Fountain of Age
Summary: AU. Syaoran and Eriol are on the trail of the Fountain of Youth... a trail that would lead them inevitably to Tomoeda... and Sakura...
Disclaimer: I don't own Card Captor Sakura. None of it: manga, anime, little plushie Keros; I own nothing.
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Chapter 1: In London...
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The Englishman Eriol had somehow fallen asleep in his extremely hard backed chair. Whatever comfort there was in those rigid arms, he had found it and had lost himself within it. He opened his eyes like a man waking from the dead.
"You've come to a decision," a voice from the doorway said.
Eriol smiled sleepily at the door. The hall outside was lost to the inky darkness of a London night. As was the speaker: he or she was perfectly hidden in the hallway. If anything could be seen out there, it was the occasional glimmer of mint green eyes.
"Reading minds are you?" Eriol asked the eyes.
The eyes moved out of sight. "Kaho called."
"Really?" Eriol said, amused.
More movement, but this time, with a slight flash of mint. "No," the voice said. Flash. "It's horrible to try and pull your leg, Eriol. You always know when people are lying." The speaker rested his or her eyes on the boy. "Glad to see you're all right."
The intensity of all that mint pinned on one person probably could've frozen fire, but Eriol grinned. "Why wouldn't I be all right?"
The speaker didn't answer, and, instead, resumed pacing. Eriol could hear movement on the carpet and the eyes swam in and out of view.
"Really, Supi, nothing's wrong."
"So you claim," Supi answered with another flash of mint. "But something else has come up. Someone from China called. The Li family."
"I know."
"Yes, and we know you know." Flash, flash. "But what are we going to do about it? The woman talked too fast, but I think she said something about a visit..."
"A visit?" He catapulted out of the chair. "In which direction-"
Ding dong!
Eriol immediately turned in the general direction of the doors to the outside. In the hallway, there was a whooshing noise, then something dropped to the floor with a clunk. Silence.
Ding dong!
He left the room.
Ding dong!
"Supi..." He picked the stuffed animal off the ground. It looked like a black cat with wings.
Ding dong!
Stumbling upstairs.
"I'll get it " Eriol yelled. He placed the stuffed animal on the hallway table.
Ding dong!
"Coming, coming " he told the door. Really, whoever was at the door really need only ring once. His ears hurt. Vaguely annoyed, Eriol marched through the narrow corridor and opened the door.
"Impatient aren't we?" he told his visitor.
The visitor tilted his head to the left, examining Eriol with his amber eyes.
"Hiiragizawa Eriol," he said, flawlessly. So he wasn't English. The English always complained his name contained far too many syllables, and they would never have put his last name first.
"Yes?" He could guess who this was now. "Li..."
The boy bowed and said, "I am Li Xiao Lang."
"Of course," Eriol said. "A phone call came from China just an hour ago to tell me you were coming."
"Yes, I came-"
"Just an hour ago; can you imagine it?" Eriol continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "Absolutely out of the blue; no warning. And I was busy in the library too; completely missed it."
The Li boy flushed.
Eriol smiled slightly. Li Xiao Lang was a very serious boy, and he was going to be incredibly fun to tease. He sighed. "Well, don't just stand out there in the dark," he moved aside, "come in."
His visitor entered meekly and found that Hiiragizawa's house was just as dark as the outside. Darker, considering that the full moon and the street lights made it possible to at least see eight feet in front of your face. There were no lights on in Hiiragizawa's house.
"Sorry 'bout that," Eriol said. He shut the door behind him. "The light bulbs died in a storm a few weeks ago, and we still have to install the new ones."
Xiao Lang responded by taking out one of his paper spells, and lighting it on fire. A weak glow washed over the hall.
"Well, yes, that might be smart." He moved deeper into the house, expecting his guest to follow him, but the boy didn't. Eriol looked back to find Xiao Lang gazing into the empty kitchen.
"Xiao Lang," Eriol attempted to grab his attention. He saw instead, in the wavering firelight, what Xiao Lang had found. "Oh..."
On the wall hung a painting. It was difficult to see exactly what was on it because someone had taken black paint and smeared the original out of sight. They hadn't done a very thorough job, whoever it was, and little corners of something colorful peeked through. Strands of pink, something red, something midnight blue. The most bizarre thing about the painting, though, was the two pairs of eyes. They were the types of eyes that seemed to follow you everywhere, and they had mysteriously been preserved by the vandal. Whoever had washed it over with black paint had deliberately left the eyes uncovered.
"Er, yes," Eriol said, unsure of how to explain this. "Someone broke in, and vandal-"
"Eriol," said the Li boy, "I have come to seek the Fountain of Youth."
"-ized it. What did you say?"
"I have come to seek the Fountain of Youth," Xiao Lang repeated.
His host sighed and scratched his head. "To the point aren't you?" he said. He pulled his fingers out of his hair. "This isn't really the place to look for it."
"My mother told me to come here," Xiao Lang insisted.
"And you followed her, of course, no questions asked." Eriol knew how it was. He patted his relative on the head. Then he gazed out into the distance, lost.
"Xiao Lang," he said quietly, "do you believe the fountain exists?"
Silence. Xiao Lang started, "My mother-"
"Yes, you're mother," Eriol agreed to nothing.
"My mother wants it and-"
"Ah Must be a trial. Xiao Lang must prove himself competent before becoming head of the Li clan someday; am I right, am I right?" He smiled, and nudged the boy as if they'd been friends for years.
Xiao Lang blushed. "Please, Eriol, my mother sent me here to find the fountain. She told me you know something about it."
Eriol turned to lead him deeper into the house and away from the ruined painting. The boy's persistence was beginning to play on his nerves. "Tell your mother," he said, in a tone he hoped was neutral, "that it doesn't exist. There is no point in looking for it."
"She's not going to accept that," Xiao Lang protested, following him.
"Well, make her," Eriol argued. "Really, people have been looking for the Fountain of Youth for centuries and no one has ever found it. You hear me? No one." They came to the part of the house where one could travel farther down the hall, turn to the living room, enter the kitchen or climb the stairs. Eriol chose to climb the stairs.
"Besides," he went on, "England is not the place to look for it. Florida maybe; you've heard of Ponce de Leon?"
The name rang a bell, but Xiao Lang said, instead, "She said you have a book; a book concerning the fountain."
His relative stopped quite suddenly, without warning, and Xiao Lang nearly ran into him. "Yelan hasn't been here for a very long time," Eriol said. He seemed to have been talking to himself more so than to the boy. "She doesn't know anything."
They stood there, Eriol, perhaps in thought, and Xiao Lang mildly confused. What was going on? Was that bitterness in the bespectacled boy's voice? The boy in question resumed his ascent as though there hadn't been a pause at all and Xiao Lang followed him a moment later.
"Now," Eriol said, cheer returning to his voice, "let's put you in a room."
The upstairs hallway was flooded with light. It poured out of the long, rectangular window that ended the hall. Outside, the moon hung low in the sky, cradled by skeletal tree branches. It was pretty eerie, considering that it was spring. Shouldn't the trees be festooned with leaves right about now?
Eriol opened the first door to the right. "There you are," he told the room. Then, he turned to Xiao Lang. "This will do. Come on; stop gawking like you've never seen the moon before." And he disappeared into the room.
"Oh Eriol " a voice cried, exasperated. "Not yet I haven't finished-"
"Oh, it's all right, Nakuru," Eriol reassured the voice. "We'll just move the ladder and the plastic."
Xiao Lang entered the room and a tall woman using Eriol as a chin rest, her arms wrapped around him. Indeed, she was a full head taller than he was. She stood next to a ladder, a spare light bulb dangling from her fingers. It seemed as though she'd been installing the light bulb that now revealed a dusty room covered in plastic.
Her eyes absolutely lit up at the sight of him. "Hello "
"Hello," Xiao Lang replied, bowing slightly.
"He's so adorable " She absolutely squealed, and the next thing Xiao Lang knew, she was pinching his cheeks with delight. "What is your name, what is your name?"
Xiao Lang, much like other thirteen year old children, didn't like being pinched. But the girl simply overwhelmed him and he stood there, stunned. "Li Xiao Lang," he complied, meekly.
Eriol laughed. "Nakuru, let the boy breathe. You act as if he's the only cute boy in the world."
"Oh, I can't forget about you, sir," the girl told him, eagerly. She turned back to Xiao Lang. "My name is Akizuki Nakuru. I'm Eriol's housekeeper. I will fix you up whatever you like, whenever you want. Would you like anything now? It's late; maybe some hot chocolate? Warm milk? Do you like marshmallows, Syaoran?"
Eriol's housekeeper was obviously Japanese. Come to think of it, so was Eriol's name, although he spoke flawless English.
"I don't want anything right now, thank you," he answered.
"I'd like a cup of hot chocolate," Eriol piped up. "With marshmallows."
"As you wish." Nakuru bowed and skipped out of the room.
"Will this do?" Eriol asked Xiao Lang when the girl was gone. "We can just move the plastic, and the ladder and you'll be all set."
"Okay," agreed Xiao Lang and he helped Eriol fold the ladder and carry it out into the hall. They shoved it in a corner, and were removing the plastic when Nakuru returned with cups of hot chocolate on a tray. Despite his words, there was a cup for Xiao Lang, and he took it once the room's plastic had joined the ladder outside.
The room felt empty, and very bright, due to the new light bulb. The walls were revealed to be a forest green color, bare of posters or pictures. The tiny bed lay in the corner next to a tall lamp and a large window. There was no bedside table, although there was a round one next to the door; the type that little girls celebrated tea parties around. There was nothing else in the room, except for an empty closet. It seemed completely cold and impersonal.
"Sorry 'bout that," Eriol said, grinning sheepishly. "We haven't used this room much, and you arrived on such short notice..."
Xiao Lang replaced his drained cup on the tray. "Eriol," he gazed at the cup as if it was his relative, "I really must find the Fountain of Youth."
"This is no longer the time to talk about it," said Eriol, hastily, but firmly. "Wait until tomorrow. And in the meantime, consider what you really believe in. You told me you did not believe the fountain existed, and yet you insist upon searching for it. Why are you putting yourself through such a fool's errand? Go to sleep, Xiao Lang. Good night."
And before he knew it, Xiao Lang was alone in the empty room.
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Author's Notes: Thank you for reaching the end of the first chapter. I know it was a bit on the long side. (Chapter two's pretty long too...)