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Chapter Text

Fai

In hindsight, Fai should not have been surprised by the rather disappointing state he found things in when he arrived at the Dimension Witch’s shop.  To say that things tended to not go well or smoothly for him would be an understatement, after all, but when a man has spent the majority of his unusually long life preparing for a single moment, well, he cannot help but build said moment up in his head, conjuring up all sorts of grand ideas of what it might look like.  Truthfully, Fai could not say just what his exact expectations for that time had been, but, for starters, he hadn’t anticipated things being so wet.

This wetness was the first thing that registered for him once the world transfer had finished.  Fai took a moment to gather his bearings—traveling between dimensions was a jarring experience, to say the least, and Fai had only done so once before, many, many years ago—and felt the rain falling all around him.  This did not seem like a particularly auspicious start to his journey.  Then again, given the nature of the journey, perhaps it was fitting.

It did not take long for Fai to discern that the world transfer magic he had performed had been successful.  The woman standing before him—unusually tall with long, dark hair and piercing red eyes—was clearly the Time Space Witch.  Fai’s ability to sense the magical capacity of others immediately set his hair on edge; this woman exuded power.  It was impossible not to feel uneasy in her presence, especially considering that he was well aware of the fact that this woman had the potential to become his enemy, to prevent him from seeing his mission, a mission he had sworn to complete at any cost, to its end.

Still, it would be most unwise to become lost in these anxieties and to, in turn, show any sign of weakness at this crucial moment, so Fai donned a smile perfected over years of practice and affably asked, “Are you the Dimension Witch?” 

Introducing himself as Fai. D. Flourite, the magician of Celes, Fai responded that they were in a place where any wish could be granted when the witch, Yuko, asked if he knew where he was.  When questioned about the nature of his wish, he responded that it was never to return to his home world.  This was not exactly a lie; when Fai thought of Celes, of Ashura asleep under the water and Chi hastily transformed into netting, which Fai knew would ultimately do little to trap his king should he awaken, it was impossible not to feel a flicker of terror.  In truth, though, it was a very different wish, one made long ago, before he’d set foot in Celes, before Chi even existed, that had brought him to Yuko’s shop.

Fai did his best to surreptitiously survey the others who had joined him at the witch’s shop.  The unconscious young woman was clearly the desert princess whose memories his master had turned to feathers and scattered throughout the dimensions.  Fai immediately silenced the part of himself that balked at the cruelty of the act, that recoiled at the sight of the girl’s lifeless body.  Such sentiments would not serve him well on this journey. 

Fai knew that the young man cradling the girl in his arms was the person who had been chosen by his master to collect her scattered feathers, but something was not right.  This boy was clearly not some soulless being created by Fei Wang to do his bidding on this journey; the desperation in his eyes as he pled for Yuko’s help and the lovingly protective way he clutched the princess close to him told Fai otherwise.  Clearly something or someone had interfered with Fai’s master’s plans, and Fai had to contend with the fact that there were likely to be many things on this journey that he had not anticipated, had not been prepared for.

Fai also had to contend with just how real these two children seemed.   

Still, the children were not the ones to ultimately capture Fai’s attention.

There will be one other who will be sent on the journey, Fei Wang had told Fai all those years ago in that cursed valley.  If you ever meet that child…remember that he belongs to the witch.  He is not my enemy alone.  He has the ability to hinder your wish as well!

Fai chanced a glance at the man whom Fei Wang had referred as the witch’s pawn.  The man was tall, exceptionally so; he stood a full head taller than Fai, who himself was taller than most men.  Fai caught a glimpse of hardened muscle in a bicep that Fai suspected was thicker than his thigh.  Sure, Fai was a very slim man, but still.  The man was dressed entirely in black, and he carried a longsword with an elaborate hilt fashioned into the likeness of a dragon.  Alarmingly, the man’s face was spattered with blood, blood that clearly was not his, and his red eyes looked very angry.  Fai thought that none of this boded well for him.

Then the man, whose name was Kurogane, began speaking.

“Who the hell are you?” he gaped at Yuko. 

“I’m not getting any of this!” he complained a moment later.

“What kind of crap are you spouting?” he yelled when Yuko began explaining the terms of their upcoming journey.

As Kurogane sputtered like a petulant child, Fai became increasingly sure of two things.  The first was that the witch’s pawn apparently did not have a clue what was going on.  The second was that Fai was fairly positive that this man, who flew into an immature rage when Fai teasingly called him “Mr. Black,” would be easy to outsmart and outmaneuver.  When Yuko took Kurogane’s sword, clearly his weapon of choice if his reaction to losing it were any indication, as his payment for being able to travel to different dimensions, Fai felt even more confident in his assessment of the situation.

Admittedly, Fai had never been a particularly good judge of character.  A history of trauma at the hands of others, long periods of isolation from people, and a deliberate choice to never allow his relationships to develop into anything beyond surface level pleasantries had not exactly granted Fai much experience in understanding the inner workings of other people.  Still, he felt certain that his take on Kurogane was correct.  He felt certain that, were it to become necessary, he could kill Kurogane.        

***

It was in the first world that they traveled to, a bright, cacophonous place called Hanshin Republic, that Fai began calling Kurogane nicknames.  The custom in that place was to add different suffixes to people’s names based on factors such as gender, social status, and the nature of one’s relationship with the other person.  Fai rather liked the idea, so Syaoran became Syaoran-kun, Sakura because Sakura-chan, and Kurogane…well, Fai had lots of different nicknames for Kurogane. 

Each time Fai called him by a new nickname, the man reacted in the same childish manner, angrily reminding Fai that his name was “Kuorgane” and demanding that he knock off the shenanigans.  It was all quite amusing.

Their first night in Hanshin Republic Fai and Kurogane shared a bedroom.

When the man with whom they were staying, Sorata, suggested that the two men room together, Fai happily agreed over Kurogane’s angry protests despite the deep unease the prospect raised within him.  Well, having an opportunity to learn more about his potential enemy could prove valuable, Fai decided.

As he and Kurogane settled into their beds—if one could call them that, as they were really just mats laid out on the floor—Fai made certain to keep a smile locked into place, hiding any trace of what he was really feeling, what thoughts were going through his head.  Fortunately, Fail had plenty of practice with that.

“So, Kuro-tan,” he began as he folded both of his fur coats and placed them nearly in the corner of the too small room alongside his boots.

“Kurogane,” Kurogane replied curtly before he could continue.

“Right, Kuro-rin.”

“It’s Kurogane!” Kurogane practically shouted.

“Ah, you shouldn’t yell,” Fai responded with a laugh.  “That’s no way to act when you’re a guest in someone else’s home.”

“Are you always this annoying?” Kurogane grumbled.  “I’m thinking that maybe you don’t want to return to your world because there’s a bounty on your head for being the most irritating man in existence.” 

“So mean, Kuro-sama!” Fai whined with a fake pout.  “Since we’re going to be traveling together, we should become friends!”

“I don’t want to be your friend,” Kurogane replied.  “I don’t want to be anyone’s friend.  Look, I told you already, I just want to get back to my own world, so do me a favor and shut up so I can get some sleep.”

“Ah, right!  And where is your world, anyway, Kuro-chi?” 

Kurogane raised an eyebrow at the question, giving Fai a measured look.  His response came more slowly than Fai had anticipated.  “I said it back at the witch’s place.  My world is called Nihon, same as that place we were in, apparently.”  Kurogane paused for a moment before continuing.  “Where is your world?”

The question caught Fai off guard, but he gathered his bearings and faltered for only a moment before righting himself.  “Hmm, this may be a conversation for another time, don’t you think?  After all, you did say you wanted to get some sleep.”  Kurogane responded by tsking and rolling onto his side, an indication that he had accepted Fai’s decision to stop to the conversation.

Apparently, Kurogane was not as thickheaded as Fai had first believed.  Not only had he realized that Fai had been fishing for information, but in returning Fai’s question to him he had made it known that he would not be letting his guard down so easily.  Well, Fai supposed that fact alone was useful knowledge to have.

Fai had not intended to sleep that night, but apparently the task of transporting himself to the Dimension Witch’s shop had been more physically taxing than he had realized, and sleep won out in the end.  That night Fai dreamt of a phoenix, an elegant and majestic bird that towered over him.  It did not speak to him, simply stared him down with a measured look.  Fai did not allow himself to flinch and returned the creature’s gaze despite the phantom ache in his back where his tattoo in the likeness of that very bird had been before Yuko had taken it from him as payment for the opportunity to travel between dimensions.  He did his best to stifle the memories that began to well up inside him, threatening to reach the surface, memories of the only man to ever show him kindness, memories of a man whose slow descent into madness went unnoticed by Fai until Celes was awash in innocent blood…memories of a man who was no doubt ruined simply because he spent time with Fai.

Just like everyone else, Fai thought bitterly.  I’ve brought suffering to everyone I’ve ever loved, and many others besides.  Fai knew the legends associating the phoenix with rebirth, but he held no illusions that he would ever be granted such a gift.  A person such as himself was not deserving of that kindness.

***

When Princess Sakura woke with the return of her feather in Hanshin Republic, the girl was like a shell of a person, her mind having been wiped clean of all its memories.  Her green eyes blinked incomprehensibly, recognizing nothing as she stared at her surroundings, recognizing no one as she stared at the people gathered around her...recognizing not even Syaoran.

Fai watched as the boy who had risked life and limb in a strange land just to retrieve a mere fragment of the princess’s soul steeled himself at the young woman’s response, swallowing slowly before forcing himself to smile (and, oh, if Fai himself did not have his fair share of experience performing that particular trick) and addressing his most precious person with impersonal formalities.  The boy then slipped outside, unnoticed by his bleary-eyed princess, into the rain.

As Fai and Kurogane watched Syaoran as he stood outside, Fai wondered aloud if the boy was crying.  Kurogane, unsurprisingly, prattled on about how Syaoran simply had to become stronger.

Fai responded by telling Kurogane that there is a certain strength needed to cry when you should.

The statement surprised Fai himself, who had spent a lifetime burying his pain.  Your smile, Fai, has done much to heal my heart.  When Fai thought of Ashura, it was still that man who came to mind, with his kind eyes and gentle manner.  How could Fai reconcile the image of the man who rescued him (no, not just him) with that of the man covered in blood, a dazed and distant look in those once kind eyes? 

Perhaps it was time for Fai to resign himself to the truth of the second image.  After all, when had Fai’s smile really done anything to heal anyone?

Fai kept a keen eye on his new traveling companions in their next destination, a place named Koryo, where they met the young spitfire Chu’yan, who was determined to protect the land she called home.  Although most of Sakura remained missing, the girl’s sweet disposition was immediately on full display as she comforted and bonded with Chu’yan.  Syaoran remained steadfast in his determination to complete his mission regardless of how painful it may be.  (Fai briefly found himself wondering if the Syaoran in whose image this boy had been made was like this, too, but caught himself and refused to let his mind stray down that particular path for too long.)  Then there was Mokona, the familiar Yuko sent along to whisk the travelers between the dimensions, who had both far more power and far more personality that Fai could have ever anticipated.  It was simply too difficult to not allow himself to get caught up in her antics, particularly when they involved Kurogane.  

Teasing Kurogane only proved to be more and more fun over time, as each annoying nickname sent the large man further into a tither.  Still, Fai made certain to keep a shrewd eye on the other man underneath the playful façade.  He could not afford to forget that this man could someday be his enemy, could stand athwart of the path that Fai had spent untold long years preparing to walk.

Fai learned that Kurogane was something called a “ninja” in his home country.  Fai was unfamiliar with the term, but based on the information Kurogane had divulged about himself since the beginning of their journey, he surmised that it referred to some kind of soldier or assassin.  Well, that was not exactly surprising, Fai supposed, and it went a long way to explain the blood that had covered the man the night their paths first crossed at Yuko’s shop. Fai also learned that Kurogane had been sent away by the princess of his land, someone named Tomoyo, for killing his enemies indiscriminately against her wishes.  (Kurogane still seemed quite loyal to this Tomoyo despite all his grumbling about her “stupid” and “unfair” punishment, and Fai catalogued this information as being potentially useful.)

A man skilled in combat who had racked up what Fai imagined was a pretty hefty body count was not exactly the person he had hoped to be potentially facing in a fight, but, well, it would have been foolish to expect anything about this journey to be easy.  The question, then, became, could Fai kill this man who was so much larger and stronger than himself if need be?  If he used his magic (magic that brought suffering and pain and destruction, magic to fight and to maim and to kill…magic, Fail supposed, well suited to a person such as himself) then there was no doubt that he would be successful, but, ah, that was not an option.  Fai supposed he would just have to outsmart the ninja.

Despite the fact that Kurogane genuinely seemed clueless as to the purpose and nature of their journey (and Fai couldn’t help but wonder why the witch had left her pawn entirely in the dark about the war she and Fai’s master were waging against each other), the ninja, it seemed, was a bit more perceptive that Fai had anticipated.  He confronted Fai the night before their party was to raid the ryanban’s castle to retrieve the fragment of Sakura that was trapped in Koryo, addressing Fai frankly (and, oh, so unlike Fai himself in that regard) while the children and Mokona slept nearby. 

“Why won’t you use your magic?” Kurogane asked, looking Fai squarely in the eye.

“Ah, but I already explained it, Kuro-pi.  I turned over the source of my magic when Yuko-san took the marking that was on my back as payment for me to travel between worlds.”

“That’s bull.  That witch herself said so when you tried to tell that same crap story earlier.”

“But now my staff is gone, too.  How can you expect a magician to use magic without his staff?”

Kurogane didn’t look away, didn’t blink, keeping his gaze even and level on Fai’s face.  “You’re lying.”

Well, yes, of course Fai was lying.  Fai lied all of the time.  He liked to think he had gotten to be rather skilled at it.  To have his lie spotted and called out so quickly and bluntly was unnerving.

Fai only hoped Kurogane failed to pick up on the moment of unease that gripped him.  Fai took a moment to compose himself as familiar words echoed through his mind, words that sounded as clearly as they had that day when they had been spoken so very many years ago.

I know your magic.  It is true, Fai!  You could be wandering lost on some far-off world...and I could come for you.

Fai laughed briefly, and it sounded forced and unnatural, so unlike the fake laugh that he thought he had perfected.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kuro-pond!”

“Whatever,” Kurogane huffed, and then turned his back to Fai.

Using magic was not an option.  Fai’s magic would have to be left behind with the corpses and ghosts of the cold, dead country from which he had fled.  Still, even without his magic, he would not fail in his mission.  He would lie, and he would lie, and he would lie, and he would kill if need be….He would do whatever must be done to finish what he had set out to do.

He would do whatever must be done to bring back Fai.  

Kurogane

Kurogane was going to kill Tomoyo.

No, forget that; apparently he couldn’t kill Tomoyo (not that he actually would, anyway), because Tomoyo had placed a curse on him that would lessen his strength whenever he took another life.  It was all terribly unfair.  All he had been doing was protecting the princess to whom he had sworn his allegiance, his life.  If the assassins who sought to harm her and the empress ended up dying at his hand because they were stupid and slow and incompetent and weak, well, that wasn’t his problem, was it?

Evidently it was a problem, however, because Tomoyo had placed a curse on him and sent him away from Nihon, away from his home, through some strange interdimensional portal she had apparently created using her powerful magic (and, gods, was that a strange sensation) into some foreign world with foreign people, to some crazy witch with weird clothes and an annoying, arrogant way of speaking to him, as if she were mildly amused by the fact that he didn’t have a clue what was going on.  Although Kurogane himself had no magic, he had honed his senses keenly enough over years of intense training to know that this woman possessed it to a degree beyond anything he had ever encountered.

The others were strange, too—an unconscious girl and a boy clinging desperately to her, both wearing clothing that was nothing like people wore in Nihon. 

It was the other man who had arrived at this bizarre place alongside himself, however, that most caught Kurogane off guard.  Tall and thin in an elegant, almost feminine way, he had large blue eyes (what kind of person has blue eyes?) and the lightest hair and skin Kurogane had ever seen.  Like the witch, the man also exuded an incredible amount of magic.  Kurogane briefly found himself wondering if he was some kind of snow kitsune turned human and briefly glanced to see if the man had a tail before banishing the notion away as absurd.

Kurogane learned just how absurd the notion was when the man began talking.

The man, Fai D. Flourite (a ridiculous name, Kurogane immediately noted), introduced himself as the magician (as if it wasn’t obvious that he was a magician) of some place called Celes, and he grinned and laughed and called Kurogane “Mr. Black” and went along with the witch’s irritating statements with a stupid, inane smile on his face that made Kurogane want to throttle him (and, no, this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the man seemed to have some understanding of what was going on while he did not).  No kitsune could possibly be that annoying.

Kurogane attempted to maintain his bearings when the witch took his beloved Ginryu from him (not Ginryu in truth, of course, but it was a blow nonetheless) and informed him that this was payment to allow him to travel to different worlds, which he was supposed to do with the boy and the unconscious girl and the dumb blonde magician in order to retrieve fragments of the girl’s memories, which had been scattered across different dimensions, with the help of some creature that looked like a white manju…or something like that.  Apparently only by doing this would he have any chance of returning to Nihon.

As Kurogane felt the pull of magic begin to whisk him away from the bizarre witch and her bizarre world, he thought, however briefly, that perhaps whenever he was free of whatever curse Tomoyo had placed on him that he would, perhaps, kill her after all.

***

If the world Tomoyo had deposited Kurogane in was weird, the world where the witch sent him and the others was stranger still.   Buildings taller than Kurogane had ever seen made of material he could only guess at towered over him on all sides.  Bright, garish lights (Kurogane didn’t even know what was producing the light) blinked and shone and flashed in his eyes.  The place was so, so loud, and there were no trees and no flowers and no plants.  Kurogane immediately hated it. 

In theory, being inside one of those strangely tall buildings and away from all of the chaos outside should have brought Kurogane some degree of relief, but things inside the tiny set of rooms in which he found himself grated on his nerves to no end.  All of the others who had been at that odd witch’s shop were there with him: the unconscious girl and the young man who had held her lifeless body, the blonde magician, and the white manju creature.  All of them annoyed him. 

The manju bounced around the room and climbed on his head and into his lap and squirmed inside his cloak and said “puu!” and made weird faces, and Kurogane wanted to throttle her.  The magician smiled a vapid smile and sat with his limbs stretched out like some damn cat and continued to call him “Mr. Black,” and Kurogane wanted to throttle him, too.  The boy continued to clutch the body of the unconscious girl and vowed to retrieve the fragments of her soul that had been turned into feathers and smiled earnestly and gratefully when the magician and manju agreed to assist him in his quest.  Kurogane wanted to throttle him for being naïve enough to believe that if he simply tried his best and had help from others, he could save his princess.  The boy needed to learn that tragedy was a part of life, and sometimes a person couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Kurogane didn’t like this world and didn’t like these people.  He didn’t want anything to do with an unconscious girl and memories that had been turned into feathers and a desperate boy and a bouncing manju and a blonde magician with unnaturally colored eyes and a suspicious smile. 

“Search or don’t search.  That’s up to you.  It’s got nothing to do with me!  I’m here to get back to my own world.  That’s the only reason I’m here.  Don’t expect me to stick my neck out for you.  Don’t expect me to help you.  I won’t do it!”  Kurogane wasn’t going to lie to these people about who he was and what his intentions were. 

Kurogane’s hosts in this strange land were a teacher who somehow managed to grate on his nerves even more than his new traveling companions and the teacher’s wife, who was supposedly a miko but was nothing like any of the many miko Kurogane had ever known.  The teacher waved around a puppet in his own likeness and babbled on about something called a “kudan,” which supposedly attached itself to everyone in that world…or something.  Kurogane was pretty sure that he wanted to throttle him, too.  Then the teacher suggested that Kurogane and the magician share a room for the night, and Kurogane knew he wanted to throttle him.

The magician grinned and called him stupid nicknames, but Kurogane was not a dumb man, nor was he a naïve one, and he recognized this façade easily and was quick to pick up on the fact that the man was fishing for information and that he was also loathe to give up any about himself.  Underneath all of that false cheer,

 it was clear that the magician was leery of him and that he was sizing him up as a potential enemy.  Kurogane, being a ninja, naturally did the same. 

Kurogane did not know much about the magician, but he knew that, despite the man’s flippant statements and mannerisms and slender, almost frail-looking body, he was dangerous.

Kurogane had not intended to sleep that night, but apparently all of this business of traveling between dimensions had been more physically taxing than he had realized, and sleep won out in the end.  That night Kurogane dreamed of a dragon, a towering blue serpent with clear, sharp eyes.  It did not much resemble Ginryu of Suwa or the other dragons of Nihon, but Kurogane recognized it as one of their kin all the same.  The creature did not speak, but its gaze bore into Kurogane, measuring him, assessing him.  Kurogane did not flinch, returning the creature’s stare, but felt the scar on his hand twitch, and found himself thinking of another dragon, one he could still see coiled around the arm of another man.    

Kurogane had spent years trying to emulate that man, trying to make himself worthy of his legacy.  When had he lost his way so badly? 

***

Kurogane hadn’t become the finest ninja at Shirasaki Castle by accident.  He had earned that distinction through years of training and practice and honing the skills most crucial to his chosen profession.  Observation was one such skill: observation of one’s surroundings and environment, of one’s friends and enemies.  Ever the consummate ninja, Kurogane turned his aptitude for observation onot his new companions.  The kid was earnest and determined to save the unconscious princess.  Despite being naïve in some ways, he was surprisingly perceptive in others, and it didn’t take long for him to display a degree of bravery and strength that Kurogane couldn’t help but find impressive.  Kurogane wasn’t interested in this mission, wasn’t interested in these people.  He certainly wasn’t supposed to like them.  Yet he found himself beginning to like this kid despite himself.   

The magician was less straightforward.  Always grinning, always teasing, the man very much came across as the fool.  He was, however, clearly not a fool, and Kurogane quickly became increasingly sure of his initial assessment that determined that the man was dangerous.  As Kurogane watched the magician flit through the air on only the wind produced by his kudan, a self-assured smile on his face, Kurogane could not mistake the degree of comfort and familiarity the man had with combat.  This was a man who had seen his fair share of battle.

Later, when the sleeping princess awoke following the return of her feather, devoid of all memories, including memories of the kid, and the kid went outside to hide his tears in the rain, the magician had looked out after him and said, in response to Kurogane’s comment that the kid needed to become stronger in order to keep from crying, “I also think there’s a certain strength that’s needed to be able to cry when you should.”

For once, the magician wasn’t smiling.  The look on his face was distant, unreadable, and Kurogane couldn’t help but find himself wondering what was really hidden underneath the man’s cheery façade. 

It was becoming increasingly clear that the magician was hiding a lot.  In the next world, a place called Koryo that was, blessedly, more similar to his own Nihon than that blasted Hanshin Republic had been, the man only served to frustrate Kurogane even more, first by lying and saying that he couldn’t use magic when he clearly could and then by refusing to use his magic even when their lives were on the line while fighting a blasted witch who had lobbed balls of burning water at them and used the power of illusion to manipulate their environment against them.

If there was one thing that Kurogane could not tolerate, it was a man who refused to fight to his full ability, even when his life was at stake.

Afterward, when the witch and the man who controlled her had been defeated and the princess’s feather had been returned, the magician laughed and smiled as if the whole thing were one big joke.

“I was so shocked when Kiishim-san kissed you, Kuro-pon!  I never expected that!”  The magician was grinning stupidly, fingering one of the sleeves of his now tattered robes.

Kurogane didn’t respond and began walking away.  The magician quickly followed.

“You should have seen your face!  Well, did you enjoy this kiss, Kuro-rin?”

“No,” Kurogane said tersely, both because he hadn’t enjoyed the kiss and because he had zero desire to engage in this conversation

The magician had caught up to him and was now matching Kurogane’s long strides.  “I wonder why Kuro-sama doesn’t like the rain,” the magician said softly.

“And I wonder why you’re running away from your home and some sleeping mystery man and refusing to use magic that you clearly possess,” Kurogane returned, and he was satisfied to see the smile temporarily slip from the magician’s face.  “Don’t ask questions that you yourself aren’t willing to answer,” he finished before walking away.  This time the magician did not follow.

Kurogane wasn’t interested in this infuriating blonde idiot.  Kurogane was only interested in getting back home to Nihon, to returning to his role as a ninja and to serving Princess Tomoyo.  That was all that mattered—no some food-stealing manju, not some princess who had lost her memories, not some kid with fire in his determined eyes, and not—certainly not—a magician who grinned and lied and kept his secrets hidden deep inside.  

Chapter Text

Kurogane

There were many things that Kurogane found baffling about the magician.  Perhaps the thing that puzzled him the most was how the idiot could be so damn happy all the time.  He was always smiling, always laughing, always making light of even the most serious situations.  There they all were, on some crazy journey through worlds, and, at times, their very lives were at stake, and supposedly the magician had fled from his home and was running away from some sleeping man who was going to come after him if he were to wake up, and the idiot couldn’t stop grinning.

The answer to the question should have been obvious, and once Kurogane figured it out he cursed himself for not having realized it sooner.  How could the magician be so damn happy all of the time?  He wasn’t, of course.

After briefly stopping in a country with a large lake and no feather, where the stupid manju had imitated Kurogane’s voice and put on a dumb little act that made him and the magician seem like some stupid lovey couple, Kurogane and his, err, traveling companions (yes, he supposed that was what he would call them) landed in a country called Jade.  Kurogane knew next to nothing about the magician’s home, other than that it was a place called Celes, but, from what he could gather, this world was likely more similar to the magician’s than any of the others they had traveled to thus far.  The clothing worn by the people in Jade resembled the magician’s, and the place was cold.  If there was one thing Kurogane could discern about the magician’s home, it was that the place was very cold.

Generally speaking, the magician acted as he always did, playing the part of the kindly and helpful mentor to the kid and the princess and continuing to call Kurogane by those infuriating nicknames and referring to him as his “hired help” when he fed the people of the town where they were staying some story about how he was doing research for a book he was writing about old legends and buildings.  Still, Kurogane, perceptive as he was, noticed the moments, however brief and infrequent they were, when the man’s very nature seemed to change.

There was the time he spotted the magician leafing through the pages of a book that belonged to the doctor with whom they were staying.  He didn’t appear to be reading the book (Kurogane had no idea if the magician even could, in fact, read the language of this world), but was just turning the pages as if on auto pilot, as if he did not know what he was even doing.  Then there was the time Kurogane spotted him sitting cross-legged in front of the doctor’s fireplace, so close that Kurogane feared for a moment that the idiot’s clothing might catch aflame, and it struck Kurogane as more than a bit strange that a man who should have been accustomed to the cold felt such a need to seek out warmth. 

The thing that was most odd about these moments, the thing that most surprised Kurogane, was that the magician was not smiling.

Kurogane questioned if perhaps the man was homesick, if perhaps he was lost in morose thoughts about the world he had left behind.  Kurogane wondered how he himself would react if he and his traveling companions were to land in a place that was similar to Nihon.  He suspected that it would, perhaps, not be easy for him.  Kurogane reasoned that it was possible that the magician missed his home even if he had chosen to leave it behind.  Still, something about this theory did not seem quite right.

Then there was the evening Kurogane found the magician staring out one of the windows of the doctor’s home, just looking at the snow accumulating outside…except, as Kurogane drew closer to the man, it struck him that the magician was not, in fact, staring out the window at all.  The look on his face was absent, far away, as if his mind were somewhere else entirely, a different time or a different place.  Kurogane was unsure if he had ever seen a look quite like that on another person’s face.  It unnerved him.

“Oi!” he called out to the magician, who did not respond.

“Oi!” he tried again, and again there was no reaction from the magician.

“Oi!”  This time Kurogane yelled, and the magician gasped and turned around to face Kurogane, a look of shock on his face…which was quickly replaced with his trademark grin.

 “Ah, Kuro-rin, you startled me!  I was just watching the snow falling outside.  Don’t you think it’s pretty?”

“No,” Kurogane answered and then walked away.  He had wanted to say more, but what?  The incident bothered him more than he liked, and, truth be told, he really didn’t know what to do or to say.

Then there was the issue of the sleep.  Kurogane learned early on in this blasted journey that the magician slept on his stomach with his face buried in his pillow.  It was an exceptionally odd way to sleep, but, then again, the magician was an exceptionally odd man.

In Jade, Kurogane learned why the magician slept the way he did. 

Kurogane was a light sleeper.  Such was part of being a ninja; one needed to wake quickly and easily at the detection of any potential threat.  Kurogane had shared close sleeping quarters with the magician in Hanshin, but Kurogane’s sleep had been uncharacteristically deep there, as that weird dragon creature had taken to visiting him in his dreams.  In Koryo, Kurogane had slept apart from the magician, as he had purposely chosen to set up his bedding as far away from the annoying idiot’s as possible.  In Jade, the group’s doctor host had offered the princess a room of her own in which to sleep and a separate room for Kurogane, the magician, and the kid.  In Jade, Kurogane learned that the magician talked in his sleep.

It was not loud, as the magician was mumbling into his pillow.  The kid slept right through it.  Kurogane, being a ninja, did not.    

It annoyed him to no end, this chatter into the pillow that woke Kurogane at night.  Kurogane tried to ignore it, tried to turn his back to the magician and simply tune it out.  Perhaps this was because, although Kurogane could not make out the exact words the man was uttering, he couldn’t help but detect the distressed tone to them.

Then one night the man was moaning and crying into his pillow, his body shaking slightly as he clutched it with his skinny arms.  This Kurogane couldn’t possibly ignore, and he decided to take pity on the man and wake him from what was clearly a nightmare.  (Kurogane knew a thing or two about nightmares.)  Not wanting to wake the kid, Kurogane walked over to the magician and shook him slightly. 

“Oi, wake up,” he said softly.  The magician did not stir, so Kurogane shook him harder, perhaps a bit too roughly, and the man shot up straight as an arrow, a look of terror on his face as he assessed his surroundings.  His eyes finally found Kurogane’s, and he smiled.

“Oh, Kuro-tan!  Why did you wake me?  That wasn’t very nice!”  The man grinned as he spoke, and it took significant restraint on Kurogane’s end not to hit him.

“You were having a bad dream,” Kurogane replied simply.

“N-no!  No, I wasn’t!”

“Yes, you were.  You were moaning and crying in your sleep.”

“Ah, was I?  Well, perhaps I was having a really good dream,” the magician replied, and he smiled even wider, and Kurogane had to exercise even more restraint not to hit him.

“You’re an idiot,” Kurogane huffed before walking out of the room.  He didn’t think he could stand to be in the presence of the magician a moment longer. 

Kurogane shouldn’t have been surprised by any of it, not really.  He had determined that the magician was a liar early on.  Was there anything about him that wasn’t false?

In that moment, Kurogane found himself remembering something the magician had said to the kid in the previous world, the one with the lake.  We don’t have to dwell on the painful moments.  We won’t be able to forget them, even if we wanted to.  Kurogane didn’t care about this idiot—truly, he didn’t.  Even so, he couldn’t help but find himself wondering what it was that the magician couldn’t forget.     

***

As it turned out, it did not take long for Kurogane to learn what it would feel like to land in a world that was similar to Nihon.  The country was called Outo, and while it certainly differed from Kurogane’s world in a number of ways—it had those boxes on wheels that carried people around from place to place that were in Hanshin and lamps lining the streets that could be lit without a flame, and the world’s currency was somehow stored in a small, flower-shaped device—in so many ways the feel of the place was the same. 

As the familiar sweet scent of cherry blossoms wafted through the air and the flowers’ pink petals gently floated downward to land at his feet, Kurogane pushed all thoughts of home from his mind.  As he shrugged into a loose-fitting hakama, the soft fabric brushing against his skin in all the right places, Kurogane pushed all thoughts of home from his mind.  As he felt the familiar weight of a sword in his hands (a cheap sword, but a sword nonetheless), Kurogane pushed all thoughts of home from his mind.

Kurogane did not do a terribly good job of pushing all thoughts of home from his mind.

As it turned out, the country of Outo was overrun with oni at night.  Apparently one of the jobs available to people in the country of Outo was oni hunter, and the kid—eager, determined, willing to take the job most likely to return his beloved princess’s feather to her—signed up immediately.  Apparently oni hunters were required to work in pairs. 

It was satisfying, in a way, hunting down the oni with the kid—watching the kid make up for his visual impairment with expertly placed kicks, cycling through all of his old techniques as he effortlessly tore through the oni with his sword, hearing the enraged hisses of the oni as they fell one by one at his feet.

None of the oni proved too much of a challenge, but it still felt good to fight again…and yet.  The oni—the sight of them, the smell of them, the sound of them—their constant presence did not help Kurogane in his efforts to ban all thoughts of Nihon from his mind.

What did help, surprisingly enough, was that damn magician.  Somehow the bastard managed to become even more insufferable than he had been before.  He gave them all stupid nicknames—Big Puppy and Big Kitty for Kurogane and himself and Little Puppy and Little Kitty for the kid and the princess—and took to calling after Kurogane like he was some kind of dog (“Kuro-woof!”).  He shoved stupidly sweet food in Kurogane’s mouth and sat on his lazy ass in the house where they were living (well, OK, the magician was technically working, as he was running a lame café there, but it wasn’t hard work) while Kurogane and the kid went out and hunted oni.  Kurogane had to admit that the stupid man’s annoying antics were a good distraction from his thoughts of home.

Then that changed.

Kurogane and the magician were off to some stupid bar to gather information that may have been related to the princess’s feather.  (Kurogane had protested this arrangement quite loudly, but the magician insisted that it was best for more than one person to go, and the children were too young to go to a drinking establishment.)  Somehow Kurogane had failed to notice the oni when they arrived (and, damn him, the magician had), and these particular variants were stronger than the ones he had faced with the kid.  Still, between himself and the magician, two seasoned fighters, it shouldn’t have been a problem.

Except the magician didn’t fight.

The magician dodged, and he flitted about, and he took down a handful of oni with those darts he kept in the café, but he didn’t actually fight.  When a blast from one of the oni sent the slender man flying into a nearby wall, Kurogane felt more rage than he had felt in a good, long while.  It came as no surprise that the attack he subsequently unleased destroyed not only all of the remaining oni, but Kurogane’s sword as well.

In that moment, Kurogane wasn’t sure which enraged him more: the oni who attacked his companion, or his companion who did not value his own life enough to defend it.

In his anger, he confronted the man, looking him straight in the eyes: “The ones I hate most in the world are they guys who still have lives to live, but they don’t make any effort to live them!”  It was harsh, perhaps, but the whole incident had thrown Kurogane for a bit of a loop, and he didn’t regret what he’d said.

As Kurogane tried to temper his rage with alcohol at the bar, he tried his best not to think of the man next to him, nursing his injured ankle with ice provided by the bartender.  A woman took to the stage and started to sing some sappy love song.  It was kind of a nice song, Kurogane supposed, although its premise was stupid.

“That’s a pretty song,” the magician said, watching the singer with a small smile—a sad smile, but, Kurogane noted, a real smile.

Kurogane rolled his eyes.  “If she wants to go somewhere, she should just pick up and go!  Why depend on somebody else for it?”

“That’s what you would do, Kuro-tan,” the magician replied, facing him with a grin.  He then turned away, the smile slipping from his face.  “I was the guy who always waited,” he said softly, “for the one who would take me along.”

Kurogane knew, somehow, that it was the most honest thing the man had ever said to him.

Didn’t the magician understand how this was supposed to work?  The magician was supposed to call him stupid nicknames.  The magician was supposed to force him to eat gross sweet food and to tease him and to pawn all of his work on him and then complain that he was not doing it correctly or quickly enough.  The magician was not supposed to say things like that to him.

Perhaps the magician did understand how things were supposed to work, though, because that night, when he and Kurogane returned to their house, the magician went and got himself and the children filthy, stinking drunk.  As Kurogane chased the three of them around, he temporarily forgot the sight of the magician laying crumpled in the rubble of that wall.  He temporarily forgot the sad look in the man’s blue eyes as he listened to that song in the bar, temporarily forgot the feel of the slender man’s weight slung over his shoulder as he carried him home.  He temporarily forgot his encounter with this world’s Soma, temporarily forgot the kid asking him to become his teacher.  As Kurogane plopped two drunk children and one drunk man down in their beds, he temporarily forgot the confession the magician had made that night.  

***

Life began to settle into a sort of rhythm in Outo for Kurogane.  Each morning, he was treated to a breakfast from the magician (and it was impossible not to notice that, as days went by, the meals that the magician presented to him were increasingly to his liking).  During the day, he and the kid would train, and at night the two of them would fight oni.  Afterward, they would return to the café that doubled as their home, and the magician and princess would tend to any wounds either of them had sustained, and the children would then go up to bed while he and the magician shared a drink (and it was impossible not to notice that, as the nights went by, the alcohol that the magician presented to him was increasingly to his liking).  Kurogane could not deny that this life he was sharing with his traveling companions was not a bad one.

Except they weren’t just traveling companions at this point, were they?

The manju would sometimes crawl into bed with him at night, somehow sensing when the oni he and the kid had fought were morphing into oni from a different time and place, one long gone, in his mind’s eye, or when the reminders this world held of his home became overwhelming.

“Don’t be sad, Kurogane!  Mokona is here!” she’d chirp.

“I’m not sad,” Kurogane would grumble, or he would simply “tch” and roll over, but the manju would simply burrow in deeper, curling in closer to him, and Kurogane had to admit that her warmth, and her company, were not unwelcome.

The princess grew more lively and more cheerful, becoming less of a shell and more of a person.  Under the tutelage of the magician, she learned to bake and to serve the customers at the café, and her smiles grew more frequent and more bright as she became increasingly sure of herself.  It was sappy, and Kurogane hated sappy crap, but he couldn’t help but think of her namesake when he saw her: a delicate, precious flower slowly blossoming.

One evening, shortly before Kuroagen and the kid were to depart to fight oni, she approached him cautiously, some fabric clutched to her chest.  “Kurogane-san?” she began shyly.

“What is it, princess?”

“I, um, I have something for you,” she stuttered.  “Here,” she finished, handing him what she had been holding.

Kurogane slowly unfolded the fabric and found that he was holding the hakama he had purchased when they had first arrived in Outo.  He had purchased several since then, but this one had been his favorite (not that he had said as much to anyone, but he did wear it more than any of the others).  It had been badly torn during a recent battle with an oni, and Kurogane had tossed it aside that night, figuring it was damaged beyond repair.

“I mended it for you,” the princess said, a faint blush across her cheeks.  “Well, Fai-san helped me—I mean, he taught me, because, you know, I didn’t really know how to do it, so he showed me how, but, um, I still did most of it in the end.”  The princess smiled then, seemingly more sure of herself.  “Fai-san told me that if I made a wish for your safety while I was working on it, you would be protected while you were out hunting oni.”

As Kurogane held the repaired hakama, he felt something tighten in his chest.  “Thank you, princess,” he told her softly.  Kurogane then made the mistake of glancing over at the magician.  He was smiling—a real, genuine smile—and his blue eyes looked, well, they actually looked happy, and Kurogane’s chest felt even tighter.

Kurogane and the kid trained each day before hunting oni at night.  Kurogane had never taught anyone anything before, and he pushed the kid hard, but he never complained, never balked at anything Kurogane asked him to do, no matter how difficult or taxing.  The kid collected as many bruises from Kurogane’s training as he did from the oni fighting, but, regardless, he thanked Kurogane profusely after every lesson, praising his teaching skills.  Each day the kid asked Kurogane for harder tasks, insisting that he could do more, that he could do better.

It was impossible for Kurogane not to think of another kid, being trained by another man, who also insisted he could do more, that he could do better.  He tried not to lose himself in these thoughts, but sometimes it was impossible not to.

It was during one of these moments, when Kurogane and the kid were taking a break to eat a lunch that the magician had prepared, that the kid asked him, “Kurogane-san, who taught you how to fight?”

“A few people, really,” Kurogane responded without thinking, “but it was mostly my father.”  He’d said the words without really giving it any thought, which, he supposed, spoke to how comfortable he’d become with the kid, but quickly wished that he hadn’t.

“Oh, really?  Was he a ninja, too?” the kid asked enthusiastically, looking up at Kurogane expectantly, brown eyes big and still, in so many ways, childlike.

Kurogane didn’t say anything, feeling exposed, feeling angry. 

The kid picked up on his change in demeanor quickly.  “I-I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean…I didn’t mean…” he trailed off, looking almost frightened.

Kurogane sighed, placed a hand on the kid’s shoulder.  “You apologize too much, you know that?”  The kid smiled a bit at that, and Kurogane smiled a bit then, too.

Then there was the magician.  Despite his injured ankle, he hopped around each night, serving them dinner and then, when Kurogane and the kid returned from their oni hunting, bandaging their wounds along with the princess.  The man smiled constantly, but Kurogane couldn’t help but notice the flashes of pain that would sometimes cross his face when he thought no one was looking.

Kurogane shouldn’t have been bothered by the magician’s pain, by his injury.  It was his own damn fault that he’d gotten hurt, after all.  Still, it did bother him.

“Here,” he said to the magician after a couple of nights of this stupidity, handing him one of the walking sticks that the manju had used when she disguised herself as a child in the previous world.

The magician quirked an eyebrow.  “And what am I supposed to do with this, Kuro-rinta?”

Kurogane rolled his eyes.  “Use it as a cane, idiot.  That leg’s never gonna heal if you keep putting weight on it.  And that ankle should be wrapped tighter.”

Kurogane motioned for the magician to sit.  He rolled up his pantleg a bit and carefully undid the bandage around the man’s ankle and then gently rewrapped it, marveling for a moment at how pale the man’s skin was, how thin his leg was even with the swelling from the injury.

The magician watched him with surprise, seemingly taken aback by Kurogane’s act of kindness.  Kurogane felt some satisfaction in having thrown the other man off guard for a moment.  Then the man donned his trademark fake smile.  “Ah, Kuro-kyu is so gentle!  Perhaps you were really a healer in your home world and not a warrior.”

“Shut up,” Kurogane replied, but it lacked its usual animosity.

After the children went to bed each night, Kurogane and the magician would sit and drink for a while.  The idiot would still tease Kurogane, but mostly they would talk about the kid’s training, or who had come into the café that day, or they would theorize together about the increasingly odd behavior of the oni and how it might be connected to the princess’s feather.  Sometimes they simply sat in silence together, each sipping from his own bottle of alcohol or, occasionally, passing the same bottle back and forth.

“This world is like Kuro-rin’s world, right?” the magician said one night, looking out the window of the café at the cherry blossom trees, which were now shrouded in darkness.

“Yeah, sort of,” Kurogane replied, staring out at those same trees.  “We don’t have those things, though—what are they called again?  Those things on wheels.”

“Cars, I think they’re called,” the magician answered, taking a swig of his drink.  “Those things are so weird!”

“Yeah,” Kurogane agreed.

“You have the cherry blossom trees, though?” the magician asked.

“Yeah, we have those,” Kurogane answered.

“Those are pretty.  It’s pretty here,” the magician replied, continuing to stare at the trees outside the café.  The man’s light hair almost shone in the moonlight, and Kurogane again found himself marveling at how blue his eyes were, as he sometimes did.  Well, there was no reason to deny that the magician was pretty.

“What’s it like where you came from?” Kurogane began hesitantly, knowing that he was potentially wading into dangerous waters.

“Cold,” the magician replied, still staring out into the darkness.

Perhaps Kurogane had to be more specific.  “What are the people there like?”

The magician finally turned towards him, a blank expression on his face.  “What makes you think there are people there?” he asked, before rising and beginning to make his way towards the stairs that led to their bedrooms.

The magician would be a whole lot prettier if he wasn’t so damned closed off.  Kurogane sighed.

The magician was half-way up the stairs when he paused for a moment.  “Kuro-sama?”

“What?” Kurogane replied, slightly irritated.

“Sleep well,” the magician said simply, a small smile on his face, and then continued his way up the stairs.

Kurogane felt a familiar frustration setting in.  He wondered if he would ever know this man and found himself debating how he would interact with him the following night.

The following night all that was left of the magician was the ribbon he had worn tied around his neck. 

Fai

It seemed Fai simply could not escape the cold.

He should have anticipated that it would happen sooner or later, that he and Kurogane and the children and Mokona would land in a world that was similar to his world (no, worlds, a voice angrily reminded him).  In truth, the country of Jade, and the town of Spirit within it, weren’t even all that similar to Celes or Valeria.  The differences probably outweighed the likenesses.  Fai may have been able to ignore it all were it not for the cold and the snow.

Jade wasn’t as cold as Celes or Valeria, but it was cold nonetheless, and it had plenty of snow.  Fai tried to maintain his composure, tried to keep his mind fixed on his goal and his purpose, but it was a challenge. 

Fai passed a holly bush while strolling through the streets of Jade, and in a flash the red berries became blood, tarnishing the otherwise pristine white snow.  Fai felt slightly dizzy.

Fai walked between two quaint and charming buildings, and suddenly their walls were towering above him, growing higher and higher, up towards the sky.  Fai felt the scars on his hands and fingers tingle, phantom reminders of another place and another time.

Fai dreamt of the children who kept going missing from the town of Sprit, and their delicate nightclothes transformed into scratchy prisoners’ shifts, and their hair grew long and wild and so, so blond.  Fai woke feeling nauseous, the specter of a different lost child hovering over him.

Fai had to remain focused.  He had to fulfill his master’s mission, had to in order to fulfill his own mission.  Fai could not afford to fail.

The situation in Jade was particularly precarious, as Fei Wang had placed one of his minions (one of his creations, Fai though with a shudder), and this so-called doctor was a continuous reminder that Fai’s life did not belong to him, that it belonged to another until Fai had executed his role in helping that man realize his own wish.  Fai could not waver until that lost child returned to the world.

Fai smiled and played dumb regarding their duplicitous host and offered nuggets of helpful advice to Syaoran, and when his hands started to tremble ever so slightly as his mind wandered off into a different snow-filled world (worlds), Fai hid them in his pockets and later stumbled towards the fireplace in Kyle’s home, his body seeming to seek out the warmth offered there on its own accord.

Unfortunately, Kurogane was proving to be a bit of a problem.  The man was too damn perceptive.  When Fai felt himself beginning to drift away from his current surroundings, he would often sense the ninja’s presence on the periphery.  One night Kurogane even woke him from a nightmare, and Fai felt unnerved and exposed.  How was it that this man was able to see so many things that Fai had kept so well hidden for so long?

The more Kurogane saw, the more he gained an advantage over Fai, and Fai could not allow him to have the upper hand, so Fai smiled and lied and vowed to do a better job at keeping the witch’s pawn at a distance.     

***

The next country that Fai and his companions landed in, a place called Outo, proved to be a nice change of pace for the magician.  Gone were the snow and the cold and the constant haunting reminders of everything Fai had worked so hard to stow away in the furthest recesses of his mind.  Outo had a pleasant, temperate climate and friendly people and the most beautiful trees Fai had ever seen.  They were strewn with delicate blossoms and filled the air with a sweet scent.  Fai had never seen anything remotely like them before, and he immediately loved them.

Fai decided that he would have some fun in this world.  In speaking with the woman who worked at a place called “city hall,” which seemed to be some kind of central hub for Outo, Fai learned that visitors to Outo were allowed to select what they wanted to do for work, so he chose to open a café.  When the woman asked for his name, as well as Kurogane’s, Syaoran’s, and Sakura’s, so that she could register them in city hall, he had an excellent idea.

Fai thought it was quite cute and clever, really, dubbing himself and Kurogane “Big Kitty” and “Big Puppy” and the children “Little Puppy” and “Little Kitty.”  Kurogane reacted as expected, ranting and raging and stomping through the café.  The interactions were all quite entertaining.

“Big Puppy, be a good doggy and bring me some flour.”

“Get your own damn flour, you lazy bastard!”

“Kuro-woof, clean off that table over there so it will be ready for our next customers.”

“Get off your ass and clean it yourself!”

“Big Puppy, go and greet our customers with a smile, won’t you?”

“Quit ordering me around like some dog!”

It all made Kurogane quite grumpy, almost endearingly so.  (Fai quite liked the way his eyebrows would twitch when he started to become irritable.)  It also had the desired effect of keeping the ninja distracted and at a distance.  When Kurogane was preoccupied with being annoyed with Fai, he wasn’t taking the time to notice things that Fai preferred to keep hidden.

While Kurogane and Syaoran hunted oni, Fai tended to his café with Sakura and Mokona as his helpers.  Now that the princess had recovered several of her feathers, her personality was beginning to emerge.  She was kind and sweet and earnest.  The knowledge of what she really was proved a weight so heavy that Fai feared it may crush him.

She’s doomed, he reminded himself over and over again.  Just like you’re doomed and Syaoran’s doomed.  He had to remember his mission.  He had to remember his goal.  Still….

Even if Sakura was doomed, even if they were all doomed, that didn’t mean that Fai couldn’t try to bring a little happiness into the lives of these children in the time they had together until his master inevitably swooped in with his cruel hand to bring this journey to an end.  Surely there was no harm in that.

In this country of cherry blossom trees, Fai taught Sakura how to bake, and he showed her the proper way to greet their customers, and he whistled a chipper song as they cleaned the café together between the afternoon and evening meals, and he trained her on how to mend clothing, and Fai found himself growing closer to this girl, this doomed girl, every day.

“Fai-san, you’re so talented!” Sakura exclaimed as she watched with eager eyes as he sewed her dress where she had torn it when she fell rushing to wait on their customers.

“This is just basic sewing,” Fai replied.  “It’s really quite simple.  I can show you how to do it if you’d like.”

“Oh, would you?”

“Of course!  Tomorrow morning, I’ll teach you how to bake my favorite pastry.  I think Syaoran-kun will really like it.  Kuro-pon probably won’t, but I’ll make sure that he eats some anyway,” Fai told her with a wink.

It was impossible to miss the soft pink blush that covered Sakura’s cheeks at the mention of Syaoran.  You cannot wish for happiness for those two, he had to tell himself.  That is a wish that can never come true.

“Did your mother teach you how to do all of these things, Fai-san?” Sakura asked, her big green eyes looking at him curiously, expectantly.

Fai did not miss a beat, his hands continuing to weave the threaded needle through the fabric.  “Ah, no, she was never very good at these things,” Fai replied, his expression smooth, his smile undisturbed.  “That’s why I had to learn to do them so well.”

Sakura smiled, nodded, her eyes never leaving Fai’s hands as she watched him sew.  She, at least, never saw through all his lies, all his falsehoods.

Kurogane was a different story.

It’s not that Fai had been looking to die, that night when he and Kurogane were attacked by oni on their way to the bar, but, well, he didn’t have any real weapons, just those darts from the café, and using magic was out of the question, so he had no choice, really, but to simply dodge and dart about, and if the oni’s attack did hit him, and if it did result in his death, then, well, that would have hardly been the worst thing in the world.

A quick end to it all—the grief, the shame, the curses, the weight of what he had done and what he may be called upon to do in the near future—would have been a gift for Fai.

It was a gift he did not deserve, however, and Kurogane vanquished the oni with one fell sweep of his sword in an attack that was, Fai had to admit, quite impressive.

He sensed immediately that his leg had been badly injured, but he smiled and clapped and praised Kurogane for a job well done, quickly burying his disappointment in having lost his chance for an escape.

Somehow, Kurogane didn’t believe any of it.  Somehow, Kurogane seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.

“The ones I hate most in the world are the guys who still have lives to live, but they don’t make any effort to live them!” Kurogane finished while his red eyes bore into Fai, his mouth a grim line.

“Then my type if the type you hate most,” Fai replied with a smile.  There was no point in trying to deny it.  Kurogane would see the lie for what it was.  He always did.

It wasn’t fair.  Why did Kurogane always have to strip him bare, to peel away all of those outer layers and expose what was underneath?

Why did Kurogane’s words have to hurt?

Why did everything have to hurt?

Why couldn’t it all just end?

Fai couldn’t seem to escape these thoughts, and perhaps that was what led him to utter those words in the bar, to vocalize that admission that he would normally have kept hidden.

“I was a guy that always waited…for the one who would take me along.”  

***

Outo was like a dream.  Each day, Fai and Sakura manned the café while Kurogane and Syaoran trained.  Each evening, Fai taught Sakura new skills while Kurogane and Syaoran fought oni.  Each night, Fai and Kurogane would drink together while the children slept upstairs.

Is this what it feels like to have a family? Fai would wonder.  Is this what it feels like to be content?

A family…contentment…those things were just dreams.  How could they ever be anything more than that?  They were dreams that Fai had never allowed himself to have.  Certainly, there were times when Fai would fantasize about these things, back in Celes, and back before that, even, in a place far too cursed to allow for any dreams to be cultivated, but he would always bury those desires beneath the weight of what he had done and what he must do in the future.

A person whose mere existence had brought about the deaths of untold numbers of people did not deserve a family.  A person whose selfishness and weakness led to the end of his own twin did not deserve a family.  A person who secretly served the man who was manipulating the lives of his companions in terrible ways did not deserve a family.

A person whose birth had doomed a nation did not deserve contentment.  A person who could not bring himself to erase a sovereign who had murdered his own subjects did not deserve contentment.  A person who lied to his companions day after day did not deserve contentment.

Fai had to constantly remind himself, in this dream world, that he did not deserve to have dreams.

Fai continued to watch Kurogane with a close eye, remaining wary of the fact that this man was his potential enemy.  Fai still knew very little of the man, in truth, although he had learned that, in many ways, Outo was similar to the world he came from.  Fai wondered what it would be like to grow up in a world that wasn’t cold all the time, a world that was home to these beautiful flowering trees.

Fai wondered about a lot of things regarding Kurogane.  “The witch’s pawn,” Fei Wang had called him…yet, unlike Fai, Kurogane seemed to be completely unaware of the truth about the children with whom they traveled, the truth about their journey. 

How had Yuko or Fei Wang intervened in Kurogane’s life…or had they?  What had happened in Kurogane’s life before this journey?  Kurogane was a seasoned, dangerous killer; that much was clear.  Kurogane was skilled, and he was driven, and he was angry.  When a person walks a path of violence and rage, there is a reason for it.  What, Fai often wondered, had made Kurogane so angry?

Yet there was more to Kurogane than his anger, his gruffness.  When he tended to Fai’s injured ankle one night several days after the oni attack, Fai was taken aback by how gentle his touch was.  Then there was his training with Syaoran.  Kurogane was a tough teacher, and he worked the boy hard.  Yet Fai watched as he grew into a caring mentor for the boy.

“Syaoran-kun’s training seems to be coming along quite well, Kuro-rin,” Fai remarked one night after the children had gone to bed.  He and Kurogane had taken to drinking together after Syaoran and Sakura were asleep.  Fai was still getting used to Outo’s liquor, which was so unlike what he had drank in Celes.  It was not really to his liking, but, well, alcohol was alcohol, to some extent, anyway, and Kurogane seemed to really like it.  Fai had recently learned which spirit was Kurogane’s favorite, and he had made a point of picking some up in town earlier that day and sharing it with the ninja that night.

Kurogane grunted.  “Kid’s still got a long way to go.”

“Mmm, perhaps, but he seems to be improving, at least from what I can tell,” Fai replied.

Kurogane didn’t respond, simply stared out into the darkness, out at the country that was, from what Fai understood, similar to his own.  Fai found himself wondering again about Kurogane’s home, his past, his life.

“You must be a good teacher,” Fai stated, and, for once, he was not teasing but sincere, and he was certain that Kurogane knew it. 

Kurogane didn’t say anything, just continued to stare out into the darkness, and Fai made no move to interrupt.  Finally, the ninja stood and made his way towards the stairs.

“Oi,” Kurogane said suddenly before beginning the climb to the second floor.  “Why did you buy this particular liquor?”

Fai shrugged and smiled.  “Because I know that you like it.”

Outo was like a dream, a dream Fai did not deserve, and Fai knew that something would ultimately bring the dream to an end.  As it turned out, it was not something but, rather, someone.

Fai knew immediately that the man, Seishiro, was dangerous, that he possessed strong magic and that he was a skilled fighter…but Fai’s magic was far stronger.

Yet…

…If Fai used his magic, Ashura could trace his whereabouts, could come to this world—this dream world of cherry blossoms where Sakura had begun to smile and laugh and worked alongside Fai, eagerly learning everything he was more than happy to teach her.

If Fai used his magic, Ashura could come to this world where Syaoran trained and fought and made a dear friend and grew in both his skills and his confidence, his resolve to protect his dear princess hardening further everyday.

If Fai used his magic, Ashura could come to this world where Fai and Kurogane spent quiet evenings together passing a bottle of alcohol back and forth, this world that reminded Kurogane so much of his own.

If Fai used his magic, Ashura could come to this world where Fai learned what it meant to have a family, what it meant to be content.

In the end, there was really no question of what Fai should do, so he trusted in Kurogane to defeat this man and to take care of Syaoran, Sakura, and Mokona, and he braced himself for the incoming blow.

Chapter Text

Fai

Outo, it turned out, was a dream…well, not a dream, exactly, but some kind of “game” world…or “virtual” world…or something.  Fai didn’t really understand it.  It wasn’t magic that had created the world, although the magic from one of Sakura’s feathers did end up playing a role, but something else with which Fai had no familiarity.  Well, it was only to be expected that he would encounter things strange and unusual while traveling through worlds. 

Whatever the case, Outo hadn’t been real.  It never could have been real.

After a brief stop in a strange world that didn’t seem to have people, Fai and Kurogane landed at a beautiful, powerful shrine…and landed there alone.  Syaoran, Sakura, and Mokona were nowhere to be found, although they must have been close by, as he and Kurogane were able to speak with each other without issue, so Fai did not worry too much. 

The place, which, Fai learned, was another world that shared many similarities with Kurogane’s own, was lovely (well, aside from the testy shrine-dwellers, who were quite displeased with having surprise visitors, but Kurogane dealt with them swiftly enough), with clean, pure air and a subtle benevolent magic wafting through the atmosphere that Fai sensed protected the shrine and its people, although from what he was uncertain.  They were met with a kind and gracious host who offered them lodging and some of the best liquor Fai had ever consumed.  Fai would have quite liked this world, except…

He supposed it had to happen at some point, that he would land in a world with its own version of Ashura, much as he hoped it never would.  He knew that his Ashura was not there, as he could not sense the man’s magic, and he would have sensed it, just as Ashura would sense his.

I know your magic.  It is true, Fai!  You could be wandering lost on some far-off world...and I could come for you.

No, Fai’s Ashura was not in this world, but Fai was displeased by how unnerved just hearing the man’s name made him.  No matter how far he ran, he would likely never be able to escape Ashura.  He would never be able to escape his past. 

He tried to block all thoughts of his king from his head and to enjoy the alcohol and the setting, and he hoped that Kurogane hadn’t noticed the effect that the utterance of Ashura’s name had on him.

Kurogane had noticed, of course.  Kurogane always noticed.

As Fai pondered how to deal with the problem of there potentially being another Ashura in this world, along with the ever-persistent problem of Kurogane and his uncanny ability to intuit things about Fai he had no business knowing, the sky opened up, and everything changed. 

***

Fai knew something was wrong immediately.  Fai sensed Mokona’s magic at work when he and Kurogane were swept up into the sky, but the small creature and the children were not there.  The world transfer felt different from what he had become accustomed to somehow—not a sharp or glaring difference, but something was definitely not the same.  As he tried to assess the situation and gather his bearings, the transfer abruptly ended, and he and Kurogane were deposited in a field.

Kurogane appeared just as disoriented as Fai felt and was grumbling and began speaking in an irritated voice, and Fai realized he had no idea what the man was saying.  Mokona was clearly very far away.

Something else was off kilter as well, and it didn’t take long for Fai to discern what it was.  Fei Wang Reed, the man who, unbeknownst to any of the travelers save for Fai, had orchestrated this journey, had, of course, been using his magic to track Fai and his companions.  Fai could sense the man’s power faintly, following them, watching them as they traveled throughout worlds.

Fai did not know where he and Kurogane had landed, but he quickly detected the lack of Fei Wang’s influence.  Wherever he and Kurogane were, it was a place his master could not reach.

Kurogane, having failed to attract Fai’s attention while the magician was pondering their current situation, grabbed Fai’s arm roughly and continued speaking to him in his language, clearly irritated by Fai’s lack of verbal response. 

Fai smiled at him.  “I don’t understand you,” he told Kurogane in his own language. 

Kurogane’s eyes went wide as he realized what was happening, and he roughly tossed Fai’s arm aside and ran his fingers through his spiky black hair in exasperation.  He continued to mutter what Fai assumed to be curses in his own language. 

Both Kurogane and Fai whipped around at the sound of noise behind them to see a group of men approaching.  Kurogane’s left hand immediately went to the hilt of the sword he had obtained in Outo (Souhi, it was called) and somehow managed to keep with him when they left that world, while his right hand grabbed Fai roughly and pulled him close to him.

Witnessing Kurogane’s actions, the men grabbed their own weapons and began to assume fighting stances, speaking loudly in a language Fai could not understand. 

Kurogane, it seemed, could understand it, however, at least to some extent, as he began speaking back to the men.  The conversation became heated, everyone’s voices rising, until Kurogane took his hands off of Souhi, and off of Fai, and raised them in a type of mock surrender. 

That seemed to calm the men somewhat, but tensions remained high, and Fai quickly realized why: the men were all staring at him.

It wasn’t surprising, Fai supposed, when he looked at the men.  They were all fairly large men with dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair.  They faintly resembled Kurogane, apart from the fact that Kurogane was even larger than they were, and Kurogane’s eyes were red, whereas all of these men had black eyes.  The pale, thin man with blue eyes who wasn’t saying a word must have been a strange sight indeed. 

Kurogane was clearly speaking about Fai at this point, and Fai wished desperately to know what he was telling the men.  Fai continued to say nothing, smiling vapidly at the men and allowing Kurogane to do all of the talking.

Eventually the conversation ceased, and the men turned and began to walk away.  Kurogane began to follow and grabbed Fai’s arm to ensure he did the same.  Kurogane kept a small distance behind himself and the men, and after they had been walking for a while, he spun Fai around so that he was facing him.  Kurogane then grabbed Fai’s face roughly with one hand, pointed towards Fai’s mouth with his other hand, and shook his head back and forth.

Fai immediately understood the message Kurogane was attempting to convey to him.  Don’t speak.  

While he and Kurogane continued their march behind the men of this world, Fai continued to evaluate the current situation.  Someone had clearly interfered in the journey.  Fai and Kurogane (though Kurogane clearly didn’t know it) had a very specific role to play in all of this, and it was to protect Sakura (and, Fai supposed, Syaoran), to keep the princess alive and whole until all of her feathers were returned to her and she was delivered safely to Fai’s master.  Fei Wang Reed would never have separated the magician and the ninja from the children.  If Sakura was lost, everything would be over for Fei Wang…and for Fai.

Someone had clearly intervened.  As Fai pondered this possibility, he became increasingly sure that there was only one person with both the power and the motivation to do so: Yuko Ichihara, the Time Space Witch.  Yuko must have somehow altered the course of the journey through Mokona, although why she would want to do so was not clear to Fai, as, it seemed to him, scattering the group in different directions was to no one’s benefit.  Was it simply to throw Fei Wang off course, to undermine the man?  Fai did know one thing: Yuko was his master’s enemy…and Kurogane was her pawn.

Eventually, the group arrived at what Fai recognized as some sort of war camp.  Tents of various sizes were pitched throughout the area, and men (soldiers, Fai now knew) went about various tasks.  Fai could hear men training and sparring somewhere behind them, and up ahead he glimpsed a castle. 

As they walked through the camp, the soldiers stopped and stared as they passed, staring, Fai knew, at him.  Fai tried his best to remain aloof and calm, but this proved increasingly difficult as he listened to the conversations taking place around them.  He could not understand what was being said, but from time to time he continued to recognize the same word: Ashura.

It seemed like this world had some sort of connection to the one from which he and Kurogane had come.  Was it really possible that there was some version of his king in this world?  None of these men looked at all like Ashura, or like anyone from Celes.  Then again, Fai did not know if Ashura was even originally from Celes; Fai was fairly certain that Ashura had been alive for centuries, and he did not know if he had been born in that icy world.

The procession came to an end, and Fai and Kurogane were presented to a man whom Fai assumed was some kind of commander in the army.  Words were exchanged, words Fai did not understand, and, to Fai’s surprise, Kurogane and the commander both drew their swords.

The sparring match ended quickly and decisively.  Fai knew enough of combat to recognize that the commander was quite skilled with his weapon, but Kurogane made quick work of him nonetheless.  He matched each of the man’s blows effortlessly and then swiftly disarmed him, threw him to the ground, and pinned him there.  It was almost comical.

The spectacle made Fai uneasy.  It provided more confirmation for what Fai had already come to know: Kurogane wasn’t just a talented swordsman; he was truly exceptional, a rarity, perhaps even some kind of anomaly.  Well, Fai supposed there must have been a reason that both Fei Wang and Yuko had taken an interest in him.

The men in the camp stood with mouths agape, clearly shocked that this stranger had taken down (Fai assumed, anyway) one of their better fighters.  The commander smiled and clapped Kurogane on the back and then began to speak in a serious tone, clearly explaining something.  As he did so, the look on Kurogane’s face grew increasingly incredulous, as if he could not believe what he was being told. 

The men then turned their attention towards Fai and began speaking again.  Kurogane did not seem to like what they were saying and began arguing with them, but ultimately he seemed to lose whatever fight he was having and grumbled angrily under his breath while shaking his head.  With that, the group began walking again, and Kurogane grabbed Fai’s arm and pulled him along. 

They arrived at some sort of barracks tent with a number of bunks lined up somewhat haphazardly.  Most were empty, but several had men whom Fai assumed were injured lying in them.  Kurogane led Fai to one of the beds and roughly plopped him down on it.  He and the commander began speaking again, and it was clear that Kurogane was still very unhappy with whatever arrangement they had worked out, but, ultimately, he gave up whatever fight he was having with the other man.  One of the other men in the group sat in the bunk across from Fai, looking bored and disinterested.  Then all of the other men left, Kurogane with them.

Kurogane’s departure troubled Fai.  It wasn’t that he felt he needed the other man for protection, necessarily.  Fai himself was a more than competent fighter, even without magic, and with magic…well, suffice to say he could be downright destructive.  Fai knew something was off about this world, and something, somehow, felt slightly off about his magic as well, although he could still sense the reservoir of power deep inside himself, still intact, still potent.  This world was sufficiently cut off from others that Fei Wang’s magic could not reach it, however, and Fai found himself wondering if Ashura would be able to trace him if he used magic here.

No, being without Kurogane made Fai anxious because the ninja was his only source of connection in this world where he was so clearly a foreigner (and, potentially, a target as a result), where he could understand not a single word spoken, where he had no means of communicating.  This was a dangerous situation for anyone, skilled fighter or not.

(Perhaps there was something else, too, although Fai had no real desire to entertain the notion….Still, perhaps Kurogane’s absence was upsetting because Fai had grown used to the man, had grown comfortable with him.  This was not a wise road to go down…)

As Fai further pondered his situation, three of the men of this world entered the tent.  The man in front, perhaps the group’s leader of sorts, began speaking to the man across from Fai.  Fai recognized the looks on the faces of the two other men—lecherous, hungry, greedy—and immediately surmised that he had found himself in a bad situation. 

The first man finished speaking, and the man who had been left behind with Fai shrugged his shoulders and turned his face away so he was no longer looking at Fai and the others.  At this point the three men made their move.

It was an understandable mistake on their part—Fai was thin, almost to the point of looking frail, and they were not, and there were three of them—and it was a mistake people tended to make often with Fai.  Unfortunately for them, Fai had been alive for a long time, and he had a lot of experience fighting people—not fighting the way Kurogane fought, or the way these men fought, but lithely dodging and flitting about and disorienting people until one well-timed move had his opponents flat on their backs. 

It ended quickly, and it seemed to take a while for the men to even register what had happened.  One man clutched at a wrist that had snapped with a sickening crack when he tried to break his fall, and another struggled to stand on an ankle that was twisted at an unnatural angle.  The worst injuries, though, Fai knew, were to the men’s egos, and it was hard not to feel a sense of satisfactions as they fought to scamper out of the tent as quickly as possible.

The man across from Fai gaped at him, slightly open-mouthed.  Fai grinned at him in return.

It was hard to determine how much time passed before Kurogane and the others returned—an hour, perhaps?  Fai heard them before he saw them.  He recognized Kurogane’s voice quickly over the others; the man was yelling and, although Fai did not know what he was saying, it was clear that he was furious.  Fai suspected that word of what had happened between himself and the three men earlier had reached Kurogane’s group.

Kurogane stormed into the tent, followed by the officer with whom he had sparred and several other men.  Fai noticed that he was now dressed in the same attire as the men of this world, and he panicked for a moment when he saw blood on his clothing, but the ninja did not seem injured, and the other men also wore clothing stained with blood, so Fai was able to quickly surmise that they had come from some type of battle.  Kurogane grabbed the man sitting across from Fai roughly and threw him to the ground and then, for good measure, punched him with what Fai thought was perhaps an excessive amount of force.

Kurogane then approached Fai, and for a moment Fai thought the ninja might hit him, too, but when he touched Fai it was not with force or anger but gently, a soft hand on his back, and, though Kurogane could not speak to Fai, could not use words to gather the information he was seeking, the look in his eyes—so worried—communicated well enough.

Are you OK?

Fai did his best to smile, to attempt to reassure Kurogane that he was fine, and it was not a lie, not exactly.  The attempted attack had certainly unnerved him, but Fai had delt with it easily enough, and he never felt he was in any real danger, never felt any true fear.

What left Fai feeling off kilter was not the encounter with those men, but Kurogane’s reaction to it.  The soft touch to his back, the look of concern in Kurogane’s eyes—these things did far more to disorient Fai than any attempt to take advantage of him.  When had anyone last cared about Fai?

Kurogane, still seething, exchanged some heated words with the commander, who seemed to then give in to some type of demand the ninja was making of him.  Kurogane subtly nudged Fai into standing and then indicated that they should follow the commander.  They walked for a ways outside, while the soldiers they passed whispered and stared, and Fai wondered how many of them knew of what had transpired in the barracks. 

The stopped in front of a small tent, one that only appeared large enough to accommodate a couple of people, and the commander offered a parting comment that seemed like it might be an apology and then left.  Fai was about to enter the tent, suddenly feeling quite tired, but Kurogane grabbed his arm before he could do so.  The ninja then pointed to the sky.

***

The following morning Kurogane led Fai to what was clearly the army’s training grounds.  Fai could see men sparring with each other, engaging in calisthenics, and honing blades.  Kurogane led Fai to a rack of practice swords, handed him a weapon, and then assumed a fighting stance with a practice sword of his own, clearly indicating to the magician that he intended to engage in a practice fight with him.

Fai smiled, shook his head “no,” and returned the sword to the rack.  Kurogane grumbled angrily and retrieved the weapon and roughly shoved it back into Fai’s hands.  Fai again returned the weapon and pointed towards a field a short ways in the distance where men were practicing archery and began walking towards it.  Kurogane followed.

Fai’s arrival certainly caught the attention of all of the soldiers at the archery field.  Some appeared angry and hostile, while others clearly could not decide what to make of him.  Fai picked up a discarded longbow and several arrows that were on the ground and proceeded to hit a perfect bullseye on the target furthest away.

He then proceeded to do the same thing three more times.

It would be a lie to say that Fai did not feel deeply gratified by the sight of the completely flabbergasted look on Kurogane’s face.  Fai grinned at him.

Shortly after Fai reached adulthood in Celes, the country had gone to war with a neighboring land.  Ashura was the type of leader who accompanied his men into battle, and one night he had returned to the castle with a rather serious wound, and it had frightened Fai more than anything had frightened him in quite some time.  As Fai sat at his injured king’s bedside, he begged Ashura to allow him to accompany him into battle, arguing that his magic was likely stronger than anyone else’s in Celes, so surely he would be an asset to Ashura’s army.

Ashura did not like this idea, but Fai persisted, and after quite a bit of arguing Ashura finally agreed to Fai's proposition.  He informed the magician that everyone in Celes’s army, regardless of how strong his magic may be, was required to learn to also fight with a conventional weapon, lest the army find itself fighting under circumstances in which magic was rendered unusable.

Fai reported to the training grounds the following day.  After trialing a number of weapons, he decided that the longbow suited him best.  Eager to be of help to his king and his adopted country, Fai practiced…and practiced…and practiced.  Once he became adept at hitting the targets at the training grounds, Fai began using his magic to bewitch them so that they moved in various ways, making them more and more difficult to strike as he became more and more skilled.

Fai became very, very good at fighting with a longbow. 

All of the archers gathered were staring at Fai, clearly surprised at his skill.  Kurogane was turning increasingly red, and eventually he stomped off of the field back to the practice grounds where he and Fai had been previously, and Fai followed.  The ninja spent the rest of the day either engaging in solo drills with Souhi or sparring with other soldiers, all of whom he defeated easily, while Fai watched.  He would periodically throw Fai a dirty look, clearly irritated that he wasn’t also training, and Fai would just smile in return.

Fai’s attention wasn’t solely on Kurogane, however.  He also spent the day watching the other soldiers, and listening to them as well.  Although he could not understand what they were saying, once in a while, he heard a word he did recognize.

Ashura.

Apparently, this world had a version of his sovereign as well.  Fai did his best to maintain his composure while continuing to brace himself for the possibility of coming face to face with someone in the exact likeness of his king.

That evening, as the sun was setting, everyone, Fai included, changed into the attire and armor Kurogane and the other soldiers had been wearing the previous night, and Fai was given a longbow and a quiver of arrows.  Fai lined up with the rest of the army, standing beside Kurogane, and waited to go off to battle.

“Yasha,” Kurogane said to him suddenly, pointing towards a long-haired man in the distance who sat atop a strange beast, some sort of cross between a horse and a lizard, and was surrounded by men who were clearly the army’s generals.  Fai surmised that this man was the leader of the army, the man for whom they were about to go to battle.

The entire army was clearly assembled, but for some reason no one made any move to depart the camp to march to battle, and Fai became increasingly confused as to why they weren’t doing anything, why they weren’t going anywhere.  Suddenly, Kurogane grabbed his arm and pointed towards an object in the sky.  As soon as he did so, Fai felt an overwhelming rush of magic and found himself transported somewhere entirely different.

Fai spent the next roughly hour fighting in Yasha’s army against an opposing army on the surface of the object to which Kurogane had pointed before the strange power had whisked everyone away.  He learned three crucial things.

The first was that Yasha, the leader of their army, was dead.  At one point during the battle Fai was close enough to the man (who never spoke, Fai noted) to sense it.  Yasha was not a living, breathing man but a man whose body was simply being maintained by some sort of magical force.  It felt vaguely familiar somehow, this magic, but Fai could not place it.

The second was that the Ashura of this world was not only not his Ashura but also not even another version of his Ashura; the person did not share the same soul as his king.  This world’s Ashura was, however, the leader of the opposing army.

The third was that Kurogane would not, or perhaps could not, kill anyone.

The man clearly enjoyed the battle, which did not surprise Fai, and he certainly was a sight to behold that night.  This, Fai could see, was Kurogane in his element.  Fai had seen him fight before here and there, but never like this.  All of the man’s maneuvers were perfectly executed, and he moved in a way that was, frankly, beautiful despite the otherwise savage circumstances.  Kurogane clearly relished all of it.  A wide grin, almost feral in nature, was ever present on his face.  Fai found himself slightly ashamed for feeling so cocky about his earlier display with the longbow in the practice fields.

As much as Kurogane appeared to derive pleasure from the bestial exploits of battle, Fai quickly picked up on the fact that he never killed an opposing soldier despite being in a position to do so more times than Fai could have counted.  Kurogane was shrewd, certainly, in that he would wound his enemies in ways that were debilitating, incapacitating, rendering them completely useless and unable to fight, and he was skilled enough to do this quickly and efficiently, but he never delt a mortal blow.  This was certainly a crucial bit of information, Fai decided, and something he would need to ponder further once the battle was over.  To make things more fun and interesting, he decided that he, too, would only deliver non-fatal injuries to the opposing soldiers.

While Fai more than held his own in combat that night, not knowing the language of this land left him at a distinct disadvantage.  Kurogane, and occasionally other soldiers in the army, were constantly yelling what he assumed were warnings and instructions at him, but he couldn’t understand what they were.  Fai was skilled enough that he could dodge the oncoming threats, but there were more close calls than he would have liked.  Kurogane remained nearly glued to his side the entire night, and the fact that, Fai admitted, this was necessary grated on Fai’s nerves.

Suddenly, the strange magic returned and Fai found himself transported back to the camp along with Kurogane and the other soldiers.  He returned to the tent he shared with Kurogane and was so disoriented and exhausted that he collapsed onto his sleeping mat without even changing out of his battle attire.   

Fai was woken the following morning when Kurogane roughly pulled him out of bed.  He threw Fai a fresh set of clothing and a wet cloth and waited impatiently while Fai readied himself and then heaved him to his feet and literally dragged him to the sparring fields.

Fai began to head towards the archery field, figuring that Kurogane wished for him to practice, but Kurogane grabbed his arm and pulled him towards a far end of the field where they were away from all of the other soldiers.  Kurogane then spent the entire day teaching Fai the various directions, commands, and exclamations he would need to know to survive the upcoming battles on that strange moon.

By the time evening was approaching, Kurogane, through a combination of words, gestures, and movements, had taught Fai “left” and “right,” “up” and “down,” “above” and  “below,” “forward” and “backward.”  Fai learned “duck,” “advance,” and “retreat.”  He ended the day far better equipped to face Ashura’s army.

Kurogane proved a surprisingly clever and persistent teacher.  Fai had already discerned long before then that Kurogane was more intelligent than the magician had initially assumed, but the ninja’s ability to impart all of this information to Fai despite their lack of a shared language proved to Fai further that there was much more to Kurogane than what was visible on the surface.

The lessons required a degree of physical intimacy with Kurogane that Fai had not experienced before.  The ninja was constantly touching Fai, positioning him in various ways, and Fai discovered the feel of his hands, the warmth of his breath, his scent.  Fai willed his mind elsewhere, afraid of what would come of becoming too familiar with these sensations.   

Fai knew the importance of this lesson, and he was grateful for Kurogane’s tutelage.  He could not communicate his thanks to the ninja in words, so he lightly touched his arm and looked up at him and smiled—a real, genuine smile.  Kurogane was clearly taken aback but quickly regained his composure, tsked, and turned away.  Fai laughed.

From that night onward, Fai and Kurogane fought side by side as partners on that magical moon, Fai dealing with distant enemies and Kurogane taking care of those who were in close range.  Fai learned all of the ninja’s movements inside and out, and sometimes it almost felt like Kurogane was an extension of himself.  This way of fighting was entirely new to Fai, and there was, if he were to be honest, something exhilarating about it.   

It was impossible not to wonder what had become of the children and Mokona, as the days in Yama turned into weeks.  Despite his best efforts not to, Fai had become attached to them, had grown to care for them—brave and determined Syaoran, sweet and gentle Sakura, and chipper Mokona, always looking to spread cheer.  Fai was surprised to discover just how badly he wanted to see them again, and this scared him.  How would he manage when this journey reached its inevitable doomed conclusion?

The fact that, for the first time since he arrived at the Time Space Witch’s shop, Fai had to confront the possibility that the journey might not reach its predetermined conclusion scared him even more.  If Fai’s master’s wish was not grated, then Fai’s wish would not be granted.  The prospect of never having the opportunity to atone for his sins was almost too painful to bear.  If Fai could not right that wrong, then his continued existence was little more than yet another evil he had committed.

These fears constantly roiled Fai’s thoughts, and the nightmares came often, dreams of a pit, of a tower, of mountains of corpses, of a small, shattered body with blank blue eyes.  Each day in Yama, Fai meandered through a miasma of words he could not understand and customs completely foreign to him, a strange, pale man unable to speak, who was mistrusted by everyone around him.  It took its toll.

Kurogane noticed. 

When Fai struggled to use those stupid sticks to eat his food, Kurogane worked with him until he became proficient in their application.  (The moment the ninja noticed the scars on Fai’s hands as he used his own to correct Fai’s movements left Fai feeling so exposed that he thought he may be sick.)  Kurogane grumbled at Fai’s ineptitude the entire time, but he didn’t cease until Fai mastered the technique.

When Fai began to lose weight because he could hardly stomach the food served up in the camp, Kurogane brough him sweets and breads and plain, palatable rice and all but forced them into his mouth.

When Fai woke from a nightmare with a scream muffled into his pillow, Kurogane was there rubbing his back, his eyes filled with concern that Fai did not deserve.

Kurogane rarely let Fai out of his sight, sticking close to him and glaring at anyone who so much as looked at the magician.  Fai knew that the ninja had not forgotten the events of their first night in Yama, and he knew, too, that there were others who, given the opportunity, would attempt to succeed where those three men had failed.  Kurogane stayed within arm’s length of Fai whenever they entered the baths, tossing a scowl at anyone who even glanced in Fai’s direction.

Men in the baths often did stare at Fai, but many stared at Kurogane, too, and on the occasions when Fai would chance a look at the ninja he could understand why.  Kurogane was all taught, tanned, sculpted muscle (and so well-endowed…well, it was simply impossible not to notice such a thing), and Fai would periodically wonder what it would be like to be physically intimate with such a man (when was the last time he had been physically intimate with anyone?) before quashing such thoughts as childish and indulgent.  Fai could not afford to be childish and indulgent.

Fai had misjudged Kurogane’s intelligence, but there were other things about the man he had gotten wrong as well.  Kurogane was gruff and grumpy and quick to anger, but he was other things, too.

Above all else, Fai was beginning to find, Kurogane was kind.

***

A couple of months into their stay in Yama, Fai and Kurogane were both promoted to generals in Yasha’s army.  Individually, each was more skilled than any of the other soldiers in the army.  As a team (and they always fought as a team), they tore through Ashura’s army, all but untouchable by the opposing fighters.  They were given an increase in wages, one of those strange lizard horses to share, and a room in Yasha’s castle and access to the building’s baths and kitchens.

Within the confines of their room in the castle, surrounded by solid stone walls and away from the ears of the throngs of soldiers swarming the camps, Fai used his voice for the first time in months.  Fai initially found it hoarse from lack of use, but it recovered quickly enough, and it was nice to be able to speak again, even if Kurogane couldn’t understand a word of what he said. 

No, perhaps because Kurogane couldn’t understand a word of what he said, Fai found himself speaking freely, spilling secrets he had kept hidden for so, so long, suddenly able to utter painful truths that he had never allowed to surface.

I am responsible for the death of my own brother.

I have been lying to you, to everyone, this entire time.

I have been alive for over a century.

I wish I could be brave and kind and strong and honest the way you are.

The children we’ve been traveling with are images created by my master.

I am a twin.

Untold numbers of people have died because of me.  An entire world was destroyed because of me.

The name I use is not my own.

I am supposed to kill you if you get in the way of my master’s plans.

I am cursed.

You and are I are both pawns of two opposing masters.

I think you are very handsome.

Someday I will betray you all.

I wish….

….except Fai didn’t know what he wished for…or perhaps he did, and that was too frightening to acknowledge.

Fai stopped telling secrets after that.

He didn’t stop using his voice, however, as Kurogane began teaching Fai Yama’s language within the confines of their quarters in the castle.  Fai didn’t learn any of the rules of grammar or syntax, and Kurogane made no effort to teach him to read or to write, but he provided words to Fai and would drill Fai each evening until he mastered each new set, rolling his eyes at Fai’s attempts at pronunciation.

Life in Yama settled into a routine that was, truth be told, not unpleasant.  Fai and Kurogane slowly melted into the fabric of the society.  When their eyes turned black over time, the same as everyone else’s in the Yasha clan, it initially came as a shock, but Fai supposed it spoke to just how much time they had spent in this land.

Life with Kurogane, Fai was increasingly finding, was not unpleasant.  Fai would often watch the ninja train during the day—and, unlike Fai, he trained every day, despite the fact that his skill with a sword was unmatched by anyone in either army—and sometimes Fai would be mesmerized by the man’s movement and skill, the firm, sturdy lines of his body as he seamlessly transitioned from one position to another.  (Sometimes, when Fai became too transfixed, he forced himself to take a break from watching Kurogane.)

One day, Kurogane, who must have seen Fai sporadically doodling with a stick in the dirt outside their old tent, surprised Fai with a pad of paper and drawing pencils.  Fai would sit and draw while Kurogane polished Souhi.  Unable to communicate with words, he found a great sense of comfort in being able to at least create images.  He wondered if Kurogane knew just how important, how sustaining his gift had been to Fai.  In secret, Fai drew the dragon from the sword Yuko had taken from Kurogane at the start of their journey and presented it to the ninja one night as a token of gratitude.  The expression on Kurogane’s face was unreadable, as it often was for Fai.

In the late afternoons and early evenings, Fai and Kurogane would go for long walks exploring Yama’s scenery, which was, in places, breathtakingly beautiful, Kurogane teaching Fai various words.  They would share meals in their room and bottles of liquor on the veranda outside it, watching the sun rise or set.  Fai gifted Kurogane a bottle of his favorite alcohol, and one evening Kurogane presented him with a soft blue robe woven from a material entirely unfamiliar to the magician.  They would take their horse lizard for rides, Fai clutching Kurogane from behind as he spurred the creature faster and faster, laughing as the wind whipped through his hair.

Fai knew that Kurogane would not hurt him, that he would protect him.  Fai trusted Kurogane, felt comfortable with him in a way he hadn’t felt comfortable with another person since…well, he wasn’t even sure when.  Fai wondered if this was what it meant to have a friend.

Sometimes, Fai would watch Kurogane sleep at night, focusing on the steady rise and fall of his chest, and would fleetingly consider crawling over to his sleeping mat and curling up next to him, craving closeness with the other man.  Fai wondered if Kurogane would push him away.  The thought scared him.  Fai suspected that he wouldn’t.  That thought scared him even more.

Fai missed Syaoran, Sakura, and Mokona and thought of them frequently, worrying about their whereabouts and their safety.  He wondered more and more if Yama would become their permanent home.  Perhaps this would not be so bad, part of him mused, staying in this place where Fei Wong couldn’t reach him, where Ashura couldn’t reach him, never having to witness the inevitable demise of the children he had come to care for so deeply. 

Still, this wasn’t how things were supposed to end.  Fai had lived most of his life with a single purpose, one he had yet to fulfill.  He wasn’t supposed to have black eyes. 

One night, as Yasha’s soldiers lined up to depart for that strange moon, Kurogane realized that he had left his cape behind in the castle, and through a mixture of words and gestures, directed Fai, who was faster on his feet than he was, to retrieve it.  As Fai made to grab the garment, he noticed something peeking out from Kurogane’s pillow and discovered the drawing he had given him.

Fai realized he had a serious problem.

Kurogane

The rage shouldn’t have surprised Kurogane, not really.  He was no stranger to rage, after all, having lived side by side with it almost constantly since that night so many years ago when his entire world disintegrated into smoke and ash before his eyes.  Still, the amount of rage he felt when the manju cried out to him, tears in her eyes, that the magician had been killed by an oni did surprise him. 

That he should feel anger at the man who had taken an innocent life (was it actually innocent, though?) was to be expected.  It was the fury that Kurogane felt towards the magician that gave him pause.  Why should it matter to him if the man had died?  The idiot probably hadn’t even fought back when that man with the false eye had attacked, cementing his fate by again choosing not to protect his own life.  Still, Kurogane thought of big blue eyes tinged with an unknowable sadness and glimpses of a fleeting smile and felt something in his gut recoil.

Kurogane raged at the magician because he didn’t value his own life.  Kurogane raged at himself because, somehow, he had come to value that life.

Things moved at a dizzying pace after that.  The kid was gone, too, and then he was fighting that bastard who had killed him and the magician both, and then the world around him was fading into another world entirely, and then the magician and the kid were back, very much alive, and he was too disoriented to think about that moment when he stood in what had once been the Cat’s Eye Café before it was gutted by oni, holding the neck tie the magician had worn, wondering what may have been had the man’s life not been snuffed out.

Later, though, once things had returned to their right state (as much as anything could be in a right state during this damnable crazy journey Tomoyo had sent him on), he found himself thinking of this moment often.

Kurogane and the magician landed in a world without the children and the manju, although they must have been nearby, as he and the magician could communicate with each other.  This world also shared similarities with Kurogane’s Nihon, right down to a bunch of insolent and incompetent idiots who were stupid enough to try to attack him and the magician.  He made quick work of them, as he always did, making certain not to wound anyone mortally (not that there was any need, given how small of a threat they were).  He may have raised a lot of hell, but at least that bastard with the false eye was fun to fight. 

Shortly after Kurogane had put those morons in their place, the master of the jinja where they had landed led himself and the magician into the inner sanctuary and began explaining some of the lore of his people and land.  It was fairly interesting, Kurogane supposed, but the man’s story was not what caught his attention that night.

Ashura.

There was no missing it.  When the jinja’s master uttered that word, the name of some god of battle in that world, the magician reacted.  It was subtle, certainly, the response of a man who had trained himself to betray nothing in his appearance, his words, or his actions, but Kurogane noticed.  That name meant something to the magician.

Later, when he and the magician downed bottle after bottle of the some of the best liquor Kurogane had ever tasted, and the magician proved himself far more capable of handling his alcohol than his antics in Outo had suggested (was anything the bastard did not an act?), and the idiot rambled some nonsense about magic he refused to even use, Kurogane found his patience wearing thin.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said irritably.  “You aren’t gonna tell me about it, right?”

“Who knows?  You may be wrong,” the magician replied, and this was such an expected response from him that Kurogane could have predicted the exact words before they left the man’s mouth. 

When Kurogane mentioned the man’s reaction to the name “Ashura,” he said nothing, and that, too, was to be expected.  Still, Kurogane knew that the magician was unnerved by what he’d managed to pick up on.

It was a shame, really, Kurogane thought.  Sitting with the magician that night, sharing that tasty liquor in that jinja, it could have been pleasant, enjoyable even, were it not for the man’s falsehoods weighing everything down between them.  Kurogane wondered if he would ever be able to share a night with the magician when he wasn’t shackled by the secrets of his past.  Kurogane wondered what such a night would be like.

Kurogane was surprised by how badly he wanted to know this man, wanted to know what he was hiding, what he was trying to outrun.  Maybe it was just because the magician was doing his damn best to keep Kurogane out, and Kurogane was determined to beat him at his game.  Kurogane had always enjoyed a good challenge, after all.

Perhaps that was for the best, because things were about to become a lot more challenging.

***

Kurogane would have liked to have had at least one more night in Shara, another night to enjoy that damn good liquor and to try to dig around a bit more into the magician’s secrets, but nothing about this journey seemed to happen the way Kurogane liked, and, just like that, he and the magician were sucked up into the sky (this despite the fact that the dumb manju wasn’t even around!) and deposited into a field in what Kurogane knew was yet another different world.  Once again, the children and the manju were nowhere in sight, and it quickly became apparent that they must have been very far away, for when the magician spoke to him Kurogane didn’t understand a word that he said. 

The damn idiot was smiling at him when he spoke, having clearly already discerned what was going on, and Kurogane was about ready to smack him in order to wipe that stupid grin off of his face, when he heard voices.  His hand quickly went to the hilt of Souhi, the sword he had obtained in Outo and somehow managed to keep, as a group of men approached.

“Never seen your like around here before,” one of the men said by means of addressing him, and Kurogane was relieved to find that he could understand the man’s words.     The man had his hand on his own weapon, as did the others who were with him.  “Clearly you’re not from around here.”

“What makes you so certain about that?” Kurogane replied, unsure of where this conversation was headed.

“You don’t got black eyes,” the man said simply, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Kurogane realized that all of these men had eyes that were the same color black.  “And I never seen a man that look like him before,” he finished, gesturing towards the magician with his chin.

“What king do you serve?” another man asked.

“The only person I serve,” Kurogane responded, growing irritated with this exchange, “is Princess Tomoyo.”

“Don’t know who that is,” the first man said, “but I do know you’re not from here, and that means you might be from Shura.”

“I come from Nihon,” Kurogane snapped, “and I don’t have time for this nonsense.”

“You talk awfully big for someone who’s outnumbered quite a bit,” another man began, “and that man you’ve got with you is awfully suspicious looking.  Why doesn’t he say anything?”

“He’s mute,” Kurogane replied, saying the first thing that came to mind, “and you people ask too many questions.”

“I would take your hand off that sword if I were you,” the first man began, rather angrily, “unless you really think you could beat all of us in a fight on your own.”

Actually, Kurogane was quite certain that he could beat all of these men in a fight on his own, and part of him was itching to do so, but he had sense enough to know that doing so in this world in which he had just arrived and of which he knew next to nothing could potentially worsen an already precarious situation, so he raised his hands in surrender and said, “alright, alright.”

“You say a lot of stuff that don’t make much sense, and that man you’ve got with you is awfully funny looking,” one of the men began. “What’s his deal, anyway?”

“I’m a traveling warrior, and he’s my assistant,” Kurogane told the men.  “He sharpens my sword for me, cleans my armor and clothing, makes sure that I’ve got food to eat and a place to sleep.  He’s not good for much else, seeing as he can’t speak.”  It felt nice to tell this little tale, given that the magician had claimed he was the “hired help” back in Jade, and Kurogane was damn irritated that the magician couldn’t understand a word of it.

“A warrior, huh?” one of the men began.  “We’ll take you to the commander then and see what he makes of you.  If you’re lucky, he may let you live.”

Kurogane shrugged.  If that last statement was supposed to frighten him, it didn’t.

“Follow us to the camp, and don’t try to pull anything funny.”  The men began to walk northward.  Kurogane seized the magician’s arm and began to trail them at a distance.  He then grabbed the magician and turned him so he was facing him.  He took the man’s face with one hand and used his other hand to point to his mouth and then shook his head “no,” hoping that the man understood the message he was trying to impart.  The idiot smiled and nodded, and Kurogane supposed that was the only assurance he was apt to get.

They arrived at what was clearly some sort of war camp, where, Kurogane noticed, all of the men had black eyes.  Kurogane’s red eyes clearly marked him as a foreigner.  No one seemed terribly interested in him, however.

“Never seen anyone like him.”

“What kind of hair is that, anyway?”

“He could have been sent from Shura to trick us.”

“Maybe he’s a demon.”

“Maybe the gods sent him to deliver us the moon castle.”

“Are his eyes really blue?”

“If you get too close to him he might bewitch you.”

Well, Kurogane supposed the magician probably was capable of bewitching someone (although, how could he really know, given that he’d never seen the man actually perform magic?), but it was hard not to be amused by the ludicrousness of many of the other statements.

Then again, Kurogane supposed that in the end there really wasn’t much about the magician that he knew for a certainty.  It was possible that any one of these absurd musings could, in fact, be true.

Kurogane assumed that the magician knew that everyone was talking about him, even if he couldn’t understand what these men were saying.  He kept his expression perfectly neutral throughout their trek through the camp.  Kurogane knew he was well-practiced in this particular act.

They ultimately stopped before a man whose dress and regalia marked him as a superior to the others around him…the commander, Kurogane supposed.

“Commander, we found these men in the field to the south,” one of the men began.  “They don’t have black eyes, but this one,” he said, gesturing towards Kurogane, “says they’re not from Shura.  He claims he’s a traveling warrior and that the one with the blue eyes is his assistant.  He don’t talk, apparently, that one.”

“A warrior, huh?” the commander addressed Kurogane.  “And if you’re not from Shura, where, may I ask, are you from?”

“Nihon,” Kurogane responded

“Nihon?  Never heard of it.”

“It’s quite far away,” Kurogane replied, trying to keep his cool, irritated at having to be questioned yet again.

“And what is your name?”

“Kurogane.”

“Well, Kurogane, if you are, in fact, a warrior, then you wouldn’t mind sparring with me a bit to prove your worth, am I right?”

Kurogane, of course, did not mind at all.  The sparring, if one could even call it that, ended quickly.  For a moment, Kurogane found himself wishing that he could run into that bastard with the false eye again and finish the first real fight he’d had in who knows how long.

The men around them were clearly not pleased that Kurogane had bested their superior so easily, but the commander, who seemed to be both better-tempered and less weary of foreigners than his subordinates, smiled and congratulated him on a fight well-fought.

“Would you have any interest in fighting for King Yasha?” the commander asked.

“Yasha?”

There was a time, not all that long ago, when Kurogane would have laughed at the tale the commander proceeded to tell him, and, even now, Kurogane was a bit taken aback by what he was told.  Given that he himself had been traveling through different dimensions thanks to the power of a white manju, though, well, Kurogane found that he was naturally a bit less skeptical of ridiculous stories than he once was.

In the end, Kurogane agreed to accompany these men to their nightly battle for this so-called moon castle.  He didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter, and he wondered if the strange circumstances that had been described to him might be connected to one of the princess’s feathers.  The sooner those were gathered, the sooner he could return home to Nihon.

“Will you provide us with armor?” Kurogane asked the commander.

“Us?” the commander asked.

“Me and him,” Kurogane replied, indicating the magician, irritated at the stupidity of the question.

“He’s not coming,” the commander responded.

“What?  Why?”

“Didn’t you say he’s your assistant?”

Ah, yes, that had been Kurogane’s story, hadn’t it?  “Well, yes, but I assure you that he’s a perfectly capable fighter.”

“You’ve proven your worth as a fighter.  He has not.  Besides, how can you possibly expect us to trust someone who looks as if he stepped out of a fantasy story?”

So much for the commander being less weary of foreigners. 

Kurogane was extremely displeased with the idea of leaving the magician behind, and he continued to argue with the commander about this for a bit, but it became clear that he was fighting a losing battle.  The commander assured him that he would leave one of his best men behind with the magician and that the man would not be harmed.  Kurogane had no reason to trust these men, and he did not trust them, but he supposed he would need to trust in the magician’s ability to defend himself should danger arise…and if he couldn’t then, well, he supposed the bastard would just be getting his wish.     

 Amazingly, everything played out as the commander had said it would—the transport to that moon, the fight between the two armies (and Kurogane couldn’t help but wonder if the Ashura leading the opposing army had the same soul as the Ashura who had so set the magician on edge), and then transport back to the camp.  It was all incredibly surreal and disorienting.

It was also exhilarating.

It had been quite some time since Kurogane had gone to battle in such a matter, but the mechanics of combat returned to him swiftly and easily.  Souhi was not Ginryu, but it was a damn good sword, and the weight of it in Kurogane’s hands as he maneuvered through the opposing army felt damn good.  If Kurogane had been worried that he had grown rusty fighting phantom oni in a phantom world, that concern had been unfounded.  He sliced his way through Ashura’s army, even saving the commander from what would have been a fatal blow at one point.

When he returned to the camp, magically transported by some strange phantom magic, Kurogane was covered in sweat and blood and still feeling the rush of battle.  Naturally, that high was short-lived, as word of trouble with the magician reached him and the commander shortly after their arrival.

Well, at least the bastard had decided to defend himself, and apparently he had done a damn good job of it.    

Kurogane was never one for restraint when he was angry, and he couldn’t help himself from punching the man who had failed so miserably at his job of keeping the magician safe.  It was at himself that he primarily raged, however, for having been stupid enough to leave the magician behind.  When he thought of what could have happened to him, what almost happened to him, he nearly felt sick.  He should have foreseen this possibility, should have planned for it.  If anything had happened to the magician, he would have been to blame. 

As Kurogane approached the magician, he could do little to stem the swell of relief within him.  The man certainly appeared unharmed.  Kurogane reached out to him, placed a hand on his back to be sure.  The magician was still there, solid and whole.

Kurogane turned towards the commander, who at least had the good sense to appear cowed.  “You promised he would be safe.”

“Well, he is.  He doesn’t appear to have been harmed,” the moron quipped.

It took all of Kurogane’s restraint not to hit the commander as well.  “We are not staying in this tent.  You will provide private lodgings for the two of us.  And starting tomorrow, he comes with us to battle.”

“But—”

“I saved your ass tonight!  You owe me this!” Kurogane snapped.

The commander nodded, motioning for Kurogane to follow him out of the tent.  Kurogane knew one thing for certain—he would be damned if something like that ever happened again.

***

The next morning, Kurogane grabbed the magician by his skinny arm and yanked him out of bed, intent on dragging him to the practice fields to prepare him for combat on that strange moon.  He  knew the man was adept at combat and a skilled fighter, but he was unsure how much experience he had with yielding a weapon.  Kurogane supposed he would need to train him in the sword.  If he could teach the kid, then he supposed he could teach the magician.

Kurogane felt something pull in his chest briefly as he thought of the kid, and of the princess and the manju, too.  It was impossible not to think about where they might be, if they were safe or not.  Kurogane wondered if he would ever see them again.

There was a time, not that long ago, when Kurogane would have told himself that he did not care about whether he saw them again or not, that he did not care about these people, that all he cared about was returning home to Nihon.  Kurogane knew now, though, that, despite his intentions, he had come to value them, and there was little point in trying to convince himself this was not the case.  This was not something he would have ever foreseen or expected, but he had learned to accept it.

What he should have foreseen and expected, however, was that teaching the magician to use a sword would not play out as smoothly or as easily as he would have hoped.  He should have predicted that the idiot would be resistant to Kurogane’s teaching, that he wouldn’t make things easy for him, because nothing was ever easy with the magician.  Kurogane fumed as he pondered how the magician would defend himself on the battlefield if he couldn’t wield a weapon properly.

Except, as it turned out, the bastard could wield a weapon, and extraordinarily well, just not the one Kurogane had chosen for him.  As the magician grinned at Kurogane after completing a demonstration of just how adept he was at using a longbow, it proved to be quite a test of Kurogane’s self-restraint to keep from smacking him.

Still, it remained to be seen how the man would do on an actual battlefield, so Kurogane stayed anxious until they actually went to the moon that night.  The magician proved his worth and skill, Kurogane begrudgingly acknowledged to himself, but it became clear that his lack of understanding of this world’s language would be a problem.  There were too many close calls when the magician just missed being speared or gutted by an enemy soldier’s sword because he could not understand the verbal warnings that were being shouted his way.  Addressing this would need to be a priority.

Kurogane dragged the magician back to the practice fields the following morning, hoping that the idiot would catch onto his intentions quickly and be open to Kurogane’s lesson.  Fortunately, the magician gave him no pushback or resistance, so Kurogane spent the day teaching him the directions and commands he would need to understand in order to stay alive on the battlefield.

Kurogane hadn’t exactly spent loads of time staring at the magician or anything, but, well, of course he’d looked at him, and looked at him closely, from time to time.  This was a crucial component of sizing up a potential enemy, after all, and by now he had spent more than enough time stuck with this man; it would be unreasonable not to have spent time looking at him.

Plus, the magician was beautiful.  There was no reason for Kurogane to deny that, and no reason why he shouldn’t be able to look at a beautiful man from time to time.

That day, though, granted Kurogane a level of exposure to the magician beyond what he had before.  As Kurogane led the magician through the various exercises he’d devised to teach the man what he would need to be safe, by necessity he was constantly touching the magician, grabbing his limbs and positioning them various ways, turning his torso from one direction to another.  Kurogane could feel the surprising degree of strength in those thin arms, the taut muscle under that smooth, delicate skin. 

By day’s end, when the lessons were over and Kurogane felt satisfied that the magician had learned all of the information he had set out to impart to him, Kurogane had to take a moment to clear his head, to quash what he was thinking in that moment.

What he was thinking was that he wanted to keep touching that pale, lithe body.

From that night forward, Kurogane and the magician fought as a team, side by side, back-to-back, covering each other’s weak spots and blind spots.  The magician seemed to have somehow discerned that Kurogane would never kill an enemy soldier.  At first this made Kurogane feel exposed somehow, and angry as a result, but in time he came to appreciate the man’s perfectly-timed arrows that would prevent Kurogane from having to execute a fatal blow. 

Kurgan and the magician moved in perfect synchronicity, predicting one another’s moves, anticipating one another’s reactions and responses.  Kurogane had always fought alone whenever possible, believing that battling alongside another would weaken him, weigh him down somehow.  Kurogane had been wrong.  

Kurogane and the magician weren’t just together on the battlefield, but at all other times as well.  Kurogane rarely let the other man out of his sight, loathe to forget what had happened the first night they arrived in Yama.  The magician had more than proven his worth on the battlefield, and no one could deny the positive contributions they were both making to the Yasha clan’s efforts on that moon, so the words he would hear muttered about the magician from time to time did not hold the same derision and venom that they once did.  Still, there were many who continued to distrust him, and others who wanted to bed him, and Kurogane would be damned if he let anyone harm him.

Kurogane wondered what it must have been like, living in a world where one could not speak, where one could not understand the words being spoken around him.  The magician generally maintained a neutral, even pleasant expression, and if he found Kurogane looking at him he would immediately flash him a smile, but Kurogane had learned long before they reached this land that these were fake expressions, not a real reflection of what the man was thinking and feeling at any given time.  It was hard not to wonder, even more so than he had before, what the magician kept guarded inside himself.

Although much of what they encountered in Yama was at least somewhat similar to what Kurogane had lived with in Nihon, Kurogane knew that it was not just the land’s language that was foreign to the magician; everything in that world was completely strange to him, and Kurogane was not so hard-hearted that he didn’t think of how difficult that must be.

After watching the magician struggle to use chopsticks one too many times, Kurogane decided that he needed to intervene and gently took the man’s hands to attempt to assist him.  That’s when he first noticed them: a multitude of scars, long and thin and faded, covering both of the man’s hands, and his fingers as well. 

“The hell?” Kurogane exclaimed, taken aback by the sight of just how disfigured the man’s skin was, and the magician recoiled, yanking his hands away, and the expression on his face in that moment was that of a frightened, cornered animal.  It hadn’t been a great reaction on Kurogane’s part, admittedly, and he felt terrible, but it was a reaction he had been unable to prevent.  Kurogane had never seen scarring like that, and he racked his brain for possibilities as to what may have caused it.  He could think of none.

Then there were the nightmares.  Kurogane had first witnessed them when they had been in Jade, but he and the magician had slept in separate rooms in the large house they had all shared in Outo, so it had been a while since he had seen them.  They were frequent and seemed even more vicious than they had been in Jade.  The magician would thrash, crying and moaning into his pillow, the words muffled sufficiently enough that no one outside of their tent would have been able to hear them.  Kurogane could not understand them, of course, save for one: Fai.  Kurogane assumed that he had heard incorrectly, the first time; after all, he did not understand the man’s language.  He continued to hear the word, though, again and again, and there was no denying that the magician was muttering his own name in these moments of torment.

Kurogane had no reason to care for this man who hid behind lies and falsehoods, and he truly did not want to.  The magician was his constant companion, though, and it was impossible not to come to care for someone with whom one spent nearly all of his time.  After that first disastrous attempt with the chopstick, Kurogane persisted in the matter until the magician had mastered the utensils.  When the weight seemed to melt off the man’s already slender frame, Kurogane swallowed his irritation at the fact that the idiot wouldn’t just eat what was presented to him and brought him foods that he would like.  When those nightmares haunted the magician at night, Kurogane would rub his back and try to provide what comfort and security he could.  Somehow it all felt insufficient.

I was the guy who always waited for the one who would take me along.

Kurogane did not know what the magician was running from, why he had been waiting for someone to take him along.  He knew one thing, through: the man was in terrible pain.   

***

About ten weeks after they arrived in Yama, Kurogane and the magician were promoted to generals—not a surprising development, given that they were easily the most skilled soldiers in Yasha’s army.  Their wages were increased, and they were given a private room in Yasha’s castle and one of those giant lizards that the people of this world rode in place of horses. 

Kurogane expected that the magician would be a good deal more comfortable in the castle than he had been outside in the tent, although the man had proven himself to be much more tolerant of their previously rugged lodgings than Kurogane would have expected given the lavish coats and boots he had been wearing the night they arrived at the witch’s shop. 

What Kurogane hadn’t anticipated was that the magician would start speaking.  In their own private room, the magician no longer had to maintain the act of muteness, and he began to periodically speak in his own language.  The man’s voice was pretty and lilting (rather like the magician himself, Kurogane supposed), and Kurogane enjoyed listening to it, even if he did not understand a single word of what was spoken.

Kurogane was surprised by just how desperately he wished that he could understand.

Nearly as soon as he had begun speaking, though, the magician stopped for reasons Kurogane could only guess at, and Kurogane found that he missed his voice.  It was at this time that it struck him that he should begin, in the privacy of their shared room, to attempt to teach the magician Yama’s language.  It was impossible to know how long they would be trapped in this world, and even if the magician would never be able to speak the language around others, it would be helpful if he could at least understand what was being said around him.

Kurogane focused on teaching the magician basic words and phrases, and he proved to be a quick learner, although his pronunciation was terrible.  During one lesson he butchered a word so badly that Kurogane surprised himself by bursting into laughter.  Once he recovered from his surprise at Kurogane’s reaction, the magician began to laugh as well, and the pair sat there for quite some time, laughing together.

It felt good to laugh with someone like that.

Kurogane used his new influence and position of power to procure some paper and drawing supplies for the magician, figuring that it might be helpful for the man to have some outlet of expression when his ability to speak and to communicate was so limited.  He had seen the magician’s silly doodles back in Outo, but he was still taken aback by the extent of the man’s artistic talent when it was fully on display.  The man’s drawings were not just beautiful but surprisingly varied—animals, landscapes, strange symbols whose meaning Kurogane could only guess at.  Kurogane found that he enjoyed watching the creation of each image.

What he enjoyed more, admittedly, was watching the magician while he worked.  A comfortable, almost serene look would cross his face, and for those rare moments it appeared as though the demons Kurogane knew tormented the man were temporarily at bay.  Kurogane tried to capture that look in his mind, knowing that it would quickly, inevitably be replaced by that infuriating fake grin.     

Then came the moment the magician gifted Kurogane a drawing that was a nearly perfect rendition of Ginryu.  The man looked at Kurogane was earnest, expectant eyes (eyes that had at some point turned black, and Kurogane thought for what must have been the thousandth time just how wrong that was), a look so foreign on that pretty, pale face, and Kurogane found that he had to turn away, had to leave the room, had to get away from the man.

There was no getting away from the magician, though.  He had become Kurogane’s constant companion—on the battlefield, in both the streets and forests of Yama where they would stroll together during their free time, in their shared quarters.  The two men had arrived in this land as foreigners, with no real allies save each other, and the magician, who was far more alien to these people than Kurogane, was especially at risk of danger.  That he and Kurogane would nearly always be together was not surprising.  What was surprising was that Kurogane found that he did not mind this.

One particularly hot night, Kurogane and the magician walked through one of the wooded areas near the castle, as they frequently did.  Their oft-traveled route led to a pond, and when they reached that point the magician shoved Kurogane into it.  Kurogane, without thought, grabbed the magician in retaliation and pulled him in as well. 

When the magician rose in the waist deep water, he was grinning and laughing, and it was a sight so unfamiliar to Kurogane, to see the man experiencing such joy.  His drenched blond hair fell nearly to his shoulders, his bangs almost obscuring his eyes, and his soaked robes clung to the contours of his long, slender limbs.

Suddenly, in that moment, Kurogane found that he really wanted to kiss Fai.

He turned away as he felt heat rising in his face, felt himself starting to grow hard.  Fai just kept on laughing, thankfully oblivious to Kurogane’s state. 

In Nihon, Kurogane would periodically lay with other ninjas or residents of Shirasagi Castle.  These instances were purely about a physical connection, a need for pleasure, a need to satiate a carnal desire.  Sometimes he was intimate with a particular man only once, while other times he would lay with the same man several times over, but he never felt any bond with any of these men, never really cared for them.  Kurogane viewed any type of attachment with another person beyond the corporeal as a potential impediment to his quest for strength, as something that was both unnecessary and possibly even dangerous.  Any such links with another person were best avoided.

Kurogane had spent too much time with Fai for an intimate relationship with him to possibly be purely physical.  He knew that.  Yet he found himself wanting that connection regardless.

For much of this crazy journey he found himself on, Kurogane was too disoriented and flummoxed by all that was going on to give any thought to physical pleasure, to feel any desire for physical pleasure.  In Outo, where they had spent a sustained amount of time and life finally took on an element of routine, he would find himself desiring from time to time, but it was something he could quickly take care of with his hand.  Now, though, he found himself wanting more, and he wanted it with Fai.

He wondered if Fai would be agreeable to being bedmates with him.  How, though, could he even pose such a question to the magician when the words they shared between them were so few?  Kurogane knew that there was a barrier far larger than a lack of ability to communicate, however.  How would he ever be able to form such a connection with a man who continuously barricaded himself behind walls, who was so clearly afraid of becoming close to others?

Kurogane did his best to try not to think about such things, to simply continue on with life in Yama…and life in Yama continued on…and on.  As more weeks passed, Kurogane began to prepare for the possibility that he and Fai would never leave Yama.  He planned for what the two of them might do when they would hopefully be allowed to leave Yasha’s army.  (All of the soldiers alongside whom they fought were young men, so this was clearly not a longtime occupation.)  He could always earn wages doing manual labor, or perhaps he would be allowed to serve as some type of instructor or trainer to Yasha’s soldiers.  Kurogane often saw men and women who were clearly not from Yama selling handmade goods in the land’s markets, and he wondered if Fai, who was both very artistic and very foreign, could perhaps earn a living doing something of this nature.  He casually inquired about where soldiers lived when they left the army, and he began setting aside money to potentially buy a house for himself and Fai one day.

It was not a terrible prospect, living out the rest of his days in this world with Fai…and yet….

Kurogane did not want to have to continue fighting a war for a dead man.  (Kurogane did not know what, exactly, Yasha was, but he had known from the beginning that he was not alive.)  Kurogane wanted to see the kid and the princess and the manju again.  Kurogane wanted to go home, and Yama, despite all the ways it was similar to Nihon—the shared language, the shared customs, the shared food and clothing and pastimes—was not home.             

 Kurogane continued to struggle with how to define his relationship with Fai.  He knew many of the other soldiers in Yasha’s army assumed they were lovers, and he never bothered to correct them, although he never confirmed their suspicions either.  When he gifted Fai with a beautiful blue rode made of luxurious fabric, which the magician seemed to love and frequently wore around the castle, the whispered rumors about their relationship only increased.  Good, Kurogane thought, let them assume that.  Maybe then everyone will leave us alone.

Kurogane couldn’t help but wonder, though, if such a relationship with Fai would ever even be a possibility, not just because of the absurd circumstances in which they found themselves, but due to Fai’s demons as well.  Kurogane, too, still felt acutely past pains that he wished to forget.

One night during a battle on that strange moon, a mishap occurred when Ashura’s army made the foolish decision to light their arrows aflame, and a large fire broke out.  When sleep finally overtook Kurogane that night, he dreamt of fire, a towering inferno, that swallowed his world whole, and of smoke and ash and charred bodies and oni that devoured everything in their path.  When he awoke to the sensation of a soft pressure on his back he grabbed the offending appendage and yanked it roughly with a growl, his mind still somewhat lost in the recesses of the nightmare.

Fai gave a startled yelp and pulled his arm away, confusion and a bit of fear in his eyes, and it was only then that Kurogane realized that the magician was attempting to do for him for what he had spent so many nights trying to do for Fai.

Kurogane sheepishly went out to the veranda off of their room, where Fai had quickly retreated following Kurogane’s startled and rough outburst, and wearily sat next to the magician, feeling guilty and ashamed.  Slowly, tentatively, unsure if it was an OK thing to do, he took Fai’s hand in his, and, to his surprise, Fai did not balk, did not pull away, instead applying a brief, gentle pressure to Kurogane’s hand, and the two sat together like that until the sun rose that morning.

That night Kurogane taught Fai the words for “I’m sorry.”

When Kurogane went to Shirasagi Castle following the deaths of his parents and the destruction of his homeland, Princess Tomoyo had done her best to make him feel welcome, and most of the people there had been kind, trying to create for him a sense of comfort in his new home.  Still, Kurogane often felt like an outsider, not because he had come from Suwa, whereas most of the castle’s inhabitants were from the province that housed Shirasagi, but because he believed that he carried on his shoulders a weight that the others could not understand.  Nihon could be a violent, unforgiving land, and Kurogane did not doubt that many of the others with whom he interacted at the castle had suffered at times in their lives, but he still could not help but feel like the level of trauma that had followed him there somehow made him different from the others.

Kurogane knew very little about Fai’s life, about his past.  He did not know what the man dreamt of at night when he moaned and cried and yelled into his pillow.  Yet he knew that Fai carried the same burden that he did, that with Fai his past trauma did not mark him as an outsider, that Fai would be able to understand his sufferings in a way others perhaps could not.  Sitting with the magician that night, Kurogane found that there was some comfort in this realization.

The fighting on the moon continued to grow increasingly violent, and both armies suffered worsening casualties as each side continued its best to strive to out-fight the other.  Kurogane felt confident in his own skills, and in Fai’s as well, but it was hard not to worry more about the possibility of real harm coming to one of them as Ashura’s army grew increasingly ruthless in its attacks.

As it turned out, it was not the opposing army about which Kurogane needed to be most concerned.

One particular night the scene on the moon became especially gruesome, with an unusually high number of unfortunate souls suffering fatal injuries, and somehow Kurogane lost track of Fai.  He searched for the man frantically until he found him standing alone among several corpses, frozen, unmoving, staring straight ahead but clearly seeing nothing.  Kurogane did not know where Fai’s mind was in that moment, but it was not at that battle. 

“Oi!”  Kurogane shouted as he ran towards the magician.  “Oi!”  Standing there like that, lost in another world, Fai would make an easy target, but he was clearly oblivious to the chaos around him.  It wasn’t until an arrow took him in the meat of his upper arm, just as Kurogane was about the reach him, that Fai returned to the moon, emitting a surprised gasp.

Kurogane grabbed him by his uninjured arm and began to pull him away from the scene.  At that moment he felt the swirl of familiar magic that indicated that they were returning to Yama.

Once safely back at the camp, Kurogane walked Fai to the medical tent, continuing to hold onto his uninjured arm and semi-supporting the magician’s weight, as he was slightly unsteady on his feet.  Once at the tent, he gently sat Fai down.  He tore a piece of his cloak and used it to staunch the bleeding from Fai’s wound, and then he once again grabbed hold of Fai’s uninjured arm.

Fai was bleeding a fair amount, but Kurogane knew rationally that his wound was not life-threatening.  He knew that, but it did little to appease the worry in his gut.  Fai’s behavior on the battlefield that night had unnerved him, frightened him even, so as he sat waiting with Fai while the medics tended to other soldiers with more serious, potentially fatal wounds, Kurogane did not let go of Fai’s arm.  His back began to ache, and his hand began to cramp, and his throat grew parched and his bladder full, but Kurogane never let go of Fai’s arm, somehow feeling that he needed to keep the magician tethered to the earth, that if he let go the man might somehow float away or disappear.  All the while Fai sat motionless, staring straight ahead and saying nothing.

Fai’s status as a general meant that he was tended to once the medics had finished with the more gravely wounded, so it was still fairly early in the morning when someone arrived to stich his wound.  Fai barely flinched as the needle entered the flesh of his arm, and Kurogane wondered how much of his mind remained wherever it had gone off to during the battle.

The magician remained slightly wobbly on his legs when Kurogane led him back to the castle, but nonetheless he began to move towards the baths once they entered the building, as he always liked to bathe following a night of fighting.

“No,” Kurogane said sternly, leading him back to their room.  Once inside, he helped the magician change into clean, unbloodied clothes and then gently laid him onto his sleeping mat.  Surprisingly, Fai did not protest, curling in on himself on the side of his uninjured arm, his wound preventing him from taking his usual face down position.  Without thinking, Kurogane began to stroke his hair, and Fai quickly fell asleep.

Kurogane did not like Fai.  The man teased him incessantly, and he lied and smiled an infuriating fake smile and closed himself off from others, never letting anyone get too close.  Fai did not value his own life, and he put no effort into protecting it. 

Kurogane did not like Fai…yet somehow he had come to love him.

As he sat there that morning stroking Fai’s soft blonde hair, Kurogane uttered a promise, spoken softly and heard by no one.

I will protect you.

Chapter Text

Fai

That night in Yama, when Kurgan had asked Fai to retrieve his cloak before they were transported to that strange moon for battle, Fai had noticed something peeking out from underneath Kurogane’s pillow.  Curiosity getting the best of him, he pulled the object out to inspect it and discovered that it was the drawing he had given the ninja of the dragon that had adorned the sword that the Time Space Witch had taken from him.

Oh, Fai thought, and then, oh no.

Fai, at least on some level, had been aware of what had been happening during those long months in Yama, had perceived the changes that had been occurring in his relationship with Kurogane.  The ninja had shown him so many acts of kindness, and they had spent so much time together, that it would have been impossible, he supposed in hindsight, for the two of them not to have become closer to each other. 

That was a problem, to be sure.  Fai could not afford to become close to anyone.

A second realization hit Fai in that moment, this one like a sucker punch to the gut, and he nearly physically reeled as it slammed into him at full force.

Fai realized that he couldn’t kill Kurogane.

It was not that he was physically incapable of doing so, that he didn’t think he could overpower the ninja if the time came, although he felt less confident in his ability to accomplish such a task than he had when he had first met Kurogane.

No, Fai couldn’t kill Kurogane because Kurogane was kind and honest and brave and all of the good things that Fai was not, and Kurogane did not deserve to die.  Fai had committed many sins in his long life; this was true.  Still, could he really bring himself to take the life of this innocent man, of this good man, for the sake of his own wish?  Was he really going to continue to be selfish, as he had been for so long, in the final days of his far too long life? 

Fai could not do it.  He knew that then with a degree of certainty that he hadn’t felt about anything in a long, long time.  Fai could not kill Kurogane.

Where, though, did that leave him?  What would happen if Kurogane acted in a way that displeased his master (and if Kurogane learned the truth of their journey, learned the truth of the children, this was bound to happen) and Fei Wang called upon Fai to eliminate the man and Fai could not bring himself to do it?  Fai was bound to serve Fei Wang.  This was the only way to bring Fai back, the real Fai, and bringing Fai back had been his entire purpose for so, so, so very long.  It was the only way for Fai to atone for his many sins, to right all of the wrongs he had committed.

Fai’s head spun, but there was no time to think of any of this further, as the transportation magic would be taking effect shortly, so he had no choice but to grab Kurogane’s cloak and return to the ninja and the other soldiers. 

Fai could think of little else from that moment onward, however.  He found a large part of himself secretly wishing more and more that he and Kurogane would simply remain in Yama and he would never need to confront the choice of killing the ninja.  Such was not to be, however, as a couple of weeks later he suddenly found himself able to understand what Kurogane and the others around him were saying, and he knew in that instance that their time in Yama would soon be reaching its end.      

Still, it was so, so good to see Syaoran and Sakura and Mokona again, and this, too, was troubling to Fai.  He had been foolish and selfish, as he always was, and allowed himself to grow too close to all of them.

The next world to which the group traveled, called Piffle, was a strange one indeed, with odd machines that people used to travel through the sky and many other wonders that were completely beyond Fai’s comprehension.  It seemed like a happy, peaceful place, and the location of Sakura’s feather immediately revealed itself.  Obtaining it would be more challenging, as it would require winning a race in one of the flying machines.  Fai supposed the whole thing could be fun, at any rate.

(Fai was still angry at himself for not realizing that one of the princess’s feathers had been nearby all along the entire time he and Kurogane were in Yama.  The fact that he had been unable to discern that Yasha, whom he knew was not a living person, was a construct brought to life by one of the fragments of Sakura’s soul spoke to just how disoriented he had been during that time.)

Kurogane continued to be a problem.  The man had stuck particularly close to Fai during the very end of their time in Yama after Fai had dissociated one night during a particularly bloody battle on the moon and taken an arrow in his upper arm as a result.  The event had clearly unnerved Kurogane, and he never seemed to let Fai out of his sight for more than the briefest of moments after that.   He seemed inclined to continue this pattern once they arrived in Piffle and suggested that they once again share sleeping quarters there.

“Now, now, Kuro-tan, what will the children and Mokona think if we do that?” Fai said airily and walked away while the ninja sputtered indignantly in response.

Fai knew that his relationship with Kurogane had changed while they were in Yama, and he knew that Kurogane knew that it had, too.  Kurogane did not seem to have a problem with this fact.  Fai did.

It was imperative that Fai take action to reverse the course their relationship had taken, so he went back to teasing the grumpy ninjas as he had before they had been separated from the children, and he even took to calling Kurogane “Daddy” in jest.  It was fun to watch his reaction to the jokes, as it always had been.

You really would make a good father, Kuro-sama, Fai would think to himself as he mocked the ninja.  I hope someday you can have children, a family.

Fai was doomed, had been doomed for many, many years, and he knew his life would end whenever this journey neared its conclusion.  He accepted this fact, welcomed it even.  The children, too, the creations of his master, were destined to face a bleak end.  This was a much harder reality to face than his own inevitable demise, and Fai did his best not to dwell on it as he watched Syaoran and Sakura train for the upcoming race.  Still, there was nothing he could do to save them.  All he could was try to give them as much happiness and cheer as he could during the time they had left.

Perhaps it did not need to end this way for Kurogane, though.  Perhaps Kurogane could live.

Fai tried to think of a way he could save the ninja, could perhaps free him from the cursed journey and shepherd him to safety.  He thought of using his magic to send Kurogane to a different dimension, but he did now know if he had the power to specifically send him back to his home.  Besides, wielding such a substantial amount of power was likely to attract the attention of both Ashura and Fei Wang, and Fai was unsure if he was in a position to face down either man.

Fai wondered if someone else could help Kurogane.  Fei Wang had referred to the ninja as the “witch’s pawn.”  Perhaps Yuko would save him.  Fai was certain that the Time Space Witch would have the ability to do so; when Fai met the woman he immediately sensed that her magic surpassed his, surpassed that of anyone he had ever known.  Would she want to, though?  What did her “pawn” mean to her?

Fai thought of the princess of Kurogane’s world, Tomoyo.  She must possess significant magic, as she had sent Kurogane through dimensions.  Fai knew little of the girl’s nature, but he wondered if she would help Kurogane.  Kurogane was clearly very fond of her, and Fai suspected based on the few things Kurogane had said of the princess that, despite the fact that she had sent him away, the two shared a close bond.  Surely she would want her loyal ninja returned to her safely.  Fai wished to contact her, to reach out to her for help, but had no means to do so.  Despite his immense magical power, he had no ability to communicate with others via dreams.  He was not a dream seer

In Piffle, Fai suddenly found himself with an opportunity to learn more about Kurogane’s princess.  Not long after arriving in that strange world, they encountered another version of Tomoyo.  The girl was kind and polite and took an immediate liking to Sakura.  Fai sensed in her a gentle soul that he knew Kurogane’s princess must share. 

Fai noted how Kurogane regarded Tomoyo with a tender look that he had never seen in the ninja before.  “Does Kuro-sama love Tomoyo?” he asked Kurogane softly one day.  The words had come to Fai unbidden, and the question surprised the magician.

“Yes,” Kurogane said without missing a beat, and Fai felt something inside himself deflate, “but not in the way that you’re implying.  It’s not like that.”  Fai knew Kurogane was telling the truth, because Kurogane didn’t lie.  Kurogane wasn’t like Fai.

If the question had surprised Fai, his relief at Kurogane’s answer surprised him even more.

One night as he and Kurogane sat sipping alcohol together following a day of practicing for the race for Sakura’s feather, Kurogane turned to him and asked, “Don’t you have anyone in your world you want to return to?”

Fai almost laughed at the ludicrousness of the question, but Kurogane had no way of knowing how ridiculous it was, and Fai certainly preferred that he not know, anyway.

“Hmm,” Fai began.  “Well, I suppose there is Chii.  She is quite fond of me.”  He took a sip of his drink.  “Then again, she would be, seeing how I created her.”

Kurogane nearly choked on his drink, and Fai grinned despite himself at the man’s shock.  “Wh—what?” Kurogane gasped.

“I am a magician, Kuro-rin,” Fai replied with a smile.

“Yes, but creating people?”

Fai laughed.  “Well, I only did it the one time, and I had to supplement my own magic with a great power outside of my own.”  Fai decided it best not to tell Kurogane that the power he had utilized had been one of Sakura’s feathers.  “She didn’t turn out quite right, though.  The ears were a little off.  Still, I do like her all the same,” Fai finished, taking another sip of his drink.

“That’s your answer?  A girl you made with funny ears?”  Fai was surprised at the thinly veiled anger in Kurogane’s voice.  “Is it really that hard for you to be close to another person?”  Kurogane signed.  “Never mind.  Don’t even bother answering that.”  Kurogane tossed his drink aside and walked away in silence, leaving Fai behind to finish his drink alone.

***

From time to time, Fai had found himself wondering about Kurogane’s past.  Fai had some knowledge of the man’s life prior to their meeting—he had been a ninja in a land called Nihon until the princess he served, a girl named Tomoyo, banished him for killing indiscriminately—but Fai knew nothing beyond that.  He knew nothing of Kurogane’s early life, of his family, and, of note, the ninja never spoke about a family.  Kurogane must have had a family at some point.  Even Fai had had a family, once, so, so many years ago.

Fai tried to tell himself it wasn’t important, Kurogane’s past, but it was impossible not to contemplate it, particularly during those many months they were together in Yama.  Kurogane was an angry man; that had been plain from the moment Fai met him, and Fai witnessed that rage flow outward during their time in combat on the moon, saw it channeled in Kurogane’s swings of his sword.  Kurogane relished battle, seemed to derive pleasure from it.  Fai knew that a man like that, angry and violent despite all of the ways in which he was kind and thoughtful, could not have been born from a happy past.     

Then there was the night Fai had witnessed Kurogane thrashing in his sleep, his torment clearly visible on his unconscious face.  A nightmare like that could only be birthed from having experienced real-life hell at some point.  Fai knew that better than anyone.

Fai knew, too, that Fei Wang had attempted to make Kurogane his pawn but had somehow failed.  His master was a cruel man; what lengths had he gone to, Fai wondered, in his efforts to ensnare the ninja in his clutches?  In what terrible way had he interfered in Kurogane’s life?

Fai knew he had no right to learn about Kurogane’s past, especially given how closely he guarded any information about his own.  Still, it was impossible not to be curious.

In the next world, a magic-filled place called Lecourt, Fai learned that Kurogane’s past was tragic enough to make Syaoran cry.

Shortly after Syaoran had regained consciousness and recovered following his trip inside the book that contained Kurogane’s memories, and the boy and the ninja had spoken in private, Fai by chance found himself alone with Kurogane in their small shared quarters when he entered the room to retrieve his jacket.  He discovered that he didn’t know what to say.

“I…” he began slowly.

“Don’t you dare ask,” Kurogane cut him off angrily.  “A man who keeps everything hidden has no damn right to ask,” he finished, exiting the room.

Well, Fai supposed that was fair.    

Fai may have remained in the dark about Kurogane’s past, but Kurogane continued to be unfairly astute when it came to Fai.  Lecourt was full of magic, much of it familiar to Fai, and hunting down Sakura’s feather involved working out a number of magical puzzles and breaking down a number of magical defenses.  Fai saw through all of the charms and traps the library hiding the feather had developed to protect it easily enough, so to speed things along he worked through them all for the children.  He acted as though it were a combination of dumb luck and basic magical ability, downplaying his own immense magical powers and training as best as he could, but Kurogane saw through the façade, as he always did.

“Really, Kuro-sama…you keep seeing the parts of me best left unseen.”

Kurogane

Kurogane had thought that things would be different with Fai after the six months they had spent together in Yama.  So much had happened, so much had changed, with them and with their relationship with each other, so, naturally, Kurogane had thought that things would be different with Fai.

Kurogane, apparently, was as much of an idiot as Fai was.

The children and the manju arrived not long after Fai took the arrow in his arm, a full six months after he and the magician had first come to Yama.  Kurogane, of course, had no way of detecting their presence, but Fai could. 

One evening, when the weather was particularly nice and the setting sun had bathed Yasha’s castle in hues of orange and red and yellow, Kurogane and Fai sat on their veranda enjoying a simple dinner of rice and fish.  (Well, Kurogane was enjoying the rice and fish; Fai, of course, was sticking solely to the rice).  After a while, Kurogane noticed that Fai was staring at him.

“Oi?  What?” he asked, his irritation mounting.

Fai looked him straight in the eye, deadly serious, and said, “Kuro-sama, you have rice on your chin.”

Kurogane nearly choked on his rice as the magnitude of what was happening struck him, and Fai burst into laughter.

“Now you have even more rice on your chin, Kuro-tan!” Fai continued with delight.

“How—how long have you been able to understand?” Kurogane sputtered, but Fai just kept laughing.

Bastard.

The kid appeared on the moon the following night, alongside Ashura.  Fai had, fortunately, agreed to go along with Kurogane’s plan to pretend not to know him in order to test his skill with the sword, although not without the usual teasing.  (“Aww, Kuro-pon is such a serious and dedicated teacher!”)  Things moved quickly after that—the princess’s feather, it turned out, had been what had been supplying life, if one could call it that, to Yasha all along—and they finally, finally were able to leave Yama behind.

Except they couldn’t completely leave it behind, not really.  The time spent in Yama had changed Kurogane, and it had changed Fai, and it had changed their relationship. 

Naturally, Fai seemed hell-bent on ignoring all of that.

Kurogane was angry at Fai for reverting back to all of his old habits, but, in the end, he was perhaps more angry at himself for thinking, for hoping that things would be different with Fai after Yama, for hoping that they could have a real relationship.  Kurogane had watched as a few of Fai’s walls had finally started to come down in Yama.  As soon as they left that world, the magician got straight to work erecting them again, hiding himself away deep inside his fortress once more.      

Kurogane attempted to speak frankly with Fai when they arrived at their current new world, a strange place called Piffle with boxes that a person could fly through the sky, but all of his efforts failed spectacularly.  Every time Kurogane attempted to get Fai alone, the magician would somehow weasel his way out of the situation, coming up with a new excuse for why he had to run off, and Kurogane would silently fume as he watched the magician scamper off in the ridiculously tight clothing he took to wearing in this world. 

(Kurogane tried his hardest not to stare at him in that ridiculously tight clothing.)

Fai simply reverted back to the way he had been prior to Yama, upping his teasing game by constantly calling Kurogane “Daddy,” holding onto all of his secrets, and keeping everyone at arm’s length.

One night during dinner, the topic of birthdays came up.  The princess had discovered that she and the kid shared the same birthday.  Both children would be turning fifteen on their next birthday.

“Kurogane-san, how old are you?” the princess asked him, her green eyes curious.

Kurogane took a sip of his drink.  “I was twenty-five when I left Nihon, but I suppose enough time has passed since then that I’m twenty-six now.”  Enough time had passed for him, anyway.  Kurogane was still struggling to wrap his head around the fact that what had been six months for himself and Fai had amounted to mere days for the children and the manju.

The princess nodded.  “And how about you, Fai-san?  How old are you?”

Kurogane noticed the slightest catch in Fai’s movements at the question, but the magician righted himself immediately, smiled, and replied, “How old do you think I am, Sakura-chan?”

The princess thought for a moment and then answered, “I guess you look like you’re around the same age as Kurogane-san, maybe a little bit younger.”

Fai nodded.  “Mmm, that sounds about right.”  He then left the room.

Leave it to the idiot to be cagey about something as simple as his age.

In the end, Fai’s behavior was not surprising—disappointing, perhaps, but not surprising.  What was surprising was meeting another version of Tomoyo in this world.  Kurogeane had been momentarily taken aback by his encounter with another version of Souma in Outo, but meeting another Tomoyo…that was something else entirely.

There were differences between this girl and his Tomoyo, to be sure, but as he spent time with her it became increasingly clear that she shared the same soul as his princess, and he missed his Tomoyo something fierce, missed his home something fierce.

Kurogane thought of Nihon frequently.  He wondered if the manju would ever bring them there, and he found himself thinking more and more about what it would be like to have his companions with him in his home.  He knew the princess and Tomoyo would become fast friends, and he could see the two of them sitting together chatting over tea, the princess dressed in a kimono that Tomoyo had made just for her.  In his mind’s eye, he saw himself giving the kid a tour of Shirasaki Castle, explaining the culture and history of his homeland as the boy listened attentively.  The manju would probably sneak into the castle’s kitchens and steal the food that she fancied most.

Kurogane knew that they would not be able to stay there with him, that they would ultimately have to depart to return to their own homes.  They deserved that, and Kurogane wanted it for them.  Still, Kurogane found himself hoping that perhaps someday they’d be able to share some peaceful, happy moments in Nihon together.

Mostly, though, Kurogane thought about being in Nihon with Fai.  Fai had spoken of having fled from his homeland, of having run away from some man there, of being unwilling to use his magic because the man from whom he had escaped might somehow track him down if he did.  While Kurogane had been sent to that witch’s shop by someone else, Fai had gone there of his own accord.

Of course, with Fai, Kurogane could never really know what was true.  Everything the magician had said about having run away from his home, about the risk of being pursued by some shadowy figure, could have been a lie; after all, Fai lied all of the time.  Still, it was clear that the man was haunted by something, or perhaps someone, that he was in near constant pain, that he was never at peace.

If Fai truly did not want to return to his home, then perhaps Kurogane could bring him back to Nihon with him, provided that he ever made it back there.  Then, if that bastard who was chasing the magician, of whom he seemed so afraid, were to reach him there, Kurogane would run his sword through that man, and Fai wouldn’t have to run, wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.

Perhaps Kurogane could give Fai a home that he wouldn’t want to escape.  Perhaps Kurogane could give Fai some peace.  Kurogane wanted that.  The question was, would Fai?

The Tomoyo of this world found Kurogane one night drinking alone outside of the trailer where he and the others were staying.  Kurogane spotted the entourage of women who followed the girl everywhere a short distance away.  It was fairly late; the children were already in bed.  Fai had been particularly cagey that day for whatever reason and had chosen to retire early instead of staying up with Kurogane.

“Good evening, Kurogane-san,” Tomoyo addressed him.

“Evening,” Kurogane replied.  “The princess is already in bed.”

“Mmm.  I suspected she might be.  Sakura-chan has been working so hard to prepare for the dragonfly race, so I’m sure she’s very tired.  I actually came to see you.”

Kurogane raised an eyebrow at her.

“I understand that there is another version of me where you come from?”

“Something like that,” Kurogane responded.

“It does all sound very confusing and complicated,” Tomoyo said.

Kurogane grunted.  “Don’t need to tell me that.”

Tomoyo smiled up at him and, gods, he had missed that smile.  He felt something in his chest ache.

“I can tell that your Tomoyo is very precious to you,” Tomoyo said gently.  “I am certain that you are very precious to her as well.”

Kurogane didn’t respond, unsure of what to say, and took a sip of his drink.

“I know that you are very precious to your companions as well…all of your companions.”

Kurogane hoped that she was right.

***

One of the things about Fai that grated on Kurogane most was how much the man seemed to be mired in his own past.  To be sure, the magician never actually talked about his past; he never talked about anything of actual importance or substance related to himself, after all.  Even still, Fai’s constant nightmares, the way his mind would so clearly wander off to somewhere—or some time—very far away at times, the way he refused to truly allow himself to grow close to Kurogane and the children: it all spoke of a man who was not living in the present, and Kurogane was quite certain that Fai was not living in the future.

Kurogane knew nothing about Fai’s past.  As much as he tried not to, it was impossible not to wonder about it from time to time.  What was it that continued to ensnare Fai so, that made it so impossible for the man to move forward in his life, that made it so that the man would sooner allow death than face his future?  This is stupid, Kurogane would tell himself when he found himself pondering this question.  The past is not what’s important.  Kurogane himself had left his own past behind—his ugly, bloody, traumatic past.  Damnit, why couldn’t Fai do the same?

Of course, one’s past can never be erased, can never be escaped from completely, and Kurogane received a harsh reminder of this truth in the next world he and his companions traveled to, a magic-laden place called Lecourt.  There, the kid had seen his childhood, his early adolescence, a myriad of moments leading up to that one night of hell in which Kurogane lost all that he had cherished.  He saw his home, his parents, things Kurogane had never shared or spoken about with anyone.

It was a fight, to be sure, for Kurogane to control his rage, to tolerate his discomfort at feeling so exposed, so naked, as the kid recounted to him what he had seen in that book, his eyes still rimmed red from the tears he had cried.  For a time, Kurogane was unsure if he could do it, but he won out in the end.  He would not be bogged down by his past, and he would not allow the kid to be, either.

“Just because you know it…doesn’t mean that my wounds are a weight that you have to carry.”

Why couldn’t Fai do the same?

Another thing about Fai that grated on Kurogane most was the man’s continued refusal to use any magic.  Lecourt was rife with magic; it was everywhere, permeating every aspect of the world’s society.  Fai pretended to be ignorant of it all, but Fai was also an idiot.  Kurogane wondered how the man could really think that his feigned stupidity would fool anyone, let alone someone who had spent six months as his constant companion. 

Like Fai’s past, his magic was also a great unknown.  Kurogane often thought about what it might be like, Fai’s magic; it was impossible not to.  What would it look like, feel like, sound like?  Was it gentle or violent, bolstering or destructive?  Kurogane was certain it was powerful.  It was impossible not to want to catch even just a glimpse of it, however small.

This opportunity would come far sooner than Kurogane ever anticipated.   

Chapter Text

Kurogane

In the end, it was not at all what Kurogane had expected, Fai’s magic.  With a strange whistle (even the man’s insistence that he couldn’t whistle had been a damn lie), an otherworldly sound unlike anything Kurogane had ever heard before, the magician had conjured a protective circle for their group, one that allowed the manju to perform the magic necessary to move everyone to the next world, when previously she had been unable to do so, enabling them to escape the danger that had been pursuing them.

Kurogane had spent so much time wondering about Fai’s magic with nothing, really, upon which to base his speculation, so he wasn’t sure what, really, he anticipated it would be like, but the reality of it was just so unexpected, so foreign—a sound he had never heard, intricate swirls of scrollwork unlike anything he had ever seen enveloping them all like a cocoon.  Yet…

Somehow, as the world transfer began, aided by Fai’s spell, Kurogane knew this was Fai’s magic, knew it not just because he had witnessed the man conjure it, but because he could sense Fai—his presence, his will, his essence—surrounding them all as they traveled through dimensions.  Kurogane had spent so many months alongside this man—battling back-to-back, sleeping side by side—that he knew him, knew him intimately.  Fai’s magic felt like Fai; there was no other way Kurogane could describe it.  Kurogane realized then that Fai didn’t simply possess magic, wasn’t simply a magician who could wield it.  Fai’s magic was a part of him, something innate, something that was essential to his very being.

Kurogane learned something else when Fai finally used his magic as well, although it wasn’t so much something new that he discovered but, rather, further evidence of something the ninja had come to suspect.

When Kurogane landed in the next world, the unconscious princess still slung over his shoulders, once he had gathered his bearings and briefly assessed their new location (his first brief reading of the place indicated that it was not a good land in which to have found themselves…), he found himself recalling a moment from Piffle, a moment that forced him to rethink who Fai was.

He could still see Fai smiling—a true, genuine smile, a sight Kurogane glimpsed so very rarely—as confetti rained around him, speaking so fondly, so lovingly of the kid and the princess, his beautiful blue eyes (and Kurogane thanked the gods again that his eyes had returned to their right color once they left Yama) hiding nothing for a change.

“If you think that then you’ve changed, too.”

Fai had been so clearly startled, so thrown off kilter by Kurogane’s statement, that it was clear to him that the man himself had failed to notice the shift that had taken place within himself.

As Kurogane felt Fai’s magic surrounding him, the spirit of the man himself embracing them all, lovingly whisking them all to safety, Kurogane knew for certain that Fai had changed, and the way in which he had changed.  The man who had refused to use magic time and time again, who had refused to use it to protect himself when his very life was at risk, had finally used his magic, and he had used it to protect them…the people he had tried so hard to keep at arm’s length but had come to care for nonetheless.

Kurogane had confronted Fai about his shrouded actions, about his lies, periodically throughout their journey, always without success.  He vowed that this interaction would be different, that this time he would push Fai until he made some headway.

Kurogane had always been a man of action, though, not words, and Fai reacted to the confrontation as expected, smiling flippantly, teasing, deflecting, until…

“I don’t want to make anyone unhappy because of their involvement with me.”

Kurogane saw a Fai that he had never seen before when the man said those words, a Fai who was sad, hurt, beaten down by the gods only knew what for the gods only knew how long.  This, Kurogane thought, was a glimpse of the real Fai.

The conversation was interrupted at that point, because of course it was, but Kurogane promised the magician that it wasn’t over.  Finally, Kurogane had found an inroad into the real Fai.  The man’s walls were beginning to come down.

He thought long and hard about what he would say next when the conversation resumed, the things he really wanted Fai to know, although he was unsure if he would really be able to get himself to say them.

I know that you are hurting.  Please, let me share some of your burden.  I care about you.

Kurogane would never learn whether or not he would have been able to say those words, because he never had the opportunity to try.  The second conversation never happened.

***

Kurogane had never expected to have a family.  Well, perhaps that wasn’t entirely true.  Naturally, when he was a child, the life course he pictured for himself resembled that of his father exactly.  Kurogane would become lord of Suwa, just as his father had, and he would marry a priestess, who would bear him a son.  He would be a strong and just lord, always protecting his people.  He would be a kind and loving husband, doting on the wife whose magic protected his land.  He would be an exact yet supportive father, imparting his wisdom and skill upon the son who someday, too, would lead the people of Suwa. 

Then, in the course of one night, his mother was gone, and his father was gone, and Suwa was gone, and none of that mattered anymore.

What need did Kurogane have for a family then?  Without a land to rule, he no longer needed an heir, a son or a daughter, and Kurogane ultimately never took an interest in women.  Kurogane did not need a family, did not want a family.  He had a family, once, and it had been taken from him.  He had failed to protect them, to keep them safe, to keep them with him.  To have a family again would be to risk failing again, to risk losing them again.  Kurogane had Tomoyo, and he had Amaterasu and Souma, too, he supposed.  Kurogane did not need anyone else…and if he ever found himself, however fleetingly, wishing that someday someone would look at him the way his mother had looked at his father, he immediately cursed such thoughts as weak and childish, burying them back in the deepest recesses of his being.

Kurogane had never expected to have a family.  He had scoffed and pouted when Fai had teasingly called him “Daddy.”  Kurogane had never expected to have a family…and yet….

The kid, the princess, the manju…and Fai…they had all become his family, hadn’t they?  Now, just like the family he had in Nihon, he was losing them.  He had failed to protect them, failed again. 

The vision was never far, never quite left him.  He saw it when he closed his eyes, saw it in his dreams, saw it when his mind began to wander.  There was the kid, his expression blank, devoid of anything human, his mouth smeared with blood, and one of his eyes was blue…blue exactly like Fai’s.  Behind him he dragged an unconscious and bleeding Fai, and as Kurogane pieced together what had happened, he felt that something vital inside him might shatter.

He could not lose Fai now, not when the man’s defenses were finally breaking down, not when the man was finally letting them in, not when he was finally getting a glimpses of Fai, the true Fai, a man who, despite his lies, Kurogane knew was kind and good, a man he had vowed to protect in Yama, a man he….

“This guy…changed who is because of the princess…and because of you!”

It was no good, though.  The kid was gone.

Kurogane had vowed to protect Fai, to keep him safe, and if there was a chance, however small, that he could keep that man alive, he would take it, take it without hesitation, so when the witch offered him an opportunity to do so, he immediately grasped it, and he never looked back. 

Kurogane knew there would be consequences to his decision, knew that going against Fai’s wishes would not come without a cost.  Still, he would stand by his choice, because it was the right choice, the only choice, and he did not regret it, no matter how painful the price.  With every bitter utterance of “Kurogane” he heard from Fai, Kurogane remained firm in his conviction that he had made the right choice.

It wasn’t easy, though, particularly given that Fai initially refused to drink his blood, refused to do what he needed to in order to continue living.  Kurogane tried to remain patient, tried to give the man time to adjust to, to accept his new circumstances, his new being, but as he watched Fai grow weaker, his body turning gaunt the way it had at the beginning of their stay in Yama, this became increasingly impossible, and one day he lost himself.

He cornered Fai, who had become quite skilled at avoiding him, in a room, shoving him roughly (too roughly, admittedly) against a wall, and lost his temper.

“How long are you going to keep this bull up?” he raged.  “You know you need to drink!”

“Do I, Kurogane?” Fai spat back, his voice low but clearly seething.  “Why, because you decided that I do?  What right do you have to make that decision?”  

“It was the right decision!” Kurogane countered.

“That’s your opinion, Kurogane,” Fai returned, still keeping his voice low, refusing to meet Kurogane’s eyes.  Fai smiled bitterly.  “I didn’t ask you to make that decision.  In fact, I asked you not to…and yet you did anyway.”

“Because your life matters!  Because your life is precious!”  The words left Kurogane unbidden, but he did not regret saying them, and he meant them.  Why couldn’t Fai see this?

Fai’s eye went wide at Kurogane’s exclamation, and he made a horrible sound, a strangled, choking sound (A laugh?  A sob?  Some deranged combination of the two?) and ran from the room.

Clearly, Kurogane had to utilize a different tactic, and he knew just which one to use.  He cornered Fai again several nights later, after the children had gone to bed.  Kurogane called out to Fai as he was beginning to walk away from him.

“Oi, listen.  Have you given any thought to the princess?”

This caught Fai’s attention, as he knew it would.  The magician turned around to face him.  “I’m sorry?”

“Are you thinking about the princess at all?  Are you thinking at all about what this must be like for her?”

Fai stared at him, mouth slightly agape, the weight and meaning of Kurogane’s words clearly registering with him the way that he had hoped that they would.

“She lost her memories, and now she’s lost the kid.  Do you really want her to have to lose you, too?  Are you really going to make her see you waste away?”

Kurogane watched as Fai swallowed hard, saying nothing, and he knew he’d found his in.

“Look, you won’t drink for me, and you won’t do it for yourself…fine.  Do it for the princess.  She’s suffered enough.”

Fai’s expression was unreadable, but he approached Kurogane slowly, tentatively.  Kurogane rolled up his sleeve and bared his arm, waiting.  The vampire in Tokyo who’d given Fai his blood had produced claws, and Kurogane assumed Fai could now do the same.  He continued to wait, but Fai did nothing.  Kurogane eyed Fai’s hands, and Fai finally understood his meaning.

“What?  No!”  Fai recoiled, grasping his left hand with his right, looking horrified.  “No, I won’t!  I’ll drink, but I won’t do that to you!”

Thus, their arrangement was born.  When the need arose, Kurogane would cut his own arm and Fai would drink—begrudgingly, unhappily, but without protest.  It was a cruel irony, Kurogane couldn’t help but feel.  He had wanted so badly to become closer to Fai, and now they were more physically intimate than they ever had been, and yet Fai had never felt so far away.

Fai was alive, though, and for that alone Kurogane did not regret his decision.

Still, the pain of it all felt overwhelming at times.  Kurogane’s heart ached for all of them—a magical creature who had lost all of her cheer; a boy consumed by guilt for merely existing, for not being someone else; a girl, battered in body and in spirit, who mustered on nonetheless, never complaining; and a man more dear to Kurogane than he could possibly say, whom he feared he may have lost forever.

Kurogane had failed to protect his parents and his home, had failed to protect Fai, but he would do what he could to remain strong for the sake of these people for whom he had come to care for so deeply.  He would remain steadfast for their sake….

….and Kurogane succeeded, as best as he could, until one night, while going through some of his belongings, he spotted it: the drawing of a dragon, given to him what felt like a lifetime ago.  Then, in the privacy of his room, Kurogane wept.   

Fai

Fai had lost his way.  He had lost sight of what really mattered.  He had forgotten his true purpose.

He should have realized it had been happening, should have picked up on what was going on.  Kurogane himself had pointed it out to him.  “You’ve changed,” the ninja had told him in Piffle, after Sakura had won the Dragonfly race.   Fai had certainly been thrown by the comment, but he had told himself that Kurogane simply didn’t know what he was talking about, that he didn’t know him, not really.

Except Kurogane did know. Kurogane always knew exactly what was going on with Fai (and how incredibly unfair that was), and Kurogane had been right.

Fai should have realized what had been happening, but he didn’t, not really…not until he used his magic.

It had all happened so quickly.  Fai hadn’t even really had time to give his actions proper thought.  All he knew was that they needed to get out of that world, and, in that moment, there was only one way to ensure that would happen, so Fai used his magic.

When it was over, and they had landed in the next world, a ravaged, beaten-down city, Fai reasoned with himself that he had used his magic for the sake of his mission.  He had to keep Sakura alive, had to deliver her safe and whole to his master.  It would have all been for naught had she perished in that previous world.

Still, the argument rang hollow in his mind.  He had grown to care for them—for Sakura, for Syaoran, for Mokona, even for Kurogane, the man he would need to kill should Fei Wang order him to do so.  He used his magic, used it despite the overhanging threat that Ashura could potentially seek him out if he did so, because he cherished these people and wanted to protect them.

Fai had always been weak, had always been selfish; he should have anticipated this course of events.  He needed to refocus on his priorities.  He needed to do what was necessary to right his great wrong, to atone for his great act of sin.  He needed to bring Fai, the real Fai, back.

Fai needed to move past this incident, needed to reorient himself.  Kurogane, of course, decided to make this difficult.  Fai should have known that the ninja would confront him about his behavior, should have foreseen the conversation they would have while Sakura lay unconscious and an injured Syaoran lay sleeping.  The man could never simply let Fai be.

“You involved yourself in their lives,” Kurogane had told him.

“I don’t want to make anyone unhappy because of their involvement with me.” The words had come to Fai unbidden, had been uttered before he could stop them.  They were words Kurogane should never have heard.

Yes, twins bring calamity!  They bring unhappiness! Bring despair!  The guilty must be put to death!  It’s all the fault of those unhappy twins!

These words had echoed in Fai’s head for most of his long life, a steady cadence reminding him of who he was, of the disaster his mere existence had brought about.  He could never escape these words—they were never truly silent—and it was these words that prompted his statement to Kurogane.

If Kurogane was struck by Fai’s statement, he did not show it.  He did not back down.  “Your past is no business of mine…so…shape up and figure out where you stand,” the ninja had finished before walking away.

Fai’s past was all he had, though.  It was what had informed his actions and decisions since he was a child.  Fai had no future.  When this journey ended, Fai’s life would end with it.  Until then, he had to keep plowing forward, looking towards the finish.

Perhaps that finish would come sooner than he had anticipated, Fai realized shortly after his conversation with Kurogane.  The seal on Syaoran’s eye was breaking.    

***

It would have been too easy, Fai thought afterward.  It would have been too easy if he had simply been allowed to die.  It would have been too easy, and it would have been a mercy that Fai did not deserve.

The seal on Syaoran’s eye was breaking.  Fai had known this would happen eventually, of course, had known the truth of who this Syaoran was since many, many years before he even met the boy, and yet…

Syaoran was not a mindless drone, a being created by Fai’s master to gather Sakura’s feathers.  Syaoran was brave and selfless, kind and thoughtful.  Syaoran loved to read, loved to learn about history and different cultures.  He could read and speak multiple languages, and he trained earnestly under Kurogane to learn how to wield his sword.  He constantly offered to help others, and he apologized too much, and Fai had not known that one person could be devoted to another in the way that Syaoran was to Sakura until he witnessed it.

The seal on Syaoran’s eye was breaking, and Fai decided that simply could not happen, so he made a decision, yet again, to use his magic, and to hope that he was somehow successful at an undertaking that he knew, deep down, was doomed to fail.

When had Fai ever been successful at anything?

Fai failed, and the seal on Syaoran’s eye broke, and Fai…Fai could not bear to think about what happened after that.

Mercifully, Fai lost consciousness for a period of time, a mercy he did not deserve.  When he woke, Kurogane was cradling him in his arms, and the ninja placed him on a bed, and he cupped the uninjured side of Fai’s face, and he looked Fai square in his uninjured eye, and he said, in a voice that was angry and afraid, “don’t you die, you hear?  Don’t you dare die!”

Fai was dying, though.  He could sense that well enough, could sense that his body was shutting down, that it could not sustain itself.

Finally, he thought.

Fai had lived for so, so long, had lived a life devoid of any real happiness, devoid of any lasting peace, of any sustained kindness.  It was what he deserved, he knew, but still, the thought that it would finally, finally be over felt like blessed relief.

Fai would no longer be bound to serve a cruel master.  He would no longer need to worry about the possibility of Ashura awakening and resuming his killing of untold numbers of innocent people.  He would no longer have to face the prospect of potentially having to kill Kurogane, of having to watch Sakura succumb to her cruel inevitable fate.

Fai would no longer have to exist under the crushing weight of the sin that had cost his brother, his twin, his life.

It would have been too easy, though, and it was a mercy Fai did not deserve, and it was one Fai ultimately was not granted.  Kurogane saw to that.

If you want to die that much, I’ll kill you myself!  But until that day, you’re going to live!

….until that day, you’re going to live….

Why, though?  Why did it have to be that way?  Why couldn’t it all, finally, just end?

Fai knew why, though.  Fai had let himself become too close to Kurogane, to all of these people.  He should have seen all of the signs—how fond he had become of the children, how comfortable he became with Kurogane in Yama, his realization that he would no longer be able to kill Kurogane, his decision to use his magic in Lecourt.  Kurogane himself had pointed this out to Fai, back in Piffle and then again after they had arrived in Tokyo.  As Fai would tell Yuko, he had crossed the line he had drawn for himself.  He had seen what was happening, and he had done nothing to stop it.  Perhaps, deep down, he had not wanted to.  Fai had always been weak and selfish. 

“I don’t want to make anyone unhappy anymore,” Fai told the Time Space Witch after he had awoken in his new, strange body, kept alive by Kurogane’s sacrifice.  There was only one path forward now.

Sakura, kind Sakura, was doomed, had always been doomed, and now she was suffering more than ever, her Syaoran now soulless and gone.  Fai suspected that she had come to know the truth of who she really was as well.  Fai would devote himself to her entirely, would treat her with every kindness possible and love her and hope that he could provide her with some small solace and happiness in whatever days she had left.

Syaoran was gone, replaced by a new Syaoran, the “real” Syaoran.  Up until this point, all of Fai’s companions had been completely in the dark about the truth about their journey—about the person orchestrating it, about the circumstances that led to it, about where it was ultimately headed.  Such was not necessarily the case with this Syaoran.  Fai did not know what, exactly, he knew, but he was certain that it was more than any of the others ever had; this Syaoran knew things, about their journey, maybe even about Fai.  Fai’s heart ached for the boy in many ways, but it was best to keep his distance, both for this reason, and for the boy’s protection. 

After all, Fai was cursed, was destined to bring pain to others.  How could he have forgotten that?

Fai knew what Kurogane’s decision to keep him alive, at great personal cost, meant.  Kurogane himself had said it when they were each faced with the decision of whether or not to continue on the journey. 

I’m going back to Nihon.  That hasn’t changed.  But there is one thing that has changed.

Fai knew exactly what Kurogane’s words meant, and it was Fai’s fault.  Fai had allowed the two of them to become close, and as long as they were close, Kurogane was at risk, at risk of being harmed by the misfortune that Fai and his curses and his wretched existence would someday inevitably bring.

Fai would not allow that to happen.  Kurogane was a good man, and, while Fai was doomed, and Sakura was doomed, and perhaps this Syaoran was doomed as well, just as the other Syaoran had been, perhaps Kurogane did not need to be.  Perhaps Kurogane could return home and live a long, happy life.  The only way that could happen would be if Fai distanced himself from him.

There would be no more teasing, no more “Kuro-whatevers,” no more smiles, real or fake.  Fai knew it hurt Kurogane, this change in his actions and words, but it was the only way to protect him. 

It really would have been easier if he had just been left to die.  Fai thought constantly of all of the pain he had caused others over his long, miserable life.  The reminders were everywhere.  One evening, shortly after leaving Tokyo, Kurogane turned his back to Fai and removed his shirt, preparing to change into his night clothes.  There, marring his back, were fading marks that Fai recognized immediately.  Fai had known Kurogane’s back had been injured while he was unconscious in Tokyo, had seen the blood that covered his shirt, but hadn’t known the details of what had happened, hadn’t realized…

Kurogane must have heard the gasp that Fai could not contain at the sight.  “It wasn’t your doing.  It wasn’t your fault,” he said simply.

“It was my magic!” Fai responded, feeling sick.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kurogane repeated.

“But it was my magic!” 

Fai’s body had been transformed into something monstrous, although perhaps that is what he had always deserved.  He was constantly faint and nauseous with hunger, hunger for Kurogane’s blood.  He craved in constantly, wanted it in a way that he had never wanted anything.  Yet how could he bring himself to drink another person’s blood, to drink Kurogane’s blood?

Kurogane, of course, figured out a way.  Kurogane had always been smarter than Fai gave him credit for, and as soon as he pointed out to Fai that, by refusing to feed, he was hurting Sakura, Fai really had no choice but to give in and to take the ninja’s blood.

Then again, how was that any different from any other time, any other circumstance in Fai’s long life?  Fai had never been allowed to make his own choices, had never been allowed any agency in his own life.  He had always been someone’s pawn—his uncle’s, Ashura’s, Fei Wang’s.  His life had never really belonged to him.  Fai hadn’t even been allowed to die when he had wanted to.  Kurogane had robbed him of that choice as well.

Their group was in a place called Infinity, a gritty, crime-ridden city where they had chosen to participate in a human chess tournament.  The setting was fitting, Fai supposed, for the circumstances under which he and his traveling companions were now living.

Fai drank from Kurogane on a regular basis.  The pair had come to an unspoken agreement of sorts about it.  Fai did not fight the arrangement, but he hated drinking Kurogane’s blood, hated it with every fiber of his being.

Fai was due to drink that night.  Kurogane cut his own wrist and held his arm out expectantly.

Fai sighed.  “I suppose I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“You always have a choice,” Kurogane responded.

“Do I, though, Kurogane?”  Fai struggled to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“We always have choices,” Kurogane replied simply.

Fai had never been allowed to make his own choices.  Was anyone allowed to, really?

“Do you really believe that, Kurogane?  You didn’t choose to come on this journey.  Your princess sent you.”

Kurogane shrugged.  “She did so because of the choices I’d made.  While I didn’t choose to leave Nihon, it was my choices that caused it to happen.”

Fai let out a brittle laugh.  “You really believe that we have that much control over our own lives?”

“Yes, I do,” Kurogane said simply. 

“Well, you’re wrong,” Fai replied angrily. 

Kurogane sighed.  “I hate that you see things that way.”

“Are you really surprised, Kurogane?  After all, aren’t I the type of man you hate most?”  Fai walked away before Kurogane could reply.

Chapter Text

Fai

For the first time in many, many years, Fai didn’t know what to do.

Since Fei Wang had come to him in that cursed valley an eternity ago, Fai had lived his life with one purpose, one goal propelling him forward: he would do Fei Wang’s bidding in order to bring his brother, his twin, the real Fai back to life, finally atoning for the great sin he had committed when he had selfishly chosen his own life over his brother’s.  Then, finally, his own life could end.   

Except it wasn’t like that at all, had, apparently, never been like that.

The entire foundation upon which Fai had built his life—that, when given the choice between saving his own life and saving his twin’s, he had chosen himself, that his twin had done the opposite, and that he must spend the rest of his life working to fix that wrong—had been a lie, an implanted false memory designed to bend him to the will of the evil sorcerer who had murdered Kurogane’s mother and destroyed his home, who had taken two innocent children and created copies of them as if their lives were meaningless and disposable, who had been sowing discord and chaos across the universes and dimensions.

Fai felt as though his entire life had unraveled before his eyes, each falsehood coming untangled from the web of what he had perceived, for all of these many years, his life to be.  He felt completely unmoored, unsure what was real and what was not, uncertain of what to do moving forward…and he felt beaten and broken from one loss after another, losses accumulated on his behalf.

First, there was Sakura, his precious princess, who had conspired with Yuko to take the brunt of his first curse upon herself, for his sake and for the sake of their companions.  “From now on…I want you to treat yourself as the most important person in your life.  Please, promise me,” she had told him before she took that sword to her breast, knowing full well what was to come in just a short time.  If ever there was a request asked of Fai that he felt he could not fulfill, this had to be it.

Still, he couldn’t help but wish he could have tried, because now Sakura was lost.  “Until we meet again,” she had told him, and the words continued to echo in Fai’s ears.  He clung to them desperately, hoping that they could be true.

Then there was Ashura, the man who had taken him and Fai from the valley, who had shown him every kindness that he could, who had loved him when no one else had…and whose murderous actions had been an attempt to free Fai from his second curse.  “You mustn’t shed tears for one such as I,” he had told Fai as he lay dying, his body split by Kurogane’s sword…another request that Fai could not possibly realize.

And Kurogane…

In the end, it was Kurogane who freed Fai, freed him from his past, from the collapsing Celes, from his curses.  Sakura was gone, Ashura was gone, and now Kurogane could be gone as well…and Fai did not know if he could survive that loss.

As Fai watched Kurogane sever his own arm, watched the limb go flying past him, watched as Kurogane, bleeding profusely, grabbed him and heaved him into Mokona’s transportation magic with one hand, all Fai could think was, “I will give anything to keep him from dying.  I will do anything to keep him from dying.”

In that moment, Fai realized that this must have been how Kurogane felt when Fai was dying in Tokyo.

In that moment, Fai realized that he loved Kurogane.

When Fai reached adulthood in Celes, Ashura began to attempt to broker a match for him.  He would invite the daughters of various nobles to court, arranging for Fai to have dinner with them, or to browse the art galleries of Luval Castle with them, or to listen to a musical performance with them.  Some of these women were terrible, but some were very likeable, and with these women Fai would have more dinners, or more shared moments of entertainment.  With some of these women, Fai would tumble into bed naked and become physically intimate.  After a time, though, when he felt the women growing closer to him, when he felt them wanting a true connection with him, Fai would begin to push them away.  Fai had one purpose in life, and loving another person would interfere with that purpose.  Fai was cursed, and loving another person risked spreading his misfortune.

Ashura seemed to believe the issue was a matter of Fai’s preference, so he began arranging for Fai to be with various high-born men, but things continued to play out the same way.  People began to gossip about Fai’s behavior, about how he would bed men and women but refuse to marry any of them, and Fai realized that his choices were beginning to sully Ashura’s reputation, so he stopped engaging with any of his would-be suitors entirely, and Ashura’s efforts ultimately ceased.  If a time came when he craved physical intimacy, he would disguise himself and venture down to one of the pleasure houses outside the castle, making sure to pay the proprietor generously just in case his identity was somehow discerned.

One night Ashura found him in his study.  “You do deserve to love and be loved, Fai,” he told him softly.

Fai smiled at his king.  “I know that,” he said

Ashura shook his head, looking melancholy.  “It really does sadden me how easily you have come to lie,” he replied, and then he walked away.

Fai had never thought he would love anyone.  Now he had come to love someone, and that person was dying, dying because of him.

Mokona’s transportation magic deposited them in a new world, and Fai watched as a group of men rushed forward and grabbed Kurogane’s still body.  He was disoriented, sobbing and screaming, unsure where they were, unsure who these people were.  Then…

“Never fear…Kurogane will not die.”

The voice was soft but full of conviction, and the girl to whom it belonged placed a gentle hand to Fai’s tear-stained face, and Fai looked up, and he knew: this was Kurogane’s Nihon, and this was Kurogane’s Tomoyo.  Somehow, when she said those words, he believed her.

Before the group departed for Celes, Fai had begged Yuko to ensure that their next destination after Fai’s former home be somewhere safe.  She had said he didn’t have sufficient payment for the price, but perhaps his request hadn’t fallen on deaf ears.  Perhaps he had managed to arrange for one good thing to happen.

Tomoyo led him, Syaoran, who was carrying Sakura’s soulless body, and Mokona into the castle that loomed over the grounds where they had landed.  Fai moved as if on auto pilot, unaware of his surroundings, unaware of what was happening, until he found himself outside a room with just Tomoyo.

“You may use this room to rest tonight,” the princess told him kindly, opening the door to the room for him.  “I will ensure that Sakura receives the care that she needs.” 

Fai simply stared at Tomoyo, unsure what to say or what to do.  She patted his arm gently.  “I told you: Kurogane will not die.  You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, so, now, please, get some rest.”  Tomoyo bowed and walked away.

Fai entered the room and closed the door behind himself, surveying his surroundings.  The room was completely different from anything in Valeria or Celes, of course, but Fai had been in enough worlds with similar lodgings that by this point it was not all together unfamiliar.  He noticed some food and water had been laid out for him, but he had no stomach for such things.  There was a set of clothing next to his sleeping mat.  He discarded his bloody Celesian attire and changed into the strange robe, finding that it took him several attempts to don it properly.

Then Fai laid on the sleeping mat…and he sobbed, and he sobbed, and he sobbed, and then he fell into a dreamless sleep.

***

When Fai woke the next morning, he felt strangely calm.  He still felt confused by so many things, unsure about so many things, and he still, in many ways, did not know what he would do moving forward, but there was one thing he did know now: he would live.

Fai would live.

Fai had spent most of his long life anticipating his death, welcoming it even.  When he awoke that morning in Nihon, though, he vowed that things would be different.  Fai, his precious twin, had sacrificed so that he could live, and now Kurogane had done the same, and Fai would honor their choices by doing just that.

Tomoyo met him in his room not long after he woke.  “Sakura’s injuries have been tended to, and Syaoran and Mokona are resting peacefully,” she told him with a smile.

“And Kurogane?  Has he woken?” Fai asked her, trying to maintain his composure and to keep any panic from his voice.

Tomoyo shook her head.  “The healers say that he will not wake for some time yet, but he will,” she told him, looking him square in the eye.  “Kurogane will not die.”

Fai swallowed and nodded.

Tomoyo smiled at him.  “Now, if you’ll join me, I’d love to show you around and get to know you a bit.  I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Fai.”

Fai spent a very enjoyable day with Tomoyo.  It was easy to see why Kurogane was so devoted to his princess.  Fai found that in her presence he felt calm and at ease and that, for at least a time, he could forget all of the many thoughts that troubled him.

Nihon, too, was lovely, a beautiful place, certainly very different from anywhere Fai had lived.  Partway through the day, Tomoyo pointed out two women who were sitting together a little ways in the distance.

“That is my elder sister, the empress Amaterasu,” Tomoyo told him, pointing toward an elaborately dressed, regal looking woman, “and that is Souma, her lead ninja,” she finished, indicating the woman next to her sister, whom Fai recognized as the woman from Kurogane’s world they had met in Outo.

“Amaterasu, that is a pretty name,” Fai said in response, and was surprised when Tomoyo giggled.

“Her name is Kendappa.  Amaterasu is her title as the empress of Nihon, much like, as its princess, my title is Tsukuyomi,” Tomoyo explained.

“Oh, I’m sorry!  This whole time I should have been calling you Tsukuyomi,” Fai stammered, feeling embarrassed, but Tomoyo only smiled.

“Please, I want you to call me Tomoyo.  Those who know me well call me by my name, and I am hoping that you and I will get to know each other better and better.”

“OK, Tomoyo it is then,” Fai replied, returning her smile.

Evening seemed to come too quickly, and Fai prepared to return to his room for the night.

“Kurogane will want to see you when he wakes,” Tomoyo told him as they approached his room.

Fai had expected this, he supposed.  “I…I think you should see him,” he said to the princess, unsure how to respond to her statement.

“Yes, I should be the one who is there he wakes up, but, still, he will want to see you, and right away, I am certain,” Tomoyo replied.

“I won’t know what to say,” Fai told her, feeling foolish, childish even.

Tomoyo smiled.  “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“I’m really not sure what to make of him, to be honest,” Fai confessed.  “I was so certain he was just some dumb, angry fighter when I met him.  He’s proven me wrong about so many things.”  Fai paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts before continuing.  “I’m not sure that I’ve ever been so mistaken in how I’ve assessed another person.”

Tomoyo waited a bit before replying, and Fai could tell that she was choosing her words carefully.  “Kurogane has been very angry for a very long time; that is true.  That is partly why I sent him away from here.  Underneath that, though, he is very kind.”

Fai found himself smiling at her statement.  “I know that.  He is probably the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

“He is also much more perceptive than you might first think.  Kurogane is very good at seeing things others cannot,” Tomoyo continued.

Fai let out a somewhat bitter laugh at that.  “He certainly saw through all of my lies, and, for what it’s worth, I’ve spent a long time lying to a lot of people.  He was able to see exactly the type of person that I was.”

“And yet he chose to love you anyway,” Tomoyo said simply, catching Fai’s gaze and holding it.

Fai wanted to look away from her, but he forced himself not to.  “I don’t deserve it.”

“Clearly he thinks you do, and I believe you and I both just agreed that Kurogane is an unusually good judge of character.”

Fai found that he did not have a good answer for that statement, so he said nothing.

Tomoyo gave Fai one final smile.  “I truly enjoyed spending time with you today, Fai.  I hope that you sleep well tonight.”  Kurogane’s princess made a small bow and then walked away.

That night, in the privacy of his room, Fai used his magic to contact the Time Space Witch.

“It is good to see you, Yuko-san,” he greeted her when her image appeared, forcing himself to appear calm and composed, although in many ways he felt anything but.

“You as well, Fai,” Yuko replied.  “I take it that you are calling me because you have a wish?”

Fai smiled.  “Well, you are the only person I happen to know who is in the wish granting business.  I need you to help Kurogane.”

“And what would you like me to do?”

Fai had given a lot of thought to this next question.  What he most wanted was for Kurogane’s sacrifice to have somehow not happened, for Kurogane to have never lost his arm, but that would have potentially involved some sort of time manipulation, and Fai knew enough of how magic worked to know better than to mess with such things.

More importantly than that, though, Fai had made a decision to honor Kurogane’s sacrifice, and his brother’s as well, and making such a wish would do just the opposite.

“I want you to give Kurogane his arm back,” Fai answered.

“I’m afraid I cannot do that,” Yuko told him, and she looked truly apologetic.  “The price required for such a wish would be higher than you could ever hope to pay.”

“I see,” Fai said simply, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. 

“There may be something I can do, though.  I could arrange for him to have a new arm, of a sorts, anyway.”

It was not what Fai had hoped for, but he supposed it would have to do.  “And the price?” he asked the witch.

“What remains of your magic,” Yuko said simply.

Fai was immediately taken aback by Yuko’s statement.  Did she realize what she asked of him?  Surely she did.  Fai’s very life was tied to his magic.  Without it…

“No,” Fai said simply.  “No, I cannot do that,” he repeated, more firmly.

Yuko raised an eyebrow.  “No?”

“Whether I agree with it or not, Kurogane made his sacrifice to keep me alive…as did my brother.  Despite how I feel, I will not throw their sacrifices—their gifts to me—away.”

Yuko smiled.  “I’m glad to hear you say such a thing, Fai.  Still, you should know that I am not asking you to throw your life away.”

“My magic is tied to my lifeblood.  If I were to lose all of it, I would die.”

“That may have been true once,” Yuko began, “but it is not true now.  Kurogane saw to that.  Your magic is no longer the sole force maintaining your life.”    

The meaning behind the witch’s words hit Fai immediately.  “The vampire blood.” 

Yuko nodded.

Fai found himself hesitating.  His entire life, his magic had been a crucial part of him, a key component of his very being.  Fai had never been without it, and he could not even begin to imagine what that would feel like.

More than that, though, his magic tied him to his brother, his twin.  It was the only thing remaining that linked him to Fai.

Yuko somehow seemed to know what he was thinking.  “Do you wish to cling to the past, Fai, or are you ready to move forward and look to the future?”

Fai knew that his inability to let go of his brother, to let him rest and be at peace, had ultimately been a cause of great pain.  In the end, the answer to Yuko’s question was clear.

Fai swallowed, nodding.  “I…I want to move forward.  I will pay your price, so, please, help Kurogane.”

“I will grant your wish, then, as long as you promise me one additional thing,” Yuko said.

“That hardly seems fair,” Fai pouted.  “What is it you’re asking of me?”

“Promise me this,” Yuko began.  “You will perform the hard work of tearing down the walls you have built around yourself, and you will begin to let others in, to let Kurogane in.  You both deserve that.”

Fai laughed lightly.  “That’s a tall order.”

“It is,” Yuko replied, nodding.

“I’m not sure how to do that,” Fai confessed.

Yuko shrugged.  “I think perhaps you do.  After all, Kurogane has already managed to break some of them down; something you did allowed him to do so.”

Fai nodded.  “I don’t know how successful I’ll be, but I promise to try.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Yuko said.

After saying his farewells to the Time Space Witch, Fai realized that he knew what he would say to Kurogane when he awoke.

Kurogane

When Kurogane returned to Nihon, he was both less of a man than he had been before he left and more of one. His left arm was gone; that was true.  Still, Kurogane returned with so much more, and when he saw Princess Tomoyo (and it was his Tomoyo this time) smiling gently at him, the walls of Shirasagi Castle immediately recognizable behind her, when he awoke in his former quarters, he knew he’d returned a better man than he’d been when he left that place.

Waking was painful, to be sure.  There was a terrible ache in his side, and it quickly registered in his mind that he must have sustained a grave wound there.  Then there was his left arm, or, rather, the space where his left arm had once been.  Kurogane’s mind recalled with both amazing speed and amazing calmness that it was gone.  Still, on the whole, the experience felt not at all unlike waking from a nightmare, that moment when understanding rushes in over the fact that everything one had just witnessed was nothing but a bad dream.

Except…

It wasn’t a nightmare, though.  None of it was.  Just as quickly as the relief had appeared, it was vanquished with the realization that it had all been real.  Everything he had just witnessed, everything he had just experienced had been real.

Fai…

All this time, Kurogane had wanted to know Fai (Yui!), know his secrets, know from what it was he was running, know the truth behind his many lies, know the motivations behind his actions, know the reasons for choices.

Now Kurogane knew everything.  When Fai’s mind seemed to travel elsewhere when amongst the snowbanks in Jade, Kurogane now knew where it went.  When Fai called out in his sleep, Kurogane now knew the person he was trying so desperately to reach.  When Fai became lost on the moon in Yama, so lost that it took an arrow in the arm to bring him back, Kurogane now knew where he had gone.

Kurogane knew the source of Fai’s nightmares, of the scars on his hands and fingers.  He knew why Fai called out his own name in his sleep, why he refused to use his magic.  Kurogane knew why Fai did not fight back when his life was in danger, why he kept everyone at arm’s length, why he ran and ran and ran. 

Kurogane knew, but he almost wished he didn’t, because he was certain that the images he had seen in that nightmare that had been real—the emaciated, hollowed-eyed child; the mountain of corpses; the child falling from the side of the tower, again and again, his hands smeared with blood; the regal figure with the dagger through his neck; the tiny dead body, its spine severed, splayed in blood before its twin; the deranged king with the blood-stained hands and the vacant, dead look in his eyes; and Fai tortured and tormented and beaten down until, ultimately, he resigned himself to a recognition that he was nothing but a cursed being who did not deserve to live—would haunt him for a long, long time to come.

I was a guy that always waited…for the one who would take me along.

Kurogane had wanted to know, but not like that, with that king displaying all of Fai’s memories for him as if they were some horror show presented for his enjoyment.

How many times had Kurogane told Fai that he didn’t care about his past, that his past didn’t matter?  Kurogane stood by those words, even now.  He had fought long and hard to leave his own painful past behind, as best as he could, anyway, and he believed others should do the same.  Still, after what he had seen…

I was a guy that always waited…for the one who would take me along.

Then Fai’s second curse activated, and that ugly, wretched world began to implode, and Fai used what remained of his magic to send the kid, the princess, and the manju away to safety, and, somehow, some other force of magic was trying to whisk Kurogane away, too, and Fai was going to be left alone to die.

Then Kurogane heard that voice, the one he now knew belonged to his princes.

Do you desire to go together?  Is that…what your heart truly wishes?  Then you must exchange magic identical to that person’s magic.

For the entirety of his long, long life (and Kurogane still did not know just how long it was), Fai had been manipulated and used, had been tossed around like people’s plaything, had been led to believe that his life did not matter, that he did not matter, that he never could.

Like hell was Kurogane going to do the same.

I was a guy that always waited…for the one who would take me along.

“I’ve got no regrets over losing my arm,” Kurogane told Tomoyo.  When Fai appeared in Kurogane’s quarters, whole and alive, and when Kurogane heard that lilting “Kuro-sama” and saw that grin, he knew he never would.

Many things had happened since that moment.  Fai had given up what remained of his magic as payment for an artificial arm for him.  (“I won’t hand over anything that amounts to giving my life away.  Not anymore,” Fai had said with a smile, a real smile, the weight and significance of those words not at all lost on Kurogane.)  The other kid, the first kid, had appeared, and the princess had disappeared, disintegrating into a plethora of rose petals, the sad truth of her existence revealed to him.  They had learned more about their enemy and prepared to depart for the Kingdom of Clow, the kid’s home world.  He had renewed his vows to Tomoyo, and she had returned Ginryu to him, the real Ginryu, his father’s sword, his ancestors’ sword, and he felt that he was finally perhaps worthy to wield it.

They were set to depart Nihon the following morning.  Kurogane sat in his room enjoying a bottle of sake when the specter of a figure in the courtyard outside his quarters caught his eye.  Upon closer inspection, he realized that it was Fai.

He was wearing a simple yukata (Kurogane would have words with Tomoyo about that furisode), and his now long hair hung loosely over his shoulders, the hair tie he usually used discarded somewhere.

Even with the loss of one eye, even with the other eye no longer that striking blue it had once been…gods, the man was beautiful.

“Oi,” Kurogane greeted him, entering the courtyard.

“Oh, Kuro-tan!” Fai responded, clearly startled.  “It was such a lovely night that I decided to go for a little walk, but, I, uh, I got a little bit lost, and I haven’t been able to find my room,” the magician (former magician?) confessed a bit sheepishly.

“The layout of the castle can be a bit confusing,” Kurogane admitted, moving towards Fai until he was standing at his side.

“Your home really is beautiful, Kuro-sama, and the people here are all so kind.  I can understand why you wanted to return here so badly,” Fai said softly.  The unsaid comparison—so unlike my home—hung heavily in the space between them. 

Kurogane placed a hand gently on his shoulder, causing Fai to momentarily flinch, as he suspected he would, but the magician righted himself quickly.  “It’s getting chilly out, and we have a big day tomorrow.  You should come inside.”

Kurogane led Fai back into his room and gestured for him to sit, and Fai did so without hesitation, a pleasant surprise for Kurogane, who was unsure how the man would react to his suggestion.  He watched as Fai looked around the room curiously, his eye finally landing on Ginryu.

“Is that…?” Fai began.

“Ginryu, my sword.  The one the witch took from me was a replica.  This is the real sword,” he explained.

“I see…”

Kurogane offered the bottle of sake he had been drinking to Fai.  The magician accepted it, taking a long swallow. 

“It’s good,” he told Kurogane with a smile, returning the bottle to him.

“Mmm,”Kurogane replied.

“Say, Kuro-rin, out of all of the worlds that we’ve visited, which one do you think had the best alcohol?” Fai asked.

“That’s easy,” Kurogane answered quickly.

“Oh?” Fai replied, eyeing him curiously.

“Shara.  Definitely Shara.”

Fai nodded.

“The  booze there was really good,” Kuorgane continued.

“So good!” Fai returned.  “It’s such a shame that we were only able to spend one night there.”

“Yeah,” Kurogane agreed.

“What about Yama?  What did you think of the drink there?” Fai continued.

“It wasn’t bad, depending on what it was.  Strong, though,” Kurogane answered.

Fai nodded in agreement.  “Do you remember that one night when we had all of that alcohol that guy—what was his name?—Hiroshi brought from the market, and it was super strong?  I’ve never seen so many people get so drunk.”

Kurogane sniggered.  “Yeah, that one idiot, Kenji…”

“Kenta,” Fai corrected him.

“Whatever” Kurogane huffed.  “He passed out with his face in his noodles, and stunk of fish for the next two days.”

“Ah, that’s right,” Fai laughed.  “No one would go near him.”

“And when we woke up in our room the next morning, your shirt was on inside out,” Kurogane continued.

“It was?” Fai said, sounding surprised.  “I don’t remember taking it off.”

Kurogane grunted out a laugh.  “I don’t remember you taking it off, either.”

“That was quite the night,” Fai said, smiling at him.

“Mmm,” Kurogane returned.

The two fell into silence for a while, but it was comfortable somehow, right.  This is what Kurogane had wished for, the ability to simply pass time together with Fai, the conversation between them easy, real, the two men content in each other’s presence.  They weren’t there yet—there were still many things to take care of, absolutely crucial things, before such nights could truly be a reality—but Kurogane was going to do everything that he damn could to make sure that someday they would be.

“Kuro-rin?” Fai suddenly said softly, tentatively, breaking the quiet.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know why I pushed you away, after what happened in Tokyo?”

Kurogane paused for a moment before answering.  “You were angry at me for going against your wishes and keeping you alive.”

Fai nodded.  “Yes, that’s true.  I did resent you for that.  That…that’s not the main reason, though.”

Fai stopped speaking for a moment, seemingly collecting his thoughts, trying to figure out what he wanted to say.  Kurogane stayed quiet, curious as to where this was going.

“I wanted to protect you,” Fai finally said simply.

Kurogane raised an eyebrow at Fai, unsure what to make of such a statement.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” Fai continued.  “I’m cursed.  I’ve always been cursed, ever since the moment I was born.  How many people suffered, died even, simply because I was born?  Everyone I’ve ever been close to…all that’s ever come to them is disaster and misfortune.  It’s always been that way.  I figured I was doomed, and Syaoran-kun and Sakura-chan as well, but you…maybe you didn’t have to be.  Maybe you could make it out of this whole mess.  You deserved that.  I wanted that for you.  After what you did in Tokyo, I realized that we’d become too close.  The only way to protect you from me, from calamity, was to push you away.”

Kurogane was momentarily taken aback by the words, although he quickly realized that he had no reason to be.  He knew Fai.  Of course Fai would think that way.  Of course Fai would see things that way, see himself that way.

“That’s ridiculous,” Kurogane finally said simply.

Fai said nothing, casting the gaze of his remaining eye toward the floor.  Looking deflated, he began to move as if to stand and leave.

Kurogane immediately regretted his response.  All of this time, hadn’t he wanted Fai to open up to him, to finally speak freely and truly?  Now the man was doing just that, and here he was mucking the whole thing up.

“Wait, no,” he said quickly, grabbing Fai’s arm and gently pulling him back to a seating position.  “I—I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean it like that.  I just…” Kurogane paused for a moment, piecing together what he wanted to say.  “I just hate that you see yourself that way.  You don’t deserve that.  You didn’t deserve any of it.”

Fai smiled sadly, still not returning Kurogane’s gaze.  “I wish I could believe you.”

“You can,” Kurogane told him.  “You can,” he repeated again, more firmly.

Fai finally looked up at him but said nothing, his eye simply studying the ninja’s face, ultimately landing on the bruise along his jawline from where he had hit him shortly after he had first awoken when they arrived in Nihon.  Slowly, tentatively, he raised his hand to the area, slender fingers tracing the mark with a touch that was feather-light.

“I really am an idiot, aren’t I?” Fai finally said, not removing his hand.

“Yes,” Kurogane agreed, “but it’s OK.”

Fai then moved closer to him, and before Kurogane could really react the magician was kissing him.

How long had Kurogane wanted this?  How long had he fantasized about this?  He wanted so badly, as badly as he had wanted anything, to kiss Fai, to do so much more than kiss Fai.  The time for that hadn’t come yet, though.  There were still many things to take care of, absolutely crucial things, before such moments could become commonplace.  Kurogane was going to do everything that he damn could to make sure that someday they would be.   

Kurogane slowly pulled away from the kiss, and the look of hurt and shame that fell across Fai’s face damn near killed him.  “I…I’m sorry…” the magician began.

Kurogane took that face, that beautiful face, and cupped it gently in one large, calloused hand, tilting it so that Fai’s one eye was looking straight into his.  “Don’t be,” he told him.  “Don’t be,” he repeated, this time more firmly.

Fai nodded, smiling a bit, and Kurogane felt hopeful that he understood.

“Well, I suppose it is getting late, and, like you said, we have a big day tomorrow, so I probably should try to find my way back to my room,” Fai began, starting to rise.

Kurogane grabbed his arm.  “Don’t go.  Stay here with me tonight.”  The words surprised even him.

Fai glanced back at him, clearly a bit shocked, unsure of what to say.

“I just….Look, we don’t know what’s going to happen after tonight, and I…I want you to stay here with me,” Kurogane told him.

Kurogane wanted for the teasing response (“So naughty, Kuro-rinta!”  “Does Kuro-pu want to have his wicked way with me?”), but it never came.  Fai simply stared at him.  Finally, he nodded.

“OK.”

Kurogane lay down on his futon and gestured for Fai to join him alongside his uninjured side.  He expected Fai to keep some distance between them.  Instead, the magician curled his slender body right into his side, burying his head into Kurogane’s chest.  It was certainly surprising, but not at all unwelcome.  Kurogane placed an arm around him, pulling him slightly closer.

As Kurogane was drifting off to sleep, he realized that Fai was crying.

“What is it?” he asked, worried.

“I’m just…I’m really glad you’re alive, Kuro-sama.”

“I’m glad we’re both alive.”

Fai did not say anything in response, but Kurogane could feel the small nod of the man’s head against his chest.

***

When Kurogane woke the following morning, Fai was already gone.  Kurogane wondered if they would ever be able to share another night like that again, together side by side.  He didn’t know, but he was sure as hell going to do everything in his power to fight so that they could.

Today was the day. 

Kurogane dressed quickly and efficiently, tucking Ginryu into his side.  For a moment, he allowed himself to consider the possibility that he may never return here, but he brushed the thought aside as soon as it entered his head.  He would return.  He had sworn as much to Tomoyo, and he would uphold his vow. 

Upholding his vow to Tomoyo…Kurogane had not been doing such a good job of upholding the vow he had sworn to her all of those years ago.  He knew that now.  He had been so consumed by rage, visions of smoke and ash and a bloody breast and a severed hand constantly roiling his thoughts. 

Somehow, Tomoyo had seen beyond that, seen that he could be a different man, a better man.  He hoped that he was that man now.  He thought that perhaps he was.

When Kurogane exited the castle, he saw Fai in the courtyard speaking with Souma, the manju, perched on his shoulder.  Several feet away, Amaterasu was chatting with that stupid bastard’s bespectacled brother.  It seemed the bastard had already left, fortunately, probably in search of those poor twins.  All that was left now was to wait for the kid to arrive.

Tomoyo found him shortly afterward.  She did not need to say anything.  He could always sense her presence.

“I meant what I said before, Princess Tomoyo.  I will return here,” Kurogane told his princess firmly.

Tomoyo smiled at him, nodded.  “I do not doubt it.”  She paused for a moment, and then continued.  “I hope that when you do return you do not return here alone.”

Kurogane said nothing.  He knew full well what she was saying, the meaning behind her words.  He was simply unsure how to reply.  Even still, silence had never been uncomfortable…not between the two of them.

Kurogane sensed the shift in Tomoyo’s demeanor before she began speaking, so he was not surprised when her next words carried an extra heaviness to them.

“I am sorry for sending you away, and I want you to know that I’ve missed you terribly.  I think you understand now, though, why I did what I did,” his princess told him.

Kurogane nodded.

“Besides,” Tomoyo began, her affect lightening somewhat, “if you had not left this place, you never could have met the person whom you were destined to love most.”

Kurogane glanced towards Fai, still deep in conversation with Souma.  He was smiling, and the smile seemed real enough, but…

After what he had seen, seen of Fai’s past, of his life, it was hard not to wonder…could he really recover from all of that?  Could he really move on?  Could anyone?  If they were successful, if they defeated the man who had taken so much from all of them and somehow set everything to rights, would Fai be able to move forward? 

Would he ever be able to share a happy life with Kurogane?

Tomoyo seemed to sense his brooding thoughts.  “Is something bothering you, Kurogane?” she asked.

“I just…” Kurogane began, unsure how to explain his worries.  “Do you think he’ll be able move on, after everything he’s endured?  Do you think…do you think he wants to?”

Tomoyo took his hand.  “I have something I wish to show you.”

Kurogane’s princess led him towards the shrine not far from the castle.  She smiled at him.  “I suppose I technically should not be sharing this with you, but, well, as the Tsukuyomi, I think I have a right to make this decision.”

She brought him to the place where the ema hung and removed one.

“I took Fai here while you were still unconscious from your wounds,” Tomoyo began.  “I explained to him that if he wrote a wish on this ema it would be heard by the gods.  He said he couldn’t possibly write a wish because he did not know our language.  I assured him that the message would still reach the gods even if written in his own language, but he still hesitated, so I encouraged him to draw something instead.”

Tomoyo gently placed the ema she had removed in Kurogane’s hands.

“He does love you, Kurogane.  Give him time, and I have no doubt that he will prove that to you over and over again.”

The ema in Kurogane’s hands contained a single illustration: a dragon in the likeness of Ginryu.

Chapter Text

Kurogane

When Princess Tomoyo had sent Kurogane away, she told him it was so that he could learn the true meaning of strength.  Kuorgane thought that was a bunch of bull.  Kurogane knew what strength was.  It was training and practicing until no one’s skill with a sword could come close to matching yours.  It was pushing all thoughts of your past back into the deepest recesses of your mind, stowed away where they could not awaken, could not pain you.  It was casting a malevolent shadow over every battlefield, one that, in time, led others to regard you with a certain well-earned dread.  It was cutting down every potential enemy in your path, without discretion, without mercy.

Kurogane was the strongest ninja in Nihon.  Who was Tomoyo to tell him he did not understand the meaning of strength?  Who was anyone?

When Kurogane returned to Nihon, short an arm and a sword, Tomoyo had asked him if he had learned the true meaning of strength.  He had told her truthfully that he was not sure.  If he were to be honest with himself, perhaps he still was not sure.  Kurogane did not know if his current understanding of strength was right or not, was “true” or not, but he did know that it was certainly different from what it had once been.

Now, when Kurogane thought of strength, he thought of a boy who, when given the choice of losing his most cherished relationship to save the one he loved, did so without hesitation; a boy who forced himself to smile when big green eyes stared up into his blankly, unrecognizing; a boy who turned his face towards the rain to hide his tears; a boy who uttered every forced formal title of “princess” without bitterness or regret; a boy who pushed himself and trained himself and worked himself into the ground in order to best accomplish the task to which he had devoted his very life, knowing that, even if he were to succeed, the thing that he wanted most would still never be his; a boy who, despite the machinations of the evil man who had created him, never truly lost his heart, never truly forgot those he loved.

Now, when Kurogane thought of strength, he thought of a girl who, despite her loss of self, of memories, despite her confusion and disorientation, mustered forward day after day, refusing to allow others, far more whole and capable than she was, to carry her burdens; a girl who spread cheer and kindness to all she met, even at times when her own heart must have been terribly sad; a girl who made others happy just by being in their presence; a girl who always put every ounce of effort, every ounce of will she possessed into everything she did; a girl who did not shatter when she watched the one she loved most contort into someone unrecognizable, someone cruel; a girl who limped forward, ever forward, on a shattered leg; a girl who plotted to take a sword through her own breast in order to spare those she cared for most deeply from suffering.

Now, when Kurogane thought of strength, he thought of a boy who bore the weight of a sad, heavy destiny to be fulfilled on his small shoulders from the time he was born; a boy who chose to leave his parents and home as a young child because he knew, somehow, that it was what he must do; a boy who remained in a foreign land, knowing he would never see his home or his parents again, in order to save another, in order to right a wrong he only believed himself to have committed; a boy who spent years searching, searching, searching for an answer, never quitting, even when the search proved futile; a boy who, frozen and imprisoned, could only watch as life marched on without him; a boy who trudged under an impossible yoke of guilt, guilt for crimes both real and imagined, guilt for simply not being someone else; a boy who swore to see that sad, heavy destiny that had been thrust upon him through to the very end.

Now, when Kurogane thought of strength, he thought of a man and a woman who lived their lives under the specter of the brutal future that they knew awaited them, that they had already tasted the first moments of; a man and a woman who raised their first son to face a destiny that was far too cruel for him, knowing that they would need to send him away; a man and a woman who did their best to impart their love on their second son, knowing that they would need to leave him; a man and a woman who willingly allowed themselves to be sent into a suspended state where they waited, and waited, and waited, where they could do nothing to reach the other; a man and a woman who ultimately chose to give up their very existences so that the universe could be rid of the terrible force that had disrupted the lives of so many, of so many that this man and this woman loved.  Kurogane knew full well that without their sacrifice he never would have been able to run his sword through that man who had caused them all so much heartache.

Kurogane would feel the pain of their loss for a long, long time to come.

Mostly, though, when Kurogane thought of strength now, he thought of Fai, a man who had been tormented and used from the moment he came into existence, tossed around from one cruel hand to another; a man who had watched helplessly as everything he held dear was brutally ripped away from him; a man who was led to believe that his life meant nothing, that the only good he could bring about would be through his own demise; a man who, despite this, never lost his capacity for great kindness, and great love.    

As Kurogane recovered from his injuries in that strange desert country, resting in a bed in what he surmised was some sort of palace, he spent a lot of time thinking.  He slept, and he woke, and then, shortly afterward, he would sleep again, and then wake again sore and tired and slightly disoriented, his shoulder aching heavily where he had torn off the artificial arm.  During his brief  waking moments, though, he did a lot of thinking.  How could it be otherwise?  There was certainly plenty to think about, to try to make sense of.  Frankly, it was all confusing and confounding enough that Kurogane was not entirely sure that he would ever truly make sense of it.

Much of the time, Kurogane thought about the fact that he was alone in that strange, unfamiliar room, and about how much he wished Fai was there with him.  The magician had seemed OK as the two of them, limping and injured themselves, had carried the children out of those strange ruins, as had the children, despite their unconscious states at the time, and the manju, but, well, it was impossible not to worry given everything that had happened.

Kurogane realized that he didn’t know when Fai had last not been at his side.  He wanted him there desperately.

Kurogane woke at one point and realized that someone was seated in a chair next to his bed, and he felt his heart leap into his throat.  “Fai?” he called out.  “Fai?!”

The figure turned towards him slowly, and Kurogane felt something heavy drop in the pit of his stomach when he noticed that, although this man had coloring similar to Fai’s, his eyes were brown, not blue, and he wore spectacles.

“Ah, no, I’m sorry,” the man began, and, for what it was worth, he truly did sound sorry, “but my name is Yukito.  I assure you, though, that Fai-san is fine, as are Syaoran-kun, Sakura-chan, and Mokona.  They’re all resting here in the castle.  Truth be told, your injuries appear to be the worst of everyone’s.  You really did a number on that shoulder.”

The man paused for a moment, looking slightly uncomfortable.  “We’re doing our best to try to fix your, umm, arm,” he began, “but, to be honest, we’ve never seen anything quite like it here in Clow Country.  Still, we’ll be sure to keep working on it,” he finished with a smile.

Kurogane regarded the robed man carefully, gears turning in his heard until something clicked into place.  “You’re the high priest of this country.”

“Oh!” the man exclaimed, looking startled.  “No, I’m afraid that would be Queen Nadeshiko.”

Kurogane groaned, feeling like his head was spinning.  That was right; it was the first kid who had said that this man was the high priest of his country, and they were in the second kid’s version of that country.  It was all too confusing, and Kurogane wondered if he would ever get it all straight in his head.  Kurogane looked up at the man seated next to him, who was smiling kindly, and tried his best to bury his irritation.  It was not his fault that Kurogane was left to work out this mess of a situation in his mind, and it wasn’t exactly fair to be angry at the man when his sole crime was simply not being Fai.

“You do possess magic, though,” Kurogane began, feeling confident in this assessment.

“Yes,” the man confirmed.

“And you’re certain that the magician is fine?”

“He is.”

“If he’s fine, then why is he off somewhere resting?  You said he wasn’t injured badly.  Why isn’t he here?”

It was more than Kurogane would have liked to have revealed to this man he did not know, but Kurogane wanted Fai there with him badly enough that he was having difficulty maintaining composure.

To his credit, the man remained calm in light of Kurogane’s small outburst.  “He may not have significant physical injuries, but Fai-san still very much needs rest right now,” the man said before continuing.  “How should I explain it?  Your companion possesses phenomenal magic.  It’s a little bit scary, his magic,” he said with a small laugh, “and it is very clear that it is tied to his very being in a way that is quite extraordinary and unusual.  Very recently, he has used a substantial amount of that magic, and from what he has told me, both his body and his magic have undergone several transformations.  It is only natural that this would take a toll on him and that he would need some time to recover, both physically and psychically.” 

Of course, Kurogane realized…the loss of the one eye, the transition into vampire, the loss of what remained of his magic, then getting the stolen eye back—Kurogane had never really given much thought to the impact that these traumas and transformations, all of which happened in fairly quick succession, may have had on Fai.

“He will be OK, though, I assure you, and I’m sure he will be here to see you soon” the robed man told Kurogane.  “In the meantime, he asked me to tell you to make sure you rest—his orders.”

Kurogane grunted.  “He’s got some nerve, ordering me around.”

The man laughed softly.  “He was quite adamant that I tell you that.”  He looked at Kurogane softly, kindly.  “Now, please, go back to getting some rest.  I am sure that you will see Fai-san soon.”

Kurogane must have dozed off at some point, because when we woke again it was dark, clearly the middle of night.  He was lying on his bad side and suspected that the ache in his shoulder was what woke him.  Looking to ease the pressure on his injury, he rolled to his other side, only to discover that someone else was lying in the bed next to him.  Instinct immediately brought about an instance of panic, but Kurogane, with his keenly honed ability to see in even the darkest environments, quickly realized that the man lying next to him was not a threat.

Much better, Kurogane thought as he was watched Fai’s chest rise and fall with the steady rhythm of sleep, and, well, if anyone had been there to witness the scene and accused Kurogane of moving closer to the slumbering magician, he would have denied it.

When Kurogane woke again, sunlight filled his chambers.  He realized that Fai was no longer lying next to him, but it didn’t take long for him to eye the magician standing a short distance from his bed, looking out a large window.  The sun spilling through the window washed over him and…

…Man, Kurogane had never really stood a chance against this man, had he?

Kurogane must have made some noise as he hoisted himself into a seated position in bed, because Fai suddenly turned and looked in his direction.

“Ah, good morning, Kuro-sama,” he greeted him, smiling softly.

Kurogane didn’t reply, temporarily at a loss for words.

Fai grinned.  “Are you staring at me?”

“Yes,” Kurogane responded, and he took no small amount of pleasure in the momentarily shocked look on Fai’s face that was brought about by his honesty. 

“Don’t you know that it’s impolite to stare, Kuro-tan?” Fai teased.

Kurogane snorted.  “That’s mighty big talk coming from a man who sneaks into another man’s bed in the middle of the night.”

“But I thought you might be lonely!”

“I wasn’t,” Kurogane lied.

“Well, I was,” Fai said with a shrug before coming over to sit next to Kurogane in his bed.  The magician’s expression darkened somewhat as he eyed Kurogane’s empty sleeve.  “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Fai returned, sounding slightly angry.  “You were injured quite badly.  Your shoulder…”

“Is fine,” Kurogane said irritably. 

“But,” Fai began, but Kurogane cut him off before he could finish.

“I’m not going sit here and have you launch yourself into some guilt-fueled frenzy over my arm,” Kurogane said forcefully. 

Mercifully, Fai stayed silent, and Kurogane decided that it was as good of a moment as any to raise the question weighing most heavily on his mind.  “You have both your eyes now,” he said slowly.

“Yes.”

“And they’re both blue…”

“Yes.”

Kurogane found himself struggling to bring his question into the open.  Fai, gratefully, took over.

“It’s hard for me to know exactly what this means,” the magician began.  “It may be that, for a while, anyway, I will still draw some strength from drinking your blood, but, ultimately, I do not think I will be reliant on it anymore.  My returned magic should be more than enough to sustain me.”

“You’re always welcome to it,” Kurogane replied, not really sure how to respond.

Fai sighed.  “I hated it, you know, drinking your blood.”

“I know.”

“I hated hurting you.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Kurogane countered.

“It felt like that to me.”

Kurogane paused, choosing his words carefully.  “I’m sorry that it was painful for you, but I’m not going to apologize for the decision I made.  It was the right decision, and I don’t regret it.  I don’t regret any of my decisions,” he finished, gesturing towards the space where his arm once was.

Fai closed his eyes, clearly thinking deeply.  When he opened them again, he tentatively started speaking.

“It’s hard to see myself as a person of worth, as a person worthy of the sacrifices that you’ve made for me,” he began, a small smile forming on his face.  “I am going to try, though,” he finished.

“That’s all I ask,” Kurogane replied.

Fai turned towards him in that moment, and, oh…

It wasn’t the same, not exactly—blue eyes instead of brown, light hair instead of dark, the sharp lines of a man’s face instead of the smooth roundness of a woman’s—but Kurogane knew that look, had seen that look directed towards another man who bore his likeness, many years ago.

Kurogane didn’t what was going to happen moving forward, what their next step would be.  There were still many things to do, many things to say.  In that moment, though, all of that could wait.  In that moment, the look on Fai’s face told him everything he needed to know.

“Listen,” he began, using his remaining arm to pull Fai close.  “I’m going to hold you to that pledge.  In the meantime, though, until you can love yourself, you’d better let me love you, you got that?”

Fai

Fai had a decision to make.

For anyone else, this would be something of little consequence, would mean very little.  For Fai, this was perhaps the most momentous thing in the world.

Throughout the entirety of his long life, Fai had not been allowed to make decisions.  He had always been someone else’s tool, someone else’s pawn, the puppet whose actions were choreographed by others in order to advance a certain agenda, to achieve certain goals.  Fai never fought this.  Fear, guilt, a need for atonement—the forces that prevented him for fighting this were many, and they were strong, too strong to overcome.

Fai had never had agency over his own life.  Now he did.

The journey—the journey that he was never meant to survive, that he had never intended to survive—was over.  Fei Wang, Fai’s master for so long, was gone.  The Syaoran and Sakura Fai had met on that fated night at the Time Space Witch’s shop were also gone (and, oh, if the ache of that loss didn’t continue to gnaw at Fai, grating at his insides painfully).  The various worlds had been set to rights.  Syaoran, the original Syaoran, had become a paradox of sorts, along with the Time Space Witch’s apprentice, and, for the time being, at least, would need to continue to travel through worlds, lest his unstable existence upend the delicate balance of whatever place in which he happened to be. It was, to be sure, a far crueler fate than the one the boy deserved, but they had all been dealt far crueler fates than they deserved.

Fai’s journey, on the other hand, was over.  He was free to do what he would like.  The prospect was daunting in a way that perhaps nothing had ever been for him before.

Even still, he had made his decision.

With Valeria and Celes both destroyed, Fai had no home to which to return.  He thought of remaining in Clow Country, of staying alongside this Sakura, training her, helping her hone her magic.  Sakura had plenty of others to fill this role, however, others who also possessed significant magic, magic much more similar to hers than his was: her mother, the queen and high priestess of this world; the young man who was her brother’s companion.  They would prove to be far better guides than he would.  Sakura did not need him, and, without Mokona’s presence, he would be left floundering to communicate in this world whose language bore no similarities to his own.

Fai thought about living with Kurogane.  Fai thought about living with Kurogane a lot, of returning with the ninja to that strange, beautiful country with the kind people that he called home.  Fai was certain that Kurogane would go back there now that the journey was over, now that all of the wrongs had been set to right.  It was what Kurogane had said that he had wanted all along, after all.

It was so easy to fantasize about, a life together in Nihon with Kurogane.  Fai wanted it in a way that he had never wanted anything before.  Fai loved Kurogane, loved him in a way that he had never loved anyone before—not his mother, not Ashura, not the children, not even Fai, the real Fai.  Despite Kurogane’s hesitance when Fai had kissed him back in Nihon, Fai felt certain that Kurogane loved him as well.  The man had certainly done more than enough to prove that.

It was easy, so easy, to dream about a life with Kurogane in Nihon.  It was a lot harder to let go of that dream. 

In the end, that is just what Fai did.  In the end, the choice he had to make was clear.  Fai would go with Syaoran.  Fai would travel with Syaoran, continuing to move from world to world, perhaps finding a way to bring back the other Syaoran and the other Sakura, or perhaps never doing so, and he would continue to do this for as long as it remained necessary.

Fai had lived his life under the oppressive weight of the belief that he had committed a grievous sin.  Left to bear this burden alone, it slowly crushed him, rendering him a shell of a man full of self-loathing, a man who erected walls that prevented any connections with others, a man incapable of allowing himself even the smallest amounts of happiness, a man who did not believe that his life had worth, a man who did not believe that he deserved to live, a man who awaited what he believed to be his inevitable death with arms stretched wide, ready to welcome it.

Fai knew that Syaoran, too, lived under this same overwhelming guilt.  Fai would not allow for Syaoran to have to bear it alone, the way that he had.  Fai would not allow for Syaoran to become the type of man that he had become.

Sakura and the people of Clow did not need Fai.  Kurogane and the people of Nihon did not need Fai.  Syaoran needed Fai.

It had not been an easy decision to make, this first decision that Fai made that was truly his own.  Fai doubted that it was the decision that would bring him the most happiness.  He did not, however, doubt that it was the right decision.

All that remained was to share his decision with Kurogane.             

That means it’s gonna be us making the next decision.

About what we do from now on?

Fai had sent Mokona off to search for Syaoran and Sakura, leaving him alone with Kurogane.  His throat felt dry, his chest slightly tight.  Why should this be so difficult?  Fai had spent so many moments with this man—angry moments, joyous moments, moments of a gentle type of  intimacy unlike any he had ever shared with anyone before.  Fai knew Kurogane, and Kurogane knew him.  Why was he struggling so much to have this one conversation with him?

Perhaps Fai knew how much hinged on Kurogane’s response.  Perhaps Fai knew that this had the potential to be one of his last conversations with Kurogane.

There was no point in delaying now, so Fai took a deep breath, steadying himself, and began.

“I’m going to continue traveling with Syaoran-kun,” Fai began.  He looked over at Kurogane, who raised an eyebrow but otherwise didn’t react, so he continued.  “Well, you know I don’t have a home to return to, and because of the price he chose while in that dimension with the other Syaoran-kun and Watanuki-kun, Syaoran-kun needs to continue moving from world to world, at least until the price is paid.  I intend to go with him.”

Fai glanced over at Kurogane again.  The ninja met his eye, but his expression was impassive, betraying nothing.  Fai forced himself to press on.

“Syaoran-kun hopes to find a way to bring them back, the other Syaoran-kun and Sakura-chan.  He intends to search through the worlds in which we travel to try to find a way to do this.  I don’t even know if that’s possible,” Fai continued, laughing slightly, a laugh tinged with nervousness, “but I don’t know that it’s not possible either, and it seems to me that if there’s any possibility, however slight, that we could do this, it is something worth trying.”    

Fai paused for a moment.  Still, Kurogane said nothing.

“Besides,” Fai pressed on, gathering his resolve further, “I am not going to let Syaoran-kun go on this journey alone.  That he must continue to travel is cruel and unfair, and he has already suffered far more than anyone should.  I can sense the burden of guilt that weighs so heavily upon him.  I will not allow him to bear it alone.  I will not allow him to become the type of man I became.”

Fai paused, waiting for Kurogane to respond.  He did not.  Fai had no choice but to move on to the next point, to face what he had been dreading.

“Ah, and I suppose you’ll be going back to Nihon, right, Kuro-sama?”

“Yes,” Kurogane said simply.

It was the answer Fai had been expecting, he supposed.  That didn’t make it any less painful.

“R-right, of course!  I mean, returning home is all Kuro-tan has wanted,” he babbled, forcing a smile on his face.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something in Kurogane’s expression change for a moment (had it been a look of hurt that had briefly crossed his face?), but he continued with his rambling.  “I know how much you’ve missed home, Kuro-rin, and now you’ll be able to go back to serving Princess Tomoyo, and…”

No, this was wrong.  This was not who Fai was anymore.  Fai was no longer a man who faked smiles, a man who lied, a man who buried his real feelings and thoughts.  That man was gone now, and Fai was not about to resurrect him, not after everything that had happened.  Fai was going to honor the man he was now.

Fai felt tears welling in his eyes, and he made no effort to fight them.  “I’m happy for you, Kuro-sama,” he said honestly.  “Truly, I am.  Still…I’m really going to miss you.”

Fai forced himself to look at Kurogane.  He was not sure what he had been expecting to see.  He certainly did not expect Kurogane to sigh and roll his eyes.

“You really are an idiot, you know that?” the ninja huffed.  “Did you really think I’d let you and the kid travel through dimensions by yourselves?  You’d probably get yourselves killed in less than a week!  Besides, I want to see that other kid and other princess again just as badly as you do!”

Fai didn’t know what to think.  Clearly sensing his confusion, Kurogane continued.  “I am going back to Nihon—someday,” he began, “but I have a feeling that day is a long way away, and…”  Kurogane stepped towards Fai, closing the distance between them.  He paused for a moment, seemingly hesitant to speak, something so completely unlike him, before finally continuing, “…and I’d like to think that when I do go back, I won’t be going back alone.”

Then Kurogane placed his hand under Fai’s chin—gently, ever so gently (and Fai still managed to be amazed by just gentle this man could be)—and tipped Fai’s chin upward, locking eyes with him, and then Kurogane was leaning in and kissing Fai, kissing him deeply, the hesitation from Nihon something distant and forgotten.

When the kiss ended, Kurogane kept his hand on Fai’s face, cupping his cheek.  “You do have a home—if you want it, that is,” the ninja began, maintaining eye contact with him, “with me,” and Kurogane ran his thumb along his cheekbone, “Fai.”

Fai leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Kurogane and burying his face in his shoulder, and he felt Kurogane embrace him in return.  He felt warm, and he felt safe, and he felt happy…and he felt loved.

Of course.  Of course, he should have known.  Just as Fai had changed over the course of their journey, just as he was no longer the man he used to be, Kurogane had changed, too.  This was no longer a man who childishly whined about being banished by his princess, a man who wielded violence without reason, a man who only helped the others when it benefitted him to do so.  This was a man who acted with kindness, who put the needs of others before his own, who made unthinkable sacrifices for the sake of those whom he loved.

Fai finally pulled away from Kurogane a bit, looking up into his face.  “You really do love me, don’t you?” he asked softly, still not quite believing it.

Kurogane smiled at him.  “You know the answer to that, idiot.”

Fai smiled back.  “I—I—yes.  Yes, I do…and I,” and he felt his smile growing wider, “and I love you.”

There was so much Fai did not know about what was to come.  There was one thing he did know, though, that he knew with a surety and certainly that he had perhaps never felt before: for the first time in his long life, he was truly and genuinely happy to be alive.