comparison stories/takesonept1.txt @ 0:ed1308d04df2 moonlitnights

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author rlm
date Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:24:59 -0500
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1
2 AUTHOR'S NOTES: First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to read
3 this. I'm so very glad you bothered! This is my second shoujo ai fic. That
4 sounds terribly official, doesn't it? ^_^ I'm hoping to keep this under
5 three chapters, considering how many *other* fics I have going. Please send
6 feedback if you're so inclined!
7
8 This isn't as dark as 'Conjure Me', and hopefully there's a little humor in
9 it as well. I can't resist the temptation to play with Tomoyo's head.
10 *angelic*
11
12 I hope you enjoy!
13 -Meredith
14
15 Disclaimer: This fic features two women in love. L-O-V-E. ^_~ If you have a
16 problem with this, please evolve, or at least get out of this fic. Any and
17 all flames will be summarily laughed at and used to line the gerbil cage.
18 Remember, bigotry is not a family value. If you're not allergic to the
19 aforementioned topic (even the gerbil ^_~), then welcome!
20
21 Rating is PG-13. Light kissing, ect.
22
23
24
25 ============================
26 It Takes One to Know One 1/?
27 by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
28 http://www.demando.net/
29 mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
30 ============================
31
32
33 She had never held another girl before; and though she had known what to
34 expect, the reality of blood fleeing Tomoyo's lithe form was so terrifying
35 she nearly fell to her knees. Gently, she cradled the young school girl
36 close to where her heart beat frantically, moving her arm to support
37 Tomoyo's knees. Now, stumbling backwards, and she pressed her back against
38 the side of the foot bridge, which was chill with soul of winter. Tomoyo's
39 eyes were wide and vivid against her pale skin, before they vanished behind
40 twin fanned lashes and the heiress' body went completely limp.
41 "Two hundred six and still a lady-killer," remarked a deep voice, filled
42 with morbid humor. Snow flakes caught in fur the color of the sun, and
43 melted as if the locks were what their shade suggested.
44 "Kero!" the woman scolded, the flash in her emerald eyes visible even
45 through the heavy fall of snow. The white masses moved like waves in the
46 wind, lapping even so high as her thighs. She held Tomoyo high over the
47 winter ocean, as one protects holy, precious things.
48 "I'm sorry," the Seal Beast remarked, the rumble in his throat sincere.
49 "It's just, there's so much blood. I never saw her body, so never really
50 hit me that she was dead. Even after all this time."
51
52 Oh, but *she* had seen Tomoyo dead, and white and in the coffin and damn
53 it they put her in the ground. Tomoyo's body, just a husk, an empty thing
54 that was blasphemy because it dare to look like the beautiful girl without
55 actually being her. There had been no blood, then-- the morticians cleaned
56 it up-- only the garish, red lines on the corpse's wrists, and the silver
57 bracelets placed there to hide them. Nothing could be done about her lips--
58 pale blue from hypothermia, even through the pink lp gloss.
59
60 "She's not going to die," his mistress replied firmly, "I won't allow even
61 Tomoyo to hurt herself."
62 "Do you need help, Sakura-sama?" this from another voice, high and silvery
63 like the the moon on an autumn afternoon. Yue's pale eyes were narrowed
64 and focused, he held his wings aloft over his two companions, shielding
65 them..
66 "Iie, but thank you. We need to get her inside. Let's go," within the
67 young woman's face, there was a brief flash, like a ghost's photograph, of
68 a younger, more carefree Sakura. Then, the snow dove in drifts of suicidal
69 faeries, and the bridge was empty as if no one had ever been.
70
71
72 ############################
73
74
75 To err is human.
76
77 To really screw up is even more human than that.
78
79 She looked about twenty six, this Sakura; her mouth hovered in a coral
80 crescent forever between a smile and a frown, and if she let you look
81 really close, you could see that there was something written and obscured
82 by the jungle in her eyes. She was tall, this Sakura, and she carried
83 herself like she knew where she was going, even when she didn't. Her years
84 numbered two hundred and six; and so many of those years had been
85 wandering, looking, wanting so badly for something that was gone.
86
87 Eden wasn't paradise until we lost it, after all.
88
89
90 ############################
91
92
93 Tomoyo had planned her suicide. Not the when, but the 'where' and the
94 'how' and the 'fate-of-my-body', since the 'why' had been laid down years
95 ago by a glorious Sakura-smile and the realization that she could never
96 speak what was in her heart. The 'when' was the theta, the renegade
97 variable that she teased and prodded herself with; 'when' didn't matter,
98 because she was almost always ready to die. In the bottom drawer of her
99 dresser, she kept the dress she planned to wear, the ribbons she'd use in
100 her long tresses, and expensive, pearl-handled letter-opener that was going
101 to do the trick. She was Cinderella, and the ball was waiting on her.
102
103 She stayed because she wanted to be by Sakura's side until someone else
104 came to take her place. Then; just fade to black. Maybe she was a little
105 scared, and maybe she thought herself a coward for wanting to take that way
106 out, but certainty in death allowed her to live.
107
108 Yesterday, at nineteen, When had come to her with wide open arms,
109 whispering that her mother was away and Sakura engaged and... and she had
110 known it was time.
111
112
113
114
115 She had been sleeping in such a way that, while under the spell of
116 Morpheus, she could sense and hear and feel the world around her, but she
117 was trapped in her ivory bones. Now the voices seemed to blur and then
118 focus. Dark wings fluttered before her eyes until the abstract angles and
119 colors of the world came into view. She couldn't even be bothered to wonder
120 why she wasn't dead-- there was something inside her so sensitized to the
121 other girl that she sensed her beloved's presence almost immediately.
122 "Do you..." began a voice that sounded like wind chimes in a summer house
123 filled with the scent of one's lover. Under Tomoyo's blue silver gaze, the
124 older woman pressed her lips together, and her green eyes said things to
125 Tomoyo that were just too good to be true. "You do realize this is the
126 first chance I've had to talk to you in one hundred eighty seven years?
127 Hoee..." she looked down at her feet, "What I am I supposed to say?"
128 "Sakura," Tomoyo breathed; taking in the matured vision of her beautiful
129 best friend. Her hair, done up in her habitual style, was a little longer
130 and a little darker. Even in the plain cream sweater and black pants that
131 graced the older woman's lithe form, Tomoyo could sense the barely
132 contained power of the Cardmistress. "Sakura," she began again, some how
133 understanding that this woman had been so changed by her experiences that
134 she was not quite (and only not quite) her childhood friend, "-sama," she
135 decided firmly. The situation may have been strange, but she accepted
136 Sakura instantly.
137 "You can call me Kinomoto-sensei, if it's easier," Sakura offered.
138 "That makes me think of your father," Tomoyo protested weakly. For the
139 first time, her eyes moved to the rest f her surroundings. Just her room at
140 home, with the curtains drawn partially so she could still see the snow
141 drifting down like lazy flower petals. The lights were on, bright and
142 somehow tangible; the quilts gathered about her form and Sakura's tender
143 gaze made her body momentarily forget the chill of being unrequited.
144 "Kinomoto-kun," Tomoyo tried, blushing just a little, "I have always
145 thought Sakura-chan would make a cute '-kun'. Li-kun should have addressed
146 her as such, in the beginning, since they are both magical people."
147 Kinomoto-kun seemed to darken at the mention of the Chinese boy, but she
148 laughed, "I'd never thought of that."
149 "Of course, That Brat doesn't have an once of respect in his body," pipped
150 a familiar, high Osakan voice.
151 "Kero-chan!" Tomoyo giggled, taken by surprise as the small, winged
152 creature dove into her hair.
153 "It's nice to see you again, Tomoyo-san," Kero said cheerfully. He hovered
154 near her for a moment, before darting back to the table situated on the
155 other side of the room. Tomoyo could see Yue had installed his rather
156 elegant form on the couch, and she nodded in greeting. Her eyes, however,
157 soon sought the blinding glory of Kinomoto-kun-- she was everything Tomoyo
158 had known Sakura would grow up to be and more.
159
160
161 "Do you think you can eat something?" Kinomoto-kun asked, taking a seat on
162 the bed and offering Tomoyo a tray of hot soup and warm bread. "I really
163 think you should but, if you're too weak, you might not keep it down."
164 "I am a little hungry," the heiress accepted the tray, enchanted by all
165 the new details and movements of the Cardmistress' future form. "Arigato,
166 Kinomoto-kun!"
167 "Tomoyo..." Kinomoto-kun's voice was tender as it moved over the world,
168 like silk pressed against Tomoyo's skin.
169 "Hai?" Tomoyo let the spoon rest against the side of the bowl, gazing on
170 the sorceress with concern, "Is something wrong? I want to help
171 Kinomoto-kun, if I can."
172 "Damn it!" the Cardmistress said suddenly, taking Tomoyo's hands gently in
173 her own and cradling them like baby birds, "You always do this. You do
174 everything for me and nothing for yourself."
175 "I want Sakura-chan to be happy," the heiress emphasized, as if that
176 explained everything. She looked down at her hands, feeling out-of-sorts
177 without a camera to see the world through.
178 "Well, I'm not," Kinomoto-kun's tone was firm as she ran a dainty finger
179 over the bandages on the younger girl's wrist. "I'm not happy, because the
180 person I love left me."
181 "Li-kun?" Tomoyo was scandalized. There was a sudden guilt inside her,
182 swinging like a pendulum, because she had not chosen the correct person for
183 her Sakura.
184 Kinomoto-kun leaned in close, until their foreheads touched, "No, Tomoyo.
185 Watashi wa Tomoyo ga daisuki desu. Aishiteru."
186 "Watashi ka?" there was a fluttering of live flowers in Tomoyo's rib cage,
187 as if everything she'd ever known had been drained from her body. "But
188 Sakura-chan is going to marry Li-kun and live happily in Hong Kong."
189 "Correction," Kinomoto-kun said dryly, " 'Sakura-chan'," she referenced
190 her younger self with some malice, "was engaged to marry Li-kun, when her
191 best friend Tomoyo cut her wrists and, for good measure, drowned herself in
192 the middle of winter. Sakura-chan was-- and still is-- in love with
193 Tomoyo," Kinomoto-kun's eyes were all emerald fire, and Tomoyo could not
194 look away, "but, all her life Sakura-chan had thought that boys went with
195 girls and so on. She was too stupid to understand how she felt, and too
196 dense to see the truth even when her best friend put it right in front of
197 her. So, when Tomoyo died, the world wasn't the same any more, and
198 everything she touched was like in the fairy tale-- it seemed to turn to
199 glass and cut her."
200 "I wasn't trying to hurt you," Tomoyo linked her arms around the
201 sorceress, but Kinomoto-kun could only see the time before. She rested her
202 cheek against the heiress' soft lavender hair and stared without seeing
203 into the snow night beyond the window.
204 "So Sakura-chan broke off her engagement," she continued, "She went to
205 college and pretended to be a person. She majored in archeology, since it
206 made a good excuse, and studied magic in Tibet. She lived so long that
207 every day was a nightmare, and she worked ten years to perfect a Card and a
208 spell that would help her change her mistakes." Small tears gathered in the
209 corners of the sorceress' eyes.
210 "It hurts me to see you cry," Tomoyo said honestly, taking up a quilt to
211 ease the sadness seeping from Kinomoto-kun's eyes. Kinomoto-kun's arms
212 tighted around her suddenly, and Tomoyo was suffused with a feeling of
213 wings folded at her back as the other woman rocked her gently.
214 "You're real... It hurts me to think I never... I didn't...," Kinomoto-kun
215 took a deep breath, "Why did you give so much to me, when I never gave
216 anything back?"
217 "Sakura-chan has always given to me!"
218 "But not the way you wanted," it was a shrewd point; and for the first
219 time, Tomoyo felt the dream-like quality vanish from the situation. No
220 dream or vision would have shown her this.
221 "No..." she admitted softly, "But I didn't have a right to want those
222 things."
223 "Of course you do!" for a moment, just a moment, Kinomoto-kun and
224 Sakura-chan were the same. "Everyone has a right to love!" Gently, the
225 sorceress brushed the twilight locks away from Tomoyo's face. Then, to
226 break the growing intensity, "Your food is getting cold."
227 "Hai, Kinomoto-kun," Tomoyo obediently took back to sipping her soup, glad
228 when Kinomoto-kun didn't get up. Instead, the older woman watched her with
229 careful attention, playing absently with the slighly curling ends of the
230 younger girl's hair. "Are you sure you couldn't have been happy with
231 Li-kun?"
232 "You don't believe me, do you?" Kinomoto-kun shook her head roughly, "Did
233 you know that I used to sit with him in the darkened movie theater and
234 wonder if there was something wrong with me because all I wanted to do was
235 go home and call you? That he practically had to bribe me to kiss him? When
236 he first said he liked me, I was just excited that *someone* did, since I
237 thought I had never felt anything. I always got 'hayaaan' when I was with
238 you, but I was with you all the time, so I didn't notice."
239 "Sakura...," the sound breezed past Tomoyo's lips, and she so wished she
240 could see the same look in her friend's wide pools of green. Coming from
241 this slightly different Sakura, it didn't seem real.
242 "It doesn't matter if you still don't believe me," Kinomoto-kun smiled
243 sadly, tracing lightly down the slope of Tomoyo's nose, "I'm going to
244 change the past. I wonder how many times Clow did the same, trying to get
245 things right?"
246
247
248 "Three, if I remember correctly," Kero put in. He'd managed to pilfer a
249 large cake from the Daidouji kitchen and, after lugging his prize upstairs,
250 was taking a bath in it as Yue looked on with vague disapproval.
251 "Kero-chan!" Kinomoto-kun scolded, "I put servants to sleep! What will
252 happen when the cook wakes up and finds her cake gone?"
253 "I'm not worried," an icing-coated Kero sang, making a flying nose-dive
254 into the cake, "My wonderful Mistress will get me out of this mess, and I
255 haven't had a Daidouji cake in almost two bloody centuries!"
256 "Of course, your 'wonderful mistress' will save you," Kinomoto-kun rolled
257 her eyes with good nature.
258 "There's another cake in the back of the freezer, if you want it," Tomoyo
259 offered, smiling at the sudden chorus of 'wai!!" that struck up from the
260 other side of the room. Kero offered a paw-full of cake to the winged young
261 man by his side.
262 "I hate food," Yue sniffed, "But thank you all the same, Tomoyo-san."
263 "Isn't there some place you two can go? It's big house," Kinomoto-kun
264 raised an eyebrow, only half-teasing.
265 "Hey," Yue pointed out with trace of his own brand of humor, "Someone has
266 to protect Tomoyo's virtue from certain amorous sorceress."
267 "Yue, what a thing to say!" Kinomoto-kun turned pink, "HOOOOEEE!"
268 Added Kero, from somewhere in the mound of cake, "And keep you from doing
269 any permanent damage to your younger form."
270 "Chaperones," Kinomoto-kun sighed. The two women blushed and looked at
271 their hands.
272
273
274 Having finished her meal, the young heiress set the tray on her
275 nightstand, studying Kinomoto-kun with wise, moon-shine eyes. "Change the
276 past..." she murmured.
277 "I really didn't know if I could do it," Kinomoto-kun replied, in answer
278 to the question Tomoyo hadn't asked. "But... after I found you on..," her
279 profile turned down, locks of auburn hair obscuring her features, "maybe I
280 shouldn't talk about this." Tomoyo's soft touch on her shoulder seemed to
281 bring the words out; "I looked, to see if you'd been reborn. All my
282 research in Hong Kong and Tibet suggested a great chance of failure in
283 time-travel, so that was my other hope. When the cards found your new form,
284 I was elated. You were thirteen, living on the colony on Europa. That's why
285 it took me so long to find you."
286 "Europa..." Tomoyo murmured, "It's an ocean moon, ne? Very cold?" Her body
287 seemed to tense with the memory of the lake and her attempt to meet death.
288 "Hai," Kinomoto-kun tipped her head back, staring at the ceiling, "You
289 were in training to dive for the gin-pearls that grow under the icebergs.
290 But all accounts, you were happy-- designed clothes for your classmates,
291 sang, worked hard in school. I told myself I just wanted to see if you were
292 really alright. I was being selfish..."
293 Breathless, "What happened?"
294 "I happened," Kinomoto-kun laughed bitterly. "I arranged a meeting with
295 you easily enough-- I offered to sponsor the school you attended. And there
296 you were-- your hair was short, but it was you and... I'm a really selfish
297 person, Tomoyo." Gently, Tomoyo eased the older woman's grip on her hands,
298 moving so that Kinomoto-kun could rest her head in the heiress' lap.
299 "You're not selfish," Tomoyo murmured, fascinated by the play of light in
300 the gold-yellow-topaz-all-over-autumn of Kinomoto-kun's hair.
301 "I am, because I was so happy to see you, and I promised to help you go to
302 a good conservatory, cultivate your voice. I felt betrayed that you didn't
303 recognize me, but I didn't let you see that. I just wanted to be near you
304 again. Then, when business called me back to Earth-- That is, when I called
305 to check on you, you'd done it again!"
306 "Death," Tomoyo may or may not have murmured. And, with sudden
307 understanding, "She loved you and thought she was... was wrong."
308 "All because I was so stupid as to come back into your life again."
309 Kinomoto-kun raised her head, eyes filled with the same desperate affection
310 Tomoyo hid within herself. "I have to change that. all of this."
311 "You have," Tomoyo pointed out.
312 "Not enough. I can't just say, 'Don't give into the sadness, Tomoyo' and
313 then expect you to wait around for me to figure things out. I thought I
314 might just vanish after I rescued you, but obviously I haven't changed all
315 that much."
316 "I won't leave," it was a breathless promise, "I would never hurt
317 Sakura-chan."
318 "But, see, you'll only be doing it out of obligation-- you'll still be
319 miserable."
320 "I don't see how--"
321
322
323 "Wait." Kinomoto-kun's lips turned up in an almost smile, "listen."
324 Downstairs, the clicking of the front-door latch echoed, and Tomoyo heard
325 the faint callings of *her* Sakura. She started to trill out a happy
326 reply, but the sorceress at her side raised a single finger, motioning for
327 silence. Sakura's calls came closer and rose to a level of fear-- the sound
328 of hurried footsteps vibrated down the hall and then.
329 A happy, pixie-ish face, and a voice slightly out of breath, "Tomoyo-chan!
330 I was worried..."
331 With smile of pity and a little self-loathing, Kinomoto-kun said;
332
333 "Okari. I've been waiting for you, Sakura-san."
334
335
336 ======================
337
338 TO BE CONTINUED
339
340 There once was a lady named Mere,
341 Who was madder than a March Hare,
342 She did love to write,
343 deep into the night,
344 and feedback made her so happy she walked upon air!
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