Author's Notes: I think it's a miracle; I've finally finished this fic! It's finally over, just under a year. No sequel or anything of the sort, sorry. But I hope everyone's had as much fun with this fic as I had writing it.
Final thanks to Aleris, Aurora, Rhea (not too far off actually), Silly*Niecy (hai, okagesama de. totemo isogashii desu kara amari kakanai), Ophie, mya (hehe, you know I'm a sucker for happy-ish endings), Mistress Clow Pixie (sorry, but I had this ending from the beginning and it sorta fits I thought.) . And big, big thanks to everyone that reviewed this story.
Disclaimer: If I owned CCS, I'd have made so many great stories on ff.net into manga long ago, but since you don't see any of them in book stores, it's a safe bet I don't own CCS.
Slipping AwayChapter 12: Reunion
Syaoran watched a single car roll past him, taking a turn and disappearing into the idyllic streets of Tomoeda suburban life. Everything here was quiet, the people that seemed to walk on air, the cars that barely made any noise as they bobbed up and down hills. And in the middle of this street was what he had never been used to. Hong Kong, downtown Tomoeda, large cities and lights and sounds and action. But it was just…quiet.
He walked down the lane, self conscious of his loud plodding steps. Houses passed, all identical in their symmetry, their well kept little patches of lawn, the clean little compact cars that parked in the driveways. Occasionally, bicycles rested on front stoops, leaning carefully on their kickstands.
He counted the numbers as he walked, dwindling toward his destination. The most normal thing in the world, walking down a quiet street, looking blank and impassive. But inside, his emotions churned in a tossing chaotic mess, anger and sadness and wonder.
Four months ago, he helped save the world. He lost someone he knew was special. He'd lost good people who sacrificed themselves for people they didn't know. Gone in the wink of an eye, in dusty rubble down by the bay.
He flipped the TV on that night, watching the decimated ruins of the warehouse replay on the news. The anchorwoman asking questions to the public to help identify unidentified men and women in strange uniforms. He had watched fiercely as the tally of the dead rose with each new beam displaced, each new sheet of metal wrenched off by giant cranes. The whole scene was a mess, the twisted infrastructure laying on its side like knotted rusty noodles. Red lights from the police cars spun around the area, glaring off the rippling water, ripping across the exposed surfaces of brick and metal.
The newspapers had a field day with the collapse, front-page headlines screaming of the dangers of building instabilities. A new board of architects was assembled to guarantee structural integrity all over the city. And all the while, they picked at the ruins, pulling out bodies and tagging them unidentified in the morgue.
He remembered the exact time when they found her body. Dragged out of the deeper debris, cut and broken. There was fear when he approached the body at the morgue, taking those steps with immovable feet. But he wanted to see her, just wanted to look at her and say goodbye. And when the white sheet was drawn back, he found himself transfixed, by the pale, blotched skin, the closed eyes that would never open again, the small mouth that opened just a little. He almost had the urge to throw up, the waste of her life, the black trail of autopsy stitches that started over her shoulder and trailed down under the cold linen. He vaguely heard some of the other medical examiners whispering about her insides looking like jelly, but he could only focus on keeping his stomach still and shaking his head when they asked him if she was the person he thought she was.
"You don't know her?"
"N-no, never seen her before. Must be mistaken. Sorry."
Syaoran left the morgue dazed, that strange final swing of the ax before the head fell into the basket. Every fantastic nightmare, every half start, every strange fear of black clad soldiers appearing from a liquid blue wall, was real. It wasn't something out of a fantasy novel, not an unpleasant daydream. He had truly fought to save the world, and he had truly both won and lost.
In the balance were three lives, probably more that he'd never see. He still kept out hope for Nakuru, just a strange little part of him that knew she couldn't be dead; she was too smart for that. They never found her body either, even after the last pebbles were swept away into the bay. He almost expected her to knock on his apartment door or rappel onto his balcony, but she never did. Never heard a single thing from her again.
And then there was Tomoyo; they'd found her later that afternoon in the warehouse debris farther down the bay. Or what was left of her; he didn't want to recall the blackened bones; they were too gruesome a thought for this kind of beautiful day.
But it all lead back to Sakura. Syaoran kept walking his brisk pace, whisking past the lanes of cherry blossoms, the well-kept lawns, the freshly painted post boxes. And as he got nearer, he could only picture her face as he flew away from her, the single blurred image as he drifted farther and farther. He could sort of make out her face, screwed up with her iron determination and shadowed by a compassion that probably ran deep underneath the walls of her defenses. And then her voice, the call, the command directive, 'find me.'
And he did finger her, rigid on the cold metal slab in a city freezer. His mission was over, and he could settle back into a life that would always seem boring now, back to his apartment that smelled different and the dark reminders of a few empty vials laying crisscrossed over one another on the top of the trash. He took a sick leave and then returned to work, remembering when he'd worked side by side with her in his office, the scattered wires and solder and metal scrap still all over the bench.
And when he'd fall asleep at night, still feeling empty and tired, he'd still dream of her sailing away from him, shrinking smaller and smaller, her voice still trailing after him, winding around him like a boa constrictor. 'Find me.' The next morning, he'd always wake up, dry lipped and screaming in his head. He did find her, what else was there to do?
Night after night, mornings spanning weeks. Always in search, always the voice and the face. Until he'd been flipping through his mail one day and a postcard dropped do the floor. It had just an address, on the back of a plain Tomoeda postcard with a big photogenic flowering cherry blossom tree. He was tempted to rip it up and throw it out, but he couldn't. It attracted him, made him feel stupid and awkward. But he kept it all the same, stuck to the refrigerator, and passed by it for weeks.
Until he'd woken up today, the streaming blue of the sky, the weekend, the haunting voice that lingered in his head. He just snatched up the keys, ripped the card off the refrigerator and left. Something was drawing him to something, and he'd learned when something just unexpectedly pops up at you and tells you to do something, you'd just damn well do it, no questions asked.
Syaoran stopped walking, turning swiftly to a small comfortable looking house. The two-story building shone with a haze of suburbia, the small compact car, the bike laid against the wall, the well-tended little patch of lawn. He briefly compared the angular handwriting on the postcard to the curved metal numbers on the door. His fingers tingled, his head was blank and he only knew his legs were taking him to the door when he'd arrived. The doorbell echoed through the window and footsteps were banging toward the door. And as the door swung open, all he could do was stare at her.
So different, different like summer and winter. She stood there smiling, hair tied up, a rag in her hands, smelling like soap. But it was Sakura. "Can I help you?"
Syaoran almost laughed, the funny innocent curious look on her face, a look that the other would've never had. "Sakura."
Sakura frowned slightly, cocking her head and giving Syaoran a long look. "Have I met you before?"
Syaoran shook his head slightly. "Just for a few days." Faces rose up in his memory, Sakura, Tomoyo, Nakuru standing there hard and unyielding. And then he could feel the courage rising to do something that the old Syaoran would've never tried. He leaned in and kissed her.
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Nakuru smiled from her vantage point at the corner of street. It'd taken him weeks, but she was glad he finally went and did it or else she'd have had to do something drastic. One happy ending might as well deserve another. Now nothing bound her here anymore. She quirked her unpainted lips and continued to walk down to the bus stop, letting the foreign sensation of her dress flutter against her sides. Maybe Paris…she'd always wanted to see Paris…
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Author's Notes: So that's the end. Hope the epilogue wasn't too bad. Won't you write a review? How was the whole fic? Anyway, see everyone in another story. Ja ne.