Disclaimer:CLAMP.
revised 51907. (The old copy was cut off, I apologize.)
Loveless: A Composition on Pain
(hold your breath longer; if i can still hear you breathing, you're too close.)
She draws her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on the soft denim material to protect the chill that seems to be invading her heart. The music is beautiful, hauntingly so, and it sounds familiar, so familiar, but she just can't place it exactly. Eriol's eyes are closed, and this is the true testament of his skill, for his long fingers fly over the keys like clockwork, never missing a beat. His fingers rise and fall and rise again, but never once does he touch the keys anything but gently. Tomoyo closes her eyes to shake the picture of those long white fingers against ivory keys, but she can't. Every note he plays is another hole in the wall around her heart.
And just as he plays a piece so melancholy, so beautiful, she takes in a small breath, which is all she allows herself, and draws her knees in closer. And as suddenly as it has taken her, the music stops, and she breaks out of her shell, and uncurls herself, feeling all her joints crack. Once again, he closes the piano lid gently, and pushes the chair back gently, everything done so damn gently when all Tomoyo wanted to do was shake him until his teeth rattled and ask him,
Why did you stop the music? Why?
But he turns to her before she can get any words out, and there is a sad look in his eyes but then he closes them and she can't see it anymore. He rubs his temples gently, and smiles a half smile.
"Did you like it?" He wants to know, and she doesn't know, but he wants her approval so bad, just because it's Tomoyo, and at one point or another, everyone's wanted Tomoyo's approval.
"Yes. Why did you stop? What's it called? Did you write it?" And Tomoyo can finally get the words out, but she finds herself babbling, and staring at him with this deathly curious look in her eyes. She wants to know, so she can go get the song, hell, so she can go buy the composer and just make him play it for her all day.
"Why I stopped? Because it's not finished. Yes, I wrote it. It's called Loveless. I suppose…it's like a composition on pain."
And as soon as those words were uttered, Tomoyo knew why she seemed to know the song so well.
It was a song of heartache, of her heartache.
-/-
Tomoyo had always known Eriol was amazing at the piano, after all, their many duets, and many lazy afternoons just listening to his fingers move over the works of Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Bach had already proved so. He also had lifetimes of experience, and well, Clow was a genius. But Tomoyo had always put Eriol on a professional level. He had never crossed over to prodigy in her mind, but after this, there is no doubt at all.
She sighs, resigned, and leans back against her window seat, her back pressed against the cold window. "Tell me about the song."
Eriol looks at her, confused about what she's asking. "Tell you…? What do you want to know?"
She looks at him, eye to eye, and moves over so he can sit next to her.
"Everything."
-/-
So he does tell her everything, the fairytale of the young boy who fell in love with a red-haired fairy and followed her to her home in the sky, enchanted by the music of her bell. He tells her about the young boy, who was foolish to believe that you could love without feeling it, about the young boy whose heart was broken by the beautiful fairy, because her heart was broken by him.
Because they had both held the other's heart in their hands and they didn't know, but while you hold another's heart, you are breaking it.
So he tells Tomoyo, about how it had been broken gently, piece by piece, until one day he came home and she was gone, and all that was left was a letter and a gentle, broken umbrella, left in the corner of her room. So he tells Tomoyo, about how he fell into a depression, and all he could do was sit at the piano and play, gentle heartbreak ballads, melancholy songs, but nothing fit, until he found the right keys to press and that's where all the pain went.
The fairy lived happily ever after.
-/-
Tomoyo touched Eriol's hand gently, a hesitant comfort. She wants him to know she understands. But Eriol only looks at her with a smile on his face and a curtain in his eyes. "Why aren't you down there?" He wants to know, gesturing to the yard outside. Coincidentally, Sakura and Syaoran stroll out, holding hands.
She smiles, a little sadly, maybe. "I…don't want to see them. Not now. It's too soon. Did you know they're getting married in July? She wants me to be her maid of honor." It was an honor, really, to be asked, especially since Sakura had also consented to allowing her to design her wedding dress.
Eriol blinked at her owlishly. "Tomoyo-san. I'm going to be the best man. Didn't you know?"
Tomoyo looked back. "You're kidding me. You're going to be the best man?"
"No, of course I'm not kidding you. Yeah, I guess my darling descendant loves me after all." And then, Eriol had burst out in laughter and after a second, Tomoyo joined him, and they were laughing hysterically, a little desperately maybe, holding their stomachs as they split their sides in pain, falling over one another, laughing first at their exchange, then laughing simply because they were laughing so hard.
Their laughs weren't polite anymore, loud, gasping wheezes in between laughs, and tears were starting to pool at the corners of Tomoyo's eyes, and she wiped them away and she thought that she hadn't laughed like this in so long. That she hadn't laughed like she was actually happy for the longest time.
It almost made her want to cry.
-/-
Soon, after all their breath had ran out, Eriol and Tomoyo leaned against opposite walls, sitting in amicable silence. Her eyes were sparkling with a mirth he hasn't seen since their childhood days, and her hair was terrible messy and the ribbon wound into her braid had started to unwind. She thought his mask had maybe slipped for that fraction of a second, that he wasn't quite so cold anymore, what with his glasses askew and his eyes still wet with tears of laughter.
"Tomoyo-san." Eriol's voice breaks the silence, and Tomoyo, who was on the verge of dozing off, looks up.
"Hmm, Hiiragizawa-kun?" Tomoyo looked up, cross-eyed, as she blew at the strand of her hair falling just in front of her eyes. The falling shadows of late afternoon threw the criss-crossed pattern of the window across her, dividing her into squares with blurry lines. Eriol thinks that if he squints, he can almost see that honestly, the squares are empty.
"How long has it been since I've last seen you?"
Tomoyo freezes for a split second (a split second, you must understand, is completely different from a whole second), and she counts it in her head, although the answer has already made it to her lips.
"Three years and five months."
Eriol laughs a light, amused laugh. "Why, Tomoyo-san, if I didn't know any better, I would say you've been keeping count." He means this to be lighthearted, playful banter.
They always mean well.
"…No," She replies coldly, detached. "I suppose then, you don't know any better." The iciness is so prominent in her voice and too chilling to be meant jokingly that Eriol looks up, surprised. But it's too late, she's staring out the window, resolutely not looking at him, a slightly pained, but mostly closed, expression on her face.
He realizes this has hurt her, because (maybe…fine, yes) she has.
He drops a heavy hand over his face and laughs once, so awkwardly Tomoyo almost winces for him but that would mean breaking the impeccable mask and she can't do that, not even for Hiiragizawa-kun. Not even for Sakura-chan.
(Are you sure?)
His next words were quiet. "Tomoyo-san, is there a way that I can say things without hurting you? Because sometimes, Tomoyo-san, it seems that either way, no matter how I put it, I never get to win. Tomoyo-san, is there a way for me to say words in a way so it won't offend you?"
-/-
Tomoyo hates crying.
"…so I was just talking to him and all of a sudden he gets on his knees, and pulls out the ring! And he asked me! Look, isn't it beautiful? He says it's been in his family for ages." Tomoyo looked in her best friend's flushed, happy face. "Tomoyo-chan. He asked me to marry him. To marry him, Tomoyo-chan. I'm so happy! And of course, I want you to be my maid of honor, Tomoyo-chan, because I love you best." Sakura had beamed at her then but Tomoyo wanted to say silently, no I'm not the one you love best because you're getting married to Li-kun, aren't you? "I mean…you will, right?" Then her eyebrows descended, and looked at Tomoyo, eyes wide and worried.
Tomoyo opened her eyes, and was surprised to find tears trickling down her cheeks.
"Oh, Tomoyo-chan, are you okay? Maybe I surprised you, I mean, you did have a bad day at work today, maybe I should have saved it for later…"
Raising a hand to quickly wipe at the tears on her cheeks, Tomoyo raises a hand, and smiles at her, a smile mingled with happiness and bitterness and a little bit of…something else. What was it?
"No, Sakura-chan. It's perfectly fine. I'm…so happy for you."
Now that Tomoyo thinks about it, it was also the last time Sakura asked about her emotional well being.
-/-
She drops her head to her knees.
"Tomoyo-san, why would you care?"
She raises her head from the denim on her jeans and he can see her mouth pressed in a tight line. She opens and then closes it, doing a pretty good impression of a fish. She opens her mouth, lets out a breath and closes it again, tightening her lips. When she opens her mouth for the third time (as Eriol watched, slightly amused), she whispers, "I don't know." and Eriol feels slightly disheartened because (he values loyalty in himself, he really does) he thought she might say something (ridiculously) sentimental like, "I've missed you" or something equally silly. He smiles, and all is forgiven.
-/-
(They were always into forgiving and forgetting, because there was no one else to forgive them and there was no one else to remember to forget them.)