storypaint | Eclipse (Tomoyo/Sakura) *repost*

Comm: 20_inkspots
Words: 1017
Title: Eclipse
Series: Cardcaptor Sakura
Pairing: Daidouji Tomoyo/Kinomoto Sakura
Author: rhap_chan
Artist: sky_pirate_tat
Theme Set: Dark themes, #15
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.

Excerpt: She smiled and walked away into her new life with her blue sky and I looked up and thought, It just looks blue to me.

"I've never seen a bluer sky."

Those were her last words to me before she left. She smiled and walked away into her new life with her blue sky and I looked up and thought, It just looks blue to me.

In fact, after she left the clouds descended with depressing rapidity. It began to sprinkle a little, but I didn't move until I couldn't see her any longer. She turned and waved the instant before she boarded the bus, and then she was gone.

Touya, Yukito, and Fujitaka were standing beside me. We exchanged solemn glances and then Touya offered to take me home.

I told him that I had a ride and instead walked off into the cold rain.

I was only two blocks down the road when the rain stopped. I looked up to see Touya with a large black umbrella. He didn't say anything, and neither did I. We walked to my house.

He followed me onto the step and we stood there a moment awkwardly before he said, "This isn't the end of the world, you know."

I looked at him coolly. I did not need sympathy. I needed to grieve.

"It's just an eclipse, I promise," he said, and stepped back down the sidewalk. I let myself into the house without looking back at him.

This isn't the end of the world.

It was a surprising thing to hear from Touya. For so long he had considered it his personal duty to keep Sakura safe. Now there was someone else charged with her safety, someone beside Yue, whom he knew he could trust. Wasn't this the end of Touya's world, as well?

No, this was the end of a piece of Touya's world, because he could go home now to Yukito and know that when things were rough he had someone who would hold him.

But Sakura was my whole world. Who was I without her?

I guessed I had to find out.

It's just an eclipse, he said. Well, it had been raining steadily for a week now both within and without. How ironic, that without my personal sun, there was no light.

He came to the door around three, before my mother would be home. I was certain that was planned; Nadeshiko's older offspring was not met with as much worship as her younger.

He had Sakura's ears, Mother, but you never noticed.

"I brought you something," he said. He pressed it into my hands and when I thanked him he strode away quickly.

His gift was a book, a thick one that said "Spring 1995" on the front. I took it inside and set it down and opened it across my lap.

The first photograph was Sakura, looking so young in the picture, with a wide smile. The caption read, "First day of third grade - It's going to be a great year!"

I paged through the book, noting several photographs to copy for myself. I was pleased to see the first photo of me, about one month into the school year, standing next to Sakura after a cheerleading event. She was holding my hand and one could already see the devotion quietly rising in my eyes and the small blush across my cheeks.

What a year that had been, a year without worries. I spent the afternoon looking through the photo album. A small note on the inside back cover said, "Treasure memories, but remember they're only memories."

Feeling annoyed, I took the note out and looked through the album again. Then I rose and began to clean, to do something to fill my mind with thoughts not of Sakura. I missed her so much it was like there was a weight pressing down on me.

I survived a month with Sakura gone, and then another. Once in a while I saw Touya and he always lifted a hand. I tried not to see him too much. He reminded me of the sweet girl I was missing.

She wrote me letters full of life. I could hear her laughter in the pages. She would come to visit in a few months, she promised. She hoped that I was well, and wondered if I'd found myself someone wonderful to love yet.

Found her, lost her. I didn't say that, though.

The day she came back, Fujitaka, Touya, Yukito, and I met her where we had left her nearly a year ago. She came to me first, and wrapped me in a hug, and I nearly cried to smell her sweet scent again.

It was strange how things had changed, and how suddenly our conversations were strange. She was learning Chinese and how to bake from Syaoran's sisters and a thousand other things I would never know. In her absence, I had tried to fill the afternoons and the evenings with work and other friends and new hobbies, anything to keep from thinking about her, which was making me crazy.

But I couldn't say that she was making me crazy, so when there were pauses in conversation I sought to fill them with tales of our former classmates or work. After a while, Sakura clapped her hands and said, "No wonder you haven't found your number one yet, Tomoyo-chan! You're so busy!"

I had to laugh a little at that, but she didn't notice the irony.

When she left the second time, in the same way, it was a little easier than before. Touya looked at me and seemed to note this. Magic or not, he was a perceptive boy.

"Is the eclipse over?" he asked me when he walked me to my door, and I wanted to say no, though the pain had dulled. Instead I took a deep breath and thought about all the new things I had done since she left, how I always had something to fill a letter, and how a girl in Accounting was always smiling at me and I was thinking about smiling back.

Then I looked up and thought I'd never seen a bluer sky.