Because I Love You

This is the first in what will hopefully be a collection around the theme of sacrifice. Most, if not all, will have SxS themes, but because sacrifice is what ties the whole thing together, it won't always be a happy ending.

Disclaimer: I don't own CCS.

Don't Break Even

It had been two years since he left. For good this time. He had returned briefly for their upper secondary school years and it had all seemed perfect for a while, but he left at the end with nothing but a broken 'I'm sorry' to remember him by.

Sakura often wondered why he had left her. Was it something that she had done? Had she upset him somehow? Or was it simply that he stopped loving her and saw leaving as the easiest way to end a nearly six year relationship?

No answers were ever forthcoming and his picture just stared back at her, his emotions hidden behind a mask of indifference. He was gone from her life and years later she was still clinging to the memory of his smile just to get through the day.

Her life was at a stand still. She worked a job she hated in order to pay for studies she had no interest in. She picked law and business because it made her feel close to him and because every now and then the name 'Li' would come up in her classes and she would smile briefly as she thought of the one she loved. A small, perverse part of her brain had secretly hoped she might run into him, but the last two years had brought no such luck.

The job she hated was at the campus café. People were rude, no one ever talked to her, and they all assumed she was some ambitionless drudgen working away while they all made something of themselves. There were days she felt like screaming at them 'I'm a fucking law student!' until she ran out of air. She didn't know how they could all be so smug when at least she had a decent work effort to fall back on if all the promises of higher education setting them up for life turned out to be a lie.

At times like these she wish she'd brought her course book with her to hide under the counter, but it was too late for that. She starred out the window having nothing better to do in the slow period after ten than let her mind wander to what could have been and how nothing in her life had turned out the way she planned. Nothing bu -

"Hi, could I please get a mochaccino, extra sweet?" a voice asked politely, jarring her from rather depressing thoughts.

"Coming right up," she said with false cheer as she hustled over to the coffee machine. A small smile graced her lips, glad that the customer at least had the decency to say please rather than simply demand that his copious amounts of caffeine by prepared immediately. It was so rare for her to be treated like an actual human being.

"Where's the girl that's usually here?" he asked by way of conversation. "Kimiko-san?"

"Kimiya," Sakura corrected, eyes focused on the delicate task of frothing milk. "She had a test so we swapped shifts."

"I think I remember her saying so," he commented. "She assured me her replacement was just as capable as herself. I'm kinda picky about my coffee."

"As you should be," Sakura agreed her mood lifted as she engaged in conversation as an equal. "Life's too short to drink bad coffee."

"That's exactly what I always say," he replied with a hearty chuckle.

Sakura turned off the steaming wand as the milk was warmed to just shy of boiling. She glanced up, readying herself to speak but found herself struck dumb by a pair of startling amber eyes.

"Syaoran," she gasped as the jug of steaming milk fell from her hands.

"Sakura," he answered at the same moment, his shocked expression mirroring her own.

Flustered, she tried to busy herself by returning to the task of preparing his coffee, starting from scratch and switching the full milk for soy milk, which she knew he preferred. "H-how are you?" she asked, forcing herself to sound like it was just an ordinary conversation, catching up with an old friend and not her first encounter in two years with the love of her life.

"Sakura," he said, in a low tone that warned her he wasn't fooled by her attempts at joviality. "I think we should talk. You probably have some questions, and I –"

"There you go," she said perkily, cutting him off. "Hopefully it's to your liking, Li-kun."

He frowned. "Sakura, are you free t-"

"No," she cut in. "I'm working."

"Maybe tomorrow?" he asked.

"I'm probably busy."

He sighed but nodded in understanding. "I come here most days, around about this time if you ever want to talk. I just . . ." he trailed off, sadness evident in his eyes as he looked at her. "It's really good to see you, Sakura," he said softly.

"Yeah, you too," she choked out. "If you don't mind I've got some people to serve and . . ."

"It's fine," he assured her. "Hopefully I'll see you around."

'Hopefully . . .'

It was three weeks before Sakura took him up on his offer and only because he had taken to almost stalking her until she agreed. Kimiya had told him when her shifts were and so he showed up at least once during each of her shifts as though to remind her of his offer.

"I'm really glad you decided to meet me, Sakura," he started. "I was starting to develop a serious coffee addiction just so I had an excuse to see you."

"You know we do hot chocolates as well," she reminded him, her voice low and emotionless.

"Tea too, I assume," he agreed, "but if I wanted tea or hot chocolate I would just go home. My apartment is like five minutes walk from campus."

"Why are you so okay?" she complained suddenly. "Why is this so hard for me and so easy for you?"

He looked at her gently, the same look he used to give her when they were together. "Because I'm just so happy to see you, Sakura, that I can't think of anything else," he told her sincerely. "I just wish you were in better spirits. Where's the beautiful, genki girl I fell in love with, ne?"

"You broke her," Sakura told him coolly. "This is what's left."

"I'm sorry, Sakura," he answered. "I really am."

"If you're so sorry and if you loved me as much as you said you did, then why did you leave me, Syaoran?" she exclaimed, letting go of the question that had been her burden for the past two years. "At least tell me that."

"I will," he told her, "but let's walk as we talk."

She nodded and the two left the café together, Syaoran guiding them towards a more secluded part of campus where they could be afforded some privacy.

"The clan elders gave me an ultimatum," he explained to her. "They said I could marry you on the condition that I took over as the head of the corporation before I turn twenty-five.

"If I didn't, then they would give the position to my sister Xiefa and I could pursue a degree in archeology like I've wanted since I was ten," he finished.

"So you choose archeology over me?" she asked, anger the only thing keeping her from crying at his admission. "At least now I know that looking at centuries old garbage makes you happier than I ever did." She knew her father would be killed if he heard her talk like that about his profession, but it was the best way to get her point across.

"It's not like that, Sakura," he said desperately. "It's not even how miserable I knew I'd be as head of Li Corp. I did it for you."

"You left me for me?" she asked him sarcastically. "Don't pretend like you were doing me a favour, Syaoran. You did this for you, and nobody else. You decided that your dreams were more important than what we had, and I was a fool for thinking otherwise."

"No, they're not, Sakura," he told her, his voice rising as they argued. "You would have been miserable as my wife, Sakura. I would have neglected you. I would have spent long nights at the office, spending all my time and energy on those things, coming home to you when I could and then treating you like dirt even though you'd be the only good thing in my life.

"I'd drink myself to an early grave. Probably hit you on a bad night. Have affairs. I would make your life a living hell," he assured her, his thoughts full of self-deprecation and loathing as he thought of what could have been.

"Syaoran, you are not your father," she told him. "You don't have to make his mistakes."

"They're unavoidable," he told her. "My father was going to be a human rights lawyer before he married my mother," he said, revealing a small part of his past that had never been known to Sakura. "He gave up everything he believed in to be with her – to be a Li – just so he could commit the same human rights violations he had sworn at law school to prevent.

"That's what killed him," he said sadly, crying for the first time in years. "It wasn't the alcohol or the telephone pole or whatever else they wrote on the damned autopsy report. It was his own hypocrisy and he ended up hating my mother for it.

"I never wanted to do that to you, Sakura," he finished sadly. "I don't want to end up hating you."

She nodded slowly, tears leaking form her eyes as she took him slowly in her arms, touching the one she loved for the first time since he left. "I-I understand," she told him quietly, the words leaving her as he sobbed quietly into her shoulder.

She wanted to tell him how much he hurt her in leaving, how much she loved him even now and wanted to be with him. She wanted to scream at him and tell him that he should have let her decide what life she wanted to lead instead of making that choice for both of them. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, but there was no point. It all would have ended the same. She wouldn't let him choose her in the same way that he wouldn't let her subject herself to the life he foresaw – they cared too much to subject the other to that misery.

And so she just held him close and told him the three words she knew he needed to hear.

"I forgive you."