...And the cage door swings open [Meiling]
Canon Status: Post-canon six or seven years.
Genre: Gen.
Rating: G.
Characters: Meiling (and some others).
Pairing: None.
Warnings: None.
Notes: For femgenficathon 2008, Prompt 13: I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry. -- Maxine Waters. Beta by the wonderful shiiki.
Summary: Meiling understands, now, why her bird ran away. She knows the feeling.
“Stop that, Meiling.”
She ignored her mother, focusing on the thud of her fists against her heavy punching bag. Her sore knuckles were beginning to sting, but she wanted to punch something more than she wanted to avoid the ache.
She didn’t have to look to see her mother’s pursed lips. “What purpose do you believe this display has? If you intend to convince me that you have no rein whatsoever upon your temper, your behavior at supper already demonstrated that. Really, Meiling! A lady of your age, shouting like a boy in front of the whole family! And after everyone was so kind to you, too!”
Meiling punched harder. She could hardly say to her mother that sometimes having people be kind to her was worse than seeing them sneer. Seeing her cousins smile pityingly, knowing that they were thinking, “Poor Meiling, we must be so kind to her,” had been slow torture, a death by a thousand pinpricks.
“You have no reason to be angry, in any case. Lady Yelan presented a more than handsome arrangement, by any measurement, far better than we could have expected for you.”
Punching was not enough. Meiling turned around and screamed at her mother, “Did you ever think that maybe I don’t like having arrangements made for me? That I might not like sitting there and listening to you and Aunt Yelan debating the best way to get me out of sight so I don’t ruin the pretty family picture any more? I hate you! And I hate my stupid cousins! And I hate Aunt Yelan most! So there!”
“Meiling.” Her mother’s tone was reproving but still cool in the face of her daughter’s temper. “At your age, you should be ready to accept that we simply cannot expect the kind of future for you to which the Li family is accustomed. That is the way it is, as little as any of us like it. You must make your peace with the situation.”
“I won’t! I won’t do it! I won’t, and you can’t make me!”
“What do you imagine this juvenile display of temper is going to accomplish? After the spectacle you made, I would not be surprised if Lady Yelan is reconsidering at this very moment.”
“Good! I hope she does! And if it’s juvenile to be angry at you planning to make my life hell, then I’m never growing up, and you can ‘make your peace’ with that!”
“What objection can you possibly make to Lady Yelan’s offer? Liu Zheng Jie is a respected liaison between the magical clans and our mundane associates.”
“Because he has no magic, either. Put the failures together, was that your plan? Pass me off to someone who would never be able to offer for one of the real family members? I won’t marry him! I wouldn’t even if I liked him, so there!”
“How can you not like him? He is wealthy, well-connected, intelligent, quite handsome-”
“And so old-fashioned he makes you look modern! He’d want me to give up fighting!”
“Well, you must admit that it would scarcely be an appropriate hobby for a married woman. Self-defense of course, but you like it rather more than a young lady ought.”
Meiling tried not to cry. Of course it wouldn’t matter to her mother that she was the best in the family, that she could beat her cousin Syaoran two times out of three even when he used magic. It didn’t make her a more salable commodity, so it didn’t matter.
“I’m good at it,” she said finally around the lump in her throat. “It’s the only thing I do better than anyone else, and you can’t take it away from me!”
“But Meiling, if you persist in rejecting out of hand all suitable matches, you will never get a husband!”
“Good! I don’t want,/i> to marry! I’ll be wearing your family name and sitting at your family table forever! You’ll never get rid of me! So there!”
Turning on her heel, she ran out of the training salle, ignoring her mother’s calls until they disappeared into the distance. It was hard to unlatch the door with tears blurring her eyes, but she managed it and ran out into the busy Hong Kong street, where no one would notice or care if she was crying as she ran.
* * *
“I won’t do it,” she repeated to herself, sitting on a stoop with her arms around her knees. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.” Still, she wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth.
It had been easy to say in the heat of temper, but Meiling suspected that her threat to stay with her family just to spite them would prove to be an empty one. Five years ago, she had still believed that she could win their respect. In another five years, she probably would gladly take whatever second-rate husband they found for her just to get away. She toyed with the idea of running away, but she had little money of her own and no way of earning more.
Besides, where could she go? There was nowhere in the world the Li clan couldn’t track her down and bring her back. They would, too: as little as they wanted her, if she ran away and vanished it would make a scandal. Besides, there was always a chance that if she had children they would inherit the magical power she herself hadn’t, and they would never stand for a child with Li blood out of their control. There was no one who would back her up against them all.
There was, she admitted, Syaoran, but he was in a precarious position as it was. No one had objected to his marrying the mistress of the once Clow, now Sakura Cards, but his decision to at least finish school in Japan had been the cause of several arguments louder than her supper-table outburst. Of course, Meiling thought bitterly, it was all right for Syaoran to yell and pound the table, but if she did so it was unladylike and inappropriate. At any rate, Syaoran had to balance what the clan wanted their leader to be with what he wanted to be. He needed all his resources for that; he would have none to spare for a mere unwanted girl-cousin who wanted to run out on her family.
Part of Meiling knew that she was being unfair to Syaoran, who had treated her better than she had had any right to expect. Still, they had grown older, and the boy who had rescued her bird, the boy who had said she could marry him, had grown farther apart from her into someone she barely knew. Once, she had believed that he would be her way out, but it hadn’t happened, and now would never happen. She couldn’t be sure that he would support her against all the clan, including his own mother.
Sakura might, it occurred to her. Sakura had no responsibilities to the Li clan, Yelan liked her, and she had enough power to send them all packing if it came to that. She might take Meiling’s part, might convince Syaoran to do the same.
‘Might’ wasn’t much, but it was better than anything else Meiling had. She stood and made her way back to the house. On the way, a man twice her size thought the teenage girl in formal dress would be an easy victim and grabbed her arm. Without looking around, she hit him hard enough that he reconsidered.
Back at the house, it was child’s play to avoid her family, something at which Meiling had had a great deal of practice, until she reached her room. Counting up her carefully hoarded money, she had enough to get to Japan, plus a bit extra.
She would leave that night. No one would miss her until it was too late.
* * *
Meiling decided against calling ahead to let Sakura and Syaoran know she was coming. If Syaoran knew in advance, he might well notify her mother, and then it would all be for nothing. She could live with being rude if the alternative was being dragged back home.
The town was much as she remembered it from the wedding, if a bit sleepy with summer heat. She found the apartment without much difficulty. It was easy to identify: from one window the sound of Sakura singing a silly song as she washed the dishes floated down to Meiling’s ears. She took a deep breath and rang the bell.
“Who is-Meiling-chan!” Marriage suited Sakura; she was more bright and cheerful than ever. “Come in! Syaoran must have forgotten to tell me you were coming.”
“I didn’t tell him,” she admitted. “He’s probably going to be mad at me, actually.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I…ran away. And I’m not going back! You can’t make me!”
“I wouldn’t try to make you do anything! Do you want to talk about it now, or should it wait? Tomoyo-chan was going to come for dinner; do you want to stay too?”
“Could I? I’d rather tell you and Syaoran both at once, if that’s okay.”
“Of course! You must be tired after traveling. Lie down and rest on the couch. I’m fine here.”
Meiling was almost pathetically grateful for the offer. She shut her eyes, it seemed only for a moment, and woke to Syaoran asking, “When did Meiling get here?”
“She arrived after I got back,” Sakura was saying. “I asked her to stay for dinner. It’ll be just like old times!”
Meiling opened her eyes. From the way Syaoran was scowling, she suspected that he had already been told she had disappeared. She hadn’t thought at the time, but of course they would send to him first. It wasn’t like there was anyone else she might have run to.
“Hello, Syaoran,” she said, fighting embarrassment at all the trouble she knew she was making for him. She had a sudden, childish urge to fling herself at him the way she had once done and beg him to make it all better. She squashed it. The child who had brought her runaway bird back to her was gone, and she was no longer sure that child was who she wanted to ask for help. He might bring her back like the bird.
“Hello,” he replied, stiff and uncomfortable. When had they become formal with each other?
Sakura defused the tension without seeming to notice. “I think I hear Tomoyo-chan. Syaoran, set the table, would you?”
It was easy to relax over dinner with the three of them. Sakura delighted in telling Meiling all about everyone’s doings, and Meiling reciprocated with stories of the Li clan. Syaoran knew of all the important events, but he hadn’t been there to see the details. She even got him to laugh at her description of the magical scuffle between two of her boy cousins that had turned one green and left the other with a lingering smell of old fish.
She helped with the washing-up, and with a dish in her hand she suddenly realized that she had smiled more in three hours than in three months at home. She had worried that she might have forgotten how to have fun, but around Syaoran-no, around Sakura it was easier to have fun than not.
“What happened, Meiling-chan?” Sakura asked after they were done. “You can tell us, no matter what it is.”
“Mother called me and said they believed you ran away after making a scene at a family dinner,” said Syaoran before Meiling could arrange her thoughts enough to begin. “She told me that I should remind you of your responsibilities to the clan.”
That was enough to get Meiling angry again, whether her thoughts were arranged or not. “I don’t have any responsibilities to the clan! Only people who count have responsibilities! What they call my ‘responsibilities’ is just staying out of sight so nobody has to remember I exist!”
“You know that isn’t so,” Syaoran began, visibly startled.
Meiling interrupted him. “It is! Don’t you tell me what is or isn’t true, not when you haven’t been there for ages! You don’t know anything, and I didn’t come to see you, anyway, so there!”
Sakura looked almost comically surprised. “You didn’t come to see Syaoran?”
“No. I already know what he’ll say. ‘Think of your mother, Meiling’, ‘Be a good girl, Meiling’, ‘Don’t bother real people with your problems, Meiling’.”
“I wouldn’t say that!”
“Maybe not, but you’d make me go back to Aunt Yelan, who would. I came to see you, Sakura-chan. I’ll tell you why I ran away.
“You know I’m not-not magical, like Syaoran. In my family, I’m the only one, and magic is all that matters. If you do have it, then your worth to the family can be based on other things, but if you don’t, then nothing can make you worth as much as someone who does.”
“That’s not-“
“Yes, it is, Syaoran! You don’t notice because you’ve always been worth something! I got better test scores than you, I’m a better fighter than you, and still Aunt Yelan’s proud of you but my mother is never not disappointed when she looks at me! You ran away and got married without permission and they’re still proud of you! And do you know why? Because of the magic! You got away with marrying Sakura-chan because she has it, and you got a chance to make your mother proud of you because you have it. And I just don’t. So when I refuse to marry a Liu clan stick-in-the-mud, when I say I don’t want to get married at all, I’m being a bad daughter.”
“Is that why you ran away?” Sakura asked. “Because your family wants you to marry someone you don’t like?”
“It’s not that I don’t like him-I mean, I don’t, but that’s not it-it’s that he’s a member of a respected magical clan, but he doesn’t have magic either. I’m not good enough to be married to someone with magic, you see. Aunt Yelan wouldn’t even consider marrying one of my cousins off to him. Real Li don’t marry anyone without magic. Just me, because I’m not worth as much to a magical family.”
Syaoran was still scowling like he didn’t believe her, but Tomoyo nodded. “Many old families are very particular about who is or isn’t good enough to marry one of them. It must rankle that they made an exception.”
Meiling nodded, blinking back tears. “I thought they’d just let me go on without getting married, but then at dinner Aunt Yelan said she was considering his offer on my behalf, and when I said I didn’t want to marry him she acted like she was doing me a favor. Like she was being kind by making it clear that I wasn’t as good as the others.” She could still see it if she shut her eyes: the entire family, listening and smiling patronizingly, because they knew that Meiling never had been and never would be a proper Li. “So I said no.”
“I don’t blame you!” Sakura said staunchly. “You shouldn’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to.”
“That’s not how things are done in the Li clan. If Aunt Yelan tells you to marry someone, you do it. You can argue it if there’s someone suitable you prefer, but you aren’t allowed to refuse to get married at all. Especially if you’re a girl. Aunt Yelan didn’t even listen to me, just went on like I’d never said anything. So I lost my temper.”
“You shouted at Mother?” asked Syaoran. “In front of anyone? How?”
“You did,” Meiling pointed out. “When you told the uncles you were engaged.”
He flushed. “Well, yes, but-“
“But young ladies don’t get angry? Young ladies don’t lose their tempers? Young ladies don’t have a right to be mad at people trying to control their whole lives?”
“No! That’s not what I meant!”
“That’s what my mother said. They’re not going to listen to me no matter what. So I ran away, and if you try to make me go back I won’t go!”
“No one’s going to make you go back,” Sakura asserted. “I promise.”
She smiled, feeling like she’d just climbed a mountain. It had hurt more in the telling than she had expected, but for some reason it was hard to be angry. “Thank you, Sakura-chan.”
“What am I supposed to tell Mother?” Syaoran asked helplessly.
“You could tell her that her niece is an adult woman capable of moving to Japan if she so chooses,” suggested Tomoyo. “Or you could simply say that your wife insisted,” she added with a flash of gentle humor.
“Easy for you to say,” Syaoran grumbled. “She’s not your mother.”
“I’ll explain everything to her, if you want,” said Sakura.
Meiling almost laughed at the rather pathetic gratitude on Syaoran’s face, but it come out as a sob instead. Before she could stop herself, she was crying in front of them all, unable to conceal the shameful tears.
Sakura’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her close, and Meiling turned her face into Sakura’s shoulder and let years of being strong pour out of her in one rush like a dam breaking. For once, no one was judging her; no one would find her wanting for letting her feelings show.
“It’s okay,” Sakura said quietly. “It’s going to be all right.”
And, because it was Sakura who said it, or maybe because for the first time in a long time it looked like it might be true, Meiling believed her.
Genre: Gen.
Rating: G.
Characters: Meiling (and some others).
Pairing: None.
Warnings: None.
Notes: For femgenficathon 2008, Prompt 13: I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry. -- Maxine Waters. Beta by the wonderful shiiki.
Summary: Meiling understands, now, why her bird ran away. She knows the feeling.
“Stop that, Meiling.”
She ignored her mother, focusing on the thud of her fists against her heavy punching bag. Her sore knuckles were beginning to sting, but she wanted to punch something more than she wanted to avoid the ache.
She didn’t have to look to see her mother’s pursed lips. “What purpose do you believe this display has? If you intend to convince me that you have no rein whatsoever upon your temper, your behavior at supper already demonstrated that. Really, Meiling! A lady of your age, shouting like a boy in front of the whole family! And after everyone was so kind to you, too!”
Meiling punched harder. She could hardly say to her mother that sometimes having people be kind to her was worse than seeing them sneer. Seeing her cousins smile pityingly, knowing that they were thinking, “Poor Meiling, we must be so kind to her,” had been slow torture, a death by a thousand pinpricks.
“You have no reason to be angry, in any case. Lady Yelan presented a more than handsome arrangement, by any measurement, far better than we could have expected for you.”
Punching was not enough. Meiling turned around and screamed at her mother, “Did you ever think that maybe I don’t like having arrangements made for me? That I might not like sitting there and listening to you and Aunt Yelan debating the best way to get me out of sight so I don’t ruin the pretty family picture any more? I hate you! And I hate my stupid cousins! And I hate Aunt Yelan most! So there!”
“Meiling.” Her mother’s tone was reproving but still cool in the face of her daughter’s temper. “At your age, you should be ready to accept that we simply cannot expect the kind of future for you to which the Li family is accustomed. That is the way it is, as little as any of us like it. You must make your peace with the situation.”
“I won’t! I won’t do it! I won’t, and you can’t make me!”
“What do you imagine this juvenile display of temper is going to accomplish? After the spectacle you made, I would not be surprised if Lady Yelan is reconsidering at this very moment.”
“Good! I hope she does! And if it’s juvenile to be angry at you planning to make my life hell, then I’m never growing up, and you can ‘make your peace’ with that!”
“What objection can you possibly make to Lady Yelan’s offer? Liu Zheng Jie is a respected liaison between the magical clans and our mundane associates.”
“Because he has no magic, either. Put the failures together, was that your plan? Pass me off to someone who would never be able to offer for one of the real family members? I won’t marry him! I wouldn’t even if I liked him, so there!”
“How can you not like him? He is wealthy, well-connected, intelligent, quite handsome-”
“And so old-fashioned he makes you look modern! He’d want me to give up fighting!”
“Well, you must admit that it would scarcely be an appropriate hobby for a married woman. Self-defense of course, but you like it rather more than a young lady ought.”
Meiling tried not to cry. Of course it wouldn’t matter to her mother that she was the best in the family, that she could beat her cousin Syaoran two times out of three even when he used magic. It didn’t make her a more salable commodity, so it didn’t matter.
“I’m good at it,” she said finally around the lump in her throat. “It’s the only thing I do better than anyone else, and you can’t take it away from me!”
“But Meiling, if you persist in rejecting out of hand all suitable matches, you will never get a husband!”
“Good! I don’t want,/i> to marry! I’ll be wearing your family name and sitting at your family table forever! You’ll never get rid of me! So there!”
Turning on her heel, she ran out of the training salle, ignoring her mother’s calls until they disappeared into the distance. It was hard to unlatch the door with tears blurring her eyes, but she managed it and ran out into the busy Hong Kong street, where no one would notice or care if she was crying as she ran.
* * *
“I won’t do it,” she repeated to herself, sitting on a stoop with her arms around her knees. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.” Still, she wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth.
It had been easy to say in the heat of temper, but Meiling suspected that her threat to stay with her family just to spite them would prove to be an empty one. Five years ago, she had still believed that she could win their respect. In another five years, she probably would gladly take whatever second-rate husband they found for her just to get away. She toyed with the idea of running away, but she had little money of her own and no way of earning more.
Besides, where could she go? There was nowhere in the world the Li clan couldn’t track her down and bring her back. They would, too: as little as they wanted her, if she ran away and vanished it would make a scandal. Besides, there was always a chance that if she had children they would inherit the magical power she herself hadn’t, and they would never stand for a child with Li blood out of their control. There was no one who would back her up against them all.
There was, she admitted, Syaoran, but he was in a precarious position as it was. No one had objected to his marrying the mistress of the once Clow, now Sakura Cards, but his decision to at least finish school in Japan had been the cause of several arguments louder than her supper-table outburst. Of course, Meiling thought bitterly, it was all right for Syaoran to yell and pound the table, but if she did so it was unladylike and inappropriate. At any rate, Syaoran had to balance what the clan wanted their leader to be with what he wanted to be. He needed all his resources for that; he would have none to spare for a mere unwanted girl-cousin who wanted to run out on her family.
Part of Meiling knew that she was being unfair to Syaoran, who had treated her better than she had had any right to expect. Still, they had grown older, and the boy who had rescued her bird, the boy who had said she could marry him, had grown farther apart from her into someone she barely knew. Once, she had believed that he would be her way out, but it hadn’t happened, and now would never happen. She couldn’t be sure that he would support her against all the clan, including his own mother.
Sakura might, it occurred to her. Sakura had no responsibilities to the Li clan, Yelan liked her, and she had enough power to send them all packing if it came to that. She might take Meiling’s part, might convince Syaoran to do the same.
‘Might’ wasn’t much, but it was better than anything else Meiling had. She stood and made her way back to the house. On the way, a man twice her size thought the teenage girl in formal dress would be an easy victim and grabbed her arm. Without looking around, she hit him hard enough that he reconsidered.
Back at the house, it was child’s play to avoid her family, something at which Meiling had had a great deal of practice, until she reached her room. Counting up her carefully hoarded money, she had enough to get to Japan, plus a bit extra.
She would leave that night. No one would miss her until it was too late.
* * *
Meiling decided against calling ahead to let Sakura and Syaoran know she was coming. If Syaoran knew in advance, he might well notify her mother, and then it would all be for nothing. She could live with being rude if the alternative was being dragged back home.
The town was much as she remembered it from the wedding, if a bit sleepy with summer heat. She found the apartment without much difficulty. It was easy to identify: from one window the sound of Sakura singing a silly song as she washed the dishes floated down to Meiling’s ears. She took a deep breath and rang the bell.
“Who is-Meiling-chan!” Marriage suited Sakura; she was more bright and cheerful than ever. “Come in! Syaoran must have forgotten to tell me you were coming.”
“I didn’t tell him,” she admitted. “He’s probably going to be mad at me, actually.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I…ran away. And I’m not going back! You can’t make me!”
“I wouldn’t try to make you do anything! Do you want to talk about it now, or should it wait? Tomoyo-chan was going to come for dinner; do you want to stay too?”
“Could I? I’d rather tell you and Syaoran both at once, if that’s okay.”
“Of course! You must be tired after traveling. Lie down and rest on the couch. I’m fine here.”
Meiling was almost pathetically grateful for the offer. She shut her eyes, it seemed only for a moment, and woke to Syaoran asking, “When did Meiling get here?”
“She arrived after I got back,” Sakura was saying. “I asked her to stay for dinner. It’ll be just like old times!”
Meiling opened her eyes. From the way Syaoran was scowling, she suspected that he had already been told she had disappeared. She hadn’t thought at the time, but of course they would send to him first. It wasn’t like there was anyone else she might have run to.
“Hello, Syaoran,” she said, fighting embarrassment at all the trouble she knew she was making for him. She had a sudden, childish urge to fling herself at him the way she had once done and beg him to make it all better. She squashed it. The child who had brought her runaway bird back to her was gone, and she was no longer sure that child was who she wanted to ask for help. He might bring her back like the bird.
“Hello,” he replied, stiff and uncomfortable. When had they become formal with each other?
Sakura defused the tension without seeming to notice. “I think I hear Tomoyo-chan. Syaoran, set the table, would you?”
It was easy to relax over dinner with the three of them. Sakura delighted in telling Meiling all about everyone’s doings, and Meiling reciprocated with stories of the Li clan. Syaoran knew of all the important events, but he hadn’t been there to see the details. She even got him to laugh at her description of the magical scuffle between two of her boy cousins that had turned one green and left the other with a lingering smell of old fish.
She helped with the washing-up, and with a dish in her hand she suddenly realized that she had smiled more in three hours than in three months at home. She had worried that she might have forgotten how to have fun, but around Syaoran-no, around Sakura it was easier to have fun than not.
“What happened, Meiling-chan?” Sakura asked after they were done. “You can tell us, no matter what it is.”
“Mother called me and said they believed you ran away after making a scene at a family dinner,” said Syaoran before Meiling could arrange her thoughts enough to begin. “She told me that I should remind you of your responsibilities to the clan.”
That was enough to get Meiling angry again, whether her thoughts were arranged or not. “I don’t have any responsibilities to the clan! Only people who count have responsibilities! What they call my ‘responsibilities’ is just staying out of sight so nobody has to remember I exist!”
“You know that isn’t so,” Syaoran began, visibly startled.
Meiling interrupted him. “It is! Don’t you tell me what is or isn’t true, not when you haven’t been there for ages! You don’t know anything, and I didn’t come to see you, anyway, so there!”
Sakura looked almost comically surprised. “You didn’t come to see Syaoran?”
“No. I already know what he’ll say. ‘Think of your mother, Meiling’, ‘Be a good girl, Meiling’, ‘Don’t bother real people with your problems, Meiling’.”
“I wouldn’t say that!”
“Maybe not, but you’d make me go back to Aunt Yelan, who would. I came to see you, Sakura-chan. I’ll tell you why I ran away.
“You know I’m not-not magical, like Syaoran. In my family, I’m the only one, and magic is all that matters. If you do have it, then your worth to the family can be based on other things, but if you don’t, then nothing can make you worth as much as someone who does.”
“That’s not-“
“Yes, it is, Syaoran! You don’t notice because you’ve always been worth something! I got better test scores than you, I’m a better fighter than you, and still Aunt Yelan’s proud of you but my mother is never not disappointed when she looks at me! You ran away and got married without permission and they’re still proud of you! And do you know why? Because of the magic! You got away with marrying Sakura-chan because she has it, and you got a chance to make your mother proud of you because you have it. And I just don’t. So when I refuse to marry a Liu clan stick-in-the-mud, when I say I don’t want to get married at all, I’m being a bad daughter.”
“Is that why you ran away?” Sakura asked. “Because your family wants you to marry someone you don’t like?”
“It’s not that I don’t like him-I mean, I don’t, but that’s not it-it’s that he’s a member of a respected magical clan, but he doesn’t have magic either. I’m not good enough to be married to someone with magic, you see. Aunt Yelan wouldn’t even consider marrying one of my cousins off to him. Real Li don’t marry anyone without magic. Just me, because I’m not worth as much to a magical family.”
Syaoran was still scowling like he didn’t believe her, but Tomoyo nodded. “Many old families are very particular about who is or isn’t good enough to marry one of them. It must rankle that they made an exception.”
Meiling nodded, blinking back tears. “I thought they’d just let me go on without getting married, but then at dinner Aunt Yelan said she was considering his offer on my behalf, and when I said I didn’t want to marry him she acted like she was doing me a favor. Like she was being kind by making it clear that I wasn’t as good as the others.” She could still see it if she shut her eyes: the entire family, listening and smiling patronizingly, because they knew that Meiling never had been and never would be a proper Li. “So I said no.”
“I don’t blame you!” Sakura said staunchly. “You shouldn’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to.”
“That’s not how things are done in the Li clan. If Aunt Yelan tells you to marry someone, you do it. You can argue it if there’s someone suitable you prefer, but you aren’t allowed to refuse to get married at all. Especially if you’re a girl. Aunt Yelan didn’t even listen to me, just went on like I’d never said anything. So I lost my temper.”
“You shouted at Mother?” asked Syaoran. “In front of anyone? How?”
“You did,” Meiling pointed out. “When you told the uncles you were engaged.”
He flushed. “Well, yes, but-“
“But young ladies don’t get angry? Young ladies don’t lose their tempers? Young ladies don’t have a right to be mad at people trying to control their whole lives?”
“No! That’s not what I meant!”
“That’s what my mother said. They’re not going to listen to me no matter what. So I ran away, and if you try to make me go back I won’t go!”
“No one’s going to make you go back,” Sakura asserted. “I promise.”
She smiled, feeling like she’d just climbed a mountain. It had hurt more in the telling than she had expected, but for some reason it was hard to be angry. “Thank you, Sakura-chan.”
“What am I supposed to tell Mother?” Syaoran asked helplessly.
“You could tell her that her niece is an adult woman capable of moving to Japan if she so chooses,” suggested Tomoyo. “Or you could simply say that your wife insisted,” she added with a flash of gentle humor.
“Easy for you to say,” Syaoran grumbled. “She’s not your mother.”
“I’ll explain everything to her, if you want,” said Sakura.
Meiling almost laughed at the rather pathetic gratitude on Syaoran’s face, but it come out as a sob instead. Before she could stop herself, she was crying in front of them all, unable to conceal the shameful tears.
Sakura’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her close, and Meiling turned her face into Sakura’s shoulder and let years of being strong pour out of her in one rush like a dam breaking. For once, no one was judging her; no one would find her wanting for letting her feelings show.
“It’s okay,” Sakura said quietly. “It’s going to be all right.”
And, because it was Sakura who said it, or maybe because for the first time in a long time it looked like it might be true, Meiling believed her.