Fate's Phoenix

Disclaimer: I love Card Captor Sakura, but sadly I do not own it. My use of it's characters is purely for fun. (Though if Clamp happens to read this and think it is brilliant... well that would be great too. XD) Anyway... I am poor, so no suing. Thank you. :)

Summary: Read within... I am not spoiling it for you. :3

Key:

- Dream State - , Flashback , ' thoughts ', " Dialogue "

Rating: T

Pairings: Sakura/Eriol

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(Several years later)

A silver-bladed sword sliced in a deadly arc, cleaving the creature of shadow neatly in two. One down... about a million more to go. The army of demons just never seemed to end. Swarming from all sides like a group of highly agitated bees.

Syaoran released a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding. A glance to one side revealed his young fiancee, the mistress of the cards, Sakura Kinomoto, laying waste to the horde with the powers of both Fire and Water. The two elementals swerved around her, doing a rather larger amount of damage than his own two hands could ever accomplish on their own. Even summoning the elements, as he could, would never bring him up to the standard that Sakura set, simply by existing. He didn't mind though, as long as he was by her side, saving the world, he simply didn't have it in him to feel outclassed. Remove the magic from the world... and he was an infinitely stronger fighter than her. Well-trained from birth, he could beat her in a physical battle any day of the week. Then again... remove the magic from the world, and there might never have been a reason for him to learn to fight in the first place.

He counted himself lucky every day that she had chosen him when she could have had anyone. Still, he couldn't help but get a nagging feeling in the bottom of his gut that their relationship would end someday. He didn't know how, and he didn't know why... but his own nightly meditations had made one thing clear... Sakura would not remain by his side forever, in fact Syaoran was uncertain that she'd ever really been his to begin with. Her choices made her an enigma of destiny. It was as though she was taunting it... thwarting it... by her very existence.

Syaoran couldn't imagine her ever leaving him... they were so much in love, and he knew he would rather die than ever see her lose such an emotion. But in spite of the warnings the future had brought, so far, so good. Syaoran prayed every day that it could go on like this forever in spite of the truth that he knew inside. And so far, his prayers had been answered.

"Why do you struggle so?" A voice broke in on Syaoran's thoughts. In spite of himself, he halted his assault on the enemies to stare about him in shock. Who was it that had spoken? These creatures had never before revealed the capacity for speech. God knew how often Sakura had tried to reason with them, back when the wars had first begun, but it had appeared that they simply did not have it in them to understand her pleas of peace and harmony. Even The Hope did her no good here... these creatures were built of a darkness so thick, that only destroying them entirely could even stop them from continuing their attacks. Somewhere in his mind, he knew that there had to be a larger entity creating these deadly little shadows... but whoever was pulling the strings had never before revealed themselves, and Sakura had barely enough energy left at the end of a day to summon The Shield card so that they could rest, let alone the amount of energy it would require for the two of them to somehow avoid the horde of monsters and try to seek out mastermind behind the scenes.

"You know your fate as well as I do. I, who am far higher on the food chain in this new world than you could ever hope to climb." The voice continued.

Syaoran narrowed his brown eyes and planted his feet firmly in the ground, taking up a stance that aimed to kill, once he could figure out which direction the voice was coming from. "Who are you?" he demanded.

Soft laughter reached his ears and he swung his sword around him in an arc, taking out the closest enemies in one well-aimed slash. "Show yourself!"

The demonic creatures directly to his right parted, leaving a rather wide path for whatever was about to come out of the forest. Syaoran judged that, whatever it was... this thing had to be huge. He glanced once more to his left, but realized he could no longer see Sakura amoung the thousands of dark heads that were separating them.

The sounds of several footfalls reached his ears, each series of steps almost impossible to hear thanks to the loud buzz that the creatures made, when combined into thousands like they were. Syaoran gave his full attention to the approaching monstrosity.

It was, as it turned out, a 15-foot-tall spider, with the head of a woman attached to the large, black insect body. Syaoran held his sword loosely at his side, calculating the trajectory needed to take her out in one hit.

She grinned down at him and laughed when she saw the pathetic look of hatred on his tiny face. She crossed her forelegs as a human might, studying him from her height. "Fool." she called him, spitting out a web of fine-spun silk. He dodged as best he could, but there wasn't much room to move in thanks to the demons, and after only a few moments, he was thoroughly trapped in her bindings. He struggled against his body-cage... but nothing seemed to loosen it.

"You have run out of time, my little friend." the spidress announced casually, drawing him up so that she could peer at him from a closer vantage. His little pod of silk swung in the air with his useless resistance.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Syaoran demanded, facing her directly, showing no fear whatsoever.

"It has been fun... watching you combat my little minions all these years, but the higher-ups insist that I draw this mascarade to its end. Torturing you has been most enjoyable, but there is something more that we want from this battle. Something, that only removing you from this world will accomplish."

Syaoran stared, the words she spoke drove a strange sort of fear into his heart, but he resisted showing any signs that she was affecting him. "What more could you possibly want from me being dead. I think that my death would be pretty much the end of anything you could possibly be able to accomplish."

The spidress laughed again, and shook her head, "Did you think this war was truly about you, my little friend? Did you honestly assume... that the whole point of the destruction of this pathetic little town you used to call home had anything at all to do with your life, or lack of one? No, no... my little friend. You have it all wrong. We have been waiting... oh so patiently... for something to be returned to us. Something which escaped our grasp several years ago. We thought, that by staging this war, and destroying this town, that it might return to us. But what we are seeking is stubborn... and smarter than we gave it credit for, so now my boss insists that perhaps we simply have not killed enough to warrant the return of what we lost."

"And... you think my death will bring back this... thing?" Syaoran asked, dumbfounded, trying desperately, without much success, to try to figure out what it was that had disappeared from Tomoeda before the war had begun... and why it was that his death, of all things, would bring said thing back.

"More specifically... the death of your little friend, over there." The spidress confessed, gesturing with one long leg in the direction of an amber-haired sorceress who was heading in the spiders direction as fast as she could kill the mob that kept them separated.

"Sakura!" Syaoran shouted, trying desperately to wiggle out of his trappings. So that's what the spider was after! It wasn't him at all. That made a lot more sense... Sakura was the only thing standing in the way of Tomoeda's complete and total disintegration, with her gone... the darkness would consume the world with a lot more ease.

Still... that's not what the spidress had said. She had said they wanted Sakura dead... to bring back something else. But... what could they possibly be looking for? Syaoran's head spun.

"Unfortunately for you," the spidress continued "her life will only become vulnerable, when her true love has died. So... that's why I'm here." the spidress explained. "You have proven to be quite difficult to kill, so they sent a stronger, more capable being, to ensure that all goes according to plan."

True love... the only power in the universe that was great enough to stand in the way of death. Syaoran had heard that somewhere before... but where? His concentration faltered. This was it... it was the end for him, but the spidress was wrong... and Syaoran knew it. Syaoran loved Sakura... that much was true. But there was something the enemy had forgotten, or maybe, they had never realized it at all... Sakura was the kind of person who drew love to her and inspired love in others without even trying. Syaoran's love might die today... and Sakura's friends may have been slaughtered in the war... but there was still at least one other person out there, who'd been spared the death of the others. Syaoran grinned sadly to himself. After all this time, this was the truth that he had not foreseen back when he had first met the extraordinary mistress of the cards, back when he'd first started falling in love with her. The only rival he'd ever had... and the only one who would matter now that his own life was about to end.

"Hiiragizawa..." Syaoran whispered under his breath, then he closed his eyes and summoned all the power he could find within himself.

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"Syaoran!" Sakura cried out with fury as she looked from her place within the horde to notice a rather larger enemy than she'd ever seen before. The small white ball of silk was undoubtedly the new prison for her love as it hung above the ground. Sakura's rage increased exponentially, The Firey growing in size and obliterating a path through the throng as fast as it could at it's mistresses command.

'Don't let him die!' she thought to herself, begging whatever invisible god there might be to spare the life of the one she loved.

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"What do you think you are doing?" The spidress demanded, observing the faint glow that was surrounding the young man. Then, without warning, his bindings tore away from his body and he landed nimbly on the ground, sword in hand. His eyes blazed a courage that only love could summon, his sword responding to the immense call of power it felt coursing through his veins.

The spidress roared and began to attack. Syaoran dodged as though he were made of nothing but air, sliding through the arachnid's eight legs as though he were dancing.

"Syaoran!"

He heard her calling his name... and knew what had to be done. Eyes glinting, he sliced forward severing several of the legs.

The bloodcurdling screech could not halt him from his intent. The spidress buckled and began to collapse, but not before she began to summon her own brand of magic, drawing in the power of the hordes around her by sucking them out of existance and reshaping them into new limbs. As the battle wore on, she became both faster and stronger with the help of her powers. Syaoran knew there wasn't much time.

Then, there she was, just within his line of sight. He summoned all of his strength to himself. "Good luck... Sakura." he muttered aloud, then thrust his glowing sword towards the young woman who stood only a few feet away.

"Syaoran!" she cried again as a blinding light encased her in a protective barrier. Just before it would momentarily blind her completely, she watched helplessly as her love was skewered on the end of a falling pincer.

Then, Sakura knew no more.

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~Rozu