Please, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger. (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

For SakuraSyaoranLiTsubasa, thank you so much for the base idea.

…

Anyway, I have MOVED this story COMPLETELY to another site. You can find this STORY and all its subsequent UPDATES here: h*t*t*p :/ archiveofourown. o*r*g /works/1142195/chapters/2311240

I have the same penname there as I do here: ParadiseAvenger

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The village of Clow was little and old-fashioned. It was settled in the bosom of the mountains where the air was chill and thin. A crystal clear blue river ran like a trailing finger through the cleft of the mountain and down through the valley where the little village nestled. The waterwheel of the big inn turned continuously, generating power for the bakery in the basement and the doctor's office in the lower regions of the inn. A deep well was dug upstream from the inn. It was where everyone drew their water from. There was a bathhouse between the well and the inn for common bathing.

Big cherry blossom trees bloomed all around the valley, ringing the village like a faerie circle. Pink petals swirled on the summer breeze and gathered on the surface of the clear pool at the edge of the village. Next to that pool lived the old witch, Hiruka. She predicted the birth of all the children in the village and was sometimes more popular than the doctor for common ailments.

The lord and his lady lived in the big manor high on the mountain, looking down over the pheasants with care and concern. The eyes of a fussy parent and their eyes were even more watchful of their single beautiful daughter. The lady's biggest secret was nothing so dark as an affair, but much much worse. She had borne twins, but only Hiruka and the woman she had given the other babe to knew her terrible secret. As far as her husband knew, Sakura was his only daughter.

Superstition reigned in the small village, not coy silly little rumors, but great and terrible truths. Twins brought only calamity, horrible awful disasters. A flood had come and washed away the entire northern half of the little village when the midwife birthed twins. A great fire swept through the crops when the blacksmith's wife had twins. In a faraway kingdom, a queen birthed twins and the entire land fell to ruin. And the lady of the little village had borne twins.

To save herself, her husband, and her babies, she separated them at birth. The first borne was kept, as was her right if she had not given birth to twins, but the second was secreted away with the woman, Setsuki, the weaver in a neighboring village of Runes. Runes was easily reachable, even in the dead of winter, through a winding tunnel that carved through the mountain.

Sakura grew up as a princess in the manor in Clow, untouched and unsoiled by her terrible birth, learning and studying a lady's arts. She was a beautiful girl. Her hair was short and fine and the rich buttery color of caramel. Her eyes were jade green and fringed by long thick lashes. Her features were fine and aristocratic, very distinguished. She had many proposals from young men in the village, but her parents had promised she would never be pushed into an arranged marriage. Sakura wanted adventure and excitement, but most of all she wanted true love. And she wanted to find it herself.

Ying-Fa grew up in the weaver, Setsuki's, hut in the village of Runes. She was a quick study and soon learned to patch and sew. Then, when she was twelve, she apprenticed herself to the village doctor. She learned many things and became the village's best nurse. Often times, children stopped her on the cobbled streets, crying and begging for a little spot of gauze for a bloodied knee or scraped elbow. She always smiled and obliged them. Ying-Fa was very beautiful, but for some strange reason, her mother insisted she dye her hair and paint her face. Her natural caramel-colored locks were dyed a thick dark blue-black and she painted her petal-pink soft lips a whore's bright red. Regardless, several of the boys pined for her attention as much as they did the lady's daughter, Sakura.

…

Across the village of Clow, on the far side, a great distance from the lord's manor on the mountain was the workhouse. In it were all the village's petty criminals and homeless scum and thieves. It was a dark cold building, a cesspool of puss and bile, drowning in filth and muck. It was on the river, downstream from where the inn's waterwheel was, the deep well where the entire village drew its water, and the grime of the bathhouse from. Even their drinking water was thick with filth of the bathhouse and blood from their own problems.

With a sneeze, Syaoran woke from his restless sleep. Something was touching the side of his face, crawling and scuttling. He wiped away a spider and crushed it under the heel of his hand. Its legs gave a few tremulous dying twitches against his palm. "Syao?" he whispered in the dark of the room.

Syao was already awake, sitting up on the thin worn mat. His shoulders were naked, lightly freckled in the darkness, and shiny with perspiration. The threadbare blanket was heaped in his lap, draped over his knees and pooling at his sides. He turned to face his brother and his amber eyes glowed in the dark.

For a moment, the brothers stared at each other. They each saw their own faces. They had the same golden glowing eyes and curved full lips and stubborn dedicated set of the jaw and translucent unmarred skin and dark chocolate tresses unkempt and mussed with work and sleep and even the same bruises on their handsome faces from the most recent beating they had received. It was like looking into a mirror.

Twins…

Syao and Syaoran had not been separated at birth. They were the midwife's children. She along with her husband had been killed for bearing such monsters, but with her last breath she put a terrible superstitious curse on anyone who harmed her babies. Terrified and superstitious, the villagers placed the twins in the workhouse with the criminals, content to work them until they breathed their very last breaths. It was the bane of all twins that no matter how terrible life was for them together, they always wished to be together. Apart, something vital was missing.

Syaoran was shy and gentle. He wished to learn and travel, to heal and help people. He wanted to unearth the ruins buried in the side of the mountain, the tips of great wings over the entrance of a deep cavern, he believed. Archaic things fascinated him. The thought of history made wonders glow behind his eyes.

Syao, on the other hand, was bold and fierce. He practiced swordplay with several thieves to the point where he was almost impossibly powerful. He wanted to slaughter the people that imprisoned and hurt him and Syaoran just for being twins, for existing.

They were polar opposites.

Twins brought calamity, terrible suffering, just because they lived.

It was unfair and horrible.

Then, Sakura fell ill and, by default, the twins were blamed.

…

The young girl caught a treacherous sickness. Her pallor was waxy and ghostly pale and there was a constant sheen of sweat on her brow. Her green eyes were glazed with fever and had sunken deep in her sockets. Her lips were chapped and bleeding, split and cracked at the corners. Her entire body was wasting away, shrinking and folding in on itself. She grew sicker day after day and it seemed there was no hope for her survival.

Desperate, the lady of the manor went to the witch, Hiruka's, hut near the crystal pool at the outskirts of the village. Hiruka was a scraggly old woman. She wore an aged fur coat that was torn and stained with sand. Sometimes, the corner of her eye twisted like a crooked pin and her hair was greasy and hung lank around her face.

"Please, Hiruka-sensei," the lady begged. "Sakura-chan, she's so sick! What can I do to help my daughter?"

Hiruka was sitting in her creaky old rocking chair, sewing something around her wrist that looked like a spiny wreath of briars. "It's the twins," she said and that was all she said.

The lady interpreted it how she wished and it happened to be incorrect. She returned to the manor and told her husband what the old witch had said and he immediately order Syaoran and Syao to be brought to the manor. While all this happened, Sakura only grew more feverous, sicker.

…

Syao was sitting up, feeding wood to the chipper and shielding his face with his arm. Splinters were wedged into his exposed palm and much of his forearm. Syaoran was at the other side of the machine, taking away the buckets of shredded wood as they filled and turning the crank to chip up the wood.

Suddenly, there was commotion in the workhouse, but they didn't hear it over the hissing and grinding of the wood chipper.

Syaoran didn't see the blacksmith grab Syao by some of his dark locks and haul him away. He only suddenly realized that no more wood was going into the machine.

"Syao?" he called and peeped around, expecting to see his twin dying from a hunk of wood that had exploded from the chipper. But the instant he peeked around the machine, a shovel struck him hard in the face and he fell into darkness.

…

Syaoran woke up on the hard marble floor of the manor. His mouth tasted sour and bloody. Syao was tied to a chair beside him, conscious and looking terribly dangerous. There was blood on his snarling mouth and his hands were clenched into fists. Before Syaoran's eyes, his twin lashed out at the bonds that held him. The chair creaked and groaned at the raw power in him.

"Syao," Syaoran whispered.

Syao stilled and turned to look at his twin. "They think it's our fault the girl is sick," he snapped.

"What?" Syaoran whispered. "But we didn't–"

"It doesn't matter. We're twins," Syao growled.

The lord of the manor came tromping down the stairs. The girl, Sakura, was a thin white shadow in his arms. She was wrapped in a pink and white silk quilt and some of her caramel hair was hanging over her father's arm. She looked like death, a beautiful corpse, a vampire. "This is your fault, twins," he said meanly.

"No," Syaoran protested and tried to sit up. His head swam and he crashed back down, smashing his face on the marble tiles. He groaned in pain and tried to sit up again, hoisting his slender body up on his twig arms. "We didn't do anything to the girl."

Syao lashed out against his bonds again.

Sakura groaned and whimpered in her troubled sleep.

The lady came down the stairs behind her husband and laid a hand on his arm. She was a glowing beauty in a dark blue velvet gown with all her dark wavy reddish hair cascading down her back and over her shoulders. "Charles," she murmured.

He shook her hand off his arm and adjusted his daughter in his arms. "Shut up, Cleo," he snapped. "They did this to my baby!"

"Charles!"

"I want them destroyed!"

Syao broke free of the chair. He destroyed the entire chair, actually, just tore it apart with pure strength. He leaped from the ruins of the chair and dashed forward at the lord and the lady and managed to get off a single blow on the lord. His fist caught the lord in the jaw and set him backwards into Cleo. They landed in heap on the stairs.

Sakura fell from his arms and bounced down the staircase in a flurry of pink and white silk. The quilt fell from around her shoulders and tangled in her legs. Syaoran rushed to gather her in his arms before she smashed into the marble floor. She groaned and her eyes fluttered.

"Syao!" Syaoran shouted as his twin once again leaped at the lord.

The lord smashed Syao away and then, without a second thought, he leaped from them and barreled to Syaoran's side. He grabbed his twin's arm and yanked him to his feet. Sakura's head lolled against his chest and he refused to set her down.

"Stop, Syao! You're going to hurt her!"

There was gunfire.

Hot blood splattered across the side of Syaoran's face. Syao lurched backwards, clutching his shoulder.

"Syaoran! We have to go! Now!"

Syaoran gathered Sakura against him and whirled to follow his twin. Cleo slammed into his back, shrieking and screaming. She tore at his face with her fingernails, trying to wrench Sakura from his arms. Syaoran stopped to grapple with her, trying to get the girl into her arms quickly and escape with Syao.

Two more shots cracked off in quick succession.

"Syaoran!" Syao shouted, but Syaoran hadn't been shot. Syao took the second and third bullets to his upper thigh and chest.

"Go, Syao!" Syaoran shouted. "Go! Just go!"

His watched his twin hesitate and then flee from the corner of his eye. Blood was a thick smeary trail behind his twin.

Cleo continued to tear at him, but he finally managed to get Sakura into her arms. She stumbled backwards, tripping on her lush gown, and finally landed in a heap with Sakura wrapped in her arms. Charles leaped for Syaoran and caught him by the hair. Syaoran's head was still whirling from the blow to his face earlier. He went down easily with a single punch to the vulnerable wound.

Darkness took him, but the last thing he remembered was the cocking of a gun and a quiet voice whispering, "Don't…"

…

Charles pulled back the hammer of his pistol and aimed at Syaoran's battered face. The kid groaned and scrabbled uselessly at the marble floor. Cleo was clutching Sakura in her arms. She tried not to think about how cold her daughter's body was.

Then, for the first time in nearly a week, Sakura spoke. Just as Charles was going to pull the trigger, she whispered, "Don't…"

"Wait, Charles! Sakura spoke! Don't kill the boy!" Cleo shouted.

Reluctantly, Charles lowered his weapon and turned away from the unconscious kid. "Send out the hunter," he ordered. "I want the other twin caught and killed!"

"N-no…" Sakura whispered, but the flurry of servants drowned out her voice.

…

Syao was running through the woods and a trail of blood marked his passage. He prayed the Syaoran would be alright, but if he had stayed they both would have been caught and killed. Apart, maybe their mother's curse could protect them. Dogs and shouts followed him as he tore through the tunnel that led to Runes. The sounds echoed in against the rocks.

His own breath was harsh and loud in his ears and the rock whipped through his peripheral vision.

The loss of blood was making him dizzy. Don't fall, he told himself over and over in a mantra. Just don't fall. Keep going. One foot in front of the other. Don't fall, Syao. Don't fall. Spots danced in front of his eyes and his world tilted. He stumbled… and fell and in that instant the dogs were on him.

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And I removed the original mature content that continued from that point due to the trolls. Please read this story and all its updates in its original version on Archive of Our Own.

Questions, comments, concerns?