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Return to the Labyrinth	By : Capitalist Category: +. to F > Card Captor Sakura Views: 8619 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Card Captor Sakura, nor any of the characters from it, nor do I own Labyrinth. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 14
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Chapter 15

‘paso doble’

The silence was profound and unending as death itself. Nothing moved, not the stars and not Yue, who lay so still he might as well be dead too. Touya was almost afraid to take a step, to be the only thing moving in all this quiet, but Yue was so close. He could not hold back. His feet carried him forward, walking over nothing but darkness, closing the last of the distance between them.

Yue did not even stir when Touya sat by his side – on what furniture, Touya did not know, it was as invisible as the floor beneath them – and braced his hands by each of his shoulders. His face was so white, was it always this pale? His eyes were closed and Touya did not even think he was breathing; he had to stop himself from putting an ear to his chest to listen for a heartbeat, because of course there would not be one. Didn’t one of his sister’s fairy tales have a scene like this?

“Yue?” Gently Touya brushed aside a few strands of Yue’s silver hair, but still he didn’t move. He lowered himself closer, praying to feel some warmth, a breath of air, anything that could reassure him Yue still lived. He kissed him, softly at first, and his heart jumped when he at last felt a response. Yue moved underneath him, tilting his face up so that he might return this kiss, the taste and feel of it so familiar to Touya after all these years. He dove deeper, forgetting to hold back, conscious of the low hum of contentment deep in Yue’s throat. Every full moon for five years they had come together like this, but the reality tasted sweeter than the dreams.

A little sigh of satisfaction escaped Touya when he finally pulled away. Yue’s eyes opened, looking dreamy and unfocused, and he smiled.

“I have missed that dearly,” he murmured, and cupped Touya’s face with one hand. “As I have your face. It has been so long.”

Touya covered Yue’s hand with his own, smiling in spite of himself. “Not that long.”

“Every night without you is a night too long, Toya. And my time is nearly up. I was afraid you would not come, you’d rejected me so soundly. You were so angry…”

“Idiot,” Touya scolded, his stomach contracting with fear. “You know I never wanted you to die. I didn’t tell you no because I hate you, or because I wanted you to end up like this, in this – this… where are we?”

“Beyond the reach of the world,” Yue answered, glancing fondly at the stars around them. “More precisely, in a ray of moonlight. It was the only place left for me to go when my heart was so abruptly shattered, a haven where I could keep myself alive without it beating inside me. But even this place can sustain me only so long, and it seems I’m close to the end.”

“Stop talking like that,” Touya snapped, more sharply than he’d intended. “You’re not going to die. I’ve brought your heart, see? I found all the pieces and I put them back together.” Touya held it up to show him, the surface cold and smooth against his palms. “Hard as a diamond, of course. Just like always.”

Yue smiled again, but to Touya it looked so sleepy and tired. “You did this? For me?”

“Of course I did. I don’t think anyone else could have. You know that I love you, Yue, I never stopped loving you. All these years, I never wanted anyone else but you.” He dipped down and dropped another light kiss on Yue’s lips.

“Like sweet music,” Yue sighed, and caressed Touya’s face again. “You really do know how to make me happiest. It’s no wonder I love you so much.”

Touya’s heart fluttered, and he did his best to ignore it. There were more pressing issues to deal with, the world they’d left behind still held trouble.

“Now that it’s complete, you have to get this heart back inside you. Everything’s a mess in the Labyrinth, I lost my sister days ago and I have no idea where she is or if she’s safe… we need you to come back and defeat Rai. Everyone’s waiting for you.” Uncertainly Touya pressed the crystal to Yue’s chest. “How does it work? Is there some spell? Quick, you’ll feel much better once it’s back in.”

Yue placed his hands over Touya’s, breathing carefully. “You mustn’t push, Toya, there is no way to force a heart to go where it doesn’t want to.”

“Doesn’t want to? But it’s your heart, it belongs inside you!”

“Shh, I know.” Yue’s eyes were gentle and sad. “But can you blame it? It was broken so thoroughly, and scattered to the world; it’s only trying to protect itself.”

Touya huffed impatiently. “Well, what are we supposed to do? I went to a lot of trouble gathering it up, and you need your heart back. Tell it to get the hell back inside you, tell it everything’s going to be fine.”

“Is it? Can you promise my heart that you won’t leave me again, to languish alone while you go back to your world?”

The question stabbed him neatly in the conscience, and Touya flinched. “That’s not fair,” he whispered. “You know that I love you. You know that I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I know. But knowing is cold comfort to a broken heart. I have been alone for five years, Toya.” His hands were so pale against Touya’s. “I miss you so much. Won’t you come back to me?”

Touya tried to swallow back a looming tightness in his throat. “So, if I say no this time, your heart refuses to go back and you die?”

“I would not want to live anyway.”

“I’d want you to live! And your kingdom, what about your kingdom? How are they supposed to get along without you?”

“I have an heir.”

“My sister, right, how could I forget?” Touya could feel the heat from tears of frustration starting to build, and shook his head to clear it away.

“It’s not fair,” he repeated. “It’s too much. Why does it all have to come down to me?”

“Toya.” The word came softer than a sigh. “You know that I love you more than anything, that I would do anything to make you happy. Would it be so terrible?”

“No,” he admitted, when he could bring himself to speak. “It wouldn’t.”

No more college, no more work, no more football. No more living in his home with his family, no more Sakura. He would lose all of it, but how could he go back to it knowing his rejection had killed the man he loved? It would be a hollow life, not worth living anyway. He could do worse than living in a castle in a magical kingdom, right?

“I guess… if there’s no other way.” Touya squeezed the crystal heart between his hands, bending forward until he’d tipped his head against the cool hardness. It would only take a promise, and then everything would be fine.

Only a promise.

Touya’s muscles tensed, then relaxed when he started to laugh. He was not quite sure if it was at himself or just the bizarre situation, but in any case once he started he couldn’t stop. He sat up straight again, hand splayed over his face, and tried to stifle it.

“Toya?” Yue put a hand on his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“My head, apparently. God, what’s wrong with me? I can’t believe I almost fell for it.” Touya lifted his head and knocked away Yue’s hand. “I thought I was smart. I thought, after what happened last time I was in your kingdom, that I knew you. But I was really slow on the uptake this time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, drop it, Yue.” Touya stood up and took two steps before he turned around, the laughter gone for good. “It was you. You’re the one that told them my sister was the new princess. You made sure that Rai knew about her, so he would come after her. You knew that making her a target was the only way you’d ever get me back in your kingdom. You needed me to find your heart and bring it back to you, and you almost got me to chain myself to you in exchange for taking it back. You knew I’d do it if I thought you were going to die. You haven’t lost your touch, Puppet Master. You fixed all of it.”

Silence, again. Yue gazed at him for a long moment before his lips curved up into a smile. Languidly he stretched and sat up, dropping his pretense of weakness.

“To the last detail,” he agreed. “It was a work of art, if I do say so myself. Stay lost long enough and I knew Rai would come seeking my kingdom, predictably eager to prove himself. He helped to bring you back to me, so very useful of him. I will thank him later, before I crush him for daring to think he could touch you. My only mistake was forgetting just how clever you are.”

“You risked my sister’s life!” Touya shouted. “And mine! And Li’s! You used your entire kingdom like a chess pawn, just to get me back! Are you insane?”

“Only very motivated,” Yue answered crisply. “And quite careful. The kingdom is in no great danger, and neither is your sister. The Little Wolf is a more than adequate bodyguard against the likes of Rai’s army. Against Rai himself is a different matter, of course, but in the end the boy kept her safe. I knew he would. Charging him to protect the girl he loves was the only way I could be sure he would not betray me for his own father. I could hardly count on his loyalty toward me, after all.”

He smiled again at the look on Touya’s face. “I always knew he would be my most dangerous liability, or my strongest asset. I played him well.”

“You’re a sick bastard, Yue. I can’t believe I even considered giving up my whole life for you, that I actually wasted one second of worry for a scheming, manipulative snake like you. We’re through. I will have nothing to do with you anymore.”

“You will love me,” Yue corrected. “You cannot stop loving me.”

“I will do my damn hardest to try,” Touya assured him.

“We are bound together, Toya, too much in love to ever be free from one another. After five years of drifting in exile amongst the stars, I know that more than anyone. Even after you broke my heart I could not stop dreaming about you, and I know you never stopped dreaming about me. With the light of every full moon I came to you and you opened your arms to me… or perhaps I should say opened your legs to me.” Yue oiled off his lounge and stood, advancing on Touya with a familiar gleam in his eye. “You were ready enough to have me then. On your back or on your knees, you put yourself eagerly into my hands and never stopped begging for more.” Touya backed up as Yue came closer, desperately trying to will away the memories that Yue so gleefully described. “You are a proud boy, Toya. I know you would not bend over and subjugate yourself to just anyone. But you did it for me because you could not help yourself, because you love me. You love only me.”

“No!” Touya braced his hands against Yue’s chest and pushed, shoving them apart from one another. “Just because you’re good in bed does not mean you own me, Yue. I have so much more to live for than just you, I have my father and my sister, friends, school, a future! I won’t give them up for you. And if that means sleeping through the night without getting fucked against the wall, then okay. I can live with that. I will be just fine.”

“Liar!”

The shout echoed in the dark around them, strangely out of place. A king did not often have to raise his voice.

“I have watched you, Toya. For more years than you know I have watched you. You feel nothing for the people around you, no desire, no interest. Your heart beats for me alone, and if you turn away from me then you will have no one. After what I’ve given you, no other could possibly satisfy you. Without me you will end up alone.”

“I think that’s what you don’t understand, Yue.” This time it was Touya’s turn to advance. “I’m not afraid to be alone. Between the two of us, I’m not the one crying in the dark because I might have to sleep by myself. It’s sad, really. Inside that fearsome king is nothing but a scared, lonely boy who needs to be loved.” He walked his fingers up Yue’s chest, but Yue knocked his hand away. His eyes glowed ominously.

“Watch yourself, Toya, for you are starting to make me angry. Don’t you know what I am? Do you even know why I’m called the Angel King?” He did not pause long enough for Touya to try and answer. “I promise you that it is not because of my pretty wings. In the beginning of the world angels were the servants of gods, carrying out the will of heaven on earth. Their beauty burned so brightly, no human could look upon them without being blinded. To try and touch such power would result in death. No one comes to me and walks away unscathed, I have seduced kings and queens in my bed and left them broken and sobbing for more. They cried for me to come back to them but none could capture my heart, not the untouchable Angel King. But you, a mere boy of no consequence at all, have my love and what do you do with it? Throw it away, and declare it’s not important. How dare you? Don’t you understand what I’ve given you?”

“Should I fall to my knees in gratitude? Look at what I’ve been through because of your love. What you’ve put me through! Why did it have to be me, ‘a mere boy’? Do you even know?”

“I remember the very moment,” Yue answered, without a second’s worth of hesitation. “And believe me, to fall so suddenly was frightening to me as well. I had searched for so many years, but I was not ready for someone like you. I was ready for another king, perhaps Rai, ready to parry wits and play games and gradually surrender my heart. You, though, an unassuming little boy, took it instantly and without even trying. That terrified me and I tried to forget you in the years afterward, fought against my feelings, but it was a fight that I lost.”

“What are you talking about?” Touya wailed, dangerously close to snapping completely.

“You were only another conquest in the beginning. Your unripe power attracted my attention before you had even learned to read. I watched you play, and pout over the birth of your little sister, and hide your face when you saw me, and I grew fond of you. I would have you, when you came of age, I decided that very early on. But then you reached ten, and everything changed.”

Touya’s throat had gone paper dry, but he did not even think to swallow, so caught was he by Yue’s stare.

“You lost your mother. And though you did not shed a single tear, your grief was so deep and dark as to nearly consume me. I knew that grief once, I knew the pain in your heart. I watched you curl up into a little ball in your room, hiding yourself from the world, and unwittingly fell in love with you. How could I not?”

“This isn’t fair,” Touya protested, squeezing his fists so tightly that they hurt. “You can’t do that, you can’t bring my mother into this.”

“Love is not fair, and you were the one that asked. Now you know the truth, Toya, and you know that it was really all your fault that I lost my heart to you. So do not stand before me with your accusing glares and tell me that I have inconvenienced you. At most, we have evenly dealt the damage to each other. And if you think, for even a second, that I will let you go after all that I have been through because of you, then you know nothing about me. I let nothing go that I wish to keep.”

Something inside Touya crumpled and he sank to the floor, face buried in his hands.

“Giving up at last? Surprising, but sensible of you.”

“No, Yue.” Wearily he lifted his head again. “There is no sense here. Five years to do nothing but sit here and think, and you still don’t get it. No matter how much you love me, no matter how much I love you, you can never win this game. I’m not something to be caught and kept. You can rule your kingdom but you will never rule me, and I will never belong to you.”

“You have no choice in the matter this time,” Yue informed him coolly, turning and walking away. A few seconds later he tossed a hand mirror in front of Touya, elegantly wrought from silver. In the glass was not his own reflection, but an image of Sakura running frantically through the labyrinth. She looked exhausted but kept pushing herself to go faster, as if she were in some great hurry. “There is your sister, alone and helpless. All of Rai’s soldiers are hunting her. I cannot guarantee her safety unless I am there to protect her, and that I will not do until my heart is back inside me. Promise to become mine, and we’ll be by her side in moments.”

Touya shut his eyes and hugged the mirror to his chest. “You’re a monster.”

“I am a king who knows how to get what he wants. Come, Toya. Just say the words.”

She looked as if she had been limping. Was she hurt? Frightened? Why was she alone, and what was she running from? Or towards? More than anything, Touya wanted to take her into his arms and hold her. He did not, however, open his mouth.

“Toya, I am waiting.”

Touya shook his head. “No.”

“What do you mean, no? I just told you that you have no choice.”

“I know what my options are. You can’t force me to do anything. I will not become your property.”

Touya looked up. Yue’s stare was stunned, but then he blinked and narrowed his eyes. “You’re bluffing. You would not dare risk your sister’s life.”

“Neither would you.” Touya got to his feet again, not dropping Yue’s gaze for a second. “She’s the heir to your crown, and control over the Labyrinth. You can’t let anything happen to her. And if you did, picture our future. Think of me turning away from you when you try to touch me, disgusted and repulsed. Do you think I’d sleep with the man who sacrificed my sister for his own selfish goals? Do you think I’d ever let you have me again? No, you must keep her safe, and you know it. You’re the one that has no choice, Yue.”

Oh, but he’d never been more right in his life. Touya could see it, the way the truth of his statements reflected in Yue’s horrified eyes. He smiled grimly.

“You lose; everyone has to sometime. This is what you get for underestimating me. Nothing less from the one you chose, right?”

“I cannot lose,” Yue hissed. “I won’t lose. You must be mine.”

“You can and will accept it. I will never be yours, Yue. No matter how you try to threaten or trick me, it won’t happen. I belong to no one but me.”

With every word he could see the despair winding through Yue’s face more clearly, a strangely frozen panic that almost provoked Touya’s sympathy. Almost.

“It’s your own fault, Yue. I beat you in the last game and you didn’t learn, you just raised the stakes and tried again. You burned yourself, and I will not cry for you.”

“How can you expect me to live without you?”

“By knowing that you’re strong, and you’ve survived loss before, and you can survive this. Take your heart back, Yue. You have more to live for than just me. You have a kingdom that needs you, desperately.”

“They do not need me.”

“Tell that to this kid.” Touya held up the mirror for Yue to see. The picture had changed from Sakura, now it showed Li chained to the whipping post outside the castle. His back was already crisscrossed with lines of blood, and again Rai struck with the whip. “I think he wouldn’t mind a little help.”

“He is my subject.” Yue’s voice had turned brittle and cold. “I owe him nothing. I act only when it suits me to do so.”

Touya just shrugged. “Fine by me. It looks like he’s going to die, and I never did like him. It’ll be a relief to not have him hanging around my sister, making her fall in love with him and so on.”

He tossed the mirror aside, to land on whatever invisible surface, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I guess it’s an acceptable loss, for you. You don’t like him either.

“Right?”

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Disclaimer: I do not own these characters
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