[8-28-06] [Card Captor Sakura] For Love

[still-ciircee.livejournal.com]

Title: For Love
Day/Theme: 8-28-06/ In sorrow to be here again, I am loving you.
Series: Card Captor Sakura
Character/Pairing: Sonomi, Daidouji-san.
Rating: G?



Disclaimer: CLAMP.
Dedication: To Chelle-sama, of course.
Notes: I consider this a sort of sequel to In Defiance, but it can certainly be read as a stand-alone piece as well.

For Love

She went to university in England because Grandfather insisted. That was how Sonomi knew that That Teacher was teaching at one of the schools in Tokyo. Because generations of Amamiyas had gone to Keio and Sonomi had been accepted already. So That Teacher was there, somewhere, and so too was Nadeshiko. Somewhere.

So off Sonomi went, to Oxford, in England. She privately thought it would serve Grandfather right if she married some random Englishman.

Instead, she met an old, old friend.

“Amamiya? Amamiya Sonomi?”

The use of her name, in the proper order, startled her in to stopping on her way to her Business Ethics lecture. Sonomi had grown resigned to being called ‘Sonomi’ by her classmates, though she hated it enough that she ignored them all as much as possible. Besides, they were all business majors. One day they would all be in competition; better that they know now that she’d cut them no quarter. But now…she turned.

A dark-haired man was staring at her, looking openly shocked and with dawning delight peeking through. “Sonomi-san?” he asked again. She raised one eyebrow, cocking her head in regal fashion and his quiet smile went completely delighted. “You don’t remember me.” He gestured to himself, “Daidouji…”

Daidouji. She knew that name. A distant branch of cousins, mostly doctors. A few lawyers. No land in Tokyo proper, but plenty near Kyoto. He was her age, give or take a few years and that meant… “Ken?” she asked, taking a step toward him, waving her bodyguards back as she noticed them cluster in the near distance. “What are you doing here?”

Ken looked at the campus around them. “Escaping,” he said.

Polite manners meant she didn’t ask him about it. And while she could have written Grandfather and asked, she didn’t. There were only so many things ‘escaping’ could have meant. And though she hadn’t seen Ken since she was six or seven she remembered that he’d been kind to her and had carried Nadeshiko on his back when she’d fallen and skinned her knee.

She met Ken for coffee regularly, after that. That they were family required it, certainly, but it was such a relief from the sharp, English words to listen to the soothing cadence of Japanese and the lilt of Kyoto.

And, she enjoyed his company. He wanted to make toys for children, showing her his sweet, floppy, whimsical designs and asking her opinion—as a business major. She liked the fact that Ken laughed when their bodyguards sat together, sprinkled here and there throughout the café in mixed pairs. It was to blend in, but Ken’s eyes sparkled as he openly discussed who was sitting with whom and what romances might blossom. She giggled when he asked her if they might meet on Tuesdays as well as Sundays because he thought that Cho and Hiro might like to see more of each other.

Ken grinned and opened his mouth, shutting it again with a sudden snap and hiding away behind his drawing pad.

“What?” she asked, covering the last of her giggles with her hand. Ken needed the occasional prodding when he decided to close his mouth and not say whatever he’d been about to say.

“Nothing,” Ken muttered head down, but she saw his charcoal stick fumble.

Sonomi smiled, unable to help herself. “If it’s about you returning home for the summer break, I already know. Great-Grand Uncle told Grandfather.”

“It’s going to be bad,” Ken said, looking up enough that his blue eyes peeked at her over the top of his paper. “But that wasn’t it.”

“Was it a good guess?” she asked, nudging Ken’s foot with her own.

“No.” Ken lowered his paper and smiled at her fully. “I was thinking that you’re beautiful when you smile and you should model for the art department.”

It was Sonomi’s turn to close her mouth without saying anything and look away.

Ken kicked her foot with his own. “Sometimes I shut my mouth for important reasons,” he told her, “like not embarrassing my favorite cousin.”

Sonomi sipped her coffee. “How bad do you think it’s going to be?” she asked, changing the subject to something they could both feel bad about.

She felt guilty about the daily phone calls Ken made to her from home. It was mostly just updates on the latest going-ons in the extended family. The sort of things that she enjoyed hearing about because it was all business maneuvering and politics. Interesting things.

The guilt came in Ken asking after the last of her finals and her telling him, enjoying the way he listened and only occasionally wishing he wasn’t somebody else.

After four years, it was easy to hug her Grandfather again. Her temper had cooled. More, she thought she understood Grandfather’s reasons now, even if she couldn’t quite forgive him. Even if, the second she reached her twenty-fifth birthday, she was still going to find Nadeshiko and never let her go again.

Ken grabbed her the moment she stepped out of her Grandfather’s embrace. “Welcome home,” he said, whirling her into a hug. “Come to my home after the family gathering,” he whispered in her ear before turning her loose and clicking his fingers at his bodyguards to fetch her luggage.

She did, of course, even ditching her bodyguards at Grandfather’s. It had been a long time since she snuck out, but her body hadn’t forgotten how. The streets of Tomoeda were almost unfamiliar from four years abroad, but she remembered running them. Running and running and running until everything ached the same.

She didn’t know why Ken had chosen to live in Tomoeda. She could have asked. But she didn’t want to.

“What—” was all she managed to get out as she climbed in through Ken’s open bedroom window before one warm, long-fingered hand stifled her.

“Shh,” Ken hissed, nodding at his door. When she nodded, he dropped his hand to grab hers, towing her behind him as he jogged up a short flight of stairs to an upper level of his room.

By the half-finished sketches and the baskets of materials and stuffing-fluff, Sonomi guessed that they were in his studio. Not his graphic design work room, which she knew he didn’t care for, but his dreaming-studio where he made his toys.

Sonomi picked up a roly-poly stuffed octopus and sat down in its chair, holding it on her lap, resting her chin between its eyes. “What’s happened?” she asked quietly, feeling sharp inside like a wire too tightly wound.

Ken didn’t look at her as he handed her two glossy photos. Ordinary, cheap 3½ x5s. “A horrible, wonderful thing,” he said softly and Sonomi clutched the pictures as though they were gold.

“A daughter?” she asked, staring at the tiny face of the tiny baby in Nadeshiko’s sweet embrace. They had been going to have their daughters together. Lovely little girls who would look like their most-precious people.

“A son,” Ken corrected. “Touya.”

She touched the boy’s tiny face. “To-ya. Is she…are they still in hospital?”

“He’s going to be four soon.”

“Four!” She stared at him.

Ken smiled back, his sad, sad smile that only family ever gave him. “I was doing the charity event at Women’s Hospital last month and she was there. Those were the only pictures she had with her; she said she was having reprints made of them, otherwise she wouldn’t have had any. I didn’t want to tell you on the phone.” Ken reached out and pulled a basket of fabric and fill close. “Will you help me make something to give him?” Ken asked.

She almost said ‘no’. Almost asked what good it would be, would it do? But Ken’s smile was still sad and she nodded instead. “Can I be with when you give it to him?” she asked, unsure if she wanted to see the boy, certain that she wanted to see Nadeshiko’s joy in him.

“It’s not just you, Sonomi,” Ken said, his hands stilling hers. “We’re none of us allowed. This will be anonymous, but she’ll know it’s from us.” He picked up one of his many sketch pads. “We’ll make sure. Do you remember the stuffed toy you used to carry with you? I only remember that you were so cute with your little plushie that I knew I wanted to make many, many more so that every girl could be as cute as my favorite girl.”

It took a moment, but Sonomi found her voice.

After, she took up driving. Car racing. She liked the speed and the fact that she couldn’t think beyond the turns in the road and the cars around her. It left her clearer inside than running ever had.

“Grand Uncle won’t like that,” Ken had said, grinning like a little boy as she showed him the track and her car.

“I don’t care,” she’d said. But she’d cut her long hair short in order for the helmet to fit better and Grandfather had liked that anyway.

When she was twenty-four, the family found out about the toys she and Ken designed and sent to Nadeshiko’s son. She lied for them both, saying the toys were for the company that she and Ken were opening, but as relative after relative paraded through the house in Tomoeda, Sonomi knew she wasn’t believed.

Most likely she was no better a liar than Ken was.

She kept her chin up as all the offers were laid on the table before her. It was the impersonal bite of the business world mixed with the cruel sting of family blood as she was told that any choice to be made was hers. She enjoyed more status than Ken could claim. They could desist or Ken could share in Nadeshiko’s fate.

Her business acumen served her well, her lessons learned at her Grandfather’s knee. She said nothing to her family, merely nodded and took her leave without giving them an answer as soon as it was permissible to do so. She went to the race track and drove until she was dizzy with exhausted adrenaline.

Ken was sitting in the place where her pit crew usually worked. “Ken,” she said as she got out of her car and let her helmet drop heavily to the ground. She leaned against her car, hiding her face in the gleaming paint. There had been no real choice. She could only make the choice that she’d been unable to make once before.

“I just wanted to say,” Ken said, still sitting on the tool bench, “that I’m glad for the time we’ve had, Sonomi. And to tell you to not risk your position feeling bad for me. Don’t cry for me, Sonomi. Don’t.”

“Would you like to get married?” she asked quietly. “Grandfather said it would be all right.”

He smiled at her with open shock and dawning delight. “I’d like that very much,” he said.

Tomoyo was three the year that Ken moved back to England. The family was told that it was in order to manage the western division of Daidouji Toys. And it was true enough. But it wasn’t the reason.

“You promised her that everything would be all right,” Ken reminded her, kissing her and Tomoyo goodbye at the airport. “You promised that you would be happy.

Missing him didn't hurt and for that, she could love him completely.