storypaint | Pieces (Tomoyo/Sakura)

Comm: 20_inkspots (claim dropped)
Words: 532
Title: Pieces
Series: Cardcaptor Sakura
Pairing: Daidouji Tomoyo/Kinomoto Sakura
Author: rhap_chan
Artist: sky_pirate_tat
Theme Set: Dark themes, #17
Rating: G
Warnings/Spoilers: shojo ai
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP. All fanfiction archived here is a derivative of canon material that is not my property. I do not profit from these writings. The opinions and actions expressed in these stories are not necessarily the views and beliefs of the original author or me.

Summary: When someone dies, photographs and videos aren't enough to stop yourself from breaking too.

I have all these pieces of you scattered across my room-- your old costumes in my closet, boxes of photographs neatly catalogued under my bed, and hundreds of videotapes.

I have all these pieces of you, and I wish I could put them together and gain the whole of you, but I can't. I can touch your costumes and remember how your body moved in them, lithely and quickly, and I can look at photographs of you and remember the special way you smiled for me, and I can watch the tapes over and over, but the same thing remains.

You're gone. I will never see you again.

The day of your funeral I asked Kinomoto-sensei if he could see you, since the portion of Clow's magic he has allows him to see spirits, but he simply put his hand on his shoulder, looking up at a ghostly wife I could not see, and said that he couldn't. You were gone from this world.

You aren't gone; there are bits and pieces of you and your true self all over my bedroom and in the Buddhist shrine I keep at my bedside. I burn incense for you and watch the smoke waft lazily across the photograph of the day (for, much like Fugitaka, I have enough film to display a new picture of you every day) and how small and battered your eraser has become. But I know that what I have holds none of your spirit.

Syaoran has your cards, and he told me once that pieces of you reside in each. He cannot open the book. Kero has gone back to sleep on it, his leonine face twisted in grief. He didn't want a new master so soon. Yue may never again emerge. He has left Yukito alone in their body and the loss of both you and his other self has left him a shadow of who he was, supported by Touya, who has always stood strongly in times of grief.

Touya stands strongly, but he is as broken as I am. We are all shell-shocked, all victim to the same vision-- your smile and wave as you walked away, promising to return with the ice cream. Eriol did not foresee it; I asked him in my grief.

I am still mourning that I did not snap one last photograph as you walked away in the noonday sun, one last try to capture your essence on paper, even though I know it wouldn't be you. I've always had these pieces and tried to pretend that I am happy with pieces, but I'm not. You never knew.

I never told you that I loved you, not that I planned to. I did not get an opportunity to film his proposal and your wedding and the births of your children. I will never get that opportunity.

In my room I have all these little pieces of you, and you are in the ground, finally silent and without a smile. I would never deny you happiness, sweet Sakura. Fate has done that for you.

All I have are pieces of you, now, Sakura, and that has left me in pieces as well.