How Horitsuba Gakuen a came to be!!! C!Syoran gets a spine and decides to put and end to this nonsense~

Warning: major spoilers for chapter 218 & 219

The black void opened up and spit me out into a room of swirling cherry petals. I opened and closed my eyes a couple times, just to be sure I wasn't going blind, but the pitch blackness remained. I honestly couldn't tell whether my eyes were open or shut, where my hands or feet were, or even if there was anyone around me in this empty black plane. No movement, no noise. The cherry blossoms floated past me on an invisible breeze.

So far, death was somewhat boring.

I sat suspended in space, watching the flowers drift past me lazily, for days, hours, centuries, wishing for something to happen. Had I saved anyone? Surely the true Syoran couldn't miss Fei Wong at that range, and Fai had his magic back, Kurogane had his game back, and Sakura had a second chance to be saved.

A mad fluttering sound met caused my head to snap around looking for a sign of something, anything, to tell me what was happening. I didn't scare or cry easily, but when this invisible thing brushed by my nose without me seeing it, I was completely freaked out.

Butterflies....Is waht I was seeing. I squinted into the black, and the butterflies moved in indistict patterns back and forth. "This is...." I murmured softly, still straining my eyes through a now heavy cloud of flower petals.

"It is a dream." A familiar voice answered back, sending a jolt up my spine and a shock wave through my heart. The Mighty, All-Powerful, All-Seeing, All-Drinking Yuuko was standing feet in front of me, wearing a pained frown that clearly didn't belong on her face. I didn't like this look in the least- Yuuko wasn't supposed to be taken by surprise- she was supposed to say that everything was fated, and then deal with it while wearing an easy smile and making snide comments about Kurogane. Kind of like what Fai did before I gouged his eyeball out. Ah, Fai and Kurogane...The last time I'd seen them, they were lying on the ground bleeding. Which brought me back to my point.........Why was Yuuko here, wasn't I dead? It's bad enough to die once, what sort of hellish torture would I have to go through now? I'd just been stabbed with a sword the size of a battering ram, you'd think I'd finally be able to die peacefully...

"You were indeed attacked by Fei Wong Reed and destroyed." Confirmed Yuuko, as the flowers that had been floating peacefully through negative space gathered around me and began to take the shape of arms, legs, etc. Wait- my arms, and my legs. Freaky. I was watching myself re-assemble into a patchy frame of a human being.

"But why then...." I trailed off, somewhat distracted by the fact that my body seemed to be re-constructing itself out of flower petals.

"You are a created being, you cannot die. Only disappear." Yuuko said matter-of-a-factly. My head shot up as a wild and crazy idea rushed through my brain. If the dead could have suffocated, I would have, as I stood rooted to the spot with the great lightning bolt of an idea that had just struck me.

"No way," I thought, "No friggin way- don't get your hopes up Syoran, there's got to be-"

"Just like her."

My dead heart stopped beating as a shining light appeared in this dim black hole. Sakura, my Sakura, was floating in that inky void with that peaceful sleeping face she used to wear back when it was just the four of us traveling together, and I was neither soul-less nor dead.

"Sakura," I said in the most loving, compassionate voice a dead clone could manage. It was my fault really that she was like this. Her heart had been broken, and then she'd been stabbed, and then had her heart broken and been stabbed again. I had only stabbed her once, but both times I was responsible for breaking her heart.

"And that is why, before you disappeared completely, I took your bodies and brought them here." Yuuko looked straight through my eyes into the depths of me dead soul.

"Along with the heart that dwells within that body. And in Sakura's case both the soul and memories that dissolved into petals-" I briefly recalled Fei Wong talking about how one day Sakura had spontaneously combusted into a pile of flowers and struggled not to snort. Yuuko really knew how to yank that guy's chain. "And the body Fei Wong Reed originally copied it from."

She had had Sakura all along. Stuck in a small glass container in the bottom of her basement, that bitch had sent us to dozens of different worlds, on so many dangerous journeys, and she'd had the solution tucked away in some storage unit the entire time. The Witch allowed herself a satisfied smirk before she was all business again.

"Why have you brought us here?" We're supposed to be dead, I added silently. Was she seriously just going to giveme Sakura, after all of the times I had trampled on her and smashed her heart?

"To choose." Was her cryptic reply. A perfectly plucked eyebrow arched itself, as she stared me down. Which was totally unfair; I didn't even know what I was choosing. But I did know one thing: I was tired of beating around the bush with these 'wishes from your heart' and her 'hitsuzen,' I was going to lay down exactly what I wanted, and if I had to cut off my leg or something to do it I totally would.

"Listen. Here's what I choose," I deadpanned. I gathered Sakura into my arms, (Familiar weight, oh how you were missed!) and faced the Witch with a sense of deja vu.

"I choose to leave. Yeah, you heard right," I added as Yuuko opened her mouth. "With Sakura, with the other me, Kurogane, Fai, Mokona, Yuuko, and even Watanuki. If you can make Gods, I want you to make us a place were everyone is safe. Nobody cries, everyone cares, no one forgets, no one dies. We can all live there happily ever after, the end, end of wish."

Both Yuuko' eyebrows had skyrocketed to the top of her hairline now, but a smile was growing ever larger on her face. " I, Being one whose is banned from all worlds would be able to live in a dimension I created myself!" I nodded, as if I had been thinking that all along. As long as it happened, I didn't really care how. "Ah, but Watanuki is tied now to that dimension in which I lived. He has met people, changed, and developed ties to people there. We could not take him with us."

"So bring the people he has ties with as well, I don't care! The more the fair-er, or whatever the hell it is. You can even take those dimension-hopping vampires if you want; they looked sort of miserable. But seeing as the threads of time and space are falling apart, I suggest we hurry."

Yuuko rolled her eyes. "You can hush up now. Although, being omniscient, why didn't I think of this before?"

"Dying puts everything in perspective."

Yuuko laughed for the first time in weeks, " Well, hold onto Sakura tight; someone who repeats the same mistake so many times over is just stupid."

I shot her a glare as we were whisked away. The strange thing was: She never mentioned the price to be paid.

The shovel broke the dirt, and the hot, dry earth was thrown over the shoulder of a busty, beautiful woman with long black hair. She leaned on the shovel, which had an X mark engraved in the dirt out here in the middle of an empty lot. The woman wiped the sweat off her brow as the crowd around her cheered. "Thank you all for coming to the ceremonial ground-breaking that is to be our new school!" She shouted above the applause. "I hope to see a good turnout of new teachers and students at our new Horitsuba Gakuen Academy!" She swept her hand out over the empty grounds and over into the next row of houses behind.

Somewhere back in those houses, two twin boys with messy brown hair were playing basketball in their backyard.

A tall, muscular, man with spiky black hair jogged down the street where he passed a group of kids on the sidewalk.

The one in the middle was shouting at another boy with his fingers stuffed in his ears, while the girl just laughed.

They passed under the window of a skinny blonde man who was filling out a job application while talking to his skinny blonde twin who lived overseas.

Glancing out the window he waved to his broad-shouldered veterinarian of a neighbor, who was getting in the car with his younger brother to go get ice cream.

As they pulled out of the driveway they each blew a kiss to one of the two pale boys sunbathing on the lawn next door.

The two boys sighed, one turned a couple interesting shades of red, before they rolled over to bake some more.

And in a house a few streets down a bird landed on the oped windowsill of a girl with soft reddish-pink hair and a softly sleeping face.

Then, for the first time in a long while, Sakura woke up. And she smiled.

Finito! R&R por favor!