Disclaimer: CCS is not mine. Now, if I had a penny for every time I said that, I could… Buy CCS! Shattered laughs

Butterflies Ten Strawberries and Chocolate That NEVER Happened

Her lips tasted vaguely of strawberries, and somehow chocolate at the same time. Perhaps… Chocolate-covered strawberries. Yes, definitely a strawberry with melted chocolate dripping off it…

He wanted to smack his forehead off something.

Sakura had frozen the moment he'd put his lips to hers. His hands were still gripping her shoulders gently, but she was in exactly the same position she had been all along. He desperately wanted her to push him away, slap him, yell at him, ask him what in hell he was doing… Or kiss him back, but that was certainly nothing if not unlikely.

But she still didn't move. And somehow, that was worse than anything else.

He let go of her shoulders and pulled away, sitting back where he had been before he'd leaned forward. They sat in silence for a few seconds, only the sound of each other's breathing reaching their ears. Syaoran couldn't stand it any longer.

"Say something, do something… Anything," he pleaded.

"What," Sakura's voice was shaking as she clenched and unclenched her fists, "do you want me to say, Li?"

"I don't care what you do or say, but please-" he began, his voice quiet.

"Why should I say or do anything, Li?" Sakura asked, her voice still quiet and shaking.

"WHY SHOULD I SAY OR DO ANYTHING?" she yelled finally into the darkness, biting back tears of rage, frustration and sadness.

Good, she was angry again. Syaoran could deal with Kinomoto when she was angry, at least.

"I don't know-" he began quietly.

"You don't know? YOU DON'T KNOW?" Sakura shouted, her voice hitching as those damn tears fell from her eyes.

"No, I don't know. I don't know why I did it, either," he said quietly, thoughtfully, trying to ignore the fact that this time Kinomoto was really, truly angry at him.

"Well, because of this, I have to quit the Deputy Head job," Sakura said, with a bitter, ironic smile. Of course she couldn't keep her job - she never wanted to see him again.

"I really thought things were going better between us, but this is what you wanted all along, isn't it? To get rid of me? You finally proved that Kinomoto Sakura can't handle the pressures of an executive job. This was your angle all along," she said as she absolutely wept. How could she have EVER even CONSIDERED becoming friends with him?

"No, no, you can't quit, it's my fault, I… I'll quit. You keep your job - you're good at it," he admitted quietly. Sakura blinked in surprise.

"No, you can't quit, the company needs you. Where else are they going to find a new Head? The blow to the company would be too great if you quit, and I loved working here, so I won't let something as bad as losing a Head of department happen to them because of me," Sakura replied.

"Then that only leaves one solution: neither one of us quits, and we work through this," Syaoran said calmly.

"No way! I'll quit, and that'll be it," Sakura said, with an air of finality.

"No," Syaoran said fiercely, "I'm not letting you quit. I'll quit myself before I let you do something so stupid."

And he was telling the truth. That was the scariest part. He would rather give up his own job than see her throw her talent down the drain. She'd worked so hard to get where she was, he wouldn't let her give up.

Sakura was taken aback at the tone of his voice. He really wasn't going to let her change his mind on this, was he?

Tentatively, Syaoran reached forward and lightly gripped Sakura's forearm. She flinched at his touch, but didn't demand he let go.

"Kinomoto, anything is better than this," he said.

"I was a bastard for doing… What I did. I don't even know why I did it, I guess I just got so caught up in the argument… I'm so, so sorry, please don't quit because of me, we make a good team when we actually manage to work together. And you're also not carrying ANY extra weight AT ALL, I was only trying to make you mad-" Syaoran babbled, before Sakura neatly cut him off.

"So you don't know why you kissed me, huh?" she asked, her voice calm, and even holding a hint of amusement. Syaoran winced, certain she was about to start yelling again.

"That's right," he replied nervously. Sakura laughed suddenly.

"Then, that's fine," she said.

"What?" Syaoran asked her, clearly he was missing something.

"As far as I'm concerned, this never happened. You were so caught up in the argument that you temporarily lost your mind. Since you had no control over your actions, it may as well never have happened. As this NEVER HAPPENED, there is no need to talk about it or think about it EVER AGAIN and so there is no reason AT ALL for anyone to give up their jobs. There is also certainly no reason for it to change anything between us. After all, things that NEVER HAPPENED have no bearing in real life, among things that DID HAPPEN, right?" Sakura explained, sounding, at least to Syaoran, a little hysterical as she wrung her hands nervously.

"It never happened," Syaoran said, as if testing the theory out.

"Right," Sakura nodded.

"It shall never be mentioned again," Syaoran said.

"Absolutely not," Sakura spoke in a tone that indicated that she thought he was being absurd for even wondering about it.

"And things will go back to EXACTLY the way they were before I temporarily lost my mind?" he ventured, sounding hopeful.

"Of course," she said confidently. What she didn't say was that things would go back to the way they were on the outside, but she would never think of him the same way again.

Syaoran knew that she was lying, of course. How could things go back to being they way they were before, now that he knew she tasted like chocolate and strawberries?

But he didn't say a word. If she could lie, then so could he. And, with a little lie, they could both be comforted. What was the harm in that?

"I'm sorry," Syaoran whispered into the darkness.

"What for?" Sakura asked, equally as quietly.

For making you cry. For causing you pain. For doing something so stupid and reckless for no reason. For knowing that you taste like strawberries and chocolate. For being the last person that you would want to know that.

Syaoran smiled mirthlessly.

"Everything."

It was three hours after the start of the power cut when Ueda entered Sakura and Syaoran's office with a flashlight to find the pair asleep side by side.

"Wake up!" he hissed as he poked the pair gently. They opened their eyelids slowly, and Sakura screamed when she saw the not-properly-lit face of Ueda so close to hers.

"What, what is it, Kinomoto?" Syaoran yelled sleepily, suddenly alert.

"It's just me, Ueda!" Ueda said, trying to sound reassuring. Sakura breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, thank God, I didn't recognise you because your face was only half-lit. I thought you were some murderer, or rapist or a - An axe-wielding maniac!" Sakura exclaimed.

"Thanks," Ueda said dryly.

"Yes, Sakura, of course you see murderers, rapists and axe-wielding maniacs everyday on the thirteenth floors of buildings during power cuts," Syaoran said sarcastically.

"Will you two stop making fun of me?" Sakura wailed, but she was giggling herself as she shoved Syaoran gently and the two men laughed.

"Anyway, Ueda-san, was there really any point in you coming to get us? We might be able to get out of the building, but it's pitch-black outside, there's no way we could get home," Syaoran said to the blonde man.

"No, I'm not here to get you out, I'm here to bring you with me downstairs. A few other staff and I are searching the building with flashlights and taking all employees down to the first floor. You two are the only people left on the thirteenth floor, and someone else is busy searching the fourteenth, so come down with me. All the other employees with offices on the first to twelfth floors are already down in the reception area," Ueda explained.

"So you're aiming to get all the employees down on to the first floor so we can wait all together until the power comes back on?" Sakura asked, her brow furrowed.

Ueda nodded.

"Okay, then," Syaoran said, and he got to his feet before offering his hand to Sakura and helping her to her feet, "let's go."

And the trio made their way out of the office and slowly down the stairs.

Eventually they reached the first floor, which was brightly lit - everyone present was holding either a flashlight or a candle. Around three hundred employees had been discovered already and they stood talking, huddled in groups. As soon as they saw Ueda they began firing questions at him and crowded around him as he nervously spluttered.

"When will the power come back on? What will we do? How will we get home?" and also, a lot of statements that weren't questions at all, such as,

"I was supposed to pick my kid up from her babysitter three hours ago!" and "Oh my God, my mother, I was supposed to cook her dinner tonight, she must be starving!" and even one person yelling, "Good God, my cat! She'll be sitting at the door and wondering where I am!"

Ueda didn't know what to say, there was too much shouting going on.

Finally Syaoran yelled, "SHUT UP!"

And everyone immediately fell silent. Nobody messed with the Head of Advertising.

"Now, over to you, Ueda-san," Syaoran said calmly.

"Okay, thank you, Li-san. Now, if you ask me questions ONE AT A TIME, I MIGHT be able to answer. But if I don't know, I just don't know, I'm afraid," Ueda instructed the mass of anxious employees.

A young woman who couldn't be more than eighteen spoke up first.

"Do you have any idea when the power will be back on, Ueda-san?" she asked timidly.

"I'm afraid that's one of the questions I just don't know how to answer," Ueda said apologetically, "It could be any time from now until tomorrow morning. Something went very badly wrong at Tokyo Power Station, and all service has been cut off for now. That's all I know."

"So we could be stuck here all NIGHT?" An older female secretary with long scarlet nails wailed.

"I'm afraid so," Ueda said. Immediately all the noise began to start up again, and so Ueda just stayed silent and waited for them to be quiet once more.

"How will we sleep here if we do get stuck here?" a man in a pinstripe suit managed somehow to yell over the other people. The crowd immediately was quiet as they wanted to hear Ueda's answer.

"We'll all just have to lie on the floor. We don't have any sleeping-bags or nearly enough blankets to do everyone -" Ueda's answer was choked by the people immediately beginning to object to this, and since there were three hundred people who all began shouting angrily at the same time, the noise was simply deafening.

Ueda just couldn't take it any more, and he walked away into a corner by himself. The crowd followed him, angrily demanding answers from him that he didn't have. Ueda did nothing but sat silently while the employees practically rioted around him.

"I feel so sorry for Ueda-san," Sakura said quietly to Syaoran.

"I know, he doesn't deserve all this…" Syaoran replied. Sakura was looking intently at Ueda, so Syaoran took the opportunity to study her face. He hadn't seen her since he had kissed her.

Looking at her now didn't make him feel all that different to when he looked at her before, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Then, damn her, she turned to him and smiled, and his stomach flipped over.

'God, if you're up there,' Syaoran thought, 'you have a very peculiar sense of humour.'