Header: Immortal (Cardcaptor Sakura, Eriol/Sakura, challenge #11)
30_dreams: 11. sweet melody
Title: Immortal
Author/Artist: rhap_chan
Pairing: Hiiragizawa Eriol/Kinomoto Sakura
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Theme: 11. sweet melody
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.
Summary: When Eriol and Sakura meet again, they find immortality to be a curse, but at least they have each other.
Decades and distances separated them until one evening in her 120th year when Sakura heard the strains of an alluring tune as she passed by a bar. She was far from her homeland and it was a cold night, and she had no other plans, so she went in.
The place was quiet, for a bar. Everyone seemed to be listening to the piano player as he plunked out a bittersweet tune. His long dark hair hung in his eyes, obstructing his view of the audience, but she saw him fine, and she recognized him.
It was Eriol.
He had been her age when she saw him last-- actually, older, since he was technically Fugitaka's age-- and yet, he looked no older than she did. Split magic or not, he still had a lot of power.
She took a seat close to the piano and when he took a break from his set he didn't appear to notice her and headed straight to the bar. Curiously she followed.
"Scotch on the rocks," he said, and when she ordered a tequila sunrise he recognized the voice and turned. He was genuinely shocked.
"Sakura-chan!" he said. His accent was strange, but he had lived in England for a long time now. He knew the Japanese would come thickly to his lips, if he tried, and he was pleased enough to see her that he would try.
"Eriol-kun, how are you?" she said. He answered and surreptitiously studied her as he did. She looked to be in her twenties, though he knew her to be six times older. She was aging in the manner that Clow had. He wondered why she had chosen to live longer than her friends and family. He was sure she wondered the same thing about him.
"I'm well," he said shortly. She stayed until the bar closed, at which point he offered her a room for the night, and she accepted.
"Do you have any luggage or anything?" he asked as they headed out the door into the cold night. She shook her head.
"I live here," she admitted. "I've got a small apartment just a few blocks from here."
She lowered her head. "It gets lonely."
"How long have you been here?" he said, surprised again. Now that he had noticed her, her aura glowed as brightly as a lightbulb. He'd been playing at that bar semi-regularly for almost a year now, and yet he'd never encountered her. How strange.
"A year or so," Sakura said. She shivered and thrust her hands into her pockets. They walked in silence to Eriol's house, both lost in their own thoughts.
*
"It's been a while," she said when she came in, sitting down on his couch. The place was quiet and had no sense of presence. She wondered where Nakuru and Spinel were.
"Nakuru wanted to go to college so she could see a little of the world. Spinel went with her," he said, answering her unasked question.
Neither of them wanted to ask the other obvious question-- why were they both still alive? Eriol sat down next to Sakura on the couch and she leaned her head on him for a moment.
"It's nice to see you again, Eriol-kun," she said sincerely, and he nodded. Then he got up and went searching through his closet for bedding. When he came back, he said, "I'll sleep on the couch tonight, and you can have my bed."
"Thank you," she said. She slept that night in a bed that smelled comfortingly like her old life, like Clow magic, and her dreams came from old memories.
*
When she woke in the morning he was in the kitchen making breakfast. There was jazz music on the radio very quietly, another slightly bittersweet tune that sounded like what he had played last night. He shut it off when she came in.
"That was you on the radio, wasn't it?"
He nodded and presented her with a plate. They ate in silence. This was all beginning to seem very surreal to Sakura, and finally she spoke.
"Eriol-kun, why are you still here?" she asked. He ran his fork through his eggs thoughtfully.
"If I die, they will too," he said. She understood and her eyes widened with horror. His guardians, who had brought him so much joy, were now tying him to this Earth.
"I cannot bear to kill them," he said. He gazed nostalgically down at his plate, remembering people important to him that were long dead, like his wife, who couldn't stand to watch him as he did not age, and finally found her own way in life.
He knew then why Sakura was still here-- she hadn't finished planning for her successor, hadn't found a good home for her beloved Cards and the guardians. Perhaps she was sad that one day those Cards would bear someone else's name, though Clow and Eriol themselves had been grateful. Maybe her standards were too high.
He knew she hadn't stopped aging for selfish reasons. No one wanted to know they would bury everyone they ever cared for. He wondered if she had children, but he didn't ask.
"I cannot find my heir," she said sadly. "How long did it take Clow to find me, Eriol-kun?"
Eriol's memories were long, but even he could not recall a time when Clow had not been searching or planning for her.
"A long time," he said.
"I see," she said, hanging her head, clearly frustrated. "I just feel like she's so close, like she's right in front of me, but not there yet."
Eriol put his arm around her and squeezed.
"Let's talk of other things," she said after a moment, and began to reminisce with him. There was no one else left who shared the memories they shared, except for their guardians. It was nice to know that there was one other human who remembered.
*
For the past few years, Eriol had been David Nasuki, a jazz pianist popular in this suburb of London. Sakura was Nadeshiko Onamiya, P.E. teacher in the elementary school. Until people began to ask why they stayed so youthful, until the enthusiastic new secretary began to ask for facial care tips, those were their identities. Then they would move on. It was unsafe to do otherwise.
They had about three more years, both assessed separately with the eye of experience. They had three years to be David and Nadeshiko before it was time to move on. They would have to move separately, as well. Two people with the ability to halt aging would be too conspicious to move together. One was hard enough to manage.
So Eriol continued to play his sweet melodies, and Sakura to teach, and they both looked into the future and stuck their fingers in the threads of fate, but were unsatisfied.
But at least, they both thought, but at least they were together.
*
After a few months Sakura moved in with Eriol. It wasn't a sexual thing, or a romantic thing, but the simple desire to be together with someone with whom one did not have to pretend. They were friends.
Nakuru rarely visited. Her spirits had been dampened through the years. Not being allowed to form an attachment to anyone for long had made her more cool and wary than she had been when Eriol was young. She tended now to give her master long, intent gazes and few words. Sakura wondered if Nakuru had guessed the reason that Eriol was still alive, or if he had told them. The secret was pulling them apart.
Still, Eriol loved her like a daughter, and there was not much change in their relationship. She didn't visit often.
Yue and Keroberos slept in the Clow Book. It had been their decision, Sakura told him when he inquired delicately. After Touya's death, there had been nothing more for Yukito. Kero, too, had grown weary of the constant movement and had settled down for to nap for "two decades or so," he had told Sakura 30 years ago. He did always tend to oversleep, Eriol had told her with a smile.
Whenever he said something like that, or they talked about the old days, Sakura was torn between gratitude and resentment. She didn't ask for this, which is what she resented most. But she couldn't imagine her life without the Clow Cards and the people they had brought into her life.
It was bittersweet, like the songs Eriol played, or their relationship, that of two people whose lives once revolved around each other and now have nothing else to offset the tides. They didn't really know each other, but it scared Eriol sometimes how much he needed her. He knew that one of these days he would come home to an empty house and he would probably never see her again. He dreaded the day.
Sakura didn't want to leave. The first person to become curious asked why she was pretending to be older than she was; a girl as pretty as her couldn't be thirty yet! She deferred them, and then another inquirer, but she began to get restless. She would have to go soon.
She didn't want to. She hadn't lived with another person since Kero went to sleep. She hadn't been in a house with a man for almost half a century. She missed people; she missed her cheerful childhood and her casual assurance that everyone would be all right.
She searched even harder for her heir. If she found her, then at least she could die at Eriol's side. Only he would understand.
*
They had about three years, they had thought, but they lived together for about five, and then Eriol came home one day and caught her packing her bags and crying. He pushed the luggage to the side of the bed and sat down, pulling her into his arms. Her skin was soft and warm and Eriol missed touching a woman. Sure, he'd had small affairs and romances in the past, but he had never reached anything resembling his initial bond with Kaho. He never shared his secret, but people could tell that he had one, and it made them resentful. Only Sakura had been gullible enough once to believe that he was simply the young boy he presented himself as.
"I don't want to be alone again," Sakura sobbed. "I just want to be finished with all of this, Eriol."
They'd long since dropped honorifics. There really was no need anymore.
Eriol had cast the spells, he'd read the runes, he'd done everything he could to help her as he tried to help himself. They were both looking in the same direction, after all. Her bundle came with two guardians and a magical book of cards; his with two guardians and the traces of Clow-memory that were bound into the spells he'd used to create them.
He could see no solution for them. He'd gone so far as to consider Yuuko, Clow's former girlfriend and the Dimension Witch, a woman with an incredible amount of power. But Yuuko would not want their burdens, and she would ask too high a price. She always did.
Sakura sobbed and he stroked her hair. It was an empty comfort, but he gave what he could.
"Come with me," she pleaded.
He knew he should say no, but he couldn't bear to say it, so when her sobs quieted he went to get his own suitcase.
*
Mr. and Mrs. Reed (Artemis and Elizabeth, respectively) took up residence in California in the summer of 2107,* a young couple that were well liked by their neighbors, so much so that no one bothered to gossip about the fact that there were two separate bedrooms in the house, each holding a single twin bed (though on occasion Sakura would creep into Eriol's room and sleep in the fetal position at the end of his bed, because she'd dreamed that he had left her).
Ten years later Eric and Cherry James, siblings, lived in Switzerland, and five years after that they were Jonathan and Kara. Names and places blurred and time passed steadily.
At least they were no longer alone, they each said to themselves. At least I have someone to walk the lonely road with me.
Not long after that Sakura helped Eriol perform the magic to seal his own guardians, who had grown weary in the world. Then they were truly the only ones. Eriol finally broke down and went to Yuuko, and she told him what he had expected.
"One or the other, I could fix, but not both," she said, and for a moment she looked regretful, as she considered their long history. "Hitsuzen is resisting the pull you made in it long ago to create this self of yours and the other. It may be a long while before there is magic to balance again."
In the twenty-third century they began to consider a young Li male with bright green eyes.
"You never told me you had children!" Eriol had railed at her the night that the boy's name came out of his dreams. It was one of the few times he'd ever been angry at her, but surprisingly she did not cry. She looked at him coolly and said, "I didn't. Syaoran may have. I don't know."
Eriol had lain awake that night fearing he would hear her get up and leave. He didn't sleep until the dawn, strange as that sounds, since most people travel during the day, but she was there after work like always, and if her eyes were a little red, he pretended not to notice.
But the Li boy turned out to have less promise than they had thought, and it was back to square one.
At the age of 229, Sakura came to Eriol's bed one night and tucked her head into his chest. He didn't protest; he had become used to her need for physical affection and in fact welcomed her touch by now.
"The only way we will find someone to answer our needs will be to reproduce ourselves," she said softly. Eriol gasped, but his brain was already running through the considerations and power restrictions and he knew that she was right.
He looked down at the woman he was holding so casually, a woman he had been with for decades, who had never shown any physical attraction to him. Her body now was nearing her late thirties, her youthful beauty beginning to mature. He wondered if she could even bear children, considering what they had done by messing with their own bodily chemistry.
She kissed him innocently and he knew they had to try, and it wasn't that he didn't love her, not at all, but it had never been a thing of passion and devotion, like his marriage had been in the beginning and her love for Syaoran. It was more of a committed love, a soft, almost platonic love. When you spend that much time with someone else you come to love or hate them, and he could never hate her.
So they spent the next couple of years learning how to love each other, and after that Hiiragizawa Tomoyo was born (and named Kayla McDougal, because they were in Ireland at the time). And when her cries split the air, a leonine beast stirred in its sleep and her parents smiled at each other, relieved.
And for the first time in a very long time, Eriol and Sakura looked forward to a bright future.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Why 2107? Because that's 120 years after Sakura was born. The series came out in 1996, and she was in the fourth grade, so she would have been nine or ten, and born in either 1986 or 1987. Since Touya is seven years older than her, and his birthday is on February 29, he was born in a leap year. The nearest leap year is 1980. Therefore, Sakura was born in 1987 and 120 years later is 2107.
Title: Immortal
Author/Artist: rhap_chan
Pairing: Hiiragizawa Eriol/Kinomoto Sakura
Fandom: Cardcaptor Sakura
Theme: 11. sweet melody
Disclaimer: Cardcaptor Sakura belongs to CLAMP.
Summary: When Eriol and Sakura meet again, they find immortality to be a curse, but at least they have each other.
Decades and distances separated them until one evening in her 120th year when Sakura heard the strains of an alluring tune as she passed by a bar. She was far from her homeland and it was a cold night, and she had no other plans, so she went in.
The place was quiet, for a bar. Everyone seemed to be listening to the piano player as he plunked out a bittersweet tune. His long dark hair hung in his eyes, obstructing his view of the audience, but she saw him fine, and she recognized him.
It was Eriol.
He had been her age when she saw him last-- actually, older, since he was technically Fugitaka's age-- and yet, he looked no older than she did. Split magic or not, he still had a lot of power.
She took a seat close to the piano and when he took a break from his set he didn't appear to notice her and headed straight to the bar. Curiously she followed.
"Scotch on the rocks," he said, and when she ordered a tequila sunrise he recognized the voice and turned. He was genuinely shocked.
"Sakura-chan!" he said. His accent was strange, but he had lived in England for a long time now. He knew the Japanese would come thickly to his lips, if he tried, and he was pleased enough to see her that he would try.
"Eriol-kun, how are you?" she said. He answered and surreptitiously studied her as he did. She looked to be in her twenties, though he knew her to be six times older. She was aging in the manner that Clow had. He wondered why she had chosen to live longer than her friends and family. He was sure she wondered the same thing about him.
"I'm well," he said shortly. She stayed until the bar closed, at which point he offered her a room for the night, and she accepted.
"Do you have any luggage or anything?" he asked as they headed out the door into the cold night. She shook her head.
"I live here," she admitted. "I've got a small apartment just a few blocks from here."
She lowered her head. "It gets lonely."
"How long have you been here?" he said, surprised again. Now that he had noticed her, her aura glowed as brightly as a lightbulb. He'd been playing at that bar semi-regularly for almost a year now, and yet he'd never encountered her. How strange.
"A year or so," Sakura said. She shivered and thrust her hands into her pockets. They walked in silence to Eriol's house, both lost in their own thoughts.
*
"It's been a while," she said when she came in, sitting down on his couch. The place was quiet and had no sense of presence. She wondered where Nakuru and Spinel were.
"Nakuru wanted to go to college so she could see a little of the world. Spinel went with her," he said, answering her unasked question.
Neither of them wanted to ask the other obvious question-- why were they both still alive? Eriol sat down next to Sakura on the couch and she leaned her head on him for a moment.
"It's nice to see you again, Eriol-kun," she said sincerely, and he nodded. Then he got up and went searching through his closet for bedding. When he came back, he said, "I'll sleep on the couch tonight, and you can have my bed."
"Thank you," she said. She slept that night in a bed that smelled comfortingly like her old life, like Clow magic, and her dreams came from old memories.
*
When she woke in the morning he was in the kitchen making breakfast. There was jazz music on the radio very quietly, another slightly bittersweet tune that sounded like what he had played last night. He shut it off when she came in.
"That was you on the radio, wasn't it?"
He nodded and presented her with a plate. They ate in silence. This was all beginning to seem very surreal to Sakura, and finally she spoke.
"Eriol-kun, why are you still here?" she asked. He ran his fork through his eggs thoughtfully.
"If I die, they will too," he said. She understood and her eyes widened with horror. His guardians, who had brought him so much joy, were now tying him to this Earth.
"I cannot bear to kill them," he said. He gazed nostalgically down at his plate, remembering people important to him that were long dead, like his wife, who couldn't stand to watch him as he did not age, and finally found her own way in life.
He knew then why Sakura was still here-- she hadn't finished planning for her successor, hadn't found a good home for her beloved Cards and the guardians. Perhaps she was sad that one day those Cards would bear someone else's name, though Clow and Eriol themselves had been grateful. Maybe her standards were too high.
He knew she hadn't stopped aging for selfish reasons. No one wanted to know they would bury everyone they ever cared for. He wondered if she had children, but he didn't ask.
"I cannot find my heir," she said sadly. "How long did it take Clow to find me, Eriol-kun?"
Eriol's memories were long, but even he could not recall a time when Clow had not been searching or planning for her.
"A long time," he said.
"I see," she said, hanging her head, clearly frustrated. "I just feel like she's so close, like she's right in front of me, but not there yet."
Eriol put his arm around her and squeezed.
"Let's talk of other things," she said after a moment, and began to reminisce with him. There was no one else left who shared the memories they shared, except for their guardians. It was nice to know that there was one other human who remembered.
*
For the past few years, Eriol had been David Nasuki, a jazz pianist popular in this suburb of London. Sakura was Nadeshiko Onamiya, P.E. teacher in the elementary school. Until people began to ask why they stayed so youthful, until the enthusiastic new secretary began to ask for facial care tips, those were their identities. Then they would move on. It was unsafe to do otherwise.
They had about three more years, both assessed separately with the eye of experience. They had three years to be David and Nadeshiko before it was time to move on. They would have to move separately, as well. Two people with the ability to halt aging would be too conspicious to move together. One was hard enough to manage.
So Eriol continued to play his sweet melodies, and Sakura to teach, and they both looked into the future and stuck their fingers in the threads of fate, but were unsatisfied.
But at least, they both thought, but at least they were together.
*
After a few months Sakura moved in with Eriol. It wasn't a sexual thing, or a romantic thing, but the simple desire to be together with someone with whom one did not have to pretend. They were friends.
Nakuru rarely visited. Her spirits had been dampened through the years. Not being allowed to form an attachment to anyone for long had made her more cool and wary than she had been when Eriol was young. She tended now to give her master long, intent gazes and few words. Sakura wondered if Nakuru had guessed the reason that Eriol was still alive, or if he had told them. The secret was pulling them apart.
Still, Eriol loved her like a daughter, and there was not much change in their relationship. She didn't visit often.
Yue and Keroberos slept in the Clow Book. It had been their decision, Sakura told him when he inquired delicately. After Touya's death, there had been nothing more for Yukito. Kero, too, had grown weary of the constant movement and had settled down for to nap for "two decades or so," he had told Sakura 30 years ago. He did always tend to oversleep, Eriol had told her with a smile.
Whenever he said something like that, or they talked about the old days, Sakura was torn between gratitude and resentment. She didn't ask for this, which is what she resented most. But she couldn't imagine her life without the Clow Cards and the people they had brought into her life.
It was bittersweet, like the songs Eriol played, or their relationship, that of two people whose lives once revolved around each other and now have nothing else to offset the tides. They didn't really know each other, but it scared Eriol sometimes how much he needed her. He knew that one of these days he would come home to an empty house and he would probably never see her again. He dreaded the day.
Sakura didn't want to leave. The first person to become curious asked why she was pretending to be older than she was; a girl as pretty as her couldn't be thirty yet! She deferred them, and then another inquirer, but she began to get restless. She would have to go soon.
She didn't want to. She hadn't lived with another person since Kero went to sleep. She hadn't been in a house with a man for almost half a century. She missed people; she missed her cheerful childhood and her casual assurance that everyone would be all right.
She searched even harder for her heir. If she found her, then at least she could die at Eriol's side. Only he would understand.
*
They had about three years, they had thought, but they lived together for about five, and then Eriol came home one day and caught her packing her bags and crying. He pushed the luggage to the side of the bed and sat down, pulling her into his arms. Her skin was soft and warm and Eriol missed touching a woman. Sure, he'd had small affairs and romances in the past, but he had never reached anything resembling his initial bond with Kaho. He never shared his secret, but people could tell that he had one, and it made them resentful. Only Sakura had been gullible enough once to believe that he was simply the young boy he presented himself as.
"I don't want to be alone again," Sakura sobbed. "I just want to be finished with all of this, Eriol."
They'd long since dropped honorifics. There really was no need anymore.
Eriol had cast the spells, he'd read the runes, he'd done everything he could to help her as he tried to help himself. They were both looking in the same direction, after all. Her bundle came with two guardians and a magical book of cards; his with two guardians and the traces of Clow-memory that were bound into the spells he'd used to create them.
He could see no solution for them. He'd gone so far as to consider Yuuko, Clow's former girlfriend and the Dimension Witch, a woman with an incredible amount of power. But Yuuko would not want their burdens, and she would ask too high a price. She always did.
Sakura sobbed and he stroked her hair. It was an empty comfort, but he gave what he could.
"Come with me," she pleaded.
He knew he should say no, but he couldn't bear to say it, so when her sobs quieted he went to get his own suitcase.
*
Mr. and Mrs. Reed (Artemis and Elizabeth, respectively) took up residence in California in the summer of 2107,* a young couple that were well liked by their neighbors, so much so that no one bothered to gossip about the fact that there were two separate bedrooms in the house, each holding a single twin bed (though on occasion Sakura would creep into Eriol's room and sleep in the fetal position at the end of his bed, because she'd dreamed that he had left her).
Ten years later Eric and Cherry James, siblings, lived in Switzerland, and five years after that they were Jonathan and Kara. Names and places blurred and time passed steadily.
At least they were no longer alone, they each said to themselves. At least I have someone to walk the lonely road with me.
Not long after that Sakura helped Eriol perform the magic to seal his own guardians, who had grown weary in the world. Then they were truly the only ones. Eriol finally broke down and went to Yuuko, and she told him what he had expected.
"One or the other, I could fix, but not both," she said, and for a moment she looked regretful, as she considered their long history. "Hitsuzen is resisting the pull you made in it long ago to create this self of yours and the other. It may be a long while before there is magic to balance again."
In the twenty-third century they began to consider a young Li male with bright green eyes.
"You never told me you had children!" Eriol had railed at her the night that the boy's name came out of his dreams. It was one of the few times he'd ever been angry at her, but surprisingly she did not cry. She looked at him coolly and said, "I didn't. Syaoran may have. I don't know."
Eriol had lain awake that night fearing he would hear her get up and leave. He didn't sleep until the dawn, strange as that sounds, since most people travel during the day, but she was there after work like always, and if her eyes were a little red, he pretended not to notice.
But the Li boy turned out to have less promise than they had thought, and it was back to square one.
At the age of 229, Sakura came to Eriol's bed one night and tucked her head into his chest. He didn't protest; he had become used to her need for physical affection and in fact welcomed her touch by now.
"The only way we will find someone to answer our needs will be to reproduce ourselves," she said softly. Eriol gasped, but his brain was already running through the considerations and power restrictions and he knew that she was right.
He looked down at the woman he was holding so casually, a woman he had been with for decades, who had never shown any physical attraction to him. Her body now was nearing her late thirties, her youthful beauty beginning to mature. He wondered if she could even bear children, considering what they had done by messing with their own bodily chemistry.
She kissed him innocently and he knew they had to try, and it wasn't that he didn't love her, not at all, but it had never been a thing of passion and devotion, like his marriage had been in the beginning and her love for Syaoran. It was more of a committed love, a soft, almost platonic love. When you spend that much time with someone else you come to love or hate them, and he could never hate her.
So they spent the next couple of years learning how to love each other, and after that Hiiragizawa Tomoyo was born (and named Kayla McDougal, because they were in Ireland at the time). And when her cries split the air, a leonine beast stirred in its sleep and her parents smiled at each other, relieved.
And for the first time in a very long time, Eriol and Sakura looked forward to a bright future.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Why 2107? Because that's 120 years after Sakura was born. The series came out in 1996, and she was in the fourth grade, so she would have been nine or ten, and born in either 1986 or 1987. Since Touya is seven years older than her, and his birthday is on February 29, he was born in a leap year. The nearest leap year is 1980. Therefore, Sakura was born in 1987 and 120 years later is 2107.