storypaint | Fate (Eriol/Tomoyo)

Comm: 10hugs
Words: 728
Title: Fate
Series: Cardcaptor Sakura
Character/Pairing: Hiiragizawa Eriol/Daidouji Tomoyo
Set: #2
Theme: #4, it shocked me
Rating: G
Word Count: 728
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.

They had a strange way of knowing each other.

When Eriol met Sakura and suggested that they had known each other before they were born, how could he have known that there was another whom he must have crossed paths with in another life? For how else could Daidouji Tomoyo know who he was?

He played piano for the choir, the year he attended Tomoeda Elementary, his skill no more than a few centuries' worth of practice, but remarkable in an eleven-year-old. He liked the way she sang, coming out underneath the chorus, full and confident with gentle guidance to the other singers. That was the way she was in all things, especially with Sakura.

But she saw the way that he enjoyed being in the background, unnoticed, and said that he should play out a little more. Incidental music has to be there, she told him, otherwise all is dull and the fun is lost. You like to guide the choir, don't you, Eriol? Like a puppeteer, you get to decide how fast and loud we sing. It seemed like something you enjoy.

She was a variable in the plan, much more than he had originally thought she would be. He began to keep a closer watch on her after that conversation. Of course, now that he had begun to observe, he saw strange things.

That every time she hugged Sakura that it seemed like something more.

That she was just as accurate at observing as he was.

That she had the most beautiful dark eyes.

He ignored her eyes in favor of the Plan. The Plan was key. When that was done he could be content. He could bring Kaho to him. That's all he wanted. Daidouji-san wouldn't get in the way of his happiness, so many decades in the making.

The Plan it was. He tiptoed around her and her enchanting eyes and she never knew the truth, though she suspected it. She called him on the teasing flirtation he had with Sakura--she saw right through it to the core of it. You're always doing that--watching Sakura-san with kind eyes. It's not the same as Li watches her, though.

She wasn't smug about it, and that made it worse. She just knew. But it was enough to give him a shock--he, the brilliant far-seeing magician with too much power for his own good (own happiness). He hadn't been shocked for a long time. Everything was fated, or rather arranged by Clow, who arranged his own future with the same ease that some people arranged flowers. He'd gotten to know Kaho through dreams, so many dreams, that he felt as though they'd been together their whole life. It was funny to think that they hadn't met yet, but that would come in time.

And when the time came he accepted it with grace that there was something else that Clow couldn't force or predict, and that was love. And the love Kaho had for him was something resembling but not quite romantic love, in the end, and he felt so alone in his home country that he came back. There he had Clow's heir to watch over and her boyfriend to tease and her best friend's enchanting eyes, which he was still carefully ignoring.

Sakura welcomed him back without questions and a hug and Tomoyo tested her questions carefully and got the story out of him. And one night on the school roof as they watched the stars for an astronomy project, she shocked him again. I look at you and my heart breaks, she said, and that in itself wasn't shocking, simply irritating in her unwanted empathy. He wasn't a stupid kid with his first crush. This was supposed to be fated! But she understood more than he thought. My heart breaks because you seem so alone, and you have always been alone. It's very hard to be alone, Clow reincarnate or not.

She was right and it hurt and he still couldn't figure out how she seemed to know him truly. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and he turned and was captured by her violet eyes. You are alone too, he said, trying to pull away, and when she said, Not anymore, he gave in and let things be.

Sometimes you have to trust in fate.