storypaint | Seeing Spirits (Eriol/Sakura)

Title: Seeing Spirits
Author/Artist: rhap_chan
Pairing: Hiiragizawa Eriol/Kinomoto Sakura
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Theme: 28. spirits within
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.

Summary: Sakura's magic grew until she had the ability to see spirits. Now they came to tell her goodbye.

I never wanted to see spirits. When I was young, my brother would always tell me about the people he saw that I couldn't see, and frankly, these invisible people scared me.

There were some things Clow couldn't predict, like my love for Syaoran. There were other things as well-- the fact that, as my magic increased, I began to dream visions more and more frequently. And there was also the fact that eventually I began to see ghosts.

I thought at first they were spirits from within me-- people I once knew that I dreamed to life. Sometimes I saw my mother, and I always figured that was simple longing. But now, people came to see me to say goodbye.

I lost my father when I was twenty, to complications with cancer. Though I was asleep when he breathed his last breaths (asleep in the family lounge a few doors down from his room, since visiting hours were over), I knew. I was having some sort of quiet dream in which my ears seemed to be stuffed with cotton, and then he appeared to me in the form I remembered from when I was a child, whole and well. He smiled and then my mother appeared, wrapping her arms around his shoulders from above, her wings bright and white. They both faded together, and I awoke with tears on my face. Touya was shaking me, waking me up to tell me the news.

I never told Touya. He knew in the end about my Cardcaptoring days, but I never mentioned any new abilities that the growth of my magic caused. He'd lost his abilities for me, after all.

He and Yukito died, about four years after I was married to Syaoran (he had stood up to give me away, and I knew it was one of the hardest things he ever did). It was late at night on an icy road, around two in the morning, when they walked into my dream and sat down next to me on the circus bench. They were holding hands and they were a little more crisp, more real, than the rest of my dreams, and I put my face in my hands, circus-dreams forgotten. When I woke up, the phone rang, three lonely peals, and then the answering machine clicked on. I didn't want to answer it, but Syaoran was beginning to stir, and I knew he had to work the next day. When I hung up, I lay there until dawn, unsleeping. I didn't want to see them again.

I hated seeing spirits.

Eriol was the first ghost I saw who could speak to me. He seemed stronger than the rest of them, or perhaps it was that I was growing older and in the dream world more often than not, searching for the next Clow Cards heir.

"Hello, Sakura-chan," he said cheerfully, interrupting my dream, in which I had been fleeing some unknown dark pursuit. When Eriol appeared, the scene shifted abruptly to a sunny spring day in a park. We were sitting on a park bench and he looked just as I remembered him from our youth.

"Eriol-kun?" I said, not wanting to believe that I had lost another of my friends. We'd kept very erratic contact over the years, but we'd remained friends. He attended my wedding, and I would have gone, if his promised wedding with Kaho had ever occurred (I wasn't sure what had gone wrong, for the period in which they broke up was a period in which we did not have much communication).

"Yes, I am dead," he said. "It's pretty restful, actually. Clow had the wrong idea."

He laughed and then smiled at me. I was drowning in memories of our past, wondering how I had forgotten his intoxicating smile. Had I ever been as young as he was? Had my children ever been so young?

"I always loved you, you know," he said, kicking his legs in the dust a little and looking up towards the sun.

"I loved you too," I said warmly. This was by far the best ghost I had seen, even if it would sink in when I awoke that he was dead.

"In another way, Sakura-chan," he said, and looked at me. He took his glasses off and I saw his face was very serious.

"I don't know how or why it happened, but for years you haunted my dreams. And here I am, haunting yours."

"I never..." I looked away from his honest face. "I never loved you like that, Eriol-kun."

"I know," he said. "I just thought that I might as well tell you now that it doesn't really matter. It's kind of a Clow thing."

He rose from the bench and I could see him getting... soft around the edges, in a way that was hard to describe if you'd never seen a ghost. During a disappearance it was almost as though the spirit was slowly being airbrushed away.

"May I kiss your hand?" he said. Feeling a little awkward, I extended it, and he leaned down on one knee like he had so many years before and brushed his lips to my hand. I shut my eyes when I felt his touch-- never before had a ghost been able to touch me-- and when I opened them again he was gone. The park setting remained and after a moment I looked down at my clothing and almost wasn't surprised to see my elementary school uniform.

I stood up on youthful legs and began to run through the park, searching for specters that would come from within me, dreams of the past, my old friends to play with.

Eriol's last gift to me was a pleasant dream, a dream in which I could be young again. A kiss, a dream, and one more thing--

I stopped seeing ghosts after that.