A/N: Welcome to the middle third. Here there be spoilers, you are warned. I know I get a thrill when I'm mentioned for leaving a review, so I am setting this space aside to thank everyone who reviewed the first third of my story. Thank you MorganD, Manteem Bluewing, Dr. Megalomania, Yakusoku-kun, Clow'd9, and Dark Ice Angel for your kind comments. I am in awe of these people because they have written *awesome* Clow or Yue (or both) fics that gave me great enjoyment. I'm blushing to get comments from them. Thank you Dream Seraph, CoraJoy, Minnorose, Gihyou, and Laurent Imagawa for the signed reviews; if these people have stories posted please read them and pay forward their kindness for the awesome reviews. Finally my anonymous reviewers, "yufgwe7tfg", "reader", "Eriol Reed", and even "Seraphic Wing" who reminded me to get to the friggin' point already. ~bashful grin~ Thank you one and all.

The middle 9 chapters are dedicated to the so far unnamed reviewer, Christina, who unknowingly introduced me to Cardcaptors, and finally Card Captor Sakura. Even with the stress and hard work she's been put under and the desire to just withdraw from everything lately she has been there to give me some awesome reviews that mean more to me than I can say. I trust her taste in things, she has yet to steer me wrong with a recommendation.


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Transitions

Half a world away, and a long, long time later, a little boy with dark hair woke up with a start. He was plagued by strange dreams of beautiful women who turned into cards and a large lion wearing golden armor. Then there was the guardian angel with the long white hair and misty gray or silver or violet eyes that changed and looked like a cat's eyes. He loved everyone in these dreams, and the dreams began to feel more real than the life he was stuck with. Eriol's parents were rich and always gone. His nanny cared about him, but she was a professional and the word "love" was frowned upon. He was lonely and wished that people like the lion and the angel would love him like that.

As soon as he thought about it he knew he could do it too.

He also knew that he shouldn't do it. His parents didn't believe in magic even though his ancient grandmother seemed to. His father would always shush the old lady when she started in on one of her "stories", but Eriol somehow knew that there was more. He took Grandmother very seriously when she said that magic wasn't something to be toyed with or used just because you could. "Always have a purpose or bad things will follow," the lady would say finally as her son glared daggers. That would end the conversation every time.

Then he remembered that there had been something bad in this last dream. Something horrifying. Something so terrible that he had woken because he wanted to scream.

Something real.

He wasn't surprised when Laura, his nanny, knocked on the door and opened it with a bit of hesitation. "Master Eriol, I have terrible news." She wrapped arms around him and held him tight, giving him one of her rare but special shows of affection. "Mr. and Mrs. Hiiragizawa were flying home tonight to surprise you, but the plane...it didn't make it. Your parents won't be coming home. I am so sorry...." Her voice faded into a buzz like the drone of an insect. The strangers who had provided him with a genetic make up and enough money to make Queen Elizabeth jealous were not coming back.

He was somehow ready for it. Almost expecting it. This was right and proper and the order of things. He comforted Laura more than she comforted him. Grandmother would manage the finances until Eriol came of age. Eriol would have more important things to take care of, and fate had released him to do it.

He looked out the window to the darkness and knew that it was almost time. There was no moon in the sky; it would be rising with the sun since it was a new moon. Without thinking he brushed a kiss against Laura's cheek and asked to be left alone in the garden. She nodded and assured him that she understood. She obviously thought that he needed to be alone to express his pain, but there was none. He felt a more urgent need, pressed by the fact that the sun and moon would rise soon.

How did it go?

He bent his will toward shaping the magic in the air. He pulled out a stick and drew the symbols in the dirt, starting with two large circles side by side. He knew that once, a long time ago, he could have done the same thing without drawing the symbols on the physical plane, but he had forgotten everything. He almost snapped out of the near trance when he started wondering how he could have known anything a long time ago when he was so young.

It didn't matter. He needed to do this. There was a simple beauty in the urgency he felt for the companionship of people who would genuinely care about his existence. He smiled and bent his will to the creation of a guardian of the sun, and a guardian of the moon. They would be his companions and friends, as much as they would be his servants. They would never die. Just like he would now never die.

Out of the mist of the predawn cold two beings began to coalesce. Dark as the new moon that was rising came a large panther with dark butterfly wings, and a very pretty human adult with wings like the panther's. Eriol grinned and stirred the elements, breathing life into his creations. "Hello master," began the panther in a cultured voice. "Who are you that we may know whom we serve?"

"I am Eriol Hiiragizawa" he began, but another voice was speaking in his mind at the same time. I am Clow Reed, the voice said. Memories of a life that spanned centuries were suddenly superimposed upon his own short life. He had the knowledge and skill now to do nearly anything. He had the wisdom to keep himself from becoming power-hungry and greedy with his newfound abilities. He also had an overwhelming sense of loneliness and disappointment that this life would be led in as much solitude as his last.

The last piece of knowledge to fall upon his shoulders was the hardest to bear by far. I have made a grave mistake, he thought to himself. Creating these two at this exact moment could be the gravest mistake I have ever made. They would never give him the same comfort and love that Yue and Cerberus had given Clow Reed. More importantly though, their creation signaled the beginning of a great and terrible imbalance that could destroy him forever.

"Ruby Moon and Spinel Sun, I...I welcome you both into this world. Come with me, we have a lot to learn." The two dark guardians looked at each other and shrugged. He would not burden them with the enormity of his mistake, but that also meant he would not share with them the deepest parts of himself that made the bond between Clow and his guardians so strong.

~~~~~@~~~~~

His grandparents were old and sick, but the important thing was that the Kinomotos had survived their son and his wife. They would take in their grandson now and teach him to celebrate life and not mourn death. Kinomoto Fujitaka knew he was loved and accepted, and loneliness only haunted his dreams despite losing his mom and dad so young. Death was not the end. He missed his parents with a pain that was indescribable, but not incapacitating. He missed them, but his life was full of family and friends that kept him from being lonely. Part of him knew that he'd lose them too, but there would be more people in his life to love and care for. There always had been and always would be.

He knew that the perspective he had was unique for his age, but he just attributed it to being faced with hardships others hadn't and having so much support. He used to have dreams all the time about more, but the night his parents died they had all stopped with a solitary vision of a boy his age, an English garden at night, and giant black butterfly wings. The next morning he got the news about his parents, and all the magic seemed to slip from his dreams.

It didn't bother him. He dove into life with gusto and learned all he could. He had a talent for helping others understand things, and an insatiable curiosity now. He found patience because he understood suddenly that everybody had the same emotions flowing through them, and he easily put himself in their places.

Years passed and the dreams faded, but life itself was full of experience. Fujitaka didn't smile much, but he never let things bring him down. He worked hard, and finally decided to be a teacher. His grandparents made it to his graduation, but his grandfather didn't last long after. His grandmother wasted away to nearly nothingness, and one day, during his first year of teaching, she died. She had been a ray of sunshine every day of her life, and again he felt that dark pit of something missing in his life. He remembered to think of the good things in her life, all the fun and happy and funny times they had shared like she taught him to do. He was caught up in thoughts of all the happy times he had shared with all the family members he had lost when an angel fell out of the sky and landed on him. Hard.

Well, she fell out of a tree. And she wasn't an angel, she was simply the most beautiful woman in the world. She radiated an inner beauty as well, and never stopped smiling, even when her family disowned her for loving him. Nadeshiko taught Fujitaka many things about love and being happy in the midst of pain. She gave him two beautiful children and even in labor she would muster a reassuring smile over her shoulder as he massaged her through another contraction. Every shining moment they were together he knew he was the luckiest man in the world. She reassured him that the spirits of the dead were around when he needed them, and told him that his parents and grandparents were there when they were married and when Touya and Sakura arrived into this world. She reassured Touya with loving arms when he saw ghosts and taught him that he had nothing to fear from them while Fujitaka watched them with wonder at their strange gift.

Then, when Sakura turned three and was the same age Touya was when he started seeing ghosts, Nadeshiko was too sick to help Sakura the same way. Nadeshiko was hospitalized and spent the last month of her life there as the cancer ate her from the inside. This time Fujitaka didn't know how he could handle losing yet another loved one. Nadeshiko smiled through her intense pain and talked him through his grief.

"Fujitaka, my love, don't be sad."

"I'm sorry Nadeshiko. It's so hard not to feel like it's not fair. I want to be strong for you, but I don't know how I can make it through this. I don't want to lose you." He wasn't crying, but his shoulders slumped in defeat and he turned to look out the window instead of seeing his beauty with tubes and needles invading her body.

He heard the bedclothes rustle and turned to see her smiling at him as usual. "I promise I won't leave until I'm not needed. Touya will tell you when I'm there, and if you need to ask me a question he will tell you my answer. I promise. When I die I will no longer be in pain. If I could though I would endure it forever if I could be with you longer. I am the luckiest woman on earth to have you, and I want you to remember that. Every moment I have been granted with you makes up for every decade I have to spend without you. In the end, my love, I will be waiting to take you home where we will be together forever."

"I don't know how you do it, but when you hurt so much and still smile I can't help myself. You have given me more reasons to smile than I could number."

"I am glad. Please, don't cry for me. Be happy for me. Be happy for Touya and little Sakura. Be happy for yourself. There is a wonderfulness in you that you don't even know about, and it makes me happy to know I could touch that greatness."

"I feel the same way about you. You are too wonderful for words. I am lucky to have known you, my beautiful Nadeshiko."

Then, a week later, the last words she spoke to him were, "Promise me, you won't cry."

He promised, and was true to his word.