storypaint | You Can't Go Back (Syaoran/Sakura)

Title: You Can't Go Back
Length: 1169 words
Prompt: n/a
Pairing: Syaoran/Sakura
Other: character death
Excerpt: 'I give you the Book because I know you will take care of it for me. I trust you, love,' the letter said.

It was dawn the day she died. She smiled at him and squeezed his hand, and then those brilliant-emerald eyes closed for the last time.

It was noon three days later that they placed her in the ground next to her mother. The box went into the dirt and abruptly all he had left of her was memories. He sat there at the grave and wept unashamedly until evening, when a concerned friend brought him home.

It is here our story truly begins.

"Looking back and longing for
The freedom of my chains
And lying in your loving arms again"
---Dixie Chicks, Loving Arms

She had been aware that she was going to die for a long time, he knew. She had seen it in her dreams. She would go to join her mother.

But she was only 24.

She was scared, of course, but fear didn't change anything. She had put her affairs in order and written good-bye letters to the ones she loved. She had written one to him, of course, her beloved husband, and he held it so gently in his hand because she had written it and he loved her so much that he wanted her to... come back to life, somehow, in the confines of that paper.

He read it again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, pausing at the same place as always and looking up at something.

'I give you the Book because I know you will take care of it for me. I trust you, love,' the letter said.

He looked at the Sakura Book behind his blurry veil of tears. It sat there on his desk, closed and locked. He had the Key. It didn't make any difference to him. He lived in a sort of fog now, untouchable. Like he used to be. Before her.

He rose from his seat and walked over to the Book, placing his hands on the cover. It was warm with her magic.

Not exactly knowing why, he unlocked it and took the cards out, running his hands over their smooth faces. Windy, her strongest ally, Fly, Woody, Illusion... More than fifty dangerous captures and the subsequent transformations hadn't killed her. No, something as mundane and unmagical as cancer had stolen her from him.

His hands paused. He blinked the tears away and looked at the card. The Return.

He wondered... The Return. Could he return? Go back? Back to before she got sick, back to when they were truly happy? The Return.

The card hummed, feeling his attention, and waited for a command.

It couldn't hurt to try.

He called his sword into existence and then released the card.

"Return card! Take me back! Take me to her!"

And suddenly, there he was. He gazed around in wonder at the blue, cloudless skies and the people brushing by him. The newspaper at the stand on the corner said a date about seven years ago. He remembered this day.

They had been on a date in Tokyo, drunk on love and freedom. It had been one of the best days of his life.

Would she come?

"Syaoran-chan! There you are!"

And she came out of the crowd, eyes sparkling, like a vision from Heaven. His throat caught and he couldn't speak.

"Where've you been?" she said teasingly with one of her brilliant smiles.

"Here," he choked out, eyes glistening with tears.

"Syao-chan? You all right?" she asked, studying his face. Her brow furrowed. It made her look cuter.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm great!" he said, feeling a weight lift off his shoulders. He was back with Sakura! He smiled.

"Come on!" she said. "There's something I want you to see!"

She dragged him around window-shopping for a while. Then they saw a movie, and she held his hand at the scary parts, resting her head on his shoulder. They ate at a café and reminisced about their younger days, laughing and talking. It was blissful for him to be with her again, just like that day seven years ago.

And it was her; he was sure of that. Her every little mannerism and memory was the same. She made a few subtle remarks as toward their future together, as they had lived it, but seemed content to be in this moment.

And at the end of the day they took a hotel room together, because they were already engaged, but they didn't do anything, just slept back to back, enjoying the warmth and closeness. He remembered that, too, and how it was almost better than what they could have done. Their love didn't need physical expression; it stuck out unconsciously all around them in the simplest little gestures, like this one.

He woke up in the morning and found everything the same as yesterday, and was content to live the day all over again with the young woman he so desperately loved.

There were days upon days of repetition: same date, same movie, same conversations, same ending. He enjoyed it at first, but something in him got itchy. On the sixteenth day, he tried to alter their routine.

"Come on, Sakura-chan! Let's go this way!" he said suddenly, taking her hand and pulling her a different way than they always went.

"What's that way? We're supposed to go over here," she said firmly, and somehow overcame his strength, pulling him in the correct direction.

He sighed inwardly and followed. That afternoon he ignored the movie and thought deeply, only mechanically comforting Sakura.

The next day he didn't let her get the best of him and pulled her to a bench and sat down. He thought a long moment, then began to speak.

"I love you, Sakura-chan."

"That's so sweet, Syaoran-chan!"

"Drop the act for a moment and listen. I can't live like this. This--this is a lie, Sakura, and we both know it."

He gestured expansively at pseudo-Tokyo.

"A lie?"

"Please, Sakura-chan."

Sakura sighed.

"A lie," she admitted. Her eyes filled with tears. She clasped her hands together in her lap.

"I love you, Syao-chan. I would stay here with you like this for eternity if it would make you happy."

"I know," he said, and took a deep breath. "The fact of the matter is: you can't go back. You can't go back. I'll be with you again someday, but now... you deserve to catch up with your mother, and enjoy your afterlife. And I have mortal obligations... Goodbye, my cherry blossom."

"Goodbye, my little wolf. See you."

Her voice was resigned, but happy, and it echoed strangely. He shut his eyes in pain and--

Opened them at home. He sighed, looking at the card in his hand, and then a picture on the mantelpiece, of that day. But the past is done and over with. All that is left is memories, and that is as should be.

Then he headed over to Fujitaka's to pick up a little girl with brilliant emerald eyes, messy brown hair, and her mother's name.

You Can't Go Back (Syaoran/Sakura)

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