(A/N: It's quite painful in this chapter. I think. Enjoy.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Card Captor Sakura. I own whatever their personalities are in this story and any character that I make up. I own my storyline.
Chapter 7
Tomoyo bit her lip. Standing up in the small kitchen room, she stretched her arms and tried to work out the cramp in her calf. Eriol had left some time ago, when a servant had come in and called him away to pick something up for the Master. She was alone.
Faintly, she recalled a time when she had been alone, just like this. Alone, but she had been happy. The carefree life she'd led then seemed infinitely far away, in a whole other world; in a whole other life. After all, she'd only been three when she had been pulled from the bosom of her wealthy environment, and forced to work for the Master.
The Daidouji family had been one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the whole of Japan, and indeed in most of Asia itself. Only the Li Clan of Hong Kong, and the Kinomoto family, who owned a large part of the mountains in northern Japan, had rivalled them in their position.
Tomoyo had been brought up in an isolated environment, as a pampered young mistress and surrounded by servants. Her parents were always too busy to pay her much attention, and let her do whatever she liked. Nevertheless, the servants loved her as their own, and raised her to be the best person she could possibly have been.
Tomoyo sighed. She needed someone to love her now. There was nothing here. No one to hold close, no one to hold her close if she needed to cry. Nothing here…nothing here to live for.
But as she let her mind drift back to those faraway days, she remembered dimly one of the highlights in her lonely life, apart from the time she'd spent with the servants.
She had loved to dance. And sing.
Now, she smiled. Raising her arms to form a delicate circle over her head, she hummed a tune that she remembered from those old days, and let her body move to the music. Her feet knew this dance; all the simple and lovely steps that criss-crossed over each other, and spun out an intricate tune that flowed as easily as it did from her lips. And here, dancing like this, without a care of who could see her or what would happen if someone found out, she felt as if she were flying away, far away from all her problems, far away from everything that was wrong in this world. Closing her eyes, she felt her heart lift, and her soul soar with the joy of it.
But yes, she thought, there is something here worth living for.
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Sakura was pressed up against the cold wall, hanging by her wrists, suspended from the two rusty iron handcuffs. The Master loomed over her. And she was afraid.
"Don't be," he crooned, his icy voice smothered with false sympathy. "Don't be afraid of me…"
As he leaned down, his musky breath striking her nose with a painfully familiar pang, she shuddered. She felt his smooth, devil-cursed hands as they slid along the skin of her stomach, up…up…
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"Stay still, little girl." A voice, husky with lust, hissed into her ear. Rough hands grabbed at her arms, pinning them down as another set of hands tore at her clothes.
Sakura could only clench her teeth in horrified disgust, cursing herself for not being more patient and waiting for the two men to pass.
An acquaintance of hers had been late in coming to pick her up to go to a rave that was being held downtown. The two always went, not for the party or drinks, but for the expensive weapons that somehow always landed outside in the dump in the morning.
But her acquaintance hadn't arrived, and after waiting for over ten minutes, she had decided to walk into a brighter area where she could see and be seen more clearly. The large front lobby of the hotel her crew was staying near had large yellow lights, and plenty of other nighttime characters she could intermingle with. But she had to cut through an alleyway to get there, and being as impatient as she was to get to the rave, she walked right into the alley without minding the two men who were standing there smoking.
As she walked by them, her eyes fixed only on the light of the hotel ahead of her, she felt a disturbance in the air behind her. Immediately, she had started to turn around, ready to fight. But there were two of them, and they overpowered her, struck her until she could see blackness at the edges of her vision, and then pinned her down.
So here she was now.
Stupid, she said again inside her head. You're fucking stupid, you know that Sakura? But there was nothing she could do about it now. So she gritted her teeth and waited for that moment when she could escape.
As her shirt came off, the men stared at her body, despite her feeble attempts to hide herself. The moment of escape didn't come. The man holding her down had tightened his grip, and no matter how she tried to wrench free, she couldn't.
Something hard pressed against her thigh, and a strong reek of alcohol and body odour surrounded her as the man lowered himself onto her. She retched, her mind reeling with disgust. He pulled back, surprised at her antics.
"Maybe this one's too soft," the man who was holding her said dumbly him.
"She'll be all the more fun to break then," the other replied, leering at her with a predatory glint in his eyes.
"But—" The first man's eyes suddenly grew wide, and he let out a cry of pain as blood came gushing out of nowhere.
Sakura's hand found the blood vessel in his wrist. She had squeezed. Hard. Using this moment of distraction, in which both the men were confused and unsure, she again pulled with all her strength, and this time succeeded in getting her arms free. The other man was still kneeling on her legs, but she kicked up hard, and he fell back with a grunt of pain.
Grabbing her long overcoat and tattered shirt, she sprinted away as fast as her legs would carry her.
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Sakura saw it all happen again before her eyes, in that infinitesimal moment before the Master's face appeared in front of hers, his hands already removing what little she wore. And in that moment, she remembered that even in that dark alley, that time when those drunken men were going to rape her, she had felt no fear.
But now…now, as she felt it all again, she did. Fear. That sickening, suffocating, overpowering fear that haunted her from the days when she truly had been afraid.
And as it finally took over her, broke through that wall she had built to keep herself sane, all her emotions were finally released in a great flooding torrent of pain. And she screamed.
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Syaoran stepped silently into the room behind the Master, heading for a dark corner into which he could camouflage so as to observe the proceedings. In doing so, the Master unblocked his line of vision, and he could see Sakura.
He saw her thin body, her ribcage so apparent that it was almost impossible that she was still healthy, her shoulders as they bent at an angle that obviously pained her, the subtle flicker of expression on her otherwise blank face…and her eyes…
It was those startlingly green eyes that were so empty, yet so full of emotion. It was the thought of them, watching him and holding him down that kept him from going insane every day. It was, and had been, ever since that first day when he had come face-to-face with her in her prison, had seen her staring into his eyes as she fought to get her breath back, and then he had almost…
Syaoran's brow furrowed as a sharp pain shot through his head. Immediately, the still-sore wounds on his back began to ache.
That's right, he thought dully. I mustn't think of the girl. She doesn't matter.
He stepped back into the shadows of the room, feeling the darkness envelope him like a cold blanket. A slight breeze blew at his back from a nonexistent other world, and he shifted to get out of its way, his eyes never leaving the scene unfolding so rapidly before him.
In the flickering torchlight, it was apparent to him that the Master intended to fully take advantage of the situation. Syaoran, despite the fact that he was subtly unaware of such paltry goings-on, took note of the small seed of fear that had sprouted in Sakura's eyes. He dismissed the thought before his mind could again remind him that the Master would punish him if he did not keep his thoughts away from her. After all, the slashes on his back were still healing, and it would be quite painful to have them reopened. Yes, he knew it would be.
But just as he was reverting back to his usual indifferent state, a bloodcurdling, heart-chilling scream echoed in the small stone chamber.
His eyes opened wide in shock, as he saw Sakura cry out, writhing in pain and fear, the Master's hands still touching her. She kicked out, her legs flailing as they struggled to get a hold on the floor, her face contorted with pain as her arms were nearly wrenched out of their sockets.
The Master, apparently taken by surprise, nevertheless recovered quickly. He grasped the struggling girl around her waist, trying to keep her from kicking him, but she swung so wildly that he couldn't hold on, and a fierce jab from her leg in his unprepared gut sent him reeling, his face pallid as he gasped for air.
Syaoran stood there, rooted to the spot, unbelieving. Sakura had just hurt the Master. Nobody should hurt the Master. Nobody would hurt the Master. Hell, nobody could hurt the Master. But here he was, bent wheezing on the floor, clutching his stomach while Sakura cried and cried above him.
Suddenly, she looked up, and it was as if her eyes could suddenly pierce the gloom and see Syaoran standing there. He felt like she could.
The agony in her face was overwhelmingly powerful, even for him. He saw right through her, and in one shocking moment felt her pain too. It was vast, unimaginably vast, like a canyon stretching from one corner of the galaxy to a distant other, immeasurable throughout the space of time. It wasn't just the physical pain she felt now, no. It was all the hurt of all the years, come crashing down in that one second when her walls had broken.
If anybody else but Syaoran had been there in that moment, they would have seen nothing but a mad, dancing light in her eyes and the froth that gathered at her lips as her mind pushed itself over the edge. But it was Syaoran, and he saw her as she was. Helpless, yes. Dying, yes. But she could still be saved.
His body moved faster than his mind could. He sprang forward, out of the darkness and into the light. As it hit him, the air suddenly seemed still. There was only one thing in the world that he could reach for, and only one thing in the world that mattered. In that second of realization, all his doubts melted away. His fear of the consequences seemed insubstantial, almost as if they weren't there. The only thing he cared about now was saving her.
Sakura realized it too. As if in a dream, she saw him suddenly appear out of the shadows, his arms reaching for her, his eyes telling her to hold on. Those few seconds of control she had over herself were enough. They had to be.
But the Master was still there, still conscious. As Sakura's screams suddenly halted, he was on his feet, the bruise that he had gained rapidly being forgotten. He saw Sakura's eyes, fixed on something beyond his shoulder. There was no doubt about what it was.
He raised his hand, and hit Sakura with all his strength on her face, and his strength was no small matter.
The last blow was too much for her to handle. The blackness that had been blurring the edges of her vision finally took over, and she fell into oblivion.
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Syaoran saw the strike as if it had been in slow motion. The Master's hand raised up, up, high into the air, and came down so hard on her face that within seconds, it had turned from deathly white to a frightening shade of red. And he saw her as she blacked out, watched all the recognition go out of her eyes as she finally fell into that peaceful darkness.
Something erupted forth then, coming straight out of his chest and burning his mind with its white-hot intensity. Hatred. Oh, how he hated the Master in that moment, hated his oily, greasy manner, hated the ice-cold chips he had for eyes, hated the way he walked and talked and thought. But he hated the satisfied expression on the Master's face the most. Yes, how he hated it.
Without a second thought, his hand reached for the knife he kept by his side. It whistled down upon the Master's turned back, its blade screaming for bloody revenge.
(A/N: I worked hard here. I'm not usually good at writing cliffhangers, because I don't much like them myself. But I promise I'll get the next chapter up fast…if you want it.)
