CCS: Balancing the Moon

[aegistheia]

Title: Balancing the Moon
Rating: PG
Genre: General, Comedy
Word Count: 2955
Warnings: Implied Touya/Yukito and Touya/Yue, but really, it's all subtext, and you can take Cerberus's insults in any way and seriousness you wish.
Also Archived On: Livejournal; Archive of Our Own on July 4, 2010.
Summary: In which Touya regains his magic and has a hell of a lot of headaches coming his way.
A.N.: For beckerbell, with the drabble prompt "Touya getting his magic back and it's like walking out into bright daylight after you're used to being inside where it's dark and the hilarious headaches that will ensue." Except it kind of just. Ran away from me. Also, I'm not very sure how anime compliant this is, but it's based mostly off the manga.

"So," the stuffed bear says in a manner of great import. "If he doesn't feel weird, that power transfer totally failed."

Sakura looks mulish. She also looks like she's being eaten by a pink-and-white radiance of a truly astonishing size. "I swear it worked!"

"Yeah," Touya breathes, aware that he is looking wonderingly at himself and utterly unable to stop doing so. He feels fuller that he'd ever felt since, well, since he'd given his power away, but in the most unphysical way possible. He hadn't even realized that the part of him that had been drained dry had any sensitivity at all.

Yue has stepped back, hands drifting down from where he'd taken a hold of Touya's arms. "I no longer possess any of Touya's magic," he says (with far too much weight, considering that it has yet to be nine in the morning). "So I believe Mistress Sakura did indeed impart her power into me and return to Touya his. How do you feel?"

"Yeah, I—" Touya clears his throat. "Yeah, I think it worked. I kind of feel like a stuffed toy."

The ability to duck unseen incoming projectiles has never been more satisfying, he reflects, especially when he gets to witness the stuffed bear smack itself silly against the wall right at eye level.

---

"Holy—"

Touya has had quite some time honing his regular senses to compensate for his loss in magical sensitivity, so he'd known that the stupid brat was coming long before he'd actually cursed.

That doesn't mean that he doesn't turn to lock glares with the brat. It's a near thing, actually, given how scorching the kid's aura is, but Touya manages.

The black winged cat yawns from the brat's shoulder. It's completely limned in a shell of coiled darkness, in direct contrast to Cerberus's white, but Touya's seen weirder. It's just – he's never actually seen that on either of them. Huh.

"So you got your power back," the brat finally says flatly, energy pulsing but oddly calm.

"Your observational skills are as peerless as always," he retorts.

"Brother, Syaoran," Sakura nearly begs from the landing, "please be civil."

"Yeah, think of the boyfriend here!" Cerberus elbows Yue as Yue floats down the stairs in a brilliant halo of presence. "He's so happy that he's not even hidin' away in—hey, watch it— look, you ain't sleepin' and it's before noon, okay, what else am I supposed ta think?"

"That I want to get used to the Mistress's power in lieu of Touya's loan," Yue says calmly. "Spinel Sun, it's been a while. Is Eriol-san visiting?"

"Oh, my," says a voice, and Father appears around the corner in Touya's pink apron with a spatula in hand. "What a party! I'm glad I made extra pancakes. Good morning, Syaoran-kun." He peers at Touya closely. "Ah, you're very bright today, Touya-kun. Would you like blueberries in yours?"

---

"It's like," Touya says, still actually at a loss of words. "It's a little like a weightless kind of completion." Like being filled with moonbeams and starlight and the dark in the dead of the night, until he's a little stiff in the joints from all the latent power pulsing in his blood. It all sounds too eloquent in his mind, though, so he might as well keep it simple.

Spinel Sun eyes him lazily, sipping at his tea, and twitches his tail. Or his tail twitches and he doesn't notice; it's hard to tell with feline beings. "You're much stronger than you were before," he remarks clinically, and nibbles at Cerberus's unsweetened pancake. ("For some reason I felt like making sugarless pancakes today," Father had informed the room at large, "I hope someone eats them.") "Yue must have amplified your powers while he was in possession of them."

"So I am like a stuffed toy," Touya realizes with dawning horror, and catches the squalling orange meteor that is Cerberus's tackle right in the palm of his hand.

Spinel Sun eyes them. His tail twitches.

---

Nakuru takes one look at him and shrieks.

Touya takes one look at her and makes a very dignified beeline for any room with a door.

Shut up, stupid stuffed bear.

---

Yuki blinks when Touya walks in a giant arc away from the torii. "To-ya?" he says curiously.

"Nothing. It's nothing." Touya tries very hard not to recoil. "It's...been a while since I've noticed how powerful the Tsukimine shrine is." A long while.

Yuki tilts his head. "I don't know if you've ever noticed," he says, "you've always been so attracted to it before."

"...I don't think I realized that."

"You were always so at ease in the shrine," Yuki says, craning his head to look up the long flight of stairs.

I had good memories, Touya does not say. "So were you, Yuki."

"Mizuki-san does have a very calming personality about her," Yuki agrees. "And you or Sakura-chan were with me almost every time we were there. It's always wonderful to be with the people you love."

Touya has to breathe past the sudden lump in his throat. "What's the matter, Yuki?" he says when he is sure his voice won't crack.

Yuki smiles at him. "I feel so inexplicably happy," he says, "and so solid, like I might not even need to eat to run a marathon. Something good happened last week, didn't it?"

"If by good you mean having Father's magical other half towing trouble back in town with his desire to 'witness Sakura-san's ability to restore magic to its proper source', or something." But he understands. It feels like he could skip sleeping for a week and not feel any consequences, like his very bones and blood had been replaced by pure stamina, pure potential.

"Eriol-san makes very good scones," Yuki chides lightly, as if good food is the key to all forgiveness.

"I'm not about to allow his scones have equal weighting with Akizuki all but making out with my neck," Touya informs him, "just so you know."

---

Touya stiffens as a vast backlash of foreign magic crashes through him. He whirls around. "Is that—"

Hiiragizawa glances at him and smiles benignly. Touya suppresses a frown when Father's face overlays his for a moment. "That is Sakura-san about to start fighting, yes."

Touya exhales hard and covers his eyes. "And that initial wave was her opponent, wasn't it."

"Well, yes. It's quite all right," Hiiragizawa informs him over the porcelain teapot, "Cerberus and Yue won't be needed at all in this match."

"I still don't know why you'd invited me over," Touya says pointedly.

"Here, have some Darjeeling," Hiiragizawa says soothingly. "I made it with leaves from one of the finest first flushes from the Castleton Tea Estate. Besides, Syaoran-kun is with her—" Touya scowls at him. "—and she is only becoming more and more powerful, so she is perfectly safe."

After a moment where they sit back into their chairs and stare at each other, Touya finally says, "You realize that nothing you say will change how I worry for her. Don't you."

"At least now I can truthfully claim that I tried," Hiiragizawa shrugs with a graceful gesture and a smile Touya doesn't want to read. "It's quite all right to be nervous, Touya-san. I imagine that regaining the ability to read the definitive proof of the danger around her is a shock, compared to the theoretical knowledge to which you have come to adapt. "

"No, that's not quite it." He ignores the knife-keen gleam in Hiiragizawa's eyes and takes a drink. It tastes exactly like Father's Darjeeling, from temperature to colour to flavour complexity to the way the aftertaste curls on his tongue like a delicate fern leaf. Touya can feel his lips firm into a flat line and relaxes them with a sigh.

He doesn't mean to mistrust the man. But in moments like these, he feels perfectly justified in finding that he just can't seem to let all those old misgivings go.

"If you brought me here to tell me that Sakura is going to be the most powerful magician in her time, you don't need to," he says levelly. "I've known for a while." Even before he gave his powers away.

"So very astute a conclusion, Touya-san," Hiiragizawa replies with a strange curve of his lips. "But that's not quite it."

Touya sucks in a sharp breath as Sakura's sharply leashed power explodes across his senses, as the echoes leave a slow drumbeat vibrating through him.

"Yes, I thought so," Hiiragizawa says pensively, unreadable eyes locked onto Touya and smile just as opaque.

"I see," Touya says, quite unable to keep his voice from evening out.

"Nostalgic, isn't it?" Hiiragizawa says cheerfully. "To be able to really feel things again."

"I don't imagine you'd know better than I," Touya says. Hiiragizawa just smiles.

---

Mirror peers at him worriedly. "Touya-san," she says, and on another day he'd freely admit to himself how much he'd actually missed her voice, glass-like and deep. She'd never really been able to hide that echo in the voices of the people she'd reflected. "Touya-san, are you all right? Should I summon Mistress Sakura, or Yue-sama?"

"No," he says, and smiles at her through gritted teeth as another pang shoots through him, "no, it's fine. I'm—" wince, "—I will be fine. There's no need to call Sakura or Yue."

"But—" She hovers over him, not quite touching him but clearly close to doing so. "You don't look so well."

Touya inhales very deeply, counts, and breathes out. "I'll be fine," he says as reassuringly as he can. "I'm pretty sure this isn't something Sakura wants to, er, deal with anyway, especially with me."

"Are you certain? After all, Mistress Sakura has the most experience with this amongst all of us. She understands best how the lunar cycles dictates the female human body, and her power fluctuations during then is undoubtedly strong enough to affect others—"

"I insist," Touya says hastily. "Please. I just need to rest." Next time, he's getting away from every moon-drawn source and camping out at— at—

"Oh my god," Touya says, bolting upright, and Mirror makes a sound of distress and dives for the hot water bottle as it slides off his abdomen, "I have nowhere to run to."

---

"Yue, I'd like a word, please."

Yukito shivers, and in a fold of wings Yue is gazing at him with winter twilight eyes.

"Is there any way I can lessen this sensory overload?" Touya asks carefully. "Not that I'm complaining, but having all of this extra information suddenly made available to me is a bit, well, overwhelming."

"Then the key will be knowing what to ignore," Yue replies.

"I would if I knew how," Touya says, more plaintive than he'd like. "My power is somehow different now, and none of my strategies have been working."

After a long silence, Yue crosses his arms. "I believe I skewed your magic towards the lunar aspect," he says with the air that passes for his version of apology. "I suppose I can help you develop some form of countermeasure to cope with the differences."

He glances around the Tsukimine shrine grounds for a split second, and then turns his attention back onto Touya. "Unlike your own innate magic, the moon's power ebbs and swells."

"Yes," Touya mutters before he can stop himself. "Yes, I know." The pull is so strong that sometimes he almost believes himself being heaved off his feet towards the sky. It's an unnerving feeling.

"The key to managing that is quite simple, actually." Yue mantles his wings and pins him with an expectant gaze. "You have already spoken to my other self of a manifestation of the phenomenon once before."

Touya stares at him, nonplussed. "I don't quite remember everything I speak to Yukito about."

Yue just looks back at him. At length he holds his hand out and abruptly Touya can feel the familiar force dragging and pushing at him. It's the same kind of physical compulsion, the raw attraction that had taken over when the moon was swollen and unblinking the night he'd regained his powers those long weeks ago, the tides that had pulsed in his ears when he'd neared the seas—

Yue sighs. "You had a test on this in the last year of your middle school."

And then Touya gets it. Classical mechanics, the third Newtonian law of motion, every action has an equal and opposite— "Gravity," he breathes.

"Very good," Yue says approvingly. He flicks his hand and a gold-lined pink card materializes in the centre of his palm. Touya is just barely able to make out the portrait of a queen in a dark dress with long straight hair fanning out. "'The Dark'," he reads, as the floating card begins to glow.

"She will be able to assist you. Spatial manipulation is under her domain."

The lady is exquisitely beautiful as her form etches itself into the very fabric of the night. "My," and her voice is just as pleasing on the ears, composed of starsong and wind chimes, and wildly Touya wonders if he's being seduced against his will because he's never waxed poetic for anything, up to and including Yue, "this is the Mistress's brother? One who descends directly from our former Master?"

"The theory, as you have concluded earlier, is to establish a balance of forces," Yue informs Touya indifferently. The intense pinpoints of lavender and blue that are his eyes, though, betray his focus. "If you have an internal sliding scale upon which to offset the power oscillations, then you will be better equipped to compensate for the moon's affect on your own magic. So our goal will be to enable you to create your own magical gravitational well, so to speak, to control the flux and flow of your own power as a response to its lunar affinity."

The Dark is beaming at Touya. "For you, I will give a private lesson." She smiles over her shoulder and Touya just barely catches the glimpse of luminescent hair and a matching crown before the lights blaze and the shadows deepen enough to swallow even the reflected silver of Yue's hair. The Dark sweeps her arms out in a graceful gesture, and for the first time Touya notices the astral gleam in the cups of her hands. "Exercise one: resist me."

And suddenly she is a inexorable vortex of existential absolution, of the heavens and earth and everything beyond, and Touya has no more time to think.

---

"Brother, you didn't lose your magic again, did you?" Sakura rakes a concerned look down what she could see of him at the breakfast table. "You're not usually this tired."

"No," Touya says sleepily into his oatmeal. Yue has always been an unrelenting trainer, but the Dark, while more exuberant, had been no easier. "No, I didn't lose it."

"But I can barely sense you," Sakura frets.

"I was wondering why Light was so amused," Cerberus grumbles. Father places a stack of French toast in front of him and he brightens. "Ah mean," he continues through a mouthful of syrup and crunching toast, "'s not ofhen she feelsh shings shrong enough to—" and then he's unintelligible with another bite.

"So that was you!" Sakura gasped. "Yesterday, at the shrine! Syaoran and I were wondering if there was someone to fight, but we didn't sense any hostility or fear and Yue was with you—!" She goes quiet so swiftly that Touya actually summons the strength needed to raise his head and squint at her.

She's beet red and Touya is suddenly quite wide awake. "No—! No, you stupid monster, we weren't—mind out of the gutter!"

"Are we already talking about these kinds of things at eight in the morning?" Father says cheerily as he deposits more toast onto Sakura's plate. "And at the breakfast table too?"

"No!" Touya and Sakura shout together, then glare at each other.

"Then what were you doin' with Yue and the Dark last night, painting that giant magical target on yourself?" Cerberus pipes up as he swallows theatrically. "If the Dark hadn't been mufflin' your— your duel with her, I'm guessin' by the smell of ya, you'da brought in every ambitious magic-seeker into town."

"I'm trying to do what the Dark did last night," Touya grouses, rubbing a hand into his eye in an attempt to get the grainy feeling out.

"What, try to kill ya?" Cerberus says blankly.

"Control my power," Touya hisses.

"Oh." Sakura and Cerberus are both silent for a minute, Sakura more because of wordless shock and Cerberus more because his mouth is full again. "Besht of luck, th'n."

"Brother, are you all right?" Sakura says quietly.

"I'm just adjusting to having magic again," Touya tells her, "I'll be fine. Don't worry." He gives her a piece of his toast, and stares at her until she lowers her eyes and bites into the bread.

"Sakura! Where's your bro—" The brat's voice dies at the doorstep and Touya just barely stops himself from groaning. "I see," says the brat guardedly, after an awkward pause. "Well, at least you're okay."

"Next time, please refrain from practicing on the full moon," says Spinel Sun, from around the same vicinity. "It's kind of hard to get Ruby Moon to sleep when the lunar affinities were being warped like so."

"My, another party!" says Father. "Good morning, Syaoran-kun, Spinel Sun. Tea? I made Darjeeling."

Why is everyone around him utterly insane, Touya thinks with a fierce kind of feeling in his chest, and slices into his toast.





-fin­-





And an edited Omake after the last scene, originally posted here:

"HIDE THE SYRUP," bellows Cerberus.

"Why?" Touya says, startled, moments before a winged black blur snatches the bottle out of his hand.