Promises to Keep, Chapter 8
"Just in Case"

slightly belated Happy Valentine's day, folks - chocolate and cuddles to ensue! ^_^ (The AI invention someone really needs to invent: Something that lets you write the fanfic you want to write at the speed at which you'd read it... I want to read more of this; it takes too long to have to write it first... ^^;;;  'Nother note: Yeah, I invented "Yukito's" hot chocolate extravaganza in college (where the hot water machine always made hot cocoa that was too hot to drink, and the ice cream server was right next to it). It's even more insanely over the top when you add hot caramel or butterscotch too... ^_~)

----

After Yukito had spent so much time collapsing at odd intervals, Touya had become accustomed to thinking ahead when it came to invalids. He pulled the car into the driveway backwards so that Sakura's door was facing the sidewalk, then went and opened the front door of the house before going to gather her up and carry her inside. She barely stirred, making a faint sleepy sound and snuggling against his shoulder; Touya set her down on the sofa and tucked a blanket over her carefully, then went to cook dinner. If she woke up for it, she'd be hungry; if she'd rather sleep, he was hungry.

It was a lot quieter, cooking without Kero-chan in the house -- or in the country, for that matter. Before this holiday, with the brat and the plush toy both gone, Touya hadn't consciously realized how much he hunched over his cooking in near-paranoid preemptive defense whenever Sakura was around.  It had taken him some thinking to realize that the reflex had nothing to do with Sakura herself, and everything to do with years of life around a ravenous, insatiable, dive-bombing fluffy yellow garbage disposal with wings -- moreover, a fluffy yellow garbage disposal which liked to hide in her purse so that you never quite knew when to expect the next assault on the kitchen.

He heard Sakura stirring in the living room, and asked softly, "Monster, you okay?"

After a moment of blinking her way back awake, she answered with a touch of panic in her voice: "What time is it? How long was I asleep?"

"Not that long," Touya said. "Dinner's almost ready; relax, okay?"

"But I can't waste the time Yukito-san's giving me," she murmured.

"Huh?"

Sakura turned toward him, a bit awkwardly with the sofa's back in the way, and said, "I... um... I have a favor I need to ask you, oniichan, except I don't know how..."

"Yeah, I got that part earlier," Touya said, tossing the vegetables in the skillet. "Dinner first, then hot chocolate, and when you're totally floating away on the warm-fuzzies trip, then we deal with the talking part; how's that sound?"

"...but Yukito-san..."

"Is buying time, yeah, I know," Touya said. "Leave it to Tomoyo-chan to pick a three-hour movie or something. Don't worry. It'll be all right. And dinner's going to get cold a lot sooner than the movie's going to get out. Got it?"

Sakura nodded a little, and tried to coax herself out of the too-soft depths of the sofa; Touya wagged a finger at her.

"You stay right there. This is me in pampering-the-sister mode. It doesn't happen too often. Take shameless advantage when it does, okay?"

With a wistful little smile, she nodded again, and settled herself more comfortably onto the sofa.

Touya was quite sincere about the pampering-the-sister mode, because he was doing it partially to calm his own half-squashed scrabbling panic that said this is serious, Yuki was scared too, what's wrong with her? Is it something about the baby? What the hell is going on?

Cooking took concentration. Cooking meant not cutting your thumb off while your brain was trying to distract you with panic attacks. Blood didn't make a good condiment for anything.

So he cooked, and he made serious work of an artistic presentation too: shrimp dancing on a neatly-arranged fan of asparagus and carrots, a tidy little pile of sesame spinach and wakame salad clustered in the cup of an endive leaf, grilled mushrooms sliced and fanned like a peacock's tail. Sakura's eyes went wide when he handed her the plate.

"...Oniichan, this is beautiful; I can't eat something like this sitting on the sofa!"

"Yeah you can," Touya said; he set the teapot and a couple of cups on the coffee table, then sat down beside her.

"But... but..."

"You think you can possibly get your rotund self off of the sofa while balancing that plate too? Didn't think so." He grinned at her, the perfectly unrepentant rogue, and picked up his chopsticks. "Let's eat!"

Blushing fiercely, Sakura turned her attention to the plate. Carefully picking at each piece gave her an excuse not to look at anything else, after all.

It was one of the quietest meals they'd ever had; Touya turned on the most insipid fluff-pop music channel he could find just to drown out the sound of neither of them talking. And then, when both their plates were clean and Sakura was wringing her hands over what to say, Touya's nerve gave out too. When she turned toward him and took a breath as though to speak, he scrambled up and bolted for the kitchen again.

"Hot chocolate, remember? Yuki taught me the most decadent thing to do with a mug of hot chocolate... of course, this is Yuki we're talking about, but still, it's pretty amazing! Don't move, I'll be right back..."

I don't want to hear her tell me something's wrong. I don't want to know. I don't want it to be real... I... oh, hell...

...but meanwhile his hands were steadily pouring milk hot enough to scald, because if he spilled it he'd be burned badly enough that they'd have to make a flying trip to the emergency room and fright like that was bad for pregnant people, particularly extremely-pregnant people. So he didn't let his hands shake at all as he poured the milk over the shaved bits of chocolate, or stirred them into melting in, and he eased a scoop of french-vanilla ice cream into each cup without splashing a bit, then dusted the top with cinnamon and crushed almonds and another drizzle of hot fudge, and then he carried both cups on a tray and presented them with a flourish and a bright and carefree grin.

Sakura's eyes lit up almost despite herself, and despite her anxious preoccupation with the Talk they needed to have.

"What is that?"

"Hot-fudge-sundae hot chocolate," Touya said, still grinning. "Like I said, leave it to Yuki. Stir the ice cream into the hot chocolate a little and it'll cool it down enough that you won't burn your tongue..." Her eyes are smiling. It can't be THAT bad. It can't. It just can't...

"Ohhh... oh, yum...!" She sniffed the air a little. "Yours smells different...?"

"Shot of Irish cream," he said, gambling everything on one too-casual toss of the dice. "You can have yours after the junior monster gets here."

"All right," Sakura said, still smiling. "That means I have a good excuse to make you make this for me again!"

And his heart leapt about three feet straight up toward the ceiling. She didn't choke on that, she doesn't seriously think there isn't going to be a time after the baby gets here -- anything else, anything else, I can deal with. I know I can.

A little giddy on sheer euphoria even before taking a sip of the spiked chocolate, Touya clinked his glass against hers and said, "I'll drink to that!"

...Unless the trauma's that she doesn't know how to say she's moving to Hong Kong. I don't know if I could deal with that. No way in hell am I moving to Hong Kong, Yuki-Yue has to go where she goes, and I'm not giving them up, and I am not moving to Hong Kong, damn I should've thought more before I told her I'd do her ANY favor she asked... nah, I was right the first time, I just should've ripped the Chinese punk's head off  YEARS ago...

"...Oniichan...?"

Belatedly, Touya realized he had a deathgrip on his mug, and he didn't want to guess what his expression must have looked like. "Er. Never mind," he muttered, taking an overdramatic swig of his hot chocolate and savoring the silky-sweet swirl of the rapidly-melting ice cream. Cheerful perky Yuki-fluffy thoughts. No blood on the pavement. No examining the inside of the brother-in-law's skull firsthand to see if he's as brain-damaged as I suspect. Might be a cheerful thought for me, but Sakura's going to wonder what's up if I break the mug or something...

And I'm still just delaying the inevitable.

Taking a deep breath, Touya braced himself and tried to keep his voice light and cheerful as he reached over and rumpled his sister's hair. "So, monster... want to talk?"

"...I'm not sure where to start," she murmured, studying the swirl of melting ice cream drifting around her chocolate.

"You're not moving to Hong Kong, are you?" The edge of alarm showed through more clearly than he intended; but Sakura just blinked at him in confusion.

"No; why would we? Yukito-san and Yue-san need to stay here with you, and Shaoran likes Tokyo University; why would we move?"

"No reason," Touya agreed hastily. "No reason at all. So...?"

Sakura stared down at her chocolate so fiercely that Touya suspected the poor beverage was wondering what it had done wrong.

After a minute, he suggested, "Just pick a spot to start. Anywhere."

With a soft sigh, Sakura nodded a little. "I've been thinking about... um... batteries."

Touya blinked. Then blinked again. Then he said, very carefully, "Batteries."

"I was in an electronics class for one of my electives this semester, before I had to drop out because I get tired so easily now -- I tried, I really did; I didn't want to lose my entire junior year of college, but the baby was... kind of a surprise... not that I'm not thrilled, I am, I'm delighted that she's coming, I would never trade her for my classes -- it's just that... there were also some things I'd really wanted to learn about batteries, some things I'd needed to have more time to learn..."

Touya said, "I take it back. Pick a different spot to start, and let's see if that one bears any resemblance to something that makes sense."

"Except that batteries are important," Sakura said, and then bit her lip. "I know. I'm doing this all wrong. It's just been all tangled up in my head for so long now that I don't know how to start getting all of it out... um..." She took a sip of her chocolate, and sighed, and tried again. "You know how Clow-san was the first to balance Eastern and Western magic in the way he did, in the way that led to the Guardians and the Cards? I think I might be the first to try balancing magic and science. Shaoran's been helping me. Except we, um, disagree a little about whether I should do any magic right now. He's so very protective... it's just that... um... this is even more important than me being careful."

For once in his life, Touya found himself siding with the Chinese brat. "Nothing's more important than that," he said.

Sakura looked up at him, and her eyes were older than they had any right to be. "Don't say that," she said. "Please. You promised me you'd do what I asked..."

Touya felt the panic start to claw at him again. "You're not going to do anything risky, are you?"

"I don't think it is," Sakura said. "But even if it is, it's... please, oniichan! I've spent eight months waiting because I knew that the longer I could stand to wait, the better chance it'd be all right if the strain makes the baby be born too early or something, but I don't think it will, I really don't -- I just can't not do this. Because it's not just my life. It's Yukito-san's, and Yue-san's, and even Kero-chan and the cards eventually -- I have to do this. Shaoran doesn't understand why, but I have to do this..."

"You're protesting too much about how non-dangerous this is, you know," Touya said, huskily. "Can't it wait one more month?"

"No," Sakura said. "It has to be before the baby comes. It has to be. I couldn't forgive myself otherwise."

"What has to be before the baby comes?"

Sakura bit her lip hard, and then murmured, "Giving Yue-san to you."

"...What?"

"Clow-san never had a child himself," Sakura said, a little desperately. "I mean, he had a family, but he was never the one having the child -- nobody knows what it will do to my power; and they didn't even have anesthetics back then. If anything goes wrong, if they have to put me on life support or something, if my heart stops, even if they restart it -- even if an epidural does something unexpected to the way my magic circulates; it's like acupuncture, sticking a needle in someone's spine; Shaoran's mother says it's all very complicated -- and I don't know what that could do to my connection to them. I just don't know what could happen to Yue-san and the others; nobody knows -- and it's not fair, and..."

A little alarmed by the headlong torrent of worries, Touya said, "Sakura--"

"Yue-san loves you. He loves you," Sakura said. "You're the most important person in his world. He's already lost Clow-san, he shouldn't have to worry about losing his happiness with you too. But I went and got pregnant, and I'm risking his life and your happiness with my own thoughtless selfishness, and I can't live with the thought that something might happen toYue-san. If I lose my power, if some of the baby's magic is coming from me, if it leaves me when she's born -- if I can't support Yue-san, he'll die. And I can't stand that. Kero-chan could live if I lose part of my power to the baby, or if I died; the cards could go to sleep for a little while; but I can't change who Yue-san is. He is the moon. His power is always a reflection. But I can change what it's reflecting -- and that's what I need to ask you about, oniichan... I mean... you helped him -- them -- before, so I know you're willing, and..."

"I would give the two of them anything, any time, if I could," Touya said. "But if they need magic, I don't have any left."

"I know," Sakura said. "That's what made me start thinking about batteries."

Touya blinked, shook his head sharply to try to clear it, rapped the heel of his hand against the side of his head to try to shake the echoes loose, and said weakly, "That's what made you start thinking about batteries?"

"But it makes sense," Sakura said. "I mean, Kero-chan is like a solar-powered battery charger. Or maybe a pudding-powered battery charger. Anyway, he makes the power he needs, and I think part of the reason he stayed sealed in the book longer than Yue-san was that he was sort of the trickle-charger for the cards. And the cards are like VCRs..."

"VCRs," Touya echoed, blankly.

"Things with cords," she said. "I'm the power supply they need, they don't take much when I'm not using them actively, but they need to be plugged in or they can't keep the clock running and it's only when I 'turn them on' that they do things that take more power, and... um... --anyway. They need an external power source, even if just a small one. Kero-chan doesn't, not in the same way. But Yue-san is different from both. He's always 'turned on,' and he actively needs power. Like a refrigerator..."

Touya couldn't help himself. He clamped a hand over his mouth, but didn't manage to stifle the choke, wheeze, and small muffled explosion of laughter.

"Oniichan," Sakura protested, a little hurt.

"Sorry...!" he gasped. "Refrigerators... Yue... always turned on...! oh, God, mental images I did NOT need...!"

Sakura stared for a minute, uncomprehending -- and then her eyes shocked even wider, and her face turned bright crimson. "ONIICHAAAAAAAN~~!"

She picked up a sofa pillow and started beating him over the head so vigorously he had to put down his chocolate rather than spill it on the floor; he wasn't putting up a very effective defense when he was doubled over clutching at his ribs and laughing hysterically.

"You... you said it first...!"

"Oniichan, I'm trying to save Yue-san's life! And you're LAUGHING!" She hit him hard with the pillow, then threw it across the room and turned away.

"I'm sorry," he wheezed, making a valiant effort to sober up. "I'm sorry, monster -- I'll try to be good..." He took a swig of his spiked hot chocolate, scrubbed the back of his arm across his face to try to clear the laugh-tears out of his eyes, and coughed and tried again.

"So... you've got a pudding-powered battery charger, fifty-two VCRs, and an... an..." the laughter was winning again, but he couldn't help it, he really couldn't... "an always-turned-on walking refrigerator...?"

"You said you'd help," Sakura choked, tears thick in her voice. "You said you'd..."

"I will," Touya said, putting his arms around her huddled shoulders and resting his cheek against her hair. "I'll help. I just don't understand yet. Tell me again how I can help with what's going on with your magical hardware and appliances collection?"

"You took out your battery and gave it to Yue-san," Sakura mumbled. "I mean... I... when I use magic, I'm tired for a while, but it comes back. I don't run out of it. You never used to run out of it either. You always could sneak up on people, or scare me with ghost stories, or..."

Feeling a little like a heel, Touya said, "It sounds like you're glad I haven't got any magic left."

"No I'm not, not really," Sakura said soberly, reaching up to put her hands over his. "You shouldn't have needed to give that up. But I know why you did it. Yue-san couldn't survive just by taking the magic you had in you right then. It wouldn't have lasted long enough. He had to take the part of you that created and stored magic. I can tire myself out and sleep for a while and have my power back. You used to be the same, but now you're not. Because you gave Yue-san the part of you that was like a battery. And there's still the hole in you. And I think I know what to do about it."

Touya blinked, then blinked again. "Hiiragizawa said it couldn't be undone."

"It can't be," Sakura said. "What you gave Yue-san is a part of him now. Yukito-san says that he can feel it -- the parts of you that came with the magic, the 'scent' of your life in that part of their power. It's why he always knows when something's wrong with you too, not just with me. I'm their mistress, but you're their lover, and you gave them a fundamental part of your life. They're connected to you through that gift, almost like the way they're connected to me. That's why I think I can do this. I can't give you back your own power. But I think I can give you a different power. Another battery. And Yue-san can live from it if anything happens to me, because of the ways that he's connected to you."

After a long minute, Touya said, "You're serious?"

Sakura nodded. "It has to work. It has to. I can't bear it if it doesn't. Eriol-kun says he thinks it should work. He says it's not that different from the types of charges he used to give things, like when your bicycle ran away, or the teddy bear turned into a giant... just that this one needs to be self-renewing, it needs to be connected to you so deeply that your living recharges it, like your own used to, like mine does, and Kero-chan too... it's more complicated than the bicycle of course, but he helped me work out the theoretical parts, because he has all of Clow-san's memories of making Kero-chan -- and Yukito-san and I made the battery itself today. At the mall, while Yue-san had promised he wouldn't be watching us."

"That's why you were so beat?" Touya asked.

She nodded a little. "That plus I'd been carrying all this extra weight around trying to keep up with Tomoyo-chan all day, but yes. --It was very kind of him," Sakura added, wistful. "He knew he'd have to give up something he loved. He loves being so aware of you, like you're always touching a quiet place in his mind -- but I need part of that connection because it'll let me connect power back to you... um... so Yukito let me split it, to take part of it for the magic. --They'll still be connected to you, it's just that they won't consciously be aware of it anymore. They'll still find themselves at the right place; they just won't know why. And... he was a little worried that... um..." Sakura's cheeks pinked rather adorably, but she managed to say, "He was worried that... you'd find him... less... um... that he wouldn't know... what you wanted, not so deeply -- that he wouldn't... be able to... please you as much..."

When Touya realized what she was stammering her way around, he had a feeling his face was turning as red as hers. "That idiot," he muttered. "He told you that?"

Sakura nodded, just as embarrassed. "You're very important to him, oniichan," she said. "He cares more about you than about himself. They both do. He wants to be sure that he makes you happy, that being with him makes you happy enough not to regret what you gave up for him..."

"Tell that idiot he can stop worrying about that right now," Touya said, still blushing.

Sakura nodded, but her eyes were still anxious. "Please be extra kind to Yukito-san for a while, oniichan -- he's loved having that connection to you; he'll miss it almost like you've missed being able to see Mother. And... Yue-san too... I mean... I know I'm going to make him terribly, terribly angry with this. And hurt. And I'm already sorry for it. I just... I can't not do this..."

Touya blinked again. "Why would Yue be angry about this?"

"I know how he felt about Clow-san forcing him to live," she whispered, knotting her hands together in the fabric of her maternity gown. "I know how badly that hurt him. I know he didn't want to outlive me, that he never wanted to have to choose another master. But I can't help it. I'm just as selfish as Clow-san, really. Because I love him too much to let him die with me. And I'm the one his life is connected to, but you're the one his heart is connected to. I didn't have time to try to explain that to him -- that I thought his life should be yours to hold, not mine. That the one he really couldn't live without is you, not me. But he's still so tied to the thought of not outliving his master -- Clow-san's force is still such a terrible wound in his soul, and I didn't have time to persuade him. It would have taken years. I know it would have. So I'm not asking his permission. I'm just going to have to ask his forgiveness afterward..."

"What does Yuki think?"

"Yukito-san thinks I'm right," Sakura murmured. "He says that there should be a picture of Yue-san in the dictionary, beside 'stubborn.' But he says he loves us both, and that he'd love it if the battery I give you might be able to help you feel better properly. If it could help you not feel sleepy all the time. --None of us knows if you'd be able to see Mother again, or if there might be some entirely different magic it wakes in you, but Eriol-san says that at least the tiredness should go away if you have some magic in that hole in you, even if it's not magic you can use... um... so... please...?"

Touya thought about it for a minute. "Doing this is going to make Yue mad at all three of us, you know. You for doing it, Yuki for keeping him in the dark, and me for knowing he'd be upset and doing it anyway. And probably Hiiragizawa for making it possible for you to do this. Of course, Yue's so tangled up in his head about Hiiragizawa it's not funny anyway."

"I know," Sakura murmured.

"And it's probably going to make the brat mad, you taking risks like this right now."

"I know," she said again. "It's not that I want to make either of them upset. But this is something I have to do. Because I can't live with the person I'd be if I didn't do it and something went wrong." With a wistful half-smile, she added, "Besides, if anything were going to have gone wrong, I think it would have been when Yukito-san and I took the power out of ourselves at the mall. Not that I expect either Yue-san or Shaoran to be understanding of the logic in that, of course... men, you know; all those overprotective pigheaded stubborn instincts, honestly. Yukito-san doesn't count, of course, but all the rest of them..."

Giving her a half-lidded glare, Touya said, "I don't know whether to be offended on behalf of my gender or offended that you don't think of me as a man."

Sakura blinked, and then started to giggle. "Of course I don't think of you as a man! You're an oniichan. That's an entirely different species from anything else."

"Meaning we're both monsters? Well, as long as it runs in the family..." With a quirk to his grin, he added, "Does Yuki know he doesn't count as a man either, to you?"

"He likes it," Sakura said, and stuck out her tongue at him. "He says if he had to care about whether or not he was acting like a man, then he'd have to spend so much time being all defensive and tough and bristly that he couldn't go to the Pink Princess ice cream shop and have a completely girly sundae whenever he wanted, and life just wouldn't be worth living without both you and a Sugar Plum Fairy Strawberry Kiss Super Sundae every so often. --Kero-chan is proud of him; I think he's almost adopted Yukito-san as his honorary little brother. He says he thinks that Yukito-san has gotten a much better grasp of priorities in twenty years than Yue-san has gotten over centuries. Of course, the biggest part of that is probably because of the sundaes, because Yukito-san can buy sweets for them both..."

Touya stared at her. "...You three talk about things like this?"

Sakura started giggling. "Are you jealous?"

"More like appalled..."

"Don't you want a Sugar Plum Fairy Strawberry Kiss Super Sundae too?"

"No," Touya said. "I just want to watch him eating one. That by itself is about all the sugar shock I can stand without falling over in a diabetic coma."

With a small, wistful smile, Sakura said, "That's why I want to give him to you. So that no matter what happens, you'll always be able to watch Yukito-san eating ice cream and smiling. It's only fair."

"Nothing's going to happen to you," Touya said fiercely.

"I think you're right," Sakura said. "I think nothing's going to happen. I think it's going to be all right. But I don't know. That's one of Clow-san's talents, or curses, that he never passed along... and so that's why I'm asking for this. Please. Tell me you'll hold Yue-san's life with me, so that you can always be there for him, and he can always be there for you. So that I don't have to worry so much." She cupped a gentle hand against the mound of her belly, and murmured, "I'm holding so many lives, oniichan. I need to share what I can. I think I could be strong enough to hold them all, but I'm so tired right now, and I... I just... I want to be able to relax a little. Please..."

When she put it that way...

Of course she's tired out. Of course she's feeling overwhelmed. I don't even think this has anything to do with the hospital or the anesthetics; I think she'll be fine, everyone thinks she'll be fine -- but people have been expecting her to be fine for so long that of course she's tired of having to live up to all of that, all by herself, and now there's someone else that's totally dependent on her life too... the poor kid.

And... being able to know that I'd never have to worry about losing Yuki again... I don't care if it's selfish. I don't care if Yue gets angry...

...No. That's not true. I do care if he gets angry. I don't want to hurt him. He's been too badly hurt by people he loves already. That's what's been bothering Sakura so much; she knows it too...

It's not the same as what Clow did to him. But it's very, very close. Choices about his life being made without asking him, again... No wonder Yuki was so insistent about Tomoyo keeping him out in public where Yue couldn't possibly transform and come back here to try to stop her whenever he gets wind of what's going on.

But I understand why she doesn't ask, too. We both know him, by now. The baby just put a shorter time frame on it -- but I suspect none of us has a lifespan long enough to just persuade him to bind himself to the chance of outliving another master.

...Well, if I'm going to do this,  I'd better stop wasting the time Yuki's giving us, too.

...Of course I'm going to do this. Sooner or later, he'll understand. I just hope it's sooner. Sakura'll be miserable if he won't even come out to see her baby...

"Well, then, monster," Touya said, "what do you need me to do?"

Sakura blinked, and then realized what he was saying; her smile lit the entire room like the dazzle of a New Year's sunrise on the snow. She bent a bit awkwardly to reach down for her purse, dug around a little, and came out with a small gold-wrapped box with a bow on top of it.

"Here--"

Touya opened the box carefully, looked at the designer chocolate truffle inside, and burst out laughing.

"...Oniichan?"

"This was his idea, wasn't it," Touya gasped, still laughing. "Yuki and his sweet tooth...!"

The truffle was covered in dark chocolate, with a sakura blossom delicately painted in white and faintly pink-tinted chocolate on the top, and a tiny crumple of gold leaf at the center of the blossom. And there was a little white chocolate bunny painted on each of the four sides. Of course.

"Did he make them decorate it just for you?"

A little pink, Sakura nodded. "But I thought it was a good idea... I mean... it's got all the right symbol-stuff, you know? A gift from him and me, and sugar gives people energy; I thought about chocolate covered espresso beans because you like coffee, except I didn't want to make you go straight through the roof when the power locks into you, and..."

For some reason, that struck him as even funnier. Sakura was looking at him with half-lidded eyes as he clutched at the arm of the sofa, laughing too hard to breathe.

"...It's not that funny."

Oh yes it is. Touya scrubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes, and somehow managed to keep his voice from breaking as he said, "You are the cutest monster I've ever met in my life, you know. --Do I get a glass of milk to go with it?"

"If you want one..."

"I'm kidding!" Touya put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from struggling her way out of the sofa to get him the milk. "I'm just kidding. So that's all there is to it? I eat the truffle and that's my magic battery pack for Yuki...?"

Sakura giggled. "When you say it that way, it does sound a little odd, doesn't it?"

Only when I say it that way? Touya ruffled her hair, and then looked up at the window; the outside world was moon-bright and blue, the near-full moon glittering on the midwinter snow. He lifted the little chocolate treat out of its box, and his fingertips tingled oddly when he touched it.

With a slight salute in the direction of the silent moon, Touya said, "Here's looking at you, kid," and bit into the truffle.

For about three seconds, he thought, Champagne-flavored. It's kind of fizzy. Yuki's got stylish taste--

--and then, in a white blaze like a million fireworks going off at once, the entire world exploded.