storypaint | Friends (Meiling/Syaoran)

Title: Friends
Author: rhap_chan
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Pairing: Li Meiling/Li Syaoran
Challenge #: 13 (table two) for 20loves
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.

We were friends. Then I gave him my heart.

That was a mistake.

In retrospect, it was easy to realize what would happen in the future. It was an open-ended promise after all. I was only his fiancee until he found the girl he loved most.

We were friends. Then I gave him my heart, and there the story ends.

I had always wanted to be the princess rescued by my gallant knight to ride off into the sunset. A Cinderella story, where I wasn't the youngest, ignored member of my family, a girl with no marketable skills.

I could at least bear his children, and thereby redeem myself, I thought. Or rather, I thought later. If I had thought at that moment at all I would have saved myself the heartache.

But we were young and I was pumped up with admiration for the small boy who'd saved my bird, my most precious thing, the best thing anyone had ever given to me.

What made him run out into the rain to search for hours?

I'd like to think there was a trace of affection there. He couldn't stand to make me cry, never could. That's why I went to Daidouji's after he told me the truth.

The story was over. The storybook romance I'd been searching for so long was a bust.

He couldn't stand to see me cry, so I wept in Daidouji's lap, and she let me. That girl was wiser than most people thought, when they bothered to think about her at all.

She knew what heartache was, but refused to sing the blues. I would have to learn to be strong like her, strong like a willow instead of an oak, with a trunk that bends with the winds but does not break.

It was time for me to find someone who can love me the most, despite my excitable personality and borderline obsessiveness. I would learn to bend, as well. The secret lay there in Daidouji's eyes, and I wouldn't rest until I found it.

We were friends. Then I gave him my heart and there that story ends. But it's time to turn the page and begin the next tale.

Next time, on Meiling-chan's Crazy Adventures, I learn to be myself, without Syaoran...

Hey, how hard could it be, if I was determined enough?