title: Lost
chapter: 2/2 (complete)
disclaimer: This is a fanwork based on characters and sitauations created and owned by CLAMP, the goddesses of manga that they are. Please don't sue me for I am making no money off this.
warnings: implied character death (eep.)

author's note: Well, due to popular demand (and confusion), I've written a second part. I'm still being vague because I'm horrible at action and it would best be left to your imaginations. Most of this was written a month ago, but my laptop is broken. Luckily, I had sent a good chunk to a friend to look over and she was able to send it back.

Anyway, I hope this isn't a disappointment for those who were looking for more. Cheers.

Lost
part 2

Syaoran returned to the room with dinner, to find Kurogane staring at him. Despite his permanently inebriated state, the older man seemed much more coherent than usual.

He seemed to know who Syaoran was, that the world they were in was not where either of them belonged, and could feed himself. It was wonderful compared to those days when Kurogane would not even move from his cot, content to stare at Syaoran suspiciously through cloudy eyes until he passed out again. It was a small victory, but taken lightly as this type of day came very seldom and didn't mean Kurogane was any closer to snapping himself out of what Syaoran now accepted as a permanent depressionary state.

It had been years since they arrived in this world. Syaoran had been forcibly aged into a man in one horrific moment when three of his dear friends were ripped from his life. One of those friends, he was able to admit to himself now, he had loved very much.

At night he still dreamed of her. Sometimes they were filled with the childhood memories that had been sacrificed to Yuko; things that she would never had the chance to remember.

Sometimes he would recall that day. The one that was marked in red and pain. He would hear Sakura-hime's broken, high-pitched cry that always tore at his heart. She could have been screaming out a word, a name, a warning, a plea, but she was never allowed through the first syllable. Syaoran thought he preferred it that way.

He dreamt about the would-have-beens too. The should-have-beens. There was the one where they found the last feather and they'd go back to the palace where Touya-ou would shake Syoaran's hand, accepting him at last. Sakura would say that she remembered him despite what the Time Witch had said, and that she loved him. She said that she had always loved him.

There was another one set in a world he'd never seen before. Syaoran would come home from work and Sakura would be there cooking dinner for him. They would talk through dinner in a relaxed, normal way. At least he guessed at what would be normal for them, since he hadn't experienced real normalcy in a long time.

There were other dreams too. Ones that young men often had, but most didn't have them about dead girls. Syaoran would move on top of Sakura at different paces, locations, and scenarios. The most frequent was sweet and loving with the Sakura who remembered him, who loved him,
who hadn't left him alone. There was also tentative and nervous encounters with the Sakura-hime he had fallen in love with all over again on their journey. Occasionally it was fast and punishing, with Syaoran grabbing his partner by the hair and demanding of her where she was and why she had been gone for so long.

The first time he'd woken from the latter, he'd gotten utterly smashed and had a quick, angry off with a brown haired girl in a dark alleyway. A week later he'd walked in on Kurogane collapsed on top of a flat-chested platinum blonde woman. That made more sense than he wanted it to.

Despite their content and the emotions that surfaced because of them, Syaoran was grateful for the dreams. They kept him sane. They reminded him or who he was and how he'd gotten there. They kept him different from Kurogane. Syaoran pitied the old ninja at times. In the beginning, when they first recognized the situation they were in, stranded in a strange world, their guide gone, friends dead, and no way out in sight,
they had both worked tirelessly to find a way back to Yuko, Japan, Clow, anywhere. However after years of searching, they came to realize that there were no higher level beings to be found here nor anyone that even knew other worlds existed.

Syaoran couldn't even find the feather that had led them into this desolate place to begin with. He searched desperately for it, just to have a piece of Sakura. He never abandoned that particular quest, not wanting to believe that the feathers disappeared with Sakura, herself.

Finally, giving up hope of ever escaping this isolated world, Kurogane took to drinking constantly to numb the anger and pain, leaving Syaoran to work long hours in order to support them both. He didn't mind the work. The jobs were always very physical but well paying. The few times he thought of quitting and taking an easy job or just giving up entirely, Syaoran just looked at his old friend, and he determination was resolved. He promised himself that he would not become that. He would not sit and let himself atrophy into nothing. He would not try to forget the good and bad that came with the past.

He would not let them die of starvation after so much struggling. He would care for and protect the last friend he had left.

After all, Syaoran had lost everything else.