My first Tsubasa Chronicles fic, written on a whim one night at work, because Sakura climbed in my head and wouldn't get out!

Reviews would be most welcome. :o)

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or Tsubasa in any way. I just play with them.

PATCHWORK HEART

If you take a set of building blocks you can make anything you like. Put them together and take a look. You've got an image, an object, something.

Now take them all apart and scatter them around. Then put them back together. What do you have?

Something … different.

It's different. This heart that was shattered into a million pieces and scattered through just as many worlds, is different. Though my friends risk everything to gather all the missing links, it can never be put back the same. I can never be the same.

This body feels almost alien to my newborn mind. I understand some things, but others not. I know how to brush my hair but am often unsure how to cross a street. I know which world we currently reside in, but I don't know for sure that Sakura is my real name.

In this patchwork heart I hold patchwork feelings. Some seem as old as the sky; a crown floats atop my head and I know, I know it's been there since my birth. But when was I born? Where? This patchwork still has holes.

So I fill it, with new feelings, new memories. Now Mokona's tinny squeal makes me smile whenever it calls and Kurogane and Fai are my brothers. Sometimes, I can feel the press of the oldest of memories, still lost to my waking mind, wrestling against these new thoughts that are making patches of their own. But the old ones have no strength, not till their own pieces are found and Syaoran says that they could be the hardest of all to find.

Syaoran.

My new heart still puzzles over where to place his piece. I know his name only because he gave it to me, other than that he is just one more face, another brother of mine on this quest to mend my soul. And yet his eyes are the one thing that threatens to break the fragile joints of my broken shell. My past lies in those eyes, hidden behind a blank veil of secrecy. And though I can't say why, that shuttered expression, he saves just for me, chips away at my newfound happiness.

To him I am Winter and Spring; age and beauty; old and new. My head spins with the expectant glances I catch when he believes I'm not looking and I wonder what it is I'm doing wrong this time. I asked Syaoran once if I had changed from the Sakura he says he once knew. He looked at me then, fully for what was perhaps the first and only time. His eyes flickered but never fell. I watched my past surface and sink without any meaning to me. Then he answered.

"You are Sakura."

He is something more. I was something more. Were we both different shapes to what we are now?

Now I am Sakura of the Broken Wings. I have a purpose that has not yet been revealed to me. I have a past that has been stolen. But I'm lucky. I have a family to help me pick up my pieces; however long it takes.

Then maybe this patchwork person will be something whole.