A/N: It's been FOREVER since I updated, I know. I blame writer's block, even though I've had this chapter in my head for a long time now. But recent events in my life influenced parts of the chapter. Ugh, don't you just hate it when your personal life intrudes on your writing? Anyway, I apologize to the sweet reviewers who encouraged me to update... gomen!

I'll save the rest of my A/N for the end. This one's for all of you nice reviewers out there, particularly BradTrinity666 and Manga-Greed. Without further ado, I present Chapter 9.

"You guys sure took your time," Eriol said, slipping an arm around Tomoyo

"Long line," she explained, licking her ice cream. Syaoran couldn't hide a smile. Her cellphone began ringing—was that the song that she had sung at her last concert? He smiled at the memory that her ringtone evoked of Tomoyo standing in her long, flowing gown made in the Chinese style, the Li clan charm around her neck—her only ornament—a beautiful picture, her voice filling the hall with a haunting love song. Her voice had held everyone spellbound.

Especially him. Especially when her amethyst eyes had frozen on him, unable to tear away, although no one else seemed to realize that their gazes had locked (a lot of people actually assumed she was staring at Eriol, who was sitting right next to him). It felt as though those eyes would never leave his. Not that he wanted them to.

"Sorry, guys," she said, moving away slightly. "Excuse me a sec, will you? Moshimoshi?"

Then her brow furrowed. "Hello, mother. I didn't know you were coming home... you should have called me earlier." Then she gasped, and a strange succession of emotions flitted across her face—shock, horror, and then grim defiance. "You saw my acceptance letter? When?"

Eriol was completely mystified when he saw Syaoran go rigid when he heard those words. Tomoyo hurriedly covered the mouthpiece of her phone. "Um, excuse me for a moment, you guys," she apologized. "I think that you three had better go on without me. I really have to talk to my mother right now, and it seems as though… as though it might take a while."

She held eye contact with Syaoran and he nodded in understanding, taking Sakura's arm. "I'm going to take Sakura home now," he said softly. "Touya will kill me anyway for letting her stay out so late." He led her away, but not without sending Tomoyo a last, anxious glance over his shoulder.

I'm all right, her eyes said (unconvincingly).

I'm here if you need me, Tomoyo.

Indecision played on her features before she shook her head slightly. "I'm fine," she whispered.

He blanched and disbelief etched itself all over his face, and he seemed torn between walking away with Sakura and running back to her side, but she shook her head almost imperceptibly. What I need you to do is go—get Sakura away. I need to handle this without her knowing…

I understand.

Eriol, however, was not to be deterred—not the he really knew what was going on anyway. "Tomoyo?" he asked her gently.

"Not now, Eriol," she said emphatically, walking away to relative privacy under the trees away from the crowd. He followed her. He reasoned that it was what a good boyfriend would do anyway—disregard her wishes if it was for her own good. She needed moral support, even if he wasn't exactly sure what he was supporting. She gave him a look which he blandly ignored, so she pretended that he wasn't there.

"Yes, I did apply. I…" Her frustration was beginning to become evident. "No, I wasn't hiding it from you! I meant to tell you later on."

What was she talking about? When he looked into her eyes he desperately wished that he could drown in her emotions. But it was more like falling into a vacuum with the emptiness crushing him. Clow Reed—well, to hell with that. He wasn't like that. Clow Reed would have known what to do and what she was thinking and whatever the hell Tomoyo was fighting about with her mother.

Frustrated, his magical energy welled up inside of him, summoned unconsciously by his emotions as Tomoyo spoke to Sonomi in a tightly contained voice.

She bit her lip. "Mother, please. This is something that I really want and—no. No! Can we talk about this later? It isn't about him. That picture—he…" She couldn't believe it. Her own mother had just broken into her drawer and found that picture of Syaoran, found the letter from him. She couldn't believe that her mother had the nerve to drag Syaoran's name into the whole affair. It wasn't like Syaoran had done anything. It had all been her decision.

Tomoyo looked close to tears, but when she saw him watching her, she turned her back on him. "Mother, how dare you even suggest that?" She tried to avoid Eriol's gaze, but evading it soon became impossible. Instead, she resorted to the usual wall that she put up, placing it like a shield between them, and her eyes were blank and meaningless. He couldn't tell at all what was going on or what she was even feeling. Not anymore.

Eriol watched her emotionless face, knowing that underneath it all was another flesh-and-blood human who knew how to feel. He was sick with the longing to know what was going on. He couldn't help her unless he knew. With that last thought inside his head, he felt himself growing tired from holding his powers in check. They burst through, tendrils of magic emanating from him and to Tomoyo.

"Mother, I—"

She stiffened in mid-sentence, and she stared frozen at him. "Eriol? Eriol, what are you doing?"

He didn't answer her, his eyes transfixed on a point just above her shoulder. He could feel resistance, as though her mind was trying to push away from his; but it wasn't like she had any magic. He could read the frustration that was floating foremost in her mind—anger at her mother for being neglected. He could see how Tomoyo hated being 'another Nadeshiko'—someone whom Tomoyo felt she could never measure up to; how Tomoyo had cried the night before her birthday because Sonomi hadn't even bothered to come, even though she'd promised to arrive that evening; how Tomoyo wanted to break away and take up music in college but Sonomi insisted that she take a business course.

She'd never said anything, not once.

And then he could see one thought clear in her mind: How dare you.

Before he realized his mistake and pulled away, he was pushed out of her head by another force, so strong that it sent him reeling. But Tomoyo doesn't have any magic, he thought, dazed with the brutal intensity of the retaliation—and this was a power beyond anything that Sakura—or even he—had. Tomoyo's eyes blazed with fury as she snapped her cellphone shut, ignoring the fact that her mother was demanding to know what had just happened.

Her hand flew out and slapped him.

Numb, he felt nothing as the ring that he had given her scratched across his face, leaving a long red mark that Tomoyo, blinded with rage, couldn't see. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered how she'd even felt his intrusion, much more been able to somehow block him. She didn't have magic… And even if she did, no one but Sakura should have been able to resist his power. But this dim question went largely ignored as she stared at him, clearly wishing for his death. She was clutching at a charm around her neck, breathing hard as her fingers curled around it.

"I can't believe you just did that!"

The words were worse than the slap.

"Tomoyo, I'm sorry, I just lost control—"

Furious tears were building up in her eyes. "No! How much did you see?" Had he seen what a monster she was? Had he seen that it had all been a farce?

He probably hated her, but at the moment she didn't really care. Damn him! She had never wanted him to know. If had, she would have told him. Didn't he understand that? She tried to tip her head back, to prevent her tears from spilling over. But they already had, and she couldn't stop them.

Those thoughts were hers, to be shared only when she wanted them to be, a gift that she gave only when she saw fit to do so. But not anymore.

"I only wanted to help," he muttered pathetically, dying inside.

"You wanted to help?" she repeated incredulously. "So you took what was mine? You as good as raped me, Eriol!"

Shocked, he could only stare at her.

"What gave you the right?"

"But I didn't mean to—"

"Don't try to justify yourself! I wish I was dead. I wish you were dead."

"Tomoyo—!"

But she was already gone.

Hearts from Aries

"Listen to this next track," Meiling suggested to him when she noticed that he liked it so far (or at least he hadn't offered his usual 'constructive' criticism, as he liked to refer to it; most other people would call it unnecessary torture). "I guarantee that you'll love it. What do you think about her other songs?"

His brow was furrowed in concentration. "It's… it's very powerful," he said slowly. "She sings with a lot more passion than most other singers. That's good, I guess." But it reminds me too much of someone else. Why…? She never… never sang like that… except…

There was another person out there who sang in the same way, her voice melting into the words as though her life depended in letting them out. And he had watched her with his heart in his throat as her song wrapped around him, circling him much in the same way his magical charm circled her neck.

Meiling smiled brightly. "Yes, she does. And they say that her technical skill is really good—she has a lot of power in her higher notes, did you notice?"

"Mmph," he said, noncommittal as she pressed the button and started another Chinese love song revival, one resurrected from ancient melodies that spoke of his childhood. He listened wistfully to the words. It had been his secret favorite when he was younger, if only because it had lovely harmony. He never admitted to his sisters (or to Meiling) that he had felt the lyrics to be hopelessly romantic. It just would have been weird to make such a statement to them.

They would have called him gay.

He winced, thinking about it. There were better things to think of.

And the thought that came to mind, while not necessarily better, was more important to him. His eyes flew open and he whirled around to face Meiling.

"Xiao Long. Tell me when you met her." he demanded.

"What?" she said, looking surprised. "Uh… that was… a few years back. She enrolled in Hong Kong at the same college as I did." She cowered a little under his intense stare. Oh boy—if anyone saw her like this, they would laugh. Ice Queen Li Meiling, scared? The girl who reportedly had the blood of snakes flowing through her veins?

They would never believe it.

"And what course did she take in college?"

Meiling's mouth opened and then closed.

"Music, right?"

"Yeah, of course—she's a singer, after all," Meiling said evasively.

"And by the way, is she the same singer who ran out on a boy who loved her like a fool many, many years ago, that night when…"

A strange light flickered in Meiling's eyes. "Yes, Syaoran. She's the same singer who cried herself to sleep for an entire year and only stopped because she knew she was keeping me from sleeping properly—and even then, I can sometimes hear her in the bathroom at midnight, saying your name. And you know what? It kills me. And it's killing her, and it's killing you, and it's a miracle that we aren't all already dead because it took you forever to realize that she was right there in front of you."

"She's Tomoyo."

"Yeah. Yeah, she is," Meiling said, not looking quite displeased although still a little frightened (and you would be too, if Li Syaoran faced you with that expression on his face). She looked, if anything, irritated and a little impatient, with a 'thank-God-you-finally-got-with-the-program' sort of look plastered on. "And I was wondering how long it would take you to find out. I thought that you would recognize her on the spot, actually—but then, it's been four years..."

"Don't remind me," he said heavily. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"She asked me not to. She only came because I begged her to do it—but she told me that it was up to you to recognize her at all. I've been so concerned, Syaoran… you haven't been—"

He cut her off abruptly. "What happened to her, after…?"

"She came to Hong Kong, naturally," Meiling answered briskly, her voice blending with that of the song playing in the background. His old favorite. He had told Tomoyo that he had liked it once. And she'd never forgotten. "She had all her money transferred to a different bank account under another name and managed it so well that her mother wasn't able to find out what happened—she had some help, though, Auntie gave her a hand with that, and you know how much weight the Li name carries. She bought a ticket and then flew over. Your sisters were very kind to her while she was here."

"You lied to me! You said that she wasn't there," he said furiously. "Even mother lied to me when I asked her—"

"You asked us whether Daidouji Tomoyo was there," Meiling said. "There wasn't anyone by that name. Only Lin Xiao Long, the music student. Do you know what she told me?" Her voice was bitter. "She said that Tomoyo was dead—and that she hoped that you would forget that she ever existed. She loved you, Syaoran, even though…"

"Even though she left." He shook his head. "Even though she wouldn't even let me know that it was her until I found out for myself."

His cousin flared up at him with those words. "And did you, Syaoran? Did you know that it was her? You keep going on and on about how much you love her, how you can't forget her—and now that she was right in front of you, you didn't even recognize her!"

"You don't understand," he said softly. "It was like… I hadn't wanted it to be her. Because she left me, and I thought that was the end of my world. You just don't get it, Meiling. It hurt beyond anything. I've done nothing to deserve to get her back."

"You did nothing to deserve having her leave you like that," Meiling snapped back. "But you will deserve getting a punch in the face courtesy of yours truly if you don't run over to her and get on your knees and finally let the two of you stop being miserable." Her tone softened. "Look, Syaoran. She may not act like it, but she's been hurting all this time too. And she's never forgotten you. Those songs were all for you. She's never dated—like a certain someone I know. Not since what happened. Even the name was for you, idiot. Xiao Long. She said that it was because of a shirt that you were wearing that night."

"The dragon," he said, his eyes widening. "Meiling, I—"

"Just go!" she snapped, pushing him out the door. She heard the thud of his footfalls dashing towards Xiao Long's—no, Tomoyo's—room, and she felt her heart break. She had never forgotten him either, but by now she had realized that she wasn't his destiny.

But Tomoyo was.

Hearts from Aries

Syaoran was already home in the space of the time it had taken Tomoyo to slap Eriol, scream at him, and then run away. He had just been about to change into his favorite pair of blue-and-white striped pajamas when he felt strong, familiar magic being released, including a trace of his own—the charm. "Tomoyo," he muttered, and then wrenched the door open and ran out to look for her. The charm wouldn't have activated unless someone had attacked Tomoyo.

Turning around the corner, he didn't see the sorry-looking girl who approached his apartment door and rang the doorbell.

She rang it eight times (she counted, and so did Syaoran's irate neighbors who yelled unprintable things at her). He has to be home. He… he said that he would be here for me if I needed him…

Stupid, he didn't say anything. You just thought… or maybe wished…

"Must be a lover's quarrel," one woman said. Apparently the housewives didn't have enough to do and delighted in gossiping about the teenage boy living on his own nearby—and the vision of loveliness standing at his doorway was fair game for their speculation. "Although I've seen that boy a lot with Kinomoto's daughter, always off by themselves in his rooms. Honestly, kids today. They're so loose."

At that remark, Tomoyo turned to face her with a look on her face that made the other woman shrink back; it was regal, dignified, and spoke of her queenly breeding despite the humiliated redness of her cheeks. Finally, after waiting for what seemed a lifetime, she started up the stairs towards the roof, trying to ignore the disapproving whispers from Syaoran's gossipy neighbors from behind her.

Around the parks of Tomoeda, Li Syaoran was muttering darkly in extremely colorful and inventive language that made passers-by shrink away from him as he raced down the streets. Finally he stopped for air and frowned.

Think, Li Xiao Lang. Start using your head instead of your feet for once. Where would she go if she was in trouble…?

To you, dimwit.

He ran back, and nearly collided with the nosy Sasahara-san, his annoying neighbor whom—although he didn't know it at the time—was the one who had made the comment which made Tomoyo's cheeks burn with shame just moments earlier. "Li-san, there was some girl hanging around your apartment just a moment ago," she said, turning her nose up. "Did you know her? Blackish-purple hair, big violet eyes. Wearing violet robes or some other fancy costume, obviously from the festival. I think she went up to the roof."

"Hae, thank you," he said before speeding past her.

"How rude!" Sasahara-san said audibly. He let the comment slide as he mounted the stairs and found Tomoyo standing near the edge, looking forlornly down at the suffused glow of the lights of Tomoeda. On a whim, she pulled out her phone. Twelve missed calls, forty-two text messages, and the phone started ringing again a split second after she registered all of those.

Sorry, mother.

With a sigh, she threw it off the roof, smiling brokenly as her ears strained to hear the odd sound of metal against pavement and wondered whether she would have the courage to follow it with her own descent. She could already envision her form, a black-haired girl in a shroud of purple. She had no illusions of the ugliness of it; no, she was pretty, and she knew that herself. She would seem to fly, just for a moment, perfectly hanging from puppet strings. But those strings would be cut the moment she stepped off. That would be a lovely way to end it, she supposed; and she could envision a picturesque image of a broken doll lying on the street, half-lit by the apartment and road's lights with a pool of blood forming underneath her. Picturesque and tragic.

"Don't stand so close to the edge."

And with those words she simply turned around and walked away from the night she had wanted to be enveloped in. That voice. That single sentence. Just hearing them… she couldn't go through with it.

She looked miserable; the careful knot that she had arranged earlier with flowers lay in tumbledown curls around her face, which was streaked with tears. Wordlessly, she let him put his arms around her and cried on his shoulder.

"I'm so stupid," she said, over and over again. "I hate myself. I wish… I wish I was dead."

"It's all right, Tomoyo," he whispered in her ear. "Don't die. I don't want you to ever be taken away." Then he went completely out of his head. "I love you."

She stared up at him, her purple eyes widening. The next thing he knew, they were kissing; her lips tasted like tears and strawberry ice cream. There was a desperation in her that he had never felt in Sakura, but he didn't think it at the time. In fact, he wasn't thinking of Sakura at all. All he was aware of was this girl, in his arms, who had been hurt so badly—

—and whom he already admitted to loving.

He held onto her for what seemed like an eternity until finally, without even letting one syllable drop from their mouths, they both started down the stairs.

"Kids," he heard Sasahara -san sniff with disdain as they passed by her, hand in hand and unsure of what they were doing, but ready to do it anyway. But at that moment, as they went into his room and kicked the door shut, he really didn't care.

Hearts from Aries

"Has it ever occurred to you that you've never tried to love anyone other than him?"

Tomoyo sighed, looking away from Eriol's eyes peering at her through the webcam. "Eriol, we've argued about this how many times now? Six… hundred?"

"Don't exaggerate," he said, his voice brittle as shale.

"I tried, Eriol, I swear that I did. I became your girlfriend, didn't I? Not that that was a hardship, of course," she added hastily. "You were a great boyfriend. Any sane girl would have loved you."

"Did you?"

She hesitated. "Do you want me to tell you the truth?"

He swallowed hard. "Yes. Yes, I do. I don't want any more lies." He could see the pain that he'd inflicted by reminding her of all the falsehoods and half-truths that she'd left between them, and he wished that he could take the words back. But another part of him—stung by the thought that even after four years of him still going after her, she was there, in New York, after his cute little descendant once again—kept the sorry side of him quiet.

"You don't want to hear it," she warned him.

"So you didn't?"

"That wasn't what I said. But I'm telling you now—you don't want to hear it."

He lifted his chin defiantly. "Try me."

"Then yes, I did. I still do," she said softly. "There were many, many times when I felt that I should just give up on Xiao Lang and fall completely for you. I could see what kind of future we would have had, if I had pulled out then and there, before he and I got in too deep with each other. And that future… it would have been very happy. I already knew it. And I wanted it." She stopped at the expression on his face and twisted her hands in her lap. "I told you that you didn't want to hear it."

"You wanted it," he stated.

She nodded. "Badly." Who wouldn't snatch at that sort of chance for love, when you were as starved of it as she was? And Eriol—Eriol loved her, with stability and kindness and genuine adoration, with all the fun and laughter and sweetness that anyone could have asked for.

"But you wanted him more."

There was a moment of silence.

"That's true."

"You never really tried, Tomoyo," he muttered. "All the times you were with me, can you honestly say that he wasn't always there, lurking in the back of your head? Can you say that each time you looked at me, you weren't thinking of him instead?"

"Yes. Yes, I can. Not every time—it happened a lot more than it should have," she admitted. "But don't even think for a moment that it had something to do with you, Eriol. You would have been enough. More than enough. And I did love you—do." She bit her lip and sighed. "But who can explain the course a heart chooses to take? There's no more reason for it than the path of a leaf fluttering down from the tree."

"If it doesn't work out over there…" Eriol hinted.

She blinked and smiled at him with wary eyes. "Yes?"

"You always have a place here. You know that, right?" He sighed. "As… friends, even. Like we are now."

"I know," she said, her lips curving upwards in a wistful little smile. "I don't think Sakura-chan would be too happy about my presence there, though, if I did choose to go back."

"I rather think she misses you terribly."

"Oh great. She misses me, so when we see each other, she'll hug me, and then pull out a knife—"

"Don't even joke about it."

She shrugged. "I don't expect her to love me."

"You didn't expect anyone to love you," he muttered.

Hearts from Aries

"Sakura. Open up!"

She jolted awake in her bed, rubbing the drowsiness out of her eyes. She was a bit irritable at being woken up just half an hour after she'd managed to doze off. "Who…?" At her side, Kero immediately morphed into his true form, baring fangs just waiting to attack whoever it was tapping on her window. She closed her eyes and detected a familiar aura. "Uh, Eriol? Is that you?"

"No, this is some ghost of a mad axe murderer just waiting to have a couple of swings at that pretty little head of yours."

"What?" she yelped, diving back under the covers.

"That's Eriol, all right," Kero grumbled, turning back into his false form and opening the window for him. Eriol vaulted inside.

Had Sakura seen Tomoyo earlier, she would have said that she couldn't judge which of the two of them looked worse. Both of them normally looked impeccable, so that only highlighted how horrible Eriol looked now. Where Tomoyo had looked like a pear blossom crushed underfoot, Eriol looked like a wounded lion, all the pride bleeding out of him in pain.

"Please help me, Sakura. I've been looking for Tomoyo everywhere. Sonomi-san is furious too—she didn't come home tonight. And her cellphone's dead. I don't know where she could have gone, and for some reason I can't sense her aura at all. I thought that she could be here with you…"

"What?" Sakura repeated, even more loudly this time.

Eriol winced. "You'll wake up your father and brother."

The Mistress of the Cards looked too distressed to listen properly to him. Perhaps, in retrospect, it hadn't been such a good idea calling on Sakura for help. While she was pretty handy as a search party, she wasn't exactly someone who handled panic and pressure well. "But this is important! What did Aunt Sonomi say? Does this have anything to do with that call from earlier?"

"Ikindofreadhermindwithoutmeaningtoandnowshereallyhatesme."

This took half a second to process in her still groggy mind. But when she finally got it, it had the effect of extremely black coffee to her consciousness. "You what?" she screamed. Now he ducked for cover as the 'Wrath of Sakura', which Touya had told him about many, many times (and those accounts, already gruesome, paled considerably compared to the real thing), turned on him.

"Well, no wonder she ran away! Tomoyo's always been sensitive about hiding her thoughts from other people!" So she had noticed after all. She had just chosen to gloss over it, believing it to be something of little consequence, believing that it was already an inherent part of Tomoyo.

"I didn't mean to!" he wailed. He looked so woebegone that she felt her fury ebbing away despite herself. She could hate him later, when they found Tomoyo and she assessed the damage he had done to her best friend.

Touya came banging in her door. "What's with all the noise, kaijuu—what the hell do you think you're doing, having him over here in the dead of night?" he roared when he caught sight of Eriol, his brotherly instincts kicking in immediately. Eriol saw Yue's false form behind him, Tsukihiro Yukito.

"We need your help," Sakura said. "Tomoyo's missing."

Touya's rant stopped abruptly. He looked suspiciously at Eriol, who didn't seem to be lying. "Kid, we need details first."

Half an hour later had the story out of Eriol as they sat around the kitchen table. Yue, now in his magical guardian form, looked compassionately down at him—it was compassion that Eriol felt that he didn't deserve at all.

He was a creep.

"So let me get this straight," Touya said dangerously. "You pried into her mind while she was dealing with her mother about a college application, under extreme stress and after she specifically asked you to leave her alone?" Eriol remembered at the last minute how Tomoyo had mentioned (in one of her rare moments of opening up to him) that she and Touya had always been fond of each other, bonded by their being protective of Sakura and because he watched over her along as her older cousin. "Do you have any idea how intensely stupid that was?"

"I told you, I just lost control!" he defended himself. "Look, I'm sorry, and I want to tell Tomoyo that, and I will when I find her… but first I just want to make sure she's safe right now."

"Tomoyo's vulnerable right now," Kero said anxiously. "All it takes is an invitation from someone… a place to crash for the night…"

Yue looked calmly at them. "You mentioned magic, Hiragizawa-san. Think. You are not Clow Reed's reincarnation for nothing. If not from you, and not from Mistress Sakura—and I'm presuming this because she has shown no sign of recognition at that part of your story—where could she have gotten it? Did it feel familiar?"

Eriol's brow knit. "Yes… somewhat." He hesitated. "It felt… like I was battling part of myself, and yet more than myself." He sighed ruefully, trying to make sense of it. Then comprehension began to dawn in his eyes.

Yue nodded as he registered the sudden realizations flickering in Eriol's head. "Daidouji Tomoyo may be vulnerable, but she isn't a fool. She's too smart to fall for anything of the sort, Cerberus. If you ask me, she would have gone to someone familiar—someone whom she could rely on not to contact any of us, because she must have known that it would slip to Hiragizawa-san. There is one person who, firstly, can be trusted to be quiet no matter what, secondly, trusted to keep his word when he gives it, and thirdly, hates you very much."

They looked at each other. "Li Syaoran."

A/N: cue scary, horror-ish music here I'm sorry for leaving all of you on a cliffhanger like that! But I swear that if I get enough reviews, I'll post the next chapter ASAP. I expect it to be a little longer than this one and may be the actual end for this story. So please, if you like it, review. If you don't like it, well, you can review anyway and tell me what you think is wrong with it. Thanks for reading this far! I hope to hear all your reactions.