Tattooed
Summary: "I've lost everything to drugs, do you know that?" Sakura told him with tears in her eyes. "The funny thing is I've never even touched a drug in my life and yet it destroyed me. It took everything." She turned to face him then. "Please, don't let it take you away from me. I won't be able to handle it, not this time, not again." S x S.
Author's Note: xXBlossomofShadowsXx, teru21, petiteTRINH, deadflo, Musette Fujiwara, Fashion Fairy 26, LadyDae: When I first published this story I was so sure this story wouldn't even get half the attention it's got. I have you guys to thank for that.
Special shout out to LadyDae for her review.
This is the first update of the day.
Disclaimer: You know none of this is mine.
xxii.
I've learned to lose
I've learned to win
I've turned my face against the wind
I will move fast
I will move slow
Take me where I have to go
- Still Alive/Lisa Miskovsky
Sakura walked into the open apartment suddenly feeling very conscious and very cold.
Syaoran was nowhere in sight.
Sakura motioned for Mei Ling to come in as they walked through the apartment quietly, hand in hand, as they scanned around for Syaoran.
"Why... was he like that?" Mei Ling's question was ringing in her ears. Sakura wondered. Why? Why had he been like that... one had to wonder? He had promised her, hadn't he? Syaoran wouldn't go back on his promise, would he?
"Let me go," Sakura whispered to Mei Ling as the two of them approached Syaoran's room. The light was on.
"But..."
"I'll be fine. Don't worry. If you hear anything, you call Tomoyo okay? She'll call my brother. It'll be fine."
Mei Ling didn't say anything and Sakura walked into the room cautiously. The light needed adjusting to as Sakura finally saw Syaoran sitting on his bed with his head hung low. She walked in then, ready for anything. If he'd managed to freak out Mei Ling, then that meant something was terribly wrong. Withdrawal symptoms were supposed to be this intense... but was it just withdrawal symptoms?
"Syaoran," she gently said. He looked at her then, his eyes blank.
"Hey,"
Sakura inhaled. He was okay.
"Hi," she said as she pointed to his lap. "What're you looking at?"
Syaoran didn't say anything, simply staring at a piece of paper on his lap. Sakura stood still for a while before the boy managed to say something.
"My father... Rei Yu Lang Li, died six years ago from blood cancer. He has five children, four legitimate daughters... and me."
Sakura's eyes widened.
*.*
"On his death bed he gave me this picture." Syaoran handed it to Sakura as she neared him. Syaoran saw her eye the woman, and then the bottom of the wall. She'd known.
"Who's this?"
"That's Yelan Rui... your mother, Xiao Lang."
"My mother was just a girl that he happened to meet... not for long though. She stayed in Hong Kong for a year and then left again.
"She came back two years later with me."
"Your mother... couldn't keep you, Xiao Lang. She left you and this photograph on our doorstep. I tried to get in touch with her, tried to reason with her... ask her to marry me."
"He never got in touch with her." Syaoran said impassively. "I don't know what she does, Father never told me. I didn't even know I had a mother till six years ago. After he passed, I wanted answers. I picked up and shifted here, to her last known address." He turned the photograph and showed the scribbling.
"This is all I could find of her." Father had told him.
"My sisters were against it." Syaoran remembered their solemn faces when he told them what he'd decided. "Mei Ling was against it.
"But I came anyway."
Sakura sat next to him as he took the photograph back. The baby in her arms in the photo was so small... Syaoran almost couldn't believe it had been him.
"What happened?" Sakura asked with her hand at the nape of his neck.
"I never found her... an English man was living at the address... but I found a number."
Syaoran had looked through so many telephone directories, so many registered addresses and numbers lists... before finding the number under the name Yelan Reed.
"Did you ever talk to her?"
"Once, just the day before father's first death anniversary."
He remembered how nervous he'd been when she picked up the phone and said hello. He almost forgot to breathe. He remembered holding the public phone closer to his ear, almost not believing it.
"Yelan Reed?" he questioned uncertainly.
"This is she."
Syaoran placed a hand to feel his heartbeat. It was beating as fast as it had back then, the day she'd spoken to him... the only time she'd spoken to him.
"My name is Syaoran Li," he had said finally. "I'm—"
Syaoran could still hear the disconnect sound.
"She hung up." He said. "I thought the line had been disconnected and tried calling her again." He laughed. "I was such a fool."
"Hello, you've dialled 0044392810029. Please leave a message."
A voicemail box had been the only thing he had left of her.
"Is she still here, in Glasgow?"
"I wouldn't know. I stopped searching three years ago."
Sakura brought her arms around him, pulling him in for a hug. Syaoran obliged willingly. A hug would be comforting, maybe even enough to—
"Why are you still calling her?"
Syaoran clenched his eyes shut, refusing to cry. He didn't deserve to cry. Holding on to Sakura tighter, he answered.
"I don't know."
*.*
Sakura put Syaoran to sleep before deciding to slip out of his room to the living room. There sat Mei Ling with someone next to her in the dark.
"I couldn't stand to be alone," Mei Ling told her as she switched on the lamp beside the couch. Sakura nodded and sat next to Tomoyo.
"Tell me," Mei Ling demanded. "Tell me why he's like that. At first I'd thought he's gone crazy. Then I thought it was my imagination but it isn't any of that, is it? He's been sleeping like the dead; and then he's awake at ungodly hours... sometimes for days at a stretch. He doesn't eat, ever. He can't account for where the money's been going. He's been losing weight... and his skin..." Mei Ling trailed off.
Tomoyo closed her eyes and relaxed against the couch.
"You knew," Tomoyo told Sakura. "You knew he was addicted."
Sakura nodded.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Mei Ling stood and screamed. Sakura hushed her.
"You can't wake him up," Sakura reasoned in soft tones. "He's—"
"Delirious! He doesn't even what the fuck's happening around him! How many times I must've excused his delirium for artist's crazy funk periods... and all the while he'd been taking drugs!"
Sakura smiled at Mei Ling. She lost count of how many sad smiles she'd given her.
"What's he on?" Tomoyo asked this time.
"Crystal meth,"
A sharp gasp was heard.
"Can Touya help?" she asked next.
"Only if Syaoran wants it,"
"Oh, he's going to want it." Mei Ling announced as she pulled out her phone. "I'm going to make sure of it."
Sakura and Tomoyo simply watched the worried cousin make the phone call.
"Fanren?" she asked into the phone. "It's Mei. I know it's late. Listen... I need you to come here on the next flight."
Sakura couldn't bear to hear more.
She'd failed.
Again.
Come fire
Let it burn and love come racing through
Oh I'm still alive
I'm still alive
QUESTION: What was for breakfast today?
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