storypaint | Her Voice (Touya/Kaho)

Title: Her Voice
Author: rhap_chan
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Pairing: Kinomoto Touya and Kaho Mizuki
Challenge#: 20 for 20loves
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.
Summary/Comments: Touya loved Kaho's voice more than anything when they were together--it had such a rhythm to it.

She had calmness in her voice and it washed over you, made you forget what you were doing just to listen. It made you feel good, no matter what silly thing she had to say, and he wouldn't admit to it but had often stopped listening to her words in favor of listening to the tone. With her, he was able to relax.

There was a cadence to their relationship not unlike her voice--it flowed quietly and easily without any trouble from teacher-student to girlfriend-boyfriend. The resistance he had expected when he first realized that he loved her never appeared. When he told her how he felt she said okay in that luscious voice and thereon they went.

Touya knew his parents had married young and it didn't surprise him that he had found his true love early in life. He refused to let it go when he started to feel for her, in that way Touya had, clutching to something so hard in hopes that it wouldn't slide through his fingertips.

That voice of hers flowed like water or perhaps sand escaping your fist when you tried to hold it tighter, and before he realized it the sand was gone, time had run out and she'd gone with him leaving only a few cryptic words and an ache he hoped would someday go away. He liked some things about his early maturity, but persistent heartache was not one of them.

"I have to go away," she said to him and he had nodded and asked a stupid question, like when she was coming back. And the more she spoke and the more he realized she was going to leave, the more it hurt. Because even if they stayed together or there were letters or phone calls, something about her wouldn't be the same. She would share that gorgeous voice with its adorable slight British accent with someone else. In fact, she told him herself.

"Promise me that you'll never forget me," he said desperately, trying to hold onto her. She said that the next time they would meet that they would have someone else to hold and this pain wouldn't hover close enough to bring tears to his throat.

"Only if you promise to forget me," she said. "Because some things must end and you can't see me as your lover anymore. You must forget that I--that we--ever existed like this."

He nodded with a gulping sob and that was that and that storybook love that he thought they had like his parents had was gone. From her in any case. In him it burned and bubbled up like an oil fire, a flame nearly impossible to douse. Even her cool voice explaining could not soothe him and he didn't see her off at the airport the next day when she left.

He was mature for his age and so wasn't entirely surprised when time went on as easily as sand passing through his fingers and he found that she was right and when they met again, it didn't hurt so badly.

But he had to shut his eyes and listen very carefully to ignore that familiar sweet cadence in her voice.