Introduction

Background, or why I hate Sado

            A writer, I wish I remember who, once said that writing was easy. You just sit there in front of the typewriter and bleed. That expression struck me, and I believe with all my heart that the act of writing--really writing--is the act of psychologically slitting your wrists and bleeding your mental words on the paper.
            Freeze My Love--aka FmL--started out as two separate fic. One was called "Sakura no Ki no Shita e" and the other was called "Wo.de." Both fics came to me as fics normal never do--as mental images. SnKnSe (I'm big on abbreviating, BTW) came to me one morning when I was taking a shower--just an image of Sakura-chan as a little girl of about five or so, terrified and almost crying, standing under THE sakura tree in Ueno Park with Seishirou on one knee facing her and smiling. It just hit me with no warning, slamming into me and generally making my day most unpleasant. I went ahead and wrote the fic, writing a story with two sections: Sakura and the Sakurazukamori/Touya and the Sumeragi.
            Then came the other story. Wo.de. Wo.de, like SnKnSe, caught me by surprise. This one came out me when I was in the state between dreaming and waking-- an image of Yue and Touya, Yue running his hand up Touya's stomach. That may not sound like much, but the way the image felt made it very, very disturbing for me because I knew that Touya was completely out of it and not all there, and that the whole situation around it was just bad.
            I flat out refused to write it. Refused. I called my friend Irina and told her the image and why it creeped me out, to see if she could help me shoot it down. But no such luck; even though I didn't want to write the fic, it stayed in my head, never to actually go away; always nagging at me because I hadn't written it, and it wanted to be written, regardless of if I wanted to or no. It simply would not go away, and tentatively and bitterly, I started to write it...and stopped. I found excuses I didn't completely believe, and stopped. I tried to let it go and forget it existed, because I did not like the fic idea and all.
            If any of you think that the writer picks what they write--that the writer has a choice--well, you would be wrong. Believe it or not, I honest to God starting having problems because I *didn't* write Wo.de. It was a truly damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. My conscious mind said "Hell, no, I ain't writing that." My subconscious/Sado, Muse of Sadism/personal Schenectedy--was having none of that, and it grated, constantly, like something "itching away at my brain like little bugses."
            The fic wouldn't go away, and somehow, I knew I was only stalling.

The Catalyst, or why I really hate Sado, and so does Irina

            As Stephen King noted in his book "On Writing," sometimes good story ideas come at you out of nowhere--two previously unrelated ideas come together in the right way, and it usually happens when you're not expecting to. Something suddenly clicks, and *thwap*, the Muse has just whapped you upside the head. I had the two elements with SnKnSe and Wo.de, but the connector just hadn't come. I'd always kind of felt that SnKnSe wasn't *complete* complete, but I knew there was nothing else to be added to it. And Wo.de was a nightmare I wanted to forget that stayed in my subconscious, clawing insistently at the door to my conscious thoughts, wanting to come out and honestly giving me no peace.
            The catalyst came one chilly April evening.
            "Freeze My Love" is a song by a j-pop group called Glay. One chilly April evening, I was visiting my friend Irina in Virginia, and were driving back from visiting another friend of ours, Scott. I had a CD of Glay songs, and we were listening to them as we drove back. We put "Freeze My Love" on repeat and tried to pick out the lyrics (we also got ass-backwards lost, but that's a whole other story). While we were listening to it, Wo.de came screaming back at me, clawing its way out of my subconscious and insisting now that it be written, and in such a way that I knew there was no way I could not write it. And as we drove, Irina and I began brainstorming. The horse was out of the stable; all that could be done now was let it go where it would. We began bouncing ideas off of each other, new characters being introduced as we made "Freeze My Love" go away and more music come on to try to scrub our brains out. An Ulali song called "Friend in Need" spawned the whole cast of CCS being pulled into Wo.de; the Yukito image song "Jitensha ni Notte" spawned the initial spark that would send the whole CCS world into a conflagration: Yukito didn't remember anything before he met Sakura; what if he wanted those memories back? What would happen? The whole time Irina and I were trying to get back to her house (we got impressively lost and ended up an hour away from her place) we started fleshing out plot for FmL, and since the song "Freeze My Love" had started this whole ungodly thing, we both decided that would be the best thing to call it.
            We got back to Irina's house, and I said, "Well, at least 'Sakura no Ki no Shita e's not in this."
            That was dumb.
            I should have known better.
            I *really* should have known better.
            SnKnSe sucked itself right in as soon as the words were out of my mouth, even though I was fighting it because I had promised not to write Subaru any more until I read Tokyo Babylon (in SnKnSe, I had hit on two really twitchy things from TB and not known it until Irina started screaming at me).
            Thwap. The final catalyst, and there you go: there's the basic plot of the fic.
            All that had to be done now was the hard part: write the story. You can have, after all, the greatest plot idea in the history of the world, but if you can't write the story it's in, it's wasted. Plot is the basic idea--"Hey, how about I make a big statue of the Virgin holding her dead son out of this hunk of marble?"; the story-telling is the art--"the Pietà". Storytelling is the mallet and chisel in your hands; the inhaling dust and coughing; the bloodshot eyes and shards of marble under your fingers. It's where the pain begins, and where the beauty lies.
            I began writing that night. Irina read over what I did, appointed editor from the get-go, because I firmly believe that everyone needs an editor, and I am so in that number.
            That night, I fell into the hole in the paper. I wrote almost twenty pages in one sitting, and don't think for a second that it was linear. FmL had begun.

The Basics, or why I love CLAMP

            Everything in FmL has some root, somewhere, in the CCS manga or anime, as well as in X and TB. Since started FmL, I've read through almost all of the TB and CCS manga (I'm still short two CCS books, and it's driving me crazy, and I will be rectifying that when I move to Japan in April) and I've got a subscription to Asuka so I could see the state of His High Royal Angstiness so I knew what state to leave him in at the end of FmL.
            I adore Ohkawa Nanase. She is the only manga writer I give the honorific "-sensei." There is a reason for this. Why? Because she really knows what she's doing. She knows how to put her characters through the wringer, and I admire that. A lot. An awful lot.
            Not only that, but I admire all of CLAMP because the art is amazing. I can pick up any CLAMP manga, flip through it, and find something new, no matter what the series. These women know what they are doing, all of them. All the seeds for everything in FmL are peppered throughout CCS. CCS, if you start analyzing it, actually has a really dark edge to it in places...and I like the dark. I've always been drawn to the more dysfunctional truth lying beneath the façade of peacefulness--I'm jaded that way, I suppose. Everything postulated in this fic comes from some unusual drawing of character interaction or facial expression or abrupt art style change somewhere in CCS.
            This fic pulls from both the Cardcaptor Sakura manga and anime--since Ohkawa-sensei wrote both, I consider them both equally canon, and where they disagree, I pick what I think works best. So Li lived by himself when he was first in Japan, and there is no Meilin, but Sakura does have a whole mess o'cards.

Annexing, or "OK, what the hell is it a crossover with?"

            I don't know quite how to label this crossover. I wish I did. For a long time, there's not actually going to be anyone who isn't CCS. After all, it started out just CCS, and then SnKnSe grafted itself onto it. Since it's taking place in 1999, it should technically by a crossover with X...but it's just not. Somehow, through the tone of the fic, it's more of a crossover with Tokyo Babylon. Weird, yes. But that's why it happens some times. To show this stronger tie with TB than X, the side stories are all called Annexes, like side stories were in Tokyo Babylon (although, lately, the sides have been taking on more of an X side story feel to them, too...oh, well.)
            The only crossover characters in this fic are characters you would find in Tokyo Babylon--sorry, guys, but no Sora, no Karen, no Yuuto, no Kusanagi, no Yuzu-chan, no none of them. The main character who isn't CCS in this is Subaru. Subaru, after all, vanished for months during X. So where'd he go? *genki smile*

Notes, or all that little shit

            I avoid fangirl Japanese as much as possible. But there is some, as well as a bit of Mandarin Chinese. But not to fret--I didn't just toss it into the story for no good reason other than an "ooh, looky, I can string words together in a foreign language!" Case in point--when I switch into Mandarin. I used the standard pinyin romanization, but another way to romanize "shi" is "shr," and that is *very* close to how it sounds. I chose it for the harsher sound of the language.
            Ahh, and while thinking of Chinese... You will note that Li's personal name isn't always romanized as "Syaoran." This is because I hate that romanization. It is a romanization of the Chinese by way of Japanese. Yes, I know. CLAMP uses "Syaoran," but it *bugs* me. The proper pinyin of that is "Xiao Lang." However, the urge for language accuracy is warring with my desire to stay close to the author's decisions (have I mentioned how much I worship Ohkawa-sensei?). So I compromised with myself. Any character that speaks Japanese natively--the Kinomotos, Tomoyo, etc--will use "Syaoran." Any character that would know Chinese will use "Xiao Lang."
            But to cut down on it, he's "Li." It's faster to type, and I think of him as "Li" anyway.
            All names are done in Asian order. Kinomoto Sakura. Li Xiao Lang/Syaoran. Tsukishiro Yukito. Sumeragi Subaru. The order in the manga is the order in this story. I also use the Japanese honorifics/affectionate diminuatives, since I love them (a good affectionate diminuative to append to someone's name is the only thing I think the English langauge is lacking).
            And for a bit on the chapters titles. They're all in Japanese...with one exception, and that's wo.de. You knew Wo.de had to come through pure in some way. The fic naturally broke into four sections, and so there are four chapter titles recycled four times:
            "Sakura no ki no shita e" - Underneath the Sakura Tree, or Beneath the Soul of the Sakura
            "Omoide no tame ni" - For the Sake of Memories
            "Kono inochi no yume no naka ni" - Within the Dream of This Life
            "Wo.de" (this is Mandarin Chinese, unlike the other three)- Mine.
                        ~ni.de - yours.
            And now, the actual glossary. I usually translate everything in Japanese or Chinese, but not always. So to help you out...

Zhong.wen (Chinese):
wo - I ni - you
ta - he/she/it
.men - pluralizing marker to make "us" "they" "them" "we," etc .
de - possessive marker shi - to be, is
bu - not; negation marker
yao - to want
xie.xie - thank you

Nihongo (Japanese):
itai - painful, aching. It can also mean "to want to stay."
maboroshi - illusion

Disclaimer, or don't say I didn't warn you

            Spoiler warning: This assumes you know three things. A) How Tokyo Babylon ends. B) How Cardcaptor Sakura ends. C) Book 16 of X--ie, how the bet in TB ends. If you don't know these things, you either A) will after you read this fic or B) will be very, very confused.
            I am a textual poacher. I own none of the characters. Not a one. CLAMP does. All I get from this is simply the act of writing, the sleepless nights pounding away at the keyboard because I'm in the zone, and the occasional email from someone who liked it. Nothing even vaguely monetary at all.
            The song "Freeze My Love" and its lyrics are owned by Glay.
            There are two scenes in this fic which are pulled directly from Tokyo Babylon and X. Word for word, in Japanese. Those are all Ohkawa-sensei's, and part of why I worship this woman.
            Any and all translations within this fic are my own. Please don't use them without permission. I can pretty much guarantee that if you ask me if you can use them, I'll jump up and down for joy and happily give you permission, but if you just take them without giving me the scrap of joy of knowing someone is using them, I'll be very unhappy, and no one wants that, do they?
            If you want to archive the fic, just let me know.
            This fanfic contains strong language, shounen-ai/yaoi, and other adult topics. All of the Wo.de/ni.de sections are yaoi-ish. There are four chapters of each, and the even-numbered ones especially are...all fucked up, and I mean it. The Wo.de/ni.de chapters are most certainly not fanservice--there is a reason why I didn't want to write Wo.de in the first place. So please don't read this if you're underage or offended by such things. I'm not responsible for you if you decide to read the fic after I've warned you--this is a messed up fic--one of the more messed up that I've written--and I make no bones about it. If you can handle it, great, if you can't, I'm sorry, but I warned you. Please don't complain or cry to me; it's never pretty. And if you want to complain to me, I can tell you my reaction up front and save all of us the trouble: You have the option of stopping. I, as I learned with Wo.de, *don't.*

Dedication, or I love you people

            You whom I love...and you all know who you are. You are my sounding boards. You whom I talk to at 2 AM. You whom I get lost with on straight roads while discussing fic. You who read my fic without knowing a damned thing about CCS, then ask me innocent-seeming questions like "Why does Touya not like Li? He and Sakura seem so cute together."

Irina.
            You were my first sounding board. You tried to kill Wo.de when it was a stand-alone story I didn't want to write, and I still bless you eternally for that, even though it was all for naught. You made me hate Eriol. We fleshed out the basic plot while driving the wrong way on a straight road, and random nights at 3 am when the fic gave you nightmares and you would call me to talk about it. You did the busy work. You yelled at me for being mean to Subaru. You literally smacked sense into me one day. You are my editor and one of my best friends, even if some days, I wonder how many bowls of Crackio's you had before you opened the fic.

Hth.
            My second sounding board. Your theories made me really hate Eriol. When I was the sounding board for your new fic series, rounding out my theories about the child molester--uh, I mean, Kaho--made my mild dislike of her fester into the seething hatred that it is today. You assured me I had a wonderful grasp of the comedic, and made me love tormenting Li. You talk to me about just the craft of writing, something I rarely get to do with someone who knows what they're doing like you do. You tell me I'm right when I'm right, but you also tell me when I need to lay off the crack pipe.

Aris.
            You know absolutely nothing about CCS, and yet you still wade through this monstrous fic that requires the reader to know CCS. You still give me feedback, and let me know things that work and things that don't. You're fuckin' brilliant, no matter what you think, and you drive me crazy because your grasp of the English language is better than mine, and English isn't your native tongue. This fic would not be what it is today without you. I love all of you.

***

            And now, it's time to bleed on the paper.