Chapter Three
Even through the haze of painkillers, his nightmares continued to plague him.
He didn't always dream of the Other. Sometimes, his nightmares revolved around getting captured by Fei Wang Reed, and being imprisoned in that tube again. Other times, the nightmares involved one or all of their little band getting killed by various threats.
Once, he'd dreamed that Fai had come to murder him for all the damage he'd caused. He'd woken from that dream paralyzed with fear and unwilling to leave his room until the pain of his hunger drove him to the kitchen.
Tonight, he dreamed of Sakura.
She wore the pink and white gown she'd owned in Clow. When he first saw her, standing in front of the wing-shaped ruins, she was facing away from him, hood drawn up over her head. Uninhibited by the stresses of reality, he called out to her. "Don't stand so close to that. Those ruins aren't safe, Sakura."
She didn't turn. Her dress flapped in the wind, like a broken umbrella. He approached, knowing with the surreal certainty of dreams that if she moved any closer to the ruins, something awful would happen. As his footsteps echoed off the solid floor surrounding the ruins, her fingers curled up, nails pressing tight against the pale skin of her palms. Ignoring his warning, she took a step forward, toward the towering remnants of some lost civilization. He ran up to her, reaching out for her with his right hand.
When his fingers grazed the skin of her hand, they came away slick with blood. His eyes flashed down to the crimson fluid smeared across his fingertips. "Sakura!"
This time, she did turn. Her gown swung wide, obscuring her body even as she twisted toward him. When he finally caught sight of her, he recoiled. Blood ran down the left side of her face, sticking to her sunset-colored hair and holding it together in clumps. A crimson splotch stained the front of her shirt, barely concealed by the shifting folds of her gown. At the center of the red, a narrow slit in her dress revealed the deep gouge in her chest. He looked up to her face, face flushing red even under the dire circumstances.
One of her eyes had turned blue.
"Why did you do this to me, Syaoran?" she asked, her voice monotone, dead. "Why did you rip out my heart?"
"I never . . . Sakura, your eyes . . ."
"You took him away from me," she said, the barest hint of anger accenting her words. "You took him away, and now you want to take his place."
"Sakura, please . . ."
She blinked, eyes returning to their natural jade color. Syaoran would've thought the change would've been a relief, but the bleak emptiness he saw there chilled him more than the mismatched colors he'd seen a moment ago.
Very quietly, she said, "Never. I will never love you."
The world went black as the words echoed in his mind. Never.
Never.
The dull ache in his shoulder roused him from his unpleasant slumber. Confusion swept across his mind as he struggled to remember what had happened last night. It took him almost a minute to come to the obvious conclusion.
Stupid. What else could it have been from? he wondered, remembering how he'd ripped the dagger out of his shoulder. He laid still a moment longer before opening his eyes to the glaring lights above. The off-white ceiling tiles didn't belong in his bedroom, that much was certain. From the beeping machines, he deduced that this was a hospital room.
How long have I been here? he wondered, turning his head in search for a clock of some sort. The slow movement tugged at his wounds, pulling against the healing flesh and making him wince.
Looking at the clock did him little good. It said it was half past six, but there was no way to tell if that meant morning or evening. He tried to calculate what time it should be based on how long the surgery on his shoulder should've taken, but he didn't know what kind of medical care existed in this country, or how intensive the work on his injury had been compared to what they normally treated, so that didn't help.
He closed his eyes again, not to sleep, but to get away from the piercing glare of the ceiling lights. Ever since the nightmares had started, sleep had become more a chore than a reprieve. Being shunned should've made sleeping an escape, but compounded with the nightmares, and one bizarrely realistic dream of seeing his clone, finding the will to go to bed every night challenged him.
His daytime thoughts weren't much better, but at least he had some measure of control over them. Instead of dwelling on the negative, he thought about Sakura, before the events at Tokyo. Her smile, the way she fretted over every little injury . . . He remembered the time when she'd created a crown made of clovers and plopped it down on his head, smiling widely as only a child could.
Not your head, the logical part of his mind intruded. He fidgeted under the sheets. Not even your body. Not your memories. She gave that crown to the Other.
He pushed the thoughts away, trying to recall something else pleasant about her, even if it didn't involve him, exactly.
"I'm really glad you came to my birthday party, Syaoran-kun." she said, staring at her dessert spoon. A soft smile lit up her face, not quite the exuberant grin she usually favored him with, but still piercingly sweet. There was a definite fondness there, a sort of joy with roots buried much deeper than those of normal affection.
He smiled back, the expression still feeling strange to the muscles of his face. The princess had named this his birthday, too, since he hadn't had one when he'd arrived. He wondered if this sort of thing was what people always did at birthday parties. Just talking at the table and eating sweets with the promise of gifts following. Except for the last part, that seemed much the same as any other day at the castle.
Perhaps the spontaneous joy came from knowing one had reached a quantifiable milestone in their lives, a number to express how much one had matured since the previous year. Perhaps it was the storm of attention one received on this special day, making it a separate occurrence from the other three-hundred-some days of the year. Whatever it was, Syaoran was surprised to find how nice it felt to be part of this, to share the birthday with Princess Sakura.
Another thought intruded on his musings. "Never. I will never love you."
He winced, opening his eyes again. It was just a dream, he reminded himself. There's no reason to get so upset by it.
But as the thought took hold in his mind, he began to wonder. Yes, it was just a dream, but dreams were nothing more than subconscious manifestations of the inner self, projected onto a quickly forgotten screen within the mind. Some part of him knew she resented him for taking the Other away from her. Sakura was too kind a person to ever assert such a thing directly, but he remembered the way she'd turned away from him, and the subdued manner she acquired whenever she realized he was nearby.
"Never. I will never love you."
Through the Other's eyes, he'd watched Sakura grow older, watched her smile and laugh and, in rare moments, cry. He'd felt the Other grow fond of her, almost developing a heart as they spent time together. After a time, when his clone had grown used to smiling and learned to act almost normal, Syaoran had felt the Other start to love Sakura.
He did. Not me. So it shouldn't bother me, if she hates me, he reasoned. For the first couple weeks, that reasoning alone had been enough to keep whatever false stirrings of emotion he felt for her in check. He hadn't loved her, the Other had. It was not his place to feel that affection.
Except that he did. Why else retreat to memories of her? he wondered bitterly. Of course, there was a perfectly good reason for that: he didn't have many happy memories to dwell on during his stint as Fei Wang Reed's prisoner. It was natural for him to turn to the Other's memories, even if they didn't belong to him.
"Never. I will never love you."
"Damn it," he muttered. The thought was just a fragment of a dream, and yet it was inescapable. Why can't I forget this dream like all the rest?
The metal handle of the door moved, startling him out of his reverie. He looked up. A nurse wearing a pale blue gown stepped through the door, looking too young to be a graduate of medical school. Another figure followed her, clad in a black jacket and dark jeans. "Kurogane-san," he greeted the ninja as the nurse examined the monitor next to his bed.
"Morning. Feeling okay?"
The concern surprised him a little. Kurogane seemed to be the only member of the group, other than Mokona, who didn't blame him for the Tokyo disaster, so it shouldn't have surprised him to hear the concern in his voice. The question wasn't quite as warm as it might've been if it had been directed at the Other, but it was still more cordial than he had any right to expect. "I'm fine."
"Your vitals look normal," the nurse murmured, pulling back from the monitor and scribbling something on a clipboard. "If you want to go, I can remove the IV."
He glanced at Kurogane, looking for some sort of approval one way or the other. The ninja just shrugged. "I'd like to go," Syaoran said.
The nurse removed the IV, applying just a bit of pressure to the needle before pulling it out smoothly. She discarded it in a box labeled "biohazard", and unwrapped a small bandage to put over the puncture. Once that was done, she removed the rest of the monitoring equipment, and said, "You're free to go. Just make sure you sign out at the front desk."
"Thank you." He sat up, being careful not to jostle his bandaged shoulder too much.
Kurogane waited at the door until he regained his bearings. Syaoran hurried over, mind still a bit hazy from whatever drugs they'd given him during the surgery.
They headed down a floor to the receptionist's desk, where Kurogane signed some paperwork. The woman behind the counter thanked him, and they left.
"You've got all the kid's memories, don't you?" Kurogane asked as they walked through the double doors.
"Up until I showed up in Tokyo. The rest are all mine." Except for that dream a few nights ago, he thought, almost feeling the mismatched eyes crawl across the back of his neck.
"You know everything about him, then? Even things he's thought, but hasn't actually experienced?"
"Yes."
"But you're not him."
He bit his lip, wishing he could answer differently. "No. The person you've been traveling with isn't the same as me."
The ninja nodded, seeming absorbed in his own conjectures. After a moment, Syaoran plucked up the nerve to speak again.
"Is there a reason for the sudden curiosity?"
The dark-haired man was silent for long enough that Syaoran thought he wasn't going to answer. When they reached the apartment complex, Kurogane stopped. "There is a reason. I'm trying to figure out how much his personality carried over to yours, if it was identical, or if you two even had separate consciences."
"Oh. And your conclusions?"
"Nothing to be concerned about at this point. You're still going to fight for the princess's feathers, right?"
"Of course."
"Then there's no reason for us to hurt you."
Something about the words bothered him. It was almost as if there was another part of the sentence being left unsaid, a veiled threat under the reassuring message.
There's no reason for us to hurt you . . . So long as your existence doesn't jeopardize ours.
Kurogane opened the door for him, and they stepped inside.