Well, due to several requests and inquires, I decided to try and write a follow up to Dusk. Would this make this chapter two then? O.o If that is the case, I guess you would call this Dusk, chapter two. ^^ I am trying here. Hopefully, I am staying with the original story plot I had. Not so gruesome and outlandish. Oh, and they are like in their early twenties I am guessing here.

You know the drill. CLAMP owns Sakura and crew. But Syaoran shall be mine! Mwhahahahha. Anyways...

Dusk, Chapter Two

She stood on the hillside overlooking the city. The usual hustle and bustle of the world faded away up here. The ocean glimmered on the horizon and it seemed to wink back at her. She found no happiness or joy in the sight. Pain was all that she felt. Today she felt numb and she stared blankly over the towering buildings that seemed like children's carelessly strewn toys. The wind rippled through her hair and she sighed gingerly and turned to look at what she had came up here for.

It had been months and months since the funeral. The therapists had told her she must go on and that since she was so young she would find a new reason to live soon enough. But she felt only the emptiness that came from one who had barren her heart from her soul.

She knelt on her knelt on the ground in front of the tombstone. There had been a great argument between Sakura's friends and the Li clan over where he should be buried. Mrs. Li had swept in with her classic style of a woman who got what she wanted; to take him home to Hong Kong to be buried with the family. Sakura's hand had flashed silver and emerald in the late afternoon sun that she arrived, and Syaoran's mother knew what had trespassed here between her son and the girl. The dishevel of disagreements had ended when she pulled Sakura into her arms and they cried together. Mrs. Li had four daughters to help her with the sorrow and grief, but Sakura was alone. She was absolute in her pain and burden and could not be reached. So, Mrs. Li had left two days later after the funeral on the hill with some of his belongings. Sakura had been left his sword and the ring. A few items the two had bought together were left to her too. Yet, his green costume he had worn in those long ago battles had returned to Hong Kong.

Her fingers traced lightly his name engraved on the cold, dull, lifeless stone that failed to capture all that he was to her. The slab of marble carried nothing but his name and the two dates that outlined his existence. Sakura had painstakingly made an engraved plate that she laid under the stone's shadow that read simply:

I love you now. I love you tomorrow. I love you as far as our souls are destined to reach and I shall transcend time and life if it is to be by your side. You are loved by Sakura still.

A simple enough declaration of her devotion to him. But it spoke leagues to her and gave her something to hold him still with her. A way for her to defy the cruel fates and prove that she would love him no matter how long it took.

The chill of his name under her caressing fingertips and the words upon her trembling lips frightened her as tears filled her eyes. She jumped up and almost tumbled backwards down the hill in her haste. The weeping willow tree, so accurately placed, gave her support as she stumbled to it and flung her arms about its cool trunk. Face pressed against the bark and the rustle of the whispering branches gave her a silent peace that she struggled with. Nails embedded into the tree's skin as she sobbed herself out. Not again. Not another vision of him and the tragedies of that night again. She gasped in choking cries and clung on for dear life. The real fear of collapsing was in the taste of the wind as it swirled the branches about her in an ageless song she never knew.

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Tomoyo had bandaged the slits that went through her dear Sakura-chan's pale wrists. Sakura had been out of it. Drunk on her own sorrow she never noticed when she had been carried out of her apartment and took to Tomoyo's sanctuary. Eriol had been draped in silence as the girl's blood was strung out over the covers of the backseat. Tomoyo's face had been a witness of tears that flowed in rivulets in her distress. Yet, Tomoyo dared not to inform Sakura of the pain she had seen in Sakura's eyes that night.

Everyday Sakura went through her life in a hopeless state. She was burnt out on the inside and no amount of comfort from an ever anxious Kero-chan could induce a slice of a smile on her lips. She was as well as dead for all the ghost of a girl she had been months ago when he was still alive and in her arms. They had been drowning in love that sprang from the purest fountain of childhood friendship. So clear and innocent had her eyes been then as she smiled and kissed his lips and then turned laughing to her best friend.

Tomoyo sighed and folded some more sheets that were in Sakura's room. She was determined that Sakura-chan would stay here with them as long as it took for her to return. With a slight sad frown, she thought unconsciously, what if she never does? Tomoyo shook her hear furiously. There was no way she was going to lose her precious to death. But Sakura had lost her precious to death's grimness. Did that bespeak ill tides? She clutched at the sheets on the bed and her head tilted forward in sadness. Her story violet eyes were hidden from sight when Eriol walked in the room.

"Tomoyo-chan...," he whispered to her.

She looked up at him and she forced her face to be expressionless. The effort was loss on Eriol who knew her too well for her own comfort, "I know. I am just trying to keep everything normal as possible for her. If she does not have to worry or look after her own physical needs, I am sure she will return sooner."

"But what if she doesn't? Will you spend your entire life trying to hold her together?"

"If that is what it takes, Eriol-kun."

"What does that say for your husband? And the...," his voice fading out.

"I will take care of that too. Do not worry. I just need to be here for Sakura-chan. She needs us all the most right now."

Eriol smiled at his bride and sat down next to her. He understood her. Tomoyo was still in love with Sakura. But when Li-kun had came back from Hong Kong, Tomoyo had needed someone too. Sakura-chan and Li-kun had been inseparable since the day he met her on the path to school. In love like only soulmates could be, Tomoyo had been on the outside though Sakura still was there. The beautiful girl with hair like a powder dusk and starry eyes of night had been truly alone, he had found that she might not be the only one.

His fingers traced her hand. Her fingers relaxed and he took the opportunity to slip his hand in hers and kissed the ivory skin. She smiled up at him a little sadly. Sometimes tenderness and caring overtook love. She was satisfied with her life. A new day and dawn was on the verge of the foreign horizon and she could feel it.

"Are you going to tell her?" Eriol asked. His voice dropped to a subtle soothing tone that wrinkled with hidden humor.

"Maybe. I suppose I should. I am just not sure how she will take it. I want her to find happiness too."

"Are you saying you are happy?"

Tomoyo smiled at him and smacked his arm playfully, "What do you think?"

She tilted her face up for a kiss. Eriol smirked to himself and the echoes of long ago of being called a hentai from his cute little descendant. A shadow of a frown crossed his eyes but Tomoyo, eyes closed, never saw it as they indulged. His fingers lightly brushed across the fabric of her dress over her stomach. Yes, Tomoyo would have something else beyond Sakura to think about shortly.

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The sun was just on the edge of the bowl of sky. Soon the lady of night would sweep across the heavens and with her gown trailing, cover the firmament of blue.

Sakura never noticed this as she stared absently at the flirting ocean in the distance. She had sobbed herself out for the time being. There was always tomorrow to do that in. Her future was now bleak and filled with tears, that would lead her to him again.

Her fingers curled over some grass and she kneaded it occasionally in a broken rhythm. Her back was pressed against the tree's firmness. While she appeared lifeless and not there, her mind was whirling as she though up new plans for her life.

Her dreams of being married and having Syaoran's children was blotted out permanently. She prayed feverishly that reincarnation existed so that she could be with him again in the next life. That thought sent out the worry what would happen if he was reborn in her lifetime? Would they spend eternity just chasing each other senselessly?

All the thoughts of eternity and soulmates failed to comfort her. She held her hands up to her face in the fading light. They were bandaged by Tomoyo's faithfulness to her. She wanted to smile, but the sadness inside her kept her from doing so. She carefully slipped them off and looked at the pale white scars. How did they seem to dance across her skin? An endless waltz carved in flesh.

She felt rather than saw a glimmer of pink shadows dance around her. They were there again for her. She had neglected them, she admitted inside. What a terrible mistress she was. Eriol-kun had created some spell or something and had been using that to keep the cards under control and keep their energy up. She had been too devastated to have spared the energy for them. Just grief.

They circled about her and she touched each in turn smoothly. These cards were apart of her. They were her friends. They had supported and chosen her for their mistress. They loved her. She felt her bond to them as they gathered and landed peacefully into her outstretched hand. She shuffled through them and whispered their names in turn.

Windy... her first and most trusted ally. Woody... helped her defeat the earth card. She wrinkled her nose as she recalled the pain of forgetting that Yue-san had threatened her with. The expression on his face when she walked into the courtyard after the final judgment. She had won and was the righteous owner of the cards. Then all the times he helped her in past battles. The first time he hugged her. In his arms in the showdown with Eriol-kun. His abrupt confession. She smiled for the first time in recalling the look in his eyes when he had intervened her on the path to school that one blissful morning. He was her world and all happiness and dreams steamed from him and what he meant to her. But her life was marching on still. She still awoke every morning and breathed the air.

She managed to stand up. Thoughtless she called forth a chant that lended her a key to power. She grasped the weight of the staff.

"Yes...," she hissed in slight pleasure as she twirled it in perfect sync. She always could spin this wand about without the bruises she used to get from cheerleading baton.

Spring would come shortly. A year had been passing before her eyes. She tossed the chosen card without looking at it. If she could not see the real thing, she would see the mirror image of what she desired so much.

"Syaoran...," she muttered as she flung herself into the arms of the illusion.

He was just the way she always recalled. That is how she knew inside that it was a brief lie she was coddling in. But the same scent of his skin. His warmth. Yes, he was her imagination playing with her. She rather wanted to enjoy her little fantasy so she paid no heed and let herself slip into the falsified comfort. The tears still slipped from the emerald globes though. . .