10-4b: Homecoming

"Tomoyo?" Sakura asked again. She turned about at the same time to sight the road behind them where Tomoyo was staring off at. There was nothing there.

"What is it? Can you feel it's presence?" Syaoran questioned.

"It's not... it's not a presence, I think. I don't know, it's like..." Tomoyo replied haltingly. She was not exactly sure about what she was even explaining, "It's more like... a familiarity. Like I know what... no. No, I do know who this is!"

"What? Who is it?" Sakura asked insistently. Further absence of any reply prompted her to turn back to Tomoyo and ask again, only to have her question interrupted by the widening grin upon her love's face. Yet those dark-colored eyes were still aimed to that same point up the street behind them. She turned again to try and determine what had caught Tomoyo's attention so securely, and found her own face widening into a bright grin at his sudden appearance, standing there at the crossroads to an alleyway as though he had always been there to begin with. He had not even noticed them yet, but that was about to change.

"Reios!" Sakura cried out, catching his attention just as he was turning to head back into the alleyway he had emerged from. He stood there as though stunned by their sudden presence, and took a moment to actually register that they were standing there. By the time that his mind had actually taken notice that they were truly there, instead of in Sakura's home where he had expected them, they were all beside him.

"When did you get back?" Sakura asked anxiously, taking note as she came up in front of him that he was holding a pair of cards in his right hand.

He scratched at his head with that hand, "Uh, ten minutes ago, maybe? I kind of lost track of time wandering around all of these streets and alleys."

"You haven't been gone for very long. It's only been about a week." Tomoyo noted, "Why are you back so soon? Unless..."

He could easily sense her intended meaning, and smiled gently to soften the building tension, "He was old, and he was dying. He said so himself, and passed on knowing that all he had done was right and with good intention. There were no regrets, so don't feel sad. I'm not, and I know for sure that he isn't."

"When...?" was all she could ask.

"Last night."

A respective silence fell over them, given in due reverence to the loss of a loved one. As the moment passed, and it once again felt right to speak openly, Sakura asked, "But then, how did you get back so soon?"

He grinned roguishly, and held up the two cards in his one hand, "This guy, of course. Come on, surely you felt Warp's magic emanations from my arrival? I used it from practically the other side of the world. The resultant energy output should have been massive! I'll probably need a three-day long nap, now, because of it."

"Yeah, we sure felt it, all right," Syaoran remarked, then raised an eyebrow, "But what's with the other one?"

Reios double checked the contents of his hand, and suddenly remembered that he was still holding onto two cards, "Oh, this one? It's the Light. It's how I tried to find you, by 'pinging' a visually undetectable wave of light against anything magic-based. These street addresses are all a bunch of gibberish to me, so I needed something to find my way around."

He activated it again as an example of his meaning, sending its power flying out as it had before with merely a beseeching thought. What he received back only verified a previous theory, as he took in not just three reflections of light, those coming from Syaoran, Sakura, and Kero, but a fourth reflection as well. His actions were also easily noticed by the four surrounding him, with their eyes instantly catching themselves upon the Light card at the familiar sense of magic washing over them. That Tomoyo's eyes had also instantly flown that way only solidified his assumptions.

"And so I instead find myself responsible for burdening you with a power that you never asked for," he muttered, drawing their attention back to him, and then to Tomoyo as he looked to her. With a wave of anxiety washing over him, he asked hesitantly, "...how long have you known?"

"We only found out just a few minutes ago, ourselves," Tomoyo replied, pulling her hands back behind herself respectfully, "But no, you're wrong. It's no burden at all. If anything, I should be thanking you."

"No, no, hear me out first before you get all angry with– wait, what? Thanking me?" Reios asked incredulously. This was a far cry from anything that he had predicted to hear from this person that preferred to play out of sight of the camera, and he had to replay her words in his head one more time to make sure that he had heard her correctly.

Tomoyo locked him into a meaningful stare, "Yes – thank you. Ever since the very start of Sakura's adventures, ever since we were kids, it had felt like I was only a behind-the-scenes person. I had believed that I was content to just watch Sakura and everyone play out their roles. But ever since you came along, ever since all of these new conflicts started cropping up, I had started feeling like I needed to be doing something greater. It was like there was some other way that I should have been helping out, more than just costumes and words, but I just could not figure out what it was."

She then smiled and looked away from him with an almost coy expression, "Then you made me make that dress, and even recorded me onto my own video camera. That was when it started to all fall into place, and I realized that there was more to my contributions than I was giving myself credit for. I figured out, through finally experiencing it from you first hand, that the moral support I was always trying to give to everyone was, in a way, its own kind of magic.

Tomoyo stalled for a moment to listen to her own words, then returned her gaze back to Reios to show him that she was being sincere, "And now I have this new power, a real magic, and its all thanks to you. Between that and this second chance that I have been given, I feel that I can really work alongside Sakura now. With all of you, even, and not just by watching from behind a camera anymore. It might take some learning, and a lot of time, but this is something that I really want to do. So I honestly do thank you, for everything."

"Well, uh... heh, I, err..." he stuttered, trying to hide both his gushing embarrassment and blatant blushing. Such attempts were failing horribly, however, so he turned and started walking back up the street so as not to have to face them directly.

"I, uh... suppose... that's good, then... uh, right?" he finished off as everyone else started to follow along behind him.

Sakura looked back and forth between the two as a beaming Tomoyo made to move up beside him, somehow unable to help but think of the potential feelings that she had sensed between them back at the Tsukimine Shrine a little over a week ago. They were pretty similar to each other, in a way. Sure, they both came from different sides of the world, but that was honestly where the differences ended, in her opinion. And she was not considering their eye colors, either.

Reios was always saying about how his first duty was to his own, to his family. That seemed to show in how much he cared for everyone's collective well being, and Tomoyo's most especially. And now that she finally understood Tomoyo's true feelings for herself, Sakura had finally realized in addition that this was the same as how Tomoyo had treated all of them for the longest time. Like family.

There was an unbreakable bond now set between her second love and their newest friend, far greater than that of any mere friendship, and she could see it quite clearly. It was the kind of bond that extended out to each person that was currently present, and probably even reached all the way to a certain Englishman that was not present, as well. And whether or not it had something to do at all with their recent troubles, it seemed to Sakura that such a bond was now growing even stronger still between every single one of them, and between the two sibling-like people ahead of her in particular. So at least to Sakura's point of view, it was as if the two had truly become family to one another.

"But you still haven't answered me," Tomoyo remarked, drawing Sakura's attention back to their conversation, "Why did you come back so soon? You couldn't have visited your home for very long."

Reios looked to her with an humorous grin, "Well of course not, I just got back! Didn't have time to head to my apartment."

"Your apartment..?" Tomoyo repeated inquisitively, then smiled to herself at his half-joke, "No, I mean when you flew over to see your grandfather. That home."

"Oh, that home," he noted with an exaggerated tone, "Well, to be honest, there was nothing left for me to visit. There was no 'home' for me to go to, over there. My only reason for even going back at all was to see him off, while the chance was available. I may or may not have told you all of this before, but when I came here to Japan, I had left everything behind. My family, my friends, my home – all of it. And I made sure that they were all well aware of that. Even now, after everything has been settled between myself and the cause of my departure, I intend to keep it that way.

He then crossed his arms as he recalled something, "Actually, one of my uncles did make a fuss about me having to stay for the funeral, despite my best efforts at remaining undetected by said family and friends, but Grandfather and I agreed that I should just keep my distance. We all knew that it would just cause trouble. Even my uncle knew that, but whatever.

"This place is my home now," he finished, and pointed down at the ground symbolically, "I have all the family I need right here."

Syaoran huffed softly, a half-humorous grin on his own face, "Home is where the heart is, huh? A bit of a cliché, don't you think?"

Reios tilted his head back behind him to issue a retort, "So? It is a good concept.".

Syaoran crossed his arms and avoided eye contact by looking straight ahead, "A good concept, but a cheesy concept."

"Well, fine then! I like cheesy. So what?" Reios threw back, which in turn incited a stifled giggle out of Sakura from their sudden bickering.

He then started walking backwards as he spun about on her, "And don't you even start, because I'm right and you know it! Or would you have preferred that I'd come back literally singing of how wonderful this... place... ah, hell."

The unexpected stalling and unfamiliar English cursing had Sakura looking at him rather quizzically, "What, did you forget something?"

Reios held his tongue while his thoughts struck home, but eventually he released a rather dejected sigh as he turned to face forward again, "Yeah, the fact that we have a recital coming up in two days? I nearly skipped out on it!"

Tomoyo flashed him another cheerful smile, "You're back to stay now, right? So no harm done there, and it also means that our plans for that evening are back on schedule."

"Plans?" Reios asked.

Sakura jumped in to answer, "Oh yeah, the party! Its already been in the works for weeks now. We were going to hold a get-together after the recital, but you and Eriol had left so abruptly that we weren't so sure about having it anymore. Then Eriol said that he was going to make a special trip just for the recital, and you're here now, too! That means we can go ahead and have it anyway!"

Without even realizing it, Reios found that they had already traversed an unseen path of streets and corners, and had once again found themselves at the front gate to Sakura's house, which Sakura was already skipping ahead towards to open for them. Yet again he had lost his chance to memorize the route to her house. The damned street signs in this place were just so confusing. But in light of recent developments, he knew that he would now have more than enough chances in the future to find his way, so he let the issue drop.

As Reios made his way by the still-beaming Sakura, he quipped humorously, "A party sounds good."

END