Til Death (Fujitaka/Nadeshiko)

[storypaint]

Comm: 20loves
Words: 623
Title: Til Death
Author: rhap_chan
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Pairing: Kinomoto Fujitaka/Kinomoto Nadeshiko
Challenge #: 3 (table one) for 20loves
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.

Summary: Nadeshiko ponders how much Fujitaka gave up to love her, but that doesn't matter to him. Fits neatly into canon.

How much did he give up to be with me? she used to wonder in the night when she rocked a fussy Touya back to sleep. She never asked the question because she was scared that somewhere in the answer would be the whisper of "too much." So as a substituted for whatever opportunities she took from him she loved him perfectly and unconditionally, a romantic worship of his being. He had sacrificed enough for her.

She didn't leave him when she died, like most would. I would rather walk the earth next to him as a ghost, than go to heaven and never see him again, she had said fiercely to the shinigami who had suggested she move on. One of the pair who had come for her tried to argue, but the woman smiled sadly and told her partner to let the woman be. You can't force something like this. She wants to make this sacrifice for him.

She stayed and it hurt to pull away from the cloying need calling her to the afterlife. It hurt because her soul wanted to rest, to take upon the next body, but she wouldn't go. Their vows had been American, something romantic he'd read in a book once, and she had promised to love him until death parted them, but now that she was dead she saw no reason to stop loving.

And still, she realized as the years passed on and her children grew and he told her photograph good morning every day, he was making a greater sacrifice. The man who had promised to love her until death parted them was still loving her and showed no signs of stopping. He never took his ring off, never even contemplated it, and he had many years left to live.

Each year after she died he wrote her a letter telling her the things that had happened, and he cried while he wrote it, and often he smiled too. Birthdays, track meets, magic--none of it escaped his pen as he wrote their lives out into the paper, bleeding his soul into it for her, pages and pages of silly and wonderful things that she'd missed. He left it every year on the date of her death with a bouquet of nadeshiko blossoms, wishing he could do more, knowing that he should let her go. He didn't want to be the person pulling her away from heaven.

Still, when Touya saw her, he always said that she looked happy.

When Eriol-onii-sama (for weren't they brothers? or even more than that?) gave Fugitaka the power to see through the veil of normal things into the dusty half-realm where all ghosts dwelled, he gave Fugitaka much more than a sixth sense. The day he saw her face again and she finally looked into eyes aware of her presence was perhaps the best gift that Fugitaka had ever received, besides her undying love. He took her in his arms again, though her presence was as thin as smoke, less tangible than paper, and the joy on his face made her realize that he had never sacrificed anything to love her. There was no sacrifice, because there was no substitute for Nadeshiko, and because love was one of the only things that could be born of nothing and persist until nothing is all that remains. He understood this in an instant of epiphany and tried to speak, words clumsy.

"I'm glad to see you again," she said and kissed him, and he nearly cried to hear her voice. He wanted to say all the things that he had thought, but he looked into her eyes and realized that she knew. So all he said was, "Me, too."

If things on earth may be to heaven resembled,
It must be love, pure, constant, undissembled.
--Aphra Behn