Part Ten
Despite the fact that we’re in England, Sakura-chan insists on yelling “Tadaima!” and kicking off her shoes as we walk in the door. It’s rather amusing, really. But our first sign that something is wrong comes when no one answers. Yue almost always answers. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever known him not to in the time he and I have been separated.
Sakura-chan notices this and frowns. “Yue-san? Eriol-kun?”
“Something’s wrong,” To-ya mutters, and takes my hand. “Let’s go look for them.”
“Something’s happened,” Kero says at almost the exact same moment. Spinel is nodding at his side. “I can smell the magic.”
“Let’s split up,” To-ya suggests. “Into pairs. Call if you find anything.”
It seems like a good idea, but as soon as we leave the front hallway, it becomes obvious that something has gone very, very wrong. The house is a mess. Broken furniture. Objects lying around everywhere.
For a minute, we all just stare.
“ERIOL!” Akizuki-san is the first to panic and runs full speed towards his room. Spinel is after her in a heartbeat; the rest of aren’t far behind. But Eriol’s room is empty and untouched, as is Yue’s. The kitchen is where the real mess is.
“This is where they were sitting when we left,” Syaoran-kun observes. “It must have happened right after that.”
Sakura-chan whimpers and clutches at his hand.
“There’s a note,” Tomoyo-chan says, picking it up and handing it to Sakura-chan.
Sakura-chan scans it, then reads aloud in a trembling voice. “As you can see, I have taken custody of your two friends. I’m willing to make a trade, as I believe you have something of mine.” At this, Sakura-chan clutches the pendant she’s still wearing around her neck. “Your friends will remain unharmed until then, unless one of you attempts a rescue, at which point one or both of them will be killed. Call me to arrange the trade.” Sakura-chan’s voice trails off. “And . . . there’s a number . . .”
Silence reigns.
Things degenerate rather quickly. Akizuki-san is in complete hysterics, not that we really blame her. Spinel is seething quietly in a corner. Personally, I’m vacillating between extremely worried and extremely upset. I mean, Yue might as well be my twin brother, for all intents and purposes. Once Sakura-chan gets over the shock, she starts approaching hysteria. Tomoyo-chan and Syaoran-kun are doing their best to keep her calm, while Kero flutters around the room trying to help everyone. To-ya looks at me and puts an arm around my shoulders. Leave it to him to be the only calm one here.
“Well,” he says, loudly to be heard over Akizuki-san’s wailing, “let’s call the number and see what she says.”
Everyone just blinks at him. For some reason, this simple solution had occurred to none of us.
“Why don’t you call,” I suggest, suspecting that anyone else would say something regrettable.
“Okay.” To-ya picks the note up, then gets the phone and dials. The rest of us wait in rather breathless silence.
****
It rings four or five times before the She-Bitch picks up. “Hello?” She sounds cheerful. I feel murderous.
“Hi. This is Kinomoto Touya.” I’m guessing she knows who I am. She must have been watching the house, waiting for there to only be a couple people here. Normally Eriol would’ve been able to fend her off, but he’s been so weak that he must have seemed to be an easy target. Yue’s not exactly a pushover, and from the look of the house, they put up a pretty big fight. Apparently the She-Bitch has gotten quite a bit of power. I think we should kill her.
“Oh, hello.” She’s practically gushing. “I’d like my pendant back.”
“We kind of guessed that.” I’m sure I sound pretty strained. “And how are you planning on arranging this trade?”
“Well, I can’t exactly bring them out in public; it was enough trouble getting them back here. So why don’t we meet somewhere and I’ll take you to where they are.”
“All right. But you’re not getting your pendant until we see them.”
“Fair enough. Shall we say tomorrow, two o’clock, London?” She gives me the name of a park and some directions.
“That’s fine. And I want to talk to them now.”
“I guess.” There’s a very long pause. She’s walking. And walking. And from the sound of it, going up a staircase. A couple doors are opening and closing. Finally, she says, “Here you are.”
There’s a slight scuffling noise, then I can hear her in the background. “Well, say something.”
“Who’s this?” Yue asks tentatively. He’s still not used to phones.
“It’s Touya. Are you and Eriol okay?”
“We’re not dead . . . or bleeding . . .” Yue sounds pretty dazed.
Sakura starts tugging on my arm. “Are they okay?” she whispers. Now Akizuki is tugging on my other arm, whispering the same thing. This is hell.
“Tell the Mistress I’m sorry,” Yue says vaguely.
“For crying out loud, Yue, you have nothing to apologize for. From the state the house is in, it’s obvious you fought as hard as you could. But if she’s been sucking up magic from everyone and his brother, she’s obviously pretty powerful. Now what exactly is wrong?”
Akizuki and Sakura both have a fit at those words. Wonderful.
“I just hurt,” Yue says. “I don’t think anything’s broken . . . but one of my wings feels funny and I can’t retract them . . . she hit it while I was trying to fly away. I figured that I wouldn’t be able to win so I thought maybe I could escape and find you, but she kinda ruined that.”
“What about Eriol?”
Akizuki’s jaw drops, and she’s tugging on my arm even harder.
“He tried to do . . . something or other . . . but fell down before anything happened. He’s still unconscious.”
Right. Trust Eriol to try to do magic. The little twit should’ve punched her. Or at least just ran.
“But he’s okay other than that?” I’m not really saying this to confirm it, more to get Akizuki to stop hyperventilating.
“Seems to be, yeah . . . what does this woman want?”
“She wants her pendant back. And we’re going to give it to her, and come get you. We’ll be there soon.”
“But then she’ll take all of Eriol’s magic away . . .”
I start to reply to that, but then there’s another scuffling noise and the She-Bitch comes back on. “Yup, that’s right,” she says in a very nastily cheerful voice. “You can have him magicless or have him dead. It’s up to you.” And she hangs up. Naturally. She doesn’t know that Eriol can’t live without his magic.
I hang up the phone, at which point Akizuki and Sakura practically throw themselves at me, demanding to be told what happened. I relay the gist of the conversation back to them, at which point there’s another moment of dismayed silence.
“So . . . what do we do?” the Brat asks, looking questioningly at Sakura. As much as I don’t like him, I know he would go into the fires of Hell for her, which means he would probably do it for Yue, too, on the principle that he keeps Sakura happy. Eriol is another story. He and the Brat have never gotten along.
“Well,” Spinel says, settling on Akizuki’s shoulder, “we either give the pendant back, or rescue them.”
“But she’ll see us coming if we rescue her,” Sakura points out. “She must be able to see our magic. Our auras . . . or whatever . . . she would know we were coming.”
We all ponder this for a moment. Then, rather slowly, every gaze in the room comes to rest on Tomoyo.
Tomoyo smiles innocently.
****
My head is killing me. I don’t think I’ve felt this bad since . . . well, not too long ago. But this is definitely worse than I’ve been feeling since Robert gave me that chunk of my magic back. So something else must have happened. Right. Searching memory . . . coming up with gaps . . . guess I’d better open my eyes.
Interesting. I’ve never been here before in my life. There’s no furniture. Yet I’m not lying on the floor. I’m laying on something fairly soft. At least, my head is. The rest of me is on the floor. It’s fabric of some sort. Feels like . . . denim. Jeans. Whose jeans? Maybe I should look around.
I try to sit up. Bad plan. All the blood drains from my head and that leaves me very dizzy and disoriented. In fact, I feel like I might throw up. So I lie down again.
“Eriol?”
“Unngh,” I manage. How very . . . pathetic of me. I clear my throat and try again. “Yue . . .?” I’m lying in Yue’s lap. Oh. My. God. This just gets worse and worse.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Where are we?” I ask. Try to sit up again. End up with my face in Yue’s thigh. Excellent. Where the hell are my glasses?
“I don’t know exactly. That woman’s house or something. Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I lie. “I’d be better if my head had fallen off, because then it wouldn’t hurt as much. But other than that, I’m okay. You?” Where are my glasses and why am I in your lap?
“I’m fine,” he says. I have a strong suspicion he’s lying. Maybe that’s just because I was lying.
“What happened?” That might answer most of my questions. It’s nice and general.
“She broke into the house and kidnapped us.”
Right. Never let it be said that Yue volunteers information. “And . . .?”
“You tried to do something you shouldn’t and passed out. I tried to fight her off, failed, tried to run for help, failed, and got blasted into a wall. Which is right about where my memory stops. Then I woke up here.”
“What does she want?” I still want to sit up, but maybe I had better wait until the nausea passes. I really do not want to throw up on Yue. I have a feeling he’d never forgive me.
“Her pendant. She was talking to Touya on the phone. I got to talk to him for a few minutes. He said they’ll come get us soon.”
“But my magic . . .” Wonderful. Now I sound like I’m whining. Actually, I think I am whining.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do,” Yue says. “But they’ll figure something out.”
He sounds very confident. Then again, I have a lot of faith in Sakura-san and her friends. They’re marvelously resourceful. So is Spinel, really. Kerberos is more . . . enthusiastic than anything. But both Touya-san and Yukito are very smart, and Tomoyo-san can be downright scary. Between them, I’m sure they’ll come up with something.
“Where are my glasses?”
“Right here.” He hands them down to me and I slide them on. Ah, the beauty of being able to focus. “I took them off because you were sleeping.” Mental note: fix eyesight with magic. Once I have magic again. Is that possible? And if so, why haven’t I done it before? I think it must not be possible, or Clow, at least, would have done it. He was more vain than I am.
I don’t want to ask why I’m in his lap. That would be the most awkward question possible. But I really want to know why I’m in his lap. There must be a way around this. “There’s no furniture?” I ask.
“No. No blankets or anything, either.” He pauses. “I didn’t want to leave you lying on the floor . . . it’s kind of cold, and you were all unconscious, and you hit your head when you fell . . .”
He sounds like he’s apologizing, which is something I definitely don’t want. “Yue, it’s fine. You’re very comfortable.” Oh God. Did I just say that?
Of course, it would probably be more comfortable if half my face wasn’t squashed into denim. Let’s see if I can roll over so I’m face upwards.
I manage that, at which point it becomes painfully obvious that I did, in fact, say Yue’s lap was comfortable. I can tell because he’s blushing terribly.
He’s also bruised to hell and back again. I’m staring. I can tell. He’s blushing more. “Yue, you said you were fine.”
“I am fine,” he says.
“No you aren’t.” Now that I can see him, I can tell he really got creamed. He’s bruised and battered and his wings are still out, which means he might not be able to retract them. He usually does indoors. There are definitely some crushed feathers, and one of them looks sort of bent. His shirt is tattered from either getting beaten or forcing the wings through it.
I have this sudden mental image of trying to get Yue’s broken wing treated. Who do we go to? A doctor? A veterinarian?
Focus, Eriol. This is ridiculous.
“I said. I got thrown into a wall.”
“Is your wing broken?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t see it. Or reach it. I just know it hurts.”
“It looks kind of bent. When I can sit up again, I’ll look at it.” Now there’s a pathetic promise if I’ve ever heard one.
“Fair enough.”
There’s silence for a few minutes. My stomach is starting to recede to its proper place. I suddenly realize that I’m hungry. Just what I needed. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a watch?”
I do. And now I feel stupid. I manage to lift it to where I can see it. It’s half past six. Dinner time. Right. “I wonder if we get food.”
“I don’t know,” Yue repeats.
More silence.
Yue shivers a little. “Think we can get a blanket?”
“Maybe,” I say. “It depends on how well she decides to treat us.” I decide to not mention that the fact that she hasn’t done anything about Yue’s broken wing doesn’t bode well.
“I’m sorry I stormed off on you yesterday,” Yue says abruptly.
Of all the things I was expecting, that wasn’t it. Then again, Yue has a habit of apologizing to me and Sakura-san. Which is kind of strange. “It’s okay,” I reply. “I’m sorry for being a jerk.”
“It’s okay.”
“Think we can behave like two reasonable adults here?” I ask hopefully.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Think you can sit up?”
“I’ll give it a try.” Between the two of us, we manage to get me into a sitting position, even though I have to lean against the wall. Ah, vertical. Though I don’t think I could stand. Where the hell are we, the attic? It’s awfully drafty. I feel bad for Yue; that torn T-shirt isn’t going to do any good keeping him warm.
So. We’re now positioned to talk like civilized adults. One would think I would have some idea of what to say, but no.
“Any ideas on escape?” I say. Brilliant, Eriol. Avoid the topic at hand with a more important one.
“No windows,” Yue observes. “And I couldn’t fly anyway. One door. Which is locked. Even if we could unlock it, then we’d have to make it past the woman and out of the house. I’m injured and you have no magic. Or, for that matter, the strength to walk. It doesn’t really look good.”
I forgot that Yue was the eternal pessimist. Then again, he’s right. It doesn’t look good at all. “We’ll have to wait for rescue, I suppose.”
Yue nods agreement and says nothing.
I come to the conclusion that Yue isn’t capable of approaching the subject. Guess I’ll have to do it myself. Now, the question becomes: am I capable either?
“Yue . . .” Good start. He knows his own name. Come up with something better than that, Eriol. I don’t want this to sound like a last-moments we-might-die confession. “I really do care for you, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.” Yue practically wilts.
Okay. That didn’t go as planned. Now what?
Saved by the bitch. The door opens and she comes in. She’s smiling. Man, the second I can get my hands on her . . .
“Dinner time,” she says with a huge grin, and puts a pizza down on the floor. Hey, at least it’s food. She adds two cans of soda to that.
“Can we have some blankets?” Yue asks.
She considers it. “Yeah, okay.” Guess she doesn’t see any ways blankets can help us escape.
“Can we have some ice and some painkillers? His wing is broken.” I resist the urge to add ‘you bitch’ to the end of my statement. Never call someone names when you’re throwing yourself upon their mercy. Wait until you have what you want.
“Yeah, sure.” She’s very congenial. It’s annoying me terribly. I’m feeling very put out.
She leaves us with our pizza. Yue isn’t hungry. Of course. So I eat a few pieces of pizza and wonder what we’re supposed to do with the leftovers. Normally I might bully Yue into eating some of it, but I don’t care that much in our current circumstances. I suppose I can eat the rest of it for breakfast.
She comes back and dumps two blankets and a tattered pillow on the floor. Just one pillow. Great. Then she hands me a bottle of aspirin and an ice pack. “See you tomorrow,” she says, still bloody cheerful, and walks out.
“Okay.” I look at Yue. Then at the ice. Have him take the painkillers first. “Here.” I hand him two pills and one of the cans of soda. He looks at it distrustfully, then swallows them. “Now lie down on your stomach.” I wonder if the painkillers will actually work. It’s never really come up before.
He looks at me, still distrustful, then lies down and rests his head on the pillow. I check to see if the wing is broken. Oh, yes. It most definitely is. Yue hisses in pain. It’s definitely going to take two people to set it, too. That’s if we can figure out how. Perfect. I apply the ice to it. Not much else I can do.
I’m really wondering how they plan to fix this. If she gets her pendant back, that would be bad, because she would suck up the rest of my magic. And then I’d drop dead, which I’m really not looking forward to. But I’m never one for hysterics. Right. They’ll think of something. I’m sure they’ll think of something.
So, in theory, I should use this time to tell Yue how I feel.
You know, just in case it really becomes a last minute confession.
But then I have to think, do I really want to tell him that and then kick off? That would just be really bad for him. I wish I could pace. Pacing helps me think. Unfortunately, I think if I tried to stand up, I would fall over.
“How’s your wing feel?”
I’m such a stellar conversationalist.
“I’m starting to feel it less, and I think that’s good,” Yue says. “Can I have one of the blankets?”
“Sure.” I get one and spread it over him. I think he’s going to fall asleep, which is probably a good thing. He’ll hurt less, rest some, and I won’t have to talk to him.
Does that make me selfish?
Or just emotionally incompetent?
Unfortunately for me, the room is getting colder and colder. Yue falls asleep fairly quickly, but I stay awake, shivering, with one of the blankets wrapped around me. I forgot how easily I’ve been getting cold lately. Too bad I don’t have Spinel here to use as a blanket anymore.
It’s too bad I’m here.
Wonder if Yue would mind if I curled up under his other wing.
I hope not, because otherwise I’m going to freeze to death.
****
I was cold when I fell asleep, but now I’m warm. I fell asleep on my stomach, and now one of my arms has lost feeling. I hate that. I didn’t have that problem when I still stared a body with Yukito. The ice on my wing is sagging and melted. In fact, I think it’s a bag of water. Where is Eriol?
Oh. Right there. Curled up next to me, under my other wing. That would explain why I’m warm. Two blankets. And two bodies is warmer than one, anyhow.
I’m not complaining. Just confused.
I probably shouldn’t wake him up. But if I don’t get feeling back into my hand, I’ll go crazy. So I sit up as carefully as I can.
Ow. Jarred my wing. Ow. Very bad.
“Yue . . .?” Eriol mumbles sleepily. “You okay?”
“My wing . . .” I can’t manage more than that. I’ve been hurt before, but never this much. I wonder if it has something to do with having my own body . . . can’t think. Thinking hurts.
He tries to sit up. Falls backwards. Closes his eyes again. I don’t know if he’s passed out or just can’t sit up. Either is possible.
I sit for a few minutes, waiting for the throbbing pain in my wing to abate. It doesn’t. So I find the bottle of aspirin. There’s still half a can of soda left. It’s flat, but not warm -- this attic really is freezing. Why the attic, anyway?
Eriol is staring at me. Come to think of it, he’s been staring at me for a while. Not even really blinking. He’s not wearing his glasses, so I don’t think he’s really awake yet. He’s kind of half-conscious. And staring. It’s oddly cute. But I’m getting nervous. Shouldn’t he be blinking? Maybe something’s wrong. I probably shouldn’t poke him. “Eriol? Are you okay?”
He blinks. “Yeah . . .”
“You don’t look okay.”
“I’m trying to decide whether I should tell you I’m in love with you now or wait until I’m sure I’m not going to die,” he says.
His eyes close.
“I can’t believe I just said that.”
I think he’s awake now.
Maybe I’m the one asleep.
Maybe I’m dreaming.
****
Part Eleven
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