Author's Notes:  Phew, I got this part done fairly quickly.  Sorry, no big action here, but the next chapter's the end, except for a short nice epilogue.

Thanks to mya (sorry, no Eriol in this fic), Rhea (heh, get away.  Um…this fic will end happily, someway or another.), Jessica, Sillly*Niecy (You don't annoy me…yet. =) You got the episode question thing.  From changing the Return Card.  Yeah, I put the 'cards' in here somewhat. Thanks for the death threat; it's always nice to get one.)

Disclaimer:  So what if I say CCS is mine?  *lawyer wielding cartoon mallet*  Eep…sorry, CCS is not mine.

Slipping Away

Chapter 10:  Morning After

Syaoran opened the door his apartment, still getting used to the new metal door.  Sakura followed from behind, her head on his shoulder, leaning her weight into him.  They were exhausted, having finally finished the converter at two in the morning and getting three hours of sleep before getting up and trudging home.  If the converter would work was still yet to be tested.  Syaoran flopped onto the sofa, burying his head into the pillow and yawning as widely as his mouth would allow.

He vaguely heard Sakura 'oomphing' into the armchair next to his, groaning.  "I'm exhausted.  I don't think I can move an inch."

Syaoran nodded, reveling in the dizzy languor that always came before a long and refreshing sleep.  "I'm taking a long nap; wake me up next week."

"Sure," came Sakura's equally listless reply, slurred and trailing off.

The apartment stood silent for a while, until the sudden crash of the bedroom door being flung open ripped through the quiet. Sakura jerked from her light sleep, snapping her eyes open and reaching for an object nearby to defend herself with.  Her bleary eyes slowly clarified, focusing on Nakuru's figure standing in the doorway, intense red lips thinned into a hard blankness.  "Nakuru?"

Nakuru tightened her belt, securing her pack against her back.  "Tomoyo's dead.  I want to discuss the plan with you and Syaoran."  She walked into the kitchen, opening and shutting cupboards.

Sakura clutched the armrests in a futile attempt at letting the waves of panic subside.  Tomoyo was dead?  She hardened her face, focusing on the blinding anger than the pain.  It hurt, even as they were never very close, but Tomoyo did everything in her power to make others' lives a little better.  Sakura swiped a rough hand across her eyes, wiping away the stray moisture.  She leaned over to the large couch and nudged Syaoran.  He was still sleeping, fidgeting under her touch and rolling around.  She shook him harder, evoking a few mumbled sleep sodden words and finally got him to open an eye.  "Tomoyo's dead."

Syaoran wondered if he was dreaming, a blurry Sakura telling him Tomoyo was dead, the distorted sounds of something opening and shutting.  But as his mind cleared, he found the truth in her words, jerking upright in a confused awareness.  "She's dead?"  He wasn't familiar with Tomoyo; she was methodical, cold, reserved, and yet he felt the loss too.  "How?"

Sakura's words were crisp, forced into a deceptive calm.  "I don't know.  Get up; we'll ask Nakuru and adjust our plans."

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There was silence at the table as they all ate mechanically, chew and swallow.  "A scouting party came through a portal last night."

Sakura wiped her mouth with a napkin.  "How did she die?"

"Explosion.  I didn't see her after we got separated, but an oil warehouse exploded.  The corps would never draw that kind of attention to themselves.  She couldn't have survived."

"So what do we do now?"  Sakura questioned.

It all seemed so cold to Syaoran, just moving on without time to remember, to grieve to even show that they cared at all for Tomoyo.  But then, he reflected, their world lived with death like an everyday occurrence, something to be informed of and then best forgotten so you could deal with the next big crisis.

"The plan doesn't change much; I'll have to take on the emerging battalions alone.  You and Syaoran need to collapse the tunnel." 

Syaoran got up and dropped a wrapped device onto the table.  "I think it's finished.  What do we do with it?"

It was Sakura who answered, coughing.  "Attach the fuel and adhere it…to one of the tunnel walls."  By the end, she was hissing out hard breaths, her coughing getting more and more pronounced.  She knew that something had changed; all the symptoms, the familiar pains had all intensified and become something altogether different.  Her breath didn't burn in the same fuzzy kind of way; it was sharp and piercing, flowing through her as if her blood was on fire.  Her hands and feet were getting numb, tingling.  Jerkily she reached into her clothes and pulled out a vial, swallowing the unctuous liquid and feeling her insides burning even harder.  The medicine had always been instantaneous, but it seemed wholly ineffective now.  She reached for another vial, breaking the seal and drinking the contents.  The fire quieted then, slowly fading into the after effects of the illness.  She slumped over onto the table, heaving breathless gasps waiting for her lungs to stop seizing.  Her body seemed to have lost the ability to coordinate, each limb laying twisted out of the norm and limp in their respective places.  When her vision started to dispel the pained stars, she registered a strong grip around her shoulders, keeping her up in the seat.  "Thanks…"

Syaoran mumbled a reply, still caught up in the paralyzing moment.  His hands clenched themselves hard into Sakura's shoulder muscles, his arms lifting her slight weight so that she barely rested in the chair's seat.  When her breathing had returned to a normal rhythm he shifted his weight a little, using the leverage to pick Sakura up and move her to the living room sofa.  This was his reality, the one thing he never quite understood.  She was dying, that he knew and accepted, but it was always assumed to be a quiet death, one of those peaceful deals in passing away in one's sleep.  And even through the first blood spatter of their first meeting, he kept his foundationless belief.  But he knew the truth now, the insidiousness of her disease, the kind that wrenched your insides and made you beg for a quick death only to suffer even more excruciating pain as you got closer to the end.  Underneath the concern, the gentle movements not to disturb Sakura, he felt the blinding anger building up behind his eyes, a darkness that tried to compel him to search out and destroy just for the sake of revenge, to take all his pain and frustration and unleash it onto the cruel world.

"Syaoran?" 

He scratched out his thoughts, staring back down at Sakura who had finally calmed down to normal.  She was smiling, a weak, barely there smile, edged with a kind of soft familiarity that Syaoran would swear that he'd always known.  And yet, with the refractive eyes and the faint lines on her forehead, there was pain.  He smiled back, a half wooden fabrication that seemed to say 'everything will be okay, though neither you or me believe it.'  "Are you better?"

Sakura breathed in a deep, faltering breath, frightened of the pain that might come if she forced too much of her lungs.  But her body was still as it was the week before, the month before, a year before, the faint warmth and fuzziness.  She knew Syaoran's smile was false, but accepted it anyway, taking his hand and squeezing it for what it was worth.  For a moment, she could almost believe she was with her Syaoran, in their dingy apartment, treasuring matching foil rings as if they were real jewels.  She frowned, just a pointless fantasy.  "Yeah, fine."  She ignored the soreness in her shoulders and got up into a sitting position.  "Where were we?"

Nakuru responded first, suppressing Syaoran's objection to Sakura sitting up with a stern disapproving look.  "You were explaining how you'll collapse the tunnel."

"Un.  We adhere it to the tunnel wall and set the timer.  Once the fuel conversion starts, we'll have a couple of minutes to get back out or we'll be destroyed when the support structure goes."

Syaoran nodded.  "And if we meet up with people in the tunnel?"

Nakuru had turned away, watching her face in a compact mirror.  Her crimson lips moved with her voice.  "You do whatever's necessary to collapse the tunnel.  Even if you have to shield the device with your own bodies."

"And what'll you do?"  Syaoran's voice had taken an edge to it, cold and grave, his analytical thoughts circling around the probabilities of his survival and coming up with the dismal answer of a snowflake's chance in hell.

"I'm fending off the emerging battalions.  Yana's army comes in battalions of twenty; they'll probably tunnel that way.  If we get to the emergence point quickly enough, we'll probably only have to deal with one or two battalions."

Sakura leaned off the couch, reaching for Tomoyo's pack lying on the table.  She forced the pang of loss under her control and started to sift through the contents.  "Do we have enough to defend ourselves with?"

Nakuru nodded, extracting a pair of guns from her holsters.  "I loaded these this morning.  Take yours."

Sakura smiled a little, morbidly happy at the sight of the guns.  They were hers and Syaoran's, the pair that she'd left behind when she tunneled.  She took the left one, carefully snapping the safety off.  "Take the other one Syaoran.  It was his."

Syaoran hesitantly lifted the cold steel, fumbling around for the latch that Sakura had flicked on hers.  He slowly brought the button into place.  "Just point and shoot?"

"Pretty much; it has a powerful recoil so keep your arms flexed when you fire."

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The sun rose from the horizon, a red angry ball that Sakura found strangely compelling; it was just like her world.  Everything was in chaos, a scattering of odd equipment, cards and clothes.  Nakuru was tuning the scanner out on the balcony, pressing and changing the settings, the odd beeps and clicks coming every other second.  Syaoran dumped a heap of clothing onto the floor, followed by the clunking of various pairs of shoes.  "So?"

Sakura crawled closer to the tangle of shirts and pants, feeling the fabric and weight of each item.  She began to sort, throwing each article in different piles.  After a flurry of crumpled cloth and clicking buttons, she held up jeans and a button up shirt.  "These.  Don't button the last shirt button; it'll help you move better."  She cast a cursory glance over the hapless shoes.  "Take that beat up pair of sneakers; you'll feel more familiar in them."

Nakuru opened the sliding glass door.  "Done with the wardrobe selection?"

Sakura smiled.  "You know me, always in style…"  She looked down at her own patched up clothes, the stitches on various rips like vicious scar tissue.

Syaoran rejoined them, in his new 'fighting clothes' taking a seat on the couch.  "What else?"

Nakuru spared him a quick glance.  "Just a few cards."  She bent over the scattered remains of Tomoyo's cards and picked up three metallic cards.  "Since I'm going to be taking on the battalions, I'm taking most of these with me.  I'm giving you two Shields and Fire.  You hold them in your hands and call the summoning commands.  Shield's command is 'activate,' Fire's 'ignite.' Remember them, you're screwed if you forget them."  She threw two cards at Sakura.  "I can only spare two for you.  I'm giving you Sword and Float.  Try and make due with them."

Sakura nodded, sliding a thumb over the green arrow depression on the Sword card.  "Like an old friend…"

Syaoran frowned, puzzled, but shook it off.  He stretched out his hands to take up the cards on the table when a strange beep sounded from the edge of the table.  "What's wrong?"

Nakuru snatched up the tracker, staring at the blinking screen.  She turned around, her eyes never leaving the device.  "Shit."  She slid the tracker under her waist cord and hastily snatched up the remaining cards on the table.  "There's a tunnel opening.  Come on!  Get your stuff; this might be the invasion."

Sakura blanched and shakily shoved the cards in to her pockets, grabbing her gun and following Nakuru onto the balcony.   "Where is it?"

Nakurau pointed eastward, toward the bay.  "A mile north of last night's emergence point."  She switched on her microphone.  "You and Syaoran take the ground route.  I'll track you and tell you the way through your earpiece."

Sakura nodded, running back into the apartment.  "We're taking the ground route."

Syaoran paused for a moment, taking in the feeling of his apartment, all those possessions that littered the small space.  This was quite possibly the last time he'd ever see them again, and he felt it with a quivering sense of fear.  But ultimately, the cause was great than him, as was Sakura.  He ran after her, slamming the front door shut.  He turned back before the metal slid into place in the doorjamb to see Nakuru's legs disappear into the balcony above.

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Author's Notes:  Sorry for the cliffhanger, but I've got the next chapter already done.  Will take some editing so expect it out next week.