Author's Notes: I think I promised I'd never do this again. Well, clearly I lied. Also, the prologue was so short that in this first chapter is both the prologue and the first chapter.
Summary: Eriol and Tomoyo, chaptered. If their story had been painted, it would have been painted by some achingly hip modern artist and called 'the empty sonnet of the broken heart' or some other such nonsense. Eriol wants to right past wrongs.
Disclaimer: CCS is very definitely not mine.
For Hally corposant. I hope that is not too presumptuous.
Your beautiful style very much influenced this fic.
Ribbons
Prologue
Tomoeda has several coffee shops. This one is Tomoyo's favourite.
There is someone talking at the table to Tomoyo's right. A pair of young women, each wearing her high school's uniform. She recognises them vaguely, but can't recall their names. One looks gravely at the other over her coffee, the other wears bright red lipstick and purses her mouth while she considers her own drink. She is the one talking.
"…Hiiragizawa Eriol."
"He went back to London years ago, though, didn't he?" the other says after a pause and a mouthful of mocha. The first shakes her head.
"Word on the grapevine is that he's coming back."
Tomoyo drops her mug. It shatters all over the floor.
No.
…
Chapter One
He left on an aeroplane years ago.
She went with the party to the airport to see him off. He smiled and hugged all those who would stand to be hugged – Li-kun glowered at him, and he grinned and requested a kiss, only to end up narrowly avoiding a punch – and kissed the girls, to Li-kun's continued rage.
When it came to her turn, he looked into her eyes so directly that his kiss was like a burn, searing a brand onto her fair cheek.
…
They had a thing, for want of a better term, all those years ago. Seems like a lifetime ago now.
It was for all the wrong reasons. She wanted Sakura and couldn't have her, his continued passion for Mizuki-sensei was being met with coldness. It was all very prim and proper, they would meet in Penguin Park under the stars and she would let him kiss her. Never anything more, not even when her blood screamed out for it.
He would tell her stories about eighteenth century Paris and she would never ask him how he knew. "I walked its streets," he'd say, and she would believe him wordlessly, because she didn't know how not to.
"I want to go there someday," she would say.
And he would nod and try to count the stars.
"There's a string of them," he would say, and point, and she would look.
"Like a necklace," she would say, a hint of a smile playing around her lips.
"Diamonds for you."
…
Once, Sonomi was working in New York for a whole week. Tomoyo took the risk and sneaked out, and they watched the sun rise together five nights in a row.
The servants liked Tomoyo and so turned a blind eye for her, every time. They knew she was with that 'nice Hiiragizawa boy' and that he would see her home each morning (and after all, anyone with an English accent as proper and well-bred as that couldn't possibly be anything less than perfectly respectable).
One or two of her bodyguards would sit up to wait for them coming down the path. They would listen as he murmured something into her cheek, as she answered, voice quiet, demure, as usual. They felt as though they should look away as he touched her face, traced the curve of her cheek, as she closed her eyes, lost in it, tilted her head for a final kiss, breath shuddering. It was intruding on something painfully private, not meant for their – or anyone's – eyes. They averted their gaze throughout the three, four, five final kisses; her hands fisted tightly in his shirt, sunlight drowning in her hair.
He would walk away, and she would stare after him, watching him as he left. She'd stand, motionless, in the middle of the garden path, for a few minutes afterwards, just staring into the distance after him. Over her head, the sky was a brilliant amalgam of violet and pink and orange.
She looked impossibly small from where her bodyguards sat, perched on a windowsill in one of the bathrooms. Their little girl.
She looked alone without him, adrift in the great green sea of the garden.
When she came indoors finally and two of her personal maids met her in the hall to whisk her upstairs for an hour or two of precious sleep before school, if she ever had grass in her hair, if she ever looked a little mussed, if her colour was ever a little high, they never said anything.
…
They called it young love, and they were nearly right.
…
He bought her a single rose for her fifteenth birthday. She put it in a vase of fresh water on her windowsill. It was a clear, vibrant scarlet; its head heavy with perfume and thick velvet petals.
He'd left the thorns on. Privately, she'd always thought a rose wasn't a rose without thorns.
It drank the September sunlight that streamed through her window as she did her homework. All the maids admired it.
Sonomi couldn't quite bring herself to ask who it was from. She had suspicions that she didn't want confirmed.
It was still blooming as brightly two months later, even as the September sunshine faded away to November gloom and drizzle.
When confronted about it, he admitted to having put an enchantment on it.
"It will never wilt?"
"Never."
…
She almost fell in love with him over that rose.
…
Three weeks later, he announced that he was leaving for England.
He told her as they lay, sprawled, on the grass in Penguin Park under a canopy of starry night-sky. She'd packed a picnic for them. The air was crisp and cool in a way that suggested December and Christmas and snow were only around the corner, but still inexplicably warm for the time of year.
She was wearing his favourite white dress. There were ribbons in her hair that he had tied for her. Her hair had smelled like a bouquet of flowers, felt like rough silk under his fingers.
These things made it all the harder.
"I'm leaving for England in two days. With Kaho."
Someone somewhere was letting off fireworks. They rose like dragons to twist and burn in the sky, star-bursts in green-gold and red and silver and purple and blue in the distance.
"Mizuki-sensei?"
"Yes."
Questions swirled through her mind. They tried to settle on her tongue, but as soon as they did, she forgot them.
"Because you love her," she'd said instead, and it wasn't a question.
Ahead, the stars were spread out in a roadmap to paradise, but she couldn't read it.
…
She came up to him the day before he left.
He was working in the music room – she hung around outside the door for a few moments, collecting herself, and overheard him say goodbye to the black grand piano. They'd played together in a concert or three – Tomoyo couldn't quite count - the pair of them. Tomoyo had stood beside it and sang – Ave Maria and Yoru No Uta and Koko Ni Kite and even Greensleeves. They were all his favourites.
He practised on it after school most days. Sometimes she had stayed behind just to listen – she'd always wished she had learned to play piano, and marvelled at the way he did it - or brought her homework or a small piece of embroidery or sewing she'd been working on. Every now and then he cajoled her into singing. People moving about the school, participating in clubs or sports, overheard snatches of their song and smiled at each other.
Everyone had supposed their getting together would be only a matter of time. In the end, nobody even knew about it. They were still waiting for news of the beginning of a relationship that had already come and gone.
"Hiiragizawa-kun."
He looked up from the piano. He'd sensed her behind the door – he had enough magic left for small feats such as that, especially when he was feeling strongly towards the person – but he still felt surprised at hearing her voice.
She looked small and timid and unsure, standing there in her uniform, not the Daidouji-san he knew. He had bought her the ribbons she was wearing in her hair. He wondered for a second if she had forgotten that, but then no, Daidouji-san never forgot such things. Maybe she was trying to completely undo him.
It was almost working.
"Yes?"
For a few long moments, she said nothing. A bird was chirping outside somewhere, its song filtering in through the open window. The sunlight, still so strangely strong for late November, flooded the room and made dust-motes swirl in the air. The room felt like it was full of old, delicate things. Tomoyo felt she should whisper, as though she were in a library.
"The rose," she said finally, forcing the words out through the stone in her chest that was grazing her throat. "Please… Take the enchantment off it."
"Why?"
He wanted to reach out and touch her.
"It's time for it to die."
…
She'd watched it wilt, little by little by little. It died slowly, faded away, until it was only a brown stalk and a scatter of dry petals. She was loath to throw it away, and it stood still on her windowsill, unmoving and untouched. Framed by the lines of her window, it looked like a painting by some achingly hip modern artist – the empty sonnet of the broken heart, maybe, or some other such nonsense.
Pretentious words meant to sound heartfelt.
One day, she opened the window and let the wind carry all the petals away. She touched the stalk and it crumbled to dust under her fingers, and it flew away too.
…
Author's Notes: This is supposed to be my attempt at a serious, non-AU ExT. ExT like in the old days. ExT where Eriol actually acts like Eriol and Tomoyo actually acts like Tomoyo. Anyone who has read any of my previous works can see how this would be a challenge for me.
This will probably be my last major 'hurrah!' with these two. I want to make it a good one. I want to try to put right all the previous crimes I have committed against this pair.
Also, anyone who expects it to stay as sombre as this? Somehow I doubt it will. Most of my stuff tends to degenerate into light-heartedness. I certainly don't see this turning into an angst-fest.
I'm going to do my best. I just hope I finish the damn thing.