Chapter 8.- Explanations.
Finally Tomoyo couldn't resist. She fainted. Eriol caught her just in time.
Everyone had to close their eyes because the light was so bright it hurt.
A second later everything was back to normal, or so it seemed. No one moved a muscle in a couple of seconds, until…
"Arg…" a voice growled.
Slowly Shaoran sat on the bed, looking perfectly fine except for the fact that his clothes were still covered in blood, although all his wounds had disappeared.
"What happe..?" he started asking.
When suddenly he noticed the figure lying on the floor, next to his bed, and still holding a certain staff tightly in her hand.
"Oh my god…" Shaoran couldn't believe it. And just then he noticed she was pale, cold, and her aura weaker than ever. "Sakura!"
He jumped out of bed, carried Sakura and laid her in another bed (a clean one).
He was about to ask for explanations when suddenly the window opened and there entered Kero, Yukito and Daeron, who had to climb up a tree because they couldn't turn to their true forms.
"What the hell happened here?!" Daeron yelled, deadly worried.
"What have you done to Sakura gaki?!" Kero yelled at the same time to Shaoran.
Yukito stayed in silence.
"It…was…not h…not his fa…fault…Kero." Tomoyo murmured breathing heavily and with her eyes half opened.
"Tomoyo!" Daeron said.
Eriol slowly stood up, supporting Tomoyo.
"Shaoran was almost killed by that Wizard Mier." Tomoyo explained. "His wounds were too bad for them to be healed by common medicine, or even common magic. So she had to use the Heal Card, with all her energies."
"Heal Card?" Eriol asked. "That Card doesn't exist."
"It does now." Tomoyo replied. "Sakura created it about four years ago."
"You mean she used all her energies, knowing she hadn't fully recovered from her last duel?" Yukito asked.
Tomoyo just nodded.
"She's crazy…" Kero started.
"In love." Tomoyo finished, so low only Eriol heard her.
Kero was about to say something else against Shaoran when he noticed something.
"Don't, Kero." Sakura murmured breathing deeply, slowly recovering her energies.
"Sakura!" Kero and Daeron yelled at once.
"Are you alright?" Daeron asked.
"Yes, a little tired that's all. Don't worry for me." Sakura insisted, slowly sitting down.
"It was all that gaki's…" Kero started.
"No, Kero." Sakura interrupted him. "It wasn't Shaoran's fault. It was I who decided to do this. He didn't even know I was here."
"That's true, and even you know it Kerberos." Yue stepped in.
"But Sakura, you were already very weak!" Kero insisted. He turned to Tomoyo. "You should have stopped her, instead of getting in too!"
"You know it would have been impossible to stop her Kero." Tomoyo said slowly standing up, with still a little help from Eriol. "She's persistent, and would never refuse to help someone in need, less of all the certain someone we are talking about. Second, I prefer ten times to help her, than to just step aside and let her risk herself, alone."
"And you preferred to risk yourself too?" Daeron asked. "Tomoyo, you could have gotten hurt."
Eriol was taken aback by this. Why did this man, whoever he was, worry so much about Tomoyo?
"I know fully well I don't posses magic of my own Daeron." Tomoyo said calmly. "But still Sakura gave me this ring, and taught me to use it, when that happened I swore if she ever needed help I would come to her aid, and so I did."
Daeron mumbled something unintelligible, probably in his own language.
"Why didn't you two tell me you were here?" Shaoran asked the question that had been eating his mind since he had seen Sakura in the floor.
"We thought it could be like a payback." Sakura finally said, after a few seconds of awkward silence.
"A pay…" Shaoran started, confused.
"It's been seven years, and you never communicated, not even once. I feared you had forgotten me, or married someone else." Sakura finally let all her feelings out. "Although each time I saw that teddy-bear you gave me, and remembered that promise we made, of being together, I told myself you would keep it no matter what. That you were incapable of lying to me…of leaving me all alone."
"And that's right." Shaoran said taking both of Sakura's hands between his. "I won't ever lie to you. I know it was my fault not to visit you before but…"
"Don't say anything." Sakura said.
"Please, forgive me." Shaoran insisted.
"It doesn't matter now. We're together. That is what matters." Sakura said sweetly. "That I saw you again."
"I should have never left you." Shaoran said with a hand on her cheek. "I repeated that to myself day and night. I should have gone against the Elders, tell them I preferred ten times to stay by the side of the one I love than to become the Clan Leader."
"You would have deceived your mother." Sakura said looking at Yelan from the corner of the eye. "And I don't think you would want that."
"I would do anything to be with you." Shaoran said with the other hand on her waist.
"We're together now, that's all that matters." Sakura said again, hugging him.
"When I was dying…I heard a voice calling me, I could feel the force of a precious soul yelling at me not to leave her alone. That she loved me too much to loose me." Shaoran spoke that in a really low voice, just so that Sakura could hear him.
"I said that." Sakura said blushing. "And I won't take it back. I love you."
"I love you too." Shaoran replied, a smile appearing in his already handsome face. "Now and forever."
Yelan couldn't believe her eyes, her son was smiling! She had never seen him smile, she thought it impossible.
And what came next was beyond all her dreams.
Neither Shaoran, nor Sakura cared at all that they weren't alone. That they were being seen by certain some ones that would bother them with this later (I mean of course Tomoyo, Eriol, Tomoyo, Kero, Tomoyo and…did I say Tomoyo?).
Shaoran couldn't stop himself. He knew his mother was there, but in that moment he couldn't have cared less. He kissed Sakura right then and there.
Sakura was shocked at first. But she immediately answered to the kiss with all her desire. It had been too long since the last time she had felt Shaoran's lips over hers.
Even Eriol was wide-eyed now. He never imagined Shaoran would do something like that kiss, in front of his own mother! Not to count Sakura's guardians…
The young lovers had to break the kiss to breathe again.
Sakura was blushing a bright shade of red, but anyway she had liked that kiss very much.
"You gak…" Kero started.
"Not now Kero." Sakura stopped him right in time.
"Would anyone care to explain what's going on here?" One of the doctors finally asked, the rest where still shocked.
"Excuse me." Sakura said giving a step forward and bowing to them.
"Sorceress Cherry." The doctor said with authority. "If you would please explain why you appeared here so suddenly, interrupted us, and then did that magic without authorization."
"She just saved Li! How can you complain about that?!" Tomoyo exclaimed defensively.
"It's okay Tomoyo, don't worry." Sakura said calmly. She turned to the doctors. "Excuse me for interrupting you, but a birdie told me that I had to take this certain business in my own hands."
"And how could you know you would be able to do what none of my doctors could?" the eldest of the doctors asked, he seemed mad because he had been expecting to save the Chinese young man and receive a reward from Mrs. Li.
"I have my ways of knowing things." Sakura said imitating Eriol's style when he wanted to keep something in secret. "As I already said, I'm deeply sorry for the interruption, but the situation was an emergency, there was no time for introductions." She made a pause. "But if you still wish to know who I am…My name is Kinomoto Sakura, I'm Japanese, and they know me as the Card Mistress."
With these words Kero and Yukito turned to their true forms in both sides of their Mistress.
"The Card Mis…" the doctor repeated. Then he realized what he had just heard. "What?!"
The rest of the doctors and nurses where as shocked and wide-eyed as he was.
"Now you'll probably give her the respect she deserves." Tomoyo said with her arms crossed.
The doctors immediately bowed and repeated a thousand apologies to Sakura.
"Don't worry." Sakura said with her sweet smile. "There's nothing to forgive."
"But there's a lot to thank you for Mistress Sakura." Yelan said stepping toward her. "Thank you for saving my son's life." She did a deep bow.
Everyone in the room where taken aback by this. They had never (and I mean NEVER) seen Yelan Li bowing, and to a girl!
"Please, don't." Sakura said bowing even lower than Yelan. "There's nothing to thank, what I did was because I care deeply for Shaoran. I really do."
Yelan smiled at her and nodded, straightening up.
"And please, call me Sakura." Sakura added with her usual smile. "It's been long since the last time we saw each other, but I'm still that young girl you met in Hong Kong: clumsy, easily embarrassed, and unpunctual for almost anything."
"And pretty, and friendly, sweet, caring, forgiving, and the best person I've ever known." Shaoran said hugging her from behind.
Sakura blushed slightly but returned the hug.
Just then the door opened abruptly.
"We felt magic and…" Nakuru started, but was interrupted.
"Shaoran! You're…" Meiling started yelling when she saw her cousin, but then interrupted herself in mid-sentence, she had just noticed the certain-someone her cousin was embracing. "Kinomoto?!"
"Hello Meiling, glad to see you again too." Sakura said smiling.
"Yeah." Tomoyo nodded.
"Daidouji?!" Meiling exclaimed, still in shock. "How…?"
"Get in the line, I got here first." Eriol said.
Tomoyo, as well as the rest in the room, turned their attention to him.
"I still wish to know how you got here." Eriol said.
"Sakura is the Mistress of the Cards, isn't that enough reason?" Daeron asked with a tone of sarcasm in his voice.
"What I wish to know mainly is how come I didn't notice their presence here." Eriol said.
"I was using the 'Mask' Card." Sakura answered.
"I don't remember that Card." Eriol murmured thoughtfully.
"That's because Clow didn't create it, I did." Sakura said.
And to prove that she moved her hand, the Sakura Cards she had created in the last seven years started floating in front of Eriol for him to see.
"Now you really surprised me Sakura." Eriol murmured.
"I thought I had already surprised you when I defeated you a while ago." Sakura said with a playful smile.
"And I was wondering why you had said 'Same trick won't work twice with me'. Now I get it." Eriol said remembering the duel.
"Almost every spell you used in our duel, you had used it when I changed the cards." Sakura said.
"Although in that time you needed your staff to get enough power to defeat me. Not anymore." Eriol said.
"I get really tired without my staff, I have to admit that." Sakura said. "But the idea was that you weren't going to find out who I really was, at least not until the last duel."
"And I have to admit it would have been interesting." Eriol said smiling.
"Yeah, I thought that too." Tomoyo said smiling. "You looked quite funny with that shocked expression when she defeated you."
Eriol was about to complain, but never did, he liked when Tomoyo was happy, and if making fun of him was the reason, then let it be. As long as he could see more smiles like that…All the opposite to what he had seen just a while ago when they were in the benches. When he had felt so attracted to that Violet but couldn't find a reason, now he knew the reason…he had always known it…
"That's a pretty ring, you know." Nakuru commented signaling to Tomoyo's Moon ring.
"Yeah, and it's very useful too." Tomoyo said
She moved swiftly the hand, the ring shone briefly and a light breeze moved her hair. It stopped suddenly and Tomoyo sighed.
"Are you alright Tomoyo?" Sakura asked worriedly.
"Perfectly fine." Tomoyo answered. "Just that it takes me longer than you to recover from energy drains."
"What energy drain?" Shaoran asked.
"Now that we get on the topic." Eriol stepped in. "Since a while ago I've been wondering about two things. The first one is that ring, I can feel something special about it. And the second is about Tomoyo's powers, if I remember well enough she didn't have magic the last time we met."
"I didn't." Tomoyo said. "And I still don't have, and least not magic of my own."
"I don't get it." Meiling murmured puzzled. "If she doesn't have magic, how did she do that with the wind?"
"That's because I 'borrow' the magic." Tomoyo explained.
This only made them get even more puzzled.
"I don't have magic of my own." Tomoyo explained. "I borrow it from Sakura."
With this everyone turned to look at Sakura, expecting further explanations.
"You see, some time ago there was an incident in which Tomoyo was in danger." Sakura started. "And after it happened I decided it would be good for Tomoyo to be able to take care of herself if something like that happened again. So I concentrated in my powers and created two magical objects, two magic rings."
"Magic rings?" Eriol asked.
"Yes." Sakura said. "There are two of them. The Moon ring, which Tomoyo posses, with it she can summon the magic of any Sakura Card related to the moon. And the second is the Sun ring, which hasn't gotten any possessor yet, with it a person can summon the magic of any Sakura Card related to the Sun."
"That's incredible Sakura." Shaoran complimented her.
"But if they're magical, wouldn't the possessor need magic to use them?" Yelan asked.
"No." Sakura said shaking her head. "I made the rings specifically to be used by non-magical people; for them to have a way to protect themselves."
"I don't understand how can someone use magic without them having it." Meiling said with arms crossed over her chest.
"It's very easy actually." Sakura said smiling. "Because they're borrowing my magic, but feeding it with their own energies. That's why they get energy drains like any magical-person." She made a pause. "The only thing that could complicate things is that the possessors of the rings won't be able to use them if I'm in an energy drain, because I have no magic to lend to them."
"Let me see." Eriol said taking Tomoyo's hand. "Quite ingenious if I say so myself." He turned to Sakura. "You really impress me Sakura. First you defeat me, you use great magic without your staff, then you heal Shaoran when no one else would have been able, then the new Cards, and now this."
"You said there was another ring." Yelan said looking at the moon ring.
"Yes," Sakura said. "The Sun ring. Tomoyo…"
"Yes." Tomoyo said reaching to her pocket. Suddenly her smile faded as she searched frantically in her dress. "It's not here….no…no this can't be."
"What?" The rest asked.
"I've lost the ring." Tomoyo answered ashamed.
I hope you all liked the reunions of our dear sorcerers, there are some things that still need to be worked out. I'm pretty sure everyone already knows what's happened with the Sun Ring, and if you don't, worry not for you'll be finding out in the next chapter. Until then!