Tattooed

Summary: "I've lost everything to drugs, do you know that?" Sakura told him with tears in her eyes. "The funny thing is I've never even touched a drug in my life and yet it destroyed me. It took everything." She turned to face him then. "Please, don't let it take you away from me. I won't be able to handle it, not this time, not again." S x S.

Author's Note: Fashion Fairy 26, Randomsam123, newbee, Guest, TaraRae89, xXBlossomofShadowsXx, brightestoflights, Gina, SweetSeductionCherryB, deadflo, teru21:

Breaking up is like turning a page. You can turn as many pages as you'd like, but sometimes, you might want to turn back.

The song used in this chapter was specially recommended by PrincessNevermore. Thank you for that. Hope you're reading this one.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

xxxvi.

It's never enough to say I love you
No, it's never enough to say I try
It's hard to believe
That's theres no way out for you and me
And this seems to be the story of our lives

-Not Meant to Be/Theory of a Deadman

"Who was that on the phone?" Syaoran asked, trying to think of the man's soft and deep voice, trying to calculate how old he might have been, trying to remember if he'd ever heard the voice before.

"Nobody you know,"

Syaoran felt red hot anger right then.

"You know what?" he paused when she turned away. "No," he moved to her and turned her around. "Why don't you pretend for once, just this once, to care enough to tell me the truth about your past?"

Sakura's nostrils flared as she spoke. "I can't believe you. You're talking to me about caring enough to tell the truth! What the hell happened to that after you slept with your ex-fuck-buddy and didn't bother letting me in on that little secret?"

Syaoran didn't say anything.

Sakura just said fuck-buddy.

That was the first time he'd heard the woman swear, even if it was a semi-swear word.

"I told you, Sakura, I didn't want to sleep with her okay? She manipulated me into sleeping with her, and who knows if I even did? She's not going to tell me the truth about that night, so we're never going to know. Ever.

"I feel guilty that it happened. I can't begin to tell you how much I wished it didn't, but it did. It wasn't supposed to happen, it was a mistake. It's not going to happen again."

Sakura stood still in his hands, the room quiet.

"You're changing the subject. We were talking about you. Who was that on the phone call?" Syaoran asked again.

Sakura moved to the other side of the kitchen this time around. "I don't want your guilt," she spat out first. "I don't want your remorse. I don't want you to be guilty or angry over it. I want you to see this from my viewpoint. What would you do, if the roles were reversed? Think about it, Syaoran, why did that night happen in the first place? Why were you there, with that girl?"

Syaoran felt the muscles in his jaw clench tight. "To keep her away from you,"

Sakura inhaled deep and loud. "You should've told me the truth. I knew you, I knew what I was getting into, even if you did lie about it, even if you tried to hide it."

"So why can't you be with me, now? What's changed that you can't even stand next to me?"

Syaoran had wanted the answer to that one for a long time now. Though it had been eating him up inside, all he'd really wanted the answer to that one question.

Why?

"Because," Sakura sobbed, making Syaoran look at her. She was crying? "Because, this is something that's happened to me before, and I'm not a fool to go falling for the same thing a second time."

Syaoran stood on the opposite edge of the counter, knowing full well that if he dared to cross the invisible boundary Sakura had set up, there'd be no more talking. The wall would be breached, the insecurities would wall up again, and this time there'd be no getting through.

How could he ask her about this without killing his last and final chance?

"You think it's so easy, do you?" she asked, wiping her eyes with her hands, looking so sad and lonely on the other side that it made Syaoran want to cry. "You think it's so easy to get up one fine day and say 'Screw it, I'm done with drugs.' You think that's all it takes to be an ex-drug addict?

"I've seen hundreds of boys and girls your age give up and dry out under the effects of a drug, and not even something as lethal as crystal meth," she said the word like it was poison. It was. But the way she said it struck oddly somehow. "It'd be a common painkiller; maybe some smashed up meds... maybe even a large dose cough syrup, but they were all hooked and they needed to go back for more every single time.

"And no, none of them wanted that. None of them grew up thinking 'I'm going to be an addict someday.' They all grew up like you, with family issues to sort out and big dreams to fulfill. But no," Sakura shook her head in a frenzied manner. "Their lives were sealed in the form of small household medicines, or large crystal pellets.

"They wanted help, they asked for it themselves, but that doesn't mean the urge to get high wasn't there. It was there. And you know what? It never leaves. It's just waiting for you to be at your weakest, so it can do its worst and beat you to the ground just before hitting bottom, just enough to get you hooked again."

Sakura was breathing so heavily that it took Syaoran a while to realize that she was... hysterical. Something about the way she was speaking, the way she was standing... everything seemed so out of place. The Sakura he knew and met every day was not this person in front of him. It was like she was a whole other person now, like someone he had never even had the misfortune of meeting.

This was the Sakura who'd picked him up off the streets?

This unforgiving, untrusting woman of twenty five...

"Why'd you bring me here, then?" Syaoran asked then, stalking to her side. "Why did you bother at all that night? You could've walked off, and it wouldn't have made any difference."

"I could've but, I didn't." Sakura bit out, looking away from him as he held her by the shoulders. "I couldn't leave you alone; I would've regretted it for the rest of my life."

"Alright, granted, I was weak and you helped me out." Syaoran paused to take in her breathing. It helped calm him a little. "Why'd you agree to dinner that night when Tomoyo invited me?"

"I couldn't say no—"

"You could've said no, that you know as well as I do,"

Sakura said nothing.

"Okay, let's say you were feeling like a martyr that night too and you wanted to treat me like your charity case just a little longer." Syaoran shut off any protests Sakura had to make and kept talking. "What about that night at Ebony and Ivory? We were well over the first night; you didn't have to oblige me in my desperate attempt at wooing you, and don't you say you didn't know I had a thing for you. So, why'd you come?"

Still nothing.

"You came for the music," Syaoran answered for her. "I'm going to make an assumption and say you came for the music. You were bored, out of place, and you came for the music, right?

"So here's the most puzzling question of them all. Why'd you come to my apartment that afternoon, that first time you'd seen me high?"

Sakura sighed quietly before one drop of tear slid onto her cheek and down her face. Syaoran closed his eyes and brought her to him. He couldn't bear to see her cry. It pained him to see her cry.

"Why did you ask me out that night?" Sakura's muffled voice came, turning the tables now.

"I wanted to get to know you better, see you outside of happenstance meets."

"Why'd you come here to play games that night?"

"I didn't want to be alone, and I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"Why'd you come find me on my terrace after that day in your apartment? The day you got high?" The questions were piling up one after the other. Unlike Sakura, Syaoran had answers.

"In my defence, I didn't know that was you."

Sakura pulled away and met his eyes. Syaoran couldn't stop the smile that overcame his face.

"Fine, I came to apologize. I thought... I thought we were friends... or God, I don't know. I thought you were hot as hell and I was attracted to you... and I thought you might... I don't know, Sakura. I wanted you to be a part of my miserable existence."

For some time after that, Syaoran held Sakura like that, against the cold kitchen counter, in silence. They said nothing more, and Sakura asked for nothing else. Syaoran felt elated... so long, it had been too long since they'd been this close. Nothing could feel like this, like coming home to a lover, like coming home to family.

Nothing could be this magnificent. Not even getting high.

Some days Syaoran could remember exactly what this felt like, and he realized then that that was what was stopping him... keeping him straight.

He prayed to God he'd remember how'd this felt for the rest of his life.

"I have to tell you something now," Syaoran whispered. Sakura shook her head.

"Let me say it, and then I'll leave."

That quieted her down.

The pang of ache in his chest did not go away after that.

"I love you," he spoke clearly into her hair. "I love you, so much, that I think I've gone a little insane in these past few weeks without you. I think about you all the time, like every second of the day, to every dream I manage to conjure up. You are everything," he paused to look into her eyes now, his hands on her face. "You are everything and nothing can ever change that. Nothing can make this different for me. You hear me, Sakura?

"Nothing is coming between you and me, not the drugs, not ex-partners, not friends, not family."

"Why not?"

Syaoran looked baffled. That wasn't what he'd been expecting to hear.

"Why not what?"

"Why won't anything come between us?"

Syaoran sighed. "Because like it or not, Sakura, I met you, and you met me, and now I'm madly in love with you. Not anyone else, just you."

Sakura nodded. "I never questioned your love for me."

"Okay," Syaoran nodded a gesture for her to go on.

"I don't trust you around the drugs."

"What if I—"

"It doesn't matter how long you stay clean." Sakura interrupted, pulling away. Syaoran missed her warmth already. "Chances are you either will stay clean, or you'll just find ways of outsmarting me. So, it doesn't matter if you go your whole life telling me you're clean. I will always doubt you on that. Not your loyalty to me, not your fidelity, but your commitment and dedication to staying sober.

"Will that bother you?"

Syaoran didn't try to answer.

"This thing with the red haired girl... it doesn't bother me as much as it should. I was angry, hurt, upset, betrayed. But I was still able to let it go, let you inside my apartment tonight. Do you understand why?" Sakura asked calmly. Syaoran recognized her demeanour, the look in her eye, the way she spoke in that calm and collected manner.

He did not pretend to understand it.

"You didn't know what you were doing," Sakura said slowly. "You were high and she was... taking advantage of your high. I hate that it happened, I'm angry that you were stupid enough to let it happen, but that's not what bothers me most.

"How can I know for sure that random ex-girlfriends will not violate you that way unless I know for sure that you will not be getting high again? I can't. I can't know the former for sure without knowing the latter for sure and I don't know the latter for sure. I don't think I ever will."

Syaoran didn't say anything.

Sakura took a deep breath before speaking next.

"I had Touya rent this apartment out because it has three bedrooms. One is mine, the other's Touya's and Yukito's. That bedroom you slept in the first night you came here?" she asked, pointing at the room. "That's the room meant for my father.

"That's who you heard on the phone just now. That's whom I came running from Japan all the way to Glasgow."

Syaoran didn't move an inch, not even to nod that he'd heard her, not even to breathe. It was then that he took a breath. He'd forgotten to even breathe.

"He's never been here. We don't talk. We're not on talking terms, really. He calls occasionally, as part of his therapy I guess, but we don't... we don't."

"Sakura..."

"I lost my mother, and then slowly, painfully, I lost my father to the oblivion he preferred to exist in, just like I might lose you one day to the exact same thing. I was alone, lonely, distraught, closed off... I didn't date, I didn't have a social life, and I had but one best friend, one sixteen year old, helpless and clueless as me.

"I had my therapist say many other fancy things to me, things that I'd become because of my childhood, because of my ill fated and lonely childhood. I wished someone could have saved me, picked me up and changed me; let me out of my caged misery. I wished for a miracle, for a family. I wished... And now, I'm not ever going back there, even if it means we have to be apart, even if it means I have to move the world around. I'm not going through that again, not ever again.

"I should have known better than to get in so deep, to get you in so deep," Sakura paused before moving to the kitchen sink to wash her face. "I may have left my past behind, but somehow, even so far from home... it still follows me wherever I go."

Syaoran almost didn't hear that last part over the running tap.

He couldn't breathe. He was afraid to. One breath could bring the sobs tumbling through his eyes.

"Now, you will forgive me when I ask you to leave and never bother with me again, because I'd like to have the life I never had, and I don't trust you to give that to me."

Syaoran felt horrid, worse than he ever had before. He didn't put up a fight after those words, not anymore. He stood still with his fists clenched and his face burning red. Sakura wiped her face with a cloth and stood, the water still running.

"I'm sorry, Sakura," his voice was hoarse as he said that.

He didn't stick around to see if she responded.

It's like one step forward and two steps back
No matter what I do you're always mad
And I, baby I'm sorry to see
Maybe we're not meant to be

QUESTION: What is the most bittersweet song you've ever heard?

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