Disclaimer:
They aren't mine, though Angsty!Xiao-Lang appears to be a permanent resident among the muses.*
Alone, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-faced teenage boy walked down the center of Tomoeda's empty streets. In one hand he held a tattered stuffed bear, hand-sewn, just as dark as his hair, eyes, expression. His steps were slow, reluctant, as if by keeping away from the place, he could deny the backwards fling his life had taken. Around his neck, the key of Clow hung like a jaw-splitting grin of golden thread against the black of his jacket.
The day, mid-spring and warm, smelled of sakura, and Sakura, and another life now closed to him only because he had failed to see. He pressed himself onward, untouched by all but memories.
"Shaoran," she'd said, "there's really nothing wrong. Promise!"
Her smile had outdone him; her smile always did. Had he not been stunned by honey-hair against flushed-pearl cheeks he might have noticed the subtle twitch of her lips that gave away the lie. Then again, she'd gotten remarkably good at lying by that time, though he'd had no way of knowing that.
The sakura trees were in bloom, pink and full and raining petals down around him like a thousand fingers reaching for his hand, or a thousand tears stained by the sunlight. Sakura's aura saturated every one. How hadn't he figured it out?
"Xiao-Lang," Mei-Ling had told him, "she's not herself. There's something—"
"Li-kun, please help her," Daidouji had asked.
She must have come here every night, he thought, pausing in the middle of the road. In his mind's eye the silver pentagram still shone blinding on the concrete beneath him, etched into darkness by the world's most powerful magician.
Even Yue and Keroberos hadn't known. They'd only seen her leaving, night after night, with the excuse that she was working on a project for school.
Seven days.
Seven days, and she was gone.
He took his left hand out of his pocket and clutched the teddy bear in his right, pressing it to his chest as though he might revive her with the sound of his heartbeat. What made a girl decide to end her life, when she had everything? Loving friends, a supportive family, good grades, wizarding abilities unequaled by any in the world…
The sakura trees stirred. To his magical sight they were brighter than the sun.
For seven nights she'd come here, given power to the trees that bore her name, slowly withering herself into nothing. It was almost like masochism, but without the telltale scars. For seven days she'd lied to him, to Daidouji, to her brother and father and guardians, hiding everything behind those verdant eyes and that cloud-white smile.
Finally, on the last night, he'd found her.
"Sakura…"
She hadn't turned at the sound of her name. She hadn't moved at the push of his hand. Her face was still, and her masks slipped away, and in death he saw the rictus of fear that had eluded him while she was alive. Her small, pale hands had grasped at nothing. And the trees had pulsed with her shivering, faint breaths, had continued to pulse even after she stopped breathing.
Seven days.
Neither of her guardians had felt her death. The power she had bled into the sakura blossoms sustained them as well as it had before; her suicide, as her life had been, was selfless.
He stared up into the blue, cloud-swelled sky, a boy with a bear in his hands and tears in his eyes. There had to be a reason, didn't there? Was it something he had done?
The sakura, to him, were like Sakura's cheeks on that day, when she had lied. As the clouds darkened and the rain began, it seemed she was crying for him, making up for the days that she'd smiled while she hurt. He hardly felt the rain, though it wound down from his hair in thick rivulets and clung to his jeans, though he opened his jacket and sheltered the bear inside, though he felt something spill from his eyelids and wondered if anyone would know the difference between his tears and the raindrops.
He tilted his head to the sky and opened his mouth like a child waiting for the first snowflake of winter to drop on their tongue. And instead of a snowflake, a sakura petal cavorted down from its branch and brushed his lips with rosy warmth.
"Why?" he asked, as his grip on the bear and on his composure vanished with the petal's kiss. "Did I do something wrong? You never told anyone…"
Inundated with the sorrow of a boy and girl forever parted, the sakura trees only bent to the rain, towards the soaked form and his dim shadow.
"Why?"
There was a soft tug at his chest, like a pinprick, or the press of one thin, smooth finger.
"Shaoran-kun," she'd said to him, "don't worry about me."
Almost without thinking he raised one hand to the winged star hanging weightless at his neck. And cried out—the Key was hot, burned his fingers, thrust sensation deep into a mind unwilling to accept it.
"Shaoran-kun."
In a soft cocoon of tawny-gold light, the Key rose as though being lifted, and spun in front of his wide, wet eyes. It hummed one low, steady note, in what sounded like her voice; hypnotized by sight and sound, he lost himself in the thought that, perhaps, this was only a dream—that he would wake and realize some terrible sin of his, and appreciate her all the more because he'd known a day without her. But then the humming stopped—
Everything stopped.
Before him was the Key, bright against a background of frozen transparent lines and marble-still sakura trees. Behind him was the world which lacked all that he needed—Sakura, and the answer to why she'd gone.
"Do you want to know?" the air seemed to ask. His heartbeat drummed fast inside his ears. Was she listening? Could she—
"Yes," he whispered, and touched the burning Key.
The aura of the trees caressed his sight like her deceptive, selfless smile. "Then…let me show you."
*
To be continued…Author's Notes:
Suicide-fics make me mad. Especially CCS suicide-fics, where half the cast is perky to a fault. I hate their OOC-ness, and I hate the overused "Sakura slashes her wrists" formula, so I'm trying for something different here. There will be a second part, 'cause to make the most happy character in the series kill herself without explanation is beyond even my evilest urges, and there may even be a third part if I end up liking this story enough. Reviews are appreciated. Sank yuu! ^_^