Covered in Rain

Written by: Ciuline Ihmenjo

Card Captor Sakura does not belong to me. The characters in Card Captor Sakura do not belong to me. CLAMP owns CCS. Besides, even if you do try and sue me, I have no money.

Little words…

Wow… it's about time that I finally updated this story. Mostly, I've run into a patch of really really bad writer's block with Fallen Neo, so I decided to go poking through some of my old writing files to see what I had there. I found this story, read through the reviews for the first chapter, and figured 'why not?'

Basically, I had originally decided to leave Covered in Rain at a cliff hanger-esque ending so that I could decide whether or not to continue writing it. I had started a second chapter for the story, but I did not have the confidence to post it. It was the urging of one of my friends that caused me to post the first chapter in the first place. I just didn't expect any fan response. So, here you go… after a very long wait, I present the second chapter of Covered in Rain!

Italicized words are thoughts. Bold words are emphasis. CAPS WORDS are shouting.

o()o Approaching Storm o()o

I think that I ended up dropping her.

At least, she fell first, and I let go. When I think back on it, I really don't remember what happened. Since she won't really bring up the subject (most likely due to a gross embarrassment) I don't think I'll ever know. It's not all that important though, because she never hit the ground. But she hadn't released her death-grip on my shirt. We ended up in a tangled heap of arms and legs. A soft thump announced another awkward moment. She rubbed a bump on her head from where it collided with mine, wincing slightly at the gesture. Her face turned a shade of deep crimson, and she tried to cover herself up. At the same time, she hid her face in the crook of my elbow. My sister didn't notice, or at least pretended not to.

"If you are going to do that in my house, then please take it upstairs." She tapped a foot on the ground, stooping to gather up the umbrella.

I glared at her. "Anything that I do cannot possibly be as bad as watching a kaiju and a gaki fumbling around trying to kiss each other."

She slammed her foot down on the floor. "I AM NOT A MONSTER!" Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she returned a glare that hardened in my direction. "And Syaoran is not a gaki."

"Whatever." I shrugged, flashing a lopsided grin in her direction. She made some noise of protest while I glanced around, trying to locate the third person that should be in the room. Meilin had already taken her leave. It was a silent one that left me confused on how she had managed to untangle herself from me without my notice. Most likely, she had not wanted the situation to be any more awkward. The small puddle soaked into the carpet was the only sign that she had existed there at all. I could hear her footsteps pattering down the upstairs hall.

"Who was that?" Sakura asked. She shook a few stray drops of rain from her head. Currently, she was peering in the mirror in the front hall, rearranging a few loose strands of hair and checking to see the state of her own clothes. A slight grimace appeared on her face when she realized that she had splashed water on her dress.

"What do you mean 'that'?"

"Simple, that girl you were with." She added, "I thought it was obvious," but that was under her breath. By now, she had stopped grooming herself in the mirror and was making her way to the kitchen. With nothing else to do, I followed. "She looked like some sort of prostitute." She choked on her next breath, almost stumbling over her feet. "Touya, you aren't—"

"Can it squirt," I muttered. Reaching out with one hand, ruffling her hair, I flashed her an honest smile. It wasn't hard to lie; I had been doing it for years now. Although, this time, it was not the case.

"So she wasn't some girl you picked up off the streets?"

"She's just an old friend who's just run into a patch of bad luck." I smiled and shrugged almost helplessly. "Really, it's none of your concern. She can sort through this herself."

"And who exactly is she?" Her foot tapped against the floor again, a loud patter compared to the soft rushing of feet on the upstairs carpet. She folded her arms over her chest and pursed her lips together. "What's Dad going to say about her?"

"He's not going to say anything. He's working late." I closed my eyes and shook my head. "Besides, she'll be out of the way." A door opened softly and closed in the background. Moments later, the water started running.

"She looks like she was beaten," Sakura said softly. "What exactly happened to her?"

I gritted my teeth. "It's not your concern."

"You brought her into the house!" She stormed over to me, jabbing a finger into my chest. "Why won't you tell me?"

"You wouldn't understand." I shook my head. "It's not your fault she's like this. And plus, the gaki might worry."

"Syaoran is not a gaki!" she fumed. Then her head tilted in the way that it usually did when she was confused by a certain subject. "Wait, why would Syaoran be worried?" she asked. Her index finger was at her bottom lip and her eyebrow was furrowed with concentration.

"Don't think too hard," I said with a slight smile, "you may pop your brain."

I heard her growl at me in the background and ducked just in time for a pillow to go sailing over my shoulder. "I'll pop you first!" she muttered, walking briskly over to pluck the pillow from the ground. She shook her head and tossed it back on the couch, where it landed with a wet slap. Her body followed the pillow, landing with a flop on the cushions only seconds later. And she leapt off the couch only a moment later as her back encountered the large wet spot there.

Thankfully, I had managed to change the subject. I don't think that Meilin would go though all of the trouble of flying secretly to Japan just to have Syaoran find out. Maybe she had told him, but, at the time, I didn't know what she had done. My best bet was to wait and see what she wanted to do. Besides, as much as I didn't fully approve of her current relationship (and I doubted that I ever would fully approve it), I didn't want to place Sakura under any pressure of having to keep a secret from Syaoran.

"As for myself, I'm going up to my room." I smiled. Her eyes narrowed. "If I remember correctly, someone owes me a favor for waking up late and having to get a ride to school from her older brother." Stuffing one hand into my pocket, I waved the other one as I turned. "That means… it's your turn to make dinner tonight."

She hrumphed and I heard the heel of her shoe slam into the floor. "What do you plan to do about all this water?"

"I'll clean the carpets and furniture tomorrow or something. I need to make sure our guest is comfortable."

"And you still aren't telling me who this guest is?"

"Of course not."

Maybe Meilin would tell her. I only shrugged and trudged up the stairs.

O o o o o O

I only had enough time in my room to slip my sneakers off and collapse on the bed. My arms were sprawled out, one draped over the side until it was just above the floor. That was the point when she entered.

There was no noise. She was a ghost drifting slowly along wood grain and past pink-tinted insulation. By that time, I had closed my eyes and began to drift off to sleep. Sakura would usually wake me for dinner, and if she did not, I would have leftovers waiting for me in the fridge with a note teasing me about sleeping in. It wasn't like I didn't do that exact same thing when she managed to wind up drooling all over a paper about the Tokugawa era or a sheet of calculus problems.

At the present moment, I needed to mull over what was happening. I wanted to figure out why she had come to me. Maybe it was the feeling of loss that we shared, but I didn't recall her knowing that Yukito had left me. Maybe it was because she didn't know where to turn. It could have been because I was the one who would know the least about her. Still, why me? The ghosts in her closet may need to be locked inside; any of her friends or the people who knew her would manage to open that door. When the old wounds opened, she would die inside.

That is a horrible feeling.

The sound of soft footsteps echoing off the walls was the only indication that I received of her presence. Her black hair was slick and extended well past her shoulders and almost to her waist. She wore it almost like a waterfall – a black torrent that fell over the lines of her body. The dress and other clothes were draped over her arm. She clutched the pair of shoes in her hands. Now she wore a large, pink towel that I gathered to belong to my sister. She also wore her wounds. A livid bruise began at her shoulder, just where the dress would cover it, and extended down to the towel line; the one near her neck almost merged with it. The mark showed no signs of fading and did not get any smaller there, so I only figured that it continued well past that point. At that moment, she must have caught me looking at her, because she turned to the side.

"Do you have a trash can?" she murmured. She approached the bed and stood before me, still turned slightly to the side. Her head angled down again, and she turned it from side to side as if examining a mark on the floor.

"Over there." I pointed, and when she didn't move, I gently tapped her on the arm. She jumped and apologized profusely, switching between a flurry of Chinese and Japanese that I couldn't understand. I only caught the word 'sorry' at least a dozen times.

In that period of time, her bag plopped to the floor. It landed with a wet splat that seemed to knock her out of her daze. Shaking her head a few times, she scanned the room for the trash can. Upon finding it, she trudged over to the small plastic cylinder and dumped the load in her arms into it. Then she just stood there, still as if frozen at that exact moment in time.

"Meilin?" I questioned. "Hey, Meilin?" I repeated her name, a little louder this time. The clanging and curses from the kitchen probably would cover up any noise from my room. She still didn't look at me. Instead, she continued to stare down into the depths of my trash can. I sat up, calling her name softly. She looked up, the same sad expression on her face as when she arrived earlier drenched in water and bruises. The only difference now was the water dripping off her body had been pumped through copper pipes and through a shower nozzle instead of plummeting from the heavens. The corner of her mouth began twitching before her knees gave out beneath her. She made no motion to catch herself. A loud crash echoed though the room as her head smacked against my chair. I heard the hollow thump before her arms brushed against a stack of papers off my desk and sent them fluttering down to the floor. It all happened in an instant where I didn't have the time to get to her.

"Ow…" she muttered, rubbing at her head. An overturned desk chair lay at her side, luckily missing her and thus avoiding any other injuries. My papers were scattered around her, some of them helping to absorb the water still trapped in her hair. I rushed over as she began gathering them into a nice stack. "I'm sorry," she said, "I screw up everything." A soft chuckle escaped her lips. "Look at me," she continued, "I don't even have the magic that my clan wants. So they try and marry me off to some guy who does. But even that doesn't work. I did something… maybe he did something because of what I did. I just…" She trailed off. "Look at me!" she cried out after dozens of awkward seconds. "I can't even stand up correctly." She began to sob, still stacking the papers in an almost mechanical way. The tears ran down her cheeks to be sucked up by the pink fluff wrapped around her body. I began to help her, and she broke down.

"Hey… hey… it's..." I stopped. It was the only thing I could think of to say. The words probably would not do too much for her. And of course they sounded mundane and inconsiderate. She had probably heard them millions of times before.

"Okay?" she snorted. "No, it's not okay." She sniffled, rubbing her face with her arm. Every time it passed her cheek, she winced.

I didn't know where to go from there. I placed a hand on her shoulder and used my other hand to tilt her head upward. "Start telling yourself that everything will be okay, and maybe something will look up." I thought I saw the sides of her lips turn slightly upwards, but, when I blinked, her mouth was still set into the same downcast eyes and twitching lips.

"What do you know?" She slapped my hand away. "You're not like me!" Meilin pointed her thumb at her chest. My papers lay forgotten beside her leg. "You won't ever know what it's like for everyone who you know to cast you away." She turned and I heard her slam her fist against my bed. Thankfully, it was only the mattress because the sheets fluttered back down shortly thereafter. She fumed and I could tell she was grinding her fist against my bed. "You are accepted by your family and everyone around you. It seems like I'm only a nuisance to them." Her head bowed again until her chin tapped against her collarbone.

"Are you?" I decided not to say anything about my feelings. As different as they were from her – after all, I had been through an entirely different series of events – she acted much like I had reacted after Yukito had left.

"Of course not!" She whirled, almost violently so that her hair swirled about her body. Droplets of moisture flew outwards, striking everything within a short radius of her body. A pair of ruby orbs spit fire at me and she seemed to glow, radiating her anger like a fiery red heat. Her feet were spread wide, her hands balled tightly against her sides.

But, after a few seconds, her shoulders sagged and she sank to her knees. We both remained in the same position until her shoulders started to jerk and the sobs returned. "I-I… I just… I just want them to acknowledge Meilin the person. Why can't they even do that?"

I was at a loss for words. Loss was nothing new to me, but I never knew the feeling of exclusion that she described. I doubted that I ever would. Her gaze traveled up my chest and to my face, her eyes still glistening with tears.

"Why?" she whispered, rubbing at red-rimmed eyes with her arm. A muffled series of sniffled followed as she began sobbing once more.

"Here," I said after a moment, "you look like you could use a few of these." Reaching out to my desk, I grabbed a box of tissues at passed it to her. She smiled, but only for a moment, before letting loose with a loud honk.

"I'm sorry," she said. Black strands had worked their way loose from their delicate perch on her head. Instead of brushing them back, she only sat there, mulling over something that she couldn't quite place. "I shouldn't have come here."

"I don't really mind," I said, waving my hands in front of my face. Shaking my head softly, I placed a hand on my shoulder. Instead of what I expected, she jumped backwards, scrambling away from me on a set of frantic hands and feet.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, easing herself into a sitting position before pulling her legs beneath her. "I'm little more than a screw up. No one really appreciates me except as little more than an annoyance."

"You're not." I sighed, wondering for a moment what had happened to her that gave her these thoughts. "I mean, no one is like that. No matter how much you want to think like that, you definitely aren't a screw up."

She pursed her lips and her brow crinkled. After a moment, she stood up and dusted herself off. "Do you have anything I can wear? You said something about clothes earlier."

"Yeah," I nodded, waving a hand in the direction of my dresser, "just pick whatever you want… or whatever fits you. I don't mind."

"You don't?" Her tone was a mixture of disbelief and amazement. She smiled and stepped over to the dresser, pulling open the middle drawer to examine the shirts I had folded there. I took her only a few seconds to find a shirt she liked. The bottom drawer flew open and she rooted around until she found a pair of sweatpants. Turning slightly, she began to slide the towel down her body.

"Privacy," I mumbled before leaving the room. She made a soft noise of surprise when the door clicked shut. A few moments later, she poked her head out my door. Her eyes met mine for only a moment before she began to stare at the ground. Awkward silence followed as we tried to think of something to say.

"Maybe I'll go out and sit on the roof," she said finally. "I usually can't bother anyone there."

"It's raining." I pointed to where droplets still pattered against my window.

"I've been in worse."

"It's really difficult to get onto the roof?" I said with a shrug.

"I'll find a way."

"I'd still prefer if you would stay inside." I closed my eyes for a moment and upon opening them, found her face hovering inches in front of mine.

"Why?"

"Because," I said softly, "you aren't bothering me at all."

"I'm not?" she questioned. Her right eye twitched before she turned away, trudging back into my room. She collapsed on the bed and began crying softly. At first, I thought that I had done something terribly wrong. I walked to her, shutting the door softly behind me. Then I sat on the bed, placing a hand on her shoulder. I could only pat her head softly, running my hand through her hair as I pulled away from her. I continued until her sobs died down and her breathing rate returned to normal. She curled into a small ball and buried her head in the crook of my knee. It only took seconds for the small ball to ease into a more comfortable position.

"I'll go now," I whispered softly in her ear. "The couch is good enough for me."

I rose and began to start for the door. A sharp tug on my sleeve managed to prevent me from walking out the door.

"Please," she said, "please don't go. You're the only one who isn't telling me that I'm a screw up. And since you haven't done that, you haven't tried to usher me away either." She sniffled. "Please, you're the only person I've met to whom I don't seem to be burden." Her grip on my sleeve tightened. "Please?"

I shut my eyes. "Fine," I breathed, "I'll pull up a chair."

"Then, you're not leaving?"

"I don't have much a reason to leave." Not entirely true, as my stomach chose to silently remind me at that point. "So I guess the answer is no, I'm not leaving."

My words seemed to calm her a little, because she turned onto her side, wincing slightly at the action, and curled into a little ball. One hand darted out to snatch the covers until she had pulled them over her body.

I didn't see her move again.

Small reminders…

It has been a long while since I last updated. Wow, I really don't know what I'm going to do with this story, so please please don't pester me about updates. Quite frankly, I don't know when I'll get around to adding another chapter to this story. Maybe I'll wait for another night of rain while I'm listening to John Mayer and find some inspiration there.

See you next update: Ciuline Ihmenjo