o n c e · u p o n · a · t i m e

c h a p t e r. i : l i k e · c i n d e r e l l a

There was a knock at the door. A frantic scurrying ensued as a tall, aging man answered the door.

"Yes?"

The messenger at the door bowed slightly. "Begging your pardon, but I have a letter from Lord Fujitaka to his household." He waved a scroll importantly.

The butler blinked, as he took the scroll and nodded. "Thank you. I shall inform the young lady Kinomoto right away."

The messenger nodded as the butler closed the door. The butler eyed the scroll, before calling out loudly. "Mistress Sakura!"

His call rang through the large manor, echoing eerily. There was no answer.

"Mistress!" he called again.

Still no answer.

"Mistress Sakura!" he called desperately, making his way to the dining room, where several servants bustled about.

"What are you yelling about, Benkei?" another servant asked him, frowning. "You'll ruin your voice that way."

"I am sorry, Suki," the butler, Benkei, said shortly. "But a letter arrived for the young mistress, from her father. I expect she'd like to read it, so –"

"Oh, she's off with that Takashi rascal," the servant woman, Suki said airily. "She'll back before you know it, and a right old mess too, I'm sure."

As if punctuating her response, the faint admonishings of an older woman could be heard, and protestings of a young girl filled the hallway, as servants paused to listen.

"…running off with that servant boy, mistress, you couldn't be ashamed of yourself, could you? Day after day, the same old riddance, how a young lady of your breeding could run off with him, rolling around in the dirt, and look at you! Filthy!"

"But Yukari, Yamazaki is my best friend! And I like playing with him, it's fun!"

"Fun! Good heavens, child, what a young lady like you would find in a scoundrel like that! It's high time you picked yourself up, young miss, and groomed yourself properly, your father will be home soon, and I don't think he'd like it very much if he saw you rolling around in the mud, beating the daylights out of the poor boy –"

There were giggles.

"Of course he wouldn't mind, he lets me do it all the time," the young girl protested indignantly. "And Father finds it amusing, why can't I?"

The door burst open, revealing a mud-covered eight-year-old girl being dragged along with a disheveled servant, red in the face.

"Yukari! Mistress!" Suki cried. "Whatever took you so long? And Mistress Sakura, why are you so filthy?"

"What's that?" Sakura pointed to the scroll in Benkei's hand.

"It's a letter from your father, child," Benkei said, smiling gently. "And I don't think – whoa! Steady on there, girl!"

The young Sakura dashed to the butler and snatched the scroll from the butler's hand.

"Father's letter!" she cried, slitting the seal and unrolling it, and reading it out loud. The servants gathered around her, to hear what their master had to say.

"My dearest Sakura, and most loyal helpers," she began. The servants smiled, for Fujitaka was a kind man, he would never call them servants, but rather helpers.

"It has been a most tiresome battle, and the skirmishes have lasted day in and day out, but finally, I am happy to announce that we have won the battle! Though there were great losses, and I grieve for those who were lost in the battlefield.

However, apart from sustaining a few minor scratches, I am well, and am returning in a fortnight. There is also something else that I must tell you, something which I am sure will make you all very happy."

"I wonder what that is," Yukari mused, fanning herself.

"Hush, Yukari! While fighting a particularly nasty battle, one of my dearest friends was killed, the Captain Daidouji. He told me to look after his wife and daughters, and I agreed. However, after meeting with the Lady Daidouji, I must say that I think she would be a perfect mother to my little Sakura. Sakura, I am sure you will be very happy, for I will have a new bride and you, a mother…" Sakura trailed off, her eyes widening. Her mouth hung open, her eyes were filling with tears.

"No!" she shouted. The servants jumped as she shouted again. "No, no, no, no, no!"

And she burst into tears and fled from the room, her mud-caked gown and girdle rustling against her. The scroll lay on the ground, where she had dropped it in anger.

"Oh dear," Suki said, straightening. "I'd better check on her, to see if she's all right -"

"No, Suki," Benkei shook his head. "Leave her be. The poor child is just upset. Maybe if we left her alone for a while. Young Sakura has never known a mother, and perhaps she's just scared. It'll all be sorted out in good time, she's quite sensible and she'll learn that this will be the best thing that's happened here."

"I hope so," Yukari said, straightening up nervously. "Master Fujitaka deserves some peace, the poor man having to raise a little girl all by himself! And to think there will be more little girls running about this place! I can hardly stand one!"

"Now Yukari," Benkei smiled as he picked up the fallen scroll. "Those other girls won't be a wild thing like our Sakura. Don't forget, they were raised properly, by a Lady mother, no less. Perhaps this is what Sakura really needs. Who knows, maybe the Lady Daidouji can teach Sakura thing or to about manners. The poor child has never really had someone to teach her about how to be a lady."

Benkei and Yukari had been married for well over ten years, although they rarely acted like it. Suki shook her head.

"Well, let's get back to work," she said wearily. "If the mistress doesn't come down by suppertime, one of you go down and get her. How about you, Beneki? She's always seemed to listen to you, if not any other."

Beneki sighed. "All right then. Let's hope Sakura doesn't feel too strongly about this…"

Behind a bolted door, Sakura lay facedown in a pile of hay, her entire form shaking. She was hiding in the stables, it was her favorite place to hide. She had always preferred the warm stables to her room; chilly and forbidding, a cage for a young girl like herself, she'd found. The only part she loved about it was the bookshelf, housing different books from all over the world, her father had collected for her, and read to her one by one.

She sniffed and sat up, wiping her face with dirt-covered hands. Her dress was drenched with mud, her hands and face and hair caked with grime and sweat, and she smelt of the stable. But that didn't bother her. She lived a wild life, and Yukari often complained that if it weren't for her, Sakura would spend her days bathing in the mud and fighting with the lads, and never take another bath in her life. Which was true, but Sakura couldn't help it: she enjoyed the wild life too much. If it meant she didn't live like a proper lady, then she supposed that was it.

Her father didn't help at all. Rather than hiring a governess to teach her sewing and etiquette, he encouraged her to live life as she did, teaching her how to climb trees, swim in the estate lake, how to properly whip a rascal, and even more. Sakura had once had a brother, Touya, who had died during infancy, and often Sakura thought her father treated her like the son he'd once had, and lost.

Because, in reality, they were all the other had: he was her mother and father, she was both his son and daughter, and he had always promised her that it would remain like that. They would remain two peas in a pod, and there would never be a third party.

In the bookshelf, most of the volumes were leather bound and thick, but she had read all of them, both with her father's help and by herself, and she was proud, for she doubted most eight-year-old girls could read, let alone read thick volumes meant for men her father's age. One of her favorites was a collection of children's tales, however, and she had spent many a day thumbing through the wafer-thin pages, reading the fancy lettering and admiring the beautiful illustrations. Her favorite tale by far was The Little Cinder Girl, and it was about a young girl whose mother had passed away, leaving her father to bring up the girl. But the father remarried and left the daughter with a horrible stepmother and two horrible stepsisters, and they made her do all the housework, and named her Cinderella out of spite. And then, one day there was a ball and the sisters left Cinderella behind and her fairy godmother let her go and she and the prince fell in love but at the stroke of midnight, Cinderella ran away but left her slipper behind, and because her own feet were so very tiny, the prince looked through the kingdom and at last found Cinderella because her slipper fit her.

Sakura looked at her own feet. They were big and clumsy, like her hands. Not the kind of hands a prince would notice and remember. She wasn't slender and slight, she was rather tall and masculinely built. No, she was not a lady, but she was no Cinderella either. And she wasn't about to be! What if this new mother was horrible to her, and treated her like a servant? And there were even stepsisters along with it!

Sakura shook her head resolutely. No! She would not be a Cinderella! She would not let her father remarry and get away with it! Had he not promised her that they would always remain one and the same? Then why was he breaking his promise to her?

"He doesn't…love her…does he?" she stammered out loud.

The stable door opened.

"If he does, mistress Sakura, then maybe you should at least give him a chance," Benkei said softly, sitting beside Sakura. "And even if he doesn't, then you still should give the master a chance. Whatever Master Fujitaka has in mind is for your good as well as his."

Sakura sniffed as Benkei handed her a handkerchief , and dabbed at her eyes and nose.

"But he promised, Benkei," she said, a complaint in her voice. "He promised."

"Yes," Benkei agreed. "He did promise. But think about it. You will be a lady soon. Very soon, it will be time for you to attend finishing school, and then court, and then, perhaps, you will be getting married after that."

Sakura's eyes popped open. "I don't want to!" she cried. "I want to stay here at the manor forever! I don't want to leave you, or Yukari, or Suki, or any of the rest!"

Benkei stroked the little girl's hair. "That's what they all say, little mistress. But in the end, you'll see that this is for the better. You need a mother, and your father needs a wife. This house needs a lady, can't you see that? It will be for the best. You will have a mother, Sakura! Think of it! A mother! And two wonderful new sisters!"

Sakura sniffed. "I don't want anyone. What happens if they are horrible to me…what happens if I end up like the little cinder girl?"

Benkei snorted. "Mistress, that was a story. Things like that happen only in fairy tales. This is a wonderful lady, a wife of your father's friend. And they are well-bred as well. They can help you turn into a proper young lady rather than the little spitfire you are now."

"I don't want to." Sakura was obstinate.

Benkei shook his head. "Your mother would have wept, seeing you like this. Had you known her, she would have made you a lady, rather than the tree-climbing, water-treading, wild thing you are now."

Sakura thought carefully. Now that Benkei shone light upon it, how bad could this woman be? The Lady Daidouji was her father's friend's wife. Surely she could not be that bad! And she already had two daughters of her own, then could she not accept the daughter of her father's, if she loved him so much?

Deep down inside, Sakura knew Lady Daidouji could never mend the hole that Nadeshiko Amamiya Kinomoto had left behind. But now that she thought about it, having a stepmother didn't seem all that bad.

She just had no idea how wrong she was.

D i s c l a i m e r : I do not own Card Captor Sakura or the plot of Ever after.

A / N : Well, while working on Undercover, I've decided to unveil my second out of many upcoming ventures. The continuation of this story depends on the success of this chapter, but it's hopelessly pathetic, reading over it, I'm kinda ashamed, but oh well. It's based on Ever After, with Drew Barrymore and Anjelica Huston and Dougray Scott, which I fell in love with the first time I saw. So please don't flame me if it seems familiar, credit is where credit is due, and I don't own Ever After, please see disclaimer above.

Anyway….

R.S.V.P! (Review, S'Il Vous Plait!)

Lotsa lub,

- Rimjhim