and covered in blood and tears. Typical.
Sakura made her way out of the mansion, after locking the door and flinging the key as far out of the window as possible. Seeing that once was more than enough for her. She met Kerobero and Yue outside. "Where are Spinel Sun and Ruby Moon?"
Yue looked down. "They no longer exist. Their existence is linked to their masters. I felt their auras wink out at the same time I felt Eriol-sama's leave."
Sakura gasped. Of course, that idiot would choose death, but taking the lives of his guardians too? 'No, they had to consent. Eriol would never do that to them.' Still, she couldn't see Ruby Moon choosing death under any circumstances. She nodded her head gravely at Yue.
Now the question came: where to go? Not home, they'd been there and hadn't the heart to move Touya or Fujitaka. Tomoyo's house was definitely out of the question. Sakura heard her stomach rumble and was immediately ashamed and angry at her body for continuing to function in such a manner. It had been nearly a day, and she hadn't eaten anything. The silence of the streets was almost deafening and when her stomach rumbled again, it echoed slightly.
Kero looked at her with not-quite-hopeful eyes. Sakura looked at him and nodded. Kero really did not need to eat, as she had tried to remind him over the years, but she knew that right now he was looking for a distraction. "Let's find the nearest place with some strawberry Pocky!" she tried to say in a cheerful voice. This time she heard the echo for several seconds afterward.
Stepping into the convenience store, Sakura tried to step lightly around the bodies and their pools of excrement. 'Oh, how terrible. Eriol's put Tomoeda to sleep again.' she willed herself to think. 'I'll go defeat him as soon as I eat some Pocky!'
Twilight found the three of them in Penguin Park. Sakura, on the swings, blood covered gloves in the sand, munching on strawberry Pocky. Kero lay in the sand in big form, also munching in strawberry Pocky, staring straight into the sky. Yue, also on the ground, staring at the grains of sand. They had decided to stay in the park, as it was a nice, warm summer night. Quite beautiful, really.
Thus ended the first day of the end of the world.
None of them had even suspected, least of all, Eriol, for the magic was far more ancient than Clow's. The last pureblooded member of an ancient civilization put a curse on the world that had destroyed his people. When the last person with even the slightest bit of their blood died, then the world would end. Simple as all that. Although Sakura would never know how she knew this, the last person had been a little old lady in Buenos Aires. She died lonely, because she was the last of her family, and full of regrets, for she'd wanted children.
When the dark clouds began to gather over the planet, Sakura felt the malicious energy and was about to leave, when Tomoyo showed up with a battle costume. "For luck." she'd said. Sakura had of course put it on. Syaoran had insisted on coming, perhaps he'd felt what lay ahead. So she set out, with guardians and boyfriend in tow. Eriol had popped out of nowhere, wheezing, and toting his guardians, explaining the curse and apologizing like crazy. They had combined their power, along with the guardians and Syaoran and tried to block the entity. Fought it with every card, ball of fire, ruby beam, diamond and ruby shard and ofuda they had. It wasn't enough. Not even Hope could dent it.
The dark clouds had broken through and destroyed the world. Not with fire and brimstone. Every, single living person had simply dropped dead. It was eerily similar to the darkness spell Eriol had cast to test Sakura. That had been easily broken because it was not malicious in intent, and the caster did not really want everyone to remain asleep. The biggest difference, was that then, you could feel pulses.
The magic protected Eriol and Sakura, and of course, the guardians, being composed of magic, were fine. Syaoran was dead. His magic was not nearly strong enough to keep him alive. Sakura had screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed, while Eriol had stared in disbelief and sank to the ground, blaming himself for not finding it sooner, blaming Clow for not being more powerful and blaming the universe for allowing magic to exist. Sakura finally calmed down and they managed to collect Syaoran's body and return to Tomoeda. Sakura had run from house to house, discovering bodies and screaming and crying, even though she knew what she would find. A few more hours of that. Then she had run to find a globe. Find a random dot on it and willed herself there, trying to find somewhere that hadn't been affected. Somewhere where children were still playing, adults were still at work and life went on. She found nothing but death and chaos. Lights on, flooding, barking dogs, God knows what else. Eriol went a few times, but after a while had returned to Tomoeda, bereft of hope, to wait for Sakura's return. She came back from Africa, meaning to shake Eriol by shoulders and scream, "What do we do now?!" to find her guardians pointing to the Daidouji mansion and the horrible scene within.
A thought occured to Sakura. 'Oh no, those poor animals in the zoo. no one to feed them. And they're in cages! How awful!' And for one terrible second, she thought she heard Syaoran say, "How can you care about that at a time like this?" And all her hopefulness and resolve broke. After she thought she could cry no more tears, she began to sob, on the swing.
Suddenly, "Return card!" Sakura said sharply. The Return obediently sprang from the glowing pack and floated in front of her mistress. "Return to your true form, Return." A woman with long hair, long ears and a blue hourglass leapt from the card.
"Yes, mistress?" The card bowed politely.
"Return, is it possible to change things in the past that you send me to?"
The Return's eyes went wide. "Yes, mistress, but with consequences. You see, if you change the past and then return to the future, you return to an alternate timeline from the one in which you began. Things could be totally different there."
Sakura considered what she could do. Stop the civilization from being destroyed, stop the man before he could lay the curse, hand the woman a bottle of fertility drugs when she was younger, or even go and lend the magical power of an extra Sakura to the battle. The further she went back in time, the more different the alternate timeline would become. Anything would be better than this silent hell, but she also wanted her friends and family back.
Choices, choices.
"You may return to your card." Sakura stretched out on the grass and looked into the stars. Finding her own, she stared at it for a long time. Perhaps she was expecting it to suddenly wink out or some such thing. It continued to shine it's pale pink light, as Sakura fell into a fitful sleep, full of screams and Syaoran's voice and finally, a crushing silence.
She woke abruptly the next morning to the sound of quiet sobbing. She carefully rolled over to see who was crying. Yue was crying into Keroberos' golden fur; somehow the sound seemed to fit into the regular morning noises. Sakura stared, numb and fascinated at the sight of her cold moon guardian crying. "Yue."
He looked up, pale eyes cloudy. "Yes, mistress?" he choked. Sakura walked over to the tree they were under and hugged Yue for all she was worth. Then she bent down and hugged Keroberos.
"Even though everything may not be absolutely all right, we still have each other, okay?" Kero blinked. He'd never heard Sakura doubt her 'invincible phrase', ever. 'Although now,' he reasoned, 'might be the time.'
"Yue, where is Yukito?" Yue looked away.
"I cannot transform, or Yukito will die, as well as I. I cannot leave you." The way he said it made Sakura think that he'd thought about it. Kero looked horrified at this, realizing that his brother might have decided to leave them.
Sakura stood in the middle of the field. "Time, Return, return to your true forms!" The two cards sprang from the deck and materialized in front of her, the Time looking like the father of the Return, with the same robes and pointy ears. They both bowed.
"What do you wish of us, Mistress?" Sakua had never seen any of the cards look so worried. Did she look that bad? Her short auburn hair was tangled and singed in places from the fight with the curse. She was covered in cuts and scrapes, grass from the park and Eriol's blood. Her face was dirty, tear-streaked and set with a fierce determination.
"Help me."
"Yes Mistress?"
"Help me fix this. How can I fix this?" Her voice was low, and deadly. Yue and Keroberos looked silently from behind. The Time looked flustered.
"Mistress. We were not created to interfere with the timeline. Our purpose was to alter the present." Sakura snapped.
"I don't care what your goddamn purpose is! I am your Mistress and you will do what I say! Now, help me figure out how to change this!!" Sakura was livid again.
"Mistress. Do not blame them." Yue's cool voice said behind her. "Clow did not want to drastically change the future, only manipulate here and there."
She couldn't believe it. Had Yue given up all hope? "Hope Card!"
Before the Hope card had even fully materialized, it had it's arms around Sakura. "Oh, Mistress! I don't know what to do! Every minute I can feel myself turning back to Void. Is there nothing we can do?" The Hope card was crying and looking at Sakura with wild eyes. The Hope Card.
A/N: Er, how did you like my first published CCS fic? Was the characterization okay? Don't worry, there will be more, but probably only one more chapter. I just posted this to motivate me to finish. Reviews are nice, thanks!