Oh, did I mention that Touya isn't Sakura's brother? She has a sister...not a brother...and Yukito isn't in this story........Anyways....Thankx Jaimee (my bestest friend) For Reviewing!



Disclaimer= I don't own the book The Other Side of Dark......Joan Lowery Nixon does, I also don't own Cardcaptor Sakura.......CLAMP does.......

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The Other Side of Dark

chapter 1

By: me! ~*cherrypinksakura*~

(Joan Lowery Nixon really does though)



The dream is too long. It slithers and slips and gurgles deeply into midnight pools in which I see my own face looking back. It pounds with a scream that crashes into earth-torn caverns and is drowned; it surges with the babble of voices that splash against my ears; it whispers over words I can't understand.

I have cried out in my dream. I have called, and ages agp someone answered.

"Mom? Okaa-san?" (Is that how you say mother in japanese?)

My voice violentely shakes the dream. I open my eyes, as with a trembling roar the dream rushes from my mind and my memory.

I'm in a bed, but this isn't my room. Across the room is a statue of a nurse. Her pencil is held in midair above her char; her mouth is open ehough that I can see some bubbles of saliva on her tongue; her eyes are stretched and glazed.

"Where's my mother?"

The statue comes to life. "Oh!" she says. "Oh, my, you're awake!" Fluttering like a moth between too many lights, she pats at my bed, jabs at the controls that rest on the nightstand, and trots to the door. "I'll be right back, Sakura," she says. She takes a step toward me with palms up as though she wanted to hold me where I am and repeats, "I will. I'll be back in a minute," then scrambles through the door.

"Where's my okaa-san?" I call to the empty room. I try to sit up, but I can't. It makes me dizzy. My mouth is dry, and there's a spot on my left hip that is sore. What is happening to me? The blanket and sheet have slipped to one side, so I pull them up to my chest.

I gasp as my hands feel breasts that are rounded and firm. My shaking fingers slide past my waist, exploring, as the horror grows. I lift my head to look down, down at toes that lump the blanket near the foor of the bed, and the horror explodes in a scream. I am Kinomoto Sakura. I'm only thirteen, and I'm in the wrong body!!

My room explodes with people, and they buzz like white-capped bees, reaching for my wrist, wrapping something around my left arm, and squeezing it until something beeps. And the whole time I'm shouting, "Go away! I want my okaa-san!"

A man with a trim blond beard sorts himself out from the confusion. He leans over me, studying me from under shaggy eyebrows, one hand gently stoking my forehead. "Sakura," he says, in a voice that pours like dark molasses, "I'm Dr. Tomodachi. I don't want to sedate you. I want to talk with you. Will you please onegai stop shouting?"

I'm trembling so hard it feels as if the bed were shaking, and my voice is a raspy whimper, "Where is okaa-san? I want my okaa-san. I'm afraid."

"Of course you are, " he says, "but you don't need to be afraid. Everything will be all right." His hand keeps soothing my forehead, sopping up the fear until the trembling is gone and the bed is still.

The nurses have disappeared, except for a short, round one standing by the door. For some reason I notice that her blue eyes are surrounded by crinkly laugh lines, so I don't mind if she stays.

Dr. Tomodachi sits on the edge of my bed. My right hand disappears into his. "Now then," he says, "the members of your family are being contacted. They'll be here as soon as they can make it."

"My okaa-san---"

But he wasn't finished, "You're in Tomoeda Blossoms Medical Center, under my care. You were brought here after hospital treatment for a gunshot wound."

I groan and screw up my face, trying to think, trying to remember.

"Relax," he says. "It doesn't matter now if you recall what happened. That can come later. The fact is that you've come out of what can best be called a semicomatose state, a type of coma."

"Dr. Tomodachi-san, listen to me!" I clutch both his hands, and my voice grates like a rusty gate. "There's something wrong. My body. It's not right. It's--"

"You were thirteen when you were brought here, Sakura. We've tried to keep you in a good state of health --as good as your condition would allow-- -so your body has grown and matured naturally."

"But I Iam/I thirteen!"

He shakes his head. "No, Sakura. You're seventeen."

"When my okaa-san comes, she'll tell you that you're wrong!" I don't want to listen to what he has to say. I try to tell him to go away; but I can't talk and cry at the same time, and the tears get in my way.

He reaches to the table by my bed and hands me a fistful of tissues. They're soft, but they're heavy. My hands are heavy, my eyes are heavy, and the bed is a warm cocoon, shuttin away the things I don't want to hear and see. Deliberately I slide into sleep.

This time I wake up slowly, scrunching up my eyes, stretching and twisting and arching the way I love to do. "You wake up just the way Akima does," my okaa-san always says, as she shoos our kitten of the foot of my bed and tousles my hair. "Sakura, our other little kitten."

"Sakura? you're awake?"

I open my eyes quickly at the sound of my dad's (How do you say father or dad in japanese? If you know how...put it in the review...) voice. "Oh, daddy, you're here! You're here! I need you!"

He quickly wraps me in a long hug. His chest, under his smooth white cotton shirt, smells cozy and warm, but my cheek grows wet from tears. I hold him away, puzzled, "Daddy? I've never seen you cry."

There are hollows under his cheekbones, and his brown eyes seem strangely faded. His hair is thin on top. He's my father, but he isn't my father---at least not the way he was yesterday.

"Daddy, the doctor told me I've been here four years, that I'm not thirteen, I'm seventeen. It's not true, is it?" But as I study my father's face I know it has to be true, and I gasp, "How did it happen to me?"

"Nobody completely understands it. Not really. You were shot, and the bullet did something to you that caused a kind of coma; but you didn't need life support. You were breathing on your own, and your vital signs were good. It's just that you were in a world of your own, and you couldn't or wouldn't leave it. The people here were able to help you sit in a chair and walk and even feed yourself if someone was with you. You have a physical therapist who has worked with you on exercises every day."

"I don't remember any of this."

He pats my hand, "I know, sweetheart. Mentally you weren't reponding."

"Then why did I wake up?"

He shakes his head. "No one knows exactly. They can just guess. You fell and cut your hip. Then last week you developed an infection in the cut, and the doctors treated it with antibiotics and even some minor surgery. They think that maybe it was the reaction to the anesthetic that brought you out of the coma. I'm doing a bad job telling you about it, I guess. Dr. Tomodachi can do a better job of explaining it to you than I can." My father wipes his cheeks with the back of one hand, then spot the box of tissues, wads one, and rubs it over his eyes.

The door opens, and a familiar face peeps through. Donna's the original. I'm the carbon. "That beautiul light auburn hair, those tilted green eyes," Dad would say, and wink at okaa-san. "We've certainly go lovely daughters Nadeshiko."

Donna shyly whispers, "Sakura?"

"Donna!" I hold out my arms to my sister, laughing as she hurries through the door. She clumsily bumps against the end of the bed as she rushes to hug me.

"I like your hair that way," I mumble against her ear. "But don't ever scold me again about munching Twinkies. You're getting fat, big sister!"

She sits back and beams at me. Her tucked-in smile reminds me of so many times when she has been where I couldn't follow: her first dance; the red-haired basketball player she thought she was in love with when she was sixteen; the dorm friends she wrote about when she started college.

"I'm pregant," she says. "In just two months you're going to be an aunt (how do you say aunt in japanese?)"

My mouth is open, and I know I'm making owl eyes, but I don't know what to say.

"You should close your mouth or flies will fly in," my sister says, teasingly. I quickly close my mouth.

"Last year, "she says, "Touya and I married." She glances at Dad from the corners of her eyes. "I had to promise that I'd get my degree, and I will---in May of next year. See, Dad, I'm keeping the promise."

"But I wasn't there!" I wail. "I was going to be your maid of honor. You always told me I could be."

She holds the palm of my hand up against her cheek. She's still smiling, but I see a terrible sorrow in her eyes. "Sakura, love, things were---well, so different. Touya and I didn't have a big wedding. Just a few people and the priest."

"But you always said when you were married, you'd have a train six feet long! And load of bridesmaids, all in blue, and wear the pearls that Grandma left to Mom."

Dad clears his throat as though he were about to say something, but Donna interrupts, "It doesn't matter anymore." she says. She shakes her head, lays my hand gently on the blanket as though it were made of fine china, and awkwardly gets to her feet, one hand pressing the small of her back. "I can't wait till you meet Touya. Touya Akimo. Hey, you'll have to get used to my new name!" She walks to the door, turning to say, "He's patiently biding time out in the hall because he wanted to see you first."

Touya enters the room, and Donna props open the door. He's tall, with brown hair.

"I've met you before," he says, "when you were---sleeping." "You came to see me?"

"Lots of times, with Donna. She introduced us, and she talked to you about our wedding, just in case you could hear."

He's smiling. I was smiling too. So I quickly say, "Donna told me about the baby. I'm glad you're going to have a baby."

"So are we." He hugs Donna in such a special way that I ache right in the middle of my chest. I wasn't there when she fell in love and when she got married and when she first found out she was going to have a baby. I have to get used to all this at once, and it makes me feel lonely and shut out, no matter what they tell me.

I take a long breath, trying to keep things going right. "I'll baby- sit foryou whenever you want. I guess I should say I'll baby-sit if Mom gives me a chance. She'll be so crazy about that baby the rest of us might not get to hold it until it's old enough to go to school."

No one laughs. No one answers. There's a funny kind of chill, like when you open the freezer door on a hot day and the icy air spills over your feet. "When's okaa-san coming?" My words plop into the cold. "Where is okaa-san?"

Dr. Tomodachi is suddenly there, head forward, his shaggy eyebrows leading the way like the prow of a ship. "Donna and Touya," he says, "we'll keep your visit shor. Why don't you come back to see Sakura tomorrow?"

Donna quickly kisses me, Touya pats my feet, and they disappear before I can protest. The door swings shut, and the room is silent.

Dr. Tomodachi lifts my wrist in strong fingers and looks at his watch.

I try to tug my arm away from him. "You interuppted," I tell him. "I was asking a question, and I want an answer!"

"Take this," he orders. He hands me a pill and a glass of water from the table.

"Not now."

"Yes, now."

As I obey, quickly gulping the pill, he nods at my father, and Dad leans forward, holding my hand again. His skin is clammy and hot, and he has to clear his throat a couple of times before he can talk.

"Honey," he says, "all along we've had faith in you. We knew you wouldn't give up. Remember even when you were just a little girl and you'd be so independent and set on gettin your own way? You've always had a lot of courage, Sakura, and---"

"Daddy, tell me now. Where's okaa-san?"

He is hurting, and I can't help him. I don't even want to help him. My toes and fingers are warm and relaxed, and a numb feeling is seeping through me. It's like the drowsy waking-sleeping in the early morning after the alarm has been turned off. But I'm awak, and I hear what he's saying.

"The day you were shot---" His words are jagged pebbles on a dry, dusty road, and his voice trips as he stumble through them. "Your okaa-san was shot too. But Nadeshiko---oh, Sakura, Nadeshiko was killed."

"No," I answer, because I don't believe these strange words that are as hollow as shouts inside a tunnel, ringing and echoing and sliding away. My father is gray and crumple, and he's crying. I try to pat his hand with fingers that are too heavy to lift. Something is wrong. Maybe it's still part of the dream whiole we're making breakfast, and she'll give me a little swat on my backside and say, "For goodness' sake, stop talking and eat, or you'll be late for school."

"Tell me everything that happened," I murmur, wanting the dream to be complete. "No one has told me."

It takes a few minutes for my father to answer. His voice seems farther away, but I clearly hear every word. "Donna said you were going to the backyard to sunbathe," he begins.

I remember. I was wearing my new red shorts, and I had Akima with me. There wasn't any smog, and it was a golden day, and I wanted a head start on my tan.

"We don't know what happened hext," he says, "Donna went to the grocery store down at the Tomoeda market to get a couple of things. She came home and found that the front door was unlocked. Your mother was lying in the den. Donna said she screamed at Nadeshiko to get up, but she didn't move. Donna telephoned for an ambulance, and then she remembered you. She ran ouside and found you lying on the grass near the back porch steps."

I hear words, but I don't feel them. I am in a tunnel, but I can still hear what Dad says. Except that his words get mixed up with the other sounds and voices that are in my head.

There's a weird noise like a yelp, and it's coming from inside our house.

But a hand begins stroking my forehead saying, "Go to sleep now, Sakura. Relax and sleep." I wanted to open my eyes, I was forcing them, but I couldn't.

I run toward our back porch, and our screendoor bangs open. Then somebody runs out. He stares at me.

"Is she asleep yet?" Dad asks, and the voice murmurs. "Not yet."

The guy on the porchstep stares at me. I can't see his face, but I know that he's staring. I feel it, the way words would flow through my mind that I needed to know just seem to sift through my skin and pour through my mind. He seemed scared. I know that too.

"Daddy, did they catch him?"

"Don't worry about that right now," he says.

"But did they?! I have to know!"

"No," he says. "They couldn't find out who it was. There were no witnesses.

"It's harder and harder to speak. There is a humming in my head, and it moves Dad farther and farther away. I whisper, wondering if my whisper is real or only in my head. "I'm a witness. I saw him, Daddy."

"Hush, Sakura." Daddy says. "Don't try to talk now. Go to sleep."

The sounds in my mind melt together and dissolve the words. I am so tired. I don't ever remember having a dream in which I felt tired. I wonder what my okaa-san will tell me about this dream.

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That's it for this chapter! I hope you guys liked it!! But don't give me credits! I love this story....You should give credits to Joan Lowery Nixon. Anyways......next chapter out soon! Please R+R!!!