Disclaimer, ratings, and other legal stuff can be found in Part One.
Reviewers: A thousand thanks to the people who reviewed and expressed an interest in seeing the story continued. I must confess I wasn't really sure what to expect from the readers at FF.net. More thanks to the people who were kind enough to immediately make this story one of their favorites. That was very pleasantly surprising! ^_^
Clarifications: Eriol is still young and does not have any children at this point. ^_^ That particular reference was really just a minor detail in the beginning and should be used to gain insight into Eriol's character instead of being taken literally. I'll elaborate further on.
Chapter Warning: This is *the* definitive mind-muddling (to put it lightly) chapter of the story, for both the characters (poor, poor Eriol) and readers. Even so, don't worry about getting confused. I tried not to make this part too messy, and even if it is, it will make sense later. ^_^ Also, the fic, once again, earns its R rating with some repeated bad language in this chapter, but there's nothing worse. Yet. >_
Enjoy!
~ Dark Rune
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"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: love."
- Sophocles
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-= Part Two: Into Darkness =-
His eyes were closed. He was only half-conscious in her arms, shivering profusely, and not entirely because of the cold. Briefly, Tomoyo was stunned, not knowing what to do. It wasn't every day that a friend she hadn't seen in over a year dropped by, looking as if he'd had a violent encounter with both the Shot Card and an unnaturally bad-tempered wild animal. She wasn't sure if the class she took on first aid in high school would be enough to keep Eriol alive, so she hesitated, half-panicked and fearfully insecure about her inadequate ability to help him.
"Hi-Hiiragizawa-kun?" she whispered, overwhelmed by his scent and his warmth and his weight in her arms, all mingled inextricably with blood, sweat, magic, and indescribable sadness. That very masculine combination was indescribably and inappropriately *attractive* all of a sudden, and Tomoyo felt her judgment abruptly clouded by light-headed, but not altogether unpleasant, confusion. It had been so long since she had even touched another human being. Too long.
She hesitated for an instant longer until the urgency of the situation finally sank in. She shook her head.
This was Hiiragizawa-kun.
And he was hurt.
Bleeding.
*Badly*.
'So what in the world are you waiting for? Just do SOMETHING!' her rational side yelled at her. 'Get him to a HOSPITAL!'
In that moment of sudden clarity, she reacted, blindly moving to help however she could while her logical mind screamed to get him to a doctor.
*Notyetnotyetnotyetnotyet* was her unexpected response to the natural urge to just stuff Eriol into her car and take him to the hospital, traffic lights and pedestrians be damned. Something from the depths of her soul warned her, loudly and stubbornly, that if she tried to get him to a hospital, both of them would end up dead. It reminded her that an unknown danger lurked somewhere in the city, and Tomoyo would be better off not leading them to it.
Having no intention to take them both to their slaughter, she figured they should go to the hospital tomorrow. Or maybe they could go on Saturday, when Sakura-chan and Li-kun arrived to watch out for them. After all, daylight was not a guarantee that they would be any safer from a danger that she could not sense. At the moment, they really needed Sakura and Syaoran, and Tomoyo found herself almost fuming at the thought.
For the first time in her life, Tomoyo inwardly cursed herself for not having any magical sensitivity at all.
Staggering under Eriol's weight, she half-dragged, half-carried the young man towards her living room couch, vaguely remembering to shut the door behind her with her foot. Sakura and Syaoran's warnings still echoed in the recesses of her mind, and Tomoyo guessed that whatever evil they had warned her against had gotten to Eriol first. She had little doubt that it would go after her if given the chance, and she knew she would not survive a confrontation with it. After all, if Hiiragizawa-kun was this badly beaten, what chance did she have?
Steering her mind away from discouragingly morbid thoughts, she deposited Eriol on the couch and took a second to assess his ailing condition.
In spite of her already light complexion, she paled.
His face was most noticeably bruised and somewhat singed on his right side, enhancing the already numerous cuts on his cheeks and lower lip. A long gash ran down diagonally from his hairline above his left eye, across his forehead, to end just above his right eyebrow, and it bled freely down his face and neck. He looked as if he had just barely made it back from the front lines of a brutal war, and suddenly Tomoyo wondered if that comparison to war was actually more apt than she had first imagined.
To her growing dismay, she found that the bloody gash on his head was the least of his injuries as she quickly surveyed his battered appearance. His dark blue, button-down shirt was shredded and clung loosely to his lean form, sporting several dark patches of blood. His black jeans were dirty and torn up in several places, with part of the lower right pant leg ripped off, revealing a large gash on his calf and more cuts and bruises down his shin. His right side had taken the brunt of the damage, she realized, noticing the unevenness of his wounds.
Worse still, his whole body began shivering violently, and his face was rapidly turning an alarming shade of blue. Tomoyo guessed that he was probably suffering from internal injuries that she could not see or treat, although those injuries needed as much—if not more—attention.
Trying to stay calm, she decided it was important to get him warm and dry first; it wouldn't help if she patched him up only so he could die of pneumonia a day later. In the instant it took her to check over him, she devised a plan, as any calm, rational business executive would.
And in the next second, she was executing her plan, in spite of how rapidly her mind was unraveling.
She sprinted to her room to fetch towels and blankets, pausing a split-second only to turn up the apartment heater as far as it would go, and then she headed back for her unexpected visitor. Although a thousand questions raced through her mind as she reached his side, she had to ignore her nagging curiosity and her fear of the unknown.
Eriol's ailing health was the only thing that mattered now. He was getting worse by the second, and she had little time to spare.
'Sakura-chan, Li-kun, I wish you were both here,' she thought desperately to herself. They always knew what to do. They'd been faced with life-threatening situations before. They had seen the edge of life and death before. They were used to it. It was their life; they were *more* than used to it.
She wasn't.
Swiftly, she dried Eriol with a towel as best as she could, knowing that she needed to get him out of his wet clothes as soon as humanly possible. She definitely did not like the current color of his face or the way he was shivering, as if he were suffering from a seizure. Deciding that modesty was useless in a life-threatening situation, Tomoyo began to peel the tattered clothes off his shivering form, wincing as the cloth stuck to the bleeding wounds on his torso.
"What monster could have done this to you?" she murmured angrily. She trembled as the nausea rose in her chest, feeling more sickened as she discovered more vicious cuts and bruises on his skin. Through gritted teeth, she asked, softly, without really expecting an answer, "What happened to you, Hiiragizawa-kun?"
So she was startled when he finally said something, as if in response to her question. His deep voice was so quiet that she almost didn't hear him, but it conveyed his suffering with piercing, emotional clarity.
"Kaho..."
Tomoyo nearly froze. Only her frantic mind reminding her to GET ERIOL WARM NOW kept her going at a breakneck pace of drying and undressing him. But what Eriol said next, in his quiet delirium, could have stopped time.
"You can't be..."
Forgetting the world, and forgetting time, she paused, her eyes searching his face. A hopeful question escaped her lips. "Hiiragizawa-kun?"
"You can't... be... dead..."
A lump formed in her throat, and it took all of Tomoyo's strength not to cry for him. In the end, she wouldn't have any strength left for herself.
He remembered. The stars were so beautiful that night. The glittering sky was an invitation to explore other worlds, to peer into the farthest reaches of the universe. And he knew that even if he went exploring and lost himself in a world far away, he could always return home.
"Kaho?"
She was his anchor, after all.
She had smiled a brilliant smile, and he had been so happy then. Only now did he realize, with a pang of regret, that her smile was not one of happiness. Not really. Not completely.
"Yes?"
She was his first love.
Over the years, they had drifted apart, coming back to each other after several separations only to push each other away again. They were doomed to repeat the cycle because they had been trapped in that infinitely long dance of separation and reunion, a dance he had lacked the courage to end.
The first time they separated, he thought they had agreed to wait for him to grow up.
At the second break up, he believed they had agreed to wait for him to discover who he was.
Later on, he had conceded that they needed to give each other space because they had lived with each other for almost ten years.
But regardless of the cause, there was just always something in the way, and he couldn't even remember half of the other reasons for their damned dance. Still, he had believed it was a dance that only tested and strengthened their loved.
He had finally sought to end their dance, happily, that night. She was his first love--his only love, as far as he was concerned. No matter how each of them tried to pull away, they inevitably returned to each other once more.
"Aishiteru, Kaho."
She had smiled again, and only now did he realize that her smile wasn't as utterly benign and beautiful and loving as he had blindly fantasized for so long. Perhaps her smile had even been one of pity, but Kaho was a very gentle person, and she knew well enough to hide hurtful words and actions and expressions from him until it was time to repeat their painful dance once again.
Besides, even if they hurt each other now, they were doomed to fall back in love again. She would always pull him back.
"I know."
Her jarringly impersonal answer to his meaningful declaration of love should have unnerved him, but he had dismissed it. A young man's fancy had blinded him in bliss and romantic ideals, and he had thought it was great that they were so in love that they could read each other's minds.
He had thought he could surprise her.
"Marry me?"
And he had found himself kneeling.
Down on both knees instead of just one, in the garden behind his mansion. Rejected. Confused. Weeping.
"You'll understand later, Eriol."
She had smiled again before she hurriedly left him in tears, and he understood now that her smile was not out of love, or a promise of things yet to come, or even just a simple request for more time to breathe. For him, nothing was that ordinary.
But because they were soulmates, he knew that they had just begun their next dance, and he would muster the courage to ask his question a second time as soon as this cycle was over.
After all, they were soulmates. Soulmates could not escape their destiny. He refused to abandon his destiny.
I'm drowning. It's dark. It sounds like it's raining outside. And I'm suffocating.
"Kaho?"
I remember a spell. Cast in a duel a long time ago. But it wasn't my life, and it didn't hurt me then because I didn't know how to love, but it's hurting me now. It has already hurt my other self before. I don't want it to hurt me. It's not fair.
Now I can't feel anything but pain. My limbs feel numb. I'm sore all over. My chest hurts with every breath I take, and I wish I could just stop breathing to stop the pain and be with you.
This isn't what rebirth is supposed to feel like.
"Yes?"
Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. I couldn't save you, and that's why I cast that last spell. So I could be reunited with you. Why didn't my last spell work?
"Aishiteru, Kaho."
Why am I not with you? Where are you?
"I know."
I can't see you. I'm lost.
"Marry me?"
Or... are you still alive, after all?
"You'll understand later, Eriol."
I'm so tired... it's so hard to breathe. What am I supposed to understand? How can I understand if half of my heart and half of my soul are no longer with me? I can't. I don't understand. I don't want to understand. Why didn't my last spell work?
Please help me, Kaho.
"You silly boy. Your spell *did* work."
Those last words in his hazy half-dream were spoken by a deep, gentle voice, filled with mocking, yet sorrow-filled arrogance, pity, and distant understanding, and he knew that it spoke the truth. It belonged to a man who knew things past, present, and future.
The voice, after all, was his own.
He became aware that he could hear someone crying, and he was deeply startled to find out that the person crying was, in fact, himself.
"Kaho?"
"Yes?"
A pause.
"Aishiteru, Kaho."
A smile.
"I know."
Hesitation. Fear.
"Marry me?"
An eternity. A sigh.
Then, "I'm sorry."
Hurt. Confusion. An unasked question hanging in the silence.
"You'll understand later, Eriol."
His knees hurt that night.
The warmth was comforting in its familiarity, and the softness beneath him relaxed his senses, but this wasn't at all what he had expected. This wasn't exactly how he remembered death and rebirth... but then again, perhaps his memories from Clow's life were simply fading with time.
His situation confused him, for he had believed that the last spell he had cast would surely kill him, or at least bring him into the next life as painlessly as possible. He didn't know whether he should be overjoyed or disappointed.
Was he even dead?
Still groggy, his mind inexplicably weary, he tried to move, and all at once a thousand sharp pains shot through his body, coursing through his aching muscles and the now familiar wounds inflicted upon him. He groaned involuntarily as he discovered how difficult it was to breathe, and he instantly gave up trying to move.
Just lying down hurts, he thought miserably, but at least the horrible pain proved that he was still alive--he just wasn't doing very well.
In spite of his hazy mental state, an uplifting thought occurred to him.
If I'm still alive, he wondered, his mind fighting off sluggishness, then... does this mean she's still alive?
Energized by the possibility, he willed his eyes to open, overcoming the powerful urge to rest in the comfort of darkness and slumber.
"Kaho?" he managed to whisper, even though his throat was parched and a throbbing headache nearly blinded his senses. He couldn't see very well; everything was dark and blurred. It took him a moment to realize that there was little light wherever he was--had the sun even risen yet?--and that he was not wearing his glasses.
"Kaho?" he whispered again, absently wondering if he sounded as pathetic as he felt. He reached out his hand from underneath the comfortable blankets that had been, mysteriously enough, piled on his body, and he grasped air for a split second until his hand caught someone else's. The hand that held his was soft, warm, and gentle, caressing his with a tenderness he thought he would never feel again. He felt another hand brush his face lightly, stroking his cheek and brushing his dark bangs away from his face with a quiet, loving intensity.
He was safe.
He gave in to his fatigue, closing his eyes once more, and a contented smile crossed his features. "You're safe... I... found you... Kaho."
He would be severely disappointed.
Daidouji Designs was alive with chatter that Friday morning. Everyone was discussing the events of the night before. A violent storm, strangely enough, had been so focused on a relatively small area in upscale Tokyo that it had meteorologists everywhere scratching their heads in confusion.
It was like magic.
But what fed the chatter more was the fact that the company's CEO was very conspicuously absent after about two years of almost continuous work. Deadlines were extended. Meetings were rescheduled. Presentations were set aside. The higher-ranking executives, in their panic, almost thought they should restructure the company to take into account their leader's very unusual absence.
Daidouji Tomoyo had called early that morning to leave one of her VPs in charge, saying that she was taking a sick day.
It was as if she had decided to quit; the news was *that* unexpected.
People immediately deduced that she was, in fact, not sick, because Daidouji Tomoyo would have gone to work even if she was suffering from an insidious collection of near-fatal illnesses. People understood that Daidouji Tomoyo would skip work only for a deeply personal matter, and whatever it was worried the people closest to her, knowing that it must be something incredibly urgent.
Still, they realized that the short break was good for their beloved, yet stubbornly aloof CEO to get some time to herself. She needed to take a break from a hectic schedule that none of them could even begin to handle, and they were relieved.
As the day wore on, with no sign of Tomoyo showing up on a surprise inspection, people began to mischievously speculate that their highly respected and impossibly distant leader had actually fallen in love with a dark stranger on the night of the mysterious storm, and so she had devoted the entire weekend to "adjusting" to her new priorities.
People laughed. They figured she might as well take the weeks of vacation she had accumulated because she had actually left the company incredibly well run, like a flawless, self-oiling machine. The sheer number of designs that Tomoyo had already finished could sustain the company for months to come, and Tomoyo had some of the world's best designers working for her if they were to run out of products, which was already highly unlikely. Thus, Daidouji Designs survived the first day of Tomoyo's absence.
But her first absent day never hinted at the tumultuous weeks that would follow.
Tomoyo awoke at precisely five o'clock in the morning out of habit, but her unfamiliar resting position in a chair, half draped over her own bed and with her hand clutching someone else's, severely disoriented her. The unusually high temperature in her apartment added to the bleary-eyed young woman's confusion momentarily until the events of the night before came back to her in a rush of memory.
A magic storm.
A flash of lightning.
Evil.
Blood.
Sorrow penetrating her soul.
And tears flowing throughout the night.
"Hiiragizawa-kun!"
Her eyes widened, all traces of slumber within them banished in a mixture of panic and alertness. Abruptly she sat up and immediately looked at her wounded visitor, noting with some relief that a tinge of color had returned to his cheeks. He wasn't shivering, and that comforted Tomoyo, who had kept a night-long vigil at his side. She had worried over his near-constant shivering for hours and had even stacked almost all the blankets she owned on him to keep him warm.
Hiiragizawa-kun was her good friend, after all. She loved him as much as she loved Sakura-chan and Li-kun, and she wouldn't have reacted any differently if they had been in the same position. That was why she was so concerned. Tomoyo realized that he was going through a terrible ordeal, and she wished desperately that she could somehow share some of his pain to lift the burden from his shoulders. Until he awoke, however, she could do nothing more to help.
"Hiiragizawa-kun," she murmured, and her initial panic faded away as she held his hand.
Upon closer inspection, she saw that his external injuries didn't really seem that bad anymore. The cuts and bruises on his face had faded quickly, much sooner than they would have on an average person. Tomoyo guessed that his body probably healed faster because he was such a powerful magician, and she was comforted by the idea that he could pull himself out of his critical condition. She did worry, however, about the emotional devastation that Eriol would probably be suffering, if his delirious words uttered the night before were any indication.
Deciding that he was going to be fine physically, Tomoyo rose from her seat, grimacing when her body ached in response to her standing up. She had never slept in such an awkward sitting position before, and her stiff body grudgingly reminded her never to do so again.
She would have groaned, but a faint movement and a slight moan from Eriol quickly removed all thoughts of complaint from Tomoyo's mind. As she turned to face him, she held her breath, wondering if he would wake up, and her heart raced when she saw his lips try to form a word. He tried again, and again, but sound refused to come out. Undaunted even in his exhaustion, he tried one more time, and this time, she heard his whisper.
"Kaho?"
His voice was weak, but the pleading tone was strong and clear. When he opened his eyes at last, Tomoyo almost gasped. His eyes remained a beautifully intense shade of dark blue, and his power shone through them, especially without his glasses to hold it all back. Tomoyo was mesmerized.
"Kaho?" he whispered again, in a slightly stronger voice. He shifted under the sheets, his hand reaching blindly, desperately, for something that Tomoyo knew he could not attain.
She took his hand in hers, gently so that she would not startle him, and, almost of its own accord, her other hand lifted up to soothingly stroke his face.
"Hiiragizawa-kun..." she smiled warmly at him, even though she knew he did not see her and even though she felt his misery.
His unseeing eyes drifted closed once more, and he smiled in peaceful slumber.
Eriol awoke to the mouthwatering smell of bacon, eggs, and potatoes. Even through the haze of pain surrounding his entire body, the delicious aroma reminded him that he was actually famished, and in response to the stimulating scent, he moved to sit up. His aching body, however, protested violently against any form of movement, and so it took him a few seconds of pained exertion to actually push the mountain of blankets off his upper body and get up to a sitting position.
He felt terrible.
A hundred hangovers put together couldn't even begin to describe his headache, and a hundred beatings put together couldn't even compare to his physical injuries.
Blinking wearily, he looked around at his unfamiliar surroundings and wondered what exactly had happened. He could have sworn that Kaho was somewhere around here; no other person in the world could possibly make him feel this safe. Yet as he looked around the room, he acknowledged that he might have been mistaken about Kaho's presence after all. The room was decorated in a uniquely fashionable, modern style, boasting metallic edges and dark, solid, professional colors, lacking the flowery curtains, embellished antique furniture, and pale bedsheets that Kaho had always favored.
Kaho *had* always? he suddenly thought, asking himself why he felt so... resigned... to think of Kaho in the past tense. It sent a shiver down his spine. What the hell was going on?
He cleared his throat and called out a name that, he suddenly felt, he had been calling in vain far too much for far too long. "Kaho?"
He looked around, feeling a bit dazed. His vision was only slightly unclear because he was missing his glasses, but he had never truly needed to wear glasses in the first place. He had worn them more out of habit and, he admitted only to himself, an overwhelming, inexplicable desire to hide his face.
"Hiiragizawa-kun?" a woman's quiet, inquiring voice drifted from somewhere outside the bedroom. Trying to figure out whose voice it was, he turned to the open doorway.
"Who..." Eriol's question trailed off when he spotted Daidouji Tomoyo standing in the doorway, holding a tray of food, tea, and orange juice. She was dressed in black designer jeans and a navy, turtleneck cashmere sweater, a simple yet sophisticated outfit contrasting with the homely picture she made with the tray in her hands.
"Ohayou gozaimasu, Hiiragizawa-kun," she greeted him pleasantly, although he could sense the guarded tone in her voice, almost as if she were in pain herself.
She practically floated towards him, so gracefully did she walk, and Eriol found himself irresistibly drawn to her. He wondered if she could feel that strange... tension... in the air, and he wondered if she knew why it was there.
Was this magic?
"Please eat something," she urged, making him feel discomfort at his own lack of response to her polite morning greeting. "You were badly injured, and you need to get your strength back."
"Daidouji-san?" he blinked, confused, and unable to remember what exactly was going on and how he had arrived at her apartment.
Badly injured? he mulled over her words. That would certainly explain why I'm hurting all over.
He ventured to ask a simple question, knowing very well that he might not be strong enough to hear the answer, but still curious anyway. He was tired, and he felt sad, even though he couldn't explain anything. "Would you kindly tell me what's going on, Daidouji-san?"
She smiled slightly, and he noticed that her smile was comparable to one of Kaho's smiles. It was a smile that held a mixture of love and pity.
Eriol hurriedly shrugged off the horrible thought.
She set the tray beside him on the bed, and only then did Eriol realize that her face was faintly tinged with red. She was discreetly trying to avoid looking directly at him, opting instead to stare at the tray of food.
Wait. The unflappable Daidouji-san was blushing?
Was it something he had done?
He looked down at himself, and instantly he fought the urge to just crawl under a rock and die.
Simply put, he was *naked*.
In front of Daidouji-san, his highly respected childhood friend and a leading global businesswoman and designer, no less.
Save for a few bandages around his chest, his arms, and his head, along with the bandages that he could feel wrapped around his legs, he was devoid of any clothing that could offer some modesty. At least he had blankets over him. His face flaming, Eriol tried to pull the blankets higher around his waist without drawing much attention to his movements.
"Hiiragizawa-kun, I'm not sure what happened to you, but you showed up last night at my doorstep, badly injured and practically incoherent," Tomoyo explained, averting her eyes with the amazing tact and grace that only Daidouji Tomoyo possessed.
Eriol relaxed, glad that Daidouji-san had such well developed social skills that she was able to turn a potentially embarrassing situation into something trivial. And then he came to the conclusion that *she* was probably the one who had undressed him in the first place, so he tensed up once more. His blush deepened even as he listened to her story. Somehow, the physical pain he was suffering dulled in the wake of his embarrassment, but he still wasn't sure whether he preferred that burning shame or his aching limbs.
He would probably rather suffer physically, especially in front of Tomoyo, someone he respected and admired greatly.
"Before you got here, however," Tomoyo continued her explanation, managing a respectably stable tone of voice although he could see that she was still red-faced, "Sakura-chan and Li-kun called me from Hong Kong, warning me that something evil was coming to Tokyo. It was something strong enough to affect the Earth's magical balance, and strangely enough, it was coming for me. That's why Sakura-chan and Li-kun are returning to Japan tomorrow. To protect me."
All thoughts of modesty left Eriol, and he straightened, regarding Tomoyo seriously. He was aware that focusing so intensely on Tomoyo made her cheeks flush a darker crimson, but both of them pushed such insignificant matters aside, knowing that this discussion was important.
"I don't understand," Eriol frowned as a strange possibility occurred to him. "I don't remember very much, but... you don't think *I'm* that evil thing Sakura-san was warning you about, do you?"
"Of course not," Tomoyo quickly shook her head, and her faith in him strengthened his own resolve. "I think that whatever that evil was got to you, first. There's no other explanation as to why you're so badly beaten up."
"That would make sense," Eriol muttered, trying to think back to the events of the night before but becoming frustrated as he mentally came up against a blank, white wall. It was almost as if someone was trying to stop him from remembering what had happened. He sighed. "I just can't recall how I got here or why I'm even here. I suppose I must have sensed that evil from England and immediately came here to try to stop it..."
"But if that were true, Hiiragizawa-kun," Tomoyo interjected quietly, her calm voice betraying the sense of foreboding rising in her chest, "if you really were coming here to protect me and to fight this evil, then where are Akizuki-san and Spinel-san?"
Eriol froze.
Almost as an afterthought, as if she didn't want him to hear, Tomoyo added softly, "And where is Mizuki-sensei?"
Daidouji-san was right.
Where were they?
And where was Kaho?
"I... I don't know. It really wouldn't make sense for me to fight something this big without my guardians," Eriol agreed, his deepening frown darkening his features. He closed his eyes, intent on mentally seeking out his creations. He had created them, so he could always sense them and communicate with them telepathically, but his mental efforts were met again by a blank wall--the same white wall that had obscured his memory only moments before.
He knew he was beginning to panic, and he hated it.
He hated staring uselessly at that blank wall, and he was quickly learning to dread what that mysterious blank wall in his mind truly signified.
"I don't understand," he muttered, becoming increasingly agitated as he searched within his mind and consistently found blank walls in his memory and in his senses. He willed himself to discover something. Any sign of his creations, his loved ones, would be good enough for him.
Ruby Moon?
In the infinite expanse of the mental plane, he found a white wall blocking his avenue to his guardian. Frustrated, he started another search.
Spinel Sun?
He discovered the same, impenetrable wall. Annoyed, but more worried than ever before, Eriol tried a different approach.
What happened last night?
Again, he faced that white barrier, and he found his fear growing exponentially. This was not something he could be annoyed about; this was serious.
He almost didn't want to ask the next question.
Kaho?
Once more, he discovered nothing. The white wall brought his search to a halt.
Ruby Moon?
A wall.
He was becoming desperate.
Spinel?
A wall.
His heartbeat was racing.
Memories?
A wall.
His head was hurting so much that he couldn't think straight.
Evil?
A wall.
He paused, feeling a chill run down his spine.
This can't be happening.
It can't be.
Kaho?
With shockingly cold finality, a solid wall blocked his path. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry out to someone. He wanted to hurt something, break something. He had never felt so helpless, so unbelievably clueless, about anything in his entire life, and because it concerned the people he valued the most, he felt even more frustrated.
He was frightened.
Kaho?
The wall remained unmoved.
Ruby Moon?
Another wall refused to give in to his tears.
Spinel?
The wall mocked his frustration, his sharply growing fear.
Memories?
The wall withstood the furious pounding of his fists. It resisted his screams.
Where was everything?
Why couldn't he find anything?
Where was everyone?
Why the hell couldn't he find anything?
"KAHOOO!!!"
It wouldn't move. It just wouldn't give. Even his magic didn't work. His sobs were futile.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
KAHOOOO!!!
He was angrily punching the wall, trying to break it, but his only rewards were bloodied knuckles.
*Shit*.
KAHO!
He was getting so tired again, and he wanted to rest, but he needed that wall out of the way.
Shit.
Kaho...
What kind of magic was this? Why couldn't he remove the wall?
Kaho...
She was... smiling?
What was she saying?
He would understand *what*?
And then someone else-—not Kaho-—was speaking to him.
"Hiiragizawa-kun! Hiiragizawa-kun... Calm down! Stop fighting me... Hiiragizawa-kun! Hiiragizawa-kun... Onegai... Hiiragizawa-kun. Hiiragizawa-kun. Onegai."
That voice gently repeating his name broke into his thoughts. He remembered the last time he had heard it at the wedding of his son and daughter over a year ago.
So where the hell was he?
Where...?
That wall!
*Shit*.
Why wouldn't the wall break down?
Why wouldn't it break?
Why couldn't he get it to break?
It was all his fault. His fault. His fault. His fault.
Someone was dead.
His fault. His fault. His fault.
His fault.
"Hiiragizawa-kun! Onegai..."
Eriol opened his eyes.
He was shocked to discover that his face was streaked with tears and his body was convulsing in unstoppable sobs. He was breathing raggedly, as if he had just run a very great distance, and he belatedly realized that he was wrapped in Daidouji-san's warm embrace. She was trying to soothe him, to calm him down, and he was crying desperately into her shoulder because he could not break down the white walls in his mind. Her soft hands glided gently across his bare back, seeking to comfort him even as she tried to understand what was happening to him.
"Hiiragizawa-kun, onegai," she whispered brokenly, her breath warm next to his ear. Her grip on him tightened, and he didn't realize that she might have been crying or that she might have been in pain. "Calm down. Tell me. Onegai. I can feel your pain, but how can I help you?"
He thought he heard a strange sadness in her voice, and he also thought it was most unbecoming on someone as wonderful and beautiful as Daidouji-san.
"I... I..." he couldn't fit the words between his gasps, so he buried his face into her warm shoulder, his arms fitting around her slim waist so perfectly that he thought, just for a moment, that she might be Kaho. She made him feel so safe--even safer?--that he thought she could be Kaho.
But her smell was different. It was intoxicating, alluring, unbelievably sweet and unbelievably arousing, but not Kaho.
Not Kaho.
Not Kaho.
Not Kaho.
"Gomen nasai, Hiiragizawa-kun. I know I'm not her," Daidouji-san suddenly whispered against his cheek, accidentally teasing him with the slight brush of her lips. Unmindful of the thrill that the contact of her lips on his skin caused, he wondered how she had read his mind. "You are my good friend," she said kindly, warmly, and Eriol, in between his shuddering breaths, couldn't help but pull her closer to him. "And I do love you. I want to help you find Mizuki-sensei."
He failed to notice that breakfast, now cold, had spilled on the floor.
He didn't realize that an hour had elapsed since the time he woke up and the time he found himself sobbing in Daidouji Tomoyo's careful, caring embrace.
He didn't see the scratches on Tomoyo's face and arms, scratches that his own angrily flailing body had caused during his inexplicable lapse into the depths of his own mind.
He didn't know there were unshed tears in her eyes because he couldn't see the sadness and sympathy and love etched in her face.
She was worried.
Hiiragizawa-kun was, after all, someone she loved because he was a very close, very dear friend. In fact, she loved him as much as she loved Li-kun.
As much as she loved Sakura-chan.
But if she really loved him as much as she did her other close friends, then how come she could literally *feel* his emotional and physical suffering?
Through a haze of despair and pain, Tomoyo wondered.
And because of that haze of despair and pain, they fell asleep in each other's arms.
Sakura and Syaoran had tried calling England about fifty times on Thursday night before they finally gave up. The phone always rang, which indicated that there were no severe weather problems that could have been caused by dark magic in London, but strangely enough, no one ever answered. Sakura and Syaoran had even resorted to e-mail and instant messaging, trying to hunt for anyone living in Eriol's mansion, but they received no response from any of their old friends.
Deciding that they would try calling again the next day, the Li's had retired for the night, still very concerned about Tomoyo's situation. It was no surprise to Syaoran that Sakura was up uncharacteristically *early* and was already calling the Hiiragizawa residence by the time he had fixed himself his daily mug of hot chocolate. Sakura quickly explained that since there was still no connection to Tokyo, she had once again resorted to trying to talk to Eriol.
While Sakura had a cheerfully optimistic personality, even this was getting on her nerves.
She sighed.
"Still no response. And I really don't understand why Eriol-kun doesn't even have an answering machine," Sakura, with the cordless receiver held next to her ear, bit her lip.
"Guess we just have to try again," he shrugged tensely, sitting next to his wife on the couch. He moved to press the speaker phone button, and he pressed the redial button just as Sakura replaced the receiver back into its cradle.
The ringing on the other end made them both unusually nervous, though neither of them could fully understand why.
But really they were expecting no response.
After so many attempts to contact Eriol the night before, Sakura and Syaoran were conditioned to expect that lack of response. Naturally, when they heard a sudden click on the other line, they were startled to the point where Syaoran almost spilled his drink and Sakura jumped a few centimeters in her seat.
Without thinking or waiting for a speaker on the other side, both of them asked, in tense unison, "May we please speak to Hiiragizawa Eriol?"
A long silence followed, and Sakura and Syaoran unknowingly held their breaths.
"Eriol-sama..." a familiar voice said faintly. "Tomoyo-chan..."
It took a split second for that voice to register in their minds.
"Akizuki-san!" Syaoran cried out in recognition, and he would have demanded to speak to Eriol if Sakura hadn't quickly grasped his arm and held him back with a slight, serious shake of her head.
Syaoran's eyes widened in understanding. The muted words of the normally upbeat Akizuki Nakuru had made Sakura instantly realize that something was very, very wrong in England, and they needed to know what was wrong before they dived deeper into whatever that mess was.
"What is it, Nakuru-san? What about Eriol-kun and Tomoyo-chan?" Sakura asked gently, her tone contrasting with the grave look on her face and the worry lines forming over her brow.
"Eriol-sama..." Nakuru repeated, almost as if she were drugged, and Syaoran found himself clenching his fists so tightly that his palm nearly bled. "Tomoyo-chan... Mizuki-san..."
Nakuru chuckled, and neither Sakura nor Syaoran mistook that chuckle as a sign of mirth.
It was a laugh that reeked of bitterness.
"Mizuki-san. Mizuki-san... She's dead."
Sakura and Syaoran were horrified.
"She's dead," Nakuru said again, faintly and in a flat tone of voice, and they could hear her sobbing even more. "She wasn't really my favorite person, and she hurt Eriol-sama a lot without meaning to, but she was a kind person. Good to everyone. But now she's dead. She's dead. She's dead. She's dead."
"Nakuru-san, where's Eriol-kun?" Sakura asked, desperately now, as she clutched the edges of her seat in a bone-crunching grip. "Nakuru-san?"
"She's dead," Nakuru echoed again, before a final series of sobs escaped her lips. "Please stop him. Sakura-chan, Syaoran-kun. Please stop him. Please stop him. Please stop him. Tomoyo-chan's next. Please, please, please stop him. Tomoyo-chan's next. Please stop him. Tomoyo-chan's--"
The dial tone was distractingly harsh.
-= End Part Two =-
Chapter Started: November 28, 2002
Chapter Finished: December 14, 2002
Chapter Revised: August 15, 2003
End Notes:
I really didn't think I needed translations, given that I don't really use that much Japanese, and that CCS, like most anime, has a Japanese-oriented fandom (the abomination dubbed "Cardcaptors" does NOT exist, dagnammit! "Showron" is NOT a family name! Nelvana morons... ). Still, here's a list of Japanese terms that should come in handy wherever you go. ^_^
~~ Japanese Translations ~~
-kun – familiar suffix for a male friend (usually)
-chan – familiar suffix for a female friend, usually used for/by young girls
-sama – respectful suffix for someone of great importance or high ranking (e.g. royalty)
-san – generally respectful suffix
-sensei – suffix for teachers
aishiteru – I love you
gomen nasai – sorry (polite)
ohayou gosaimasu – good morning (polite)
onegai – please
Please review and direct all questions, comments, and criticisms to rune_dreaming@yahoo.com. Thank you!
Copyright (C) 2002 by Dark Rune. All rights reserved.
Reviewers: A thousand thanks to the people who reviewed and expressed an interest in seeing the story continued. I must confess I wasn't really sure what to expect from the readers at FF.net. More thanks to the people who were kind enough to immediately make this story one of their favorites. That was very pleasantly surprising! ^_^
Clarifications: Eriol is still young and does not have any children at this point. ^_^ That particular reference was really just a minor detail in the beginning and should be used to gain insight into Eriol's character instead of being taken literally. I'll elaborate further on.
Chapter Warning: This is *the* definitive mind-muddling (to put it lightly) chapter of the story, for both the characters (poor, poor Eriol) and readers. Even so, don't worry about getting confused. I tried not to make this part too messy, and even if it is, it will make sense later. ^_^ Also, the fic, once again, earns its R rating with some repeated bad language in this chapter, but there's nothing worse. Yet. >_
Enjoy!
~ Dark Rune
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"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: love."
- Sophocles
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-= Part Two: Into Darkness =-
His eyes were closed. He was only half-conscious in her arms, shivering profusely, and not entirely because of the cold. Briefly, Tomoyo was stunned, not knowing what to do. It wasn't every day that a friend she hadn't seen in over a year dropped by, looking as if he'd had a violent encounter with both the Shot Card and an unnaturally bad-tempered wild animal. She wasn't sure if the class she took on first aid in high school would be enough to keep Eriol alive, so she hesitated, half-panicked and fearfully insecure about her inadequate ability to help him.
"Hi-Hiiragizawa-kun?" she whispered, overwhelmed by his scent and his warmth and his weight in her arms, all mingled inextricably with blood, sweat, magic, and indescribable sadness. That very masculine combination was indescribably and inappropriately *attractive* all of a sudden, and Tomoyo felt her judgment abruptly clouded by light-headed, but not altogether unpleasant, confusion. It had been so long since she had even touched another human being. Too long.
She hesitated for an instant longer until the urgency of the situation finally sank in. She shook her head.
This was Hiiragizawa-kun.
And he was hurt.
Bleeding.
*Badly*.
'So what in the world are you waiting for? Just do SOMETHING!' her rational side yelled at her. 'Get him to a HOSPITAL!'
In that moment of sudden clarity, she reacted, blindly moving to help however she could while her logical mind screamed to get him to a doctor.
*Notyetnotyetnotyetnotyet* was her unexpected response to the natural urge to just stuff Eriol into her car and take him to the hospital, traffic lights and pedestrians be damned. Something from the depths of her soul warned her, loudly and stubbornly, that if she tried to get him to a hospital, both of them would end up dead. It reminded her that an unknown danger lurked somewhere in the city, and Tomoyo would be better off not leading them to it.
Having no intention to take them both to their slaughter, she figured they should go to the hospital tomorrow. Or maybe they could go on Saturday, when Sakura-chan and Li-kun arrived to watch out for them. After all, daylight was not a guarantee that they would be any safer from a danger that she could not sense. At the moment, they really needed Sakura and Syaoran, and Tomoyo found herself almost fuming at the thought.
For the first time in her life, Tomoyo inwardly cursed herself for not having any magical sensitivity at all.
Staggering under Eriol's weight, she half-dragged, half-carried the young man towards her living room couch, vaguely remembering to shut the door behind her with her foot. Sakura and Syaoran's warnings still echoed in the recesses of her mind, and Tomoyo guessed that whatever evil they had warned her against had gotten to Eriol first. She had little doubt that it would go after her if given the chance, and she knew she would not survive a confrontation with it. After all, if Hiiragizawa-kun was this badly beaten, what chance did she have?
Steering her mind away from discouragingly morbid thoughts, she deposited Eriol on the couch and took a second to assess his ailing condition.
In spite of her already light complexion, she paled.
His face was most noticeably bruised and somewhat singed on his right side, enhancing the already numerous cuts on his cheeks and lower lip. A long gash ran down diagonally from his hairline above his left eye, across his forehead, to end just above his right eyebrow, and it bled freely down his face and neck. He looked as if he had just barely made it back from the front lines of a brutal war, and suddenly Tomoyo wondered if that comparison to war was actually more apt than she had first imagined.
To her growing dismay, she found that the bloody gash on his head was the least of his injuries as she quickly surveyed his battered appearance. His dark blue, button-down shirt was shredded and clung loosely to his lean form, sporting several dark patches of blood. His black jeans were dirty and torn up in several places, with part of the lower right pant leg ripped off, revealing a large gash on his calf and more cuts and bruises down his shin. His right side had taken the brunt of the damage, she realized, noticing the unevenness of his wounds.
Worse still, his whole body began shivering violently, and his face was rapidly turning an alarming shade of blue. Tomoyo guessed that he was probably suffering from internal injuries that she could not see or treat, although those injuries needed as much—if not more—attention.
Trying to stay calm, she decided it was important to get him warm and dry first; it wouldn't help if she patched him up only so he could die of pneumonia a day later. In the instant it took her to check over him, she devised a plan, as any calm, rational business executive would.
And in the next second, she was executing her plan, in spite of how rapidly her mind was unraveling.
She sprinted to her room to fetch towels and blankets, pausing a split-second only to turn up the apartment heater as far as it would go, and then she headed back for her unexpected visitor. Although a thousand questions raced through her mind as she reached his side, she had to ignore her nagging curiosity and her fear of the unknown.
Eriol's ailing health was the only thing that mattered now. He was getting worse by the second, and she had little time to spare.
'Sakura-chan, Li-kun, I wish you were both here,' she thought desperately to herself. They always knew what to do. They'd been faced with life-threatening situations before. They had seen the edge of life and death before. They were used to it. It was their life; they were *more* than used to it.
She wasn't.
Swiftly, she dried Eriol with a towel as best as she could, knowing that she needed to get him out of his wet clothes as soon as humanly possible. She definitely did not like the current color of his face or the way he was shivering, as if he were suffering from a seizure. Deciding that modesty was useless in a life-threatening situation, Tomoyo began to peel the tattered clothes off his shivering form, wincing as the cloth stuck to the bleeding wounds on his torso.
"What monster could have done this to you?" she murmured angrily. She trembled as the nausea rose in her chest, feeling more sickened as she discovered more vicious cuts and bruises on his skin. Through gritted teeth, she asked, softly, without really expecting an answer, "What happened to you, Hiiragizawa-kun?"
So she was startled when he finally said something, as if in response to her question. His deep voice was so quiet that she almost didn't hear him, but it conveyed his suffering with piercing, emotional clarity.
"Kaho..."
Tomoyo nearly froze. Only her frantic mind reminding her to GET ERIOL WARM NOW kept her going at a breakneck pace of drying and undressing him. But what Eriol said next, in his quiet delirium, could have stopped time.
"You can't be..."
Forgetting the world, and forgetting time, she paused, her eyes searching his face. A hopeful question escaped her lips. "Hiiragizawa-kun?"
"You can't... be... dead..."
A lump formed in her throat, and it took all of Tomoyo's strength not to cry for him. In the end, she wouldn't have any strength left for herself.
He remembered. The stars were so beautiful that night. The glittering sky was an invitation to explore other worlds, to peer into the farthest reaches of the universe. And he knew that even if he went exploring and lost himself in a world far away, he could always return home.
"Kaho?"
She was his anchor, after all.
She had smiled a brilliant smile, and he had been so happy then. Only now did he realize, with a pang of regret, that her smile was not one of happiness. Not really. Not completely.
"Yes?"
She was his first love.
Over the years, they had drifted apart, coming back to each other after several separations only to push each other away again. They were doomed to repeat the cycle because they had been trapped in that infinitely long dance of separation and reunion, a dance he had lacked the courage to end.
The first time they separated, he thought they had agreed to wait for him to grow up.
At the second break up, he believed they had agreed to wait for him to discover who he was.
Later on, he had conceded that they needed to give each other space because they had lived with each other for almost ten years.
But regardless of the cause, there was just always something in the way, and he couldn't even remember half of the other reasons for their damned dance. Still, he had believed it was a dance that only tested and strengthened their loved.
He had finally sought to end their dance, happily, that night. She was his first love--his only love, as far as he was concerned. No matter how each of them tried to pull away, they inevitably returned to each other once more.
"Aishiteru, Kaho."
She had smiled again, and only now did he realize that her smile wasn't as utterly benign and beautiful and loving as he had blindly fantasized for so long. Perhaps her smile had even been one of pity, but Kaho was a very gentle person, and she knew well enough to hide hurtful words and actions and expressions from him until it was time to repeat their painful dance once again.
Besides, even if they hurt each other now, they were doomed to fall back in love again. She would always pull him back.
"I know."
Her jarringly impersonal answer to his meaningful declaration of love should have unnerved him, but he had dismissed it. A young man's fancy had blinded him in bliss and romantic ideals, and he had thought it was great that they were so in love that they could read each other's minds.
He had thought he could surprise her.
"Marry me?"
And he had found himself kneeling.
Down on both knees instead of just one, in the garden behind his mansion. Rejected. Confused. Weeping.
"You'll understand later, Eriol."
She had smiled again before she hurriedly left him in tears, and he understood now that her smile was not out of love, or a promise of things yet to come, or even just a simple request for more time to breathe. For him, nothing was that ordinary.
But because they were soulmates, he knew that they had just begun their next dance, and he would muster the courage to ask his question a second time as soon as this cycle was over.
After all, they were soulmates. Soulmates could not escape their destiny. He refused to abandon his destiny.
I'm drowning. It's dark. It sounds like it's raining outside. And I'm suffocating.
"Kaho?"
I remember a spell. Cast in a duel a long time ago. But it wasn't my life, and it didn't hurt me then because I didn't know how to love, but it's hurting me now. It has already hurt my other self before. I don't want it to hurt me. It's not fair.
Now I can't feel anything but pain. My limbs feel numb. I'm sore all over. My chest hurts with every breath I take, and I wish I could just stop breathing to stop the pain and be with you.
This isn't what rebirth is supposed to feel like.
"Yes?"
Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. I couldn't save you, and that's why I cast that last spell. So I could be reunited with you. Why didn't my last spell work?
"Aishiteru, Kaho."
Why am I not with you? Where are you?
"I know."
I can't see you. I'm lost.
"Marry me?"
Or... are you still alive, after all?
"You'll understand later, Eriol."
I'm so tired... it's so hard to breathe. What am I supposed to understand? How can I understand if half of my heart and half of my soul are no longer with me? I can't. I don't understand. I don't want to understand. Why didn't my last spell work?
Please help me, Kaho.
"You silly boy. Your spell *did* work."
Those last words in his hazy half-dream were spoken by a deep, gentle voice, filled with mocking, yet sorrow-filled arrogance, pity, and distant understanding, and he knew that it spoke the truth. It belonged to a man who knew things past, present, and future.
The voice, after all, was his own.
He became aware that he could hear someone crying, and he was deeply startled to find out that the person crying was, in fact, himself.
"Kaho?"
"Yes?"
A pause.
"Aishiteru, Kaho."
A smile.
"I know."
Hesitation. Fear.
"Marry me?"
An eternity. A sigh.
Then, "I'm sorry."
Hurt. Confusion. An unasked question hanging in the silence.
"You'll understand later, Eriol."
His knees hurt that night.
The warmth was comforting in its familiarity, and the softness beneath him relaxed his senses, but this wasn't at all what he had expected. This wasn't exactly how he remembered death and rebirth... but then again, perhaps his memories from Clow's life were simply fading with time.
His situation confused him, for he had believed that the last spell he had cast would surely kill him, or at least bring him into the next life as painlessly as possible. He didn't know whether he should be overjoyed or disappointed.
Was he even dead?
Still groggy, his mind inexplicably weary, he tried to move, and all at once a thousand sharp pains shot through his body, coursing through his aching muscles and the now familiar wounds inflicted upon him. He groaned involuntarily as he discovered how difficult it was to breathe, and he instantly gave up trying to move.
Just lying down hurts, he thought miserably, but at least the horrible pain proved that he was still alive--he just wasn't doing very well.
In spite of his hazy mental state, an uplifting thought occurred to him.
If I'm still alive, he wondered, his mind fighting off sluggishness, then... does this mean she's still alive?
Energized by the possibility, he willed his eyes to open, overcoming the powerful urge to rest in the comfort of darkness and slumber.
"Kaho?" he managed to whisper, even though his throat was parched and a throbbing headache nearly blinded his senses. He couldn't see very well; everything was dark and blurred. It took him a moment to realize that there was little light wherever he was--had the sun even risen yet?--and that he was not wearing his glasses.
"Kaho?" he whispered again, absently wondering if he sounded as pathetic as he felt. He reached out his hand from underneath the comfortable blankets that had been, mysteriously enough, piled on his body, and he grasped air for a split second until his hand caught someone else's. The hand that held his was soft, warm, and gentle, caressing his with a tenderness he thought he would never feel again. He felt another hand brush his face lightly, stroking his cheek and brushing his dark bangs away from his face with a quiet, loving intensity.
He was safe.
He gave in to his fatigue, closing his eyes once more, and a contented smile crossed his features. "You're safe... I... found you... Kaho."
He would be severely disappointed.
Daidouji Designs was alive with chatter that Friday morning. Everyone was discussing the events of the night before. A violent storm, strangely enough, had been so focused on a relatively small area in upscale Tokyo that it had meteorologists everywhere scratching their heads in confusion.
It was like magic.
But what fed the chatter more was the fact that the company's CEO was very conspicuously absent after about two years of almost continuous work. Deadlines were extended. Meetings were rescheduled. Presentations were set aside. The higher-ranking executives, in their panic, almost thought they should restructure the company to take into account their leader's very unusual absence.
Daidouji Tomoyo had called early that morning to leave one of her VPs in charge, saying that she was taking a sick day.
It was as if she had decided to quit; the news was *that* unexpected.
People immediately deduced that she was, in fact, not sick, because Daidouji Tomoyo would have gone to work even if she was suffering from an insidious collection of near-fatal illnesses. People understood that Daidouji Tomoyo would skip work only for a deeply personal matter, and whatever it was worried the people closest to her, knowing that it must be something incredibly urgent.
Still, they realized that the short break was good for their beloved, yet stubbornly aloof CEO to get some time to herself. She needed to take a break from a hectic schedule that none of them could even begin to handle, and they were relieved.
As the day wore on, with no sign of Tomoyo showing up on a surprise inspection, people began to mischievously speculate that their highly respected and impossibly distant leader had actually fallen in love with a dark stranger on the night of the mysterious storm, and so she had devoted the entire weekend to "adjusting" to her new priorities.
People laughed. They figured she might as well take the weeks of vacation she had accumulated because she had actually left the company incredibly well run, like a flawless, self-oiling machine. The sheer number of designs that Tomoyo had already finished could sustain the company for months to come, and Tomoyo had some of the world's best designers working for her if they were to run out of products, which was already highly unlikely. Thus, Daidouji Designs survived the first day of Tomoyo's absence.
But her first absent day never hinted at the tumultuous weeks that would follow.
Tomoyo awoke at precisely five o'clock in the morning out of habit, but her unfamiliar resting position in a chair, half draped over her own bed and with her hand clutching someone else's, severely disoriented her. The unusually high temperature in her apartment added to the bleary-eyed young woman's confusion momentarily until the events of the night before came back to her in a rush of memory.
A magic storm.
A flash of lightning.
Evil.
Blood.
Sorrow penetrating her soul.
And tears flowing throughout the night.
"Hiiragizawa-kun!"
Her eyes widened, all traces of slumber within them banished in a mixture of panic and alertness. Abruptly she sat up and immediately looked at her wounded visitor, noting with some relief that a tinge of color had returned to his cheeks. He wasn't shivering, and that comforted Tomoyo, who had kept a night-long vigil at his side. She had worried over his near-constant shivering for hours and had even stacked almost all the blankets she owned on him to keep him warm.
Hiiragizawa-kun was her good friend, after all. She loved him as much as she loved Sakura-chan and Li-kun, and she wouldn't have reacted any differently if they had been in the same position. That was why she was so concerned. Tomoyo realized that he was going through a terrible ordeal, and she wished desperately that she could somehow share some of his pain to lift the burden from his shoulders. Until he awoke, however, she could do nothing more to help.
"Hiiragizawa-kun," she murmured, and her initial panic faded away as she held his hand.
Upon closer inspection, she saw that his external injuries didn't really seem that bad anymore. The cuts and bruises on his face had faded quickly, much sooner than they would have on an average person. Tomoyo guessed that his body probably healed faster because he was such a powerful magician, and she was comforted by the idea that he could pull himself out of his critical condition. She did worry, however, about the emotional devastation that Eriol would probably be suffering, if his delirious words uttered the night before were any indication.
Deciding that he was going to be fine physically, Tomoyo rose from her seat, grimacing when her body ached in response to her standing up. She had never slept in such an awkward sitting position before, and her stiff body grudgingly reminded her never to do so again.
She would have groaned, but a faint movement and a slight moan from Eriol quickly removed all thoughts of complaint from Tomoyo's mind. As she turned to face him, she held her breath, wondering if he would wake up, and her heart raced when she saw his lips try to form a word. He tried again, and again, but sound refused to come out. Undaunted even in his exhaustion, he tried one more time, and this time, she heard his whisper.
"Kaho?"
His voice was weak, but the pleading tone was strong and clear. When he opened his eyes at last, Tomoyo almost gasped. His eyes remained a beautifully intense shade of dark blue, and his power shone through them, especially without his glasses to hold it all back. Tomoyo was mesmerized.
"Kaho?" he whispered again, in a slightly stronger voice. He shifted under the sheets, his hand reaching blindly, desperately, for something that Tomoyo knew he could not attain.
She took his hand in hers, gently so that she would not startle him, and, almost of its own accord, her other hand lifted up to soothingly stroke his face.
"Hiiragizawa-kun..." she smiled warmly at him, even though she knew he did not see her and even though she felt his misery.
His unseeing eyes drifted closed once more, and he smiled in peaceful slumber.
Eriol awoke to the mouthwatering smell of bacon, eggs, and potatoes. Even through the haze of pain surrounding his entire body, the delicious aroma reminded him that he was actually famished, and in response to the stimulating scent, he moved to sit up. His aching body, however, protested violently against any form of movement, and so it took him a few seconds of pained exertion to actually push the mountain of blankets off his upper body and get up to a sitting position.
He felt terrible.
A hundred hangovers put together couldn't even begin to describe his headache, and a hundred beatings put together couldn't even compare to his physical injuries.
Blinking wearily, he looked around at his unfamiliar surroundings and wondered what exactly had happened. He could have sworn that Kaho was somewhere around here; no other person in the world could possibly make him feel this safe. Yet as he looked around the room, he acknowledged that he might have been mistaken about Kaho's presence after all. The room was decorated in a uniquely fashionable, modern style, boasting metallic edges and dark, solid, professional colors, lacking the flowery curtains, embellished antique furniture, and pale bedsheets that Kaho had always favored.
Kaho *had* always? he suddenly thought, asking himself why he felt so... resigned... to think of Kaho in the past tense. It sent a shiver down his spine. What the hell was going on?
He cleared his throat and called out a name that, he suddenly felt, he had been calling in vain far too much for far too long. "Kaho?"
He looked around, feeling a bit dazed. His vision was only slightly unclear because he was missing his glasses, but he had never truly needed to wear glasses in the first place. He had worn them more out of habit and, he admitted only to himself, an overwhelming, inexplicable desire to hide his face.
"Hiiragizawa-kun?" a woman's quiet, inquiring voice drifted from somewhere outside the bedroom. Trying to figure out whose voice it was, he turned to the open doorway.
"Who..." Eriol's question trailed off when he spotted Daidouji Tomoyo standing in the doorway, holding a tray of food, tea, and orange juice. She was dressed in black designer jeans and a navy, turtleneck cashmere sweater, a simple yet sophisticated outfit contrasting with the homely picture she made with the tray in her hands.
"Ohayou gozaimasu, Hiiragizawa-kun," she greeted him pleasantly, although he could sense the guarded tone in her voice, almost as if she were in pain herself.
She practically floated towards him, so gracefully did she walk, and Eriol found himself irresistibly drawn to her. He wondered if she could feel that strange... tension... in the air, and he wondered if she knew why it was there.
Was this magic?
"Please eat something," she urged, making him feel discomfort at his own lack of response to her polite morning greeting. "You were badly injured, and you need to get your strength back."
"Daidouji-san?" he blinked, confused, and unable to remember what exactly was going on and how he had arrived at her apartment.
Badly injured? he mulled over her words. That would certainly explain why I'm hurting all over.
He ventured to ask a simple question, knowing very well that he might not be strong enough to hear the answer, but still curious anyway. He was tired, and he felt sad, even though he couldn't explain anything. "Would you kindly tell me what's going on, Daidouji-san?"
She smiled slightly, and he noticed that her smile was comparable to one of Kaho's smiles. It was a smile that held a mixture of love and pity.
Eriol hurriedly shrugged off the horrible thought.
She set the tray beside him on the bed, and only then did Eriol realize that her face was faintly tinged with red. She was discreetly trying to avoid looking directly at him, opting instead to stare at the tray of food.
Wait. The unflappable Daidouji-san was blushing?
Was it something he had done?
He looked down at himself, and instantly he fought the urge to just crawl under a rock and die.
Simply put, he was *naked*.
In front of Daidouji-san, his highly respected childhood friend and a leading global businesswoman and designer, no less.
Save for a few bandages around his chest, his arms, and his head, along with the bandages that he could feel wrapped around his legs, he was devoid of any clothing that could offer some modesty. At least he had blankets over him. His face flaming, Eriol tried to pull the blankets higher around his waist without drawing much attention to his movements.
"Hiiragizawa-kun, I'm not sure what happened to you, but you showed up last night at my doorstep, badly injured and practically incoherent," Tomoyo explained, averting her eyes with the amazing tact and grace that only Daidouji Tomoyo possessed.
Eriol relaxed, glad that Daidouji-san had such well developed social skills that she was able to turn a potentially embarrassing situation into something trivial. And then he came to the conclusion that *she* was probably the one who had undressed him in the first place, so he tensed up once more. His blush deepened even as he listened to her story. Somehow, the physical pain he was suffering dulled in the wake of his embarrassment, but he still wasn't sure whether he preferred that burning shame or his aching limbs.
He would probably rather suffer physically, especially in front of Tomoyo, someone he respected and admired greatly.
"Before you got here, however," Tomoyo continued her explanation, managing a respectably stable tone of voice although he could see that she was still red-faced, "Sakura-chan and Li-kun called me from Hong Kong, warning me that something evil was coming to Tokyo. It was something strong enough to affect the Earth's magical balance, and strangely enough, it was coming for me. That's why Sakura-chan and Li-kun are returning to Japan tomorrow. To protect me."
All thoughts of modesty left Eriol, and he straightened, regarding Tomoyo seriously. He was aware that focusing so intensely on Tomoyo made her cheeks flush a darker crimson, but both of them pushed such insignificant matters aside, knowing that this discussion was important.
"I don't understand," Eriol frowned as a strange possibility occurred to him. "I don't remember very much, but... you don't think *I'm* that evil thing Sakura-san was warning you about, do you?"
"Of course not," Tomoyo quickly shook her head, and her faith in him strengthened his own resolve. "I think that whatever that evil was got to you, first. There's no other explanation as to why you're so badly beaten up."
"That would make sense," Eriol muttered, trying to think back to the events of the night before but becoming frustrated as he mentally came up against a blank, white wall. It was almost as if someone was trying to stop him from remembering what had happened. He sighed. "I just can't recall how I got here or why I'm even here. I suppose I must have sensed that evil from England and immediately came here to try to stop it..."
"But if that were true, Hiiragizawa-kun," Tomoyo interjected quietly, her calm voice betraying the sense of foreboding rising in her chest, "if you really were coming here to protect me and to fight this evil, then where are Akizuki-san and Spinel-san?"
Eriol froze.
Almost as an afterthought, as if she didn't want him to hear, Tomoyo added softly, "And where is Mizuki-sensei?"
Daidouji-san was right.
Where were they?
And where was Kaho?
"I... I don't know. It really wouldn't make sense for me to fight something this big without my guardians," Eriol agreed, his deepening frown darkening his features. He closed his eyes, intent on mentally seeking out his creations. He had created them, so he could always sense them and communicate with them telepathically, but his mental efforts were met again by a blank wall--the same white wall that had obscured his memory only moments before.
He knew he was beginning to panic, and he hated it.
He hated staring uselessly at that blank wall, and he was quickly learning to dread what that mysterious blank wall in his mind truly signified.
"I don't understand," he muttered, becoming increasingly agitated as he searched within his mind and consistently found blank walls in his memory and in his senses. He willed himself to discover something. Any sign of his creations, his loved ones, would be good enough for him.
Ruby Moon?
In the infinite expanse of the mental plane, he found a white wall blocking his avenue to his guardian. Frustrated, he started another search.
Spinel Sun?
He discovered the same, impenetrable wall. Annoyed, but more worried than ever before, Eriol tried a different approach.
What happened last night?
Again, he faced that white barrier, and he found his fear growing exponentially. This was not something he could be annoyed about; this was serious.
He almost didn't want to ask the next question.
Kaho?
Once more, he discovered nothing. The white wall brought his search to a halt.
Ruby Moon?
A wall.
He was becoming desperate.
Spinel?
A wall.
His heartbeat was racing.
Memories?
A wall.
His head was hurting so much that he couldn't think straight.
Evil?
A wall.
He paused, feeling a chill run down his spine.
This can't be happening.
It can't be.
Kaho?
With shockingly cold finality, a solid wall blocked his path. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry out to someone. He wanted to hurt something, break something. He had never felt so helpless, so unbelievably clueless, about anything in his entire life, and because it concerned the people he valued the most, he felt even more frustrated.
He was frightened.
Kaho?
The wall remained unmoved.
Ruby Moon?
Another wall refused to give in to his tears.
Spinel?
The wall mocked his frustration, his sharply growing fear.
Memories?
The wall withstood the furious pounding of his fists. It resisted his screams.
Where was everything?
Why couldn't he find anything?
Where was everyone?
Why the hell couldn't he find anything?
"KAHOOO!!!"
It wouldn't move. It just wouldn't give. Even his magic didn't work. His sobs were futile.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
KAHOOOO!!!
He was angrily punching the wall, trying to break it, but his only rewards were bloodied knuckles.
*Shit*.
KAHO!
He was getting so tired again, and he wanted to rest, but he needed that wall out of the way.
Shit.
Kaho...
What kind of magic was this? Why couldn't he remove the wall?
Kaho...
She was... smiling?
What was she saying?
He would understand *what*?
And then someone else-—not Kaho-—was speaking to him.
"Hiiragizawa-kun! Hiiragizawa-kun... Calm down! Stop fighting me... Hiiragizawa-kun! Hiiragizawa-kun... Onegai... Hiiragizawa-kun. Hiiragizawa-kun. Onegai."
That voice gently repeating his name broke into his thoughts. He remembered the last time he had heard it at the wedding of his son and daughter over a year ago.
So where the hell was he?
Where...?
That wall!
*Shit*.
Why wouldn't the wall break down?
Why wouldn't it break?
Why couldn't he get it to break?
It was all his fault. His fault. His fault. His fault.
Someone was dead.
His fault. His fault. His fault.
His fault.
"Hiiragizawa-kun! Onegai..."
Eriol opened his eyes.
He was shocked to discover that his face was streaked with tears and his body was convulsing in unstoppable sobs. He was breathing raggedly, as if he had just run a very great distance, and he belatedly realized that he was wrapped in Daidouji-san's warm embrace. She was trying to soothe him, to calm him down, and he was crying desperately into her shoulder because he could not break down the white walls in his mind. Her soft hands glided gently across his bare back, seeking to comfort him even as she tried to understand what was happening to him.
"Hiiragizawa-kun, onegai," she whispered brokenly, her breath warm next to his ear. Her grip on him tightened, and he didn't realize that she might have been crying or that she might have been in pain. "Calm down. Tell me. Onegai. I can feel your pain, but how can I help you?"
He thought he heard a strange sadness in her voice, and he also thought it was most unbecoming on someone as wonderful and beautiful as Daidouji-san.
"I... I..." he couldn't fit the words between his gasps, so he buried his face into her warm shoulder, his arms fitting around her slim waist so perfectly that he thought, just for a moment, that she might be Kaho. She made him feel so safe--even safer?--that he thought she could be Kaho.
But her smell was different. It was intoxicating, alluring, unbelievably sweet and unbelievably arousing, but not Kaho.
Not Kaho.
Not Kaho.
Not Kaho.
"Gomen nasai, Hiiragizawa-kun. I know I'm not her," Daidouji-san suddenly whispered against his cheek, accidentally teasing him with the slight brush of her lips. Unmindful of the thrill that the contact of her lips on his skin caused, he wondered how she had read his mind. "You are my good friend," she said kindly, warmly, and Eriol, in between his shuddering breaths, couldn't help but pull her closer to him. "And I do love you. I want to help you find Mizuki-sensei."
He failed to notice that breakfast, now cold, had spilled on the floor.
He didn't realize that an hour had elapsed since the time he woke up and the time he found himself sobbing in Daidouji Tomoyo's careful, caring embrace.
He didn't see the scratches on Tomoyo's face and arms, scratches that his own angrily flailing body had caused during his inexplicable lapse into the depths of his own mind.
He didn't know there were unshed tears in her eyes because he couldn't see the sadness and sympathy and love etched in her face.
She was worried.
Hiiragizawa-kun was, after all, someone she loved because he was a very close, very dear friend. In fact, she loved him as much as she loved Li-kun.
As much as she loved Sakura-chan.
But if she really loved him as much as she did her other close friends, then how come she could literally *feel* his emotional and physical suffering?
Through a haze of despair and pain, Tomoyo wondered.
And because of that haze of despair and pain, they fell asleep in each other's arms.
Sakura and Syaoran had tried calling England about fifty times on Thursday night before they finally gave up. The phone always rang, which indicated that there were no severe weather problems that could have been caused by dark magic in London, but strangely enough, no one ever answered. Sakura and Syaoran had even resorted to e-mail and instant messaging, trying to hunt for anyone living in Eriol's mansion, but they received no response from any of their old friends.
Deciding that they would try calling again the next day, the Li's had retired for the night, still very concerned about Tomoyo's situation. It was no surprise to Syaoran that Sakura was up uncharacteristically *early* and was already calling the Hiiragizawa residence by the time he had fixed himself his daily mug of hot chocolate. Sakura quickly explained that since there was still no connection to Tokyo, she had once again resorted to trying to talk to Eriol.
While Sakura had a cheerfully optimistic personality, even this was getting on her nerves.
She sighed.
"Still no response. And I really don't understand why Eriol-kun doesn't even have an answering machine," Sakura, with the cordless receiver held next to her ear, bit her lip.
"Guess we just have to try again," he shrugged tensely, sitting next to his wife on the couch. He moved to press the speaker phone button, and he pressed the redial button just as Sakura replaced the receiver back into its cradle.
The ringing on the other end made them both unusually nervous, though neither of them could fully understand why.
But really they were expecting no response.
After so many attempts to contact Eriol the night before, Sakura and Syaoran were conditioned to expect that lack of response. Naturally, when they heard a sudden click on the other line, they were startled to the point where Syaoran almost spilled his drink and Sakura jumped a few centimeters in her seat.
Without thinking or waiting for a speaker on the other side, both of them asked, in tense unison, "May we please speak to Hiiragizawa Eriol?"
A long silence followed, and Sakura and Syaoran unknowingly held their breaths.
"Eriol-sama..." a familiar voice said faintly. "Tomoyo-chan..."
It took a split second for that voice to register in their minds.
"Akizuki-san!" Syaoran cried out in recognition, and he would have demanded to speak to Eriol if Sakura hadn't quickly grasped his arm and held him back with a slight, serious shake of her head.
Syaoran's eyes widened in understanding. The muted words of the normally upbeat Akizuki Nakuru had made Sakura instantly realize that something was very, very wrong in England, and they needed to know what was wrong before they dived deeper into whatever that mess was.
"What is it, Nakuru-san? What about Eriol-kun and Tomoyo-chan?" Sakura asked gently, her tone contrasting with the grave look on her face and the worry lines forming over her brow.
"Eriol-sama..." Nakuru repeated, almost as if she were drugged, and Syaoran found himself clenching his fists so tightly that his palm nearly bled. "Tomoyo-chan... Mizuki-san..."
Nakuru chuckled, and neither Sakura nor Syaoran mistook that chuckle as a sign of mirth.
It was a laugh that reeked of bitterness.
"Mizuki-san. Mizuki-san... She's dead."
Sakura and Syaoran were horrified.
"She's dead," Nakuru said again, faintly and in a flat tone of voice, and they could hear her sobbing even more. "She wasn't really my favorite person, and she hurt Eriol-sama a lot without meaning to, but she was a kind person. Good to everyone. But now she's dead. She's dead. She's dead. She's dead."
"Nakuru-san, where's Eriol-kun?" Sakura asked, desperately now, as she clutched the edges of her seat in a bone-crunching grip. "Nakuru-san?"
"She's dead," Nakuru echoed again, before a final series of sobs escaped her lips. "Please stop him. Sakura-chan, Syaoran-kun. Please stop him. Please stop him. Please stop him. Tomoyo-chan's next. Please, please, please stop him. Tomoyo-chan's next. Please stop him. Tomoyo-chan's--"
The dial tone was distractingly harsh.
-= End Part Two =-
Chapter Started: November 28, 2002
Chapter Finished: December 14, 2002
Chapter Revised: August 15, 2003
End Notes:
I really didn't think I needed translations, given that I don't really use that much Japanese, and that CCS, like most anime, has a Japanese-oriented fandom (the abomination dubbed "Cardcaptors" does NOT exist, dagnammit! "Showron" is NOT a family name! Nelvana morons... ). Still, here's a list of Japanese terms that should come in handy wherever you go. ^_^
~~ Japanese Translations ~~
-kun – familiar suffix for a male friend (usually)
-chan – familiar suffix for a female friend, usually used for/by young girls
-sama – respectful suffix for someone of great importance or high ranking (e.g. royalty)
-san – generally respectful suffix
-sensei – suffix for teachers
aishiteru – I love you
gomen nasai – sorry (polite)
ohayou gosaimasu – good morning (polite)
onegai – please
Please review and direct all questions, comments, and criticisms to rune_dreaming@yahoo.com. Thank you!
Copyright (C) 2002 by Dark Rune. All rights reserved.