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: Fashion Fairy 26, Cesia 14, PrincessNevermore, RandomSam123, Gina, deadflo, teru21, Cascada Azul, xXBlossomofShadowsXx, Finespun: The biggest smile on my face, the best feeling in my heart, and I have all of you to thank for that.

My favourite most best Cardcaptor Fanfiction has to be Pleasure Slave, by Capitalist. It's on Adult FF, it's a little out there and different from what we usually read, but it's the best work yet. If you're not into yaoi and the likes, it might take you a while. It sure did take me some time, but it's brilliant. Give it a shot. I promise you, you will not be disappointed.

Also, check out Peacewish's work on FF. She's the BEST. The absolute Best. Her best work on FF has to be Wild Flower. It took me a while to be able to pick a favourite from her work. But there's no doubt about it. There has never been and will never be a better author than her.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

xxxiii.

Everything's falling, and I am included in that
Oh, how I try to be just okay
Yeah, but all I ever really wanted
Was a little piece of you

- Be Be Your Love/Rachel Yamagata

Syaoran knew it was a long shot, a shot not worth the effort, but he had to. It was killing him from the inside now.

How bad would it be to just get high one last time?

After class he kept his eyes open for John, then Rika. Wherever Rika was, John was never too far behind. Looking out for a head of red hair was much harder than he'd thought it'd be.

Nakuru had a similar hair colour.

Sakura had auburn hair...

Could he not go one moment of the day without thinking about Sakura?

Finally, after much pursuit, he found her on a bench in the campus courtyards. He narrowed his eyes. She was alone. That wasn't a good sign.

"Rika," Syaoran greeted with a nod. "Know where John is?"

Rika looked away solemnly. "You didn't hear, I'm guessing."

"Hear what?"

"He got busted," Rika affirmed his fears. "Two days ago,"

Syaoran exhaled. "How bad does it look for him?"

"Pretty bad, considering,"

Syaoran sat next to her on the bench. "I'm sorry, Rika."

The girl sat without tears, probably spent and done for the time being. Apparently looking indifferent and strong was the easy way out of this whole mess she'd got herself into.

Maybe Syaoran should have tried that instead of this.

What was he even doing here?

"I'm sorry, Rika. I was looking for John for all the wrong reasons," Syaoran confessed to her with a pat on her back.

"Who isn't?"

"You weren't." Syaoran reminded her.

"Don't be so sure."

Syaoran smiled. Strong and tough, through and through, was Rika Sasaki. Never a moment of frailness from the fake red haired graphics designer.

"He was a good guy, smart too. He'll work it out."

Rika looked up at the sky. "Doesn't matter, we're done."

Syaoran looked at her. "You broke up?"

Rika sighed. "I've been thinking about it for months."

Syaoran shook his head. Girls... so fucking unpredictable all the time.

"So once you're through with the high, you're through with the guy?" Syaoran questioned. Rika rolled her eyes.

"Look who's talking,"

"I thought you were in love with John."

"I thought he was in love with me," Rika shrugged as she pulled out a cigarette box. "Turns out Nakuru's got them all wrapped around her fingers. You should know what that's like."

Syaoran felt his fists clench involuntarily. "Nakuru and John... since when?"

"Since she moved back to Glasgow, it seems. They've been sleeping together a while now."

"I'm sorry, Rika," Syaoran sat looking out to the green grass.

"It's fine. John was just a substitute for you, in any case. It's not like she loved him or anything. Rat bastard got what he deserved."

Syaoran found so many things wrong about that statement she'd just made.

"Substitute?" Syaoran asked. For the first time, a ball of cotton lodged itself in his throat. What did she mean by that?

"It was clear as day that Nakuru was still hung over you,"

Syaoran felt sick. "I never loved her."

"Didn't say you did,"

For some time they sat in the silence, basking in the afternoon sun whilst enjoying the way others moved about, unconcerned with what was happening on that concrete bench.

"If you need anything, I'm here."

"I think you need more help than I do," Rika glanced at him as he stood to walk away. "I'm sure you weren't looking for John for lollipops and candy canes."

Syaoran sighed. "Momentary lapse of judgment... won't happen again."

"I hope so, for your own sake."

Syaoran strode forward to call Mei Ling for a ride. Things had been tense between the two cousins, but right now he had no choice.

He didn't look back.

*.*

Truth be told, the withdrawal symptoms everyone had been hammering about had been easy enough to deal with. Yes, it was much harder the first time he'd tried to quit, and it only harder still the second time. This time, though, with some help from Sakura initially, he'd managed to curb to smoke marginally.

If only she was still around.

Syaoran did what he did every day. He walked into his apartment, threw his things on his couch and walked outside to the balcony and sat in the spot that Sakura had been sitting in that early morning not more than three months ago. The evening chill was unbearable, but he sat there anyway. After a while he got up, went to the confines of his room and tried to paint.

Painting was suddenly a very difficult thing to do... alone. Painting had been difficult to do alone for a while now, but now... it was impossible. So he called in for reinforcements. A bit different from his usual routine but he was trying to fit it in.

"Hey, this is Lillian Fitz. You'd better get ready, the beep's coming up right about-"

Beep

"Lillian," Syaoran spoke to her answering machine. Why couldn't the girl keep a cell phone? "It's Syaoran. I'm painting tonight at my place. Come if you need company." He wanted to say please, but he didn't need to beg. Walking to his closet he hung up. After shuffling through his sock drawers, he flung onto the rumpled sheets and mattress and observed the small glass pipe in one hand.

Thinking about smoking only made him feel guilt. This was what had got him into this whole mess, why he'd lost Sakura.

How could he still want to smoke?

Could you rate the urge when you do feel it, on a scale of one to ten?

Eight. The urge was a big, fat and roundly shaped eight today. He was sure of it.

The doorbell distracted him. How long had he been staring at the pipe? He stashed it back in its place and went to open the door.

*.*

"So what do you do now?" Mei Ling asked Lillian as they shared dinner together.

"I'm doing many things. I'm trying to work as an intern for a photographer who's interested in doing some work on body-art. I'm trying to keep my snivelling parents at bay, but let's face it, no pay check, no security, and no respect from your parents." Lillian eyed Syaoran then, between bites of her burger. "What I'm really trying to do is find a muse, really, something to get me started, to get me going."

Syaoran snorted.

"Something funny?" Lillian questioned him. Syaoran grinned.

"You're wasting your time if you're looking for a muse," Syaoran told her. "They're a potty bunch, the entire lot."

"Tomoyo called me her muse only hours ago," Mei Ling told him. "Are you calling me potty?"

Syaoran laughed. "You give Tomoyo a good time, there's no doubt. You're inspiring her to do some good work. That doesn't mean you're going to be her inspiration forever." Syaoran paused to look at his food.

"Of course not!" Lillian stated with a crunch of a potato chip. "No one's ever had just one muse, no real artist anyway. We're all humans Syaoran; we've got to have something new. Otherwise where does the inspiration strike up from? The same old boring whatever it was definitely didn't help you with this right here, on the wall, did it?" Lillian pointed at the wall with the painting.

Mei Ling's eyes shifted in a way that showed that something had occurred to her.

"It was Sakura," Mei Ling said cautiously, scared he would pounce on her if she used her name. "Wasn't it?"

What was Sakura?

Syaoran closed his eyes. "It doesn't matter. She's not coming back."

"How do you know, Syaoran? You guys have fought before, maybe if you just went and spoke to her—"

"Because I slept with someone else, Mei, that's how I know." Syaoran screamed, a vein pulsing at the side of his neck. Never had he wanted to tear something apart, not before that moment. He was so angry, so angry he could break through that damned wall with that stupid painting. He was so angry he could get high again; this time it would be little effort and no guilt whatsoever.

Mei Ling stood, her chair screeched against the floor at that, and walked away from the table without another word.

Lillian stayed quiet.

Syaoran sat back down with his face in his hands, ashamed. Confessing to Mei Ling was so much harder than he'd thought it'd be.

"I don't believe it." Lillian started. "The man who drew this painting was quite surely transfixed with the woman in it."

"He was also very high." Syaoran spoke before he knew it.

Lillian didn't say anything to that.

"I don't know what I'm doing anymore." He told her, pushing his plate away. Lillian picked up the leftover of her burger and chewed.

"You were high during this cheating incident, I'm guessing?" Lillian asked casually. Syaoran nodded.

"Ah," Lillian wiped her hands with a tissue. "Getting help?"

Syaoran nodded.

Lillian smiled then. "It's time to move on, then." She stood and stalked off to the couch. Syaoran frowned, wondering what the hell she'd meant by that.

"Here," she told him while handing him a brush, a bucket of black goo in hand. "Let's get started."

Syaoran took the brush and stood. "What are we doing?"

"We're going to get rid of this painting," Lillian stated, dipping a brush into the bucket. Syaoran shook his head.

"No!" he cried out. "This... this painting... it's all I have left." Of Sakura, of life, of love, Syaoran wanted to say, but he held back.

Lillian scoffed. "If that's true, Syaoran, then you really need to rethink your life."

Syaoran stood with a hole slowly eating into his heart. This painting... this was where it had all started, how it had all started... and now, he was supposed to tarnish it?

"I don't like the thought of leaving these walls bare," he tried to find an excuse, something, anything that would keep this painting intact.

"Who said we're going to leave the walls bare?" Lillian frowned. "Jesus, man, you assume so many things."

"What?"

"It's called redo, Syaoran. Can you do that?"

"What?"

She thwacked him with the paintbrush. "Can you manage to repaint this wall... do this again?"

Syaoran looked at the wall again before coming up with an answer. "I don't know. I was high at the time."

"Okay then, look at the painting, erase it, and then redo it. If you can't even do a decent redo when you're sober, I can't imagine you're a very good painter."

Lillian wasn't wrong... she was twisted in her thinking and probably had some serious sociopathic logic behind the statement she'd made, but she sounded reasonable enough. He'd done it; he could see it... all he had to do was do it again.

"Okay," Syaoran conceded. "But I do the painting,"

"Yes, boss."

Four hours later, a bit after one o' clock in the dead of the night, Syaoran placed a blanket over Lillian and sat on the couch next to her. He watched the smile on her face grow wider.

"Finished?" she asked him with a yawn.

"Yup,"

A few moments passed. Syaoran never heard a thing from her. He looked at her now, eyes closed and lips parted as she slept. Had she even seen it? It didn't matter. Syaoran looked back at his creation, feeling elated. It had felt just as good as painting it the first time, even without the high. Syaoran highly doubted he'd felt as happy painting it the first time.

Happy... he hadn't thought of being happy in a while now.

Syaoran sighed as he held his pillow close, trying to drift off to sleep, still able to smell Sakura on it. With Sakura, he'd been happy. He'd even realized it, prayed on it, hoped it would stay with him, that happiness... Sakura. Sakura had been the best thing, the only thing, that had made him feel this good, that could ever make him feel this good.

Syaoran gripped the pillow tighter.

Why?

Why her?

Why did it have to be her?

*.*

Mei Ling smelt the fresh paint and looked at the sleeping girl on the couch. The wall... something was different about it. She went to take a closer look.

Sakura wore a blue dress with what looked like a man's coat on now, instead of the skirt and blouse and cream coloured coat she'd worn before in the painting... she still stood with her back turned, her long hair in a bun this time.

Mei Ling left the house with a smile, remembering the taunt she'd thrown that night that'd left her brother sleepless.

It was done now, though, and it was no longer her business.

Everybody's talking how I can't be your love
But I want want wanna be your love
Want to be your love for real
Want to be your everything

QUESTION: How old were you when you first watched Cardcaptor Sakura?

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