three;
The man let out a rasp that sounded as if there was something thick and heavy lodged inside his throat. Little wonder – the tip of a sword was pressed against his neck.
Seconds ago, he had made the mistake of attempting to steal from a young, harmless-looking teenage boy who had been passing through the alleyway. He had placed his hand on the boy's shoulder and told him if he wanted to pass through here, he needed to give up his wallet. It made sense, after all – it was a dark, grimy alleyway and on some days the man saw rats bigger than his hand scurry around the walls. If he wanted to live outside the alleyway, he needed to make enough money to make it happen.
Unfortunately, there was the first matter he had to attend to, which was the boy's sword. Not to mention the eerily calm and detached expression on the boy's face. From the look in his eyes, he seemed so much older than a boy of perhaps fourteen or fifteen. While he had one hand on the sword, his other hand was grasped tightly on the man's wrist. The man had been holding a knife, but because of the boy's vice-like grip, the knife was completely useless.
It was a strange, uncomfortable feeling to be so ruthlessly overpowered by such a slim boy. The man felt an uncontrollable shiver pass through him and suddenly, he found himself screaming let go LET GO.
So the boy did, but the frigidness in his gaze was still there. A few months ago, he could not have conceived acting this way even in self-defence, but he was alone and friendless now.
The only person who had ever understood him was miles away in a country he could never return to, pregnant with his child.
Extracts from the journal of Queen Nadeshiko:
… There is in fact a way to remove the curse on Sakura. The Time-Space Witch spoke of it in dreams…
… A life. A life must be sacrificed. But not just any life can suffice. The lifeblood of someone who is precious to the princess must be taken; a price equal to the amount that will be given. That is the way wishes are granted…
Syaoran straightened up and peered at the assortment of goods the vendor had laid on his carpet. There was a considerable variety: a collection of thick, hard-covered tomes lay in a pile in the top right part of the carpet. Below that there were two rustic-looking keys each about the size of a garden peg; they were gold and silver-coloured respectively. To the left of them was a pile of coloured stones. Some were dim and faded while others were bright and rainbow-coloured. In the bottom left corner of the carpet there was a folded black cloth and on top of it a handful of paper charms with foreign script written on them. And in the top left corner there was a pack of cards.
Syaoran picked them up and scrutinised them carefully. The image of a sun encased in a magic circle was emblazoned on their rear faces. The front faces of the cards depicted pictures: sometimes of women, sometimes of animal, sometimes of objects. And all the cards were labelled with names.
The Windy. The Maze. The Sword. The Shield.
There were about as many cards as a deck of playing cards.
"What are these?" he asked the vendor. The vendor was an old, bespectacled man whose beard was not really that long; it had been shaven down to stubble. He had been reading one of his books – the title of it was in the same foreign language as the paper charms – when Syaoran asked his question.
"Those are Clow Cards," the old man explained patiently. "Or, to be more accurate, they are replicas of the Clow Cards."
"The Clow Cards…" Syaoran murmured. The cards felt thick and heavy in his hand, as if they were weighted down with something that he could not see. "Are they connected to the Kingdom of Clow?"
"Yes." The old man nodded. "They are both connected to Clow Reed."
Syaoran did not respond to that. He was looking through the cards. He stopped at the card that depicted an old, wizened woman in a robe holding an hourglass. The Time.
"The cards were made with no intention of good and evil in mind," said the old man. "They are like wishes themselves."
"I wish…" Syaoran began, and then he stopped. "I can't," he said. "I have to do, not wish."
"You cannot escape wishing," said the old man with a shake of his head. "When your wish comes true through your own merits, your price was your effort. But having a wish itself is the power that changes the universe, whether they are granted or not."
Then he said, "What is your wish?"
"To go back," said Syaoran.
"To where?"
To Clow? To Sakura? To that moment? Helplessly, Syaoran shook his head.
Before he could answer, the old man said, "Here." He was holding a vial in his hand. Inside the vial there lay specks of gold-flecked dust. "If I sprinkle this on you, you will remember the thing you want the most."
Syaoran hesitated for a moment, and then reached into his travel bag and pulled out his remaining coins. "Please," he said, and placed the coins on the carpet in front of the vendor.
And so the old man dipped his finger into the vial and sprinkled the dust over Syaoran's eyes.
Instantly, it was as Syaoran he was no longer in the vendor. He was no longer anywhere. He was floating. And he was remembering: not a particular person, not a particular thing, not a particular place. He was remembering a feeling.
He could not describe the feeling because he was the feeling. To describe the feeling would mean to lose touch with it, to see it through the lenses that meant everything was said and done. Because he had the feeling with him, he suddenly and abruptly found himself face-to-face with Sakura. It was Sakura when she was young and he had first met her, and she was smiling up at the heavens, radiantly as if she was a beam of sunlight herself.
"Maybe our meeting was Hitsuzen, too!" she said with a girlish giggle, and he felt nothing so very earth-shaking from it, because that wasn't part of the feeling. Then he was down on earth, his feet touching lightly upon the grass, and Sakura was beside him, tossing a bunch of sweet-smelling flowers his way. His feeling remembered that it was embarrassing but also that he liked it, and his feeling also remembered that the sky was so very, very blue today. He wanted to trace each cloud with his finger, but instead, his feeling fell back and simply imagined what it would be like. His feeling could fly, it could leap between mountains, swim across oceans. He hooked his little finger with Sakura's and as he watched her, it seemed as if she was sprouting wings from behind her. His feeling could not even remember what the Black Wings looked like: these ones were white. He liked these wings. He leaned forward and touched them and suddenly his feeling was spinning around where it stood. He waited until he was still, and then he laughed and laughed and laughed, until the sides of his feeling were aching and all he wanted, nothing more, nothing less, was to fall asleep in the shade.
Eventually, Syaoran woke up, startled, and the feeling cowed and shrank away, disturbed from its nest.
"I want more of that dust," Syaoran rasped. "I want to remember that feeling again." What it had been, he did not know – he could put no name to it because it was both everything and nothing at all. The old man peered at him sombrely through his glasses and said:
"How would you do it?"
"I'll save her," said Syaoran firmly. "And then I'll remember…"
"Is that the course you want to take? You don't want to go back?"
"If I go back," Syaoran answered, "I'll have forgotten what everything means. And I'll just lose that feeling again and I'll have the same regrets. But if I had time…!"
"Ah," said the old man. He seemed close to smiling. "Time, huh?"
And in the moment, he perceived that the future had split itself into two paths. In one future, Syaoran was on his hands and knees, begging to go back in time, back to the day when he could have grabbed Sakura's hand and saved her from the curse. Back to before he had tainted her. Back to before he had realised his selfishness.
And there was another future, this future. Syaoran's face was clouded in the shadowy light of the vendor, and there was steel in what could be seen of his eyes. There was also something very much like callousness, because the feeling was as selfish as it was selfless, as ruthless as it was altruistic.
"I want to go back to Clow," he said.
It was Sakura's birthday.
"Fifteen, huh?" said Touya, standing over her bed. He was smiling ruefully and he rubbed his cheek. "You're getting old."
"You're a dinosaur," Sakura retorted. She smiled feebly.
"But you're still too young," said Touya. "Still way too young…" His voice choked slightly.
The smile faded from Sakura's face as it easily could, nowadays. "I know," she said quietly. "I agree."
Touya frowned.
"Don't be scary, big brother," she told him. "You frown so much around me. You mustn't frown around the baby too, when it's born… It'll grow up looking scary like you!"
She patted her stomach – her large, round, grossly pregnant stomach, and this time she tried to smile again, and it was a smile of tentative rediscovery.
"You know," she said softly. "I wonder if this didn't happen to me, would I ever have realised how much I really love you?"
And she was herself, Touya knew. The light in her eyes was different but still so inherently Sakura.
Suddenly, she gasped. "It's… I feel it…!" Her breath hitched. "It's starting…!"
Wordlessly, her brother embraced her.
"I know the way to get back to Clow," said the old man in the vendor.
Syaoran felt his breath quicken. "How?"
"An incantation," the old man replied. "A spell that bypasses the barrier that the Queen of Clow erected."
"How do you…? Is this a coincidence?"
"There is no such thing as coincidence. There is only Hitsuzen."
Syaoran nodded, accepting the explanation. Before his eyes, it seemed as if the old man was changing. His features were softening, becoming younger. His hair filled out and turned to black and he stood up tall instead of slouching.
"There is no time," said Clow Reed. "The curse will take her life today."
He was dressed in a long, flowing robe. When he lifted his arms, the sleeves of his robe fell, revealing on his arm the very same mark of death that had been on Sakura.
Syaoran bit his lip. He declared strongly: "I will not let Sakura die!" And after that, he fell silent and braced himself for the next words that needed to be heard.
"And your price?" Clow Reed asked.
"My sword," Syaoran answered promptly.
"For the spell, I will take that, but to save her, you need more."
Syaoran nodded. He knew. He knew all too well.
As Clow Reed began to chant, the floor of the vendor lit up beneath Syaoran and him. Within his head, like a mantra, Syaoran repeated his wish: I will not let Sakura die. I will not let Sakura die.
I will not let her die.
After her waters broke, Sakura spent her birthday in bed, feeling the contractions dig painfully into her. Her mother was beside her now, whispering words of comfort in her ear, telling her when to push and when to hold herself back. Her father and brother were there, watching, yet unable to bear doing so at the same time. And yet still they remained, and Sakura was weeping now. She thought of Syaoran, wishing that he could have been there to see the child being born. She thought of the days she had spent hearing her child kick inside of her, and of the occasions she had placed her hand over her belly and felt the life inside of her grow. Oh, Syaoran…! Syaoran…!
As the hours ticked by, Sakura felt her vision and perception dim, like everything was closing and swallowing itself up around her. There was blood. She saw it stain the sheets and at first, it shocked and pained her, but as the blood continued to flow and nothing changed, she then felt dizzy. Then slowly, gradually, the pain dulled her senses. She tried to think, but her mind was slower than it had ever been. Each contraction made her think that this was it, the time had come, but there was simply no knowing. She knew nothing except for Syaoran, and she repeated the name of her child's father again and again within the dullness of her mind, because to her it was the only thing that mattered now.
He was there with her, she knew. She could not comprehend the fact well enough to appreciate it, but he was there. He was breathing beside her and he was gazing at her with pure, sweet affection. When he had appeared, she did not know; she was quite sure that he could also simply be a figment of her imagination. But he made her smile, and her lips parted, and even in her pain, all she could think of was: It'll be okay...
And time stood still.
Syaoran appeared, encompassed by a flickering circle of light, seconds before the curse took hold. When he appeared, Sakura's family members could do nothing but gape at him, and Syaoran turned instantly to face Sakura.
She was lying there on the bloodstained bed sheets, her half-lidded eyes peering at him uncomprehendingly. Her lips parted slightly. She was pale and her hair was wild and tousled across the sheets. Her legs were parted in an undignified manner, revealing the hairless head of a bloodstained infant. Sakura's mother had been grasping at it with her hands when Syaoran appeared and now that he was there, her hands fell away and her mouth opened in pure astonishment.
Sakura's parted lips curled upwards.
Syaoran had time to utter her name – softly, lovingly – and to begin to reach for her hands.
Then the shadows impaled her.
The first thing Syaoran comprehended was her eyes: they widened and yet she had comprehended nothing yet. Her eyes widened because she had noticed him. They were warm with love and kindness and everything else that was Sakura. The shadows were sharp and lethal like daggers. They had sprouted from the same blackness as the mark of death and they had stabbed Sakura through from behind. It was all a clean cut, a very clinical death. There were so many shadows slicing through her that Syaoran could not count them.
And still he stared at her eyes. It seemed everything had gone still. He could hear himself breathe, even, and nothing had changed, but he could not hear her breathe, not even shallow breathing. She did not blink. She did not move.
It took him a moment of sheer, blind panic before he realised that time had in fact stopped at this very moment.
Nadeshiko collapsed on the ground, clutching her chest.
"I used… the last of my strength…" she gasped, "… to freeze time… You must save her!"
Syaoran knew wordlessly that Sakura's mother had sacrificed her life for the sake of her daughter. He sprang towards Sakura then, but not touching her. He strained to look at her body, the lower part naked and bloody before him.
The clocks had frozen on the wall. Nevertheless, he could hear them ticking incessantly within his mind.
Even when time stops, it moves…
If he did not move quickly, both Sakura and the child would be dead. His mind went blank, and his hands, possessed by some monster that could only think of protecting Sakura, began to move on their own accord.
And finally, there came that moment – a moment of supreme, utter relief that he was shaking where he stood. The shadows were gone around Sakura and her expression was the same and there was still so much blood but that didn't matter anymore, did it…?
Time moved again when the curse was broken.
Sakura blinked, first of all. She was faint and weak from loss of blood, but she knew now without a doubt that it was Syaoran before her. Even in her fragile state of mind, she could recognise him. She recognised him even though he was almost unrecognisable himself.
He was covered in blood.
It was all over his hands and it was smeared liberally across his face. It dripped off his eyelids and off the tips of his fingers and his matted hair, and the drops fell on the bed sheets. Some of the drops even landed on Sakura's bare skin.
She recognised him because he was smiling. His eyes were creased into his kind and genuine smile – the one he gave her to let her know she meant the world to him. But there was something different, too, about it. They shone with a manic, frenzied gleam, like he was just beginning to exhaust himself from a panic. But he was smiling his most brilliant, dazzling smile.
He was holding their baby in his arms. It was naked, tiny and fragile. Sakura identified it immediately as a girl.
Then its head fell off its shoulders.
It landed with a soft, unassuming plop on Sakura's naked stomach. Its eyes were closed shut and its cheekbones were fat and plump, like a soft, squishy toy. The rest of the body, which Syaoran still held tightly in his arms, was nothing but a bloody mess of limp flesh.
Sakura screamed. She swiped her hand across her stomach and knocked her decapitated daughter's head off her body in one motion. The head skidded across the floor, landing by her father's feet.
No one said anything for a moment. Nadeshiko was nothing but a crumpled, lifeless body on the floor. Touya and Fujitaka stared at the baby's head blankly, because the horror had not yet struck them.
And with exquisite tenderness, Syaoran took hold of Sakura's sweaty, limp hand and began to cry tears of joy.
"You're safe, Sakura…! I'm glad, I'm so glad! We can be together now! We'll remember that feeling now!"
Sakura fainted then; the overpowering stench of her blood and the baby's was simply too much for her to handle.
While we drift inside the darkness
Like innocent little birds, we huddled our wings together
You, who hide behind your smile when you're lonely
Are a blade of unmelting ice
I bare my heart and embrace you
I'm by your side
Forever…
"… Why?" she should have asked, her voice cracking and her heart thumping in trepidation.
He would be wracked in grief by then, and nothing would be the same. He would be nothing but a caricature of a man, and like a broken record he would repeat for her the final resolve of his. He would make her live because that was their price now. Time had run out and still it progressed.
"But why?" she should have asked him again.
And now that emotion would flood into his eyes, the one that spoke of endings and beginnings, of things that had bloomed and things that would wither. It spoke of the feeling that had been erased without a murmur, never to be acknowledged again except with bittersweet fondness.
"Because I love you," he would say.
fin
Afterword: … the fuck did I just write?
Well, seriously speaking, though, I can't really call this fic anything particularly new for me because all the elements in it are things I've written before. It's not my first AU, nor is it my first story with horror themes, nor is it my first lemon. But this is definitely the most mature story I've written and will probably remain that way for a while. I will say I definitely felt squeamish writing this, particularly with the penultimate scene.
In terms of inspiration, I'd have to credit Stephen King for being a boss, although the actual horror part of this fic was original. You might find this surprising given his treatment in the story, but I actually do like Syaoran. The SyaoSaku pairing, though, comes across as a bit too romanticised to me, so while I did feel quite guilty writing a teenage pregnancy plot for them, it was the direction I wanted to take their relationship. I wanted to touch on this idea of obsessive, blind young love and the theme of lost time and innocence. That being said, I did try my best to keep both characters in-character, while twisting them to suit the darker elements of the plot. Obviously, these are themes the original series never explored to much depth, so simply having the scenario there was going to skew the characters. So rather than go for a sweet, fluffy or even an angsty piece, I wrote this story with the intention of shock value in mind. Honestly speaking, it's not really my favourite story and nor would I expect it to be yours, but it's something new from the other fanfics that focus on relationships. I hope you can appreciate it through that light, at least.
For those who have me on alert, my next fic will definitely be much lighter fare. Look forward to it!
Edit (17/09/11): In the end, I decided to go against my earlier logic and separate the chapters for no better reason besides I look more accomplished with completed chaptered fics under my belt. Pffffft.
