Card Captor Sakura Fan Fiction ❯ What I Didn't Know ❯ Brothers ( Chapter 5 )

What I Didn't Know

Chapter 5-Brothers

Feeling a little bit of déjà vu, I stood in front of Sakura's bedroom door, wondering if I should knock. It wasn't a question of either knocking or walking right in; instead, I wondered if I should bother her at all.

She'd just had her heart broken for the very first time. I knew what that was like. The ache that settled in your chest as if your heart was being squeezed, not being able to draw a sufficient breath, wondering what was so terribly wrong with you that the other person didn't feel the same way.

So even if she didn't want to see me, I wanted to see her. I wanted to do whatever I could for her. Isn't that what older brothers are for? I knocked on her door softly, and when she didn't answer, I slowly turned the knob. "Sakura?"

She was asleep. I sat down on the edge of her bed, careful not to wake her, and just looked at her. She seemed so small to be going through so much. I reached out to stroke her hair, and she stirred a little but otherwise made no indication that she knew I was there. I could see that her cheeks were stained from crying, and I almost regretted my decision not to deck Yuki when I had the chance. How dare he make my sister cry?

How could anyone not love her?

How horrible and wonderful a first love could be. I guessed it had to happen sooner or later. It was all a part of growing up. She didn't really know what love was about yet, but for her, the pain must still have been as real as it was for anyone. Was it easier to get over when you were that young? If the wound was shallow, she would heal quickly, and one day she'd be ready to hold her heart out to someone else.

And then God help that poor bastard if he makes my sister unhappy for even one second.

I watched her sleep for a few moments more, hoping that she was having good dreams, healing dreams. As I got up to leave, I heard a persistent "psst" coming from somewhere. I looked around and saw that stuffed animal's big, round head poking out of Sakura's bottom desk drawer.

"Psst, 'nii-chan!"

"Shhh!" I warned him, putting a finger to my lips. I didn't want him waking her up.

He got the message and gestured toward the door with his little plush paw. This was a sight I'd finally gotten used to. It hadn't been as hard as I thought it would be. Compared to everything else, it was a relatively easy change to assimilate.

We made it into the hallway, and I cast a quick glance back into the room to make sure that Sakura was still asleep. The kaijuu would roar mightily if rudely awakened. That's why I gave her the name in the first place. When she was a baby, she could howl louder than anything I'd ever heard. The name stuck when it turned out that she was always going to be noisy and clumsy. She hated it, of course, but I meant it with the utmost affection. Usually. Sometimes, anyway.

I quietly closed the door and turned back around to see Kerberos hovering just inches in front of my nose. "Gah! Don't do that!" I whispered harshly, instinctively waving my hands as if to swat away a pesky fly.

"Hey, watch it!" he replied, ducking just in time.

"What's all the noise up here?"

So much for my newly sensitive hearing. I hadn't heard my father coming up the stairs, and as he approached the landing, I quickly grabbed the plushie, giving him a squeeze to remind him to keep quiet. 'Tou-san still didn't know this little secret of ours.

"Sorry," I said, finally answering his question. "I stubbed my toe." Well, that was a bad cover story. There was nothing for me to have bumped into, and I hadn't inherited the klutz gene from 'kaa-san like Sakura had.

"Oh, I see." He had that look again, the one that said he didn't believe me, but that he'd wait until I was ready to confide in him. How did he do that? He had to be the most patient and understanding father ever. He deserved some sort of award. But I realized that over the past few months-years, even-I'd had to do the same, and I knew that I'd given Kaho, Sakura, and Yuki that same look many, many times, even though patience was not one of my strong suits. "Why do you have Sakura-san's toy?"

Oops. That probably looked funny, to say the least. I didn't even play with stuffed animals when I was a kid. "It has a ripped seam, so I thought I'd stitch it up for her." That was a much better story. Pretty soon I might even be able to sell him the King Penguin slide. Well, maybe not.

"That's nice of you. How many chore shifts is it costing her?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

I wasn't that bad about doing things for her, was I? "None, this time. I thought I should go easy on her after what happened today."

"Oh?"

Didn't she tell him? I didn't guess she would have yet. The pain was still too fresh. "Apparently, she finally told Yuki how she felt about him, and he turned her down."

He nodded slowly. "I thought maybe it was something like that. She didn't seem herself when Li-kun brought her home."

What? What had that gaki been doing with my sister? Going after her when she was at her most vulnerable, I'd bet. That little punk. I could just-

"But what about you?"

"What about me?" He'd been saying something, but I hadn't been paying attention, as I was otherwise occupied with mentally punting that Chinese kid back to Hong Kong. The long way. Via the moon, if necessary.

"How do you feel?"

"About what?" I was still incredibly lost. He was going to have to draw a flowchart of this conversation for me to study later. "Oh. Well, I'm still a little tired, but other than that, I'm fine."

I could see in his eyes that I hadn't even come close to guessing what he'd asked me, or else what he'd meant to ask me, and he looked like he wanted to say something, but he just sighed and shook his head. "Don't stay up too late, then, okay?"

"Okay." I'd definitely missed something there. "Good night." He wished me a good night as well, and then I went into my room and leaned against the closed door. "What was that all about?"

I didn't usually expect an answer when I talked to myself, but I got one this time. It was a sharp pain in my finger, as if a dog's pointed teeth had sunk into the flesh and were holding on for dear life. I yelped and shook my arm frantically, and it took a second for me to recognize the yellow blur that whizzed back and forth as that stuffed toy, dangling from my hand before it let go.

Kerberos gulped for air, his little plush stomach puffing in and out. "I thought I was gonna die," he wheezed. "Did you have to squeeze so tight?"

I'd forgotten about him. "Sorry," I muttered back. "Did you have to bite so hard?"

"Be glad that's all I did, buddy." I didn't want to know what that meant. He flittered, or floated, or whatever the hell it was he did, over to my nightstand, where he got comfortable as if he were taking up permanent residence there. "So, Sakura finally confessed to Yuki-usagi, huh?"

He had a little nickname for everyone. He'd even taken to calling me 'nii-chan, which he'd said was just a habit he'd gotten into. It was funny, considering that he was technically several decades older than I was. "Yeah, she did. You knew about that?"

"I know everything," he replied, puffing up proudly. Then his little plush face turned serious again. "Poor kid. I probably should have said something. I knew this would happen."

"Really?" Well, he'd said that he knew everything, but I'd quickly discovered that the plushie had a tendency to boast. Hmm, it seemed like I had my little nicknames for everyone, too. "Why do you say that?" I knew why Yuki had gently rejected Sakura's feelings, at least I thought I did, but since Kerberos didn't really know Yuki, there must have been another reason. A reason called Yue.

He breathed a profound sigh. He really was a hard creature to get a handle on. He looked so silly and harmless, and he usually acted like it, too, but there were years of knowledge and experience behind that misleading façade. "Well, Yue has always been very... devoted... to Clow. Even if he's accepted Sakura as our mistress, he still only sees her as a somewhat passable replacement."

"I see." But I didn't really. What an interesting choice of words-devoted. What exactly did that mean? There was a lot about Yue that I didn't know. Actually, what I did know could fit into a thimble with space left over. This was my chance, I realized. Who better to tell me about Yue than his own brother? Well, that was their relationship, wasn't it?

God, this was still very weird.

I settled onto my bed, propping up my pillows and pulling up my knees. I wanted to be sure I was comfortable, because the great plushie and I needed to have this talk. At least, I needed it. I needed to understand as much as possible before going to see Yuki tomorrow. Only then would I be able to help him. And only then would I know how to deal with Yue, should I ever have to.

I still wondered how I fit into all this now. Yue was Sakura's guardian and would come out when she needed him. But was that it? Would he just... hibernate, or whatever it was he did when Yuki was awake?

It was like one of those philosophy puzzles that had no solution. A conundrum. If a man dreams that he is a butterfly, is he in actuality a butterfly dreaming that he is a man? And which one would that make Yuki?

God, this was hard enough for me to wrap my little mind around. I could only imagine what it was like for him.

"'Nii-chan?" Kerberos had left his spot on the table to hover in front of my nose again, waving a yellow plush arm in my face. "Anybody home?"

I gave myself a mental shake. That was the problem with riddles. I'd always hated them, because I'd fixate on them, determined to find the answer, even if it was clear that there wasn't one, which only made me more frustrated. "Sorry. I was just thinking."

"Yeah, I could see that," he responded dryly. "So, what do you think about all this?"

I folded my arms on top of my knees as I shook my head. "I really don't know. I wish I did." Shouldn't it have been odd to be discussing my innermost thoughts with a stuffed animal?

Kerberos returned to the nightstand and made a murmuring sound, as if he were thinking about all this, too. "What about Yuki-usagi? How's he dealing with it?"

That was what I'd been waiting for. A chance to bring this up. "I was hoping you could tell me," I answered. "I mean, I know Yuki better than you do, of course, but then you know Yue better than anyone does."

"Well, as well as anyone can, I suppose," he amended.

"Oh?"

He proceeded to give me a vague account of their life before, when Clow Reed had been alive. I could tell he was leaving a lot out, probably feeling that it wasn't his place to tell too many tales about the unusual relationship between the magician and his human-like creation. Or maybe he just didn't know everything after all. I got the distinct impression that Yue was a very private being, kind of like me. Reserved. Anti-social. Secretive?

He then tried to explain about the time that had passed while they were sealed in the Clow book, when Yue had somehow taken it upon himself to get out while the guardian of the seal was sleeping on the job. He didn't know what Yue had been up to while disguised in Yuki's form-if he'd only been sleeping, or if he'd been conscious of everything from the first day I'd met Yuki.

And he told me more about what had been going on recently, even though he and Sakura had said some of this before, when they first showed me her cards. Since Yue spent so much time as Yuki, they hadn't spent much time together, unless something out of the ordinary happened. Even then, it was mostly all business, finding out what was causing the disturbance and figuring out how to stop it. There was still the mystery of why Clow's aura was always present when these things occurred, but that was a whole other story, and didn't really interest me as much, except where Sakura's safety was concerned.

Although, now that I thought about it, I'd sensed Clow's aura, too. I wasn't sure how I knew, and I couldn't remember where or when, or even if it had been more than once. Those feelings had faded in the days after I gave up my power, and it was almost as if I'd never felt them at all. Feelings that had once been so strong were now just memories, and just like trying to remember anything, it was hard to recapture what exactly it had been like.

I was amazed that I was able to stay awake as long as I did. We talked long into the night, and I didn't even know that I was starting to get tired. My brain was too busy processing all of this information to realize that it needed rest. But my body slowly began to shut down, sliding lower and lower onto my bed until I was stretched out with my arm wrapped around one of my pillows. The last thing I saw before my eyes closed was Kerberos, curled up on the other pillow, mumbling something about pudding as he too finally gave in to the urge to sleep.

***

It was after lunch the next day that Yuki and I finally had our talk. After staying up so late, I'd slept in, which really wasn't such a rare occurrence these days. But that meant that I didn't make it to his house until the afternoon. Which I supposed was fine, since we hadn't set a time. It was just that way between us. We went by our own clock, which was somehow perfectly synchronized to the other's.

We'd decided to go for a walk, out in the brisk February air. It was good for both of us, because there was something incredibly claustrophobic about staying inside when you had something weighing on your mind. You had to get out, to remind yourself that the world was so much bigger than whatever it was you were dealing with. It was comforting, in a way. It put everything into proper perspective.

That was probably why I used to spend so much of my solitary time at Tsukimine Shrine. But that's not where we went today.

We didn't go anywhere, actually. We just walked. I let him decide this, and it was his reasoning that brought up the long-dreaded topic.

Dreaded? What a way for me to be thinking.

"I guess walking just makes me feel normal," he said out of the blue, giving a self-conscious laugh as his feet shuffled along the sidewalk. "Funny how you don't think about things like that."

I waited for him to say more. I felt that if I interrupted him, he'd stop talking. Well, it wasn't that, exactly. But if his words just came out in a stream, he would reveal what was really going on in his head, rather than editing his thoughts before speaking. I knew I'd get more out of him that way.

"Yue flies, you know," he said. "I'd always wondered what that would be like. I guess that's what children do, wishing they could be a bird and just soar through the air without a care in the world. But it's not like that, is it? And, come to think of it, I was never a child. And children are by nature carefree, and I'd thought I was, too. I never had anything to worry about. Maybe that should have concerned me."

He was rambling. I wondered if he got that from me. It wasn't that I was the most verbose person in the world, but sometimes I'd think out loud, forgetting that the other person was even there, until I realized that what I was saying probably didn't make a lick of sense.

He was still talking, and I decided I should probably listen instead of getting distracted by my own thoughts. How else was I going to understand anything? "It's so weird, you know?" He kept saying "you know," as if I could possibly know, when in fact I didn't have a clue. "Now I have two sets of memories, and then there's the place where they overlap. But it's like remembering a movie. You know that you saw these things, but they didn't happen to you. You were just a spectator."

A spectator. That's what I'd become recently. A spectator in my own life. There I went again, making things about me.

"But he's trying to help me make sense of it all. He's trying to show me what's real and what isn't." Yuki stopped walking and looked up at the sky, at the gray, wintry clouds that obscured the golden glow of the sun. "We've been talking a lot lately. I don't think he likes it, but it's something we have to do if we're going to live together." He looked at me then, and his hazel eyes were just like the sky, as if there was a haze of silver over the amber.

"I'm sorry if I've been moody and distracted lately," he continued. "We're still trying to sort all of this out. I have so much to learn." Then he gave me an odd look, somewhere between irritated and amused. "You can say something, if you want."

I shrugged, a gesture of helplessness, or maybe unhelpfulness, if that was a word. "It's not that I don't have anything to say; it's just that I don't know what to say," I told him. "I don't know what to ask. If it would be too personal or too stupid or just... whatever."

"They say there are no stupid questions," he responded, almost teasingly, which was so like him. I had to keep reminding myself that it was him.

"Well, leave it to me to be the exception to the rule," I shot back glibly. We started walking again, and it was only after a few silent minutes that I took the opening he'd left me. "So, what happens now?" I asked. That was the thing that had been bothering me the most. Maybe I should have asked something more personal, something that related to him instead of me, but of all the things I wanted to know, that came first.

"The same as always," he answered. "Yue will help Sakura-chan when he's needed, and I'll finish high school and attend university with you this spring, just like we'd planned. Nothing really changes."

He was wrong about that. Everything changes. "Is that how it's going to be from now on? I mean...." My words trailed off. I knew what I meant, but I didn't know how to say it.

He seemed to understand. "For now, that's how it will be. We've decided it's best that way."

This was yet another thing I'd have to get used to. When he said "we," he didn't mean me. He meant Yue. I'd noticed this slight change in his speech before, but I just now recognized its importance. He was speaking for both of them. "How does that work, anyway?" I blurted out.

"How does what work?"

"How does he talk to you? How do you decide things?" Sure enough, I'd found the stupid question. I knew I could do it. I raked a hand through my hair, which anyone who knew me would say was something I did when I was distracted or frustrated. I didn't even realize I did it most of the time. "What does he do when... when you're here?"

"He watches. He listens. He tries to rest when I do, if he's not needed. And if he has something to tell me, I hear him in my thoughts, only... they're not my thoughts. And everything I think, he hears, too." I knew that the expression on my face must have been one of confusion, or at least concern. "It's not so bad, you know," he added. "Before, it was just me in that house. Now I'm not alone anymore."

"You never were alone," I corrected him. "You've always had me, and Sakura, and 'tou-san." And me. Me. But maybe I wasn't enough.

He nodded, not looking at me. "I know," he said softly. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

Did he mean all of us, or did he mean me, specifically? But while I tried to figure out how to ask him, and if I really wanted to know, since he'd said before that he considered us his family-which still didn't sit well with me for some reason-we rounded the corner and stopped in front of his house. We'd made a loop around the neighborhood, and it seemed like a natural close to our conversation, even though there was so much I still wondered about. But with what Yuki had shared and what Kerberos had told me, I was able to start connecting some of the dots. It wasn't clear what the picture was yet, but I was headed in the right direction. It was better than just staring at the jumble of dots and feeling overwhelmed.

"Hey," I said suddenly. "Do you want to come home with me for dinner?" It was getting to be that time, and I'd told my father that I'd be back.

"I don't think I should," he replied. "Sakura-chan probably doesn't want to see me right now."

I'd forgotten about that. "Give her a couple of days. She'll be fine."

"I hope so." The look on his face told me that a lot more had happened yesterday than he'd shared.

"What?" I had no idea what that expression meant. It was starting to make me a little uncomfortable.

But if he'd been about to say something, he changed his mind. "Thanks for coming over. Can we talk more about this later?"

"Of course." If that's what he needed, then that's what I was here for. And I needed to hear it, too. "I'll come by after school tomorrow, if that's okay."

There was that look again. I wished I knew what was going on.

And then the damnedest thing happened.

He hugged me. And it wasn't a quick, friendly hug, or even a casual, brotherly hug. It was... I didn't know what the hell it was.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," he said again, even quieter than before, and this time, I knew he meant me. Just me.

So I did the only thing I could do. I hugged him back. And it was so damn strange. But my arms were around him, holding him close to me, and what was even stranger was how good it felt. I didn't even think about what I was doing. I closed my eyes and lowered my head so that my nose brushed against the silken strands of his silver hair, and if I'd been able to sense his moon aura before, now it was like I could smell the soft sweetness of it. And, yes, I was aware that the words I'd just used made it sound as if....

I pulled away from him then. "So, I'll see you."

He looked just as startled as I felt. "Yeah, see you," he replied quickly. And I could have sworn that he was as anxious to get away from me as I was from him.

From the first day I'd met him and felt that power of the moon that surrounded him, I'd been intrigued by him. It was my downfall to be attracted to that kind of aura, and so I'd naturally assumed that that was all it was. I'd decided that one good thing about sacrificing my magic was that I wouldn't be distracted by that kind of thing anymore.

So, the reason for my attraction to him was gone. And yet, my attraction wasn't.

And just when I'd thought things couldn't get any more confusing.

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