Topic: Twisted
Genre: Action, Psychological, Dark
Canon: post-anime
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2,730
Special Requirements: Remember your OTP (one true pairing), and how it's so sweet and fluffy and pure? Yeah. Now write this pairing in a way that makes it dark, disturbing, or just plain wrong.
Tease: There’s no distance he won’t travel, no risk he won’t take to be with her again. To save her, he’d go to the end of the earth.

‘end of the earth’

Li Syaoran paused, trembling, waiting, the cold moist air clammy against his skin. All the heat had been drained away, his blood sucked inward as if to a sponge, leaving the flesh pale and dewey with unnatural sweat. Sweating in cold like this was not right, and it wasn’t going to help matters any, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that right now. Raw winter air knifed into his lungs as he gasped for air, sharp and cold, and his fingers curled against the freezing ground. Maybe now it was over.

No. Another shudder gripped his stomach and he tipped forward, emptying the last of its contents on the snow, retching every last painful bit of it before he would allow himself to believe he’d finished. Hands shaking, he pushed himself back onto his rear and wiped his brow, breathing unsteadier than before. His heart was beating too quickly. Vomiting had brought relief, but he was disgusted with his weakness and impatient with the delay, not to mention annoyed that he’d lost all the calories he needed from that food. Li had to be strong, Li couldn’t afford to stop and throw up in the snow just because he was worried sick (literally) for his girlfriend. But Li couldn’t help that he loved her, so much so that since her kidnapping he’d been forced to endure visions of what she was going through. A bond through their magic, a curse on his soul. He didn’t want to see her kidnapper tearing away her clothes and forcing her down on her knees –

His stomach contracted in warning and Li put a stop to the thoughts, willfully pushing away the sick images plastering his mind. Delays would not do. She’d been gone for five days now, five very long nights, during which he’d had not more than three hours of a very nightmarish sleep. Five days of torture, and he would not let it be six. He was close now, he could find her. He would save her. A handful of clean snow in his mouth helped to rinse away the bile and he spat it out when he stood, hands still shaking but vision a little clearer. White fields stretched away from him in all directions, trees loaded with tufts of snow grouped around the small country store. Hokkaido deserved its reputation of beauty, but it was too cold for his taste, too quiet and lonely. A place where a girl could be taken and disappear forever, lost in the wilderness.

He was feeling better now. Walking with only a little stumble now and then, he crossed the distance between his car and the store, a tiny bell on the door announcing his entrance. An older man behind the counter, probably the owner, looked up with a smile.

“Good evening, sir, how are you today?”

“Fine,” he lied, and scanned the store quickly. Not another in sight. Hand went into his pocket, and he produced the small and creased wallet-size photo he’d carried for five days and five nights. “I’m looking for this girl. She’s about twenty, same as me, I think she might have been in this area. Have you seen her?”

The owner’s gaze lowered to Sakura’s frozen smile and his muscles tensed, his amiable expression switched off and then on again in a heartbeat.

“Er- no. Sorry, sir, but I haven’t seen this young lady. And I know everyone in these parts.”

Liar. Li forgot he was weak and sick, forgot the trembling hands and his sputtering heart, and snatched the man’s collar in one clean grip. He might lower himself to throwing up in the snow but if nothing else he could still fight, could always fight. It was quite effortless to drag him over the counter and toss him to the floor at Li’s feet. He yelled, of course, but that wouldn’t do him any good. His hands braced against the floorboards to scramble away from Li, but froze when Li flicked open a switchblade.

“Please,” Li panted, feeling the effects of his sudden burst of activity. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if I have to I will. Tell me.”

The owner’s mouth flopped open, eyes focused solely on the silver blade in Li’s grip but unable to produce a sound.

“You’ve seen her. I know you have, I could see it in your eyes. Everyone that sees her remembers it.”

Helplessly, the owner nodded.

“Why did you lie?”

“She- she begged me…”

“She’s been kidnapped, someone is threatening her to stay silent.” At that the owner looked surprised, and hesitated. “Please,” Li added, hating the way his voice broke in the middle of the word. “She’s been missing for five days, and I’m so afraid for her I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. Whoever did it is hurting her, and he might kill her. Just tell me where she is, and I will leave you alone.”

His eyes were terrified and bewildered, darting back and forth between the knife to his white and haggard face. He would count to five, and then start cutting. One. Two. Three-

“The house,” his informant stammered. “Just up the road, and right at the old windmill. It’s been rented out recently, don’t know to who.”

A lead. Li exhaled breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and retracted the lethal blade. “Thank you. You did the right thing.”

Looking rather ashen, the owner nodded quickly and averted his eyes. He should help him up but Li was feeling none too steady on his own feet, and too eager to get going anyway. Sakura was just an arm’s length away now, stupid to dally. Without even glancing back at the floor Li strode past his victim and back out the door, retracing the path his footsteps had left in the snow. He ignored the mess not far from his car, slipped back into the front seat, and rekindled the engine. His breath was clouding up ever faster; his breath had begun to speed up. Heartbeat, too. “Not long now, Sakura,” he whispered into the vapor of his own breath. “Hang on. I’m coming.”

- - - - -

The white fields rolled past him, driving up the road, unbroken white snow looking soft as powder under a gray evening sky. It might snow again, but he wasn’t sure, unfamiliar with the stuff and a stranger in this remote northern part of Japan. This country that he wouldn’t belong to were it not for Sakura, leading a life he would have never led if he had not laid eyes on her. Sometimes Li felt a dull panic in his chest when he considered all that he’d given up for her, how much of himself had changed because of her. And that was when she was close by; when she was gone the panic sharpened and made it painful to draw breath. Like a rubber band stretched too far to snap back into its original shape, he’d stretched too far beyond the boy of ten from Hong Kong who thought only of magic and power. He couldn’t go back but he couldn’t stay here without her, couldn’t live without the one who changed him. Her kidnappers were about to find out what a dangerous mistake they’d made, when he found this house, no one took his Sakura away from him and survived.

He pulled over and killed the engine when he spotted the described house on the horizon, a small and cozy dwelling nestled into the snow with a few telltale puffs of smoke above the chimney. Someone was home. Again Li’s syncopated heartbeat was accelerating, his breath wheezing out of his lungs. If only he’d been able to get more sleep, if only he’d been able to hang onto his lunch. Silent as a cat he wended from one tree to the next, closing in on the unwary home with its brilliant yellow windows, silently astonished at the ease with which he sidled up to the brick walls. Did they not think him capable of tracking Sakura from Tomoeda to this place? Did they not think he’d track her to the end of the earth, if he had to? A rapid peep, through the closest window, lit all his blood on fire.

Sakura. Standing, dressed and apparently uninjured. But her kidnapper hovered close, was closing in on her, preparing to wreak another night of torture like that which Li had already seen too many times in his visions. He only stole one more moment for a fast and deep breath when he returned to the front door, and then he kicked. The door exploded away from the frame with a bang that startled even him, triggering a cacophony of noise that was a blur in his dizzy state. He heard Sakura’s surprised shriek, and the yell of her attacker as he jumped and then tried to push Sakura behind him so that Li could not get to her. Five days, five nights, anguished nightmares and lunch left on the side of the road converged and then Li was on him; he did not even have time to reach for a weapon before Li kicked him straight up and into the chin. He flew back, narrowly missing Sakura, and hit the floorboards with a crash.

Now! Li leapt on the unconscious kidnapper and smashed his fist into his face, then again, ready to bring death to the one that took Sakura away even if it meant crushing his body into nothing more than pulp on the floor. His fist pulled up again but some force prevented him from touching the body below him, and then that force ballooned outward and threw him onto his back. Li hit the wood hard, unprepared for such a thing, and groaned. Sakura’s Shield had done it, he knew the feel of her magic well. If she had access to her Cards, why did she allow herself to be held captive for so long?

Hysterical sobbing threaded its way through the buzzing in his ears, and he realized she was crying. Sakura was crying, and he picked himself up off the floor to go comfort her. She was only an arm’s reach away, or so he thought, but his body was falling apart and now even his depth perception had gone. He had to take three or four steps to reach her and when he finally did they were near the door again. He caught her before she could fall to the floor, and she crumpled in his arms.

“Sakura! It’s okay, you’re alright now, everything’s going to be fine. I’m right here.” Anxiously Li peeled back the hair from her damp face, searching for bruises or any kind of evidence to the injuries he’d seen in his mind. But she’d covered it with her hands as she sank to her knees, shoulders shaking with the force of her cries, and Li could only hold her and try to soothe her as best he could. “Shh… shh. Everything’s going to be alright now.”

She cried a while longer, while Li held her to his chest and hummed platitudes, breathing in the sweet scent of her body and relishing her closeness. It was all gone now, the dark fears that he would have to face this life without her, he could breathe again and his heart had slowed to an ordinary beat. He’d found her, the most precious thing he’d ever known.

“Why are you crying?” he asked, when she’d slowed to the occasional hiccup. “Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?”

“No… Syaoran,” she whispered, “he didn’t hurt me. I’m just- happy. I was so happy to see you.”

“I was happy to see you too. I was so scared, Sakura, you were gone for so long. I could hardly eat or sleep the whole time, and it was such a long time. I never stopped looking for you, though, I hunted day and night. Nobody else thought I could find you but I found you.”

He squeezed her a little closer to her chest and felt her nod, under his chin. “That’s right, Syaoran. You found me.”

“Why did you stop me, Sakura? I wanted to kill him, for what he did to you!”

“No!” Her hands snarled in the material of his shirt, as if to keep him in place, and she repeated herself less urgently. “No… please. I don’t want you to kill anyone, Syaoran, he doesn’t matter anymore. I’m fine and you found me, so please don’t hurt him. I’ll call the police, and they can take care of him.”

Li was not entirely appeased, but she was holding onto him so fervently and he decided it wasn’t wise to upset her right now. She’d been through a difficult time, after all. But wasn’t there something about the Shield Card… a question? He’d had a question, just a minute ago, but now that he tried to think back he couldn’t remember. He really did try hard, but he was so tired. It was only important that Sakura was with him again.

“Were you scared, Sakura? Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”

“I thought… maybe…”

“Nobody else could find you,” Li pointed out, with just a touch of smug pride. “They were all looking, and they thought you’d been taken south, but I looked on my own and I figured out it was Hokkaido. It’s a good thing you’ve got me, huh?”

She hiccuped, with what might have been another tiny sob.

“But this is the third time you’ve been kidnapped,” Li continued, a little more seriously. “Too many people are after you, it’s too dangerous. From now on I won’t let you go anywhere without me, I’ll handcuff us together if I have to. I can’t take another week like this one again.”

She exhaled with a slight shudder, and he realized how cold it was here on the floor next to the open door. “C’mon, we have to get out of here. Time for us to go home.”

He would brook no argument and picked her up in his arms, carrying her so that her feet would not get cold in the snow. The gray twilight had almost gone by the time he installed her in the passenger seat and fastened her seatbelt for her, then returned to his place behind the wheel. It was too far to drive all the way back to Tomoeda, but they could still put a fair distance between themselves and this horrible place, and then they’d sleep in a hotel. He told her this and patted her hand, and she smiled wanly. Thank all gods it was finally over. He really did love her so much.

- - - - -

“Tomoyo-chan? Tomoyo-chan, can you hear me? I’m sorry, but I have to whisper.”

Syaoran shifted slightly and Sakura tensed, checking cautiously over her shoulder. But he was exhausted, after so many days of searching, and she’d waited an hour or two just to be safe. With a little creative stretching and careful wiggling she’d been able to extract his phone from the hotel’s bedside table, long experience having taught her that slithering out from under his arm would wake him instantly.

Eyes pricking with fresh tears, her head returned to the pillow. “Yes,” she sighed, in answer to the question. “He found me. I don’t know how… but he almost killed the alarm system man when he did. I was so scared…

“No. I know you’d help me, Tomoyo-chan, everyone would help me. But I can’t run away again, I’m terrified he’ll kill someone or himself looking for me. He’s sick, Tomoyo-chan. I can’t leave him alone like this.”

Again Sakura peered back over her shoulder, at the lean and haggard face that belonged to the man she once loved. Still did, maybe, in a way she couldn’t explain to even Tomoyo-chan, the part of him that was buried under layers of obsession and violence and bizarre mental illness. He would die, if she left him again, and knowing it chained her to him more effectively than any handcuffs he might one day use. Two more tears rolled down the sides of her face.

“I’m his, after all. He’d hunt me to the end of the earth.”

--

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters