Title: The Dressmaker's Bride (part 2)
Rating: T
Pairing: Tomoyo/Sakura
Spoilers: AU of the Card Captor Sakura verse (with a couple of familiar cameos!)
Summary: Sakura investigates an old, run-down mansion in her neighborhood and surprised to find that a new girl has moved in. Tomoyo Daidouji is a girl who has it all; wealth, beauty, taste. What could she possibly see in a poor little tomboy like Sakura?
Author's Note: Written for Cloverfield for the Secret Santa challenge.
When school started that September, Rika didn't come back to class with them. She'd received an unexpected scholarship for a much better school, the CLAMP Academy in Tokyo, and wouldn't be returning to Tomoeda. Sakura was happy for her, of course - at last, Rika would get to go to a school she really deserved - but her desk at school felt keenly empty.
(She'd come home that day to meet her brother's scowling face. "That makes five times I've called that house, asking to speak with Mr. and Mrs. Daidouji, and five times I've been given the runaround!" he said angrily.
Sakura rolled her eyes. "Niisan, I'm not six!" she had yelled. "I don't need you to coordinate play-dates with my friends' parents!"
"This isn't about that!" He'd slammed the phone back in the cradle, and turned his glare on her. "As your guardian I still have a right and a responsibility to keep in touch with her guardians. But I can't even get anyone to tell me where her parents are, or when they'll be back! Have you ever even seen them? Has she ever even talked about them?")
The last weekend of summer break found Sakura, instead of doing her summer assignments, belly-down on the plush carpet of Tomoyo's sitting room. Tomoyo had a new kitten, and she'd invited Sakura over to play with it while she worked on the dress.
The kitten was so young that it was still wobbly and unsure on its legs, and its fur stuck out in every direction like a surprised dandelion. The effect was compounded by the faint darker marks in the pale fur surrounding the nose and eyes, giving the wide blue eyes an expression of perpetual astonishment. Indeed, the world seemed like a fresh and novel place to this kitten, and she'd spent over an hour chasing a fluffy wand-toy dragged by Sakura across the carpet with no sign of tiring or even losing interest.
In the past weeks she'd spent enough time in Tomoyo's home to become familiar with the layout; even though the 'playroom' they currently occupied had more square footage than her entire apartment with Touya, she felt almost at home here. Her friend sat nearby on a heavy low armchair, thick with plush padding, with yards of cloth draped over her lap as her needle wove in and out with a steady rhythm. The peach-colored dress was slowly starting to take on a shape that Sakura would actually identify as a dress, after spending weeks as a disorganized scatter of tape and paper and bolts and ribbons. It wasn't complete yet, but Sakura could already tell it was going to be beautiful.
Tomoyo herself was no less beautiful; although she'd disclaimed that she "couldn't wear green," her dress today was a loose openwork knit of deep pine green over cream-colored silk. The dress itself was relatively plain, but the high collar was clasped at the front of the throat with a marvelous brooch; gold set with rubies and yellow sapphires formed the shape of a peacock, from which hung rows of pearl and emerald pendants making up the feathers of the peacock's tail, which swung slightly when she moved. Though she wore a loose, lacy crown of ruffles set on a wide headband, she had dispensed with the usual elegant wide-brimmed hat, and the long silk gloves had been set aside as her slender white fingers drove the needle in and out.
As all her attention was fixed on her work, Sakura felt safe to pause for a moment in her play and give Tomoyo a low sideways glance. She just looked so beautiful and elegant, sitting upright and poised like a portrait against the dark frame of the chair and the wooden paneling behind her. It made an odd mix of emotions flutter in Sakura's chest and mix in her throats; happiness to be here with her friend, as well as a certain envious sadness that she could never be so beautiful, and a strange yearning that she could not explain.
And yet, despite her elegant prettiness, Tomoyo didn't look quite well. She'd been slim before, but she seemed to have lost even more weight since Sakura had seen her last; surely it couldn't be healthy? The exquisite lines of her bones pressed through her skin, which had always been pale but now took on an almost translucent look. Her violet eyes sparkled with something that might have been a fever. Although she'd greeted Sakura at the door today, it was without the almost manic energy that Tomoyo had exhibited on their first few meetings.
She looked almost unearthly, as though she had been touched by some uncaring angel to draw her gradually away from this world. Sakura kept stealing glances at her, growing more and more concerned, until finally she couldn't help herself and blurted out; "Tomoyo, is something wrong? Are you sick?"
Tomoyo smiled at her, and the smile was no less luminescent for the growing paleness of her lips. "It's kind of you to ask, dear Sakura. But no, I am not sick. I am fine."
"You don't look fine," Sakura objected. "Are you sure you're not sick? Have you seen a doctor?" Someone like Tomoyo probably even had private doctors of her own, rather than having to wait for hours in the chilly hospital lobbies at Tomoeda General.
"There's no need for a doctor; I know perfectly well what the problem is," Tomoyo said calmly. "It is an affliction that comes and goes; there's no medicine that will cure it. My staff and I have it under control, do not concern yourself."
Sakura looked up, her eyes widening. "Of course I'm concerned! I'm your friend!" she exclaimed. "But Tomoyo, isn't there anything I can do to help?"
Tomoyo's smile - and her eyes - softened. "That means more to me than I can say," she said sincerely. "Sakura, you are the best medicine of all."
Sakura scowled, slightly discontented. She supposed Tomoyo was right; it wasn't like Sakura was any kind of doctor, but the answer seemed kind of condescending when she really was worried for her friend.
"I do appreciate you coming over to play with Opal," Tomoyo added, returning to her sewing. "As you see, she has an insatiable appetite for adventure."
"Oh, it's no problem!" Sakura said, quickly looking back down at the kitten on the floor. Finally coming to the end of her seemingly boundless energy, the kitten was in the middle of dropping off to sleep even with her paw extended to swipe the toy. "She's so cute! I'm just so happy to get to see her and play with her, I should be the one thanking you!"
Tomoyo smiled, making a small 'hmm' sound. "She may be cute, but she is quite a handful," she said. "She's been keeping the entire floor awake at night with her meowing."
If Tomoyo hadn't been able to sleep lately, maybe that was why she looked so tired and pale. "That's too bad," Sakura exclaimed with sympathy. "Is it because she wants to play in the middle of the night?"
"Mmm, partly that," Tomoyo answered. "But I think she hasn't realized yet that her mother and littermates are gone forever. She keeps crying for them in the middle of the night. "
"So she's lonely?" Sakura said, reaching out to stroke the tiny kitten's soft fur. "Poor thing."
"Yes, I'm afraid so," Tomoyo said. Her voice was kind and compassionate, but also firm. "It's hard for one so young to be separated from her mother and siblings, transported to a strange place so different from the life she used to know. But all young ones have to leave the nest eventually; I'm sure with a little time and patience, kindness and understanding, she'll come to be happy here."
"Oh, she will be, she must be!" Sakura said fervently. "This is such a big house, with so many people and toys to play with! She'll never have to be hungry or afraid. I can't imagine any pet so lucky as to be adopted by you, Tomoyo-chan!" She had to bite her lip before anything more could escape them; she could hardly believe what she'd already said. Tomoyo would laugh at her, if she knew that Sakura was jealous of a cat.
"No, she won't lack for anything. I'll see to that." Tomoyo paused in her sewing and looked up at Sakura, then gave her a sweet and gentle smile as she laid the garments carefully aside.
Tomoyo carefully gathered her skirts and stood up, and the unaccustomed effort in the simple movement made Sakura frown in worry. Tomoyo must be a lot more tired than she let on, more so than just being woken up by a loud kitten should account for. Was she working so hard on the dress that she wasn't sleeping well? Sakura felt guilty at the thought, and as she looked back down at the adorably sleepy kitten her eyes pricked. Couldn't she do anything right?
A gentle hand on her hair startled her into looking up; Tomoyo had knelt on the carpet beside her, stroking Sakura's hair as delicately as the kitten's fur. "She has her new forever home here, even if she doesn't know it yet," Tomoyo said. "I will take care of her, provide her with anything she needs and wants in exchange for the company and companionship she blesses me with, for all the years of her life."
…crowded in a tiny dressing room, barely more than a closet; no windows, only one overhead light shining down hot and bright on her. "I must take my measurements, dear Sakura," Tomoyo's voice murmurs.
…the long marked tape slithering over her legs, startlingly ticklish, as those fingers slide cool as water over her belly, her hips, her chest; just barely brushes over her nipples, and Sakura starts and swallows and holds her breath.
"Breathe in," Tomoyo urges her, holding the tape closed around her breasts. "So that I know how much give the bodice must have…"
…and she breathes in, and holds it ticklish in her throat, while Tomoyo's hands press carefully around her ribcage; and Tomoyo has captured even her breath…
A week later Sakura received a call from Naoko, wavering between excited burbling and upset wailing almost too rapidly for Sakura to follow. It seemed that her father had been offered a golden new opportunity in a new position, one that paid twice as much as his current job - but the company was in Okayama, so they would have to move away. Sakura managed to stutter out her congratulations and her condolences, all through a throat that seemed too thick to swallow.
("I've been doing some investigating," Touya told her bluntly, his hand coming down heavily on a stack of printouts with the letterhead of the local Internet café. "There's no birth record of any child named Tomoyo Daidouji in the last twenty years - in fact, there's been no female children registered to the Daidouji family for at least sixty years!"
"Niisan!" Sakura had been honestly shocked by his rudeness. "That's none of your business! Who asked you to go poking around like some dirty private detective, anyway?"
"It's my business because you're my business," Touya told her impatiently. "How do you know she's not lying to you about who her family is?"
"I don't believe you!" Sakura stamped her foot in fury, snatching the stack of papers out of his hands. "I don't care where she was born, because it doesn't matter to me if she's half-Japanese or full Japanese or if she was born out of the country or what. She's my friend and I care about her! Now you leave her alone, or else!")
"I still can't believe his nerve," Sakura said, still fuming about it hours later. "I hate the way he just dismisses everything I say like I don't know anything. Like he knows better than me who's a good person and a true friend or not!"
"He's just worried about you," Tomoyo replied calmly. The two of them were walking side-by-side in the shaded garden, as the sun slanted lower in the sky. Sakura had seen the gardens before, both from the outside and from the inside where the busy green growth pressed against the crystal glass of the windows, but the rich honey color of the late-afternoon sunlight set the flowerbeds and autumn colors ablaze with reflected glory. "I can understand his concern. You are very precious to him. If you were mine, I would worry just as much."
"I know he worries," Sakura huffed, feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed and warmed and ashamed all at once. "But, gah, he sometimes acts like I'm still in diapers! I just… it's stifling, like he wants to stuff me back in a cradle! I couldn't stand to stay in that apartment after that, not for one more minute."
Tomoyo turned to face her; the scalloped edge of her bonnet caught the red-golden sunlight and made it glow in a halo around her face, cast in uncertain shadow in the foreground. "You are always welcome here, Sakura," she declared. "If you need to stay the night, I have a guest room all ready for you; the maids just put fresh linens in this morning."
"I… thanks, but I really shouldn't," Sakura said, guilt twisting her chest as her anger faded further. "He'll be really mad if I stay out all night. He's working a late shift tonight, so if I go home after he leaves I can be in bed by the time he gets back."
Tomoyo nodded, although she looked faintly disappointed. "Well, you can remain as long as you like, anyway," she declared. "You must stay for dinner, at least. I will have Fai call for some take-out, doesn't that sound nice?"
"Um, sure, I guess," Sakura said, somewhat flustered. She still didn't understand why Tomoyo insisted on trying to feed her specially, instead of just eating together. At least 'take-out' sounded like a better plan than the night she'd come over to Tomoyo's for dinner and been faced with a seven-course feast - including three whole roasted turkeys, and one course consisting entirely of potato chips. Chiharu was right, rich people were weird.
But no matter how eccentric Tomoyo became, Sakura felt nothing but fondness for her. Even that time last week when she'd dressed Sakura in an outlandish outfit of pink and white spandex - in checked diamonds, no less, and a headband with golden wings! - and asked her to demonstrate her old baton routine on the mansion's lawn while Tomoyo filmed the whole thing. It had been embarrassing, especially as many of the servants had turned out to applaud and cheer, but it had been fun all the same.
Sakura had tried to get Tomoyo to come play as well - Tomoyo had such exquisite delicacy and grace, Sakura had no doubt she could perform at least the basic moves of baton - but Tomoyo had begged off, claiming she felt too tired. Indeed, the dark-haired girl still did not seem to be sleeping well, her face pale and wan and her movement stiff and slow. As the dress sped towards completion, Tomoyo seemed equally drained of life and vigor. She'd only had a glimpse of the dress - now standing on a dressmaker's dummy, poised like a silent dancer in the workroom - before Tomoyo had shooed her out and turned off the lights behind her, saying something about how it was unlucky for the groom to see the bride's dress before the wedding.
The friendly blond valet, Fai Flowright, had been one of those who'd turned out to watch and cheer her on. Sakura had encountered him a few more times around the mansion, always with a smile and a friendly word, and he always insisted on driving her home if she stayed after dark - which was more and more often these days as the autumn days slowly shortened. He also seemed immensely fond of Tomoyo herself, which warmed Sakura in perfect sympathy. Indeed, most of the maids and servants (including those frightening bodyguards who lurked about in dark glasses) displayed great affection and deep reverence for their tiny mistress, treating her not just as an employer but as a princess.
"About that valet," Sakura said slowly. "Fai, I mean…"
"One of my favorite manservants," Tomoyo smiled, her voice warm. "He was quite a find, and I was lucky to be able to lure him to my service. Fortunately I was able to offer some enticements that his former employer was not."
That didn't make much sense to Sakura, but she didn't worry it; Tomoyo was always saying odd things like that. It just came of being raised in a position where your family had enough money to buy anything - or anyone - they wanted, she supposed. "But, um, I was just wondering, where did he come from? He's not Japanese, surely, not with a name like that. And his coloring. Did he move to Japan before you met him, or…?"
"Oh, no," Tomoyo said. "He moved back to Japan with me, of course. I met him on his family's estate in Scandanavia, and he choose to move on with me when I did. We only returned to Japan the winter before last, and moved here from Nagoya at the beginning of the summer."
"You've been to Scandanavia?" Sakura blurted out incredulously. "I mean… Wow! That's so far away! I've never even been out of the country."
Tomoyo gave a silvery laugh. "I've been to many countries, as a matter of fact," she said. "In fact many of the staff here are like Fai, emigrants from other countries I have passed through in my journey. My family travels quite a bit," she added, in the face of Sakura's stunned astonishment.
"I guess so," Sakura said, although she was a bit preoccupied. Their gentle perambulations had stopped them before one of the rosebushes; a thicket well over Sakura's height, although neatly trimmed and sculpted enough not to appear wild or untidy. Some half-open roses hung down to the thicket's hem, at the height of Sakura's own waist, and she reached out to idly fiddle with one of them. "But then, does that mean… I mean… no offense, Tomoyo, and I don't want to be insensitive, but…"
"Say whatever is on your mind," Tomoyo encouraged her. "There is no way that you could ever offend me, dear Sakura."
"Were you born here?" Sakura blurted out, and then stammered to try to explain herself. "I just mean, it sounds like your parents are really, really men of the world - well, men and women of the world - and you've been to all those different countries just in your lifetime! And I just wondered - well, Daidouji is a Japanese name, obviously, but -"
"It's all right," Tomoyo said reassuringly. Indeed, there was a faint amused smile on her lips, and she didn't seem the least bit offended. Sakura breathed a sigh of relief. "To answer your question, yes, I was born in Japan; but we moved away years ago, while I was still young. My mother travels quite a bit as a matron of high society; even now she is away on a business trip in Bombay, looking after the Daidouji interests, while I retire here."
"Your mother?" Sakura tried to figure out if Tomoyo meant to imply that her mother wasn't Japanese, and if her father had married a foreigner for some business partnership. But if they were away on business trips, that would certainly explain why Sakura had never seen Tomoyo's parents. "And, uh - what about your dad?"
The smile dropped away from Tomoyo's voice, leaving it briefly devoid of expression. In that moment she looked almost frightening, like a doll, hard and smooth and ageless and without pity. "It would please me if you would never speak of my father again, Sakura. Ever."
"Oh," Sakura was taken aback, shaken and a little frightened by the cold vehemence of Tomoyo's voice. She looked down, trying to hide the quivers in her arms and hands. "S-sorry. Sorry."
"It's all right." Softness crept back into Tomoyo's face and voice, although her violet eyes remained dark and deep. "There was no way you could have known, and I don't blame you for your innocent curiosity. Indeed, it's one of the things I like best about you, Sakura."
"I didn't mean to upset you," Sakura said, blinking back tears and trying to swallow the choking sound out of her voice. "I'm sorry."
"I'm not upset," Tomoyo said, and then sighed. She reached out and plucked one of the roses, an orange-pink blossom just unraveling to show its pale center. It snapped easily at the base of the stem, and she reached out to press it into Sakura's hands. "Dear Sakura, it troubles me to see you distressed. You should always wear a smile, for that is what makes you the most beautiful."
Sakura was distracted, though, as the implications of Tomoyo's story began to weigh in on her. If Tomoyo's family traveled all the time, enough that Tomoyo had been around the world twice even at such a young age, then did that mean - "Wait, do you mean you're not going to be staying here forever?" Sakura asked, her voice slightly edged with panic. "Does that mean you're going to leave? Leave me?"
Tomoyo blinked, in that moment looking as nonplussed as Sakura had ever seen her. "Why… yes, I suppose so. It was never my intention to settle in Tomoeda permanently. Eventually, I will be moving on…"
"Don't go!" Sakura's hands spasmed around the stem of the rose, ignoring the way the thorns cut into her flesh. "Please, please, don't leave! We've only just met, and I - you're one of my best friends! There's still so much for us to talk about, and do together, and, and, I just don't know what I'll do if you go away…" Terror and despair seemed to rush up and cover her like a wave of dark water, at the thought of all the light that would leave her life without Tomoyo there…
"Oh, no!" In a flash, Tomoyo's hands were around hers, clasping her hands between them in a position of earnest supplication. Although just who was praying to whom here, Sakura didn't think she knew. "Please, Sakura, don't be so sad. I'm not leaving any time soon. Indeed, it will probably be years from now, and many things could change between now and then. Who knows? Perhaps by the time I am ready to move on… you will wish to come with me."
"Come with you?" Sakura blinked rapidly, the dark tide of misery residing in the wake of this new, implausible idea. Surely Tomoyo must be joking. "But, I've never left Tomoeda, I wouldn't… I… Touya wouldn't want me to…"
"Dear Sakura." In Tomoyo's mouth the endearment sounded loving, almost possessive. "You are so young yet."
With precise dignity Tomoyo lifted Sakura's nerveless, unresisting hands between them, until her lips traced paths of bright fire over Sakura's knuckles and the backs of her hands. Sakura realized that she had squeezed too hard around the thorns of the rose, and blood welled in the thorn punctures on the inside of her fingers.
"All little birds must fly the nest eventually," Tomoyo breathed, her breath raising damp goosebumps over Sakura's skin. "You cannot remain dependant on your brother forever, surely. Why not come with me? I would see that you were well cared for, that you lacked for nothing. And of course, we would never have to be apart…"
Sakura stood there in bemused shock, bright lances flashing up her arms and hands as Tomoyo's eyes closed and her lips parted, covering Sakura's fingers with the rich velvet tough of her lips and tongues. One by one her tongue flicked over them, until at last she lowered Sakura's hands and opened her eyes, a deep light shining in their violet depths. "Wouldn't you like that?" she murmured.
"I, I, I don't know," Sakura said, breaking their gaze and stepping back. She was tingling all over, she couldn't stop trembling, she couldn't think. "I don't know what I'm going to do when - I don't even start high school until next March. And my brother - I can't make any decisions like that yet, I'm too young. I - I just don't know."
"Of course," Tomoyo said quietly. The mask of smooth poise seemed to slip back over her features, the brief flash of heat fading and leaving in its place the gently smiling doll. "You are so very young, Sakura, and you don't need to decide all at once."
She released Sakura's hands and stepped back, and Sakura's hand jerked towards her in a moment of loss and woe before falling back to Sakura's side. Tomoyo raised her hands gracefully to her throat, . "But please do take this with you, as a promise," Tomoyo said, overriding Sakura's indrawn startled objection. "I think it looks lovely on you, Sakura, and I only ever wanted you to look your loveliest. Take it with you, and when you look at, remember that I will never leaving you behind…"
The strand of pearls was cool and smooth against Sakura's neck, but the pendant was heavy and pricked at the skin of her chest like tiny thorns. Sakura raised her hand to her chest, touching the chain, and raised the pendant somewhat blurrily into view. It was fashioned of some brilliant silvery material that flashed reflected gold in the dying sunlight, worked in a pattern of elegant filigree so detailed that Sakura could easily get lost in it; the edges curled delicately back as though they were paper, not metal, and it was their points that had dug into her skin.
The central pendant was a large, square-cut stone of a pale blue color, now tinted by the sunset to a deep violet that glowed like Tomoyo's eyes. It had the heavy weight of a promise indeed, and it struck Sakura so utterly as Tomoyo's style that she didn't think she would ever be able to look at it in a mirror without immediately thinking of her friend. "I, I can't take this," Sakura said unsteadily. "I mean - it's too expensive. I can't keep it."
"You can," Tomoyo told her, and something in her voice made all thoughts of fumbling the silver-chased butterfly clasp open and thrusting it back on her friend fall from her mind. "You will."
She did.
The flash goes off like a bolt of lightning, and it makes Sakura blink and flinch despite herself. Warm sparkles of electricity seem to crawl over her arms and shoulders, down her sides and her legs, and she squirms as Tomoyo moves in a half-circle around her.
"The lighting is just right," Tomoyo says soothingly. "Hold your leg just so… oh yes, that's lovely."
Sakura twists uncomfortably; for all that she's almost stiff in the bright pink dress Tomoyo has coaxed her to wear, she is shy in the face of the bright lights and the camera lenses in a way that she hadn't been to undress down to her underwear. "I don't understand why you want to," she says half-complainingly, half-plaintive. "I never look good in pictures."
Tomoyo lowers the camera and smiles at her, and the chrome ring of the camera lens echoes it like a second grin; the glass lens staring big and black like a third eye. "Then that was only because they were doing it wrong," she says in a voice like silken honey. "You are beautiful, my dear Sakura. I will always treasure these little mementos of you."
The photo shoot goes on and on, long after Sakura thinks she ought to have taken all the pictures possible; but there's still always a new angle, always a new pose, Tomoyo reaching in one cool white hand to lift her chin or smooth her dress or trail along her thigh…
Even without the call in the middle of the night, Sakura would have heard the news all around the school today: how a fire had started in the middle of the night in the apartment complex where the Mihara family lived, and raged quickly out of control. Chiharu and her mother and sister had gotten out, but they'd lost everything; with no one left in Tomoeda who could put them up, they were moving back to Chiharu's mother's family in Sendai.
Three classmates gone in under a month, all in such unlikely coincidences - it hardly needed Naoko's daydreaming to start whispered rumors of a curse flying excitedly about the classroom. Sakura sat at her desk, surrounded by the three empty desks that burned like live coals around her, and tried to push her fists against her ears to block it out.
All she had left in the world now was Tomoyo.
Tomoyo, and Touya.
("I don't want you meeting with that Daidouji girl again, Sakura!" Touya had yelled; and even in the midst of her outrage she still found room to be shocked that he used her name, not any kind of affectionate nickname or insult. "Everything I hear about that family says that they're trouble! Predatory loans, overseas banking, real estate scams, cozy deals with local politicians… Even the story of how they got that house to their name was shady! They're dangerous, and I don't want you mixed up with that family or that creepy girl any more!"
"How dare you talk about Tomoyo like that?" Sakura had barely been able to see straight; even now the memory of the anger that flooded her system made her shake with rage. "I don't care one bit what people say about her family! Tomoyo isn't any of that, it's not her fault what anyone else does or what nasty things people say. Tomoyo is Tomoyo, and she's my friend!"
"This isn't a discussion, Sakura," Touya said through his teeth, his fingers tightening to white on the edge of the table. "You are not going over to that house again. And that's final!"
"Oh yes, I am!" Sakura retorted. "You're not Dad. You don't get to tell me what to do!"
The name, flung into the argument in the heat of the moment, lay there like a live grenade on the kitchen table. Touya stood up, his face darkening with anger. "I may not be Dad, but I am your legal guardian," Touya said ominously. "So long as you live in this house and you eat the food my money pays for, you'll do as I say!"
Sakura felt her face go bloodless cold, then furnace hot. "Fine then!" she snapped back, flouncing over to the door. "Maybe I'll just go live with Tomoyo, then. She's got plenty of rooms in her house, and she doesn't mind feeding me. She doesn't serve top ramen three nights a week anyway, so she'd do a better job than you anyway!"
She'd rushed out the door before Touya could reply to that, slamming the door shut on his rising shout. Just to be safe, she covered her ears with her hands as she bounded down the stairs two at a time; if she didn't hear his answer to that, then the sooner she could forget she'd ever said it.)
She didn't cry. But more of her feelings must have shown on her face than she'd realized, because as soon as she arrived at Tomoyo's, the staff - with whom she'd grown increasingly familiar over the past months - looked at her with barely-concealed worry. "Are you okay, Lady Sakura?" Fai asked her with concern, as he keyed open the doors with his badge and stood aside to hold it open for her.
Sakura wondered about Fai, sometimes - what his story was, what his life had been like back in Scandanavia. Had he had a family there? Had he once had a brother that he'd left behind, in order to follow his new employer halfway across the world? Had his family approved, or had he gotten into terrible fights with them when he announced his decision to go? What kind of devotion, what kind of courage would that take?
But Fai was a grown-up, competent and confident and strong; Sakura was not. "I'm fine," Sakura said, and managed a trembling smile. "Thanks."
The concerned-looking maid ushered her in to Tomoyo's bedroom, and Sakura's heart - already seeming a heavy lump in her stomach - dropped even further. Tomoyo looked weaker than ever, sitting in a large chair propped up by fluffy pillows and with a creamy soft wool blanket spread over her lap. As the weeks had passed and Tomoyo's condition had grown worse, Sakura had asked her about it several more times; each time Tomoyo had simply replied that she wasn't sick, and she knew what the problem was, and that she'd be fine, until Sakura finally had given up asking.
In the wake of the last terrible week - all of her friends moving away one by one, Chiharu losing her home in the fire, now even Touya no longer the steady bedrock beneath her feet - the thought that she might lose Tomoyo as well filled her with a suffocating terror. "T-tomoyo?" Sakura asked tremblingly.
Tomoyo opened her eyes and smiled as Sakura entered. "Dear Sakura," she said, her voice faint and tired. She made the effort to sit up a bit straighter when the maid led Sakura in, and tilted her head to the side as she studied Sakura's face. "Is everything all right?"
Everything was not all right, everything was wrong, and the question almost made Sakura burst into tears. "Oh, Tomoyo," she said, and her voice was almost a wail. The room seemed to waver in her vision, and Sakura stumbled to Tomoyo's side and collapsed by her feet, burying her hands and face in the soft blanket in Tomoyo's lap.
She hadn't meant to burden Tomoyo with her problems, but she couldn't help herself; the whole story came tumbling out. Tomoyo's hands stroked gently through her hair, trailing soft shivery caresses over the top of her head and down to the back of her neck.
"And I know he's just worried about me," Sakura finished up, sniffling hard against the tears that wanted to tumble out with her words. "And I know that he cares. But he just won't listen to anything I say and it's so frustrating! He doesn't care whether I'm happy or not, he doesn't care at all! All he cares about is whether I obey him or not! He just wants to control me, and I'm sick of being guilt-tripped into going along with every little thing he says!"
"I'm sure that's not true," Tomoyo said soothingly. "But why should you feel guilty?"
"Because I shouldn't have yelled," Sakura said shamefully.
"I don't mean right now," Tomoyo said. "I mean in general. Why should a child feel guilty for being cared for by their parent?"
Sakura fell silent, calming down a little now that she'd had a chance to vent some of her churning emotions - although she felt no less miserable for it. But at least it was easier to think now. "Because… he's not really my parent, I guess," she said. "He shouldn't have to take care of me, but after my dad died, there was nobody else who could. He… he could have gone on to college with his friends, and gotten a good career, but because of me he couldn't.
"And he's going to be stuck with me for four more years, at least, until I'm old enough that he doesn't have to support me any more, and I'm sick of it already! I know it's my fault that his life was ruined, and I hate it! I didn't ask him to take care of me!"
"Oh, Sakura," Tomoyo sighed, and then she leaned over and gave Sakura a brief hug. "You shouldn't worry so much about things that are beyond your control."
"Then that's everything," Sakura burst out resentfully. "I'm not in control of anything."
"And that's hard, I know," Tomoyo said. Then she released the hug, and patted Sakura on the top of her head. "Come, I know just the thing to lift your spirits. I finished your dress last night, you see."
"Oh!" Sakura's head came up, startled. "But… already?"
Tomoyo laughed. "It's hardly 'already' when it's taken over a month, is it?" she said, smiling. "I didn't tell you because I wanted it to be a surprise. But I think the time has come."
She took Sakura's hand and urged her to her feet, then rose from her chair and brushed the blanket and pillows aside. Without letting go of Sakura's hand, she led her to a door set in the wall - not out to the main hallway, but to some hidden adjoining chamber off the bedroom. She opened the door and flicked on an overhead light to reveal a walk-in closet - by itself as large as Sakura's bedroom, but cramped and cozy compared to most other rooms in this house.
A set of three joined, lit mirrors waited at the far end of the dressing room; in the center was a dressmaker's mannequin, silently waiting the touch of the light. Draped over the mannequin was the peach-and-rose dress, looking as though it had stepped out of the photograph of Sakura's mother across all the miles and years.
There were a few differences. This dress was shorter than Nadeshiko's had been - of course - and narrower in the bust and hips. The hue was a little more pink, a little less gold, and the posies lining the hems and seams were now changed to roses. The overskirt - a shimmering white, heavy with the weight of its own thread and inviting Sakura's fingers to run down its satiny grain - was subtly embroidered with a twining pattern of the same, and had been gathered up in elegant pleats up from the hem. The embroidered frieze around the hem of the skirt, rather than the rolling country hills that had been the original designer's trademark, now depicted a lush garden instead; climbing vines sent their shimmering tendrils up as high as the dress-wearer's leg.
It was beautiful. So beautiful.
"I…" Sakura hesitated, her throat tight and her heart beating in a funny way. "I don't… I don't know how to put it on."
"Don't worry." Tomoyo turned slightly towards her, smiling a low smile like a banked flame. "I'll help you."
At last when the last lacing had been tied off, and the last clasp done up, Sakura turned to the triple mirror standing under the lights, and looked at herself.
She felt strange, at once a hundred miles away and painfully, heavily present in herself. She swallowed heavily, and saw the bob and flex of her own throat in the mirror above the fall of lace. She took a breath, and saw the stitched bodice rise and fall with it; twitched her shoulders uncertainly, and saw the fabric ripple and flow. Took a small step, and saw the skirt swish and swirl.
Tomoyo had put her in dresses and outfits before, but this was different. Those had already been made, and had felt more like costumes than clothes. This - this had been made for her, and it hugged every line of her body, clung to her skin, seeming more a part of her than anything she had ever worn before.
Or perhaps like a part of a her that she'd never seen before…
The girl in the mirror was almost a stranger to Sakura. Gone was the skinny, grubby teenager who had played in the woods and the ditches for lack of anything better to do; gone was the poor little ragamuffin in her big brother's handmedowns, worn to rags for lack of anything better to wear. In her place was… a lady, a princess, a girl on the verge of a womanhood more full of poise and promise than Sakura had ever dared dream. Even her short, raggedly-chopped hair had been clasped with pink and brown ribbons, cascading forward over her shoulder and down over her back like an elegant waterfall. The ribbons were slightly crinkly, slightly curly, just like her mother's hair had been.
In the mirror was - not her mother, Sakura understood that much, because the girl in the mirror moved and blinked and breathed as she did, not like the still remote picture from the magazine at all. But for the first time in her life, she could see her mother's daughter. No more a little girl, but at last stepping forward to take the part of a woman.
"Now you see," Tomoyo's voice murmured in her ear. Pale, slender arms wrapped in black lace - violet and black against white and pink - circled her chest just under her arms, folding over her breasts. Cool breath misted against her ear. "This is your true self, the self you had always hidden within. What came before was only a chrysalis, like the cocoon that a caterpillar wraps itself in on the way to becoming a butterfly. It is time for you to cast away that empty shell, and be what you were always destined to be."
Sakura's heart jumped into motion, a startled, frenzied rhythm that felt like it would burst from her chest if not for the confining bonds of the dress' tight bodice. She froze like a statue, momentarily unable to breathe, and it was not only the feel of Tomoyo's cool hands drifting over her chest, trailing up her breasts to finger the lace collar of her throat; nor even the cold breath in her ear.
It was because Tomoyo was standing behind her, her body pressed up close against Sakura's back and her lips hovering against Sakura's neck just below her ear; but Sakura was alone in the mirror.
"Dear Sakura," Tomoyo breathed against her ear, the familiar endearment suddenly alien amidst this sea of horror. "I have never hungered for any man's blood the way I have for yours, not for years uncounted. Cast off the shell of your previous life and come to me; be my lover and companion, and my chalice, and I shall make you the princess you have ever longed to be. All that you ever wished for, all you desired, shall be made yours, for all the years of your mortal life."
A hard, sharp edge scraped oh-so-litely along the side of Sakura's neck - not hard enough to hurt, but enough to send white bursts of frission across her skin. Sakura jerked her head to the side, neck cricking painfully, as her white-edged eyes slewed sideways. Tomoyo's face was inches from her own, violet eyes half-lidded. She was smiling, as Tomoyo had smiled oh so many times. But while Tomoyo had always before kept her lips tightly closed, now they were parted, flush with exhilaration and desire; and two pearly incisors peeked down from her upper lip, a dainty curve ending in a flint-sharp point. No, no… no! It can't be, it can't, it can't!
"Let go of me!" Sakura screamed, panicking wildly now. "Let me go, let me go!" She threw herself against the heavy weight of Tomoyo's arms, thrashing wildly until she fought her way free.
Sakura stumbled backwards, hands clenched into shaking fists at her side; Tomoyo leaned after her, arms open as if to embrace her again, eyes wide in surprise - or anger. Framed now under the harsh bright lights of the dressing room, her pale skin looked white as bone, not the slightest flush of pink or blue to betray the flow of blood underneath. And though she stood in the full view of the triple mirrors, they reflected only empty space.
"Sakura," Tomoyo began, taking a breath for some further speech - calming or enticing or chiding Sakura would never know. She swayed unsteadily on her feet, her momentum carrying her backwards until she stumbled into a rack of clothes, then rebounded. She blundered forward, eyes hot and blurring, until the sight of Tomoyo lifting a hand towards her urged her to sudden action again.
"Stay away!" Sakura cried out, and she cringed from Tomoyo's hand, darting around Tomoyo to break for the door.
The richly appointed serenity of Tomoyo's bedroom seemed like an alien landscape to her now, tilting in a drunken surreality as Sakura dodged around the heavy furniture and stumbled through the thick carpets. She burst into the corridor, saw servants stopping and turning to stare with their eyes and mouths stretched wide in astonishment. "Don't touch me!" she shrieked, and veered away from their outstretched hands - helpful, or insidious traps? - as she bolted down the hallway towards escape. Not for nothing had she been star of the girl's track team two years running, and her legs lit now with a speed she'd never dreamed she had.
Through her adrenaline-blurred fog she found a door she knew, an arched glass portico that opened from the wing of the mansion into the gardens, now dark with the oncoming winter's night. Light blazed from the mansion behind her, glaring into the darkness, blinding her to all but looming shapes of black on black.
The tight bodice squeezed against Sakura's chest as she heaved for breath, and the heavy skirts of the dress swished against her skirt as she ran. She was barefoot, and could not remember what she had done with her shoes; back in the dressing room, no doubt, along with her old clothes and… No! No! Tears blurred her vision, blinding her further; she stumbled across the darkness of the lawn until she crashed into the scrub brush at the edge of the property.
The summer's leaves had fallen, crunching dry and dusty underfoot and not quite cushioning her feet from blows against hard sharp rocks and stinging broken twigs. Bare branches whipped and tore at her arms and hands, flung up to shield her face, and dragged at the billowing skirts of her dress. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't run in this dress; why, why had she let Tomoyo put such bindings on her, why had she walked blindly into this snare every step of the way…?
Her first panicked sprint slowed to the inevitable wearing drag of fatigue; she stopped and turned, panting, to look back through the woods and the darkened slope of the Daidouji household. It blazed with lights, more and more coming on over the lawn and grounds as upset shouting people filtered out of the opening doors. They were mere shapes, silhouetted against the light; she could not tell if any of them were the servants she'd befriended, but it was a certainty that the slim dainty figure of their dark mistress did not move among them.
Sakura took a deep shaking breath, suddenly aware that tears were running down her face to smear coldly on her chin; she wiped them off, but more came to replace them. Trembling with terror and cold, Sakura tugged the trailing hem of her sleeves out of the thornbrake and forced herself onward, her body knowing the route that her mind and eyes could not see.
Because there was really only one place she could go, wasn't there? Home.
And Tomoyo already knew where she lived.
Touya was still at work when Sakura arrived at the house, limping and shivering, dirty and scraped and bedraggled. Her housekey was still in her jeans somewhere back - Sakura's mind shied from the thought - there, - but the spare key was still hidden under the step of the staircase leading overhead, and Sakura was able to let herself inside. She slammed the door behind herself and locked it, threw the deadbolt, but the apartment still seemed too cold and dark and - empty - anyone could be hiding there! So Sakura retreated to her bedroom; pushed the door shut to lock it, and turned on every light.
Sakura was seized with a sudden paranoia - couldn't those things turn into bats, or, or mist, and come through the window? She shoved her dresser over until it snubbed up against the window, then thumped her back against the heavy wood, hugging herself and shaking. The familiarity of her old childhood bedroom didn't feel safe, not any more. Not when everything had been turned upside down and ripped inside out.
A movement caught her eye and Sakura whipped her head around - but it was only her own reflection in the mirror that had startled her. She looked awful, dirty and bedraggled and tear-stained. The ribbons in her hair had been yanked out or pulled askew, and the dress - the beautiful dress was ripped to shreds now, the skirt hanging in rags over her legs, the tattered hem blood-streaked where she'd fallen and cut her knee on a sharp rock.
Ruined - ruined - just like - just like everything. Just like the dream. How could it have all gone so wrong? How could legends and - and nightmares come true, walk so confidently in the day? And she had seen Tomoyo walk in the daylight, under her hats and gloves and parasols, and how was that even possible? Maybe… maybe there had been some mistake, maybe she'd freaked out and run away about nothing at all…
A faint flash of red at her throat; Sakura turned her head in the mirror to see it better, the tiniest of toothmarks. It was real. She's real. Tomoyo is… my best friend is…
The implications were only beginning to dawn on her. This childish panic and flight would do her no good; Tomoyo knew where she lived. But if she were going to hunt Sakura down, she could have done so at once; Tomoyo's grim dark-clad bodyguard could have been waiting for her at the apartment. Where else could she go? All of her friends were gone, shuffled out of Tomoeda on those oh-so-conveniently timed excuses; none of her classmates or teaches would know what to do, if she stumbled into their homes in the middle of the night babbling about… monsters and vampires.
But what could she do? Who could she tell? No one would believe her, no one. No one could help her, not even Touya, and he'd only be in danger if he tried.
Could she run away? Where to? The Daidouji family was huge and powerful, with connections everywhere; Touya had said so. Even among the police. Everywhere in Japan, even in other countries. There was nowhere she could go that Tomoyo would not be able to find her. Tomoyo would track her down, and then… Sakura shivered convulsively.
But new thoughts were beginning to make their way across the panic. And then what? Tomoyo hadn't hurt her. Hadn't moved against her her at all. But for that offer - that terrible, velvet-voiced, soul-shaking offer - Tomoyo had made no threats or demands on her at all. Except the one. My whole life.
What if she said no? Could she say no? Touya's voice came back to her, serious and cynical, weeks and weeks too late - A girl from a wealthy, powerful family like that, chances are she's used to getting everything she wants. She remembered the look of cerulean fire in Tomoyo's eyes, when she'd first turned away from the mirror; no, saint or monster, that was not a creature that would easily take no for an answer.
Sakura's shivering increased until her teeth were chattering, and she doubled over herself, wrapping her arms around her own torso. No, no! I won't believe it, I won't. Tomoyo would never hurt me… she's my friend… she…
"I can't," Sakura sobbed. The tears had never stopped leaking from her eyes, running silent and cold down her cheeks; but now they poured forth fresh and hot again. Sakura curled herself into a ball, pressed her face into her knees. "I can't, I can't."
The choice loomed up before her, silent and implacable. She couldn't say yes to Tomoyo's terrible offer, she couldn't. But even if she said no, it was too late; she'd already lost everything. Her best friend. Her marvelous dress. The glorious dream-world. The beautiful girl in the mirror, the one shining link to her mother's memory.
Innocence.
"Sakura?" Touya called out impatiently, rattling the door handle. It was more for effect than anything else; he'd already tried it and found it locked, something that Sakura had never bothered to do for years and years. Not since she'd shut herself away, crying inconsolably, after the death of their father. "Sakura, answer me!"
For days at a time she'd stayed in there, coming out only for miserable hurting meals, never quite stopping crying. Touya had felt like crying too, but he'd had responsibilities, he'd had duties, things he had to do to support them both now that it had fallen on him to protect his little sister. It had been a heavy weight, almost crushing, but at the same time it had borne him up steadily, knowing that this was what he had to do to make things better. "Sakura, please!"
"Go away!" his little sister's voice wailed from behind the barrier of the locked door.
"Won't you come out?" Touya pleaded, mind racing furiously as he tried to come up with some cause for this miserable withdrawal, some solution. "Come on, let's have ice cream. Tell me all about it."
"You wouldn't understand," Sakura replied, her voice breaking at the end into a cry.
"If you won't come out, can I come in?" Touya tried desperately. There wasn't much room in the tiny, crowded bedroom for him, but he could sit beside the floor and pet her hair while she cried on his shoulder. Even if she dripped snot all over his work uniform, at least that would be a start. "Just tell me what's wrong. I'll find some way to help, I promise. I swear."
"You can't," Sakura's voice came through the door, miserable despite the muffling. "There's - there's nothing you c-can do to make this right."
Touya glared at the blank door, resisting a hateful urge to kick it down. "Sakura, what is this all about?" Panic was beginning to edge his voice, and anger; he fought to keep it down, lest she think he was angry at her. "Is this about her? That Daidouji girl, is this all her fault?"
There was a pregnant pause from the other side of the door, just the silence enough of an affirmation to kick Touya's wild suspicion over into fury. "There's nothing you can do about it," Sakura's voice came back, the misery clear despite the muffling of the wood. "Please, Touya, j-just leave me alone. I want to be alone."
That was a yes. Touya was sure of it. Daidouji, had done this, Daidouji Tomoyo had made his sister cry.
A tiny sting of pain brought him back to himself, and he realized he was standing outside Sakura's door with his fists clenched so tightly that his nails were in danger of drawing blood. He inhaled - his first breath in several minutes, it seemed laced with fire - tried to find some comforting words, and failed. He turned away from Sakura's door and walked away, making his footfalls as soft an unobtrusive as possible; but he could hear, as he moved away, the muffled sniffling resume.
Touya went to his own room across the hall, and stripped off his work jacket, the cartoonish mascot of the chain blazed across the back. In a burst of temper he threw it across the room hard enough that it knocked the heavy coat rack against the wall; and stood there glaring at it as though it were to blame for all his troubles.
Why did Sakura have to be so stubborn? All his warnings, all his arguments, all his research and snooping and under-the-table maneuvering to try to find out the truth about the Daidouji family, and it had all been for nothing. He hadn't been able to stop Sakura from getting too close to the fire; and now she'd been burned. His little sister had been hurt, and Touya hadn't been there to protect her. A tiny, unworthy part of Touya wanted to jump up and down and yell I told you so! I warned you! You should have listened! But the last thing he wanted was to make Sakura feel worse right now by rubbing her nose in it. Besides, he didn't blame Sakura for this mess; he blamed that Daidouji girl.
That girl! Touya wasn't blind, it was obvious to see that over the past few weeks their relationship - that creeping obsession - had gone somewhere beyond the bounds of innocent girlish infatuation. He didn't know all that had passed between them, but he did know that Sakura wasn't hiding in her room crying her heart out over any mere spat between childhood friends. And if that girl - that spoiled, rich, malevolent brat of a girl - thought she could play with Sakura's heart and then break it in half for fun, she would soon learn otherwise. He would teach her otherwise.
Touya reached into his closet and yanked out another jacket, one he hadn't worn in years. It was dark leather with glossy black trimmings and it had made his teenage self feel cool and dangerous; but on a washed-up high school dropout struggling to hold a menial part-time job, it had just felt stupid. He pulled it on now, and fumbled a dark baseball cap and a pair of leather gloves from a corner of his closet and jammed them on.
He resisted the urge to slam the door behind him; his anger was threatening to spurt off in all directions if he didn't control it, but there was no sense in upsetting Sakura. Worse, if she knew where he was going she might take it on herself to stop him, or try to talk him out of that, and Touya didn't want to deal with that right now.
The night air was cold and soggy, hanging in misty haloes around the streetlamps and wetting down the pavement with a slickness that was not quite cold enough to be icy. The streets were almost deserted, and Touya walked briskly past the neon glow of the vending machines and dark, hallowed out storefronts with his anger keeping him nicely warm.
He didn't know his way among the back-lot woods that would provide the shortest line between their apartment building and the Daidouji mansion, but he'd memorized the street routes long since. He turned aside before he reached the end of the long, brightly-lit driveway that was the official street-numbered residence of the Daidouji mansion, and walked instead down a little side-road running along the extensive grounds.
His view was blocked by a hedge, growing up and around a tall metal fence; Touya paced along it until he found a suitable gnarled tree that could give him the necessary boost. A bit of a scramble and a leap, a grab and heave, and Touya dropped onto the manicured grass on the mansion's lawn with barely more than a quiet grunt.
The house seemed oddly lit-up and active for this time of night, not that Touya had known what to expect; he avoided the brightly-lit front gate and driveway and circled around towards the back of the house, taking ruthless advantage of the darkened topiaries for cover. From all that Sakura had said about the Daidouji girl, she would most likely be in her rooms, which were more towards the back of the house by the garden. With all those windows, at least one was likely to be unlocked, and he could make his plan from there.
Touya entertained a nagging uneasy thought that told him how stupid this was, breaking and entering on the property of a rich and powerful family that had just proven itself to be every bit as unpleasant as all his dire warnings to Sakura; but he brought the memory of Sakura's heart-wrenching sobs firmly back to his mind, and pushed the concern aside. All he had to do was get face-to-face with the Daidouji girl for long enough to give her a piece of his mind - and possibly put a little bit of the fear of God into her against bothering Sakura any more in the future.
A shifting motion in the darkness ahead of him was his only warning; he didn't hear so much of a footstep when the hulking shadow rushed towards him. A hand like a steel clamp fell on his shoulder, sending him stumbling and slipping across the wet grass. "What are you doing here, punk?" snarled a deep, dangerous voice that more properly ought to have come out of a mountain lion, or maybe just the mountain. "Looking for trouble, uh? Well, you've found it -"
"Let go of me, you filthy thug!" Touya gritted out from between his teeth, yanking and twisting sideways. With a wrench that felt like it nearly dislocated his shoulders, he managed to drop forward and slither out of his jacket, leaving the hulking figure with an empty shell. He rolled across the muddy ground and came to his feet, glaring across the space at his sudden assailant. The man was huge, looming more than two meters high and seeming half that broad, dressed in the same uniform as he'd seen on the men moving around out by the driveway. Security, then, shit! The reflected light from the house made the hulking man's eyes show up a deep unsettling red. Touya wavered for a moment in the balance between anger and shocked alarm - his impulse was to run away, but he didn't want to get away, not until he got what he came for -
That hesitation was a mistake, because the dark figure moved with the speed of a striking snake; this time the steel hand landed on his left shoulder and right arm, yanking his wrist up behind his back. "Got you," the deep voice ripped out in triumph, and there was something to that; for all Touya struggled, he wasn't able to twist away a second time.
"Kurogane."
The measured female voice seemed to speak out of nowhere, and Touya startled, looking reflexively about him. The hulk growled and freed one hand up to touch his ear; now that he knew where to look, Touya was able to identify the black earpiece snaking up the side of his neck to his ear. "What?" he snapped back to the air. "I just apprehended an intruder, this is not a good time -"
"Is it Kinomoto-san's brother?"
The hulk sized him up, those narrow red eyes bringing a chill to Touya's spine despite his outrage. "Yeah," the man said, halfway between a growl and a sigh. Touya felt a spasm of shock; he'd never seen this man before in his life! He would definitely not have forgotten him. He managed to keep himself from blurting out How the hell do you know my name, instead just keeping it to a return glare.
"Bring him here."
"Lady Tomoyo, he was sneaking across the grounds in the middle of the night," the thug protested, and Touya tensed. So that was the Daidouji girl's voice? "Surely you can't -"
"I've been expecting him. Bring him here. It's time for us to meet face-to-face."
Touya expressed a silent, but vehement agreement with this; the burly man closed his mouth on any further protest and only vented a beleaguered sigh. The channel went dead; Touya's captor gave him another heated glower, this one seeming more resigned than hostile, and began hauling him by the arm towards the front of the house.
After a few steps Touya managed to regain his own footing and shook the bigger man violently away in order to walk under his own power. So he was going to see the Daidouji girl after all. This wasn't quite how he'd planned for this meeting to go, but as long as he accomplished his goal, he didn't much care how.
The brilliantly lit doors and hallways nearly blinded his dark-adapted eyes; the luxurious walls and carpeting passed by his notice. They passed by a number of people in the hallways, or hovering in doorways looking after them; servants, Touya guessed by their clothing and attitudes. Certainly no sign of the senior Daidoujis, Tomoyo's parents. By now, he wasn't even surprised by that lack.
At last they came to a set of large, decorated double doors; by this time Touya's eyes had adjusted enough to make out the colorful, intricate enamel decorating the panes and the ornately decorated handles. The brute who'd been escorting - shepherding - him this far took a step forward and knocked on the doors, then opened one of them and stood aside.
"Go ahead," he said, his red eyes a curious unsettling weight on Touya. "You asked for it."
Touya ignored that bizarre statement and walked past him into a richly appointed room. The details of the carpets and drapes, paneling and wallpaper and furniture flitted past his eyes and were dismissed; his eyes locked immediately on the slim figure sitting very upright on a velvet-padded sedan chair. At the very center of the room, like a spider in the center of her web - the image flashed up instantly in Touya's mind, and he quickly dismissed it, taking in the first sight of his nemesis.
She looked to be about Sakura's age, but without any of Sakura's awkwardness; her features were delicately pointed, almost elfin, her hair a shining river of night that flowed over one shoulder to coil on her chest. Jewelry glittered from her throat, her hands, her ears; sparks of ostentatious wealth complementing the rich beauty of her dress. Just as I thought, spoiled rotten. Touya ignored it as he stepped forward, meeting her eyes.
And that was all he knew.
~to be continued...
More A/N: YES, VAMPIRES! Almost two months after Clover posted her list of requests, she finally gets to find out what request this fic was supposed to fill!
Anyway, the second part was supposed to be the last, but this got ridicustupidlong, so I'm splitting it again. Tune in for the thrilling conclusion in part 3. Spoiler: there will be lots of biting.