Chapter Twenty-Three

Disclaimer: I don't own CCS.

He who cannot agree with his enemies is controlled by them.

~ Chinese Proverb

Syaoran was sitting in his tent, studying the blade of his jian. The sword's balance was perfect in his hands. The power of darkness made it shine more brilliantly than it ever had, and the edge was sharp enough to make his eyes hurt as his gaze slid over it. However entranced he had become with the weapon, there was something gnawing in the back of his mind. Something he had forgotten to do. Each time he thought he was remembering what it was, it would slip from his mind again like water through his fingers. Was it his men outside? No. They had already submitted to him. They would not rise against him again. There was a peace in them now; one that was there because they now understood that they were safe under his command. All they had to do was obey.

A strong aura of the moon approached. Syaoran dematerialised his jian and reclined on his cushioned chair, looking up just the right distance so that when Yue walked into the tent they would be face to face, eyes to eyes. Yue was a strong, patient man, full of integrity and formality. He was rarely worried and out of line. But as he observed Yue's demeanor and the minute changes in the tiny muscles in his face, Syaoran knew that the man was anxious and about to say something that would make him, Syaoran, quite irritated.

What was it? The generals were all on his side. He had become what they needed him to be: the ultimate bringer of death. So why was Yue's heartbeat racing ever so slightly and why was he desperately trying to hide his feelings from his emperor? Why did the formidable general look like he was going to be gutted on the spot?

"What is it?" asked Syaoran, seeing as Yue did not seem in a hurry to voice his thoughts.

Yue sank to one knee and bowed his head.

"Your Imperial Majesty, I regret to inform you that your imperial concubine is unwell. I have come to ask you to visit her at once."

His imperial concubine? Concubine...

A faint memory of green eyes and a bright smile, flashed to life in his mind.

"Sakura..."

"Yes, Huangdi."

"Have you alerted Hing-sensei?"

"Yes, Huangdi. Your servant is attending to her now, but I must implore you to come at once."

Yue looked up at him, his expression just shy of pleading. Syaoran came around his study table and brushed past Yue. He quickly maneuvered his way through the maze of a camp and he all but ran to Sakura's tent when it came into view. The tightness that had wound itself into his chest after Yue's words, had dissipated at the sight of her smiling face even though her annoying brother was at her side. It seemed the man had no more energy today to glare and snarl at him. But... why was he looking so horrid - as though the very skies were falling down around them? Syaoran glanced back at Yue, who had been following close behind him. The general's icy blue eyes glowed so brilliantly, they almost turned as white as his hair. A light wind whipped about him spreading his aura throughout the tent.

"This is what you must see, Huangdi," said Yue, his voice echoing in the tent. "What you both must see. Show what you are hiding, and reveal your true self to me, Illusion!"

Syaoran's gaze snapped back to Sakura. All about her was some strange reflection - like coloured glass, shifting in a never-ending pattern and hiding her from sight. All at once, it materialized in front of him, in the shape of a hooded man, and then dissolved into a card. Sakura caught the card in her hand. But it was not the Sakura of a few moments ago. It was a Sakura with a fever on her neck and in her face. Her green eyes were dull as her skin. Her hair was slick against her forehead with sweat, and her breaths were uneven. Syaoran rushed to her, almost pushing her brother away in the process. He pressed his palm to her forehead, then it traveled to her neck. Her eyes slid halfway shut and she stared unseeingly at him.

"Sakura?" he called, his voice expressing his concern, but still very much composed.

He shook her slightly. She did not stir. He raised her up and pulled her into his lap, giving her another good shake.

"Sakura."

Nothing.

"Wake up," he commanded, slapping her on the face lightly. "Come on, wake up."

His heart pounded hard inside him but he did not panic. Sakura was a heavy sleeper. Yes. That was it. He shifted her, bringing her more upright. He took one steadying breath and pressed three of his fingers to her wrist, feeling for her pulse. He waited. One... he counted.

His calm turned to dread as he waited for the second count.

"Yue! Her heart has stopped."

He shook her again, violently this time, causing the neck of her hanfu to come undone slightly. He blinked. Was her neck always so slim? He pulled at her clothing, moving them past her shoulders.

"No. No no no no no," he murmured, his hand trembling as he clutched her clothes.

Sakura's skin was sallow and her frame was too slim for a woman in her delicate condition. Syaoran did not understand what was happening. Sakura looked like she had not slept or eaten in days.

"What is this?" demanded Syaoran. "Who has done this to her?"

"We do not know how long she has been unwell," Yue said, his eyes downcast. "She has been using an illusion to hide it from you."

"Impossible," said Syaoran forcefully. "I would have noticed. I would know if she was unwell. I would have sensed it."

"You didn't," said Touya, covering Sakura's shoulders with her hanfu. "But I should have. I've been visiting her all this time, I didn't suspect a thing. When the general arrived, he felt the magic."

Syaoran shot to his feet.

"Where is Hing-sensei?!"

"He left to get herbs," said Touya. "Shortly before you arrived."

"Yue, bring him to me at once. Bring everyone who knows anything about medicine. Man and woman."

The anger inside Syaoran, fueled by his fear, was threatening to burst forth at any moment and crush everyone in sight.

"How could you let this happen?" he asked Touya as Yue left the tent. "All your talk of her being your most cherished person. I left her in your care and this is the state I return to find MY WIFE IN?"

"She is not your fucking wife! Your wife is in your harem."

"She is my wife in everything but ceremony. She is most beloved. Do you understand? Do you understand that I love her more than myself?!"

"And I believe you, dammit!" shouted Touya throwing his arms into the air. He grabbed at his hair. "From the moment I saw you I knew! I hate it! But it doesn't matter! She is dying. I can feel her aura slipping away-"

"Xiao Lang..."

Syaoran and Sakura's gazes locked. He breathed a sigh of relief but his anger would not subside so easily.

"Sakura!" he said, dropping before her on his knees. "What have you done? Answer me! Do you hear me talking to you?"

Sakura looked at him and then to Touya uncertainly. She reached out and touched Syaoran's face.

"You're real," she said quietly. "Xiao Lang!"

The panic in her eyes was undeniable.

"He's here," she whimpered. "He's here!"

"No one is here besides us three. Breathe Sakura! Deeo breaths."

Tears flowed down her cheeks. She gripped her clothes at her chest and moaned.

"Lu Sheng is here. Inside."

Syaoran shushed her.

"You were dreaming."

"No. I wasn't. I wasn't..."

"You were dreaming."

"He said..." Sakura hiccuped, her breath caught in her throat. "No... no...please no..."

Suddenly, she began yanking the layers of her hanfu up her legs like a wild demon. Sakura gave an blood-curdling cry, her stare pinned to her legs. Blood had soaked her clothes near her thighs. Touya and Syaoran sprang back, each looking at the other, knowing they were both equally out of their depth. Syaoran ran to the tent opening and ripped back the flap.

"HING-SENSEI!"

Hing-sensei, a few of his male apprentices, two maidservants and Nakuru quickly disappeared in and out of Sakura's tent as they gathered the necessary washbowls, cloths and instruments to deliver Sakura's baby. It was an unusual and terrifying sight - men in the same area as a woman about to give birth, a male doctor between her blood-soaked legs and Nakuru to his side assisting him.

"Not now," whimpered Sakura, her face crimson. "It's not time yet."

"It's coming whether you want it to or not Sakura-chan," said Nakuru.

"No it can't - listen to me! Somebody!"

Her body was weakened and she could barely summon the energy to shout. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and all became black though the she heard all the commotion about her. A maidservant dipped a cloth into icy water, wrung it, and patted it to Sakura's forehead. Pinpricks of light dotted her vision as her sight slowly returned.

"Xiao Lang," she murmured even as medicinal tea was put to her lips. She took a sip. "It needs me… it can't come now."

She knew he heard her because he moved closer to the doctor.

"You're sure the child is ready?"

"Yes. You are making the right decision Great Imperial Son," said Hing-sensei. "If we do not act quickly we'll lose both mother and child. This is best."

"She will survive this," said Syaoran, inadvertently warning the doctor of his failure to do so.

"Yes," said Hing-sensei in agreement, placing his hands on Sakura's belly, feeling her contractions. "But the child..."

"Is second in my mind."

"Huangdi, please!" begged Sakura.

She could not articulate exactly what she wanted just then, but he had to understand that the child must come first. Nakuru slipped her fingers between Sakura's and plastered a brave smile on her face. Sakura's vision cleared and she raised her other hand towards Syaoran willing him to comfort her but he made no movement towards her. Instead, Touya clutched her empty hand.

"Let's begin," said Hing-sensei, but Sakura shook her head even as she screamed and writhed in pain. It felt like something was pulling out her insides and ripping them apart with razor-sharp talons.

"Nooo!"

"Push. Now!" commanded Hing-sensei.

Sakura squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to defy the instinctive drive to push. Touya was attempting to reassure her with words that were far too kind for him but she could not appreciate what he was saying because she stubbornly refused to have her child born early.

Syaoran dropped to her side and gripped her jaw, turning her face towards his.

"Push."

"No! Not yet, please. It will die. Our child will die."

The longer he stared at Sakura, the more untamed his expression became. His eyes glowed a golden hue and he grew more cold like stone.

"You're not dying today," he told her, matter-of-factly. "There will be other children."

Sakura shook her head, and licked tears from her lips.

"I want this one. You should too!"

Syaoran glanced at Touya, whose eyes were turned away though his body was rigid with attention. Clearly, he was giving Syaoran free reign on this one. He applied more pressure on Sakura's jaw opening it slightly.

"We can knead her belly," said Hing-sensei to Sakura's horror. "I can push the child out of her."

"I'll do it myself!" Sakura relented.

Syaoran released his grip on her. Just as she said she would, Sakura pushed like the doctor instructed her.

"It hurts," cried Sakura. She screamed as wave after wave of imaginable pain shot through her middle. She squeezed the blood from Nakuru and Touya's hands as her contractions came. Touya brought his head near hers.

She half-expected some milk and honey to be pressed to her lips just like whenever she was ill and he took care of her in Japan. The metallic odour of blood and the biting scent of salty sweat permeated the room to remind her that she was not home, not to mention the small body tearing through her.

"Once more time!"

Sakura ripped her hands away from Nakuru and Touya, propping herself up on her elbows. She pushed with all her strength. The room spun as she grew faint and fell back against the cot.

"What's happening?" she heard Syaoran ask.

Through pulses of light and darkness, she saw Hing-sensei quiver at Syaoran's thundering voice.

"She's very weak, Huangdi."

"I can see that!" exploded Syaoran with fury. "Is that all the information your exhaustive years of study has equipped you to give to me, at this moment old man?!"

"Huangdi," interjected Yue. "Perhaps we should wait outside. The doctor should be trusted to do what is needed."

Syaoran ran a hand through his hair as he considered Yue's words. Finally, he nodded bridling his temper.

"If she dies," he began to tell Hing-sensei.

"He knows," said Yue, escorting Syaoran from the doctor's presence.

Sakura's head spun for the umpteenth time that evening, and she saw black once more.

Outside the tent, Syaoran paced back and forth his aura growing darker with each step. Yue for the most part was not alarmed by this, after all it was good to see some emotion coming from Syaoran. However, all at once, a calm entered the emperor and he came to an abrupt halt.

"It's been three hours," said Syaoran.

"From what my brother told me, these things can take up to half a day."

"I can't wait so long. I need her to be fine now."

"Babies don't care what we can and cannot do, what we want and what we do not want. They do things in their own time," said Yue.

He looked up at the stars twinkling above them.

"I remember when you were born," he told Syaoran. "You had the smell I suspect all babies have - a clean, pure enduring scent."

"I've never smelled a baby," said Syaoran, welcoming the conversation as a distraction from Sakura's intermittent screams and groans. "Even when I lived in the harem with the other princes and princesses... somehow, I was always separate from others."

"You simply never know what a child will become," said Yue. "You were quite and you were observant. But you were gentle. Who could have predicted the fearsome leader you will grow to become?"

"We are taught to be what we are," said Syaoran, becoming interested in Yue's musings more and more. "We learn what is expected, what our place is and we obey."

"So if it were not for what we were taught, could there had been other paths for us? Could you have been a musician and I a poet?"

"Yes... no..." Syaoran passed a hand over his face and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Maybe. Why are you thinking of such things?"

"I don't know," said Yue. "They just occurred to me. It's a great responsibility parents have to rear their offspring. The slightest word or gesture can make all the difference."

Syaoran scowled and in that instant, noticed a deep silence. Nakuru walked out of the tent, a deep melancholy bearing down her shoulders. Syaoran did not wait for her to speak. He brushed past her, his gaze falling first on Sakura and then on Hing-sensei who was wrapping a small body in a thick cloth.

"I want to see," an ashen Sakura uttered weakly.

Syaoran accepted the child from the doctor and stared at it. It was so small he held it out in front of him in one hand. Was this pitiable size normal? Its flesh was tinted blue and its eyes were shut. Its little chest rose up and down almost imperceptibly. The room was silent as he examined the little human he had made.

"Xiao Lang!" Sakura called powerfully but with a bit of anxiety in her voice. "I want to see my child."

There was hope in her face but it was misplaced. He deposited the little bundle into her arms like he was handing over a sack of flour. She hurried pulled back the blanket to look at it. A gust of cold wind blew into the room biting at everyone's faces. It should have been enough to make a newborn stir but not this one.

"His breaths are shallow, Huangdi. He does not cry nor react to touch. I do not believe that he will last until morning," said Hing-sensei.

"And her?" asked Syaoran tilting his chin in Sakura's direction.

"She is still very weak and fatigued but she will live. Can she bear another child? Perhaps. If the environment is different, more beneficial to an expecting mother."

Syaoran held Hing-sensei's gaze. The man had saved Sakura and that was all he asked him to do. He turned to his concubine as she kissed the child's forehead.

"Do you hate me?" she asked Syaoran.

She knew what he would have expected and she saw what he had received instead.

Yue drew up behind Syaoran, looking down at Sakura and the child. Sakura shifted as she felt something else slip out of her. She looked down to see Nakuru discard some bloody substance in a bucket. Then Nakuru was wiping at her with a washcloth as the other maidservants began to clear the space. Syaoran's nose wrinkled in disgust.

"Get rid of it," Syaoran told Hing-sensei, his gaze still lingering on Sakura.

At first, Sakura thought he was speaking to the servants. But when Hing-sensei reached for her child, she instinctively pulled back, clutching her son to her bosom.

"Xiao... Huangdi...!"

"You heard the doctor," said Syaoran, his voice void of emotion. "He will die."

"He won't die," Sakura told them all. "He can't die."

"When you were a baby," said Touya, shifting close to her to get a look at his nephew. "Okaa-san would let you sleep on her chest. She said it soothes children to feel the warmth of their mother's skin. She said that a mother's touch and presence had the power to heal."

Sakura nodded. She loosed her clothes, and rest the child to her naked chest, pulling her clothes together again to wrap him in.

Syaoran glared at Touya, spun on his heels and marched from the tent.

The purples and reds in the early morning sky sought to brighten his day but Syaoran would not be reached. His eyes darted back and forth across the trees in the nearby woods, as he stood, brooding.

"Is it dead yet?" he asked, Yue who had quietly approached him from behind.

"No."

Sakura had been up all night and morning watching the child lest it slip away if she so much as blinked. He knew this because he too had been up all night and that morning watching her in case she succumbed to the afterlife herself.

"Why does she torture herself with the inevitable?"

"Women are like that."

"I heard her speaking to the woman, Akizuki. She said that Sheng is responsible for this. That he came to her in a dream and told her she must lose the child in order for them to be together. I had thought it strange that he kept his word and gave her back to me unharmed. He wants her."

Yue came to strand beside him.

"I've never held a baby before," said Syaoran. "I held my own and I was ashamed. Then I was ashamed for being ashamed."

Syaoran's nails dug into his palms.

"I did not care as much as she did," he told Yue. "But when I saw the child, it became real and I realized just how much I already cared for it. Why make it suffer? We should make its death quick. It is inevitable."

He drew a deep breath and released it heavily.

"I've been standing here, thinking about how it would be gone soon. That I would never get the chance to hear its voice. To see it run. To show it how to swing a sword. Then I think of Sakura and I know that she would be crushed when the boy dies. She will never be the same."

"Yukito has told me that losing a child is not uncommon," insisted Yue. "She would make another child and she will heal. Give it time."

"It didn't... feel... like this when my father was killed," said Syaoran. "It didn't feel... and Lu Sheng is the cause of this... ache. He is the reason why Sakura will never be the same."

Syaoran rubbed at his nose and swallowed the lump in this throat.

"Today, we start our march to the City. Inform the men."

By that afternoon, Yue, the Lei, Renshu and the generals were leading their respective units off toward the Forbidden City. As the number of soldiers around Syaoran dwindled, the three tents that remained in the army camp became more prominent like an omen. Sakura lay with their soon to be dead son in one of them. The thought of going to them did not cross his mind. What was done was done, and what will be will be. All he could do now, was finish what was started in the City many years ago.

"Oi."

Syaoran looked down at Touya from his vantage point on his horse.

"My sister... she still loves you. She's doesn't understand why you don't visit her... why you don't want to see your child, but her feelings for you unfortunately, does not seem able to change. Now you're leaving with no instructions to her. No farewell."

An imperial soldier brought Syaoran his horse and he mounted it. He turned it around, squeezed it sides lightly with his thighs, and started to canter off. But then he pulled on its reins and made it come to a halt. Remembering something, he turned the animal around to face Touya. He slipped a hand inside his armour and pulled out a green gem.

"My father gave this jade stone to me when I was born. It has great value. It can carry you home, and keep you for the rest of your life."

He tossed it to Touya who caught it deftly with one hand.

"Is that it?" asked the man.

"Trusted soldiers have remained behind to accompany you to Japan," said Syaoran. "That's it."

Syaoran took the remaining men and made up the rear of the army. He expected to feel something to make him turn back, but the farther he rode from Sakura, the easier it became to focus on the task at hand. Eventually, he slipped into thoughts so dark and deep, he could no longer see the good in anything or anyone. By the next day, he had wrapped himself in his dark magic so thoroughly, he could dream of nothing else other than the carnage he was about to bestow.

A/N:

Hey Tomodachi! Read and Enjoy. ^_^ Until next time, Ja ne!