storypaint | Surprise (Meiling/Syaoran)

Title: Surprise
Author: rhap_chan
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Pairing: Li Meiling/Li Syaoran
Challenge #: 14 (table two) for 20loves
Rating: PG-13 for semi-graphic character death
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.

Sometimes life surprises us, and sometimes double-decker tourist buses have trouble stopping. This was Meiling's dilemma, and the reason she was lying in the middle of the street bleeding her lifebloods into an unsympathetic pavement.

I should have looked before I crossed the street, she thought, and closed her eyes. After only a minute she felt someone grab her hand and pull her head up on his lap. She screamed at his touch; her back felt like it was on fire. But he didn't drop her.

"Meiling! Meiling!" he said urgently. She opened her eyes a little and Syaoran's face swam into focus. She'd never seen him this upset before, tears cascading down his cheeks and desperation in his eyes.

"Go away," she said weakly. It was his fault she was lying here dying.

Well, actually, it wasn't. Death makes one drop all pretenses, and it hovered close to her, reminding her to be honest with herself-- there wasn't much time.

He hadn't been able to tell her that he loved her. She knew he didn't, never had. But desperately she had fought, tooth and nail, to be his one and only.

Can't blame a girl for trying, can you? Can you?

This last silence after her plea ("Tell me you love me, Syaoran...") was too much for her, and she had burst forward through the crowd and onto the street, fleeing his silence, trying to escape it--

And then there had been a bus. The driver was crying on the phone to emergency service. People were beginning to form a circle around the battered, bleeding teenager and her companion. It wasn't a pretty sight. Both legs were broken, bones peeking through flesh, and more blood was splattered across her body than she had thought her body contained. There was something internal, a rib piercing her lung, she figured. It was the worst pain she could imagine.

The worst physical pain, she thought, looking up into Syaoran's eyes. He seemed to be struggling with himself, struggling to say something. She knew what it was and why it didn't matter.

"Don't tell me you love me, it's not who you are. I want to die without hearing those words. That would be a wonderful way to die," she said, trying to swallow the blood threatening to leak from the corner of her mouth. His hot tears splashed down on her forehead.

"You're my favorite cousin," he said instead, knowing it wasn't enough, but she managed to smile before her body went limp in his arms. He took her hand in his and held it for a long moment. He could hear the screeching of the ambulance and the sorrow that was threatening to overwhelm him. Trembling, he kissed her hand.

"I love you, Meiling," he said with utmost sincerity. It wasn't that he couldn't say it to her-- it was that this sort of "I love you" wasn't the sort that she wanted from him. That was a gift he couldn't give.

She gave him her heart, and he gave it back, and now there was no chance for her redemption. Sometimes life surprises us with someone else's smile and a promise, and sometimes with a double-decker tour bus.

It was one of those days.