[Fanfiction] [Cardcaptor Sakura] Dark Nightingale

Dark Nightingale

by Seductive Venus

a Cardcaptor Sakura fanfic

“It’s been a while. I’m glad to see you.”

Tomoyo Hiiragizawa turned around at the sound of his voice. Warm, gentle and familiar in Japanese instead of crisp British English. It was the sound of her husband’s voice on cold winter nights and warm spring days. It used to be her favorite sound in the world. Now, it made her skin crawl.

The cold Japanese winter air made her nose and cheeks turn pink. The Tokyo Tower glittered in the distance. At the top of the Daidouji empire’s skyscraper, she had an unobstructed view of the city. The stars looked lonesome tonight as they stood at the rooftop under the same moonless sky. She adjusted her lavender scarf to cover her neck more snugly and his eyes drank in the graceful action like it was art.

“I’m glad to see you too,” Tomoyo replied serenely. But her violet blue eyes were full of a sadness that the universe couldn’t contain.

It was exactly three months since she walked out on him.

Neither of them said anything for a while.

After a while, Eriol Hiiragizawa walked slowly to stand beside her towards the edge of the rooftop to look down at the sleepless Tokyo streets.

Time seemed to stop for the married couple. The golden couple who got married at a lavish wedding ceremony dubbed as the “wedding of the century”. They celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary five months ago. It’s December now. It seemed so long ago.

“How have you been?” Eriol asked quietly. His eyes wandered over her profile and lingered on the wayward curls that had escaped her headband. Even at thirty, Tomoyo was still lovely and girlish. There was a beautiful melancholic quality that lingered around her pretty features that was more than sadness. She was walking a beautiful tragedy.

Tomoyo didn’t look at him but kept her eyes trained on the most famous landmark in Japan. She was glad that her voice didn’t shake. “I’ve seen better days.”

“We don’t have to divorce you know,” he said gently. His deep blue eyes were serious and the wind caressed his night black hair. In the moonless night, his pale skin seemed to glow even more. “It would be a waste of time, money and effort.”

She didn’t answer him.

Her mind wandered back to the sleepless nights she spent alone in their bed, the cold rainy mornings in Wales when she sipped lukewarm tea while waiting for him and the dark thoughts that snapped at her footsteps like a dark dog. She recalled his cold touch, his dark gaze of desire for her sometimes and his clipped, almost unemotional tone when talking to her.

They got married at 25 years old after years of courting. They have been best friends since high school. Their friends, Syaoran Li and Sakura Kinomoto, had gotten married so it made sense for them to follow suit. They had mutual respect and affection for each other in the long years of their courtship. They thought that it was enough to build a life together.

Tomoyo and Eriol bought a modest cottage in Wales with Ruby Moon and Spinel Sun. They decorated it with quaint antiques and strange objects they found from the secondhand markets within London. They shared kisses in tender mornings and passionate nights.

It was universally understood that Tomoyo and Eriol were perfect mirrors of each other. Both were perceptive, intelligent, old souls and too broken for love in a cruel world. Both had loved and lost someone once upon a time. It seemed like two broken people trying to fix each other by staying together would build something beautiful.

It was beautiful and it was mythic.

But Tomoyo didn’t count on the fact that Eriol would be enamored with the pursuit of magic again.

He wanted to prove himself one more time as the most powerful sorcerer in the world after accidentally bumping into Yuuko Ichihara in London while Tomoyo was away on business in the continent. 

He wanted to best his own memories. 

Eriol was competing against the ghost of Clow Reed. 

Tomoyo understood this desire more than Eriol himself and so she watched, supported and cared for him.

What she didn’t see was that he was falling in love again with the woman who was the reason for the rip in time and space.

As time passed and Eriol fell deeper into his obsession with magic, Tomoyo felt the weight of his absence.

She noticed that he hugged her less and kissed her even less. His touch became cold and their bedroom was freezing. His presence was like a ghost within their own cottage. Ruby Moon and Spinel Sun, his familiars, looked on with helplessness in their eyes. Their loyalty was torn between the gentle mistress who cared for them without magic and their master who created them from his own flesh and bone.

Five years. 

It had been five years of her life spent with the man she loved deeply, completely and unconditionally.

Three months.

Tomoyo bit the inside of her lip until it bled. 

It had been three months since their marriage withered on the vine because of another woman he loved in his past life, an obsession with magic and his own unraveling.

“Of course we don’t,” Tomoyo said pleasantly after a while. She was glad that he didn’t see how her eyes shook or how her hands were trembling while tucked inside the pockets of her coat. “But you owe it to me. Set me free, my love. You don’t have to keep me like a caged bird in your house who has to beg for your attention. I don’t want to sing at your command. I don’t want to be a flightless bird dreaming of a wide blue sky.”

“You’ve always been poetic, my dark darling.” Eriol replied in a tone that betrayed his regret and longing for his beloved wife. “I truly apologize for my behavior in the past few months. I will get better. I will stop dabbling in dark magic. I will not see her again…”

“It’s okay, Eriol,” she whispered and the wind carried her grief towards him. “We have a prenup and we have no children. We don’t have anything binding us together.”

“Spinel Sun and Ruby Moon are our children,” he retorted sharply. “We will have our own someday.”

This time, she turned to look at him.

His breath caught at his throat and stuck there.

Tomoyo’s violet blue eyes were large and luminous with unshed tears. They clung to her long eyelashes and ran rivulets down her pale cheeks. But her smile was serene, content and knowing.

“I know, my love.” The woman he married, loved and lost was heartbreakingly beautiful in her acceptance of their fate. “But they are hers too. Their butterfly wings, Ruby’s red eyes and Spinel’s biting wit… I love them and I love you. But I think I love you well enough to set you free.”

“Free?” Eriol’s voice was raspy. “I do not want to end our marriage, my darling. My Tomoyo. My wife. I don’t want to divorce.”

“But we have to,” she whispered and her pain struck him like an arrow. “I want to divorce because I don’t want to be second best. I don’t want to be your number two. I don’t want to live in jealousy of her or your obsession with magic. I don’t want to be… unloved.”

The last word hit him like a punch in the gut.

“But you are loved,” he said helplessly.

She shook her head. 

He stepped back when she bridged the tiny gap between them on the rooftop to take both of his hands. His eyes fell down on her beautiful hands, her tiny manicured nails and he realized that she had cared for him with them. These fingers held him close when he danced towards madness and they raked his back in the midst of passionate lovemaking. 

Shaking, he lifted them back up to his lips and kissed her knuckles tenderly. 

“You loved me as much as you permitted yourself to, darling.” Tomoyo’s voice was tender, aching and full of understanding. “We tried to make it work. We tried so hard. But we both know that you love Yuuko and I love Sakura…”

Eriol’s whimper escaped his throat.

She squeezed his hands and looked at his eyes with a gentle, resigned smile.

“We don’t have to pretend anymore,” Tomoyo said softly. “We can part ways here as friends. We’ve always been friends, right?”

Tears escaped his eyes and he crossed the 10 centimeters between them. 

Tomoyo blinked when she felt her husband’s arms wrap around her tightly. He always smelled like pine, winter and something that smelled faintly like hope and she realized that it was the last time she would hold him.

She smiled into his shoulder and hugged him back. Her right cheek and tendrils of hair became wet with his tears. She allowed herself to cry too.

“Thank you, Tomoyo.” Eriol whispered into her hair. “I will always love you.”

“Me too, darling.” Tomoyo replied as she stepped back to stare up at his handsome face. “We’re soulmates. But we don’t have to be married to have each other.”

“I hope that you’ll find your happiness in freedom, my little nightingale.” Eriol said as he pressed a kiss- one more, one last affectionate gesture- into her temple. “Our lawyers will find this divorce a walk in the park.”

An amused smile tugged at the side of her lips. “I think so too.”

“Please take care of yourself, my dear Tomoyo.” Her soon-to-be-ex-husband gave her one last achingly beautiful smile. 

She watched him walk away from her, their marriage and their imagined future.

Tomoyo turned towards the Tokyo Tower and smiled at it.

A nightingale will sing in freedom tonight.