Promises to Keep, Chapter 5
"Tactical assault on the mall"
(cute fuzzies, as promised! ^_~ Thanks for the reviews, y'all!)
Christmas shopping was rather complicated around the Kinomoto family. Aside from the fact that Sakura's own advanced pregnancy was tiring for her, there were the intricacies of who could be shopped for in front of whom. Even Tomoyo looked a bit boggled by Sakura's attempt at puzzling through the details.
"I used to be able to go shopping for Mother with oniichan, but now he can't see her anymore, so I can't go shopping for her when I don't know whether or not she's watching, and Father could tell me but he's not here, and that makes it easier to shop for him but harder to shop for her, and Yue-san could tell me except for the fact that I still need to shop for him too; I've gotten my present for Yukito-san but Yukito-san could never see Mother the way oniichan could, so he couldn't help me either -- and then there's the part of the family that doesn't like to see Father but doesn't mind oniichan and me, except that most of them don't know about oniichan and Yukito-san, and none of them know about Yue-san of course, but Yue-san told me that he would like to find a gift for Grandfather to pay his respects to the family's eldest, and..."
Tomoyo gamely took out a notepad and started graphing who could know what about whose gifts. By the time they arrived at the mall, Tomoyo had taken charge of martialling the troops' schedule for the afternoon.
"...So Yue-san will come with us for a while, and then we'll split up so that Sakura-chan can shop for Touya-san and Yue-san, and then we'll meet back at the food court at three p.m., and then Yukito-san will have his turn with us. And then I think we've got all the options covered."
Yukito's eyes had that peculiar internal-conversation lack of focus. "...He doesn't say so, but I think he's worried about whether people will notice him. As in, whether they'll notice we're not human."
"So he likes odd contacts or something," Touya said. "With the hair to stare at, I doubt anyone's going to be looking that closely at his eyes anyway. --Tell him he's just our shy little shrinking violet and see whether he'll come out to slap me across the head," he added, grinning.
A little stiffly, as though struggling through the internal debate, Yukito started to shrug off his overcoat too.
"Yuki? You'll get cold if you leave that here," Touya said.
"But I'm not the one who's going," he said, "and if they stare at his hair, they'll definitely stare at his clothes."
Tomoyo blinked in absolute bewilderment. "But his clothes are beautiful!"
"Yes, but people don't usually wear clothing like that to the mall, Tomoyo-chan," Yukito said very gently. "Actually, ladies, speaking of which -- if you'll excuse me for a few minutes--" and he put his hands to the buttons of his shirt.
Sakura grabbed Tomoyo's elbow and they both did a hasty about-face, staring fixedly away from the van. "Tomoyo-chan," Sakura said in an undertone, "for Yue-san's sake, please tell me you have an extra ponytail holder in your purse. And that it's not Hello Kitty."
Tomoyo dug around in her purse and came up with three plain soft ponytailers, one maroon and two gray. "Hello Kitty?" she asked.
"It's a long story..."
Yukito's clothing was a little short on Yue, too tight in some places and too loose in others, but the combination of Yukito's sweater and the masking of his long overcoat made it look plausible enough. Tomoyo expertly looped up Yue's hair and fastened it at a few places and suddenly his hair would hide reasonably well down the back of Yukito's sweater, although Yue kept moving his head oddly, unaccustomed to the shifted balance of its weight.
"Ready?" Sakura asked encouragingly, putting a hand through his; Touya took his other hand, and they both looked at him.
Yue ducked his head, embarrassed by their loving, anxious attention, and Sakura stroked the back of his hand in an attempt at reassurance.
"I think it'll be fine, Yue-san, really. I think you might like it! But if you don't want to do this, then I don't want to ask it of you..."
"Let's go," Tomoyo said crisply, before their tangled collection of embarrassment and shyness and mutual concern could escalate. "We have a schedule to keep, after all, and the mall waits for no one!" She put her arm through Sakura's and tugged towards the entrance.
Yue had watched the modern world through Yukito's eyes, so he wasn't surprised by the tall building with the ten floors of shops and galleries; what unsettled him was that this was one of very few times that he'd been the one walking around. He took his task as a guardian seriously enough when Li and Kero were also present; in their absence, he was almost hypervigilant, wary of anything that might have the ability to endanger either his disguise or Sakura's safety. Even with his wings magically hidden, he was silent and trembling with tension, his knuckles white with the pressure of his grip on Sakura's arm.
His tension communicated itself to Sakura, who was desperately anxious to reassure him that it was all right to enjoy himself, and in return her desperation made him even more determined to keep her safe from anything that might harm her, and he urged her to stop and rest whenever she looked uncomfortable or rubbed the hollow of her back to try to ease the strain of the baby's weight. Tomoyo gave up on the pair of them and took Touya's arm to shush him with an elbow in the ribs whenever he started chortling too loudly about what absolute saps they were being.
And Tomoyo had to shush him twice as vigorously when Sakura and Yue began to earnestly debate the best thing for Yue to offer to Sakura's grandfather -- while standing in front of the stuffed animals shop.
"But this one looks like you, a little bit," Sakura said, holding up a soft plush angel with swan-white wings. "We could make her a little white outfit like yours, and then Grandfather would know what you look like."
"It's... it's..." He struggled with the thought of disagreeing with his mistress, and finally nerved himself to say very faintly, "It's... not very... dignified..."
"You don't like it?" she asked piteously, and he almost tripped over himself backpedalling.
"It's a perfectly good stuffed fluffy little... er... angel... thing. It's... just... um... a little... extremely... cute. And female..."
Touya made a strangled snerking sound; Tomoyo dug a sharp elbow into his ribs.
"Be nice," she told him primly.
"But he's plenty cute and effeminate-looking!" Touya wheezed. "I think she picked a good one myself..."
Yue shot him a look that could have singed steel.
"No promises broken," Touya said, grinning from ear to ear. "Complimenting her taste and everything. Not teasing her in the slightest!"
"But you're teasing Yue-san," Sakura said unhappily, and put the little angel back on the shelf.
Yue picked it back up again. "You like it," he said. "It made you happy to think of giving it to your grandfather."
"But I don't want to embarrass you..."
"Here," Touya said, and took the little angel, and handed it to Sakura. "You give this one to Mother. I'll give her one that looks like Kero-chan. And we'll help Yue find a gift he thinks is appropriate for him to give to Grandfather."
More than a little wilted, Yue said, "You're saying we both look like plush toys?"
"Oh, poor Yue-san!" Sakura patted his hand gently. "You don't look like a plush toy at all..."
"Let's look at this the other way. What sort of thing do you think Grandfather would like to receive?" Tomoyo asked them all.
Sakura chewed on her bottom lip, thinking hard, and propped her hand in the small of her back in the eternal posture of late pregnancy. "Nadeshiko flowers?" she guessed. "It's so difficult to buy personal things for him, though; we don't know him very well..."
"What do you think he would like to receive from Yue-san in particular, though?" Tomoyo said. "A gift from the moon, a gift that speaks of moonlight..."
Yue's eyes widened, and then he bowed to Tomoyo in the old Western fashion he'd learned centuries earlier, down on one knee with his head bent.
"You are a very thoughtful young woman," he murmured, oblivious to the stares from the passers-by. "Starting from that place, I know what it is I should give to him; we are unlikely to find such a thing here, though. I will need a frame. And a piece of glass. I can manage the rest."
Blinking enormous green eyes, Sakura looked back and forth between Tomoyo and her guardian. "Huh...?"
Tomoyo was very, very good at wearing the calm and composed face, but Sakura had known her for most of twenty years now, and it was a little reassuring to realize that Tomoyo was a little bit baffled too. Still, she gamely replied, "I'm glad I could help, Yue-san."
She tapped the end of her pencil against her cheek, looking over the day's battle plan. "Then that's one taken care of -- or at least, as taken-care-of as it gets at the mall, yes?" In response to Yue's nod, Tomoyo went back to strategizing like a military general. "Right. Now, Sakura-chan and I will need some privacy to shop for the boys, but Touya-san will also need some privacy to shop for you-plural, Yue-san, and we're not about to abandon either of you out here because you would be paralyzed and Yukito-san would find a candy store to eat out of business. Therefore, here's what we're going to do..."
Yue didn't do sweatdrops. It wasn't his style. However, the way he was standing there too-pointedly not fidgeting was about as close to a sweatdrop as he was congenitally capable of coming. Sakura was doing sweatdrops for both of them, to balance out the inequity in the universe.
"...So at 2:15 we rendezvous at the central court and trade off again and go shopping with our new partners from 2:20 to 2:55, and then there's the final rendezvous at 3 and Yukito gets his chance to come shopping. So everyone has their plans straight, right?" Tomoyo asked.
Sakura opened her mouth to reply, and had meant for something intelligible to come out, but what she heard herself say was "Huh...?"
"You two go that way," Touya said. "Tomoyo-chan comes with me. We'll call you when we're done. --You both have cell phones, you know."
Tomoyo looked wilted. "But I liked my plan better."
"Because you were going to take the opportunity during all those swaps to ditch us and film Sakura shopping, or because your brain's just naturally more convoluted than a Grecian labyrinth?"
Tomoyo gave a sheepish little laugh. "Well, a little of both actually..."
"How is she supposed to buy something for you when she doesn't know when you're sneaking around videotaping her?"
"I'll close my eyes for that part," Tomoyo replied brightly.
Touya smacked a palm into his forehead, caught a handful of Tomoyo's collar, and started dragging her away. "See you later, monster..."
* * *
About a quarter to three, one of the fake ferns near the central court rustled suspiciously.
Touya said in his ordinary voice, "Tomoyo-chan, I don't know what you think you're-- ouch!"
Tomoyo, who had produced a floppy black hat and sunglasses and a very small but high-zoom-factor videocamera from the depths of her purse, resumed her position behind the fake fern. She parted the leaves cautiously, and the camera chirped and whirred as she shifted the zoom and the focus.
In a much quieter although no less exasperated voice, and leaning hard on the fake fern's container to take the weight off his newly kicked ankle, Touya said, "What do you think you're filming this time?"
"Sakura-chan is done shopping for us, isn't she," Tomoyo replied.
Warily, Touya nodded. "So?"
"So you can't possibly scold me for videotaping her while she shops for me, since she's already done!"
"..."
"Hush."
"I didn't say it!" he protested.
"You didn't need to. Now hush."
Touya rolled his eyes and sat down behind the fern, still nursing both his injured ankle and his injured dignity.
Watching intently through the viewfinder of the camera, Tomoyo sighed with bliss at Yue's mute gallantry as he helped Sakura settle herself into a deep soft chair. He knelt at her side, and Tomoyo hoped the microphone's background noise filter was good enough to pick up their conversation.
"You're sure you're all right...?"
"I'm fine," Sakura said, blushing. "It's just that my back hurts from carrying all the extra weight! But I'm perfectly fine; you don't need to worry so, Yue-san."
His silence was just as eloquent as Touya's had been, a few moments earlier. Tomoyo wondered how much conversation the pair of them held without speaking a word aloud.
"...mmph!" Rubbing the snug mound of her belly with a rueful hand, Sakura said, "I think the baby takes after oniichan. Soccer lessons, definitely... that was quite a kick!"
Barely a whisper, Yue said hoarsely, "I feel so helpless."
Sakura blinked, concerned by the distress in his voice. "Yue-san...?"
"There is nothing I can do for you now," he murmured. "I cannot aid you in this, no matter how desperately I might wish it; I can only stand here, distant and futile as the moonlight itself, watching as you suffer--"
"That's not true!" she said, and leaned forward to catch his hands between her own. "The number of times you or Yukito-san have sat with me and rubbed my back or my middle when I've been uncomfortable -- I'm embarrassed to have taken so much of your time and attention for such silly things, honestly."
"It's not silly," he murmured. "You hurt, and there is so little I can do to ease that..."
"How do you think I feel?" Sakura asked wistfully. "Yue-san, I know when you hurt too. You spent so very long alone in the dark, and deep in your heart, somewhere that I can't seem to touch, you're still afraid to believe that this is real -- that you have oniichan, that you have happiness, that it won't be snatched away from you... I watch you hurting even when you smile sometimes, and I wish there was something I could do. I wish I was strong enough that you could just trust me, the way you trusted Clow-san..."
"I trusted him with everything, and he died," Yue replied, quiet and tired. "It wasn't his fault. I've come to understand that, lately. The fault was mine, for asking the impossible. Even he could not live for me simply because I needed him to. I cannot ask the same of you. I cannot make the same mistake again. It is not fair to any of us. All I can do is to hold on to you and to Touya with all the strength I have, and to pray that my strength is enough for a time."
With a small sad smile, Sakura smoothed his hair back from his face. "But don't spend your whole life living in fear of that day," she said. "Don't spend so much time clinging to us in fear that you forget how to hold us and smile. Please?"
Yue bent his head beneath her hands, and said, "I will try."
"Thank you." Sakura shifted a little in her seat, and said, "If you were Kero-chan I'd get you some pudding and all would be right with the world. Actually, the same thing would work for Yukito-san too. I still need to find what makes you that happy. --I don't suppose you might like pudding after all? Or ice cream crepes?"
Yue looked up at her again, with the ghost of a small smile that looked suspiciously like Yukito's tugging at his lips. "Shall I go and bring you one?"
"Oh--! No, no, I wasn't trying to hint or anything, I just... I wondered if... but... um..."
"It might be wiser to bring one now," Yue said. "If you sent Yukito, I don't know if your crepe would make it all the way back unmolested. Chocolate and strawberries, yes? Pardon me for a moment..."
And he stood, bowed, and walked toward the crepe-sellers' booth while Sakura was still spluttering over how to protest.
"Are you done snooping through the ferns yet?" Touya asked Tomoyo dryly.
"For the moment, yes," Tomoyo replied, very much on her dignity. "Besides, I want a better angle to film Sakura-chan and her crepe!"
Muttering something unprintable under his breath about what prolonged exposure to the electrical fields from the videocameras had done to scramble her brain, Touya hoped he wasn't limping too much as he walked out from behind the fern and over toward his little sister. He was the one with the black belt, but Tomoyo didn't need a black belt when she had high heels with sharp points.
Touya wasn't the only one walking across the courtyard cafe toward Sakura, though. With a couple nudges from giggling comrades, a little girl about four or five years old tiptoed over with a finger in her mouth, and then stood there staring.
Sakura blinked down at the girl, a little surprised. "Can I help you? --Are you lost?"
No response but more finger-chewing; another of the children piped up, "Are you Mrs. Santa Claus?"
"Am I who...? Why...?"
"'Cause you're fat, and you've got a red dress," the littlest one said, matter-of-factly.
"She doesn't have a beard," the second one said.
The littlest one turned a look of utter disdain on her comrade. "Of course she doesn't have a beard," she said. "She's Mrs. Santa Claus."
"I... er... oh, goodness..." Sakura put both hands to her cheeks to try to hide her blushing.
The finger-chewer mumbled something that sounded like, "'r y' r'lly mzz san'claus?"
"She's got an elf, too," the littlest one said, determinedly. "I saw him."
"An elf...? --Yue-san...?"
"He has white hair," the littlest one said, as if that proved everything.
"So do foreigners," said the second one, who seemed to be the skeptic of the group.
"...'n gran'ma," the finger-chewer said.
"But he's got to be an elf because she's Mrs. Santa Claus!" the littlest one wailed. "And he knelt and everything."
"Oh, dear," Sakura said.
Struggling with a grin that threatened to crack his face open, Touya leaned over the back of his sister's chair and said, "Looks like some bright kids we've got here."
"Oniichan, stop that this minute!"
Three pairs of eyes swiveled to blink at him. "You look normal," the littlest one said, sounding utterly betrayed by Touya's normalness.
"So did she, before she married my brother-in-law," Touya said, enjoying every minute of this.
"Oniichan!"
It wasn't actually teasing Sakura if he was talking to the kids, after all. Technically. And probably even Yukito wouldn't blame him for the technicalities. Maybe. Depending on whether or not there was something edible as a distraction. He made a mental note to ask Yue to buy Yukito some ice cream before changing back.
Yue, coming back with Sakura's crepe, stopped dead in his tracks when all three pairs of little eyes swiveled to fix unnervingly on him. He stared back.
After a long assessing moment, the littlest one said, "I told you he was an elf."
Yue nearly dropped the crepe in shock; Touya took it from him and took a bite of it himself before handing it off to Sakura, who was nearly as red as her dress between embarrassment and vexation.
The little skeptic said, "Elfs don't have tails."
"Tails...?" Sakura squeaked. "Oh -- Yue-san, some of your hair's come loose--"
Touya reached over and fished Yue's improvised ponytail out of the back of Yukito's sweater; Yue was still staring fixedly at the children, trying to decide whether or not they posed a hazard to his human disguise that anyone over the age of seven would be likely to fall for.
"See?" Touya said to the littlest one, with a conspiratorial grin. "No tail, just his hair. I guess that means he has to be an elf after all, doesn't it."
A second too late, Yue turned to stare at him in utter shock; Sakura threw a chair cushion at her brother's head, all but incoherent.
"You -- you -- oooohhh...!"
"Waiii!" The littlest one was jumping up and down in excitement; then she turned to the skeptic and proclaimed, "I told you so!"
Sakura turned to Tomoyo to plead for assistance, but whatever she might have said died unspoken. Tomoyo was glued to the eyepiece of her video camera, with one of her dazzled expressions on. It was generally easier to pry Kero away from pudding than to pry Tomoyo away from her video camera when she was being all ...sparkly like that.
With a fixed, shaky grin on her face, Sakura asked her brother through clenched teeth, "If Yue-san is an elf and I'm Mrs. Santa Claus, what does that make you?"
"Santa Claus's brother in law, of course," Touya replied far too helpfully. "Isn't it obvious?"
Yue looked as though he were physically ill, suffering through the combination of agonized embarrassment, hurt and astonished outrage at Touya's fanning the flames, and shaking tension over the way the children were blithely announcing his inhumanity to anyone who cared to listen. Sakura reached over to hold his hand, as much for her own comfort as for his.
Touya bent over and said to the littlest one in a secretive voice, "So what is it that you want for Christmas?"
"A kitty!"
"Any particular kind?"
"One that purrs."
Touya nodded sagely, and pulled a scrap of paper out of his coat pocket to write it down on. "Kitty that purrs. Got it. ...How about you?" he asked the finger-chewer.
"...h'wai'j'nee..."
Somehow, Touya got "Hawaiian Jenny" out of that, and wrote it down too. He looked at the skeptic and said, "I suppose you're too grown up to ask Santa Claus for anything, aren't you. Oh well."
"Oniichan!" Sakura gasped, because the little skeptic looked utterly miserable, torn between being grown up and wanting to ask Santa Claus for a Christmas present.
"Yeah, I know," Touya said. "It's hard for you to believe there are kids who don't actually believe in your husband and all, but you just have to face facts sometimes..."
Sakura was out of loose pillows to throw, and couldn't reach her shoes around the bulge in the middle. "Oniichan, you... you...!"
The little skeptic stalked over to Yue and glared up at him, all miniature ferocity. "Are you really an elf?"
After a long frozen moment, Yue sighed, and knelt to be closer to the child's height.
"Look into my eyes," he murmured. "What do you think...?"
After a moment's staring, the little skeptic's eyes grew enormous. "Whoooooaaaa...!"
"I told you so," the littlest one said again, vindicated.
Yue shot a frantic look at Sakura, wondering if he'd just made a terrible mistake. Yukito said I should, he said it would be all right, but if they tell other people, what can we do? What if...
She smiled at him and silently replied, It's fine. We just tell the grown-ups you have contacts. Out loud, she said to the little skeptic, "So what would you like for Christmas?"
The skeptic shot Touya a dirty look, then stretched up on tiptoe to whisper in Yue's ear.
Touya was 'casually' leaning on Sakura's chair again, because it let him end up with an elbow on the chair back, his chin propped in his palm, and his fingers 'casually' over his mouth, clamping down hard on the urge to burst into howls of glee.
"So, then," Sakura said, a little too brightly. "I'll tell my husband that the three of you would like a kitty, a Hawaiian Jenny, and --" she shot a glance at Yue.
A pony. Good luck.
Sakura gulped hard, then said gamely, "And a pony for Christmas."
The look of redoubled awe in the skeptic's eyes was both heartening and terrifying. The likelihood of an ordinary family having a place to put a pony in Tokyo was approximately on par with the likelihood of Yukito spending 24 hours locked in a room with a cheesecake and not eating a single bite... or on par with Yue spending the same time in the same room and eating a bite.
"We can't make any guarantees," Yue said, very faint, and clearly under some mental pressure from his mirthful other half. "Santa has to think about whether or not the pony could fit down the chimney, you see..."
Three little heads nodded soberly. Someone's mother was waving from the other side of the food court, and making rather agitated get-back-here gestures; the three of them bobbled little bows, and said their thank-yous quite properly. But even as they headed back toward the gesturing mother, the littlest one said in absolute vindicated bliss, "I told you he was an elf."
As soon as they were approximately out of earshot, Touya dissolved into gales of hilarity, doubled over the back of Sakura's chair shaking with glee.
"You," Yue said in a voice dripping shards of ice, "are sleeping on the sofa for a month."
Touya simply started laughing harder.
"Oniichan, that was mean! To put poor Yue-san in a predicament like that... not to mention me too!"
Still leaning hard on the chair, Touya managed to wheeze, "Predicament...? He did fine...! You both did. And I bet anything... inside his head... Yuki's laughing like mad too..."
Rather than dignify that with a response -- most likely because he would have had to agree, Sakura thought furtively -- Yue turned on his heel and started walking toward the restrooms. "It's past three," he said. "I'm going to change."
Sometimes, Sakura envied Yue his ability to escape when her brother and the rest of the world got to be too much to handle.
