Sweeping Up the Heart by rhap_chan [Cardcaptor Sakura, elegy]
Title: Sweeping Up the Heart
Author: rhap_chan
Theme: #10, elegy
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Warnings: character death
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura is the property of CLAMP. "The Bustle in a House" was written by Emily Dickinson.
Summary/Comments: It was hard to lose Kaho, and harder yet to discover that she had lied to her family about their relationship. Goodbyes are hard, but even harder when you discover the dead didn't really love you.
It was going to end anyway, Eriol thought. Really, it was.
He pressed his head into his arm and felt the tears soak through the fabric of his button-front shirt. He'd been very strong at her funeral, so much so that all of her relatives whom he had never met were praising his stoicness. Very adult for a thirteen-year-old, they said. Made the arrangements himself. Picked out a coffin, even! I couldn't do that when my mother died, and I was forty...
It hadn't been as hard as he thought it would be, the funeral. The more people who referred to him as Kaho's son, the more cold and dead he became. He nodded and spoke in the right places out of a combination of the brave front of the British and long-practiced deception, but inside he hurt.
She hadn't told her family about us, he thought again, delicately picking at the matter like one picks at a scab. She hadn't seen her family in decades, but all those carefully worded letters home made me out to be her son, in case we should meet them sometime.
She was embarrassed of me. Damn, he thought darkly.
He knew now why she was content to be engaged to him for such a long period of time. She had brushed off his worries. She knew he would be in school for several years, especially if he became a doctor as planned. No problem!
She hadn't intended to marry him at all. That hurt nearly as much as her death did.
He wept into his arm like the child he appeared to be and wished that he had incarnated earlier, or aged as he was supposed to, or something! Anything to make the supposed age difference more compatible to her. She knew that he was no child, but he supposed that something in her bucked against it anyway.
He sniffled and it echoed a little in the large room. He wondered with the Clow part of his mind how silly he looked, a teenage boy in a severe black suit weeping in the chair Nakuru had once dubbed his Throne O' Ultimate Evil. Who cared? Shut up, he thought fiercely to the remnants of Clow's personality. Don't disturb my grief.
The guardians knew better than to disturb him; at least for now anyway. In an hour or so--maybe longer, because even Ruby had been sombered by Kaho's sudden death--the pair would be in here trying to cheer him up. Spinel would act like a cat, rubbing himself gently in comfort across the master's legs, and Ruby would be...
Who cared? The quiet joy that had glued them together as a dysfunctional family of four was gone now. Something would be missing now, missing like it had been when they were in Japan and Eriol counted every day that Kaho was gone. She had to go; it was part of the plan. Now he regretted ever letting her leave.
She was only to be gone for an hour, a jaunt to the grocery store and back. They were out of milk and sugar, like they always seemed to be. She intended to stop at the bookstore for a bit. He was tired and it was early in the morning. When she told him of her intentions he had simply grunted and rolled over in the bed.
He hadn't told her that he loved her. He had just gone back to sleep. Not, he realized, that it would have mattered to her, apparently. Still, it mattered to him. He had let go of the magician's life all too easily--but who wouldn't have? A long century or more (he still didn't know) as Clow, several decades with his own body growth frozen so he wouldn't age beyond the new mistress and could gain her trust, and then a nerve-wracking year of deception and fighting when he wanted to do nothing of the sort. He had thrown away his magician self like it was nothing. It was no longer useful to him. He wanted nothing more than to be free of the visions.
So he had rolled over and slept until the phone rang persistently and he had picked it up and heard a solemn voice asking if he was the closest relative of Miss Mizuki Kaho. He hadn't hesitated to say yes, nor had he hesitated to call a cab and leave his guardians in the house alone as he hurried off to make sure that she was all right.
His magic, where it usually lay dormant, was flat and quiet and gave no hints about her injuries or lack thereof. He had taken that as a good sign. But as he rushed into the hospital he felt a sharp pain in his chest as their connection was broken and he'd started crying before he asked for her room and was told that she needed none. She needed no more room beyond a small plot.
A few of their closer relatives had attempted to follow him home from the funeral with their well-meaning but useless condolences. Kaho's mother had stolen a moment with him to ask if her daughter had been happy, and if she had even mentioned that he had relatives living barely half an hour from their house. She had been, and she had not, he answered, and the woman with the lined face and his beloved's eyes seemed hurt. She offered to take care of him, feeling it was her duty, and he had quickly declined, claiming Nakuru as his cousin (well, on his father's side, of course) and of age, and perfectly willing to be his guardian, as she had been living with he and Kaho for several years, lacking her own home. It wasn't hard to arrange the papers.
And here they were now, a little unbalanced family of three. The door opened quietly and Spinel padded into the room in panther form. He put his paws carefully on the side of the chair, trying to stay balanced, and rubbed his chin along his master's jawbone in the comforting way a cat does. Following close after came Ruby, her false form uncharacteristically subdued with somber gaze. She climbed into his lap as though she were small and he was the comforter, which he usually was, but she hugged him and he didn't mind the weight. They sat that way for a long time, and even Spinel cried.
I didn't tell her that I loved her, Eriol thought, and even if she didn't feel the same, or she was ashamed of us, I hope she knows I love her still...
His magic clung close to him since he was near his guardians and he wondered idly if he dared glance into the future and see how long the pain would burn at him, but he decided not to. Sakura had indeed been wise to let that power lie dormant. Perhaps he would just have to trust her invincible spell.
Everything is going to be all right, he thought, testing it delicately, and it felt fake and wrong except for that Clow part of him that nodded quietly, still respecting his grief, but knowing there would be an end to it. Someday. And what else did he always have, but time?
The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth,--
The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.
--Emily Dickinson