A Primrose for Mirror
by Morgan D.
I borrow Card Captor Sakura's characters from CLAMP and Kodansha every now and then to take them for a stroll.
This story takes place during episode 61 of the anime. Spoilers for the second and third season (Yue).
Hints of Shounen Ai.
Glossary:
Oniichan - older brother
~*~
Part II
Mirror and the Memories of the Past
Go shopping with Oniichan... No, no, no, no... The bitter taste of failure was already slipping down her throat.
He could tell. She had met him twice, and both times he had been able to tell the difference.
Mirror pouted. Didn't the Mistress know that her copying tricks were ineffective against psychic humans? It was the kind of thing Kerberus-sama was supposed to warn her about. Maybe she should remind the Guardian...?
But then...
She blushed. Then the Mistress wouldn't summon her to be with Oniichan anymore. And being with the Mistress's brother felt nice. Really nice.
He reminded her of Master Clow somehow. Same height, similar hair color, same dark blue eyes. And just as gentle. The Mistress's brother's smile was sadder though. Lonelier.
But there was something else bringing her thoughts about her creator today. The direction the Mistress and the boy had taken... Mirror could feel the pull too. A strong aura pulsing like a beacon call.
Saying that that aura was familiar to her would be a serious understatement. She had lived inside that warm presence, breathed it, fed from it, for almost all her life. Her first memories were of an ethereal, tight embrace from that loving energy, of a soft voice calling her name, baptizing her, summoning her to the outside and to the broad grin of the kind man whose spirit she felt inside her. Master Clow Read.
He had always been with her then. No matter in which form she was, no matter how far he could be, his presence had been the only permanent reality in her existence. Sometimes she had been put apart from the deck, or sent alone on a mission without the Guardians' escort -- the Master trusted her that much! --, but still that aura would follow her, or rather guide her, or rather be her, always, doubtlessly.
That is...
...until the day it vanished.
Well, it didn't quite vanish, but...
She couldn't explain what had happened, really. One day everything was perfectly all right, and the next Master Clow was summoning them, all the fifty-two of them. He had stood smiling in the center of the circle they had formed around him... and told them that he was leaving.
Leaving, he had said. And of course, all the Cards could have asked him was "Where are we going?" Because wherever he went, they would too. Or vice-versa, it was hard to tell for sure. Anyway, it was a given.
However, she had felt the two Guardians' presence hovering nearby as well. And they were sad. So, so sad. She had tried to remember one single occasion when Kerberus-sama had projected such distress, in vain. And Yue-sama... Oh my, Yue-sama was in sheer agony, and all the Moon-ruled Cards -- Mirror included -- were flinching in agony with him, as he seemed unable to keep his whirling emotions to himself...
Yue-sama... always so calm, so in control... It was incredible. Implausible.
Through their Guardians' mood the Cards had understood the gravity of the moment, although Master Clow did nothing but smile as if that was the happiest day in his life. Well, most of the Cards had understood. The foolish Jump had tried to look smart, mocking all the others for falling in another of the Master's antics.
Still, it was impossible to blame Jump. Because when the Master said that he would be going to a place where none of the Cards and not even the Guardians could follow him, and that he would never come back... Mirror thought Jump had to be right. That could only be a joke.
Only the Master's jokes were always funny and this one wasn't funny at all.
Dark and Light had stepped forward to ask him what would become of them all. Those two were the wisest ones and already knew what Mirror and the others had only learned that night: that without the Master, only Kerberus-sama could survive. The deck would die to the outside world, and eventually the inner world would collapse and take them with it too. Yue-sama would simply fade into nonentity. And what would the Sun Guardian do then, with nothing and no one to take care of?
Mirror shivered in remembrance, and had to fight to keep her balance on the roller blades. That had been the first time that the Other was mentioned.
Master Clow had actually spoken of the "new master", and explained how the Guardians and the deck would be imbued with their creator's last life energies so they could survive until that new master was chosen by Kerberus-sama and judged by Yue-sama. But for most Cards, it was still the Other. The one that would steal them away from their real Master. Only five of them were willing to give any Other a chance: Wood, Glow, Libra, Flower and Windy. All the others, although at different levels, were determined to help the Guardians to give the Other a hard time.
Mirror sometimes wondered if that could be considered a riot. If Master Clow had really wanted them to have a new master... But Yue-sama was so adamant about it... that no one would ever be good enough to replace Master Clow...
That night, as their creator flooded them all with his aura like he had never done before, to the point of losing the ground under his feet and falling on his knees, needing the help of the Guardians to stand, Mirror felt Yue-sama was right. The one who had given them life was then giving them all of himself; the one they were supposed to protect was then sacrificing his ultimate strengths for them. It made no sense.
And when it was done, he had shaken his head vehemently at the worried Guardians that were trying to carry him to his bed. Instead, he had held the whole deck in his hands, touching each of them separately, murmuring soothing words to every Card as he bid them farewell.
For Mirror he had said, "You'll always be far more beautiful than anyone you'll ever copy."
Master Clow...
He had put the deck inside the Book then, carefully, reverently... and more and more Mirror felt that couldn't be real. She and most of the Cards were still hoping that the next time they would be summoned out, everything would still be the same and Master Clow would be there to smile at them again.
But they weren't summoned again. Not for a long, long time. And although the inner world still breathed and they could still talk among themselves and also to the Guardians sealed on the Book's cover, the Master was gone. His energy was there to feed them, but devoid of his warm presence, of his happiness, of his love. And without him, they soon found out there was very little to talk about.
The Other's appearance had changed that, of course, markedly when she managed to defeat all the predisposition against her, even Yue-sama's -- arguably, perhaps --, and became the new Mistress, loved and respected, as Master Clow had intended. Suddenly there was a lot to talk about, to be happy about, to worry about, to gossip about. The commotion inside the Book was so big that not rarely the tome would fall from the Mistress's desk, apparently making a lot of noise on the outside and causing a scowling Kerberus-sama to reprimand them.
But the day Firey had returned to them with the new look and swearing by the Book Seal that he had sensed Master Clow's aura in the outside... not only sensed, but sent by the new Mistress to fight his magic!... That was when the real hubbub started.
Mirror didn't know what to make of those stories... After Firey, it was Song that had a piano filled with Master Clow's energy thrown at her. Sword had cut off a net of invisible strings -- definitely one of the Master's old tricks -- and the ear of a giant bear doll that had the Master's monogram sewed in it -- well, Fly had been there too, but wouldn't tell them a thing, as usual... Then Erase showed up babbling about how he had saved the Mistress from drowning in a pit of stuffed sheep... And the most frightening moment, when Dash got out of control and fled in panic towards the warm familiar presence of their creator... and ended up merging with the Mistress's brother's bicycle!
At first Mirror wondered if the Sun-ruled Cards were throwing some elaborate prank at their siblings. It didn't stop there though. Jump, Loop, Big, Little, Sleep, Float, Shield, Shadow, Freeze... Six of those were Moon-ruled and had narrated similar adventures. They couldn't be ALL making those stories up.
And the night before it had finally been Mirror's turn. Obeying Mistress Sakura's call, she had crossed to the outside world, the cherry-scented magic replacing the dying remains of the Master's faded energy in her... while his presence wafted somewhere in the distance, as real and heartwarming as in her precious memories. He was out there, he had to be, she couldn't be mistaken.
But now the aura she breathed, fed from, lived in... was the Other's.
So confusing.
"Sakura!"
Mirror almost fell on her bottom, so startled she was at the sudden hail. Lost in her thoughts, she had practically forgotten that...
Oh dear. Oniichan was here.
~*~
April 2nd, 2002
Author's notes:
- Both anime and manga aren't all that clear about which Cards are ruled by the Sun and which are ruled by the Moon, so I made my own division. Feel free to disagree with me.
- Most of the Cards gave Sakura (or Syaoran) a hard time, while Woody, Glow, Flower and Windy accepted capture easily, hence my conjectures on the Cards' predisposition about the "Other". I included Libra, one of those Cards we know nothing about, because I wanted to. Hn.
This story is part of the Clow no Tenshi timeline. Read the other stories of the series in the Only the Inevitable website:
http://www.solitudeofafallingstar.hpg.com.br/cardcaptorsakura.html