Author's Note: Enter Chapter Two. Standard warnings for massive amounts
of angst, other non-fluffy-bunny emotions and as stated in the first
chapter, character death. Despite this being rather depressing and dark, I
hope some segment of the audience is enjoying this latest addition to the
CCS fandom collection. Reviews and comments are most welcome!
Disclaimer: I still don't own Cardcaptor Sakura, unless the ladies at CLAMP ever manage to return my phone calls.
The One Thing You Can't See – Chapter Two "Penumbra"
Spinel Sun hated interruptions. He hated most, if not all noise. He hated annoyingly cheerful people and above all things he hated sugar. Despised it, loathed it. He hadn't drawn any attention to his distaste for sweets until Eriol-sama's unfortunate school festival. Since then, Ruby Moon had never missed an opportunity to sneak anything sweet into Spinel's mouth. Or to cram it in, if she was really determined.
Her latest project, however, had her attention and energy focused elsewhere, and for that the sun guardian was deeply grateful. One of Clow's tomes on magic lay beneath his paws, a saucer full of genmai-cha on the table besides him. Though he was far less conspicuous in his smaller form – 'enough to fool that idiot Cerberus,' he thought with a wry smile – it was still wiser for him to stay in Eriol's chambers, enclosed with the books he had come to love, away from tens of giggling, noisy high school students.
It hadn't been much of a sacrifice on Spinel's account.
With a deft flick of his paw, the winged cat turned the page. This latest chapter talked about the generalities of lunar and solar elemental magic, and the mechanics of channeling such powerful energies into magically created guardians. Along with matters of aligned spells, Card loyalties and power sources, Clow had included a few cryptic, amused margin notes on personalities – namely on sun guardians' tendencies towards over exuberance and their ability to consume their full weight (in their full form, nonetheless), in pudding.
"Eriol-sama, either you erred quite badly or you're more capricious than I thought," Spinel mused before pausing to lap at his tea. Clow had left precious little besides theoretical abstractions when it came to his moon guardian, but from what Eriol had told Spinel, he was quite sure he'd care a great deal more for Yue than the insufferable, overly-genki creation that was Ruby Moon. With a sardonic smile, he was certain Cerberus would get along fabulously with his lunar counterpart, even if she had to find new methods of torturing her solar companion.
Spinel lapped up the last of his tea with a sigh. He picked up the delicate dish in his paws and flitted over to the corner, where Eriol kept the magic pot for their convenience. 'Perhaps Ruby Moon will find more projects to occupy her time,' he mused in mid-flight, before the world erupted into chaos all around him.
Every magical being or magically endowed human being within the house and grounds was projecting so loudly Spinel nearly lost hold of the saucer. He floated to the ground and tried to sort out the Ruby Moon and Eriol-sama's presence amid the din.
Both his master and his fellow guardian were wracked with terrible grief, but Ruby Moon's was tinged with an unsettling guilt and somewhere further down, an angry, smoldering self-loathing. As cool and collected as Spinel normally he was, he felt the sudden urge to rush to her side, to comfort her, no matter who saw him. She could feed him a ton of sugar, if only it would stop the shadow of despair he felt enveloping her through their bond.
Carefully, Spinel fluttered his pale blue wings and peeked out the side of Eriol-sama's expansive window that looked down onto the grounds. The Seijuu students in their blue blazers were just trickling out of the first- floor door, many of them clutching on to one another, nearly all of them crying. Eriol-sama, his dear master, was kneeling on the ground, one hand pressed to the earth, the other clenched holding his glasses so tight Spinel as sure he would shatter them. The Card Mistress was weeping in the arms of her faithful friend and cinematographer. Clow's "cute little descendent" was standing near them, perfectly still, with thin streams of glistening tears running down his face, looking out at –
"Kami-sama, no," Spinel murmured as he saw what Li-san couldn't look away from. The Card Mistress' brother was clutching a limp, lifeless, gray- haired form in his arms – and Spinel suddenly realized where he should have felt two magical auras he only felt one. Where the other one should have been, he felt a nothingness that burned like a dark star.
A sudden rush of lunar magic flitted at the edge of his vision, near the top of the window. Spinel Sun was the only one who saw Ruby Moon, changed into her true form, streaking higher into the sky, unable to look back.
"Ha ha! You'll never beat the Cerberus Super Speed Burst!" The diminutive sun guardian pounded furiously at the video game controls. His little yellow racer zipped by the other players, narrowly avoiding pedestrians and trees as he zipped by the lead cars. Fourth place, third place, second place – just one more car, and first place, the honor, the glory, and maybe even the high score were his! Much to his dismay, Sakura still held the high score – even with how much more time he spent on the game then her. It was becoming something of a minor obsession.
Pounding his tiny paws against the controls, Kero pulled himself level with the other car, tapping down on the accelerator, trying to nudge his racer past while still navigating the last tricky curves. Just a few more feet –
"Nooooo!" Kero threw down the controller in disgust as the other car flipped him off the road and the cars he had just passed zoomed by. Sakura's record was safe – for this game, at least.
Frustrated at the computer car's trickiness, the small Beast of the Seal decided to console him with some cupcakes that Sakura had left in the room, knowing she would be out the entire day. His mistress might have dropped her baton on him too many times for his liking, but at least she, like the rest of her family, was an excellent cook. She had even made some of his favorites, strawberry cupcakes with a sweet, very pink strawberry icing.
The cupcakes were finished off in a matter of bites, and Kero soon found himself wanting something to drink – to counter the sweetness, at least until he found the rest of the cupcakes. The 'nii-chan was with Sakura at the filming, and her 'tou-san was in classes all day. Nothing wrong with seeing just what the Kinomotos had in their fri-
All thought of sweets, of drinks, of the flashing video game screen asking if he wanted to continue were forgotten as he felt his world drop out from under him.
"Sakura!" But his mistress was all right – well, she was alive. As new as their formal magical bond was, Cerberus could feel her pain as surely as if she was in the room with him. Her grief was raw and potent, too much sorrow to be inflicted on someone so innocent and cheerful.
"I don't even know where you are!" Kero groaned aloud, his little wings flapping furiously. "Damn it, Yue's there, can't he-" And with a sudden, horrible disbelief, Cerberus finally realized that Yue wasn't there at all.
From the time they had been created, the 'brothers' were always able to sense each other. It was like the Light and Dark Cards – despite their differences, Yue and Cerberus were always together. Watching the snow fall outside from the comfort of a fire-warmed room, sleeping beneath the trees in Clow's guardian, trying out their wings for the first time. True, Yue had masked his presence so that his brother couldn't pinpoint his false form before the Judgment, but Cerberus had always felt the tug of the moon as a faint presence in the back of his mind. Yet now there was nothing. His brother was gone, as if he had never existed.
"Yue? Yue!" Kero leapt off the ground and hurled himself out the window, tipping it open easily. The breeze caught his open wings, and he caught an updraft lifting him above Tomoeda. "Yue, where are you? Yue!!" But no pale, easily annoyed moon angel appeared, and the nothingness where he had always felt his brother didn't fill with Yue's cold yet comforting light. That light had been fading, but Yue wouldn't have been in this kind of danger for a while more.
"Yue!!" Cerberus shouted against all hope as he flew in the direction of Sakura's power, as he tried to believe that she mourned for someone besides his brother.
Disclaimer: I still don't own Cardcaptor Sakura, unless the ladies at CLAMP ever manage to return my phone calls.
The One Thing You Can't See – Chapter Two "Penumbra"
Spinel Sun hated interruptions. He hated most, if not all noise. He hated annoyingly cheerful people and above all things he hated sugar. Despised it, loathed it. He hadn't drawn any attention to his distaste for sweets until Eriol-sama's unfortunate school festival. Since then, Ruby Moon had never missed an opportunity to sneak anything sweet into Spinel's mouth. Or to cram it in, if she was really determined.
Her latest project, however, had her attention and energy focused elsewhere, and for that the sun guardian was deeply grateful. One of Clow's tomes on magic lay beneath his paws, a saucer full of genmai-cha on the table besides him. Though he was far less conspicuous in his smaller form – 'enough to fool that idiot Cerberus,' he thought with a wry smile – it was still wiser for him to stay in Eriol's chambers, enclosed with the books he had come to love, away from tens of giggling, noisy high school students.
It hadn't been much of a sacrifice on Spinel's account.
With a deft flick of his paw, the winged cat turned the page. This latest chapter talked about the generalities of lunar and solar elemental magic, and the mechanics of channeling such powerful energies into magically created guardians. Along with matters of aligned spells, Card loyalties and power sources, Clow had included a few cryptic, amused margin notes on personalities – namely on sun guardians' tendencies towards over exuberance and their ability to consume their full weight (in their full form, nonetheless), in pudding.
"Eriol-sama, either you erred quite badly or you're more capricious than I thought," Spinel mused before pausing to lap at his tea. Clow had left precious little besides theoretical abstractions when it came to his moon guardian, but from what Eriol had told Spinel, he was quite sure he'd care a great deal more for Yue than the insufferable, overly-genki creation that was Ruby Moon. With a sardonic smile, he was certain Cerberus would get along fabulously with his lunar counterpart, even if she had to find new methods of torturing her solar companion.
Spinel lapped up the last of his tea with a sigh. He picked up the delicate dish in his paws and flitted over to the corner, where Eriol kept the magic pot for their convenience. 'Perhaps Ruby Moon will find more projects to occupy her time,' he mused in mid-flight, before the world erupted into chaos all around him.
Every magical being or magically endowed human being within the house and grounds was projecting so loudly Spinel nearly lost hold of the saucer. He floated to the ground and tried to sort out the Ruby Moon and Eriol-sama's presence amid the din.
Both his master and his fellow guardian were wracked with terrible grief, but Ruby Moon's was tinged with an unsettling guilt and somewhere further down, an angry, smoldering self-loathing. As cool and collected as Spinel normally he was, he felt the sudden urge to rush to her side, to comfort her, no matter who saw him. She could feed him a ton of sugar, if only it would stop the shadow of despair he felt enveloping her through their bond.
Carefully, Spinel fluttered his pale blue wings and peeked out the side of Eriol-sama's expansive window that looked down onto the grounds. The Seijuu students in their blue blazers were just trickling out of the first- floor door, many of them clutching on to one another, nearly all of them crying. Eriol-sama, his dear master, was kneeling on the ground, one hand pressed to the earth, the other clenched holding his glasses so tight Spinel as sure he would shatter them. The Card Mistress was weeping in the arms of her faithful friend and cinematographer. Clow's "cute little descendent" was standing near them, perfectly still, with thin streams of glistening tears running down his face, looking out at –
"Kami-sama, no," Spinel murmured as he saw what Li-san couldn't look away from. The Card Mistress' brother was clutching a limp, lifeless, gray- haired form in his arms – and Spinel suddenly realized where he should have felt two magical auras he only felt one. Where the other one should have been, he felt a nothingness that burned like a dark star.
A sudden rush of lunar magic flitted at the edge of his vision, near the top of the window. Spinel Sun was the only one who saw Ruby Moon, changed into her true form, streaking higher into the sky, unable to look back.
"Ha ha! You'll never beat the Cerberus Super Speed Burst!" The diminutive sun guardian pounded furiously at the video game controls. His little yellow racer zipped by the other players, narrowly avoiding pedestrians and trees as he zipped by the lead cars. Fourth place, third place, second place – just one more car, and first place, the honor, the glory, and maybe even the high score were his! Much to his dismay, Sakura still held the high score – even with how much more time he spent on the game then her. It was becoming something of a minor obsession.
Pounding his tiny paws against the controls, Kero pulled himself level with the other car, tapping down on the accelerator, trying to nudge his racer past while still navigating the last tricky curves. Just a few more feet –
"Nooooo!" Kero threw down the controller in disgust as the other car flipped him off the road and the cars he had just passed zoomed by. Sakura's record was safe – for this game, at least.
Frustrated at the computer car's trickiness, the small Beast of the Seal decided to console him with some cupcakes that Sakura had left in the room, knowing she would be out the entire day. His mistress might have dropped her baton on him too many times for his liking, but at least she, like the rest of her family, was an excellent cook. She had even made some of his favorites, strawberry cupcakes with a sweet, very pink strawberry icing.
The cupcakes were finished off in a matter of bites, and Kero soon found himself wanting something to drink – to counter the sweetness, at least until he found the rest of the cupcakes. The 'nii-chan was with Sakura at the filming, and her 'tou-san was in classes all day. Nothing wrong with seeing just what the Kinomotos had in their fri-
All thought of sweets, of drinks, of the flashing video game screen asking if he wanted to continue were forgotten as he felt his world drop out from under him.
"Sakura!" But his mistress was all right – well, she was alive. As new as their formal magical bond was, Cerberus could feel her pain as surely as if she was in the room with him. Her grief was raw and potent, too much sorrow to be inflicted on someone so innocent and cheerful.
"I don't even know where you are!" Kero groaned aloud, his little wings flapping furiously. "Damn it, Yue's there, can't he-" And with a sudden, horrible disbelief, Cerberus finally realized that Yue wasn't there at all.
From the time they had been created, the 'brothers' were always able to sense each other. It was like the Light and Dark Cards – despite their differences, Yue and Cerberus were always together. Watching the snow fall outside from the comfort of a fire-warmed room, sleeping beneath the trees in Clow's guardian, trying out their wings for the first time. True, Yue had masked his presence so that his brother couldn't pinpoint his false form before the Judgment, but Cerberus had always felt the tug of the moon as a faint presence in the back of his mind. Yet now there was nothing. His brother was gone, as if he had never existed.
"Yue? Yue!" Kero leapt off the ground and hurled himself out the window, tipping it open easily. The breeze caught his open wings, and he caught an updraft lifting him above Tomoeda. "Yue, where are you? Yue!!" But no pale, easily annoyed moon angel appeared, and the nothingness where he had always felt his brother didn't fill with Yue's cold yet comforting light. That light had been fading, but Yue wouldn't have been in this kind of danger for a while more.
"Yue!!" Cerberus shouted against all hope as he flew in the direction of Sakura's power, as he tried to believe that she mourned for someone besides his brother.
