two;
It was different after the first time. She had been a bundle of shivering nerves then; her face was flushed and so was her skin. When he touched her, she wanted to pull away because she was hesitant and nervous and she did not want him to hear the frightened, erratic beating of her heart. But then he pressed himself close to her and mouthed wordlessly against her flesh. She could hear his heartbeat then, and his was just as wild and frantic as hers. It startled her; she had just as much of an effect on him as he had on her.
After that, she delighted in his body in a way she had never expected to. She loved to touch him, to hear his breath come short and dissolve into pants. She loved the hardness of his flesh because it was so fascinatingly different from her own body and yet it complemented hers so well. She loved the way he looked at her at these times. He had always been serious and intense, and when he was inside of her, he was so uniquely him in a way he had always and never been.
The first time, he had asked it of her. Or more like it had happened, but he had taken charge, whispering and easing her into it every step of the way. After that, it was like something had snapped shut around him. He did not ask again.
So she asked him. Whenever they did it, it was because of her – because she would kiss him and tell him how much his touch affected her. She could not imagine doing such a thing with anyone besides him. She would lean into their embraces and when his defences snapped, as they always eventually did, he would touch her more. And she liked it when he did.
But afterwards, he would pull out of her soundlessly, and even as he embraced her, no barriers between them, the first thing he would utter was that he was sorry.
Extracts from the journal of Queen Nadeshiko:
... A choice that will bring much pain but may in fact be the key in stopping Fei-Wang Reed...
... So he chose this path after all...
... And yet the hardest road is for Sakura. I pray for her with all my heart, for a part of me regrets the decision that was taken. How can I help it? I am a woman first, and a mother...
Her mother noticed it first. Mothers always did.
Long before any noticeable change came upon Sakura, her mother called her to her chamber. When Sakura came, Nadeshiko could say nothing for a while. She could only embrace her dear, cursed daughter. The Black Wings had grown since yesterday and the day before and the day before that.
It was not the only thing that had grown.
"Tell me, Sakura," her mother whispered gently into her daughter's ear. "How far along are you?"
At those words, Sakura stiffened. It was as if something was going to spill out of her. Yet curiously enough, she was more embarrassed than she was horrified. It was a secret that she had been unsure of how to keep since the very beginning.
"Th-Three months," she stuttered finally.
Nadeshiko closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her daughter was still there in front of her, peering at her anxiously.
"Is that... bad?" Sakura asked worriedly.
"New life is never a bad thing," Nadeshiko replied, and yet still, she felt weary. "But the burden on you will be heavy, I'm afraid."
"If Syaoran and I work together, I'm sure we can take care of it," Sakura insisted. She tried to be bright, although she was beginning to understand the gravity of her situation. "I thought..."
Nadeshiko shook her head. "If that was simply it, your father and I could have arranged for you to be married. But as it is..."
Sakura gasped. The pain spilt through her eyes, and her mother felt it sink into her like a blade. "What do you mean, mother?" Sakura asked.
And Nadeshiko explained. Sakura was a princess of Clow and, as everyone in the kingdom was aware, she had latent powers that surpassed High Priest Yukito's. The purification rite she had engaged in as a child was necessary, not simply for the sake of tradition, but for her powers to nurture. Until her coming-of-age ceremony in six months' time, she was supposed to remain chaste. It was all for the same reasons.
Sakura stared at her mother until the slow, horrifying realisation dawned on her. "Does that mean... I-I've lost my powers?"
Nadeshiko nodded gravely. "Have you been having dreams lately? Can you feel the emotions of water?"
Sakura shook her head, frantically. "N-No, and I didn't notice!" The point of being with Syaoran, she thought, was that they would make a world where time would stop, not crash forward into the future and beyond. She was the one who had brought the unpleasantness upon herself.
She fell into a sober silence for a moment before beginning to sob into her hands.
"I've disappointed you, mother..."
Nadeshiko embraced her again. "No, you haven't, dear."
Sakura was sniffling into her chest. "Why didn't you tell me, mother? That I wasn't meant to do these things...?"
"It didn't matter," Nadeshiko replied. "He knew and that was enough."
"Syaoran knew...?"
Nadeshiko nodded. It was certainly Syaoran's way of turning back time. The thought must have haunted him for years: for the sake of tradition, he had avoided grabbing Sakura's hand on that vital pivotal moment that had decided his future.
He could not have afforded to wait.
"I'm scared, mother," Sakura confessed shakily. "I told him I was scared everything would suddenly change and now it has." Gingerly, she laid a hand on her belly. She seemed so remarkably young, little more than a child herself. "What will happen to Syaoran? T-To our...?"
"Be strong," her mother whispered. There was nothing more comforting that she could say. The dark days had come.
Sakura's parents advised her to remain purely within the castle from now on. To this she wholeheartedly obliged; she had always loved her parents unconditionally and she felt no need to rebel against their kind intentions.
The only problem this caused was with Syaoran. She had no opportunity to see him and tell him what was happening with her. Until the day she told her mother, she had spoken of her condition to no one, not even him. She longed to tell him about it now and to ask him what it was that had been bothering him. Had it been that? Was it because he already knew what he had been doing to her?
Now that her mother had pointed out the loss of her powers, this became painfully evident to her in the following months. She had always felt that the world around her had a voice and that on particularly bright and beautiful days she could feel the world whispering and bathing in its own radiance around her. Suddenly, it was as if the beating of the world's heart had died down altogether. There was no more voice. She began to see her surroundings as ordinary people saw it, yet she was so accustomed to believing in the world's mysticism that the absence of it was in itself a kind of farce. And so she had another reason to stay inside, for she did not want to see the deadness of the world that she had never noticed before.
Her body was changing too. It felt tender and fragile these days and on some days, she felt weary and fatigued. Her mother understood the symptoms of pregnancy and helped to assist her when she could while keeping the secret, but as three months turned to four and then to five, it was impossible to hide what was happening.
Her father and Yukito were the next to learn. Her mother discussed with her father what had happened and these days, the two of them walked about the castle with eternally melancholy expressions. Sakura felt an enormous guilt in her heart, just above where the baby grew, if only for that. As for Yukito, he had found out the truth by himself, probably as early as Nadeshiko found out. He only spoke of it to Sakura later, to tell her that someone had to tell Touya and could that person be him? Sakura told him yes, oh please, Yukito-san, yes,and then she went to the privacy of her bedroom and burst into tears.
The next day Syaoran came and it was the worst time he could have chosen.
She was playing on the steps leading to the front garden the way she had done as a child, when there was no one to play with and there was nothing else to do. She could not skip and prance around any longer as she had done in the past; now, she sat down upon the steps and rocked her bare feet back and forth, watching their repetitive motion wistfully.
Then she heard the voices. The sound of them ringing so sharply across the courtyard was what made her jolt and sit upright and then pale and screw her face in anguish.
"HOW DARE YOU SHOW YOUR FACE HERE? !" It was Touya, louder and more furious than she had ever heard him. "After what you did to my sister...!"
Syaoran said something, too quietly for her to hear.
"SORRY? !" Her brother roared in response. "YOU SAY YOU'RE SORRY? ! SORRY WON'T CUT IT, YOU LITTLE ASSHOLE!"
Sakura sprang to her feet and sprinted all the way to the courtyard. The blood was rushing to her head. She arrived to see Touya punching Syaoran in the face, again and again and again, as if the teen was nothing more than a punching bag. And Syaoran was simply taking each blow with a resigned, miserable expression on his face. Sakura arrived, and for a brief moment, their eyes met. Then Syaoran blinked and looked away as Touya pummelled him to the cold stone floor.
"Big brother, stop it!" Sakura screeched.
But the righteous anger of an older brother was not something that could be so easily stopped. Touya waited until Syaoran had struggled back to his feet and then punched him again. Syaoran stumbled backwards, clutching a bleeding nose.
"This horny bastard got you pregnant," Touya snapped. "How could he have been so fucking selfish? !"
"But it was me!" Sakura insisted. "I was the selfish one! So please...!"
Touya growled. He seemed about to launch into another tirade when Yukito's voice cut across the courtyard.
"Calm yourself, Touya! Can't you see you're making this situation worse for everyone?" Yukito was standing at the opposite end of the courtyard, evidently having only just arrived. Gone was his easy, mellow expression. He stood tall and firm and gazed Touya down, serious and intent like he had never been.
And Touya listened, because Yukito was his best friend, and as his best friend, he knew what every expression on his face meant.
Yet still Touya's ire had not calmed.
"But Yukito-!"
"Quiet." Yukito came closer. He placed a restraining palm against Touya's cheek. "You're upsetting Sakura-chan."
Finally, Touya hesitated and glanced in Sakura's direction. She gazed tearfully back at him.
Then unexpectedly, Touya's eyebrows creased, not into an expression of anger but of deepest sorrow.
"Why, Sakura?" he asked plaintively. "Why?"
Sakura looked down at her feet, unable to answer. She noticed her legs were trembling.
Then she heard a scrambling of movement to ahead of her. Syaoran had gotten down to his knees and was bowing his head against the ground in a most desperate humble gesture.
"I want to take responsibility," he said. His voice sounded thick. "Please... please! I'll do anything. I'll marry her!"
His words made struck keenly at her because he said them so earnestly and oh, Syaoran, she thought. It was almost more than she could take, and she could not bear to meet his eyes.
"Don't be ridiculous," Touya answered scornfully. "You should be grateful you're even still alive, you brat."
Yukito left Touya's side and came to Syaoran. Gingerly, he lifted Syaoran's head up from its downward pointed angle. "Listen," he said; his kindness was back. "I don't blame you. I know you're a decent, honest young man and I don't doubt you would have been able to take care of Sakura-chan. But you've broken a taboo. You said yourself you value our laws and traditions. Surely you know what this means."
Wordlessly, Syaoran nodded. His face was drawn and pale.
"You're to be banished from the Kingdom of Clow," Yukito said quietly. "Forever."
They gave him a grace period of one week to gather his possessions together, but Syaoran chose to leave much earlier than that. He did so quietly, unobtrusively, because for all his actions, the last thing he wanted to do was to leave a burden upon everyone. By now, news of Sakura's pregnancy had reached everyone in town and wherever Syaoran went, he heard the whisperings not so far behind him.
"What a cad!" he heard the villagers say. "Getting her pregnant and running off...!"
These biting remarks hurt him, but in response, all he could ever do was to fasten his travel cloak a little bit tighter around himself. Because the truth was that he deserved every cruelty that was inflicted on him.
When he came to Clow's border, he saw Queen Nadeshiko standing, a lone figure among the sands. She had her hood pulled over her head to protect her from the desert wind, although he could recognise her from the long, flowing hair spilling around her shoulders. She was grasping her staff in her hand. When she noticed him draw near, she turned to him and nodded in acknowledgment.
As custom dictated, she explained his punishment. "When you leave, I will cast a spell. This spell will ensure that you never find this country again, no matter how hard you search or how close you come."
He swallowed. Even at the ending, all he could think of was Sakura's smiling face... "I'm ready," he told the queen.
Nadeshiko nodded again. Syaoran closed his eyes, feeling the wind and sand whip against his skin and hair. Then Nadeshiko spoke once again.
"Thank you," she said.
"Why?" he asked her.
"Fei-Wang Reed cannot use my daughter's power for evil any longer. You might have given her a burden but you eased our world of a greater one."
"Don't put it like that," he said.
"Syaoran..."
"I don't care about Fei-Wang," he declared bitterly. "I don't care about whether or not his wishes come true. All I care about – all I ever cared about – is Sakura. And now I can't even save her from that curse. I hate myself. It's my fault she'll die. All I've ever brought her is pain and death. I'm so selfish!"
His outburst was more violent and intense than anything he had ever mustered in his life. He was physically shaking, his gloved hands pressed tightly against his face.
"I never deserved an ounce of her kindness!" he snarled. Then, more quietly and more shakily and with all the loneliness in the world: "Not ever..."
Such a tragedy, Nadeshiko thought, when such lovely fruit ripens too early.
"But there was no time," she said softly. "You did all you could. You would have saved her if you could."
But there were no more words to be coaxed from him. He pulled his own hood over his head and wordlessly made his way across the border without showing a hint of another emotion. Then Nadeshiko had no choice but to recite the spell and that was that.
The following months passed at an agonisingly slow rate. Sakura seldom left the confines of her room. She swathed herself in blankets and spent the days of her pregnancy inert. She was told to stay still, but if she had to be honest with herself, she would not have been able to bring herself into moving if she had the opportunity to anyway. If her family and Yukito had not been so kind to her in this time, she would have felt happier, in a way. She could have hated them all for separating her from Syaoran. She could have contemplated something stupid like fleeing the country, even though she had never been outside Clow before, had no idea where to find Syaoran and was by now heavily pregnant. She could have had some hopes to cling to.
But as it was, she remained in the castle, seeing little and perceiving even less. The one thing she found herself regretting was how she never found the opportunity to say goodbye to Syaoran at his banishment. So she said it within the boundaries of her own mind a thousand times over, each time with a thousand different little variations. And it would hurt, each and every time.
(In the dark, unbidden, the Black Wings on Sakura continued to spread.)
