The Plot-Hole of Shadowlings

WIPs

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:39:59 GMT

This is shamelessly stolen from Oz, who in turn stole it from Ana. Such dashing thieves are we, hm? Urgh...I have so much I should be doing... I actually have more than what I've got listed below to be working on, but these are the pieces that have sizeable chunks sorted out. The rest would've been one-sentence stuff.
When you see this, post a little weensy excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.

1) Ever After (Tsubasa/XxXHoLic/Cardcaptor Sakura)

Her room was empty, her abandoned pipe still smoking faintly from its holder. It simply seemed as if Yuuko had just got up and wandered away, planning shortly to return, but there was no sign of her anywhere. It worried Watanuki – but not too much. (All the sake was gone; Yuuko had had time to down her drink before vanishing into thin air. (Then again, Yuuko seemed like the sort of woman to take her drink with her, even if she’d been suddenly kidnapped.))

2) Twofold - Nihon (Tsubasa)

“He didn’t go back to his rooms last night,” Kurogane said, suddenly wishing he were back in Nihon with Tomoyo beside him, a soothing presence, “and there were rumours about him being seen leaving –Zhuang’s chambers this morning.”
The princess looked sympathetic. “Rumours are just rumours, Kurogane. Please talk to Fai-san before you leap to any conclusions.”

Kurogane gritted his teeth, and looked stubbornly aside. “I have to see him to talk to him.”

3) Mary Mary - Nihon (Tsubasa)

Kurogane waited until Fai fell asleep, waiting a while and then going back out into the main part of the apartment, failing to see the way the shadows twisted along the bedroom’s floor behind him, and curled around the sleeping Fai’s bare throat. Syaoran was sitting on a couch out there, Mokona snoozing on his lap, and he looked up, pensive, when Kurogane appeared.
“You should be asleep,” Kurogane told him.
Syaoran looked distracted, shifting in his seat. “It didn’t…feel right. I heard singing.”
“Singing?”
‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?’
‘With silver bells –’
Syaoran nodded. “A girl’s voice. Out in the city.” Which was supposed to be deserted.
Kurogane cocked his head, and listened. “I can’t hear anything.”

And then the door to Fai’s bedroom was blasted off of its hinges from within, and slammed into the wall beyond with enough force to leave a dent on the wall and shower plaster down from the ceiling above.

4) KF genderswitch/femmeslash (Tsubasa)

Hanshin is the world of kudans, where Kurogane dreams of a water dragon and Fai dreams of a great bird, the first granting the warrior strength in the shape of a sword, the second allowing the mage to dance through the air as if she’d been born there. They fight to take back Mokona, stolen from them by a petulant girl trying to catch the attention of her boyfriend, fighting through layers of incomprehension as Kurogane snaps harshly and Fai laughs liltingly, and Syaoran glances between them in confusion, none of the understanding anything any of them had said. The feather is found and borne proudly back to Sakura, Syaoran smiling bright – too-bright – as she looks up at him drowsily, able only to query so softly, ‘Who are you?’
Fai steps in with a smile to do introductions and Kurogane obligingly yells, Syaoran escaping to the pouring rain outside. As Sakura slips back into dreams Fai and Kurogane go together to watch over the boy from a window, their kudans curling around him to offer what comfort they could. They discuss tears; one hand of Fai’s touching the cold glass, Kurogane’s arms across her chest. Again, they are opposites, every ideology they possess a clear contrast.

They move on.

5) Courting at Court - Nihon (Tsubasa)

“You’ve kept them?” Kurogane was incredulous.
“Of course – I need to respond to them, don’t I, Kuro-tan?” Fai’s smile was soothing. “It would be dreadfully rude not to, especially with how painstakingly formal the writing is. Nihon calligraphy really is in an art form; I at least have to acknowledge its existence in the world.”
“Idiot,” Kurogane took a seat at the blond’s side, raking a hand back through his hair in distraction, “the courtiers here use scribes to write their letters for them. Not one of the lords pleading for you to take their precious darling off their hands will have written the letter to you themselves.”
Fai looked thoughtful, tapping the end of his brush on his chin as he mused aloud. “…I don’t use a scribe.”
“Nor,” his lover rather flatly responded, “do you live in the Royal chambers Tomoyo first assigned to you, use the horde of servants that were all but given to you for your own personal use, or take advantage of the hundred odd or so other privileges you’ve been granted here.”
Fai only smiled again, cheerfully bland. “True.”

Kurogane groaned, and leaned back against the wall. “You’re the strangest royal I’ve ever met, and I’m including Tomoyo in that description.”

6) Third Star on the Left (Tsubasa)

"Idiot - you could've died back there!" Fai remained silent, numb, as Kurogane yelled at him, accepting the words, letting the white-hot anger wash over him.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light, and Kurogane stormed, fighting the darkness with every shred of his being - he would not die, he could not die - do not go gentle good sir, oh no. Kurogane Youou was a man you could conceive at the end of all things, still defiant, still furious, his anger such a pure, honest thing, sharp steel that held that fierce frame together.

Fai's cheek stung, stiff and sore from injury and antiseptic, the stupid bandage over the top. He swung his legs, once, twice, double, double, toil and trouble, and reached out with one hand, snaring the still-fuming Kurogane and pulling the dark man to him, letting Kurogane's hot anger crash against his lips.

This is why you should never mix CLAMP and reindeers

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:06:09 GMT

KISEKI CHAT, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.

(Warnings for crack, bad rhymes, Mokona/Yuuko being a voyeur, dress-up, more crack, and boy-kissing. Shacha accepts no responsibility for any brain-breakage or choking this madness may cause.)

'Twas the night before Christmas and, out of habit,

Not a creature was stirring - save for the thing that looked like a rabbit.

Mokona was awake, downstairs by the tree,

Hiding in its branches, oh, quite sneakily.

Sakura and Syaoran were safe nestled in their beds

With visions of tomorrow dancing sweet through their heads.

For once it was quiet (the ‘parents’ were elsewhere),

And Mokona sat determined, ready to finally win a dare -

When all of a-sudden, there was what sounded like ‘mews’,

And the footsteps of someone who’d forgotten to take off their shoes.

Mokona was quiet (never let the fact she couldn’t be be said)

While into the room stumbled a person in red.

They weren’t alone, and as the fire gave a soft crackle,

Mokona heard the second complimenting ‘Santa’s’ tackle.

The first – he was the tallest – then gained a deep flush,

And the second ‘hyuu’ed and said that he liked the blush.

And then Santa swore, and children’s hearts would be broken,
To know that dear Santa could let out such a terribly rude token.

Fai – who else could it be?- only leaned up for a kiss,

And Santa pushed him away with a particularly low hiss.

‘Whaaat? Idiot, where did your sanity go?!’

Fai only shrugged, pointed up, beamed: ‘Mistletoe.’

And indeed, the damned plant, it hung overhead,

And Santa, he gained a whole new shade of red.

‘Santa is shy!’ Fai all but cooed in delight,

And Santa turned away, his face to the night.

‘Fai-mommy will teach him,’ Fai-mommy did insist,

And pulled Santa back with a shrewd little twist.

He kissed Santa again – oh there, right on the lips,

And Mokona cried out – all things this did eclipse!

‘Fai-mommy!’ She sobbed, giving up her plans of a surprise,

With little salt tears trickling down from her eyes.

‘What of Kuro-daddy?’ Poor Mokona cried,

With the wailing one would expect when hearing their grandma had died.

‘He’s asleep upstairs, thinking you’re there,

Whilst Fai-mommy is downstairs having an illicit affair!

He’d be sad for sure, and his heart would be broke –’

(Santa made a weird noise, and tried not to choke)

‘Mokona,’ Fai broached gently, ‘this isn’t what you think-’

‘Mokona knows what she saw – Mokona didn’t blink!’

‘But Mokona-’ She wouldn’t listen, so Fai reached for Santa’s hat,

But Santa, you see, wasn’t having any of that.

He growled all a-scary: ‘Do it and die.’

‘But Santa,’ Fai pouted, ‘we’ve made Mokona cry.’

‘I don’t care.’ ‘Saa, Santa is mean!’

Mokona kept crying. Santa: ‘Tch, drama-queen.’

‘Santa,’ Fai reproved, ‘take that hat off your head.

Else you can sleep on the couch, whilst I keep the bed.’

‘Fai-mommy!!’ Mokona wailed again - her family was a con,

‘How long has this affair really been going on?!’

Fai looked disapprovingly at Santa, and Santa gave out a sigh,

‘If this gets back to the bitch, you immediately die.’

‘It won’t~!’ Fai did chirp – Santa didn’t believe a word that he said,

But eventually reached up and took that red hat from his head

Along with his beard, and Mokona blinked: ‘Kuro-daddy?’

As it slowly dawned in that Santa might not be a baddy.

She turned to Fai, ‘Why was Daddy in disguise?’

‘It was,’ Fai admitted, ‘going to be a surprise.

Kuro-sama was Santa, so it wouldn’t have been a lie

To tell Sakura-chan and Syaoran-kun that Santa stopped by.’

‘Fai-mommy loves us!’ Squealed Mokona, and bounced up to kiss Fai’s cheek,

‘And Kuro-daddy too -’ ‘Try and kiss me, manjuu, and I’ll kick you into next week.’

‘Mokona should’ve known,’ Mokona babbled, ‘that Fai-mommy wouldn’t cheat.

Because Mokona thinks Daddy’s pretty hard to beat!’

Fai only smiled, and Kurogane muttered ‘yikes’,

Mokona turned to him, ‘And Fai’s the only one too, that Kuro-daddy really likes?’

‘Of course n-’ Kurogane started, ready the accusation to deny,

But Mokona wibbled most dramatically, and once more threatened to cry.

‘It’s Christmas,’ Fai chided gently, and if there was hope in his gaze

It was covered quickly – the mage’s heart truly was a strange maze.

‘I don’t need Christmas,” Kurogane started a new sentence anew.

And then a little more quietly, ‘…I don’t hate you.’

Fai smiled brightly, Mokona cheered once again,

Pleased to see her ‘parents’ once more right as rain.

She then turned to nothing in particular, ‘See, Mokona was right!’

And then an image of Yuuko appeared in the night.

‘So Mokona was,’ said the witch, as Mokona cheered, ‘Mokona’s never wrong!’

Kurogane spluttered, Fai got it and asked: ‘…So you knew all along?’

‘Of course Mokona knew~!’sang Mokona, as if there really was any doubt,

‘Fai-mommy is faithful!’ …At which point ‘Santa’ began to shout:

‘When I get my hands on you -’ ‘Eek!’ Mokona then cried,

And then leaped onto Fai’s shoulder to find a good place to hide.

‘Kuro-chan,’ Fai smiled, ‘it’s the season – goodwill to all men.’

‘That’s a meatbun,’ Kurogane hissed. Yuuko smiled, ‘Kurogane, then

You won’t mind me sending these to Tomoyo?’ And held up in the air

Pictures of Fai and ‘Santa’ (with clothes quite obviously not there).

Kurogane paled, ‘Where-?’ Mokona peeped, ‘Mokona’s a super spy!’

‘Oh,’ Fai too was speechless, Yuuko smirked, ‘Yes, oh my.’

Kurogane dived for Mokona, Mokona took off at a run,

Kurogane yelling and screaming death for the meatbun.

Sakura and Syaoran were woken, and came down from bed,

And naturally inquired why Santa wanted Mokona dead.

‘Communication difficulties,’ was all that Fai would say,

And then Mokona bounced past them, still bounding on her way,

Kurogane scrambling after. Sakura: ‘Why is Yuuko-san here?’

Kurogane: ‘She’s a pervert.’ Fai: ‘We have beer.’

‘Beer?’ Queried Yuuko, Fai hurried the children ahead,

As Kurogane yelled, Fai put the kids back in bed.

‘Merry Christmas,’ Fai greeted the witch, when ‘Santa’ paused for breath.

And Kurogane scowled at him also, a glare fit for death.

‘Merry Christmas,’ Yuuko replied with a smile, ‘and to all a good night.’

She had what she wanted, so she vanished from sight.

Kurogane cursed and Mokona bounced away whilst the ninja was distracted,

Hoping the call for her life had finally been retracted.

‘Kuro-santa,’ Fai purred, and went to sit on the man’s lap,

Reaching up to replace Kurogane’s missing cap.

Kurogane smirked as Fai drawled out his ‘I’ve been good all year~’,

Winding his arms round the man’s neck, and breathing against his ear.

‘Tell me what you want, then,’ the ninja drawled back.

Fai plucked at his shirt, ‘Then tell me - what’s Santa got in his sack?’

Kurogane only glared, and Fai saw Mokona once more herself back had borne.

Both men sighed - Mokona shrugged, unrepentant. ‘Yuuko says she wants porn.’

And so concluded Christmas Eve, with yelling and shrieks,

A holiday for sure the ‘family’ would remember for weeks.

Fai and Kurogane got no sex; Mokona and Yuuko were proved right,

And Sakura and Syaoran blushed themselves to sleep – so for all, a usual night.

END.

TRC AU sci-fi plunny

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:11:26 GMT

As the title says. I'm not planning on going anywhere with this thing (so, if anyone wants it, you can have it), but I accidentally let slip I wrote it to the Hounds of Hell (Crys and SJ) in chat yesterday, and they demanded what I had be typed up. >.< I am stupidly malleable when it's after one am; it's ridiculous.

Notes: Um. KuroFai, so boy x boy, and mildly implied twincest, YuuiFai? Infidelity, general wtfery, and rambling. I'm going nowhere with this plunny for a reason. The universe it's set in is explained in the narrative, and Yuui and Fai are canonical Yuui and Fai - Yuui is our!Fai, and Fai is dead!Fai. But not dead. In this. Right? ^^;;

It was a widely accepted fact that the Celesian Confederation of the forty-ninth (Windam) galaxy was the strongest political force that side of the universal quadrant. Ruled by the Fluorite family from the largest planet in the Windam galaxy, Celes itself, the Confederation all but owned the other planets in that solar system, ninety-percent of all life in that area either living subject to Celesian rule or paying tithe to the chief planet. The surrounding galaxies, too, were not spared Celesian influence – Fluorite control had exterior bases in many solar systems, small colonies that wielded tremendous power even in systems that were supposedly dominated by another head.

The Fluorite family had an investment in everything – in luxury items, accommodation, healthcare, food, spaceflight, entertainment, music. It was a good idea to remain in their good graces – although the Celesian Confederation was technically a union of many planets and forces, it was the Fluorites who lorded over them – the Confederation was an Empire in all but name, with the Confederation’s chief (a Fluorite) as the emperor.

It made logical sense, therefore, for a force outside the quadrant seeking an ally in the area, to look first to Celes, and the Fluorite family. This was the case with the Nihon Union. From the adjacent quadrant the Union was composed of a range of select sub-systems and planets that had been forced to band together due to earlier war in the area, watched over and maintained by the Amaterasu. Although small the Union was rich in terms of resources, plentiful with minerals and skills that were to be found nowhere else in the known universe. They had a lot to offer and so a lot to defend – it had been the reason they’d been attacked, and the reason they’d united to try and offer a stronger defence. An alliance with the Celesian Confederation could only be opportunistic for both sides – better trade between the two alliances would be of benefit to everyone, the Confederation gaining more of a monopoly in another quadrant, the prestige of the elusive Union’s support, and the Union receiving extra support, a strong political ally that would lessen the risk of further attack upon their system.

And so it was that an alliance was arranged, the Emperor and the Amaterasu meeting to sign the documents that would lead to a peaceful future, to the sound of polite applause and the rest of the universe watching with trepidation and fear. The alliance would be sealed the traditional way – a marriage, of course, between the High-General of Nihon, a young man by the name of Kurogane hailing from the large Suwa sub-system in the Union, and the Chief’s third child and only daughter, the wide-eyed and innocent princess, Chii. They were introduced and declared a wonderful match for one another – he was dark and tall and strong, and she was gentle, small and fair. A perfect complement of opposites. They were set to be married in the spring of the next Celesian year –

Which didn’t really explain why Youou Kurogane was currently standing in the midst of the labyrinth of the Imperial gardens in Celes, in the middle of a rainstorm, in the autumn of the year before his marriage, with his tongue stuck very firmly down one of the princess’ brothers’ throat.

“Kuro-”The half-word was breathed out when the two of them broke for air, quickly swallowed by the heat of Kurogane’s mouth again, Yuui Fluorite sinking back into the kiss with a groan, pale hands fisted in the front of the High-General’s soaked shirt.

Both of them were drenched through; Celes was prone to sudden, heavy rainstorms in the late months of the year, quick deluges that gave the world its lush foliage. Caught out in it Kurogane and Yuui were sodden within a few minutes, Yuui’s gold hair dark with water and plastered to his face, scraped back by overeager fingers for quick gulps of breath between hard kisses, slick skin rubbing against slick skin. His fine robes clung to him, moulding to him sharply, and it took effort to peel them away, baring a proud collarbone to the pouring rain, a hot tongue down a long neck.

Kurogane’s belt made a muffled jingle as it hit the wet grass below them, fumbling fingers finally succeeding in ridding the Nihon man of the vexing clasp. Unbuttoning the shirt the man was wearing was another Herculean task in and of itself, Yuui’s groan frustrated through the kiss. His mind too distracted to focus on the intricacies of buttons Yuui settled for just shoving his hands up Kurogane’s shirt, cold skin against cold skin – everything was chilled by the rain. Kurogane snorted at him and Yuui dragged his nails down the taller man’s sides, panting when Kurogane jerked and slammed his hips forwards instinctively, pressing against the only real heat between them, a hot ache.

“More,” the eldest son of Ashura-ou demanded of his lover, his lips kiss-bruised and swollen, his eyes as cloudy as the sky overhead. Kurogane had a habit of robbing Yuui of his vocabulary.

The demand startled Kurogane out of his daze for a moment, caught by the way the water ran down Yuui’s face, droplets on the slighter man’s long lashes. “We said -”

“Kurogane.” Yuui Fluorite did not make a habit of using Kurogane’s full name – from the moment they’d met the Fluorite heir had taken great delight in bastardising the title in as many obscenely cutesy ways as he could think of, much to Kurogane’s anger and disgust. A few months of knowing the idiot had, however, generally made Kurogane immune to the nicknames – making the use of his full name rather jarring, as Yuui had no doubt intended.

The Fluorite prince was pissed at him.

Yuui touched Kurogane’s with his hand, smiling up into the darker man’s face, lovely and broken and not quite all there. “It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” They were both liars already.

Kurogane hesitated, hating that smile, hating his own indecision.

“Kurogane,” Yuui repeated again, lowly, insistently, and brushed the corner of the General’s mouth with his thumb.

Kurogane leaned down and kissed him again, tasting the rain, if only so he didn’t have to hear Yuui say that name again.

“Where is your brother?”

Fai Fluorite looked away from the window he’d been staring out of, over to his father standing at the doorway to his room. “Papa.” Ashura-ou, the Chief of the Celesian Confederation.

“Where is your brother?” Ashura-ou repeated again, looked slightly weary. “Chii is looking for him.”

Fai avoided glancing back out of the window again, to the labyrinth in the wet garden with the grey skies overhead. It was such a bleak scene. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen Yuui since lunch.”

“What about your link with him?”

Fai shook his head, and gave a rueful smile. His twin had taught him a good few things about lying. “Closed.” Yuui never closed the link between them entirely, dependent always on knowing where his beloved twin was. The link was the reason Fai could feel vague pleasure humming through his veins, an echo of Yuui’s state. Sometimes Fai almost wished his brother would close the link all the way – that way Fai could pretend everything was fine, everything was going to plan, and that Yuui wasn’t breaking everyone’s hearts by sleeping with the Nihon High-General. As a twin, as a linked individual, Yuui wasn’t supposed to be intimate with anyone outside his other half, and yet…there Yuui was, with Kurogane. Who was supposed to be marrying their sister Chii the following year. Fai worried.

Ashura-ou sighed. “…When you hear from him,” because Yuui would always first go to Fai, “send him to Chii.”

“Yes, Papa.” Fai bowed his head, ever the obedient son, and remained that way until Ashura-ou had left the room. When his father was gone, Fai went back to looking outside the window.

Nihon: Twofold (1)

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:09:03 GMT

Title: Twofold
Characters/Pairings: KuroFai, others mentioned, OCs
Rating: M – warnings (and I do so hate giving warnings) for violence, possible (probable) OC death, bad language, and definite citrus content. Possibly (probably) other dark stuff too. *absently tacks that last bit on, just in case*
Summary: To the neighbouring nation of Chugoku Kurogane and Fai go, there to finalise and sign an important peace treaty between that empire and Nihon. It should’ve been a relatively simple enterprise, had the Emperor been willing to keep his word, but that no longer seems to be the case. Despite the talk of peace Chugoku looks set for war, and if that’s what the empire wants Fai and Kurogane will willingly give them it.
A/N: Another instalment in the Nihon series, chronologically set a fortnight after the events in Sky of Gold, in the autumn of their second year in Nihon. This one’s a short story, instead of an oneshot.
So much love to Tuul this chapter. I don’t know if she’ll ever even read this, but – still, send the love her way. *beams psychic thoughts* She helped me with my Chinese and the general grammar of it, and just generally talked and made me feel…better about it? *loveslovesloves*

*****

Kurogane had a headache. A bright, bounding, overly-enthusiastic headache that had a particular insistence in hanging around and causing havoc, smiling and laughing and skittering about the ship willy-nilly, will o’ wisp. This headache had poked everything on-board there was to feasibly poke, asked an endless stream of questions that had simultaneously charmed the captain and had the man putting said headache outside of the door for some peace, and driven Kurogane, yet again, to the point where he was actually considering murder.

Most people called this headache ‘Fai’.

“Mage, I swear to all the gods out there that if you do not shut up, sit down and stop bouncing all over the deck like some sort of demented rabbit this instant I’m tying you up and throwing you overboard.”

They were on their way to Chugoku, the empire that was closest to Nihon by sea, there to finalise what was basically a peace treaty between the two nations. The Chugokian ambassadors had arrived in Nihon with the summer to negotiate the first half; this return trip would draw a conclusion to the affair, if all went well, on amiable grounds. Chugoku – larger, denser, and by far more aggressive - had been a political pain for Nihon for far too long. A few more days of sailing, and they’d be there.

“Mou, Kuro-tan,” Fai’s pout was legendary, the blond leaning back against the deck’s rail and letting the sailor he’d been harassing (‘questioning, Kuro-pii!’) escape, giving his attention to his vexed lover, “that would be awfully mean.”

“Gagged,” Kurogane added for good measure, stalking forward the few more steps that would take him to Fai’s side, “with rocks around your ankles.” This close to the port side he could hear the slap of the waves against the side of the ship, spray touching the skin of his arms.

Fai laughed at him, impervious to the crimson glower being levelled his way. “Kuro-chi would miss me if I were gone.” His smile was confident, damnably so, as Kurogane came within touching distance, Fai walking his fingers up the ninja’s chest and cupping Kurogane’s cheek with one hand. “Who would he have to cuddle with at night?”

Kurogane continued to glare. “I don’t ‘cuddle.’”

“Of course not.” When had Fai grown so patronisingly indulgent? “Kuro-chan snuggles. In a really manly fashion.”

Kurogane planted a hand either side of Fai’s waist on the rail, pinning the mage in place. “The waters around here are shark-infested, you realise.”

“Those would be the fish with the really big teeth?” Kurogane nodded and Fai flung himself melodramatically against the ninja’s chest, sobbing artistically as his voice cried out with a wail. “Wah, Kuro-sama wants me to be eaten! Eaten!!” Everyone on deck turned around to stare, and Kurogane felt a dull flush creeping up his neck. “He’d probably chop me up into little pieces and feed me to them himself – ohhhh,” this last was a quivering lament, “Kuro-pon is such a tyrant! So mean; so cruel, disposing of his love to the beasts of the sea to avoid scandal and shame -”

The eyes of the people on deck were beginning to turn disapproving. Kurogane leaned down to hiss against Fai’s ear, “Would you shut up already?!”

Fai looked up to smirk at him, and his eyes gleamed wickedly, foreign blue and gold. “Oh-!”

Kurogane clamped a hand over his mouth – and the disapproving looks around the deck promptly became arctic glares boring into his spine. Kurogane bristled, flung on the defensive. “I’m not gonna do anything to him!!” Disbelieving. “I wouldn’t throw him overboard!!”

“Kuro-sama!!” A happy yell (squeal) from in front informed Kurogane that, while he’d been glaring at everyone else, the hand that had been muffling Fai had slipped, the mage slithering down to his knees and wrapping his arms determinedly around Kurogane’s waist and snuzzling thereabouts. “You love me after all~~.” Snuggle, snuggle, rub.

Kurogane coloured further, switching his glare down to the one on the ground as he attempted to pry Fai from his person. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“I’m hugging Kuro-tan~!”

“That isn’t hugging!”

“Of course it is~!” Rub, rub, snuzzle, rub. Fai was as affectionate as a cat, short hair gleaming brightly in the sun overhead as he shamelessly nuzzled against Kurogane’s stomach – in public -, all but purring all the while. The sound sent pleasant vibrations through his lover’s skin, red touching Kurogane’s ears as he realised the effect Fai’s actions were having on him. Just thinking about it made everything even worse - Fai was on his knees in a position far better suited for the bedroom, memories of that golden head between his thighs doing much more pleasurable things not at all distant for Kurogane to pluck at, feeling heat pool low in his belly.

“Mage,” Kurogane gritted his teeth, trying vainly to clamp down on his body’s reactions to Fai’s enthusiastic (and possibly unintentional) stimulus, his hands tightening on the ship’s rail, the wood protesting at the strength of his grip with his metal hand. (Please let everyone have looked away by that point.) “Let go.”

Fai looked up and smiled sweetly, and for one brief, blinding instant Kurogane felt a surge of hope his companion would actually listen to him for a change. Naturally, it all came crashing down. “No.”

“Let go of me, damn it!!”

Fai laughed into his abdomen, lips curved and shoulders shaking, Kurogane shuddering at the sensation and fighting his instinctive reaction to curl over the body of the kneeling magician. It was a wonder Fai hadn’t commented on his aroused state already – it had to be hard to miss, with his face pressed that close; a hakama could only hide so much.

“Kuro-sama…” Fai’s voice was a breath and his eyes were mischievously burning, mouth tugged up into a devil’s smile, hands slipping to Kurogane’s hips. The bastard knew exactly what he was doing, hot gaze flickering between Kurogane’s tormented face and the agape people on-board with them – nearly all of whom who were staring at the entangled couple with the sort of morbid fascination, to quote something one of Tomoyo’s guards had been caught muttering whilst they’d been in Piffle, that was usually reserved for a trainwreck.

It was truly a miracle there was any blood left in Kurogane’s body to paint his cheeks such a vivid shade of red, the rest of his circulation having pumped lower to the building ache there, hot and hard. It was all Fai’s fault – all of it -, Fai with his teasing, Fai with his smile, Fai for making himself become so associated with lewd thoughts in Kurogane’s mind that it was hard to draw breath and look at the mage sometimes without some sort of indecent image springing immediately to mind.

Enough was enough.

Kurogane reached down with his right hand, yanking Fai up forcefully by the collar with little care for the state of the blond’s clothes and growling into his face. Again, Fai laughed, delighted in the face of danger, and, snake-fast, leaned forwards to press a lingering kiss to the corner of his ninja’s mouth.

“Kuro-sama,” he murmured again against the soft skin there, the slits of his eyes aglow with his wicked teasing, “do you want to play?”

Stiff-legged, Kurogane dragged him off, pulling Fai below decks and heading for their rooms. They didn’t make it there – Kurogane’s grip on Fai’s collar was awkward and the mage tripped, stumbling into Kurogane and pushing the taller man into the nearest wall. The sudden pressure made Kurogane hiss, hips slammed against hips, Fai more than happy to rock into him, sealing their mouths in a searing kiss.

The corridor they were in was thankfully deserted, their moans muffled by each other’s mouths, covered up by the creaks of the ship and the ever-present sound of the waves. Fai broke their kiss with a grin and dropped to his knees once more to make good of his earlier unspoken promise, undoing Kurogane’s hakama even as the ninja himself tried to offer a protest – they were in a public area, anyone could walk by, and oh, kami-!

Fai only smirked when Kurogane groaned, settling his grip on Kurogane’s hips once more and returning to lazily sucking on the head of the ninja’s cock. Kurogane’s protests seemed to have died a miraculous death, the man’s breath hitching and his head making a dull thump as it fell back to hit the wood of the wall behind him, throat working but little comprehensible noise coming out as Fai took him in deeper, deeper, swallowing him into wet warmth. Kurogane instinctively strained against the hands pinning him in place, trying to buck into the damp heat, but Fai kept him mostly still, not wanting to choke.

Fai was certainly good at what he did – experience had taught him what Kurogane did and didn’t like, how to drag his sharp teeth lightly down the man’s length to get Kurogane to make that particular noise, that sound between a growl and a groan, larger hands fisting in gold hair for something – anything – to hold onto. He hummed deliberately and Kurogane gave in and came with an oath, Fai swallowing the other’s seed and letting Kurogane slip from his mouth so the ninja could slide heavily down the wall, still panting, orgasm leaving an attractive glaze in his eyes.

“Good?” Fai queried, amused at the utter failure of his words to sink into Kurogane’s mind until a good three minutes had passed, Kurogane focusing eventually on his face – and letting loose another oath again, quieter this time, thumb rising to brush at some of his come that Fai had missed, a spot on the mage’s swollen lower lip.

“You -” again, Kurogane’s throat worked, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, but little sound came out. He gave up on speech and slid his artificial hand to the back of Fai’s neck instead, pulling the slighter man up and between his legs for a hard kiss.

“Kuro-chan,” Fai started wetly when Kurogane’s other hand spread itself on his inner thigh, pulling back slightly as the fingers slid upwards, pushing up the hem of Fai’s kimono, the bottom of the under-robe underneath, “we’re in a corridor.” An awareness of one’s surroundings was optional and relative to the situation.

“Hn,” no-one had come along yet. Fai shivered as those familiar calloused fingers touched his hip, points of warmth against the skin. “Why aren’t you wearing underwear?”

“The kimono wouldn’t hang right on top -” Fai breathed out harshly when Kurogane palmed his length, the mage already hard beneath his clothes. His words were gritted out, a testament of will. “Kuro-pii, my robes -”

Kurogane stroked him and Fai’s head fell forward against the ninja’s shoulder, a shudder trailing down his spine. “Fuck the robes.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever tried that kink -” the words broke into a soft cry, Kurogane’s thumb doing that thing over the tip of Fai’s cock, pumping the other slowly, surely, Fai’s breathing damp and heavy as he pushed against Kurogane’s chest with his head.

Kurogane smirked down at him, continuing to rub the nape of the blond’s neck with his artificial hand, liking the tremble the cool metal sent through Fai’s form. It was good to have the – literal – upper hand for once, Fai moaning low in the back of his throat, thrusting shallowly into Kurogane’s grip. Kurogane stroked him more firmly, faster, just to hear the other’s breath quicken, harsher, to hear Fai’s keen. When the mage came he spilled over into Kurogane’s hand, Fai going lax against the ninja’s chest as Kurogane retrieved his palm from beneath the other’s kimono, absently wiping it on the cloth.

Hazy, mismatched eyes glowered at him, coupled with a pout. “My robes.”

“They were wrecked anyway,” Kurogane, ever the shining example of reasonability, pointed out.

Fai grumbled. “Tomoyo-chan made them.”

“Tomoyo knows what you’re (“‘we’re’, Kuro-chi,”) capable of. They’ll wash.”

Another grumble, Fai dropping his head again. “I’ll remember that, Kuro-myu.”

It was the afternoon of their arrival in Chugoku. Land had been sighted and the port where they were to make official introductions had come into view, Kurogane leaning on the side of the ship beside one of his advisors for the trip, a scholar named Taro who had been at the Chugokian Imperial Court before, assisting the Nihon foreign ambassador there, Shizkomoto Akemi. (He’d returned to Nihon, he told Kurogane idly, to be married.) Fai was absently darting about the deck doing only-the-gods-knew-what, a blur of white and blue and gold out of the corner of Kurogane’s eye.

Taro was naming the officials that could be barely seen on the port’s side, tiny figures that had mostly only been names on official documents to Kurogane before.

“That’s Jiang-gōng, and those are Miankai-jiéxià and Sun Kai-jiéxià -”

“I know those last two.” Kurogane interrupted, brow drawing down into a scowl. “They were the ambassadors who came to Court in the summer.” Bastards that they were.

“And that’s -” Taro froze, mouth dropping open slightly as his finger pointed to a figure reclining in yellow and gold under a white pavilion, “kami, that’s Zhuang-wángyé.”

“Hyuu,” Fai actually paused for a moment in his fluttering around the deck, drawn in by the comment and leaning in on Kurogane’s shoulder to peer at the glittering figure in the distance as if it would magically make him any larger. “They sent the Crown Prince to greet us? That’s fairly uncommon.”

“Maybe it’s a sign they’re ready to take us seriously,” Taro said, looking hopeful. “It’s an honour for the Imperial House to greet us this way.”

“Hn,” Kurogane looked away from the scholar, back at the Chugokian Crown Prince.

“Kuro-rin,” Fai teased, “how eloquent of you.” Kurogane flicked a glare at him and Fai laughed, changing the subject. “We’ll be coming to port soon, Kuro-wan, and I need to finish getting dressed. Have you seen my other slipper?” He gestured down to his feet, one of which was bare.

Kurogane eyed him. “Why the hell would I know where your damn slipper is?”

Fai pouted at him. “I didn’t move it, and no-one else aside from you has been in our cabin.”

“I didn’t move your slipper.”

“So it got up and walked off by itself?” Kurogane glared at him, and Fai sighed. “Fine, Kuro-chin, I’ll go look again. But -” he exclaimed with a flourish over his shoulder as he walked away, “a truly noble ninja would aid his dearly beloved in his quest~!”

“Find your own damn slipper!”

Taro smiled blithely at the exchange. “My new wife and I argue the same way. She’s forever haranguing about moving her things around and messing up her organisation.”

“Hmph,” Kuro slumped against the rail again, Fai out of sight, his snort a feeling one. Then it hit him. “Wait, he’s not my w-”

“Kurogane-sama,” one of the sailors passing by interrupted, “the captain wishes you to know we’ll be pulling up to the port presently,” as if any of them could miss how close they were to land, and the crowds standing upon it.

“…Right.” Wouldn’t disembarking into that viper’s nest be fun. “Make sure the idiot knows.”

“‘The idiot’-?” Clearly, this sailor hadn’t been exposed to Fai as often as some of his friends.

“Fluorite-sama,” Taro elaborated, clearing up the confusion and letting the man go off. Taro glanced up at Kurogane beside him. “Do you think this trip will go well, Kurogane-sama?” The ninja nodded sharply. “What makes you so sure?”

Kurogane laid a hand on the sword at his waist, smile wolfish. “I can be a pretty effective persuader.”

Taro laughed a little more weakly at that – he just hoped someone had informed Kurogane they were going on shore for a peace treaty.

Kurogane disembarked the boat with his shoulders back and his head raised high, an imposing figure in black and vivid red. A few of the Chugokian slaves – marked by the collars of silver or gold around their necks, the metal respective of the ranking of their owner – visibly quavered when the ninja stalked into view, but kept still, afraid of a lashing if they stepped away and could possibly be deemed to have interfered with their masters’ oiled presentations.

“Kurogane-jiéxià,” it was the ambassador Miankai that stepped forward to greet the ninja, Kurogane’s Nihon name jarring a little beside the Chugokian honorific. The Chugokian courtier only smiled though, a perfect image of insincere sincerity. “It is my pleasure to welcome you to this, our fair land.”

“It is my pleasure to be here,” Kurogane dutifully replied in the same tongue, having had manners (and the language) drummed into him by the Amaterasu, Tomoyo and Fai for these sorts of situations.

“I will lead you to His Highness, Zhuang-wángyé – but,” Miankai paused, glancing at the noticeably empty spot at Kurogane’s side, “is the mage, Fluorite-jiéxià, still indisposed with his summer sickness? We were told he was to be arriving with you.”

Kurogane only just managed to avoid going ‘huh?’ at the question – why was Miankai asking him about Fai? The blond had gotten off the ship right behind Kurogane; the idiot had even flashed him a quick smile before he’d disembarked. Fai was –

Kurogane risked a glance over his shoulder. Taro looked back at him a little helplessly, and shrugged slightly. The scholar hadn’t seen him.

Fai was nowhere to be found, apparently. Brilliant.

“My apologies,” Kurogane’s words were clipped, irritated at Miankai, the situation, and Fai – probably in that order. “It appears my partner has found himself delayed on-board.”

“I found my shoe!” The sudden cry from the ship drew everyone’s attention, heads swivelling throughout the crowd to the blond figure that had appeared at the top of the gangplank there, waving some frippery in a pretty shade of blue about in the air. (It was probably the slipper.)

Fai scrambled his way down the gangplank, the people that had come from Nihon with them hastily clearing a path for him to get through, Fai darting forwards until he reached Kurogane’s side – at which point he still realised he was holding his slipper in his hand, and promptly dropped it to the floor so he could actually put it on.

If there’d been a wall nearby, Kurogane would’ve smacked his head off of it.

“…Fluorite-jiéxià?” Miankai looked a little taken-aback – his was one of the milder reactions. Some of the other natives were out-and-out gawking, jaws having outright dropped throughout the Imperial welcome party at the sight, and introduction, of the blond. (Kurogane couldn’t blame them, quite aside from his fair colouring, Fai tended to have that sort of effect on people.)

“A pleasure to meet you,” Fai was immediate warmth, delicately focusing one of his potent smiles on the Chugokian ambassador, an expression very few could tell was nearly completely fake.

There was laughter, full and rich, from the side, Miankai halting with whatever reply he’d been about to make and hastily bowing to the man who had appeared behind him. “Highness.” The courtier glanced up again. “Your Highness, I was bringing them to you -”

“No matter,” the newcomer held up a hand and Miankai fell silent, dropping his head once more. The stranger then looked to Fai and Kurogane, both of whom offered their own obeisances, murmuring a soft ‘Your Highness’ between them, recognising the man pointed to them by Taro on-board the ship.

“It is my pleasure to welcome to Chugoku, friends from Nihon, on behalf of my father, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Chugoku. He extends his warmth to you, and bids you make yourself comfortable whilst you are in these lands.” Crown Prince Zhuang was impressive up close. He was tall – but not quite as tall as Kurogane -, with a set face and a determined dignity. His gown was the same shade of wild yellow as the petals of a sunflower, heavy with brocade and fine stitching, curling dragons over the fluid cloth. His eyes were painted and he was covered in gold, a princeling the like Fai had never seen before, not in all his own experience.

(From the way his attendants seemed to be fussing amongst themselves in the background about how the prince was supposed to have stayed out of the sun and under his pavilion, however, it was clear the royal was very much like the others Kurogane was acquainted with. (None of them would do as they were damn well told.))

“Her Imperial Majesty Amaterasu, the Empress of Nihon, sends her kindest greetings, and the hope for the strengthening of the bond between our two nations.” Kurogane left the pretty words to Fai – the idiot was far more verbose than he, and still a much better liar. The speech was rehearsed but the charm was all the blond’s.

And then the Chugokian prince broke from tradition. “You certainly know how to make a lasting first impression.” He sounded amused.

“It’s a terrible habit of mine, Your Highness.” Fai glanced up between his lashes, a flicker of rueful amusement, and something flitted across Zhuang’s face too brief to properly register but had Kurogane stiffening slightly all the same –

“We’ll be taking barges up the river to the Imperial Palace.” Zhuang turned his back on them and began striding off with the clear intention they were to follow. As the prince’s servants fussed Fai and Kurogane did as they were implicitly bid, the rest of their entourage being shepherded about behind them. Kurogane made a face as they walked, disliking the royal’s abrupt way of dismissing them, but Fai’s smile was soothing (wasn’t he supposed to be mad at that idiot?) and Miankai stayed thankfully out of the way, looking thoughtful.

Kurogane smacked Fai upside the head the moment they were somewhere relatively quiet on-board, Fai immediately whining and rubbing his abused skull. Fai mock-sulked and Kurogane called him an idiot, and they both watched as the boat cut smoothly through the water, the rippling river, the passing scenery on the banks.

“They’re showing off,” Kurogane said lowly, as the Imperial barge sailed past another glittering military camp on the banks, row upon row of soldiers out and doing their drills.

“Oh, I know.” Fai’s pose was lazy, his chin propped up on one hand as he leaned on the rail. “There were powerful mages in the welcome party – most of them came on-board with us.” Kurogane stiffened again. “They came to assess us.”

“And?” His lover prompted him. How had they done?

Fai smiled, a slow spread of his lips. “His Highness Zhuang-wángyé was so very personable with us for a reason, Kuro-pii. We have to be worth their time if they’re going to be nice to us.”

“Incidentally,” Kurogane’s voice was still low, “the prince is staring at us.” Zhuang had taken a seat in the shade on deck the moment he’d come on board and not budged from it since – his eyes, however, brown-gold and attentive, had been everywhere. Currently, they were fixed on the Nihon ambassadors, and Kurogane didn’t like it.

“And why shouldn’t he?” Fai queried, keeping his smile even. “We are his guests and his responsibility, and we’re also something new in his day. Variety is the spice of life, Kuro-pon~!”

“That still doesn’t give him the right to -” Kurogane broke off mid-sentence and turned on the person who’d suddenly ghosted into their close vicinity, lips pulled back in an almost-snarl, “what?”

It was a female slave dressed in off-white and grey, her black hair cropped about her ears. When she straightened from the bow she’d been holding the gold collar about her neck caught the light of the sun. “His Highness, Zhuang-wángyé, requests that you will see him now, Fluorite-jiéxià, Kurogane-jiéxià.” It was less of a request, and more a politely-worded demand. “There are refreshments in the shade.”

Fai smiled again – really, this trip was letting the mage fall back into horrible habits. Barely any of the caricatures of happiness Fai had sported since coming off the ship had held any genuine meaning behind them (but then, maybe that was a good thing – Kurogane wasn’t quite sure he’d be willing to share). “We’ll be there presently.” The slave disappeared to inform the prince.

They went to Zhuang and sat and the low chairs the slaves provided for them – although it was implied they were meant to sit lower than the prince Kurogane’s height meant that Zhuang was still towered over, the royal expressing only the slightest flash of irritation before cordially offering the ambassadors some of the cool, sweet tea he’d been drinking, along with some fruit.

“We’ll be at the Palace in about an hour,” he told them. “You’ll be shown to your rooms where you can wash and change after your journey, and then be presented to the Emperor before dinner.”

“Change?” Kurogane looked up at the prince, his voice muffled around the plum he’d just bitten into. His expression clearly revealed his feelings on the matter – they had to get changed? Again? (Fai had had to threaten him into the fancy robes he was already wearing for coming off of the ship.)

Fai kicked him in the ankle, feigning a stretch, and beamed charmingly for Zhuang. “That would be wonderful, Your Highness, thank you.”

They made idle, meaningless conversation for that hour, Zhuang and Fai driving it along, Kurogane occasionally voicing a question or comment. They discussed the weather, their clothing, music, food, even broaching tentatively out onto family at one point (‘Fluorite-jiéxià, do you have any siblings? Wives? Children?’ Fai had smiled and laughed and said ‘no’, and Kurogane had echoed him), but nothing political, nothing to do with the military or international affairs.

They arrived at the Imperial palace eventually. Fai made his ‘hyuu’ noise at the sheer size of it as they disembarked, and Kurogane muttered under his breath about it making such a spectacular target – even an idiot beginner couldn’t fail to hit it.

They were shown to their rooms – Fai first, as Kurogane insisted he wanted to know where the mage was being placed, and then he himself, led away by another slave what seemed a stupidly long distance. His belongings were already in his chambers by the time he arrived there, and Kurogane promptly opened up one of his cases, grabbed one of the robe-things that was on the top, and made the trek straight back to where he’d last seen Fai.

The idiot had found the bath. Kurogane left the clothes he was carrying in the bedchamber and followed the sound of water over into the bathroom, only mildly surprised to see his lover up to his neck in warm water, boneless and sprawled out in sheer hedonistic pleasure. The air was heavy with some…weird scent, the bathwater’s surface gleaming with a thin sheen of oil.

Kurogane folded his arms across his chest, and leaned back against the nearest wall. “Having fun?”

Fai made a noise closely akin to that of a sleepy cat, his eyes opening as he smiled out a lazy greeting. “Kuro-myu~”

“Weren’t you supposed to be getting changed?”

“Kuro-chan, we have an hour until we’re supposed to see the Emperor.” Fai sank a little lower in the water, tilting his head back so the liquid sank into the gold of his hair, darkening it. “I fully intend to spend it right. Here.”

“You’ll wrinkle.” An appeal to the blond’s sliver of vanity usually worked.

“I don’t care.” Fai really didn’t, resuming his expression of bliss. No power in heaven or on earth was moving him from that bath before he was good and ready. “Kuro-sama should join me – don’t worry, I won’t peek.”

Kurogane considered it. If he turned down the offer he’d have nothing much to do except wait around for Fai to be done; it really wasn’t advisable for him to attempt to check out the palace just yet, not considering they’d still to meet the Emperor and be extended his tacit welcome. They’d have to meet the permanent Nihon ambassador here in Chugoku, Shizkomoto, sometime – he’d probably be at the dinner, and Taro and the rest of their group would be milling about as well…

Kurogane dropped the clothes he was wearing and stepped into the water, not looking at Fai but definitely hearing the other’s soft groan of appreciation. “Oi, what happened to no peeking?”

“I didn’t peek,” Fai defended, his smile cat-like and curling as Kurogane waded through the water towards him, the ripples caused by the movement lapping up around his pale neck. “I ogled.” His voice dropped when Kurogane came close enough, his hand rising, sleek, to trail a wet line across his lover’s bare collarbone. “Kuro-sama is very oglable.”

Kurogane wrinkled his nose, feeling the water drip down his chest from the blond’s touch. “Is that even a word?” Actually in the water the scent of the oil went straight to his head, heady, overpowering.

“It is now~,” Fai only chuckled at Kurogane’s disgruntled expression, tugging the other down to sit beside him and promptly snuggling against the ninja’s chest, making himself comfortable.

Kurogane…had to reluctantly admit that this was nice. The water was warm and soothing, Fai was tucked at ease against him and drawing slow, whimsical patterns on his skin, and the time could trickle by, lost in the curls of steam that rose from the water to twirl in the air.

“Before we go home,” Fai drowsily informed him after a long stretch of peace had gone by, “we’re having sex in this bath.”

Kurogane glanced down at him. “Don’t I get any say in the matter?”

“Sex. This bath.” Fai was firm. “You can choose the scented oil.”

Kurogane snorted and they lapsed back into quiet again, eventually slipping out of the bath, drying themselves off and heading through to get changed. Kurogane yanked his red and black ensemble on with little aplomb but Fai dawdled about for what seemed like forever and a day, whisking out a selection of multicoloured fabric and darting behind a patterned screen nearby to change.

“No peeking, Kuro-tan~!!” …Hypocrite.

“Idiot,” Kurogane sighed and sat in a nearby chair, “I’ve seen it all before.”

“That’s because Ku~ro-sa~ma is a per~vert~.” Kurogane only growled at the other’s sing-song declaration, Fai laughing and appearing a few minutes later in Chugokian-style robes of blue and cream, holding out a light sash to his lover. “Would Kuro-do help me tie this?”

Kurogane strongly resisted the urge to wrap the sash around Fai’s throat and throttle the mage with it, instead fixing it around the other’s waist as he was asked to, Fai kissing him on the cheeks in thanks before moving away a step or two.

“It looks alright? Tomoyo-chan made this for me before we came, to fit in with the local fashions.” Fai twirled, the edges of his long over-robe lifting slightly as it caught the air, material pressing against the mage’s legs. “Does Kuro-pon like it?”

“Don’t call me that while we’re here.” Kurogane moved automatically to take the other’s arm, feeling soft cloth beneath his fingertips. He had to impress this upon the other – he probably should’ve told him earlier. “We’re official ambassadors for Nihon – we need to command respect ion this Court.”

“So I can call you it every other time we’re not at Court?” Fai fluttered his eyes rather suggestively, Kurogane close enough to make out each individual lash.

“Tch.” The ninja glanced away. “It’s not like you’re going to listen to me if I say no.”

“Of course I listen to Kuro-tama!” Fai looked scandalised. “He always makes such pretty noises, especially when I do that thing he likes with my t-”

“Fai.”

Fai smiled up at Kurogane, softer than before, and laid a hand on his arm. “I promise I’ll be good.”

Kurogane was slowly, but inexorably, getting sick of the Imperial family’s fondness for the obnoxious shade of yellow they all seemed to be wearing. The Emperor wore it, his wives wore it, his sons and daughters wore it, and the room seemed full of the glaring colour, the Court's whispers as they looked at the foreigners from Nihon. Let them whisper – Nihon was small, but Nihon was rich and strong, and Chugoku would do well to mind that.

They had been presented to His Imperial Majesty, the son of Heaven, and Kurogane had disliked him on sight, but bowed low as bid as the man brought out his darling heir, Zhuang, for display, his chief wife, a mild hand waved at a flock of what were, Kurogane assumed, his giggling daughters. Even Fai had flickered a little wearily as the Emperor brought out his officials again, the men they’d be dealing with over the treaty, Sun Kai, Miankai, a score of others. Both Fai and Kurogane had nodded and noted names and faces as best they could for a brief introduction, neither really sitting up to pay true attention until the Court’s Chief Mage was introduced, Liu Bao, and the two slave charges he watched over. Usually, the Emperor languidly explained, as he waved forward an elaborately-dressed, smiling man, slaves weren’t taught magic, but these two had been found young, raw and dangerous, and it was for the benefit of the Empire that they had been brought in to hone their craft.

Neither Fai nor Kurogane were looking at Liu Bao. Fai, poor Fai, was very much transfixed by the two naively blinking slave children flanking the Chugokian Chief Mage on either side, and Kurogane was distracted trying to offer his lover a subtle, steadying arm, because Fai had gone dreadfully, terribly white, and looked as if he were going to fall over.

Zhuang asking if they had family on the boat suddenly made painfully cruel sense.

“Why, Fluorite-jiéxià,” Liu Bao said, looking taken-aback, seeing the blond’s ashen face, “you look just like my students.”

“It…” Fai shivered once and then forced himself to straighten, to not lean on Kurogane in a Court full of probably hostile eyes, to look away from those blue-eyed, golden-haired, golden-collared twins accompanying the other mage. He could feel his memories screaming in his ears and his breath caught again, faltered, but then he was smiling so serenely again, smooth perfection dressed up prettily for this foreign Court’s eyes. Fai inclined his head courteously, respect from one magic practitioner to another. “It is an honour to meet you, and your students.”

“Likewise,” said Liu Bao, glancing down at the twins beside him, confused.

“Likewise,” the twins softly echoed, transfixed by Fai.

Fai didn’t raise his head from its incline to look at them, and his smile was cracked so painfully wide Kurogane wondered how it could fit on his face at all.

A/N: I haven’t checked exactly, but I actually think the only time Kurogane’s referred to Fai by his name in this series insofar was when (in We Go Ever Onwards) Koko the cat shredded his manga. I mean, seriously, Kuro-pon, you’re having wild, passionate sexytiems with sex-on-legs, and you care more about the mangayan. *sighs*

Notes:

1) They’re sailing over an AU version of the Sea of Japan at the beginning of this. It does have sharks.

2) On Fai’s lack of underwear – women sometimes did this, as the underwear left lines on the outer kimono and shucked it up a bit. Instead, people would wear a long, smooth robe so that the clothing fit better, looking better overall.

3) ‘-wángyé’ and ‘-jiéxià’ are…hm, Chinese suffixes, used quite similarly to the Japanese honorifics I usually use in my fics. I used ‘-wángyé’ for the Crown Prince as it basically translates to ‘princely lord’, and it’s usually reserved for kings/princes (both of which are considered below the Emperor). Members of the Imperial family will usually receive ‘-diànxià’ (‘beneath your palace’), but I felt I’d be overusing that with other characters so switched to a different address for Zhuang.

‘-jiéxià’ (‘beneath your ceremonial banner’) is used for ambassadors.

4) Fai’s clothing when they go to see the Emperor, pretty much (without the hat): https://www.chinesemoods.com/product.php?productid=2384

Kurogane’s clothing (only in red/black/gold): https://www.chinesemoods.com/product.php?productid=680

Fic: Triple Lutz (2)

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:21:05 GMT

*****

Novosibirsk, Russia, August 2009

“You want to go skating again?”

Yuui tried not to falter as his brother looked at him, seemingly genuinely perplexed, the dishes Fai had been collecting from the café out front forgotten in his hands. “Yes – what about this weekend?”

“Why?” Fai looked good in The Cat’s Eye waiter’s uniform, clean and crisp in black and white even as his blue eyes focused on Yuui with the stirrings of unnameable suspicion. Yuui, the part-owner, had established the café with money his brother had originally loaned him, designing the uniform with his twin in mind, as Fai, the other owner, had come to help around the place when he hadn’t been busy with hockey. Ever since Turin, however, Fai had worked there mostly full-time. “We went last week.”

“…We used to go every other day.”

Fai set his plates down, the crockery clattering loudly on the kitchen bench. “I’m going to be doing my gymnastics this weekend.”

“You never mentioned that.” Yuui tried to properly smile, he really did.

“I just remembered.” Fai’s smile was a much better lie. He switched it on and off at will, Yuui watching quietly from The Cat’s Eye kitchens as Fai charmed the young ladies that frequented the café, the way they giggled and swooned for his brother. “I’m sorry – maybe we could go some other time?” So basically – never.

“I’d like to,” Yuui said, but his brother only smiled his sweetly fake smile again, and swanned back out to take the order of a young couple who had just walked in.

Fai hadn’t lied, when he said he was going to do gymnastics at the weekend. He had lied, however, when he’d said he’d forgotten about it – really, the plan had been made up on the spot the moment Yuui had suggested they go back to the rink again; Fai really didn’t want to set foot out on the ice again so soon.

Fai changed from his casual clothes to his practice ones in the gym’s changing room, holding back a shiver at the chill in the air, his outer layer now clinging so much closer to his skin. It sometimes felt that he might as well have been born in the clothes – he and Yuui had taken gymnastics from a pretty young age, fascinated by the acrobats at a travelling circus their mother had taken them to once. Yuui had dropped the practice after a few years and taken up archery instead, but Fai had pushed on, liking the knowledge it gave him of his own body, knowing how far he could push himself. It had been handy once he’d started hockey – he was already fit, and fast, and the team coach had tried to encourage others to take up the exercise as well. Of course, he couldn’t play professional hockey anymore but –

Fai had hired a private area and it was to there he took himself, carefully doing his stretches so he wouldn’t pull a muscle later. He was shut off from the world, hearing only his own breathing, his own heartbeat, the whisper his fringe made as it fell around his face, moving with his movement. He went into his exercises on the floor mat, losing himself to what he could still do, letting his flips grow harder, harder, longer, as he pushed himself further and further. Practice had made him flexible and he flung himself through his moves without too much strain – that was, of course, right up until he was halfway through a back hand spring and, upside-down, he caught sight of someone dark watching him at the door. Surprise jolted Fai out of his peace and he forgot to push his hands down to brace himself in time, his forearms wobbling with sudden pressure as his whole weight came down and slammed his torso into the floor.

As soon as he’d got over the pain – his ribs hurt – he rolled over, pushing himself up into a seating position with his legs spread out, looking vaguely annoyed at the stranger at the door. “How long have you been there?” He should’ve seen him, should’ve seen some movement from the door’s opening, but the entrance was on his blank side, and his focus had been elsewhere. (It wasn’t only his ribs that currently stung.) “Don’t you know it’s rude to watch someone in a private session without their permission?”

“Your private session ended a good twenty minutes ago.” The stranger was tall and broad and damnably confident of himself, strong arms folded across his chest as he leaned back against the wall beside the door, red eyes intent on Fai on the floor.

Fai’s head whipped towards the clock – it was true. Immediately he pushed himself up of the ground, brushing down his legs reflexively to remove whatever dust he might’ve picked up from the mat. “Why didn’t you stop me?” People paid good money for the private areas; it wasn’t like someone to sit by and watch whilst someone else was using up their time.

“You looked like you needed it more than me.”

Fai actually flinched at that – was he really so obvious? He pasted on a smile when he saw the stranger follow the reaction, feeling it hanging heavily around his mouth and refusing to touch his eyes. He closed them instead, presenting the image of a smiling fool. “Mr. Black is terribly kind for worrying so about me.”

“‘Mr. Black’?!” The stranger looked affronted.

Fai kept smiling. “It’s not like Mr. Black gave me his name.”

“Why the hell would I?!”

“So Mr. Black didn’t have to be called ‘Mr. Black’~!” Fai laughed when the other – taller – man took an angry step forwards, the stranger’s fists dropping to clench at his sides. Fai lowered his lashes, deliberately flirtatious. “He must secretly like it.”

“You,” the stranger told him flatly, “are an idiot.”

“I’ve heard it takes one to know one, Mr. Black~.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Fai only laughed again at his companion’s temper. “Then give me your name!!”

“Why would I give my name,” the stranger demanded bluntly, “to an idiot who clearly doesn’t want it?” Fai’s laughter froze, his eyes widening slightly as he actually looked at the man beside him. The stranger turned away. “Tch. You really are an idiot, aren’t you? A pretty obvious one too.”

Fai forced another smile, but this one felt brittle, its edges digging sharply into his cheeks. No-one had confronted him like this since – “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The stranger snorted, and then suddenly whirled about, stomping for the door.

Despite himself, Fai called out after him. “Your booking -”

“As I said,” the other man ground out, one hand on the knob, “you need it more than me.” And he went out, and had the cheek to slam the door behind him.

Fai’s hands tightened into fists of their own, his nails leaving crescent-shaped curves in his palms. At least he wasn’t the one with anger issues.

Outside the room Youou Kurogane stalked off and away, scattering other gym-goers as he went, muttering under his breath about goddamned idiots.

“No, no, and no again.”

Youou Kurogane had been born nearly a month prematurely, startling his parents as they’d been heading back to their native Japan after a long trip, catching them just inside the Soviet Union, four years before the Union fell. He’d been brought into the world on what was now Russian soil, rushed to a hospital, placed in a unit as his mother recuperated and his father went between the ward where his wife lay and the unit with his newborn baby son.

“Youou -”

“Don’t call me that, witch.”

They’d said he was a fighter as he struggled on, his parents delighted to see him growing, naming him Youou – ‘Hawk King’. Their precious baby boy, he’d been doted upon, loved and coddled the moment they’d been able to hold him, happily taking him home to Japan.

“Then -”

“No.”

It had been his mother who’d first taken him skating, when he’d been old enough, pulling his father along with a laugh and letting them slip around the rink with her. Youou hadn’t felt like the most graceful of people at that time, slithering about and ending up on his behind more often than not, but he’d gained a liking for skating all the same, watching his mother twirl about before him, his father not as elegant, but still adequate to keep up her pace. They’d inspired him.

It was a pity they were both dead.

Yuuko put her hands on her hips, and eyed her recalcitrant tutee. “Do it or I’ll post pictures online of your plushie Googoo -”

“Ginryuu!”

“- And you cuddling it whilst you’re asleep.” Yuuko didn’t even bother to include the correction. “They’re even cuter than the ones of you and your pillow.”

Kurogane reminded himself very strongly about that point that it was terribly bad etiquette to attempt to strangle a woman. “Where do you get these photographs?” He locked his door. Every night. He checked.

“I have my sources,” his coach whispered, and tapped her nose with one finger in what was assumedly meant to signify her information was top-secret. Whatever. She looked like an idiot.

“I’m not doing it,” Kurogane told her, calling her bluff and folding his arms in utter defiance of Yuuko’s weird ways. What little she’d told him sounded insane enough, and wouldn’t be of use to him in any way.

Yuuko promptly began fiddling with her purse.

“No.” Kurogane insisted.

Yuuko rummaged around in her purse.

“No,” Kurogane said again.

Yuuko plucked out a set of photographs and began flipping through them herself, but Kurogane was determinedly Not Looking at her and her quiet chuckling was Not Affecting Him In The Slightest. It was a bluff, and he wasn’t going to fall for it.

Kurogane stiffened his resolve, and held firm.

Yuuko held up a picture of a sparkly silver dragon plushie with big eyes. Tomoyo had bought it. “I’m trying to think of a title for my post. ‘Skaters extraordinaire, Kurogane and Gurgle’ -”

“Ginryuu.”

“ – sounds quite fetching, don’t you?” Again, Yuuko ignored him. “It’s not as catchy as one might wish for, but I feel it gets the point across adequately enough.”

Kurogane twitched. Strangling, maiming or otherwise slaughtering a female was against his principles. Generally. Unless they were trying to kill him. Could he get away with claiming he was acting in self-defence of his sanity? “This is blackmail.”

Yuuko beamed. “I prefer to think of it as an incentive to co-operative companionship.”

“It’s blackmail.” Yuuko fluttered his lashes at him, and Kurogane snorted and looked away. “Witch.”

She only smiled knowingly. “So you’ll come to meet him, Kurogane?”

It wasn’t as if the damn woman had given him much of a choice. Kurogane grumbled under his breath but nodded assent sharply, once, mentally removing himself from the squeal his coach let out and reminding himself he wouldn’t hit a member of the fairer sex. (But then, there was nothing fair about Yuuko. The woman was an atrocious cheat.)

“Yuuko-san, this is a bad idea.”

Yuuko flapped her hand, leaning back in the plastic seat around the ice rink and putting her heeled feet up on the chair in front. Thankfully she was wearing trousers that day; else the action would have probably flashed anyone looking at them with a glorious view of the woman’s underwear. “Watanuki-kun, you’re such a pessimist. Think positively!”

Kimihiro Watanuki, seventeen years of age and very much used to the ways and wiles of Yuuko Ichihara, his parents’ distant relative on some side of the family or other no-one had ever quite specified to say and his current caretaker of the moment (his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend’s family usually opened up their doors to him, but when Yuuko called you answered, or your sanity was forfeit), eyed the woman beside him with a deep distrust, completely ignoring the figures on the rink before them. “I’m positive this is a bad idea.”

Yuuko turned a lazy red gaze on him, downing about half of the flask she held in her hand. By the smell of it, she’d spiked the hot chocolate he’d given her. “Are you certain of that, Watanuki?” When the youth didn’t answer she only smiled, cat-like, and stretched out a little more firmly in her seat. “Be a dear and check to see Kurogane hasn’t drowned himself down the toilet, would you, Watanuki?” They’d been waiting for him to come out for about ten minutes. “He’s been in there an awfully long time.”

Obligingly – and with distinct relief at being away from the mad woman -, Watanuki went off. About two minutes later he was back, and Yuuko raised one eyebrow in inquiry. “He says he’s not coming.”

“Whaaaaaaa’? We can’t have that!” Yuuko pouted, swinging her legs around and down until her feet were flat on the floor again and pushing herself up into a standing position, one finger pointing dramatically towards the ceiling. “To the toilets!”

Watanuki gaped, and tried to ignore the people around them that had turned to stare. “Yuuko-san -”

It was far too late. Yuuko had already clacked off in her heels, all but slamming open the door to the men’s toilets and striding inside like it was a perfectly everyday occurrence. “Kurogane, yoo hoo~!”

A few of the men that were inside automatically baulked at the sound of a woman’s voice, Kurogane, who had been leaning against a far wall, narrowing his eyes at his approaching coach.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?! This is the men’s toilets!”

“Is it?” Yuuko feigned surprise, glancing around herself (and completely ignoring all the men quickly shying out of the door), tapping one painted finger off of her chin in thought. “I guess the terrible taste in décor should have given it away.” She took up a spot beside the urinals, leaning on a divider with very little care for the man directly behind her hurriedly trying to finish his business and stuff his equipment back into his pants. “Don’t worry dear,” she spoke over her shoulder, the man’s ‘urk’ clearly audible at having her undivided attention, “I’ve seen smaller.” He was out the door in about three seconds flat.

Kurogane growled. “Witch -”

“Now, now, Kurogane,” Yuuko chided, waving one finger at him in reproof, “that’s no way to speak to a lady.”

He glared back at her. “I’m not speaking to a lady.”

The door to the room was tentatively pushed open, and Watanuki poked his head inside. “Yuuko-san? Kurogane-san?”

“Watanuki-kun,” the female among them pouted melodramatically, “Kurogane is calling me names.” She said it like it was something new. “I’m going to need more of my special hot chocolate to ease the pain.”

Watanuki shook his head. “You already drank it all.”

“But Watanuki-kun-!”

“I can’t get anymore when we’re in an ice rink!”

“Then you shall have to make three times as much when we get home~!”

“That’s not fair!!”

Kurogane snorted, and looked aside. “Life rarely is, kid.” Yuuko took that opportunity to lock her hands around one of his arms, and start dragging him towards the door. “Bitch, what d’you think you’re-?!”

“The future calls, Kurogane!” His coach only laughed at him.

Kurogane dug in his heels. “No.” If it hadn’t meant losing his defence, he would’ve stamped his foot as well.

“One word – Ginpoo.”

“It’s Ginryuu, dammit!!”

“Ne, Watanuki, don’t you think Tomoyo-chan would love to know about our manly Kurogane hiding in the toilets~?”

“I was not hiding.” Yuuko raised an amused eyebrow at her tutee, and he scowled at her. “I don’t need to tell you what I was doing – it’s private.”

Yuuko turned back to Watanuki. “Kurogane was sulking.”

“I was not sulking!!” Kurogane put too much effort into yelling and too little attention into his position in the floor, Yuuko pulling him along a lot easier as she baited him. “Let go of me, you twisted bat.”

“Very well.” Yuuko did so – she’d already pulled Kurogane to the edge of the rink, anyway, ignoring all the stares passers-by were giving them. She pointed out two people skating on the ice, watching as one of them stopped to wave at her when he saw her, waving back. “Those are the Fluorite twins, Kurogane.”

“Who-?” Kurogane followed the line of her gaze – and then froze. “No.” He recognised that blond hair, even as the one who’d waved to Yuuko began moving over to someone identical to him, pulling on that person’s arm. “You want me to-? No. No way in hell.”

“That one’s Yuui,” Yuuko said helpfully, pointing to the first brother, “and that one’s Fai.” The second. “Fai’s the one I was talking about.”

Kurogane shook his head – an abrupt denial. “No.”

Yuuko fluttered her lashes at him, even as the twins started making their way over the ice, Yuui pulling Fai. “He’s a good skater.”

Kurogane didn’t care, and offered the first excuse that came to mind. “He’s male.”

“Very quick on his feet.”

“He’s male.”

“He’s light – he’d be good for lifts.”

“Witch,” Kurogane interrupted Yuuko’s song of praise, scowling, “he’s male.”

“Yes,” Yuuko beamed back, “but don’t you think he’d look pretty in a skirt?”

Kurogane glared.

Fai didn’t quite know how his brother had managed it, but he was back on the ice, Yuui a constant presence at his side, laughing, joking, smiling and outright refusing to let his twin sink too deeply into his own thoughts. Yuui could be quite effective at badgering people when he chose – Fai supposed he was just lucky his twin was usually the quieter, more demure of the two of them. (Dealing with someone exactly like himself in terms of psyche and emotion would have killed him.) Yuui was different in the ways that mattered, in the ways Fai loved him for.

Yuui laid a hand on his arm as they were skating, welcoming, warm. “Fai, there are some people I want you to meet here.”

“Oh?” Fai smiled back, consenting to be pulled past the other skaters on the rink, his attention on his brother. “Who?” This reeked of a plan of some sort, especially as Yuui had been so insistent that they went skating that particular day, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer in any of its smiling-faced, subtle forms. (Yuui was the same in all the ways that mattered as well, though Fai didn’t like admitting that as much.)

Yuui only smiled again – they were both doing a lot of that – and gestured to a small group of three people waiting purposefully at the rink’s edge, a teenage boy, a tall, dark-haired woman and – oh, hell no.

Fai attempted to dig his blades into the ice. “Yuui -”

“Hm?” His twin looked inquiring.

Fai had a bad feeling – the red eyes glaring at him from over six metres away didn’t help much. “Whatever you’re planning – no.” It was the growling, observant stranger from the gym.

Yuui kept pulling him along. “What makes you think I’m planning something?” Fai looked at him. Yuui looked back at him, eyes softening in a way he knew Fai was susceptible to. “Just hear us out, Fai – please?”

“Yuui…” Yuui kept looking at him. Fai sighed, but gave in. “Alright.”

Yuui brightened; Fai tacked a smile on, and the two finished making their way over to the edge of the rink.

This was going to hurt.

Fic: Ever After (10.2)

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:11:22 GMT

Title: Ever After
Characters/Pairings: Characters abound from the multiverse, and if you think you spot a pairing, it’s probably there.
Rating: T
Summary: ‘Fairytale’ is a very trying place. Children get abandoned; loves fall under evil spells, and various members of royal families get abducted on an almost regular basis. Even with a witch on-hand all ills can’t simply be wished away – but then, if it’s really the ‘happy ever after’ you’re looking for, it’s quite obligatory to start with ‘once upon a time…’ AU, with heavy reference to canon.
A/N: I have a great lot of nothing to say this chapter but this: http://news.uk.msn.com/odd-news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=149601784 This amuses me, ^w^.
Posted in two parts.

First part is here.

Watanuki supposed it was a good thing Doumeki Haruka was already dead, or the amount of cigarettes the youth had seen the man get through during their night-time conversations probably would’ve killed him. People dreaming weren’t supposed to be able to smell anything, but still the rich scent of tobacco hung around Haruka, something comforting and familiar even in the ever-changing landscape dreaming crafted up out of thoughts and air.

“The fireflies are bright tonight.” Watanuki felt the comment was a stupid one as soon as it left his lips, but still it hung in the air between him and his companion, he himself standing, Haruka calmly seated on the imitation of Yuuko’s porch. (Or maybe the porch was the imitation and this was the real thing? It was so hard to tell sometimes.)

Haruka blew out a stream of smoke, letting it curl up into the darkness. “They are, aren’t they?” The fireflies were lovely, darts of blue-white amongst the trees in the garden. Weren’t they a sign of the Zashiki-warashi? “Perhaps it’s their way of apologising to you.”

“Why would they apologise?” Watanuki was confused. “The fireflies haven’t done anything to me.”

“Then that’s why they’re apologising.” Haruka really was nothing like his grandson. “It hurts when we can’t protect those we care for.”

“About Doumeki’s eye -”

Haruka glanced up at him from the side, somehow quelling half-formed words with that look. “I wasn’t talking about my grandson’s eye.”

“Both of you,” Yuuko told the two males sitting on her couch, Fai on one end, Syaoran on the other, “came to this island with a wish for me to grant, and from both of you I demanded your time as a price.” Maru and Moro silently brought her a chair and she sat upon it, aware of the brown and blue gazes tracking her movement, the tiny flickerings of action that could lend emotion and meaning to the words she said. “In addition to this, Syaoran-kun has retrieved items for me, pouring his effort and his will into everything, made bonds with others that may later hurt and sting. Fai-san…” the witch’s eyes softened slightly, “Fai-san, you have given your precious feelings, your home, the safety that you treasured for so long. Combined, these things you have paid equal the wishes you made to me, and so now I can grant what you’ve worked for so long.”

Fai looked at her more seriously, setting down the cold tea he’d been holding for so long. “Kuro -”

“You wished for opportunity, Fai-san. He is it.”

Guilt struck Fai again, sharp as the implication that lay in Yuuko’s words. “So I did this to him?” It hadn’t been Ashura-ou’s magic-?

“Regardless of your intervention in affairs, some things would have always happened.” There was a vague comfort in what Yuuko said. “It is hitsuzen that things have come to be so.”

Syaoran interrupted, hesitant. “About Kurogane-san -”

“Kurogane-san has gone to the place where Sakura-chan is. That is,” Yuuko continued, seeing both of her customers snap to attention at that, “castle Leval. It’s an old faerie castle enchanted out of time – only those who know where it is can pass through the barrier that divides it from the rest of this world, and only those with strong magic can reach the barrier in the first place.”

“How do I get there?” Fai asked at once.

“How do we get there?” Syaoran asked, looking at the mage.

“Syaoran-kun -”

“With aid,” Yuuko said, overriding Fai. She held out her hands before her, palms up, and something small and white suddenly bounced up onto them, looking unusually serious. “Mokona will help you find your way there, and keep you both in contact with me through the other Mokona throughout your journey.”

“Mokona will do her very best,” the little creature promised.

“Yuuko-san -” Fai tried again, frustrated. He didn’t want this – this was his mess; he had to solve it on his own, without dragging anyone else into it, without forcing them to share in the problems he inevitably brought with him. He was supposed to be dealing with this alone.

Again, the witch overrode him. “Mokona can teleport you anywhere that she has been before. I would advise going first to the Faerie Court – perhaps someone there will be able to advise you on how best to find Leval. The castle is of fey creation, after all.”

“Thank you, Yuuko-san.” Syaoran nodded solemnly as Mokona suddenly leaped into the air, glowing brightly. Wings spread from the creature’s back to curl around them as Yuuko’s magic circle appeared beneath them on the floor, the wind rising to curl around Syaoran and Fai, pulling them into the vortex that was swirling in Mokona’s enlarged mouth.

Fai, with his nails digging into his palms, looked at Yuuko’s stoic face until it was no longer possible to do so, closing his eyes as the witch’s magic pulled around him and took him to another place. It was only when he felt his feet touch solid ground once more that Fai opened his eyes again, his blue gaze meeting an opulence he hadn’t seen in a very long time, Syaoran gawking at his side as Mokona cheerily leapt down to sit on the brunet’s head.

“We’re here~!” Inside the Faerie Court, on the spirit mountain.

“So we are,” Fai agreed, tacking a smile to his face as he looked at Syaoran’s new choice of headgear. “Mokona is very clever to land us straight in the Faerie Court’s Entrance Hall!”

“Mokona is very clever,” Mokona preened. “Mokona is everybody’s idol!”

“Uwa~,” Fai clapped his hands, almost visible sparkles coming off of his frame. “Mokona gets more and more impressive by the minute!”

“Yup~!” Mokona unashamedly joined in with the sparkling. Syaoran sweat-dropped, and tried not to choke all on the glittery emissions that were floating in the air.

“Visitors, visitors~!!” A new voice trilled out a cry before Fai could further flatter Mokona’s ego, the sound of two pairs of pattering feet coming flying across the floor to the trio accompanied by the jangle of what sounded like tiny cymbals and tinkling bells, something small and pink crashing into Syaoran’s knees. Syaoran went flying, Mokona leapt to safety in Fai’s outstretched arms, and a second voice spoke out, disapprovingly, originating from a tiny…girl-like creature who had come to stand at the fallen Syaoran’s feet.

“You knocked them over.” She was a serious thing, dressed in dark colours with hair the same shade, bound up with bells in long pigtails either side of her disproportionate head.

Her pink, short-haired counterpart ignored her, having already scrambled up from where she’d run into Syaoran to do a twirling dance on the boy’s stomach, waving a jangling tambourine with a gusto.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome~! Sumomo will do her welcome dance for you!”

“Er…” Syaoran seemed a little nonplussed by the spinning, tambourine-waving girl – and especially her choice of stage -, glancing up at Fai and attempting a discreet whisper, “what are they?”

Fai chuckled softly, leaning down slightly to whisper his response as he offered a hand (Mokona moving to his shoulder) and helping the youth up. ‘Sumomo’ hopped off of his stomach, still spinning on the floor. “Chibis. Don’t worry, Syaoran-kun,” the boy relaxed minutely, “you’ll see a lot worse in this Court.”

“F-Fai-san…”

“Come, come~!” Sumomo was singing again, twirling around as she lilted out a strange little song to the rattle of her instrument. “Visitors should come with Sumomo~!”

“Our Regent will give audience to Fluorite-sama within the hour,” her companion said somewhat more stiffly. “His companion is free to partake in the food of the feast in rooms adjacent to the audience chamber. Their Highness wishes both of you to know that no harm would come to any emissary sent by the Forest Witch in this place.”

“Their Highness is very kind,” Fai said, still smiling.

Syaoran tugged on his sleeve, asking quietly, “How do they know you’re here?”

Fai patted him on the shoulder. “The fey don’t easily forget anything.”

“Come~!” Sumomo prompted them again, dancing ahead to get the others to follow her.

Slowly, they went after her as Sumomo led them down vast corridors all but glowing with magic, Syaoran clearly interested as he glanced around himself, asking questions of their other little companion – the second girl, who turned out to be called Kotoko. Fai, for his part, kept quiet and looked only ahead, petting Mokona with one hand absently. They continued like that, right up until Sumomo laid a hand on a gigantic set of double doors before them, the wood swinging inward at once to reveal a room full of talking faeries, their sound obviously previously sealed off from the outside corridor by some magical barrier of some sort.

Almost immediately the talking all but stopped, gazes flickering up to gawk at the newcomers, feeling the threads of magic coming off of both of the humans. The recognition slowly stealing onto a few of the faeries’ faces did nothing to abate the shock, the curiosity that was so palpable in the hall, Sumomo and Kotoko apparently oblivious to the gradual whispers that were starting up around the small group of four – five, when they included Mokona – as they made their way into the room.

Mokona took the opportunity to hop down and hide in Syaoran’s arms, quietened by the looks.

The two guiding chibis drew to a halt, Kotoko still as serious as ever. “We will inform the Regent of your presence.”

Syaoran smiled. “Thank y-” Their guides didn’t even wait for him to finish his sentence, disappearing with one last rattle of Sumomo’s tambourine, the chime of Kotoko’s bells.

Alone now in a sea of virtual strangers, Syaoran shifted a little awkwardly at Fai’s side, painfully conscious of the stares they were receiving. How his elder companion could appear so unaffected was beyond him, but Fai only continued to smile in that blithely bland manner of his, so outwardly friendly but so obviously unapproachable. Syaoran didn’t dare quite look at him, never mind speak, and Mokona huddled down a little more in the boy’s arms, quiet.

And then Fai went rigid. The sudden stiffness in one usually so languid drew Syaoran’s attention immediately, the boy looking up to see what had caught his companion’s attention and seeing a tall faerie with mismatched eyes and black hair stepping through the hall’s whispers, his own implacable smile a direct challenge to the blond his gaze had locked with.

Mokona let out a soft sound, barely above a whisper. “Fai…”

Syaoran frowned slightly, feeling the pull in the air, hearing the increase of hissed messages being flung around them, sensing more than seeing Fai straighten into someone of authority, exuding a chill that just wasn’t…that just didn’t feel like Fai, not the smiling, laughing man of the sunshine forest who called a grumpy wolf silly nicknames and climbed trees with twigs in his hair. This person…this smiling person who didn’t even so much as incline his head when the approaching faerie bowed before him, who radiated coldness and greatness and a distance so vast Syaoran hurt inside to think of it…that wasn’t Fai. This was someone else Syaoran didn’t know, had never been introduced to, and the brunet didn’t know whether that made him immensely grateful or endlessly sad.

“Fai-bocchan,” the faerie male before them rose from his bow, slipping from that smooth movement and seizing Fai by the upper-arms in the next breath, leaning in to kiss the man’s mouth. Fai turned his head aside at the last moment, the stranger’s lips scraping his cheek instead. “How lovely to see you come home.”

Fai raised his hands and placed them squarely in the middle of his captor’s chest, pushing the other away and freeing himself. “If I have a home, Seishirou-san, it is certainly not in this Court.”

“And I thought our time together meant so much more.” ‘Seishirou’ only smiled when Fai made a disgusted noise at the back of his throat, the faerie turning to look at the silent Syaoran. “And who is this? He’s got a little way to go in terms of magical strength, Fai-bocchan, but he looks just as sweet as you once did, all those many years ago.”

Fai’s snarl was liquid, twisting as the mage stepped protectively in front of his brunet charge, and Mokona flattened herself completely against Syaoran’s chest, slipping under the boy’s cloak. “Try it and your remaining eye will go the same way as its partner.”

Syaoran saw then, more closely, the difference in Seishirou’s eyes: the left iris was grey, something that seemed tinged with shades of violet, alive and responsive. The right eye, in contrast, was…it moved as it should’ve done, but it was darker than its twin, blanker, closer to black. He…was blind in that eye?

Seishirou smirked, uncaring of the scrutiny fixed upon him, and brushed a hand over Fai’s cheek, the edge of his long sleeve touching skin. “You’re lovely when you’re angry.”

The images flooded instantly to mind with the faerie’s touch – hot, heated flashes, clasped hands, lips on skin, bodies tangled and twined together under the frost-laced sakura tree at the centre of the Court. His back arched in pleasure, pain, Seishirou’s teeth on the pale line of his throat –

Fai tore himself from the visions, reeling, blood still pounding in his ears, some of it having slipped shamefully lower. “…Tell me Seishirou-san,” the blond still felt breathless, but none of it leaked into his voice, “just how many years is it now since you’ve last seen Subaru-kun?”

Something flashed through the faerie’s gaze, a blaze of anger – white-hot –, bitterness, hate, but still Seishirou’s smile never faltered. Instead, he gave a long sigh, striking the pose of an indulgent elder. “Little bocchan, didn’t your esteemed guardian ever teach you not to pry into others’ personal affairs?” Clearly, Seishirou hadn’t seen his darling Subaru for a very long time.

“But I’d hate to intrude on unfinished business, Seishirou-san.” Fai’s smile was all the sweeter, carrying on a conversation that went straight over Syaoran’s head. The boy had no idea what – or who – they were talking about.

“I’d call no word for a couple of centuries pretty finished – by my book, anyway.” A new voice broke into the conversation, another faerie creeping in whilst the others had been too distracted.

Mokona perked up, recognising the tones. “Fuuma!” The little creature leapt out from her hiding spot under Syaoran’s cloak and onto the new stranger’s shoulder, happily chattering away with familiarity.

Syaoran looked confused, Fai mildly interested. The mage ignored Seishirou’s brittle expression, and turned to the faerie’s brother and Mokona. “You’re acquainted?”

Mokona nodded eagerly. “Yup~! Fuuma gave Mokona lots of tasty treats when Mokona was here last time and let Mokona ride around with him all day when Mokona wanted to.”

Seishirou smoothly sliced back into the conversation with his usual bland explanation. “My dear little brother’s taken to collecting stuffed toys just recently.”

“Mokona is not a stuffed toy!” Mokona squeaked her protest out; puffing herself up to meet the cool gaze levelled her way. “Mokona is Mokona!”

“Quaint.”

“Now, onii-san,” Fuuma broke in, as Mokona bristled as much as Mokona could bristle, “you’re offending all our guests. There’s a reason Lord Subaru finished with you, you know.”

“If I recall correctly,” Seishirou clearly wasn’t in the mood for games, “wasn’t it Lord Kamui that did the finishing, as he took his brother along with him?”

Fuuma only smiled. “Ah, no, onii-san dearest. Kamui and I never technically got started – and you have to start something to finish it.”

“Such an optimistic outlook.”

Fuuma bowed, still bright. “I try.” The fey around them were still whispering and Fuuma straightened, adjusting the glasses he wore on his nose. “Come, onii-san, delightful as this is Ashura-sama will be vexed if you meddle with the Court’s guests so soon after their arrival. Look,” he extended a hand, the rest of the group automatically following its line to glance at where a silent Kotoko and Sumomo stood, observing. “The eyes and ears of the Regent are here.” When they’d gotten there nobody had noticed.

“Come,” said Kotoko, taking Syaoran’s hand, as Mokona bounded back across to the boy’s shoulder, “I’ll show you to the table.”

“Come,” said Sumomo, taking Fai’s hand, for once also unusually calm, “I’ll show you to Ashura-sama.”

Both of them ignored Seishirou and Fuuma, pulling the humans along through the parting sea of faeries, Fuuma giving a lazy mock-salute of goodbye when Syaoran glanced back over one shoulder, Seishirou having already melted into the masses. The two little chibis led the humans and Mokona through the crowds and through another set of double-doors to another room – this place was quieter than the last, with less people, a large table crammed with all manner of weird and wonderful food running the length of one long wall.

Kotoko drew to a halt, Syaoran with her. “You are to remain here, for the time being,” she said, rather firmly. “Ashura-sama bids you make yourself at home and sample of the Faerie Court’s wares at your own leisure.”

Fai glanced with a little concern at his companion, Sumomo not pausing and still leading him along, so Mokona piped up with reassurance, waving one tiny happy paw from her perch on Syaoran’s shoulder. “Mokona will stay here with Syaoran!”

“Thank you, Mokona -” Fai attempted to dig his heels in a little to slow his guide down – Sumomo, although tiny, was remarkably strong – offering Syaoran some quick words of advice over his shoulder. “Syaoran-kun, I’ll be back as soon as I can, but don’t so much as touch the burgundy-red fruits; don’t go near the golden joint of meat, and always be sure to poke every piece of food with something blunt before you attempt to cut into it in any way -”

Syaoran looked mildly confused by such strange guidance, wanting to query what would happen if he did go against the recommendations. “Fai-san -” but it was too late, Fai just smiled at him a little helplessly, already being dragged away by the overeager Sumomo, both of them off to see the Regent.

Kotoko watched Syaoran and Mokona impassively, unmoving, but somehow Syaoran got the feeling she wouldn’t allow him to follow the departed Fai.

“Syaoran, Syaoran~” Mokona tapped the boy’s cheek, bright and burbling, “let’s get something tasty to eat~!”

Syaoran smiled at the little creature. “Alright then – let’s.” And they went off to the table to check out the food.

A/N: Let it be known, one and all, that I am very proud to present to you all this day my darling baby ‘Kuro-pon’, my shiny new laptop on which the latter two-thirds of this chapter was written. *snuggles her precious*

Also, also, also, I found out during the course of writing this chapter that the seiyuu for Mokona (Mika Kikuchi) and the seiyuu for Fuuma in the Tsubasa OAD (Yuuji Kishi) are getting married on December 4^th. Apparently they met at the after-recording sessions for TRC, and Nekoi drew them some pretty art and – oh hell, it’s just incredibly cute. Incredibly.

(And I have little else to say save I am Sorry This Chapter Took So Long and – er – I got distracted with other fic? >> There was still fic coming out. Don’t give me those eyes. I see you. >> *hides*)

Fic: Triple Lutz (1)

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:32:10 GMT

Title: Triple Lutz
Characters/Pairings: KuroFai, others mentioned
Rating: T
Summary: Fai D. Fluorite is a competitive ice hockey player, very much in love with the world on ice. A tragic accident during one game, however, forces him to drop the sport he loves, and he rapidly sinks into a semi-depression. To try and restore some of his previous passion for skating his brother and the once-champion skater Yuuko tie him up with the figure-skater Kurogane, a serious professional who sends the majority of his partners scurrying in fright, and doesn’t care for Fai’s defeatist attitude. They could be great together…but, before they admit that? Hell will freeze over first. AU
Chapter: 1/?
A/N: This is all Eli-from-Kiseki’s fault. I somehow got set up into writing this, and I’m still not even sure how. *had been talking about squirrels, sob* Apparently the plot is based loosely on the film ‘The Cutting Edge’, but I’ve never seen it, so – *sailing blind, here* Just a general disclaimer – I don’t own that film, and I don’t own CLAMP’s characters.
*Forgot to mention: I'm using the Horitsuba order for the twins again. Fai is our!Fai, Yuui is real!dead!Fai.

*****

Turin, Italy, February 2006

Fai D. Fluorite was good at what he did, and very glad he was good at it. No-one who looked at him would think a man with such a slender build could possibly be involved in the competitive world of ice hockey – but involved Fai was, quite highly too. His team were up to the Olympics and he, a defenceman, was looking forward to the games only a few hours ahead.

“Nervous?” His brother looked in on him in his hotel room, Yuui’s expression sympathetic.

Fai looked up at him from where he’d been plucking at the curtains, smiling back rather ruefully over one shoulder. “A little.” There was a lot riding on this. “Is your room alright?”

“It’s amazing – everything here is.” Yuui strolled in, joining his twin at the window to look out onto the city of Turin. “I rode up in the lift with three sporting celebrities, and we discussed pastries.”

“Mm,” Fai laughed, amused his brother could find a fellow food-enthusiast wherever he went. “You promised me a…what was it called again? A gally-something, whilst we’re in Italy.”

“A galani.” Yuui corrected. “You’ll like it.”

Fai leaned back into him, put at ease by the other’s presence. “It’s got sugar in it?”

“As I said,” Yuui smiled, nodding and wrapping an arm loosely around his sibling’s waist. “You’ll like it.” Fai’s sweet-tooth was horrendous.

Fai laughed again. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Yuui sat impatiently in the VIP seats, waiting for his brother’s game to start. He knew Fai was getting ready somewhere out of sight with the rest of his team, wrapping himself up in the protection that was necessary for the rather aggressive sport. Sometimes he wished Fai had chosen some other sport than ice hockey – the sport always seemed so violent, and he worried that Fai would end up hurt -, but it was the game his brother loved, smiling and laughing and ever-waving as he’d skated out onto the ice during practice, for his earlier games.

“You know someone that’ll be going out there?” The woman sitting beside Yuui spoke – the blond had been placed with the family members, close friends and significant others of the competitors in the ice hockey games, a few of the other sportsmen and women occasionally fluttering through, killing time between their own displays and competitions.

Yuui nodded, rubbing his hands together from the cold. He really should’ve worn gloves. “My brother.”

“The Russian team?” The woman was clearly looking at his fine colouring. Yuui nodded again, and the stranger smiled, red lips curving in a knowing way. “All the best to him then.”

“And you, Ms…?”

“Ichihara. Yuuko Ichihara.” Yuui blinked once, recognising the name. Wasn’t that-? “Of course,” ‘Yuuko’ confided almost immediately after, “that’s not my real name.”

“Right.” Another blink. If Yuui wasn’t wrong, Yuuko Ichihara was the name of a Japanese professional figure skating champion from a few years before – hadn’t she gone into coaching? She supervised some…hot-tempered upcoming male Russian skater and his sweet-faced partner, the news had said (not that Yuui had been focusing all that much, looking for information on his brother). Either way, she looked pretty good for her supposed age.

“I got temporarily kicked out of the hotel after my tutee finished his short program the other day,” Yuuko remarked idly, plucking out a small silver flask from one of her coat’s deep pockets and taking a drink – it smelled potently alcoholic. “He threw a lamp at my head.”

“…He lost?” The suggestion was a mild one.

“He came first.”

“Oh.” The world was insane. “Congratulations?”

“He has the free program to get through later this evening, but he’s forbidden me from watching him. He said I was distracting.” Yuuko sighed melodramatically, sprawling back in her seat, limbs all akimbo and her rather indecent dress riding up her legs. “Do I look distracting to you?”

Yuui felt what could have possibly been a mild headache coming on – talking to Yuuko felt a lot like talking to a half-drunken Fai. “I’m sure your tutee meant your being forbidden in the very best way, Ms. Ichihara. This way he can focus all his attention on his performance?”

The woman snorted. “He would’ve done that anyway – Kurogane doesn’t know how to have fun.” She pouted. “He hid all my sake – and after Watanuki-kun carried it all the way to the hotel for me too!” Another sigh. “You never gave me your name, Mr-?”

“Yuui Fluorite.” Yuui pitied whoever ‘Watanuki’ was. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Then pray point out your brother to me when he comes on, if you please, Mr. Fluorite.” It sounded almost like a command. “I would’ve liked to have tried to guess which one he was myself by his looks, but the helmets they wear in this game make it awfully hard.”

Yuui smiled. “I’d be glad to.”

They made further small talk as they waited for the game to start, Yuuko draining her flask and tucking it away out of sight once more the moment the two teams came on, the noise of the packed stadium trebling and trebling again at the prospect of the sport to come. Yuui obligingly pointed out his brother as soon as Fai came on; both he and Yuuko following the figure through the game, watching Fai weave through the packed bodies on the ice.

“He’s good,” the woman remarked halfway through the game, seeing Fai deflect the puck from the half of the rink he was defending, sending into careening over to a teammate on the other side.

“He is,” Yuui agreed, pleased. “Fai loves skating – he has done ever since we were small. Ice hockey just seemed natural for him.”

“Oh, he -” Yuuko halted mid-sentence, gaze suddenly sharpening on the rink, and Yuui twisted about just in time to see his brother trip, fall, someone from the other team going down with him in a tangle of limbs and sticks and sharp, sharp blades, a clatter that echoed through and over the crowds, followed by the shrill shriek of the referee’s whistle.

The other player got up almost straight away afterwards, a little shaky, grabbing at his stick. Fai, on the other hand, didn’t – and there was red suddenly pooling on the ice.

“Fai -” Yuui felt glued to his seat, frozen, the medics rushing out onto the rink when the referee frantically beckoned them, Fai unmoving, sprawled out. They hurried to him, slipping on the rink’s surface, around Fai and blocking him from his brother’s view –“FAI!!”

Tokyo, Japan, July 2009

“She’s the third one you’ve rejected this month.” Yuuko sighed as she watched her tutee’s latest attempt at a skating partner stomped out of the room with the rink, not even bothering to take off her skates. She slammed the door behind her – sayonara, attempt number twenty-three. “Really Kurogane, I didn’t raise you to have such terrible manners.”

“You didn’t raise me at all!!” Kurogane drew to an irate halt before his coach, all but stamping his blade on the ice in (what Yuuko saw as) his petulance.

“Whaaat?” Yuuko feigned being scandalised. “After I gave you such tender loving care -”

“You call drinking me out of my home ‘tender loving care’?!”

“- Nursed you through your sicknesses -”

“You made me sick more often than not.”

“ - Fed you -”

“You made the flaily kid cook.”

“- Clothed you -”

“I bought my clothes myself.”

“ – Tucked you up in bed at night -”

“You did what.”

“It’s true~!” Yuuko clapped her hands, eyes sparkling. “Kurogane is terribly cute when he cuddles his pillow.”

Kurogane glared at her. “I do not cuddle my pillow.”

“You do, you do!” His coach began rifling around in her purse, withdrawing some rather dog-eared photographs and presenting them with a dazzling smile. All of them were candid shots of Kurogane asleep, and in nigh all of them the skater was, indeed, cuddling his pillow.

Kurogane immediately made a grab for them.

“Ah, ah, ah~!” Yuuko pulled them out of reach, waggling one finger at the man chidingly.

“Give me those.” Kurogane did not want to know why his coach carried around pictures of him in her purse. Really, he didn’t. Just as long as those photos were little more than multicoloured confetti, post-haste.

“Kurogane’s been a bad boy, just recently.” Yuuko held the pictures just out of reach. “You’ve been sulking terribly ever since Turin.”

“Like hell I have, witch.” He was a grown man. Grown men didn’t sulk.

“So you took a fall on the ice; it’s no reason to be eternally angry at Tomoyo-chan -”

“I’m not angry at Tomoyo!”

“But,” Yuuko said, tucking away the photographs, “you are angry. If not at Tomoyo-chan then – at who? Yourself? She didn’t quit professional skating because of you, Kurogane.”

Kurogane scowled, and glanced aside. “It’s none of your damn business.”

“It is currently very much my business, Kurogane, when you keep scaring all your partners away.” Yuuko had returned to her chiding tones. “There are only so many Russian skaters of a high enough quality around to partner you and still have you both considered a viable entry for the Olympics – must I remind you that the event is next year?”

“No.” The reply was growled out.

“Then,” said Yuuko, and smacked her tutee upside the head with her handbag, “learn to play nice!”

Novosibirsk, Russia, August 2009

Yuui stood in the centre of the rink and watched as his brother circled it, once, twice, three times, faster and faster, actions as smooth as they’d ever been, his face shadowed by his golden hair. Fai didn’t smile when he skated anymore – Turin three years before had stolen that from him, and replaced it with a thin scar beside his left eye. The mark was barely noticeable to anyone looking at him, but it was painfully obvious to Fai himself, the visible sign of what he’d lost.

“Fai…” Yuui watched a little helplessly as his twin made another loop of the rink, not looking at him. He’d thought to make Fai feel a little better by taking him to the ice rink in the times when it was quiet, but pulling on the skates had only seemed to have made Fai drawn even more into himself.

In Turin…Fai had lost the peripheral vision in his left eye in Turin, knocked out cold by a blow with the ice and someone else’s blade dragging sharply across his cheek and temple. He could still see out of the eye – the doctors had called it a miracle and said Fai should’ve been thankful to retain his sight -, but it made little difference to the hockey-player in the long run. Without his peripheral vision the game – his life – suddenly became so much harder, and he had been forced to retire from the Olympic team. The fact he could still skate so very beautifully was like a slap to the face.

“Fai,” Yuui skated closer to his brother, trying to draw the other out of his reverie, “do you want to go now?”

“I’m fine, Yuui.”

“Fai -” Yuui cut himself off when he felt something buzzing against his thigh, his phone vibrating in his pocket. He went to the side of the rink to answer it, leaving Fai to do his circuits, frowning at the screen’s declaration of ‘unknown number’. “…Hello?”

“Mr. Yuui Fluorite?” The voice on the other end seemed vaguely familiar.

“Speaking.”

“My name is Ms. Yuuko Ichihara – I don’t suppose you remember me?” She was rather a hard woman to forget, not that the events of that day weren’t already imprinted firmly in Yuui’s mind. “I’d like very much to meet and talk with you – would that be possible, do you think?”

Moscow, Russia, August 2009

“Did you know,” Yuuko calmly enquired, as she poured out some rather civilised cups of tea in the café they were in (Yuui was vaguely surprised at the location, he’d somehow thought the woman before him would’ve preferred meeting in a bar), “how remarkably easy it is to find personal information on the internet these days? Names. Addresses. Phone numbers, to name a few examples.”

Yuui took the cup she offered him. “Is that how you found mine?”

“No.” Then why had she mentioned the internet? “A few of my contacts gave me the information to get in touch with you. Your brother might have dropped out of the skating world, but the bonds he made once still linger.” Yuui winced at the reminder of the thought that was currently plaguing him. “My condolences for what happened, by the way. Your brother really was a promising hockey player.”

“…I’m just glad he didn’t lose his eye.” The confession was a guilty one, blurted out to the strange woman with the knowing red gaze. Yuui hadn’t even admitted that to his brother.

“Does he still skate?” Yuuko wasn’t looking at him as she drank her tea, picking at one of the cakes she’d ordered to go with her drink. “Your twin, I mean.”

“How did you know-?”

Yuuko bit into her dessert, clearly enjoying it. “Contacts, Mr. Fluorite.”

Ms. Ichihara was making Yuui feel more than a little paranoid. “Fai still skates. He doesn’t enjoy it the way he used to -” he looks like he hates himself every time he steps on the ice, “but he still skates.”

“A lack of motivation, do you think?”

“A lack…of feeling.” Fai was smooth and professional, but mechanical.

“What would you say,” Yuuko ventured, chin on her threaded hands, “if I said I could think of a way to try and reinvigorate your brother? To give him back some passion for the world on-ice.”

“Then I’d say, Ms. Ichihara, that you would be a worker of miracles.” Skating was dead to Fai.

“Would you let me try?” Yuuko persisted.

“I wouldn’t try to stop you.” Yuui had forgotten his tea. He loved his brother. If something might help Fai –

“Would I be able to come and observe him skating before saying anything definite?” The woman had to be a professional stalker. Or a P.I. But probably a stalker.

“Alright.” Yuui gave her the address of the rink he went to with his brother from time-to-time, writing it down and watching as she folded it and tucked it away on her person.

“I’ll call you to arrange a meeting again,” Yuuko said, and finished her own tea, rising to her feet. (The tea and cakes had already been paid for.)

“I’ll wait on your call,” Yuui replied, mostly to himself, and watched as Yuuko Ichihara breezed out of the café door. His initial impression of her had been right – she was a weird woman.

I should be in bed~

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:33:52 GMT

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
shadow_of_egypt goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Anne Boleyn.
archangelunmei gives you 10 milky white evil-flavoured pieces of bubblegum.
crys_tenkari tricks you! You get an eraser.
demi_rabbit tricks you! You get a block of wood.
hikaridaeron gives you 18 pink lime-flavoured pieces of bubblegum.
marajohuiki gives you 16 yellow coffee-flavoured jawbreakers.
nekogirl_beth16 gives you 9 mottled green apple-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
singingrain5 gives you 16 red-orange tropical-flavoured gummy bats.
white_hayate gives you 11 tan cola-flavoured gumdrops.
xxray gives you 19 tan cinnamon-flavoured jawbreakers.
youkohiei_fan gives you 6 tan grapefruit-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
shadow_of_egypt ends up with 105 pieces of candy, an eraser, and a block of wood.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

*fuzzes at you all - yes, even for the rubber and block of wood. I NEEDED THOSE.*

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:33:25 GMT

Or rather, do. ~~Sorry Marvin.~~

...Occasionally I do other things than write - stories/fic, I mean. I've been in a big writing mood just recently, which on the one hand is great for those who put me on their f!list for that reason, but for the rest of you...um.. *feels bad that she may be spamming you* Actually, I'm starting to feel that I may even be spamming those who watch me for fic. UM.
...
CLEARLY, THERE IS ONLY ONE SOLUTION. F!LIST, WRITE. (Pretty please, because sometimes I go onto my list to see how you're all doing and it feels like I'm alone in the world. ;o; ) Thus, the spam is lessened ~~or just hidden better~~ and I'm rambling again, aren't I? *sigh*

Eh, I've just got back in after the fire alarm went off. As some of you may know I'm in Halls of Residence (first year at uni), and yesterday some idiot burned their pizza, and set the alarm off at about nine pm. A bunch of students padded out in their pjs. Learned of the pizza. Blasted the boy whose pizza it was (apparently the ash made it taste better). Tonight was a drill and - I am getting kinda sick of that alarm. >.< Did I mention they test it regularly every Wednesday lunchtime as well? I was sleeping.

As for my courses - ffffff, one of my professors is mad. Old and mad and brilliant. I love him~ (in the 'wow, plz be teaching me' way). *potters off again to write a little more before heading out*

Nihon: We Go Ever Onwards (2)

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:46:47 GMT

Title: We Go Ever Onwards
Characters/Pairings: KuroFai, SySak, others mentioned
Rating: T
Summary: The journey goes on.
A/N: Another instalment in the Nihon series, the first chronologically in the series. Set prior to their reaching Nihon (again, and for the final time), shortly after the epilogue’s end. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU’VE READ THE EPILOGUE.
Posted in two parts.

First part here.

*****

Among the grime and lights of another non-magical world Kurogane found himself accosted by another blond, a creature with the same bright smile as his counterpart, but a pair of summer-sky eyes.

“Kuro-chan~,” the voice was the same as well, lilting and sweet, and Kurogane spared an idle pitying thought to this world’s counterpart, a bond over stupid nicknames. “I thought you said you couldn’t come out tonight?”

Kurogane attempted to detach himself from the other-Fai, this world’s Yuui. “I think you’ve got the wrong person.”

“Kuro-pon, don’t be silly.” Yuui chided him, wagging one finger in his face. “I know my Kuro-pup and what have you done to your arm?!” The blond was wide-eyed as he took in the ninja’s metal appendage, lifting it up to inspect. “Kuro-wan -”

Kurogane pulled his hand from the other’s grasp. “Like I said, I think you’ve got the wrong person.”

His companion frowned at him, confused. “But you’re Kurogane.”

“But not your Kurogane,” answered the same voice from behind Kurogane’s back, a familiar possessive hand pressing against the ninja’s right hip, Fai leaning on the man’s left side with his arm around the other’s waist. The angle he was at meant Kurogane couldn’t see the look on his face, but the stiffness of his frame and the thoughtful consideration that crept onto Yuui’s said it was probably a sight indeed.

“…I don’t understand,” the Yuui before them admitted, taking in his reflection living, breathing, resting against the side of someone who looked very much like his own boyfriend, “but I don’t think I’d believe you if you explained it to me.”

“No,” said Fai rather shortly, having no patience for himself. “You wouldn’t.”

“And my Kuro-sama?”

“Probably exactly where you left him.”

“Right,” said the Yuui, and inclined his head. “It was a pleasure meeting you.” Fai didn’t return the sentiment, and the other blond wandered off. (Kurogane supposed it beat screaming, but the calmness was a little weird.)

Kurogane raised an eyebrow at Fai, unused to the mage being so rude, and Fai looked up at him, still bristling from the encounter. “You’re jealous of yourself?”

“Who else could put up with you?” Kurogane only continued to look down at him, and Fai reached up to grab the front of his shirt. “I’m not losing you, Kuro-sama,” he said simply, right before dragging Kurogane down into a kiss, “not even to myself.”

“Kurogane-san,” Syaoran said in a world without houses, where the people lived in hides under trees so tall they had to reach to the sphere of the sky itself, “do you think I’m wasting my time?”

Kurogane looked at the boy consideringly, feeling the heat of the fire they were sitting beside touch his face, people chattering in this tribe they’d entered, gathering around the communal pot for food. Fai was elsewhere with Mokona and Koko, talking to the Chief’s wife. “You made a wish, didn’t you? To be together with those you love.”

“To live in a peaceful world,” Syaoran said quietly, his hand over his heart, as if he could reach inside of himself to pluck out the soul of his father, his friend, his clone, “with everyone together.”

“…There are a lot of worlds out there,” Kurogane told him after a short pause, getting to his feet and ruffling the youth’s hair with one hand, looking over to where the food was being served. “We’ll find the one you’re looking for sooner or later.”

Syaoran looked up at him. “Kurogane-san…”

“It’s time to eat,” Kurogane said bluntly, cutting the brunet off, “before the food gets cold.”

“Yes, Kurogane-san,” Syaoran said obediently, and followed the ninja to the pot.

Kurogane did not like cats (Fai was the self-declared exception). They mewed and they wailed and they scratched his pants-legs to ruin with their claws. They got underfoot and tripped Kurogane over, and moulted all over his black clothes – black. Fai suggesting Kurogane change his primary colour choice was met with a rather hearty scowl, Koko mewing innocently and washing her face as she sat on the kitchen counter opposite the two humans, Mokona curiously inspecting the cat food Fai had bought their animal friend.

Kurogane did not like Koko – but he put up with the cat, because Fai, Syaoran and Mokona declared themselves deeply attached to the feline and were forever cooing over her, and Kurogane’s eardrums weren’t quite feeling up to the task of combating the scolding he’d receive should he so much as look at Koko in a semi-violent way. The cat was forever getting in the way – from using Kurogane as her personal cushion and scratching post, to pushing in-between Fai and Kurogane when the ninja was in the midst of successfully angling them both towards the nearest bedroom, effectively stealing Fai’s attention as the blond swooped down to pick her up and coo over her, declaring that Koko was hungry and had to be attended to at once.

The last straw came one sunny afternoon in a fairly modern world, the group living in a small house whilst they consulted various sources around the nearby city. Kurogane was resting on the couch, reading his latest copy of his favourite mangayan; Syaoran was out investigating with Mokona, fai was in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal and talking to the cat. All was well, all was peaceful, and Kurogane tuned out Fai’s non-stop yammering with a skill born of practice, immersed in the manga before him.

That was until, of course, Koko suddenly pounced on his chest, covered in white flour, and tackled the mangayan from his hands, clawing at the page the ninja had been reading and proceeding to shred the rest of the book before Kurogane’s eyes.

“FAI!!” Kurogane yelled for the idiot even as he smacked Koko away from his manga, grabbing the precious up from the floor. The stupid cat had wrecked the middle section – a few torn pages fluttered loose just as Fai walked distractedly out of the kitchen, just as covered in flour as the cat.

“What is – ohhhh.” Fai understood implicitly what the death of the mangayan meant. Especially one Kurogane hadn’t finished reading. “Kuro-chan,” he said diplomatically, “we can get you a new one.”

“I wanted this one! And your cat shredded it!!”

“I’m sure Koko was just playing -”

“The cat shredded my manga.”

“I can see, Kuro-chan – it’s making a mess on the floor.” Kurogane growled, and Fai sighed. “You already smacked her, right?” A sharp nod. “Then what else do you expect me to do?”

Kurogane floundered. His instinctive response was to say ‘kill the cat’, but there was certain warning gleam in Fai’s eyes that promised a certain kind of hell if he so much as breathed the suggestion. Koko, it appeared, had diplomatic immunity – Kurogane did not.

“Come,” Fai took his hand, and tugged him gently towards the kitchen, shutting the door behind them and sealing Koko in the other room. “Kuro-pon can help me with dinner – I’m making pie, and I need a taste-taster to try it out.”

Kurogane sulked, taking a seat at the nearby table. “I’m not your damn guinea-pig.”

“No,” Fai agreed, smiling, lifting a spoon of some filling or other to the other’s mouth for Kurogane to try out. Trained, Kurogane opened up, and ended up with something hot and meaty in his mouth – beef? “Kuro-wan is my growly puppy.”

The chunks of beef went down the wrong way, and Kurogane choked. Fai immediately looked up in alarm, but Kurogane coughed his mouthful back up, breathing normally.

Fai looked distraught. “It was that bad?”

Kurogane shook his head, still breathing a little heavily, and wondered just when it was he’d been domesticated. “It wasn’t the cooking.”

“Then the filling was good?” Fai perked up again.

“Yeah,” Kurogane granted him, watching the blinding sparkles emanate at once from his pleased partner, Fai clapping and flinging his arms around the taller man’s neck. He was getting flour all down Kurogane’s front, but the rather sweet kiss he gave the ninja more than made up for it.

Peace reigned in the household for the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening, Syaoran and Mokona returning to the house for the meal. Kurogane was relatively content, having calmed down, Koko was happily out of sight, and then Fai wailed in the kitchen – some thing had scoffed half of his pie, and the only culprit –

Kurogane was first out of his seat to offer. “Can I string that cat up by the neck?”

Sulking about the destruction of his cooking, Fai didn’t hold him back.

They came to a world of contrasts – magical and non-magical both, two-thirds of the population living magic-free and clueless about the second life the minority conducted. They landed in the garden of one of the wizard families of the world, a few children leaning out of windows and applauding their ‘apparating skills’, asked if they were there to see their parents. Having no clue about where they were Fai agreed and said they were, and somehow or other (over very civilised cups of tea with milk and about three heaped spoonfuls of sugar for Fai - stirred clockwise three times – and about seven for Mokona) the story of what they were doing came out to two very-concerned-looking-but-ultimately-exceedingly-helpful wizard parents, and the whole group found themselves being escorted to another end of the country (apparently) using the fireplace.

They were in a castle, it seemed, a school, as a rather stern-faced woman (the headmistress) informed them, ramming a worn hat down over Syaoran’s head before Kurogane could whip out his sword. Seeing it was only a hat and it didn’t appear to be eating the boy or anything (although the incredibly spooked expression Syaoran was wearing didn’t raise the ninja’s hopes too high) Kurogane relaxed slightly – and then jolted when the brim opened, and the hat spoke.

“They’re telling the truth.”

Kurogane actually goggled at that, and Fai clapped his hands together (again), looking utterly enthralled. “Hyuu~! What a clever hat!” And then he sneezed, and looked most startled.

“Bless you,” said Syaoran automatically, the talking hat still sitting on his head.

“Thank you, Syaoran-kun~,” Fai sang, and then he sneezed again. Koko, who had been sitting curled around his neck, leapt onto the ground in disgust, not ready to put up with her perch jerking so violently like that.

Mokona piped up. “Someone is talking about Fai!”

“Tch,” Kurogane snorted. “Who’d waste their time talking about this idiot?”

Fai sneezed again, and looked apologetically at the headmistress. “This castle is full of magic, isn’t it?”

The woman nodded. “It’s a school of magic.”

“Ah,” Fai looked temporarily woeful. “I think I’m allergic.”

They were allowed use of the extensive castle library, though after about an hour straight of sneezing Fai was forbidden from the room, stirring up too many delicate pages. Mokona went with the blond for a walk outside to keep Fai company, and when they came in three hours later soaking wet Fai only beamed, Mokona giggling, and both informed their alarmed companions they’d made friends with the giant squid who lived in the castle lake.

Fai was promptly forbidden from going back outside again as well.

They were given rooms in the castle that night. After a long day spent in the library Kurogane was actually glad to be heading to bed, only to discover a certain cat had gotten there first and made herself quite comfortable on his pillow. Picking Koko up and dropping her on the floor – and then chucking the cat-fur-coated pillow after her for good measure – Kurogane went for a long bath, looking forward to stretching out alone –

Only to discover Fai curled up half-asleep on Kurogane’s bed when he came back. The mage woke up promptly and properly when Kurogane loomed over him, Fai reaching out with his usual assurance to the younger man, pulling Kurogane down over him and joining their mouths.

Kurogane was still slightly damp from his bath but Fai didn’t really seem to care, clothes shed and dropped over the side of the bed onto the floor, skin sliding against skin, softer, slower, closer than usual. Taste, touch, sight, sound, nigh all were each other, time dropping away as they actually smiled into each kiss, Fai leaving a row of white fingermarks along his lover’s darker shoulder, hot gasping breath rushing along Kurogane’s neck. Tighter, hotter, brow to brow, skins flushed, somebody’s shivering moan when Fai shifted his leg, deeper, better, god –

Afterwards, sweaty, sated, the sheets barely covering them, Fai pressed into Kurogane, all but purring as the ninja stroked one hand down his spine, shamelessly nuzzling into the arch of the taller man’s neck, too comfortable to even think about moving. Not that Kurogane wanted to move him, either. This…this was good, this was nice, legs tangled, hair tousled, safe and content and dropping sweetly into sleep.

Sometimes, however, it was such a shame Kurogane did so much post-coital thinking.

“You stopped sneezing.”

“Hm?” Fai was far too gone to care about his usual extensive vocabulary, dark lashes fluttering as he looked up at his lover enquiringly and tried to process those things – ah yes, words – coming from Kurogane’s mouth. Why was Kurogane talking again?

“Sneezing,” the ninja repeated, tone taking on a slight impatience as he attempted to get his message into the skull of his drowsy companion. “You stopped doing it.”

“Oh,” Fai blinked once, twice, Kurogane feeling the lashes brush the skin of his throat, almost hearing the wheels turning in the mage’s labyrinthine mind as it was reluctantly called back from the tempting oblivion it had been happily heading towards. And then Fai smiled, awake enough again to once more be a tease. “Kuro-tan, maybe all I needed was a pick-me-up?”

Comfort and cosiness be damned, Kurogane promptly pushed Fai out of the bed. (The mage made such a satisfying thump as he hit the floor.)

They fought back-to-back, side-by-side, with Syaoran between them; Mokona curled safely into a hood or collar – usually Fai’s -, Koko slinking out of sight into a nearby bush until a battle was done. The blond preferred long-distance fighting still above all other forms of combat, his magic a beautiful, deadly thing in battle, strengthening his comrades, protecting them, biting and burning and searing the skin of the fools that dared try to harm the ones he loved, white-hot phoenixes that blinded the eye and turned those that stood against them to little more than charred scraps, ash.

Kurogane dived in, dark, dangerous, slicing and cutting and blazing a path through their enemies, his dragon roaring and curling around them in the air, the blazing protector before and behind.

Syaoran was the lightning-flash, wind, fire, water, connected to nowhere and nothing but with a heart of pure gold, defending his allies and taking down his foes. He learned quickly and well, keeping them safe, learning, improving, set only on his goal.

Individual, each of them was formidable. Together, most people wisely decided that fighting was simply not the best option that day, and lay down their weapons. That, of course, often disappointed Kurogane, and Fai patted him pseudo-comfortingly on the head and got his hand snapped at for good measure. The blond only ever laughed, Mokona squealed in delight, and both ran or bounced away from the pursuing ninja ‘kyaa’ing and waving their arms whilst Syaoran looked on, smiling, Koko coming out of hiding and taking up her place on his lap.

It was good to be together.

They arrived in a country that could’ve been Paradise, on an island lush with tropical green with an endless sky of blue overhead. They landed under trees and Fai promptly stripped down in the humid air, Syaoran following suit a few beats later – though not to the excess that the blond did. Kurogane refused to be parted from any part of his black ensemble and Fai whined about it, complaining that daddy was a prude and shy and silly and if he got sweaty and overheated it was all his own fault, and just see if mommy comforted him later when he died of sunstroke. Kurogane responded in his usual succinct fashion, and called Fai a pervert.

They lounged in the shade as the sun climbed higher overhead, Fai snapping a large leaf from a nearby tree and lazily fanning himself with it. Kurogane, he announced, made Fai hot just be sitting there, brooding away in his big black cloak. Kurogane only growled at him; it was far too hot for him to be bothered enough to get up and kick the blond, even if Fai was being terribly annoying.

And then Fai had the bright idea of contacting Sakura, immediately perking all of them up (even if Kurogane refused to show it). The Clow princess was as delighted as ever to see them, literally shoving her elder brother out of the room the viewing portal had appeared in so she could talk to them in private, beaming and chattering and asking them about their journey, telling them about her day. Kurogane decided it would be a good idea to give her and Syaoran a little private time to talk (and he was growing weary of the meaningful looks the two younger ones were exchanging) and dragged a reluctant Fai away, unable to grab Mokona because the manjuu decided she was going to stay and keep Syaoran and Koko company.

The two adults went to the beach that ran the length of the island, Fai dropping the clothes he’d shed in a small patch of shade – and then pulling off a few more, much to Kurogane’s sudden embarrassment – and running for the ocean that sparkled rather enticingly, reversing their previous roles and being the one to drag Kurogane along instead. Kurogane only had time to kick off his boots and lose his cloak before Fai had pulled him into the – thankfully rather warm – water, laughing and splashing the other like a child half – well…a child a lot, lot younger than him (Fai had never revealed his exact age).

Kurogane attempted to go after him but he tripped over an underwater rock, spluttering as he went under for a second or two. Fai laughed at him and Kurogane sent up a wave of water as soon as he got footing once more, Fai splashing him back and protesting that oh, Kuro-puu, the water was so cold –

They sat on the sand in the sun afterwards drying off, Kurogane finally peeling away his wet clothing and trying to get it dry as well before Syaoran rejoined them. Fai flopped down beside him, eyes closed, sand sticking to his pale skin, salt stiffening the gold of his hair and leaving traces of white on his lips. He didn’t look like a prince like that, or a mage, or a knight. He didn’t look like someone who had stood at what could’ve been the end of all the worlds beside Kurogane, dream-burned, determined, pushing for the tomorrow so that they could all go on. He could’ve been anyone.

He was Fai.

He was Fai, and despite everything Fai was there, a thousand trials suffered and beaten to reach this point where they were, side by side still, with the sun warming their faces.

“Kuro-sama,” Fai didn’t even bother opening his eyes to speak, too comfortable exactly as he was, halfway to anywhere and two-thirds asleep, his arms propped behind his head, “I can hear you thinking.”

“Some of us like to do it from time to time,” Kurogane griped, knowing rather than seeing that Fai was smiling at his comment, letting the truly nonexistent jab within it roll off him as easily as the beads of water from the ocean.

“Some of us develop headaches as a result.” Fai lazily retorted. “Really, Kuro-tan, you’re going to go all wrinkly.”

Kurogane picked up his still-soggy shirt for that comment, and flung it over his lover, Fai letting out a peculiar squeak noise and flinging the damp thing off of him again (it was cold), pouting when he heard Kurogane laugh at him.

“Saa, Kuro-myu is so mean.”

“Yes,” the ninja agreed quite readily. “I am.”

Fai sulked and Kurogane ignored him and Fai teased so that, when Syaoran finally emerged from under the tree-line with Koko draped around his neck and Mokona bouncing a few steps ahead of him, both Fai and Kurogane were back in the ocean again, the former evading the latter as Kurogane attempted to drown him.

“Syaoran-kun!” Fai waved as soon as he caught sight of the boy, voice taking on a piteous note, “Save me - your daddy’s finally cracked!”

“I’ll show you ‘cracked’, you idiotic -!”

“Ah, Kuro-wan is scary – scary~!”

Syaoran took a seat on the sand with Mokona and Koko, and let the two ‘adults’ continue with what they were doing, yelling and squealing coming from the ocean for a good half hour as the two out there chased each other around and around.

It was a regular day.

A/N: I haven’t a lot to say, really. ^^;; Ah, Tsubasa, I’m so sad to see you go. *woe*

- The ‘text’ Fai is translating in the first part of this story is actually a song – Tsunaida te ne kisu wo, from the D.Gray-man anime. It’s a very beautiful song and actually makes me wibble like hell – I’d recommend it to anyone.

- The magic castle in this part of the chapter? Yes, it’s a minor crossover (of course I don’t own that series), and if you don’t know which one I’m referencing you need to look up your pop culture references - seriously. X3

Nihon: We Go Ever Onwards (1)

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:31:14 GMT

*****

“Trolls,” was all Kurogane said as he cut the ropes binding Fai, glowering for the blond to keep still so he wouldn’t catch the edge of the blade. “Only you could get kidnapped by trolls.”

“I thought of it more as an unexpected detour myself,” Fai replied a little distantly, his head aching from where he’d been hit with a club or something earlier, knocking him out. “Like a mystery ramble to places unknown, except conducted whilst unconscious. You should try it sometime, Kuro-tan,” he stretched his arms slowly as the ropes fell away around him, trying to push himself up to his feet but swaying rather dangerously. Kurogane caught him when he stumbled, steadying the mage against his chest. “The surprises just keep on coming.”

“I’ll pass,” his companion said shortly, looking down at the hazy eyes trying to focus on his face. “You’ve got concussion.”

“And here I thought there were always three Kuro-pons who came to rescue me from dire peril in the past.” Kurogane snorted at the sarcasm, crouching down to hook one arm under Fai’s knees, the other supporting the mage’s back as he stood, Fai settled comfortably in his arms. The blond rested his head against the ninja’s shoulder, eyes half-lidded and drooping. His head really hurt. “Where’s Syaoran-kun?”

“Back at the Library – the Head Mage around here has some information relating to magical constructs, apparently. I made the kid stay there to look it up.” This world they’d landed in was thankfully a relatively civilised one, populated with mages and seers. Their group had been escorted to the Royal Palace shortly after their arrival from the world before, greeted by the Queen Yelan, who had apparently foreseen their coming. She had greeted Syaoran like a son, offering hospitality to the whole group and giving them free range of her kingdom. When queried by the still-distrustful Kurogane she’d only smiled slightly, replying that her actions were the least she could do for ones who had done so much.

And then they’d gone for a ride out in the surrounding countryside together, been ambushed, and Fai had been knocked out and carried off by the local trolls.

“Kuro-daddy is so thoughtful, not wanting to bring his child into danger,” Fai mused as Kurogane carried him along, heading out of the rather dank cave he’d been taken to and into the afternoon sunlight once more, “but Fai-mommy would appreciate it if he took along some kind of backup before he dives straight into danger again next time – Mommy’s not really into necrophilia.”

Kurogane grumbled, hearing a jab to his prowess. “I can take on a few trolls by myself any day.”

“But it could be a lot of trolls next time,” Fai said softly, slowly being pulled towards slumber, “or an army. Or a dragon. Or…some other scaly thing with teeth and claws. Or a really powerful, completely insane magician bent on tearing apart time and space itself to break down the laws that govern reality.”

Dryly: “We’ve covered that last one already.”

“Kuro-sama…”

Kurogane glanced down at the one he held in his arms at the quiet entreaty, a little alarmed to see Fai dozing lightly. He shook the blond, jolting mismatched eyes open again, still hazy from the concussion. “Don’t go to sleep,” he ordered rather gruffly, knowing it wasn’t a good idea for the other to do so until he’d been checked over by a medic.

“Keep me awake then,” Fai half-grumbled, unappreciative of the shake.

Kurogane sighed, knowing he was going to regret the next words that left his mouth. “Then talk.”

“…Talk?” The ninja nodded shortly. “…About what?”

“Anything you like – just talk.” Kurogane couldn’t believe he was saying what he was. “You do it enough other times.”

And so Fai talked. About the sky, about the trees, about how surprisingly comfortable Kurogane was and had he gotten practice carrying delicate young men around back in Nihon like this and, if so, did Tomoyo-hime have pictures or other evidence of some kind? Although, it wasn’t as if Fai needed evidence, oh no, – a rumour would be more than enough - but he’d Dearly Appreciate Them All the Same because then there was proof, and corroboration, and a very good start for Fai to find whoever it was Kurogane had carried about so and make sure they implicitly understood It Would Not Be Happening Again, right? He even went off on a tangent about Celesian fox cubs at one point (at least, Kurogane assumed he was talking about fox cubs – the rambling description Fai was giving sounded pretty close to a fox, anyway -, but then he went off into the complicated realms of spells and writings and Sakura’s feathers, deciding aloud that Chii had looked cuter with the ears anyway even if they had originally been a mistake. (Transformation spells were, Fai drowsily defended himself, some of the hardest types of magic out there, and he had only been very young when he’d made Chii, after all, and it wasn’t quite his fault if somewhere between crafting a girl out of a feather he’d gotten a little distracted and thought of a kitten-fox-creature instead.) Ashura-ou had agreed as well.

Kurogane privately thought anything was better than a pool-cover, but let Fai keep rambling on right until they reached the palace again and he’d been delivered into the hands of a medic. Then he told Fai to shut up; Fai laughed; the medic gaped at Kurogane for being so rude to an injured person, and Syaoran came running from the library, books in hand and Mokona on his shoulder, immediately querying whether Fai was alright. Mokona leapt onto the blond’s bed and declared she was going to sing a ‘get better soon’ song for Fai; Kurogane clamped his hands over his ears and yelled for the manjuu bun to stop her caterwauling, and the medic fled the room as Syaoran blushed, Fai clapped, and everything descended into general insanity as Kurogane chased the still-singing (it sounded more like screeching cats) Mokona around the room with a chair.

It was a regular day.

“It makes more sense this way.”

“Mage, you’re holding the book upside down.”

Fai blinked up from the text he was attempting to read at Kurogane. “Am I?” He looked back down at his book again, not withdrawing much meaning from the squiggles on the page before him whichever way he held the book. He attempted to crane his head upside down, bending rather ridiculously in his seat to the point where he would’ve fallen out of it had not Kurogane grabbed his arm, hauling him upright again.

Kurogane took the book before the blond and turned it the right way up again, hitting his companion (lightly) over the back of the head with it before setting it back down before the other.

“Saa,” Fai pouted, rubbing the spot, “Kuro-chan is so violent.”

“Violent,” Mokona solemnly agreed, before turning the page for Syaoran opposite them.

“Just read the goddamn book the right way up,” Kurogane groused, already somewhat put-out at the mountain of text he’d had to trawl through that day in the search for information. He had nothing against books, particularly, but it was the kid who was the scholar amongst them – even Fai was better suited to reading than Kurogane himself was, when the mage could be coaxed to stop being an idiot for any suitable length of time.

“It’s in Kuro-tan’s language, right?”Kurogane grunted a ‘close enough’. “It makes no sense,” Fai whined, well-aware he was drawing attention to them in the library of this world – they always ended up in the libraries at some point – but bored of sitting before a literal wall of incomprehensible textbooks and histories. Were the Celesian and Valerian tongue really that rare across the worlds?

“Then go find something that does make sense,” Kurogane all but groaned, feeling the signs of a Fai-induced headache set firmly in. “Somewhere else. Preferably far away from me.”

Fai rose from his seat with a put-out huff, but his steps were light as only the relieved could be, glad to escape the unintelligible Nihongo.

This was a strange world they’d come to – magic lay in understanding here, bound up in books and the written word, not in the people themselves. Anybody could do magic here provided they could read and understand the appropriate spell and so, as a result, there was a high demand for written spells. Which meant the libraries were packed with literature and documentation, which meant Syaoran, Kurogane, Mokona and Fai had a lot of reading to do, recommended to this world by a witch a few worlds before. There had to be some clue in this lot somewhere that would aid them in their quest, if only it was another lead to another place.

Fai wandered among the many bookshelves for a while, occasionally pulling one of the books down to quickly flick through in the vain hope it would be in a language familiar to his own. None of them yielded a result, and feeling more than a little useless Fai slid down an aside space between two sets of shelves, leaning against one and feeling book-spines press against his back, drifting off into daydreams.

“There you are.” Fai had no idea for how long he’d allowed his thoughts to meander, but when he came back to himself it was to the sound of Kurogane’s voice, the ninja frowning down at him with all his one-head-higher height. “I thought you went to go look for something you could read?”

“There wasn’t anything.” Fai affected a loose shrug, letting some of his current feelings of uselessness show.

Kurogane looked dour. “So you skulked around here instead?”

“I was waiting for inspiration to strike.” Fai’s smile was a blithe one.

“I wish something would strike you,” his companion grumbled. “It might knock some sense into that idiot skull of yours.”

Fai seized his arm, smiling up at the other brightly. “But Kuro-sama loves me just the way I am, right? Right~? He whispered it in Fai-mommy’s ear as he snuggled up to him last night -”

“I did not ‘snuggle’!!”

“Clearly Kuro-pon is going through de~ni~al again – don’t worry, Kuro-woof!!” The blond sing-songed. “Fai-kitty shall be at your side for ever and ever and -”

Kurogane kissed him, yanking his idiot up by the collar and crushing their mouths together, silencing Fai’s words before they could escape into the air. It was a pretty effective method to get the mage to temporarily shut up, pushing Fai back into the nearest shelf with his larger frame.

They drew back for precious air sometime, brows touching, panting breaths gusting over lips already begin to bruise. When Fai pressed up and connected them again Kurogane was still light-headed, one hand gripping a shelf to ground him, the other tight around Fai’s slender waist.

It was a gentler kiss the second time around, slower, a lazy exploration of each other’s mouths. Fai hummed against him and Kurogane nipped the blond’s lower lip, feeling the sharpness of the other’s canines in response, a prick just enough to sweetly sting. They pulled apart again eventually, eyes fluttering open from when they’d closed, steady, softened gazes taking in the faint washes of pink over both of their cheeks.

“You’d think we’d never kissed before,” Fai teased lightly, raising a hand to run a soft thumb over Kurogane’s still-parted lips, the moisture from their earlier kisses.

“Have we?” Kurogane asked him lowly, treasuring the lull around them in the hush of the library, the steady rise and fall of both their chests. Have we ever kissed like this?

“…We’ve kissed before,” Fai told him after a few seconds of consideration, recalling times in Outo, Yama, Piffle, Lecourt, Nihon, Clow, memories coloured by heat and hopelessness and bittersweet alcohol, everything an excuse to end with them in the nearest bed, against the wall, locked against the counter. Blue-gold eyes were serious, keeping and holding crimson red. “But this time we mean it.”

One of the worlds they came to had heavy rain for most parts of the year, a deluge that kept up through the day and the night. The rivers were thick and fast and strong, swollen and overrunning so the ground everywhere was one great puddle, Fai settling in quite nicely with boots up to his mid-thigh. (Kurogane outright refused anything that came above knee-height, even when Fai prodded him about it for four days straight.)

The people of that world lived in houses on stilts, raised from the water and the mud that went with it. The rain was warm and sweet, and Fai pranced through it blissfully uncaring, t-shirt see-through and plastered to his skin, pulling a confused Syaoran out into the downpour with him to look at the swirls in the afternoon’s clouds. They were drenched through within seconds, their hair rat’s tails and hanging in their eyes, but Fai drew a laugh from the serious boy with his silliness and they found a bank of adaptive flowers growing up through the water around their ankles, petals white tinged with a dusting of pink. Syaoran smiled at them too, something soft and warm, and Fai knew he was thinking of Sakura, his princess back in Clow.

“Hyuu~,” Fai had never grown out of his not-whistle, leaning over Syaoran’s shoulder as the youth cradled one of the flowers in his hands and looked at it, “that’s a pretty one, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” the brunet whispered, beginning to sink into his thoughts.

“I bet Sakura-chan would like to see it, ne~?” Fai clapped his hands when Syaoran started and blushed, knowing he’d been seen through, nodding. Fai beamed. “Let’s send it to her!”

“Fai-san -”

It was too late; Fai had already drawn his looping sigils into the air, the power whirling into a circle that opened a portal in the air, a window to a moonlit-drenched bedroom in the desert country of Clow.

Fai paused, musing aloud to himself. “…I should probably have consulted Mokona about the time difference, shouldn’t I?”

Syaoran could only nod helplessly, but what was done was done, and a familiar figure was stirring in the bed in the room in Clow, sleepy green eyes blinking once, twice before there was a sudden flurry of blankets and Sakura was diving for the portal on her side, still in her nightdress.

“Syaoran! Fai-san!”

“Sakura-chan~,” Fai waved happily at the girl, pleased to see her in good health, “I apologise for contacting you so late.”

“Don’t apologise!” The princess declared fervently, a bright smile in her eyes, on her face. She looked radiant. “It’s so good to hear from you! But – um -” she faltered, taking in the soaked state of the two before her, the rain lashing down in the foreign world, “won’t you get ill standing in a rainstorm like that?”

“It’s fine; it’s fine~,” Fai waved away her worries. “I’ll make sure Syaoran-kun and I are wrapped up warmly when we go back inside so Sakura-chan needn’t worry. We’ll be extra-snug!”

“I’m glad.” The girl clasped her hands. “Please take care!”

“I wouldn’t dream of allowing it to be any other way,” Fai promised her, perfectly sincere. These were the days of caring, of today and today and tomorrow. The hurt and the pain wasn’t gone – there was simply far too much, and it had been around for far too long -, but the wounds were healing slowly and they were healing well, bound up with magic that touched the heart and spread from their smiles and closeness and laughter. “Ah!” He remembered suddenly why he’d originally contacted Sakura, smiling brightly at the princess. “Syaoran-kun has a present for you!” Fai looked to the boy. “…Syaoran-kun?”

Syaoran had turned aside from their conversation, his face bright red and buried in his hands, averting his eyes from the princess on the other side of the portal.

Sakura looked perplexed. “Syaoran?” The boy didn’t look up. “Syaoran, why won’t you look at me?”

“Sakura…it…you…” the brunet was still as helpless as before, crimson spreading to his ears as the girl looked at him in concern. He waved one vague hand in the princess’ direction, though he could’ve been pointing out anything from the magic surrounding the viewing window to the moon over Clow.

Fai took in the youth’s terrible blush, and then glanced back at Sakura. It clicked, and he grinned. “Sakura-chan, I think Syaoran-kun is a little embarrassed to see you only in a nightdress.”

Syaoran flamed even redder, Sakura suddenly going a matching hue as she dived off to the side suddenly with an ‘eep’, only reappearing when she was clad in a gown clearly designed to ward off the desert chill, still horribly pink in the face.

“If it helps, it’s a very pretty nightdress?” Fai offered, only making both of the children flush even more. They were both incredibly sweet – Sakura’s clothes had been perfectly decent, but Syaoran was really the perfect gentleman.

“T-thank you, Fai-san.”

“I found a flower,” Syaoran suddenly blurted out, extending his hand with the water-flower he’d picked in it towards the portal. “It reminded me of you,” because it was both strong and incredibly pretty, “and I thought you might like it.”

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” Sakura seemed enraptured by the bloom – or just the fact Syaoran had thought to send it to her -, smiling in delight when Fai drew his magic over the flower and it vanished from the world they were in to appear gently in the Clow princess’ hands. “I’ll treasure it always.”

Syaoran smiled at her.

“It could’ve been a common weed or an expensive necklace,” Kurogane said when Fai recounted the situation to him later, the ninja finally drawn out from the (dry) building he’d been to fetch the blond in from the rain, “and she would’ve loved it just the same.”

“Because it was a present from Syaoran-kun,” Fai nodded happily, the motion letting water fly off from his skin. It was still raining. “And Sakura-chan loves him most in all the worlds.” He smiled up at the sky, expression serene. “It’s good to be remembered by those we love and care for.”

Kurogane didn’t reply, plucking at his soaked shirt and trying to peel it away from his skin.

Fai eyed him, and for a few minutes there was silence, save for the millions of tiny splashes of the raindrops hitting the water about their feet. “Kuro-chan,” he said suddenly, “let’s have cake.”

“I don’t want cake,” Kurogane replied, just not understanding how someone could stuff themselves with sugar at all hours of the day and night.

“I’ll make you coffee,” Fai bribed. “Tea, if you want it.”

“…Fine.” Kurogane actually felt like something hot to drink.

Fai lit up. “It’s a date; it’s a date~!” He cheered, latching onto Kurogane’s rain-slicked arm, his mouth curved upwards into a brilliant – genuine – grin. He was laughing still, his teeth white, his blond hair dark with water and sticking hopelessly to his cheeks, happiness glittering in his eyes.

“It’s a date,” Kurogane agreed a few seconds later, smirking when Fai suddenly registered what he’d said, mouth dropping open and hanging agape in perfect surprise.

Another world, this one full of mountains and woods, crisp air, the group entering a small village to take up lodgings there, welcomed into the abode of a pretty woman called Hisui. (Although Kurogane thought ‘she’ was a ‘he’, and Fai confusingly declared she was neither so wouldn’t it just be politer to go with what their pleasant host wanted?) They heard tales of a wise woman who lived in the nearby woods so they stuck around, Syaoran taking up work with the local shepherd, Mokona riding in his collar, whilst Fai and Kurogane made themselves useful with odd jobs around the village.

Although the community was small it was by no means poor – Hisui’s home was a large one considering she lived alone, offering a room to each of her guests. They gratefully thanked her for her kindness and took her up on the offer, but Fai only lasted until the second day until he unceremoniously moved himself into Kurogane’s bed and hogged the softest pillows, refusing to be shifted even when his reluctant bedmate tried bodily lifting him up and depositing him outside the door. Fai clung onto Kurogane like a monkey, long limbs locked firmly around Kurogane’s frame, pouting and whining and clambering all over the ninja until the taller man eventually gave in and just let Fai sleep beside him, too tired to protest anymore.

On the third night they slept together in the less literal sense, a hot kiss placed by Fai to Kurogane’s throat ending with them both tangled in the sheets and around each other, bodies moving in a pattern they hadn’t taken up for a few worlds. It was hard and fast, a coil of need and want and please gasped from bruised lips, harsh satisfaction wrung from snapping hips, arched backs and wordless cries. Afterwards, sated, they slept, tousled and together, puzzle pieces locked together – but they’d done that before. If questioned (no-one would question), it was simply too much of an effort to pull apart.

On the seventh night they slept together – and they only slept. Kurogane was somewhat tired from his manual labour that day and Fai was…Fai was Fai, and impossible to tell. Kurogane woke the following day with golden hair in his face and a familiar head tucked under his chin, Fai curled into his body like it was supposed to be there. The ninja stirring woke the mage and sleepy mismatched eyes flickered up at red, Fai covering his yawn with one hand and looking entirely unsurprised by his body’s natural fit with the other man’s. After a few seconds musing Kurogane decided that he wasn’t all that surprised either, though he did blink once or twice when Fai clambered out of the bed (taking his warmth with him) and kissed Kurogane for no other reason than that he could kiss Kurogane without anything else being required, smiling against the ninja’s brow before leaving to help Hisui with the breakfast.

The next morning Kurogane beat Fai to the chase and kissed the blond before Fai had even opened his eyes, Fai smiling and winding arms around his neck before letting his lashes flutter open, brushing across his lover’s cheek. They both stayed in bed a little longer that morning, and Mokona giggled knowingly at them as she sat on the kitchen table, happily devouring an apple. Syaoran had already gone to work for the day so they didn’t catch his reaction, but Hisui was perfectly serene, not commenting on their later appearance, and she poured them both cups of tea.

“Syaoran!!” Sakura flung herself at the boy as soon as she got within sight of him, her cloak catching the wind and flying off of her shoulders as she literally bowled the brunet over, happily cuddling up to him in front of the smiling, crowded marketplace.

“S-sakura -”

“Sakura, Sakura~!” Mokona leapt from her perch on Fai’s shoulder to bounce into the princess’ waiting arms, shamelessly snuggling up to the girl as Kurogane snorted in the background. “Mokona brought us back to see you!”

“Mokona is very clever!” Fai lauded, smiling when the little creature preened and offering a hand to help the princess back up to her feet (and off of the heavily blushing Syaoran). “How are you, Sakura-chan?”

“Good!” Sakura replied brightly, and flung her arms around the startled man’s midriff, not quite yet at shoulder-height. “It’s so good to see you, Fai-san!”

Fai smiled again, crouching down so he could hug the girl properly. “And you, Sakura-chan.” He meant it. “It’s always wonderful to come back to you.”

“I’m glad you’re all here,” Sakura said, stepping back after a little while from the hug, green eyes bright as she looked at them all – Syaoran, Mokona, Fai, Kurogane. “I’m glad you’re all safe, and I’m glad you’re all here.”

Syaoran took her hands, his own gaze clear and earnest. “We’re glad to be here.”

Sakura hugged him again, a flying tackle, and Syaoran made a surprised noise and went careening into a nearby stall.

“I cease to pray will ne – I will never cease to pray?”

Kurogane nodded in what he hoped was an encouraging fashion as Fai stumbled on with his reading, the mage attempting to make sense of a text Kurogane had handed him earlier that morning and told him rather gruffly ‘practice’. Alongside the book was a translation dictionary – they’d finally landed in a world that used a language similar enough to Celesian for Fai to recognise the written word, and Kurogane was taking the advantage of ramming home Nihongo/Japanese (depending on whether you asked him or the kid) into Fai’s fluffy head. The less excuses the mage had to get out of work, the better.

Fai, of course, griped about the lessons, but there was an amused gleam in his eyes that belied his complaints, a genuine interest that kept Kurogane going even as every gust of wind slammed the door of the room shut and sent all the scattered papers Fai had amassed on the desk in front of him to translate the book he had flying everywhere. Kurogane would’ve blamed Mokona for being disruptive but the manjuu was out shopping for groceries with the kid – he would’ve blamed Fai for using his magic to play with the wind as well, but the blond seemed as honestly exasperated as Kurogane as he snatched his strewn work up from the floor and air.

Fai took a stab at the next line, tapping his pen against his bottom lip thoughtfully as he read out the translation he’d done. “Always on this child will…it rain?”

“No matter what,” Kurogane loosely read from the original text himself, “shower this child with love.”

Fai smiled, finishing off the page. “To his hands you hold please give a gentle kiss.” Kurogane nodded, and his companion leaned forward in his seat, intrigued. “…Where did Kuro-chan get this book from?”

The ninja shrugged. “Some shop I passed when you made me fetch the flour for food tonight. It was beside the dictionary, so I grabbed it.”

“…You bought both of these for me?”

“Yeah, well,” Kurogane glanced aside, the tips of his ears going a particularly suspicious shade of pink. “You need to know how to read Nihongo.”

“Oh~?” Fai slid closer to him, putting down the sheet of paper he’d been holding to touch the other man on the arm, voice practically a purr. “And why’s that, Kuro-sama?”

“It’s…” Kurogane hesitated, something he wasn’t prone to doing, something he’d rarely – if ever – done before meeting Fai. He hesitated, but then he pushed on, ever on, opening up the path to further insanity he didn’t think his life could be the same without, anymore. “It’s the common language, in Nihon.”

Fai’s smile was brilliant, hearing the unspoken question, the implied plan for their future ahead. He bowed his head over his work again, assuming the air of diligence, but let his hand trail down Kurogane’s arm, slide into another warm palm. “I’d best get learning then.”

On the next world Syaoran found a stray, injured cat on a side-road and took it in, unable to watch the creature in pain. Mokona watched worriedly by as Fai helped Syaoran tend to the feline, sorting out the injuries as best they could and leaving the cat in a warm place with some water in a dish nearby and some (of Kurogane’s) fish. They watched over the cat for about a fortnight until Kurogane asked why they were still keeping the thing around, Mokona and Fai immediately turning on the ninja and scolding him soundly for being ‘insensitive’. Syaoran only looked up at the man with his usual solemn eyes, the cat sound asleep and purring on his lap.

“Kurogane-san,” Kurogane knew it was rarely a good thing when everyone fell silent to listen to Syaoran address him like that, “can we keep her?”

Kurogane floundered for a few moments in the face of the boy’s obvious sincerity and faith, Fai and Mokona glaring at him disapprovingly from the side that he could even think of saying no to Syaoran’s dreadfully hopeful face.

“…Fine,” the ninja grumbled eventually, and looked aside. “Just keep the thing away from me.” He wasn’t a cat person.

Fai immediately decided the cat should, in line with his own Nihongo lessons, be called ‘Nyanko’ (“You can’t call the cat, ‘cat’, you idiot!!”), but – since Kurogane was so terribly grouchy and liked to spoil poor, poor Fai-kitty’s fun all the time - they’d call her ‘Koko’ for short.

Mokona approved, Kurogane yelled, Fai ran away from him and Syaoran sat with Koko on his lap, rubbing her behind the ears and making her purr.

#

Second part here.

Nihon: Solstice

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:51:49 GMT

Title: Solstice
Characters/Pairings: KuroFai, mentions of other characters
Rating: T
Summary: It’s the Amaterasu celebration, the Winter Solstice, in Nihon, Fai’s first ever experience of the festival. It’s new, some things will always be so, but thankfully Kurogane is always ever the same.
A/N: Another instalment in the Nihon series. Set on the winter solstice of their first year in Nihon.

*****

One of the many children who ran around the palace was clinging to Fai again, hanging off the end of the mage’s formal (women’s) kimono with adoring eyes, shamelessly begging for the treats everyone knew the blond was hiding – the war cry had gone up amongst the palace’s younger generation when Fai had been spotted entering the kitchens the previous day. Shirasagi’s children weren’t stupid; Fai only went to the kitchens for one thing, and one thing alone – sweets. Confectioneries and desserts, majestic creations of sugar and wonder that he seemed to spin up out of nothing, things that no-one else in the palace had made before he’d came, or could make quite like him. Kurogane labelled the whole lot as ‘sugary crap’; the children of the palace classified it as ‘ambrosia’, and all but worshipped the ground Fai walked on.

Kurogane, ever-unsympathetic to the plight of Fai’s would-be worshippers, plucked up the little girl who was attached to his lover, walking a few steps away and depositing said child further along the corridor with an inaudible, but oh-so-very-tangible ‘shoo’. (It was the look. The girl took one glance at his set face and then fled, scampering away to plot how to get more of Fai’s creations at a later – and less Kurogane-inhabited – date.)

“Kuro-pyuu~,” Fai only laughed as the ninja stomped huffily back to his side, reaching up to tap the taller man on the nose with one cool fingertip, “if the wind changes your face’ll be stuck like that forever, you know.” Kurogane snorted in reply and Fai laughed again, winding long arms around the other male’s neck. “It will – you’ll see~! And when they write ballads in your name it’ll be of the Big Bad Scowly Kuro-pon – defender of the palace, confidant of the princess, saviour of sorcerers and thwarter of childish plots country-wide to get a-hold of some sweets.”

Kurogane scowled some more at that, and looked down at the blond happily hanging off of his person. “I’ve still got a sword, you realise.”

“Yes,” Fai had the grace to nod sagely and for once Kurogane took that as the idiot finally learning that one day – one day – Kurogane would follow through with his threats of bodily harm to the mage’s person, “and daddy’s quite good with it too. But let’s keep it away for now, hm, Kuro-pon?” Wait – “There are probably still children about and Kuro-tan really doesn’t need another lecture from Tomoyo-chan about scarring the next generation of little would-be ninjas now, does he?”

Kurogane ground his teeth together. “Mage -”

Fai was too far into his spiel to be stopped – nothing short of decapitation could end the flow (and even then Kurogane had once had a nightmare about Fai continuing to talk even with his head tucked under his arm and he really didn’t want to go back there and think about that again, oh no, because – even for Fai – that was weird and strange and just downright creepy). “They could end up traumatised, Kuro-tan – traumatised. And then we’d have to send out flowers and apologies and maybe little gift-baskets -”

“Mage.”

“And you’d have to personally deliver them, you realise? And Kuro-myu would grumble so -”

Kurogane leaned down and kissed him firmly, covering Fai’s next half-formed word with his own mouth and letting the other’s rambling nonsense trail off into a pleased moan, Fai’s arms pulling just that little bit more firmly around his neck, one hand threading itself into dark hair to keep Kurogane in place. The mischievous smile he could feel curving against his lips informed Kurogane that, once again, Fai had gotten exactly what he’d wanted, but the ninja’s ire was effectively distracted by the lingering taste of mint in his lover’s mouth, sweet and cool and hanging everywhere about Fai, as testified when he finally broke the kiss, resting his head (it was not nuzzling. Ninjas did not nuzzle) in the crook of the mage’s neck. Fai smelled faintly of mint, the scent curling in his hair and breathing against his skin.

Fai himself seemed mildly amused by the action (it was not nuzzling), turning his head slightly so he spoke against the curve of his lover’s ear. “Kuro-chan, you’re crushing my kimono.” Kurogane made a low noise – protest, denial or complaint, it was impossible to tell -, and refused to budge. “Tomoyo-chan put a lot of time and effort into making it and -”

“Why do you smell of mint?” Kurogane raised his head slightly, meeting Fai’s mismatched eyes with his own scarlet.

Fai beamed at him – a worrying occurrence -, shifting around a bit so he could rummage in his obi even with his lover still wrapped around him. Kurogane watched him, mildly perplexed, as he finally brought out a tiny little drawstring bag, opening the thing and displaying the contents inside.

Kurogane straightened, blinking into the bag, taking in the small mound of little white balls therein. “…You made marbles?”

Fai sighed with the air of one who has been long-suffering, plucking out one of the balls and holding it up to the ninja’s mouth. “Open up.”

“Hell no -” Fai popped the ball into Kurogane’s mouth regardless, the ninja coughing as it hit the back of his throat and hastily shutting up, not wanting to choke.

“It’s good?” The blond only laughed when Kurogane growled at him; taking the dark look the ninja was shooting him as a ‘yes’. If it had been bad Kurogane would’ve already have spat it out. “I made some for the children at the feast tonight – Kuro-tan!” Fai was suddenly aghast; breaking off from what he’d been saying when the sound of crunching filled the air, Kurogane obliterating the treat he’d been given with his teeth.

Cool sweetness washed through the ninja’s mouth, the sweet sharper when broken, and he swallowed the shards, looking up at Fai’s accusing gaze. “What?”

Fai pouted, and lightly smacked him on the arm. “Kuro-wan wasted it!!”

Kurogane grumbled, not getting what the blond was fussing about. “I ate it, didn’t I?”

“But you’re supposed to savour it,” Fai protested, gesticulating wildly, “roll it around your mouth to get the full benefits of the flavour and – mmph!”

Another kiss – harder than the one before –, Fai yanked forwards and up onto the point of his feet to meet Kurogane partway, the ninja showing the mage exactly how ‘to get the full benefits of the flavour’, taking it from Fai’s more than willing mouth.

“Kuro-chan,” Fai finally breathed out later, still breathless, leaning against Kurogane rather heavily with his fingers curled in the front of the other’s kimono, “has learned some very bad habits just recently. Bad doggy.”

“Hmph,” Kurogane snorted against his temple, a warm puff of air, and tilted the blond’s head back up to seal their mouths together again.

Fai – notably – didn’t complain.

Kurogane went to Fai’s rooms as the evening swept in, giving a cursory rap to the door with his knuckles and stepping inside. The mage had changed again, still formal, still in female garb (Shirasagi’s residents were used to him), but now in a kimono a few hues off of pearl, tinged with lavender and sewn with the pattern of curling clouds.

He was kneeling on the floor before the small shrine Kurogane had helped install, but he glanced up and smiled when he saw the ninja enter, extending one hand to the man in a gesture to come closer.

“I was talking to Fai,” the blond explained, leaning against Kurogane when the other kneeled down at his side. “Solstices are special times; magic is strongest on those days, and sometimes, just sometimes, you can almost feel the people who are gone beside you, see them out of the corner of your eye.”

Kurogane made a soft ‘hm’, shifting a little so Fai was more comfortable against him, focusing on the small, scented candle the blond had lit in the shrine, the flame glowing steadily in the growing dark. “Did your brother have anything interesting to say?”

“He’s happy,” Fai returned, eyes sliding shut and enjoying the peace. “He feels happy from where he’s watching me, just out of sight.”

“He’s happy you’re happy,” Kurogane said firmly, as if daring his lover to disagree with him.

Fai smiled, titling his head up towards the other. “I’m happy,” he confirmed simply, hearing the unspoken question.

“Good,” said Kurogane a little gruffly, perhaps a little smugly, because Fai chuckled softly at his tone and the ninja’s lips twitched with the beginnings of an answering smile. “Good.”

And that was that.

The empress looked undeniably beautiful that night, wrapped as she was in layers and robes of crimson and yellow and gold. On the Winter Solstice the people of Nihon celebrated the sun goddess Amaterasu coming out of her cave and filling the world with light once more, Kendappa-ou the representation of the goddess on earth, lauded and loved. There were cheers sent up when she stepped into the Hall where the night’s festivities were to be held, the music already playing, the woman smiling and talking with the people beside her as the Court trickled in, taking their respective seats.

Kurogane found himself, as was pretty usual, seated between Tomoyo and Fai (his lover on his left, the princess on his right), leaning back in his chair so the two on either side could talk around him, Fai rambling something about how pretty the Hall looked that night, how lovely Tomoyo looked in her robes. Kurogane himself was scanning the Hall around them, looking for any potential threats – technically, he was never off-duty, but even if he had been he still would’ve searched, protecting his most important people.

Fai made a pleased sound when the Armorican ambassador Hououji was ushered into the seat next to him, greeting the elder man enthusiastically, glad to have someone else who was new to the Nihon Solstice celebrations beside him. They were soon chattering away in a queer mixture of Armorican and Nihongo, Fai attempting to pick up the ambassador’s native language – apparently it shared threads of speech that were quite similar to the Celesian and Valerian tongues (though Kurogane himself hadn’t seen the link, despite all the poking in the world from an exasperated Fai).

The blond’s distraction left Kurogane to talk to the Tsukoyomi, Tomoyo speaking over the noise of the crowded Hall and wondering aloud at all the children hiding behind nearby pillars with their sights set on Fai. Kurogane turned around to glare at all the little would-be ninjas of the Court and sent them scattering, sweet plans foiled yet again. (Kurogane was waiting for the day one of the little brats summoned up the courage to attack him with a toy sword or something.)

“It’s good to know you get along so well with Fai-san’s friends,” Tomoyo said serenely, smiling as though she hadn’t just seen Kurogane terrify a small crowd of plotting prepubescents.

“Kuro-sama has such a way with children,” Fai chimed in brightly from the ninja’s other side, Hououji choking on his drink at the comment and spluttering into his handkerchief.

Tomoyo nodded. “He’d make a wonderful father.”

“What do you think, Hououji-san?” Fai brought his companion on his other side into the discussion, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that the look on the ambassador’s face plainly stated that he was wondering whether the small group were still talking about the same Kurogane he thought they were.

“I – well -” Hououji scrabbled for his skills at diplomacy, “there are many different approaches to parenting, I suppose.”

“You yourself have two daughters back at home, don’t you?” Tomoyo was politely curious.

“That’s right,” Hououji was relieved – this was safer ground, “Kuu and Fuu. Fuu, my youngest, is just shy of her fifteenth birthday; I sent her a hankyuu bow as a gift, as she’s terribly fond of archery.”

That gained both Fai’s and Kurogane’s attention, the two querying about the crafter and the length, Tomoyo smiling again and turning to talk with the person on her other side. They occupied themselves like that until the servants started bringing out the food, trays piled high with delicate dishes sweetened and spiced, the sake good and burning in the fine tiny cups. The musicians played in the background, the Hall murmuring happily as they sampled their food, plucking it to their mouths with chopsticks, refined.

Fai coaxed Kurogane to feed him a bite of some of the food on the ninja’s plate, unused to some of the dishes that were being brought out and curious as to what they tasted like. He liked most of what he tried, hmming over the mixture of flavours thoughtfully as he rolled morsels around on his tongue, ignoring Kurogane’s half-hearted grumblings about the idiot mage being able to feed himself, dammit. A few things he didn’t like, gagging at the dishes that were too salty and refusing anything and everything that included raw fish in its composition. As for the desserts –

Half of what was brought out seemed to be of Fai’s concoction, recipes handed to the kitchen staff to play with as they would. Everything else was more traditional, sweet cakes and tempura sweetened with azuki bean paste, Fai laughing when Kurogane pointed out the fact the beans left marks on his skin and kissing the ninja swiftly with his red-stained mouth. Tomoyo clapped and the musicians played on, jugglers and tumblers coming out as the servants cleared the empty plates away, keeping the alcohol flowing. Children pushed their way under the tables and crawled between longer legs to get as close to the displays as they could, hands and cheeks stuffed full with leftover sweets as they chattered brightly, only leaving their coveted vantage spots in cases of dire emergency (they needed the toilet or, even worse, they ran out of treats).

After the jugglers and acrobats left the dancers came out, the bamboo flutes and taiko drums sounding as a woman began to sing, two men dressed as one gorgeous golden lion twisting about the floor, the shishimai. One of the younger children, a little girl, grew scared by the swooping motions of the costume, scuttling away from the front lines and running to hide behind Kurogane’s chair, much to the ninja’s apparent disgruntlement and the amusement of everyone else. (It didn’t escape either Tomoyo or Fai, however, that Kurogane slipped the girl some of the cakes he hadn’t eaten a little while later when he thought no-one was looking.) She shyly peeked her head around the chair again halfway through the dance, intrigued by the fact that, although the lion was ‘biting’ people, everyone being bitten seemed to be perfectly fine. (Some were delighted, raising their cups high and toasting the lion’s good health.) Tomoyo smiled at her encouragingly and beckoned her closer, and the child spent most of the rest of the night happily ensconced on the princess’ lap.

After the dancers came the manzai, two men Fai vaguely recognised from about the palace performing a comedy routine. One was called a boke, Kurogane reliably informed him, the air-headed ‘idiot’ of the two, who always misheard and got everything wrong. The other, smacking the mistreated boke with a pleated fan, was the tsukkomi, forever impatient and butting in to correct his companion. (Fai privately thought he had a good manzai going on in his regular life, only Kurogane was just a little slow with his weapon of choice to catch Fai for what the ninja called ‘stupid remarks’.)

“I bring a message from the gods!!” The tsukkomi was in full officious swing, pompous and puffed-up and playing the part to perfection.

“The guards?” The boke queried rather blithely, tilting in such a way that spoke of the heavily drunk. If it weren’t for the quickness of his speech and wit Fai would’ve sworn the man was drunk. “Who cares about them? They’re probably all drunk right now, anyway.”

“Not the guards – the gods, you idiot!!”

“…Well they’re probably drunk too!”

The crowds laughed and clapped and jeered accordingly, the performers revelling in their roles and playing up to the audience. Even when their routine was done both of them stayed, proposing a game of riddles to the Hall and looking pleased when a cheer went up. The boke started them off, strutting about the floor as he boomed out his puzzle.

“I am a merry creature,
In pleasant time of year,
As in but certain seasons,
I sing that you can hear:
And yet I'm made a by-word,
A very perfect mock;
Compared to foolish persons,
And silliest of all folk. What am I?”

There was a lull in conversation and a round of whispers about the Hall, a few stray voices calling out suggestions and getting them wrong, the tsukkomi wandering over to smack them with a fan to general laughter.

Eventually, it was the empress who cried out, her smile wry as she’d figured it out. “A cuckoo bird!”

“Correct~!” The boke clapped and the Hall joined in, others groaning after being caught so far off the mark. “And now, if Your Imperial Majesty would grace us with a new riddle?”

Kendappa-ou tapped a finger against her chin for a moment in thought, before rising gracefully in her seat and speaking out. “There's not a kingdom on the earth
But I have travelled over and over,
And though I know not whence my birth,
Yet when I come, you know my roar.
I through the town do take my flight,
And through the fields and meadows green,
And whether it be day or night,
I neither am nor can be seen. What am I?”

“Love!” Called out one person, to be met with the empress shaking her head as she took her seat again and a smack of the tsukkomi’s fan.

“A dragon,” someone else suggested, which earned him a smack of the fan and cries that dragons weren’t invisible.

“The wind!” Another woman called from the other end of the Hall, another cheer sounding when the empress nodded with a smile. The answerer rose to her own feet, a riddle already clearly in her mind. “In Spring I look gay,
Decked in comely array,
In Summer more clothing I wear;
When colder it grows,
I fling off my clothes,
And in winter quite naked appear. What am I?”

“A tree,” Fai announced suddenly, after a few minutes of consideration, drawing all eyes to himself. A few more groans went up when the riddler nodded, other guessers thwarted that someone else had got it so quickly, but more general applause.

“Tell us a riddle then,” Tomoyo urged the blond, others picking up the cry.

“…Very well,” Fai agreed pleasantly and stood, “but I’m afraid it doesn’t rhyme.” There were smatterings of laughter, dying down as the crowd listened to the mage’s voice. “There are four brothers in this world that were all born together. The first runs and never wearies. The second eats and is never full. The third drinks and is always thirsty. The fourth sings a song that is never good. Who are they?”

There was general puzzlement, Fai hovering with a smile on his lips as people guessed and guessed and got it wrong, earning themselves smacks. Tomoyo laughed softly to herself and the girl she held giggled behind one small hand, until finally someone got it, sounding rather smug.

“The four brothers are the elements!” It was a young man, one of Kurogane’s recruits if Fai remembered correctly. “Water, fire, earth and air.”

Fai smiled and nodded and there was more applause, the blond taking his seat again and having some more of his drink as a new riddle was put forward. He looked content in the atmosphere, leaning back in his chair with a peaceful expression on his face. His cheeks were a little pink from his drink but he still seemed in his right mind (or as right as Fai’s mind could possibly be), prior experience having taught Kurogane that the blonde could, contrarily in regards to his slender frame and giggly attitude, when he felt like it, hold his drink remarkably well, and between the two of them they’d managed to severely deplete Shirasagi’s alcohol stores on more than one occasion.

It was quite late into the night when the blond took Kurogane’s hand, threading his fingers with cooler metal ones and tugging Kurogane up with him, pulling him out of the hall past the chattering crowds, sleepy-eyed children protesting to their parents that they were perfectly all right to stay up just a few more hours until sunrise and no, they didn’t need a short nap before then.

Outside, where the sound from the Hall was a soothing background murmur and the winter chill was on their cheeks, Kurogane looked to Fai for explanation and the blond smiled, stepping closer to the ninja’s body for heat. “I felt like some fresh air.”

Kurogane looked down at him, one eyebrow raised. “And you brought me with you?”

“Mmhm,” Fai’s breath left his mouth as mist, smoke that curled around Kurogane’s head, the blond pressing into him, cool against warmth in what was actually quite a pleasant contrast. The moon overhead was a waning crescent, white light spilling down and gilding everything in silver. “Kuro-wan needs his regular walks else he’ll get lazy and fat.”

“‘Fat’?!” Kurogane spluttered, more than a little indignant, but Fai only laughed and slid his cold fingers under the folds of the ninja’s kimono to warm them, spreading his palms against the other’s chest and listening to him breathe in sharply through his teeth. “You’re freezing,” Kurogane half-protested, even as his arms wrapped themselves around Fai’s slender waist, drawing the mage closer as Fai’s hands slipped lower, lower – and were plucked out by one tan hand. “We’re in public.”

Fai smiled again, a few shades short of a smirk, his eyes heated and showing he was quite willing to try his luck. “Kuro-sama,” he moved in again, pressing himself up against his lover’s frame and stretching to put his mouth near the ninja’s ear, “there’s no-one around.” It was true – everyone was at the celebrations inside.

“No,” Kurogane said shortly, even as his willpower began to quickly unravel, Fai nuzzling into his throat, leaving wet kisses against his neck that the night breeze quickly chilled. He attempted a distraction. “Aren’t you -” a hiss, Fai having nipped at soft skin. Though he wasn’t technically a vampire anymore the blond’s teeth were still sharp. “Aren’t you enjoying the party?”

“Very much so,” Fai replied, nudging his companion backwards to the porch that ran alongside a nearby door, pushing Kurogane down into sitting on it and curling up against the other’s side. “We celebrated the Solstice differently in Celes and Valeria – nothing like this.”

“Oh?” A gentle prompt, mildly curious.

“In Valeria…” Fai spoke slowly, thoughtfully dredging up the ancient memories from within him, “in Valeria there was a hunt, and all the men were sent out on Solstice Night to fetch in a prize, to display with the dawn. The greater the catch the more blessed that man, and his family, would be in the coming days of light, and the one who had the greatest catch would be crowned ‘Dawn-Bringer’ and dance with the woman who had…won a game in the Hall whilst the hunters were away. The women and children always told stories and played games on Solstice Night but I…I forget the details; I was never really involved.”

Kurogane dropped his hand to the other’s hip, feeling the ridge through the mage’s cloud-soft kimono. “And Celes?”

“Ashura-ou filled the great fireplace in the Main Hall with blessed logs, and it was stoked and stoked, higher and hotter as the night grew darker, and there was dancing and feasting and music.” Fai smiled, his eyes still reflecting the fires of his past, glittering in nostalgia. And then he laughed, a memory sweeping quite sweetly into focus. “There was a lot of kissing too.”

Kurogane shrugged, and inwardly sat upon the mild irrational urge to query just why, exactly, talking about kissing made Fai smile like that. “There always is at parties.”

“But ah,” Fai said brightly, wagging one finger in the lover’s face, “this was a game! For favour and fertility in the coming sunshine; everyone grew flowers in the weeks leading up to the Winter Solstice – they were white, with heavy petals and a strong scent; it was the tradition to burn them at the end of the night with the logs, and their smoke always had such a peculiar smell…”

Kurogane grabbed hold of the finger in front of his face, looking very pointedly over the top of the digit at his smiling companion. “Get on with it.”

Fai curled the rest of his hand around the one gripping his finger, a strange attempt at holding hands. “Everyone had their own unique type of ribbon; we tied them in bows around the flowers, one ribbon for each bloom. On Solstice Night when the music played kisses were traded for flowers – if you accepted a kiss from someone, you surrendered a flower. At the end -”

“At the end,” Kurogane interrupted, seeing where the story was going, “whoever had the most flowers that weren’t their own won.” Fai chuckled, but nodded. Kurogane eyed him. “…How many years did you win?”

Fai smiled again, his grin particularly cat-like, and crawled his way onto Kurogane’s lap, straddling him, chest-to-chest, mouth close to Kurogane’s own. “Mommy doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“‘Mommy’,” Kurogane retorted, feeling his lips brush the other’s, voice dropping to a slightly lower pitch, “is still a horrible liar. Or is it someone else that runs off and gives Tomoyo regular updates about our daily activities?”

“The walls have ears,” Fai replied rather impishly, and was still smiling when Kurogane kissed him, humming into something that was slow and languid, completely uncaring of its surroundings. His arms rose up, wrapping themselves rather possessively around the other man’s shoulders, hips rocking down and forward in a familiar pattern.

Kurogane growled at the motion, feeling himself gently pushed back until his back was against the porch’s floor, Fai pushing himself up onto his hands, palms either side of the ninja’s head. His smile was damnable, confident, smug, his gaze still blazing, his golden hair dangling and hanging hopelessly in his eyes. He had the look of someone who was getting exactly what they wanted and knew it.

Kurogane looked up at him and – with the air of one who was losing and was well-accustomed to the feeling – Stuck to His Principles. “I am not having sex with you on the porch.”

Fai couldn’t care less about the porch. “There are plenty of rooms, Kuro-sama.” He leaned down again, licking a long line up the ninja’s quite abused neck and grinding down into the then quite obvious bulge his lover was sporting beneath his kimono at the same time. “If,” he said pointedly, tone taking on its usual teasing quality when the other groaned, “you think you can make it to one of them.”

Kurogane ‘made it to one of them’ in record time, Fai beaming and waving cheerily at a startled servant they passed (at remarkable speed) on the way as he was being dragged along by the other wrist. The woman blinked and tried to do the brief customary obeisance, but Kurogane had already pulled Fai out of sight into the nearest bedchambers, the door sliding shut so hard the frame rattled.

Having heard tales of the duo’s (in)famous exploits, she quickly made herself scarce.

Fai woke muzzily to a grey world, eyes flickering and head pillowed on something soft and moving – Kurogane’s chest, he quickly surmised, pushing himself up slightly to look down at the peacefully sleeping man, relishing the sight. Joined at the hip as they were sometimes it was still rare to catch Kurogane so totally off-guard, spread-out and relaxed in slumber, bare body tangled around Fai’s own. The ninja nearly always woke first out of the two of them, already up, dressed and training by the time Fai sleepily stumbled out of their shared bed (the blond didn’t know why he bothered keeping his own futon and room, really. Kurogane was entirely more comfortable).

The mage drew one slow fingertip down Kurogane’s exposed abdomen, lips quirking in amusement as the muscles twitched, Kurogane himself letting out a sleepy mumble and shifting slightly. Low warmth bloomed through Fai as the ninja continued blissfully sleeping on, so tellingly at ease in Fai’s presence. Save Tomoyo and himself, anyone else who dared to enter the room - never mind touched Kurogane – would’ve had the ninja’s sword at their neck, however deeply the man appeared to be sleeping. Even unconscious Kurogane was by nature distrustful and yet, beside Fai, he kept trustingly sleeping on, instinctively leaning into the warmth the blond emitted in the chilled room.

As for the room –

Fai frowned at it, not recognising his surroundings. Where-? Ah. The night before flashed through his head, drawing a wry smile in memory of Kurogane’s delightful impatience fuelled by his own playfulness, some unfortunate soul (or not so unfortunate, depending on where they’d ended up instead) clearly having been done out of their room for the night – but then, everyone had been planning on staying up until dawn at the celebrations anyway, so –

The dawn!

Fai took note of the grey light with widened eyes, slipping out from under the futon’s cosy sheets and quilt to pull on his cream under-kimono of the night before, belting it only very loosely before padding barefoot over to the room’s exterior doors, his hair still loose and tousled about his face. Sliding back the lock he opened them as quietly as he could, trying not to wake Kurogane, letting the morning mist creep in around his ankles as he looked to the distant horizon, seeing the line of gold just beginning to show there. He was on time.

Fai watched the sunrise contentedly, leaning against the doorframe next time with his arms folded across his chest. Slowly, oh so slowly, the gold at the horizon’s edge grew and spread, lengthening and stretching yellow fingers out over the frost-laced, mist-cloaked land, branches of pure light that widened and grew as the sun’s arc finally began to push up past the world’s rim. The morning birds who’d stayed the winter began to sing, calling out to one another, one, then two, then four, than eight, until there was a trill from every tree in the Imperial garden, the clouds decorated in swirls of yellow and pink. The longest night was over, and the morning’s light was here.

“I’ve got the better view.”

Fai actually jumped at the voice speaking so suddenly from behind him, whipping around to see Kurogane awake, having propped himself up onto his elbows, regarding Fai.

“You -” Fai faltered for a moment, searching for his unused voice, “Kuro-chan, you can’t see the garden from that angle.” It was true – Fai had opened the outside door only a little way, not wanting the breeze to roll in and disturb the ninja.

Kurogane smirked, a lazy self-satisfied curving of his mouth, an echo of the active night before. “I didn’t mention the garden.” He was looking very deliberately at Fai, and Fai alone.

The blond actually coloured lightly at that – such comments from the ninja were few and far between, and endlessly precious -, Kurogane’s self-satisfaction only growing with the result. Fai cleared his throat, putting on a slight pout. “…Kuro-chama was supposed to be asleep.”

Kurogane waved a vague hand in the direction of the open door, from whence the morning birdsong poured in, sweet and loud and clear. “You think I could sleep through that racket?”

“A fair point,” his companion conceded, leaving the door and padding back to the futon, glad to drop his clothes and retake the warm spot at Kurogane’s side, snuggling in. “…Whose room is this, anyway?”

“It’s…” Kurogane looked around them, taking in the scenery and frowning. A few seconds later: “I don’t know.”

Fai laughed. “Kuro-chan was so eager last night he pulled me into the room of a stranger?”

Kurogane turned his head away, his cheeks darkening with the faintest tinge of red. “They shouldn’t have left their door unlocked.” Fai kept laughing. “This is your fault, anyway.”

“Ohh~?” Fai was still grinning as he hooked one arm around the ninja’s neck, leaning back into the pillows and pulling Kurogane down over him. “And how, pray tell, is Kuro-sama going to blame this all on me? I wasn’t the one who picked our destination last night.”

“No,” Kurogane grumbled back, “you were the one draped all over me yanking my clothes off in such a hurry we had to go into the room of a stranger.”

“A good ninja must be able to operate effectively even in moments of great distraction,” Fai told him primly, lips still threatening an amused twitch.

“And what does that make me?” His lover challenged, leaning down lower beneath the covers, pressing into the blond.

“A bad ninja,” Fai told him a little breathlessly, arching his back when the other pressed down harder, his interest more than stirred into awakening alongside – quite obvious – other things. “A very bad ninja. But don’t worry, Kuro-pon, I’m sure I could give you some lessons to make it all better again.”

Kurogane smirked again, quite intending to take the blond up on those ‘lessons’ –

The door to the room opened, and one of the lesser nobles strolled in, clearly drunk, halfway across the floor before he noted the two men entangled in his bed, one slowly turning blood-red, exceedingly pissed, borderline homicidal eyes upon him. The dire threat took about ten seconds to sink into the alcohol-fuddled nobleman’s mind, time in which all three of them either stared or glared at one another, and then, when it sunk in, another six for the nobleman to flee in his inebriated fashion, vanishing with a girly ‘eek’ and slamming the door (his door) shut again on the way out.

Kurogane glowered at the spot where he’d left. Fai flopped back into the pillows again, and dissolved into laughter. The morning light slid in through the open door across them, golden and warm, taking the world onto its lighter days.

A/N:

- The Amaterasu celebration/Requiem of the Dead was the celebration held on the Winter Solstice in seventh century Japan and after it for quite a while, celebrating the re-emergence of the sun-goddess Amaterasu from the cave she hid herself away in (because she lost her temper with someone, I believe). The other gods tricked her out by having a loud party outside her cave, and when she looked out in curiosity she caught sight of herself in the mirror they’d placed there and got so distracted they sealed up her cave when she left it so she couldn’t get back in, bringing light back to the world.

- The thing Fai is kneeling before would probably be called a butsudan – the best way I can think to describe them is to think of a small, highly-decorative cupboard, a scared place to revere the Buddha and the deceased. I was going to call the shrine a ‘butsudan’ – but then I got to thinking. This is an AU-version of Japan – I wasn’t quite sure if that version of Japan would have had a Buddha and, if they did, whether he would’ve been called by that name. And so – Fai simply has a shrine. (Aka, when Shacha is unsure, she leaves things terribly vague.)

- The shishimai is the Japanese lion dance. Towards the end of the dance the lion ‘bites’ the heads of some of the watchers, to bring good luck.

- …I don’t actually own any of the riddles in this chapter, alas. The first three are old English riddles, and I think Fai’s was traditionally eastern.

- Armorica was, in ancient times, a part of Gaul, what is now the Brittany part of France, extending inland some way and down the Atlantic coast. Later on the term became almost exclusively used for the Brittany area, and that’s where I’m envisioning the Hououji family coming from. (And if you don’t know who Fuu and Kuu are – for shame. Your homework’s to go and read Magic Knight Rayearth. Yes, go on – shoo. X3 )

Meme thing

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:25:12 GMT

*shamelesslyt stolen from Compy*

List 12 characters you like from any fandom BEFORE you read the questions (it doesn’t matter what order they’re in, there’s no need to list them from favourite to least favourite or anything). Then go through and answer the questions.

(I decided to do anime/manga only.)

1 – Light Yagami (Death Note)
2 – Fai D. Fluorite (Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles)
3 – Yami no Yugi (Yu-Gi-Oh)
4 – Tamaki Suoh (Ouran High School Host Club)
5 – Kimihiro Watanuki (XxXHoLic)
6 – Kyo Sohma (Fruits Basket)
7 – C.C (Code Geass)
8 – Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
9 – Umi Ryuuzaki (Magic Knight Rayearth)
10 – Allen Walker (D.Gray-man)
11 – Takashi Natsume (Natsume Yuujinchou)
12 – Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura)

1. Have you ever read a Six/Eleven fic? Do you want to? (Kyo Sohma/ Takashi Natsume)
I must shamefully admit I never have, nor would ever want to, read a slash fic between these two – though them just meeting would make me burble like hell. Fruits Basket + Natsume Yuujinchou would be an awesome premise; they’ve got some vaguely similar themes/feelings running throughout.

2. Do you think Four is hot? How hot? (Tamaki Suoh)

Er…yeah, I s’ppose so, but I’m more used to thinking of Tama-chan along the lines of ‘cute spastic idiot’. X3 I’m sure he could do ‘hot’ though, if he had his preparation time. And toned down his gay sparklyness somewhat.

3. What would happen if Twelve got Eight pregnant? (Sakura Kinomoto and Edward Elric)
…I think a lot of people would be pointing accusing fingers at Ed and saying he’d been meddling with alchemy again. And Sakura would be fluttering about looking confused and trying to stop Kero/Touya/Yue/Syaoran slaughtering Ed because ‘think of the baby’. And there’d be tea and cakes and Tomoyo/Al being called in to negotiate a peace treaty whilst Sakura sat and insisted ‘everything will be alright’.

4. Can you recall any fic(s) about Nine? (Umi Ryuuzaki)
…Not any about her alone. Hm. I should delve into the MKR fandom a bit more.

5. Would Two and Six make a good couple? (Fai D. Fluorite and Kyo Sohma)
…Dear God NO. Kyo’s a younger Kurogane only without the putting-up-with-Fai capability – Fai would drive him mental within a day and he’d storm off to sulk on the roof or something. Neither of them would talk about their problems/traumatic pasts either, curling up in the corner to lick their individual wounds.

But – oh, Fruits Basket + Tsubasa = kitty love. X3

6. Five/Nine or Five/Ten? Why? (Kimihiro Watanuki/Umi Ryuuzaki or Kimihiro Watanuki/Allen Walker)
…*snickers* Oh, I’m torn. I think Wata-pon would be gentlemanly to both of them – he has a thing for cute things, and Umi’s a girl and Allen’s just...little and sparkly. Allen’s the sort of person Watanuki’s used to – he eats/drinks a lot, and cheats amazingly. (It’d be interesting letting him meet Yuuko.) But…er…Watanuki and Umi. They could bond over a shared dislike of Mokona.

7. What would happen if Seven walked in on Two and Twelve having sex? (C.C, Fai D. Fluorite/Sakura Kinomoto)
C.C would probably make a totally inappropriate comment and go and get some pizza. (She might even skip the comment.) Really.

8. Make up a summary for a Three/Ten fic. (Yami no Yugi/Allen Walker)
The Nameless Pharaoh once made it his mission to rid the world of the Shadows that plagued it, sacrificing his life and sealing himself within the depths of the mystical Millennium Puzzle. Now, almost three thousand years later, the sacred Puzzle turns up in the hands of the cursed Exorcist Allen Walker, the boy called to the Item by events not-unlike the actions of the mysterious Innocence. Spirits, it seems, can be awoken by a song, and now the powers of Shadow and Innocence are united to drive out the destruction plotted by the Earl.

9. Is there any such thing as One/Eight fluff? (Light Yagami/Edward Elric)
Nope. Post-Death-Note-gaining-Light wouldn’t know ‘fluff’ if it smacked him in the face.

10. Suggest a title for a Seven/Twelve hurt/comfort fic. (C.C/Sakura Kinomoto)
And the Earth was Gold and Green. (For their eyes/hair.)

11. What kind of plot would you use if you wanted Four to deflower One? (Tamaki Suoh/Light Yagami)
…Is Tamaki physically capable of deflowering anyone? Really, it’d probably be the other way around, and Light would probably deflower Tama-chan in the much more literal sense of throwing out the blond’s piles and piles of roses as Tamaki sobbed melodramatically and clutched to his leg.

12. Does anyone on your friends list read Three hent? (Yami no Yugi)

‘Hent’? I’m assuming that means het so…um…singrain5 might (if it was Bakura-centric) and…inu_kaiba? Maybe?

13. Does anyone on your friends list write or draw Eleven? (Takashi Natsume)
No. ;-;

14. Would anyone on your friends list write Two/Four/Five? (Fai D. Fluorite/Tamaki Suoh/Kimihiro Watanuki)
…I’d like to think I could corrupt at least one of you enough to write something like that.

16. What might Ten scream at a moment of great passion? (Allen Walker)
…Depends who it’s at, what type of passion it is.

Anger (at the Millennium Earl, as he blasts a demon): “May your pitiful soul be saved!”
Anger (at Kanda/Lavi, after being called a beansprout again): “It’s Allen!”

Bedroom/passion: that particular person’s name?

17. If you wrote a song-fic about Eight, which song would you choose? (Edward Elric)
UM. Oh, I’m awful at picking appropriate songs. Um…I don’t know. Really, I don’t. *cheats and skips*

18. If you wrote a One/Six/Twelve fic, what would the warnings be? (Light Yagami/Kyo Sohma/Sakura Kinomoto)
…Character deaths. Because one, Light’s involved, and two, Sakura’s involved, and Touya/Kero/Syaoran/Yue would murder the other two – or try to, and Light would get out his Death Note and…does that thing work on magical guardians and people haunted by cat spirits?

19. What might be a good pick-up line for Ten to use on Two (Allen Walker and Fai D.Fluorite)
“Can I try some of your cake?” Only, this being Allen, he really would be asking for cake. Lots of it. Fai probably wouldn’t be able to bake enough. ^^;

20. When was the last time you read a fic about Five? (Kimihiro Watanuki)
Yesterday, actually.

21. What is Six's super-secret kink? (Kyo Sohma)
…I’m sorely tempted to put ‘bondage’, but – as he’s haunted by the cat – he hates collars and things of the like. Pains probably not his thing either – he likes Tohru – so…submission/humiliation? He certainly seems to get his kicks out of challenging Yuki all the time.

22. Would Eleven shag Nine? Drunk or sober? (Takashi Natsume and Umi Ryuuzaki)
He wouldn’t – Natsume’s too polite, and Umi’s too…Umi.

23. If Three and Seven get together, who tops? (Yami no Yugi and C.C)

*laughs* Yami’d probably do his kingly thing, but C.C just wouldn’t care. They’d probably fight it out. X3 And there’d be chains and leather involved.

24. One (Light Yagami) and Seven (C.C) are in a happy relationship until Nine (Umi) suddenly runs off with (C.C). (Light), broken-hearted, has a hot one-night stand with Eleven (Takashi Natsume) and a brief unhappy affair with Twelve (Sakura Kinomoto), then follows the wise advice of Five (Kimihiro Watanuki) and finds true love with Three (Yami no Yugi).

a)What title would you give this fic?
Why Light Yagami Should Never Piss Off the Dimensional Witch. (She’ll warp your character as a result.)

b) Name three people on your friends list who might read it.
…Crys, SJ, Hikari.

c) Name one person who should write it.

YOU SHOULD ALL WRITE IT. (Alleviate my guilt for feeling like I spam some of your f!lists with my stories all the time.)

25. How would you feel if Seven/Eight was canon? (C.C/Edward Elric)
Deeply confused.

Fic: This Cold Country (2)

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:13:29 GMT

Title: This Cold Country
Rating: T
A/N: For the kuroxfai late summer contest. Based upon my take of what might have happened had not both Kurogane and Fai’s mothers died in canon, and just what exactly would happen with the twins’ great magic.
Much thanks to Crys for the Kuro-quack nickname. X3
Warning - this isn’t happy.

Part one is here.

To practically everyone else save Kurogane Yuui is a perfectly rational, sane human being. A good king who sits at Council with his brother, listening to his councillors thoughtfully, offering suggestions, talking through ideas as Kurogane watches from the shadows, kept within sight always of one of the twins. Both of the brothers are clearly intelligent, diplomatic in a way Kurogane isn’t, drawing a wonder if it was something all royalty had to be good at – Tomoyo, dark-haired and delicate, had pure steel running through her frame, echoing in her voice when she gave direct commands.

As soon as the Council is done, however, Yuui is back to his usual idiotic self, draping himself across Kurogane and declaring himself bored, even as Fai hands him a pile of paperwork from the meeting and advises him to work through it soon. Yuui pouts and clings to Kurogane and says he wants to go play, but takes the paperwork and somehow wangles Kurogane into carrying it for him, although the shinobi himself has no idea how it happened. (He’s an assassin, not a packhorse.)

Yuui trills and flirts and skips all the way back to his chambers unburdened, but once they arrive there he does actually settle down to work, shooing Kurogane over to look at some books in the corner. Kurogane goes, grumbling, and they manage to last like that for an hour, and then Kurogane wanders across and sees Yuui has to have technically been done with his work for at least a good twenty minutes, and is now drawing stick figures and smiley blob-shapes down the side of some of the official documents. His white gloves are spotted with ink in places, and his voice is sickeningly bright as Kurogane’s shadow looms over him.

“Kuro-pon~!!”

“It’s Kurogane.”

“Kuro-pyun,” Yuui ignores him as usual, “did you come to check up on me? Kyaa, Kuro-tam loves me after all~!!” He flails his arms in what is supposed to be joy, Kurogane grabbing one wrist to avoid getting smacked in the face with it.

“Idiot,” he barks out reflexively, fingers curled around the slender limb in his grasp, feeling the thin bones beneath furred robes, expensive cloth. The cuff of Yuui’s sleeve has slid back, revealing the line of the stained glove beneath, drawing the shinobi’s attention. “You’re going to need t’change these.”

Yuui waved his free hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, Kuro-wan shall mother me so until I do and – Kuro-tan!” The name is blurted out in surprise, blue eyes wide beneath their owner’s mask as Kurogane looks at them, having just pulled off the glove on the hand of the king’s he held. His hand, now bare, is pale and fair, only a few shades of the snow Valeria is coated in. “W-what…” Words fail him.

“What?” Kurogane is blank, not understanding what has the other so shocked.

“You don’t…” Yuui gathers himself. “Kuro-cha is terribly forward.” He tries to pull his hand away from the man from another world, but Kurogane refuses to let go, still confused.

“Explain.”

“It’s…not proper etiquette to show skin to another, individuality.” Yuui fumbles a little. “Only lovers…” He trails off, but his meaning is clear.

Kurogane is curious. “So no-one’s ever held your hand before without wearing gloves?”

“They have, before the decree of the Masks was introduced, but that…” Yuui glances aside, “that was a very long time ago.”

Kurogane can remember holding hands with people – his mother, when she was trying to help him feel better, Souma, correcting his grip on his sword, Tomoyo, little and small and trusting, happily being guided around the palace by her larger companion. Skin on skin, holding hands – touching - was a human thing, a way to say ‘I’m here; I trust you’. How many had lived and died in Valeria without that simple form of communication?

Kurogane raises the hand he holds almost unconsciously, placing a kiss on the back like he’d seen foreign ambassadors to Nihon do to the Amaterasu and to Tomoyo, somehow…somehow trying to mend all that was wrong was this world’s way of thinking.

(“Lord Kurogane has his father’s kindness.” Tomoyo’s voice is sweet in the mind, her frame younger and smaller then but still just as decisive as ever, smiling after seeing her noble fetch down a younger girl’s ball that had become stuck in a tree.

“Tch,” Kurogane had looked aside. “She would’ve bawled the palace down if she hadn’t got her toy back – I didn’t need the headache.”

Tomoyo had only continued to smile at him, and under her scrutiny Kurogane had slowly started to blush.)

He turns over the hand he holds, not wishing to treat Yuui like a lady – the king is a man (albeit an annoying one) -, and so he presses his lips to the inside of the blond’s wrist, to the frantic beating through the tender skin, and hears Yuui’s breath catch.

Silence.

Still.

Yuui snatches his hand back, scalded, and Kurogane watches as the royal stiffly organises his documents, picking up the pile and heading for the door. “I need to deliver these.” He leaves, and doesn’t take Kurogane with him.

On the eighth day Kurogane is in Valeria, it becomes obvious Yuui is avoiding him. He has not seen the younger king since the day of the Council meeting, Fai – his guard whilst Yuui is elsewhere - vaguely replying that his brother was with their mother, who was ‘very sick’ at that time.

Kurogane is frustrated, sick of sitting idly by attempting to read, in no way soothed by the crackle of the nearby fire. He drops his book to the floor with a thump, glowering impatiently over at the blond king sitting at a desk on the other side of the room working through some paper or other, trying to bore through the man’s skull to get some answers. “Why haven’t you killed me yet?”

Fai doesn’t glance up at him, tone perfectly even. “What makes you think I’m going to kill you?”

“Don’t you generally kill the people coming to kill you?”

There’s a pause, Fai setting down the pen he’d been using to write with, and propping his chin up with one gloved hand. The fire’s light catches his hair, gleams off the smooth curve of his mask. “Why haven’t you killed me yet, then Lord Kurogane? Or my brother, for that matter? It’s what you came here to do, isn’t it?”

“I need my sword.” The answer is prompt.

“You don’t need a sword to kill someone, Lord Kurogane.”

“I need that sword to kill you.” Ginryuu was charmed; it would cut through magical defences the same as flesh. It took a special sword to kill a special magician.

“So you’ve chosen – I am the twin that you’re going to kill?” The firelight hides whatever expression Fai might be wearing; the monarch is completely unreadable.

“I -” Kurogane pauses, floundering. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course not,” Fai agrees, and goes back to his paper.

Feeling chastised, Kurogane bends down to pick up his book again to pretend to read a little more. The room descends back into quiet.

It takes a fortnight for Kurogane to eventually run into Yuui again – and it’s a literal run, Yuui hurtling along the corridor without looking where he’s going and running straight into Kurogane’s chest. Unbalanced, the collision knocks Kurogane over, and he lands in a tangle of limbs and cloth and fur with the blond, Yuui flush against him, breathing hard from his run. Red and blue meet through the masks and there’s a dreadful quiet, but Fai is there and gently helps his brother to his feet, passing a hand down his twin’s robes and suddenly they are smooth, uncrumpled, perfect again.

“Are you alright?” Fai’s voice is a murmur, his touch light on Yuui’s elbow, but his brother is still looking at Kurogane, still as the shinobi raises himself from the floor. “Yuui?” Fai sounds concerned, and – slowly, ever-slowly – Yuui turns to look at him.

“Fai…I…” a sudden false smile breaks out over the young man’s face, curving up the mask’s lips, “how lovely it is to see you! Were you taking Kuro-pon out walkies?” Kurogane growls on cue and swipes for the idiot, Yuui laughing and ducking the blow easily, hiding behind his brother as Kurogane advances on them both. “Bad dog, bad dog~!”

Kurogane makes a grab for Yuui but ends up holding the wrong brother, Yuui’s laughter doubling at the mildly perplexed look both his brother and their guest/prisoner have adopted, cooing ridiculously temporarily out of harm’s way.

“Fai, is there something you’re not telling me~?” His tone is teasing, but Fai only smiles back, more amused by Kurogane’s answering snarl – Yuui’s antics don’t bother his sibling anymore, but Kurogane is certainly fair game (for them both, when both are in the mood).

“You-!” Kurogane reaches for Yuui but again the king evades him, dashing down the corridor with no care for dignity. “Get back here!”

Yuui is still laughing, waving gaily as he stays stubbornly just ahead of his pursuer. “Kuro-chuu has to catch me fiiiiirst~!”

Kurogane dives after him, still snarling, and Yuui takes off again, both of them speeding down the corridor, scattering servants as they go. Fai follows behind somewhat more sedately, hearing the servants gossip, thinking, musing. Yuui will keep Kurogane occupied he knows; it is safe to attend to his duties again, to call in upon his mother. Yuui will keep Kurogane occupied and –

And Fai doesn’t want to think about it, his head aching with the memories of terrible dreams. He goes to his tasks, and leaves things well enough alone.

Kurogane catches Yuui when the blond dashes into a room with only one exit – the entrance, a dead-end. He shuts the door behind him, sealing them both in, grabbing at Yuui and finally succeeding in snagging the blond’s arm, dragging the other closer.

“Kuro-chan~!” Yuui is breathless from their race, something close to genuine mirth glowing in his blue eyes, hanging in his voice. He’s probably smiling but the mask hides it – the masks hide everything for and from everyone and Kurogane suddenly hates them. This is a world of liars, a crowd of the plural people, not a single individual among them. Something must be showing on his face because Yuui repeats his words, although more curious now, wondering why the shinobi hasn’t growled out an insult yet. “Kuro-chan…?”

Kurogane reaches up and, ignoring Yuui’s gasp, takes off his own mask, feeling the thing melt into a blob in his hand. He drops it to the ground, scowling at it. “I hate that damn thing.”

“Kuro-rin is a naughty boy and needs to put his mask back on.” Yuui’s words are playful; his tone is not. He looks away from his companion, refusing to look at the taller man.

“Are you so scared of seeing my face?” Kurogane challenges.

Stiffly: “It’s against the law.”

“You write the laws.” Yuui refuses to look at him still, and an awkward silence hangs between them. “…The first time we met, you said I was handsome.”

“‘My noble ninja’…” Yuui echoes the words of the past.

“How long is it since you’ve called someone other than me that? Since you’ve said someone’s beautiful or pretty.”

Yuui doesn’t sound pleased. “You can’t really describe a mask as being beautiful, Kuro-ru -” he halts, catching the shinobi’s point. “…It’s against the law,” he repeats again, more weakly, his argument frail and not even surviving the breath it takes to leave his lips.

Kurogane takes his chin, gets the other to look at him. “Idiot, do you even know what your own face looks like anymore?” Silence again but the answer is obvious – no.

Yuui’s opposition trickles out of him and Kurogane reaches out for the royal’s face. He can hear the other breathing, soft breaths that quicken when he brushes back the gold hair from the other’s face, fingertips sliding back behind Yuui’s ears to grasp the edges of the mask. Kurogane pauses there for a little while, letting the other bow his head slightly, offer protest if he really does not want this, but Yuui stays silent, remains still, and Kurogane draws off his mask.

It comes away easily, melting into a small palm-sized blob in the shinobi’s palm the moment it is no longer touching Yuui’s face, and Kurogane puts it to the side, raising his hands again, framing the prince’s face before him but just not touching the skin, unsure of how the blond would react, given how just taking off a glove had caused the other to bolt for two weeks.

Yuui looks up at him, feeling the heat radiating from the Nihon man’s palms, and his expression, although bared, is unreadable. So many emotions chase through his eyes, across his features – he’s fair, terribly fair, and lovely in a way that men rarely are.

“Why…” words fail Kurogane temporarily, searching his companion’s expression, pursuing some fleeting emotion within him, some strand that’s beautiful and awful and confusing all at once, “why must you wear a mask?”

Yuui doesn’t speak. He watches Kurogane as Kurogane watches him, flinches slightly as the taller man finally touches his face, fingers warm and surprisingly gentle. It’s the first time in….so terribly long someone has touched his face, the nerves singing and shivering, feeling Kurogane’s warmth, the eddies in the castle cool against his heated cheeks.

“…You’re blushing,” Kurogane tells him almost wonderingly and Yuui raises his own wondering hand, feeling the softness of his own skin, the warmth spreading along his cheekbones, the sudden itching in his eyes. He’s not about to –

Yuui’s eyes are tear-bright and he looks stricken, confused, lips somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “You -”A breath and he pulls away, out of Kurogane’s grip, fumbling a little unsurely for his mask, bringing it up to his face again, letting it cover him. If he’s crying the mask hides it flawlessly, Yuui impersonal once more, and his gaze is direct as he faces the foreign man. “You’re going to kill me in four days; Fai saw it a long time ago.” Kurogane jolts, and Yuui continues. “Did you forget the reason you came to this world?”

Kurogane had. If…if only for a moment he – his mission had always been an absent preoccupation, lurking at the back of his thoughts, but only now it hit him what it truly meant and –

“It’ll be mine and Fai’s birthday party.” Yuui continues on, slamming the truth home to the other man, slamming down a wall between them. It hurts – thick, glittering ice where moments before had been a softer warmth. Yuui is joyless. “Please don’t get blood on the cake.”

Fai comes to Kurogane later that night in the rooms allocated to the shinobi, having stayed with his brother as Yuui had wept on his lap, waiting until his twin had fallen into restless sleep. The dreams are bad for both of them, but at least Fai knows what he sees is the truth – or one version of the truth, anyway. Yuui can only be plagued by nightmares.

Kurogane is awake when Fai comes to him, sitting on the edge of his bed, red eyes watchful through the dim lighting of the room. He’s waiting, so Fai spares him aimless small talk and gets to his point.

“Next week my brother and I celebrate our birthday. On that day…it’s traditional to make a wish on your birthday but – those wishes aren’t necessarily supposed to come true. Sometimes though…if someone has enough magic, they can change the way things are unconsciously – it’s usually only small things but with Yuui and I we’re…” The king sighs. “We’re always getting stronger, day by day by day. And if we wish strongly for something, it’ll come true. If we wish unconsciously for something, it’ll come true. And what we wish for -” he breaks off, to breathe, to think. Kurogane graciously lets him have the quiet. “Lord Kurogane, do you have any idea of the amount of assassination attempts my brother and I have been subjected to since our births? I’ll give you a clue – the answer has three digits in it. But still, the attempts keep coming. They’re necessary. You’re here to kill at least one of us, because combined we’re too strong, even if we lived on other worlds. Our genetics bind us together, and make us twice as dangerous.”

“I know this.” Tomoyo had told Kurogane – the princess did not order a death if she could help it, avoid it but –

“In my dreams,” Fai speaks again, a little more quietly, “I saw you kill my brother on our birthday– I saw Yuui die. I want you to kill me instead.” Kurogane freezes. He’d never – “I keep – in all my dreams I see such strange things….worlds that are, and worlds that were but now aren’t, and worlds that will be – Yuui always…it’s always Yuui that -” the king stops, unable to finish his sentence. “I want you to kill me.”

“I’m not a dreamseer.” Kurogane can offer no comfort, taken aback by the twins’ acceptance of death, of parting. This is a cold world, in more ways than one. “I don’t know what will happen.”

“Kill me.”

Kurogane pushes the request aside, more disturbed by the entreaty for death than he’d like to admit. “…If you wish so much for death, why is it that you didn’t give me my Ginryuu? It could’ve been done before the party, before things get dangerous -”

“Forgive me for wanting to spend as much time with those I love, if you will, Lord Kurogane.” Fai’s voice is slightly dry. “Forgive me for attempting to guarantee the future – changing a vision is always a tricky thing, best left to the last minute.”

Kurogane understands more than he would like to, and the future seems as bleak as the grey clouds outside threatening a blizzard.

Fai looks to them, sees their heavy, chilling promise. “We didn’t ask to be born. We didn’t ask for this.” But they’d accepted it, slowly.

“No,” Kurogane agrees quiet, quiet, gruff voice muted. Valeria is a frozen country. “We never do.”

The party had been an elaborate one, the great hall hung with flowers and drapes, polished to perfection. The great fires had been roaring, blasting heat out to the far corners of the room, the people laughing and dancing, the drink flowing, the food plenty. The Queen Mother had been in attendance, escorted on each side by her children, their hair all the same flyaway shade of burnished gold. The royal family had worn robes of white and blue and gold, the twins had smiled and laughed and danced and been the perfect hosts, the perfect kings.

The magic in the hall had been oppressive, building, building, pressing down on Kurogane’s ears and head and heart, the dark man having kept to the shadows, Ginryuu returned to him, sheathed at his waist. Had. Then.

The cake had been beautiful, wheeled out of the kitchens on a great cart, layered and tall and iced and Fai and Yuui had approached it, hand-in-gloved-hand, Yuui dropping the palm to applaud the skill of the chefs, Fai echoing him. Both of their voices had rung hollow but the crowds hadn’t heard it, swarming around their sovereigns, letting the two cut the cake, make their wish, and Kurogane had been swept up with them, disorientated, and – at the end, two masked blonds had stood before him, identical in every way, their masks hiding their identity, silent. Kurogane hadn’t been able to tell which of them was which.

And then they’d made their wish –

Hand-in-gloved-hand, the twins, the magicians, the –

The world had rumbled, the building shaking, and the crowds had screamed, flinging themselves about and away to get out of the way of falling masonry. Around the twins power built and grew, the two young men with eyes of brilliant blue, magic raw and spilling about them, cracks in the ceiling, cracks in the floor, screams as people looked outside and saw cracks in the sky, other worlds pulsing and pushing through, angry, pulled towards implosion, destruction –

Two was one too many. Two had always been one too many in Valeria, a country dragged to misery for its own stupidity, superstition, discrimination. Perhaps –

It had been too late to ruminate, to ponder, the cracks in reality having grown larger, wave after oppressive wave whipping through existence, the twins’ power. What had they wished for, to cause such chaos? What wish was so terrible it could end all the worlds?

Kurogane had pushed himself through the power, smacked with stone, with debris, with raw magic, feeling it sting and burn and try to claw the skin from his bones, hot needles piercing and sharp. Before him had been the twins, lost in their own strength, swallowed by the maelstrom, and he hadn’t known which was which, because they were identical, alike in every way, masked and –

There are tears now, masks ripped off and tears streaming from one set of blue eyes, one voice hoarse from a wordless cry, a wail, a lament, bowed over a cooling corpse and sobbing, sobbing. The twins are identical, save that only one of them is still breathing, the other glassy-eyed and bloody. Ginryuu is on the floor and Kurogane does not have the strength of will left in him to pick up the sword still stained with blood, torn between relief that the sky has gone back to normal, the power has died down, and grief, that for all of this, one had to die –

He didn’t even know which brother he’d killed.

The living one is still crying, and everyone has been flung away from him, lashes of his sole strength flaying anyone to step within a five metre radius of him and his fallen brother. Keening, the sound of a broken heart being killed again and again –

Valeria has witnessed two murders today.

Eventually, the sounds stop, the surviving twin’s voice lost, his eyes red and aching and unable to shed another tear. It’s a small world that’s ended, but it’s a dear world all the same, one pale hand wrapped around a paler lifeless one, gloves ripped away, masks fallen to shreds. There’s no need anymore. There’s no use anymore.

Kurogane approaches slowly, and the magic parts to let him through. He pulls off his own mask and lets it drop to the ruined floor, mixing with blood and dust and tears. The twin on the ground looks at him, and his eyes hurt so much Kurogane can hardly bear to look at them, but he does all the same, accepting the guilt, taking the agony.

“You were supposed to kill me.” The blond’s voice is too hoarse to tell which it is Kurogane is speaking to.

Kurogane crouches down, on level with the other. “Your brother would’ve said the same thing.”

“We wished to be together.” An impossible wish – the fates are cruel. The king before him chokes, his head hanging, his golden hair stained with his sibling’s scarlet. “I hate you.”

Kurogane had expected the comment, but it hurts all the same. “I know.” He can’t apologise – millions of people have been saved with the death of one, but still –

“You should’ve killed me.” His companion has found tears again, slow and steady trickles down his face. “Why didn’t you kill me?” He buries his head in Kurogane’s shirt, clinging to the shinobi, uncaring of the rest of the world. “I hate you; I hate you.”

Kurogane holds him, lets him tremble. “You were wearing masks…I didn’t know which -” he stops awkwardly, realising the insensitivity of his remark, but the blond he’s holding is already raising his head, lips twisted in a bitter parody of a smile. Something about that smile makes Kurogane think of jagged edges of ice and metal, screaming birds falling from the sky with their wings ripped off. It’s not a mask anymore, a real face, but Kurogane no longer has any desire to see it. Irony plunged in its knife and twisted the blade for the most devastating effect.

“You don’t know which brother you killed.” The sole King of Valeria’s voice is dark, angry, amused, and still Kurogane doesn’t know who it is.

“…No.” He admits, feeling the blood on the floor seep into his clothes. He doesn’t look at the corpse.

“…Yuui,” the blond tells him shortly, blue eyes dead. “You killed Yuui. I’m Fai, Lord Kurogane.”

Valeria is a world full of liars; Kurogane can’t tell whether ‘Fai’ is lying or not – but why would he?

“…I’m sorry.” The words are meaningful and meaningless all at once.

They are maskless, gloveless, dusty, covered in blood. Bared of everything, kneeling beside a dead man in blood and tears. “I hate you,” Fai says again, and lays his head back down against Kurogane’s chest. He continues to tremble. “I hate you.”

Kurogane holds him tighter, and hurts. Valeria is a cold, bloody country. “I know.”

Fic: This Cold Country (1)

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:33:56 GMT

Now I say again: two remain

But, of course, they’re part of you now.

– Koushun Takami

The puppets clatter and dance on their strings to the beat of children’s laughter, porcelain-white faces with curving lips and bright eyes, clapping gloved hands that bare not an inch of young skin to the cold. Around the square their mothers and nannies shop and linger, baskets on arms and boxes borne in servants’ grasps, crisp commands echoing over the frosty ground, gossip and happenstance traded almost on par with the silver coins spilling from heavy purses, glittering gems.

‘Did you hear-? Did you know-? You’ll never guess-!’

Kurogane breathes out dragonsmoke into the falling snow, gloved fingertips pulling his hood further up over his face to ward off the chill and the snow, feeling the pervading cold snake its way through his bones even as the little children before him keep laughing, entranced by the puppets of the show in the square’s centre and unbothered by the weather. This is their world, their home, and they’d been brought up in it, but still it stings a little that such children can float on by, unaffected, whilst Kurogane himself huddles further into his borrowed furs and tries to hide the most of his shivering.

“Kurogane-san,” a familiar voice gives warning of the approach of a familiar figure - even though she is dressed in the long, decorative robes this strange country seems to favour, sweeping lines that have a different elegance to the Nihon style Kurogane has known all his life.

“Souma,” it is good to see the other shinobi, an excuse for him to stamp his feet and express all the gruff impatience he’d felt whilst waiting for her for a good hour, snow frosting his lashes and fussing children grating on his ears as they were dragged away from the puppet show too early for their liking. “Did you find -?”

The woman shakes her head at him as soon as she is close enough, her own low hood only letting him glimpse the thin line of her mouth, displeasure at her own failure to retrieve the information they sought. “This whole country is founded on magic, Kurogane-san. It’s a much more common trait than in Nihon - everyone possesses it, from the royalty on down to the lowliest-born babe.” Souma radiates an impatience Kurogane can only echo – when Tomoyo had presented the mission to them the day before it had sounded a simple task to track down the two magicians she’d dreamed of, but half a day in and a whole world away her two shinobi keep drawing up blanks. Even with the gift of charmed anklets to translate for them the task seems impossible; they’re looking for two people amongst thousands, hundreds of thousands.

“Mister, mister,” a tiny hand pulls at the edge of Kurogane’s cloak, the man looking down to see one of the children has wandered over from the show, a girl by the sound of her voice, the ringlets of her hair. Kurogane fights off the urge to forcibly detach the child; he has nothing against children in general, but the shifting masks everyone in this country wears – white, snow-white, with a single bead of colour in the centre of the brow – remind him too much of the old tales of youkai and yuurei, pale wraiths without identity or purpose. “Mister,” the girl’s voice is piping, drawing the attention of some of her little friends, “are you a ghost?”

Kurogane stares at the child. “What?”

The girl points up, straight up, to the narrow band of skin visible under Kurogane’s hood, his face. “Mother says only dead people don’t wear masks.”

Souma flinches as one of the girl’s friends screams at the mention of ghosts, heads all around the square swivelling around to stare at the two cloaked figures surrounded by children, young accusing fingers pointing as the shrill noise is taken up by the whole group –

“Ghost! Ghost!”

The adults stare, the children scream, the guards with shining helmets and weapons glittering like the frost appear, almost shimmering into existence – perhaps, they had come that way; they are hard to focus on, even though their white faces are flat and cold. Kurogane puts his hand to his sword beneath his cloak, Souma to her moon-blades, but there are children in the way and their consciences ringing in their ears, and more and more guards surrounding them every second they stand there.

“Ghost,” says the little girl who had started the mess, young voice taking on an edge of awe-laced fear, right before her friends pull her back and away from Kurogane, the puppets stopping their show.

The snow whirls down, faster and faster, blurring sight and putting Kurogane and Souma more on edge. There are threads of magic in the wind that drives the snow on, foreign symbols they have little to no defence against. It yanks down their hoods, exposing their unmasked faces – such a blasphemy in this strange world - and coating their hair in tiny flakes of frozen white.

‘Put down your weapons.’ The voice comes with the snow, frosted and flat and something heard not with the ears, but the mind. Magic, issued from one who expects to be obeyed.

“Like hell,” Kurogane snarls back, feeling the cold touch his high cheeks, his lips, his nose. He tightens his grip on his sword – Ginryuu -; beside him, Souma does the same with her own blades. Their message is clear – they refused to be disarmed.

‘Put down your weapons,’ the voice repeats once more. ‘We will not warn you again.’

It was really, Kurogane reflects, quite unfair for magicians to make that sort of demand when their opponents couldn’t even see them anymore. A good, visible target for retaliation would be nice, something he could point his sword at and slaughter.

“We refuse,” says Souma clearly, dark eyes looking all around her for the hidden foe through the lines of blurring white falling from the sky.

‘Then,’ speaks the voice, ‘we place you formally under arrest for the bearing of arms and of being without a mask. You will be escorted to the dungeons, there to await trial.’

Kurogane scoffs – magic or not, one blow from his sword will send all the guards tumbling, falling to the ground like finely-dressed dominoes. “You and whose army?”

‘We won’t need an army,’ the voice assures him, and then pain clamps down tight around Kurogane’s mind, bright and bold and blazing, arctic fire that rips across his thoughts and instinctively has his hands falling from his weapon, clutching at his head to try and relieve the agony. Blearily, Kurogane can see Souma suffering as well beside him, the thunk as her blades hit the snow-covered ground, the world whirling and dizzying as both of them fall to their knees –

Unconsciousness, when it comes, is a relief.

Kurogane can remember clearly the look on his mother’s face when he’d told her he was going to be going to another world, the widening of her eyes, hands loose and lax in her lap. She’d recovered well – she is a lady, after all -, lips curved and knowing in a way that seemed akin to all mikos.

“The Tsukoyomi favours you, son.”

“You mean,” Kurogane had retorted, grumbling a little as he sipped at his green tea, “she likes using me as her errand boy.”

His mother had laughed, a lovely sound. “Some things will never change.”

Kurogane wakes to cold again, to hard stone and dimness and the echo as his boots scrape the floor he’s lying on, cheek pressed to the rock beneath him. His head still aches, throbbing from the magical assault it had undergone an undeterminable amount of time earlier – the room Kurogane has been placed in has no window, the space lit by strange glowing globes on the walls; the shinobi has no idea how long he had been knocked out. He has no idea where Souma is either – pushing himself up to his feet and glancing around himself he can see is quite alone in the empty room, Ginryuu removed from his waist.

“So you’re awake?” A lilting voice draws Kurogane from his analysis of the room, the man whirling around to glare at what had been a featureless wall behind him – it is marked with an open doorway now, a single androgynous figure dressed in robes of white and gold just beyond the threshold on the other side.

The figure’s face – like all the other’s of the country – is covered with a white mask, a magical construct that moulds to the wearer’s skin and moves with it, completely concealing the identity – and in this case the sex - of the one behind it. The person’s words had been soft as well, an even pitch that could work for either gender. All Kurogane had been able to draw from was that the stranger is young – younger than him, probably.

“Where am I?” The shinobi demands without preamble, blunt. “Where is my companion?”

“You are an esteemed guest in the dungeons of the royal palace of Valeria.” There is a smile in the words of the stranger, something touching on lazy that irks even as the person leans against the lintel of the door, nonchalant to the space between their ‘guest’ and them. “Your companion is in another cell, perfectly safe, but she’s still out-cold. Do all people from your world have such low magical resistance?” Kurogane narrows his gaze and wonders how the stranger knows he is not from this world, and the stranger laughs, still lilting. Kurogane thinks the stranger might be a boy, wispy as the blond hair that is combed back away from the other’s face. “Don’t scowl so~! You look so handsome when you’re not scowling.”

…Although, with that sort of comment, the stranger can just as easily be female.

“Does the scary ninja have a name?”

Kurogane glares (this person knows too much) and steps forward, standing on the other side of the door’s threshold opposite the stranger, his captor or jailor, he wasn’t sure which. He’s easily a head taller than the assumed boy, broad-shouldered where the other is slender. Looking down he can see the other really is blond – Kurogane’s mother had told him stories about pale demons once with pale skin and fair hair. The shinobi would wager this foreign creature before him would fit the description perfectly, but that is unverifiable due to this country’s – Valeria’s – strange fashions, the stranger covered from throat to foot, masked, robed, gloved.

This is not a country of individuals.

The stranger tilts his head up to meet Kurogane’s gaze, and his eyes are wonderful, terrible, blue. There is power in that gaze, a power belied by the languid leaning the Valerian is still doing against the lintel, uncaring of the fact his captive could reach out and throttle him in less than a heartbeat. Kurogane has never seen eyes like that, not on all the mikos in Nihon.

Could…this boy…?

Kurogane still glares, working things through in his mind. “This isn’t a social call.”

The shinobi can hear the pout in the other’s voice. “How rude~!! Sir Blacky needs to learn some manners.”

“’Blacky’?!” Kurogane is reaching up to choke the other before he’s even had time to properly think about it, rage-fuelled instinct lashing out and being helplessly denied when his hands, instead of wrapping around a slim neck, smacked into an invisible barrier, a kekkai dividing him from the now-laughing stranger.

“What else am I to call you~?” The stranger straightens up, his eyes aglow and his lips curving through the mask, laughter still bubbling from him, airy, light. “Mysterious Sir Blacky refused to give me his name!”

Kurogane has never wanted to slaughter someone so much as now.

“…Kurogane.” He eventually growls out his name, if only to shut the stranger up. “Kurogane-tono.”

“So Sir Blacky is a lord…” the statement is breathed out, and then the stranger claps his hands. “My most noble ninja~!”

The urge to kill is still strong.

“Saaaa, Kuro-gon is scowling again!! Shame, shame!”

“My name is Kurogane.” The man from Nihon enunciates his syllables slowly and clearly, convinced he’s speaking to an idiot.

“Kuro-ga-neg?”

A twitch. “Kuroga-ne.” Is this really his ‘trial’? The idiot before him is certainly trying enough.

“Kuro-gag-nu?”

“Kurogane.”

There’s a pause. “…Kuro-puu,” the stranger says eventually, ignoring Kurogane’s instinctive baulk. “Don’t you think that’s cuter?”

Kurogane slams one hand against the barrier between them, ignoring the tingling feeling it sends shooting up his arm. “I don’t care if it’s ‘cuter’!! My name is Kurogane!!” The moment he got out of this cell –

“Kuro-pon is so grouchy…”

Kurogane still wants to shriek, but something else springs to mind, pulling him away from his need to yell. “How is it that you know of my job and my origins, but not my name or status?”

The stranger seems almost disappointed, losing his sport. “…My brother is a dreamseer. He saw your deportation from your world and your arrival in this one, but not much else.”

Dreamseers…Kurogane can understand, as both his mother and Tomoyo shared the streak alongside their miko abilities. Sometimes their visions possessed a startling clarity, other times what they saw was clouded, confusing flashes that were endlessly vague.

“…You’re too early, Kuro-pya, for what my brother saw.” The quiet words draw Kurogane from his musings, attention focusing on the stranger again. “A whole year too early, in your time.”

“You know what I’m here for.” It isn’t a question.

There’s a smile again, but it’s more twisted, dry, the mask showing the curve but lessening its magnitude. “It isn’t hard to guess, when a princess of another country sends two of her best assassins on an errand. She’s not the first to try and take responsibility for saving all the worlds. Hopefully, she’ll be the last.”

“Then you know where the magicians are.”

The blue, blue eyes shine again, pools for drowning men, and the stranger’s voice is low, soft as a snowflake. “Kuro-myu is cleverer than that.”

“You.” Kurogane’s earlier suspicion comes back to the forefront of his mind. “You’re -”

“It’s time to say bye-bye for now, don’t you think?” The smile is back, sweetly insincere, and Kurogane growls when he sees the stranger write glowing symbols into the air, the Valerian script. These pass through the barrier and encircle Kurogane, the shinobi struggling, not knowing what the other was doing.

“Wait -”

“Bye-bye,” breathes the stranger, and then the magic in the writing flows in, over and under and around Kurogane, pulling him down until he’s suddenly smacking into the ground again, breathing in grass and cherry blossoms and –

And he’s sitting in the Imperial gardens at Shirasagi, at home in Nihon, with a groaning Souma coming to beside him. And it hits him -

The masked idiot hasn’t given him back his sword.

A lot of powerful magicians and mikos were dreamseers, though it wasn’t a requirement. The visions could come when called or at random, flashes and sequences depending on the strength of the dreamseer, the certainty of the present or future that they saw. Dreamseers often dreamed of people they didn’t know, important twists in fate, occasionally coming around to their own loved ones. Dreamseers dreamed of other dreamseers, connected across the many worlds by their common bond of magic, bright sparks that called out to each other. It wasn’t uncommon for a dreamseer to predict the birth of a great miko or magician, to send out blessings and warmth to the unborn child still cradled in its mother’s womb, another potential addition to the community. Those with magic but without the ability to dreamsee could still feel their brethren across the worlds, although they could not predict the time of their coming. Everyone was connected.

No-one knew when it was exactly people started dreaming of the Twins or who exactly it was that had had the first dream of them, but suddenly dreamseers across the worlds were united in strong images of two blond boys, perfectly identical, stupidly powerful, as yet unborn. Magicians across worlds woke up crying, torn between happiness and a vague despair, feeling the power building as the Twins were conceived and began to grow, and their power grew and swelled with them. When they were finally born, they were strong, ridiculously strong, and as they grew they kept getting stronger, flourishing into their magical prowess, easily outstripping their elder counterparts.

The dreamseers kept dreaming, and dreamed of the Twins, elder, adult, blond, blue-eyed and beautiful, and saw magic so strong it ripped apart the worlds, completely without the consent of the two who wielded it. Together, united, they would be too strong for their own good; their own strength would drive them insane, kill them and kill everyone with it. For the safety of everyone –

Across the worlds, those who could dreamsee sent their assassins, alone, in pairs, in flocks, from the moment the Twins were born. All of the assassins failed, driven away by the strength of the children, the Twins fiercely protective of each other, holding onto each other as they grew up, as they grew stronger, as they followed a fate that should not have been, but was.

Tomoyo was a dreamseer, and she saw the Twins. She saw everything ending for their sake, and her heart tore a little for them – but there was nothing she could do. There were too many lives at stake –

She sent Kurogane and Souma to Valeria, to do as they could.

“Kuro-paa!” A warm body hits Kurogane’s the moment he arrives back in Valeria, having waited out the year a certain idiot had told him of even though he’d grouched and grumbled and complained all the while, much to the amusement of both his mother and Tomoyo. (The latter case he can understand – Tomoyo has Always Been Like That -, but the former was as incomprehensible as always. He’d lost Ginryuu. Ginryuu, the family sword, his late father’s sword. Why didn’t his mother care more..?

“Don’t worry,” she’d said, and smiled, kissing his brow.)

“You.” Kurogane is not in the mood for niceties, pulling at the lanky frame that’s wound itself laughingly around his neck and pushing back with his grip on the other’s hips – he can’t tell by his sight alone because the stranger is still masked, but the voice is the same, the hair is the same, the stupid nicknames are the same.

“Kuro-pon,” the hypocritical stranger from the cell smiled up at him, nameless, irritating, fake, “you came back.”

“My sword.”

The stranger – boy – man brings his hands together, as if to pray. “Did you miss me?”

“My sword.”

“I was so lonely without Kuro-pii~!! I told Fai all about the grouchy puppy in the dungeons and he was quite disappointed he never got to meet you so I said I’d take you to him as soon as you arrived -”

“Give me back my goddamned sword.”

The stranger wiggles out of his grip, slipping to the side and hanging off of the taller male’s arm. “Let’s go to dinner! You kept me waiting so long and I’m terribly hungry now – Kuro-tan is such a terrible person to keep his date waiting like that. I should scold you, I should, I should, but I shan’t because true love is blind and I shall just have to accept that Kuro-wan is just like that and -”

“Do you ever shut up?” Kurogane interrupts when there’s a pause between words, but his companion – his target – only laughs at him again, grating on the shinobi’s nerves, sharpening the blade of Kurogane’s temper in an impressive display of sparks.

“Here,” something pale and white is withdrawn from one of the stranger’s pockets, held up to Kurogane’s cheek. The shinobi can’t help but flinch as it moves onto him, spreading across his face, and he raises a hand to claw it off, sure his companion is trying to kill him – “It’s a mask; it won’t hurt you.”

Kurogane drops his hand automatically at the reassurance, and then he inwardly kicks himself, and tries to pry it off again. He does not know this man beside him, this man who knows what he’s here to destroy – why should he feel safe in what is technically his enemy’s company? There are no reassurances in this strange world, none –

“It’s done~!” His target chirps out the words, poking Kurogane’s – now masked, covered - cheek with one finger and causing the shinobi to smack it away. “Now let’s go eat! I want cake.”

…Alright, there was one reassurance. Some people could always be trusted to remain annoying.

Kurogane shakes his head – the mask is like a second skin, moving with his muscles. It feels strange. “I’m not going to dinner with you.”

His companion gasps. “Kuro-chii is standing me up?! I’m hurt; I’m wounded, I -”

Kurogane puts one hand over the idiot’s mouth, holding the words in even as the man – the magician – continues to try and mumble away. When the mumbling finally stops he removes his hand, meeting a pout with a glare of his own. “Get this damned mask off of me and give me back my sword.”

His companion is stubborn in his own way. “Not until you come to dinner with me.”

“I don’t know your name.” As if it really mattered.

“Yuui,” the name rolls out, foreign and strange, slipping off the tongue as easily as the blond plucks a pair of gloves from another pocket, offering them to Kurogane and hurrying on before the shinobi can offer protest again. “Kuro-chin should put these on, else he’ll be flung out of Court -” they’re at Court? “It’s not illegal, like not wearing a mask, but it’s terribly bad etiquette.”

Kurogane pulls on the gloves – reluctantly, but he needs Ginryuu and a pair of gloves (probably) won’t kill him - as Yuui links arms with him, the shinobi trying to shake his personal limpet off and away as they began walking, Kurogane semi-dragged out of the room he’d transported into and out into a grand hallway. “Why does everyone have to wear a mask?”

“The Queen Mother decreed it,” Yuui says lightly, “when she was Regent. Valeria was such a terribly superstitious place; everyone had to be unique, individual. Wearing a mask made sure no-one was individual, and so society lost its scapegoats.”

Distracted, some thread of the story nagging at him, Kurogane consents to being led down another corridor, this one a little busier, servants passing by in muted, understated furs to keep them warm in the cold country and yet still largely unnoticed. Kurogane glances at them, at their white masks, at the different coloured spots on their brow, the only thing differing from mask to mask. He reaches up to touch his own brow, not certain if he had a colour there at all – Yuui’s mask is totally blank. “What are the marks for?”

“Decoration – they change from day as the wearer wills it. ‘Crimson for health, green for the wealth, for the chaste there is yellow and brown. Rose for the looks, blue for the books, and white for the ones with the crown.’” Yuui recites the words smoothly, with the ease of something that has been learned by heart, at a young age, even as he stops at a set of great doors, guards on either side snapping to attention.

Kurogane’s gaze is drawn to the blond’s brow again. “So you -”

Yuui pushes open the door, and Kurogane’s following words are lost, drowned in the sudden rush of noise that hits them, a great hall at dinner, plates clattering, chairs scraping, trays being lifted and shifted by scuttling servants.

“Your Majesty.”

“King Yuui!”

People – courtiers – stop what they are doing and bow, Yuui waving a hand laconically for them to rise, to continue with what they’d been doing. This continues even as he’s still clutching at Kurogane, pulling the shinobi up the large hall to the far dais, the high table.

Kurogane is quietly furious – seething. “You’re the King.”

Yuui is oblivious to his anger, or pretends to be anyway. “No.” Kurogane is about to argue, angry the other could deny something so obvious, but they’ve stopped at the dais and someone is rising from their seat to greet them, gold-haired, white mask blank, fair and slim and – and – Yuui looks up at him again. “I’m one of them. This is my twin brother, Fai.”

Evening, dinner done, and the setting sun over the snow-capped mountains sets the horizon on fire, Yuui humming under his breath as he looks out of the window, his brother beside him, quieter, still. Kurogane sits in a chair close to the fire in the secluded room they’re in, and waits for the attention of the kings to be bestowed upon him again – he’d tried speaking before, moving, but he hadn’t received so much as a glance, the silence in itself a quelling feeling in the air.

The shinobi ponders as he waits, about the mission Tomoyo had first given him over a year before, the mission he’d resumed, insisting Souma would be unnecessary. He would be quick, efficient, separating the twin magicians his princess had dreamed of with the only true certainty that the many worlds could offer –

(“People die, Youou.” A hand on his cheek from the past, one of his father’s underlings, trying to comfort him, to stop his endless pleas for someone, anyone to bring back his dead parent. “All we can do is mourn, and know they are in a better place.”

“But chichue liked it here,” he’d insisted. “With us.”)

He comes back to himself to gloved fingers in his hair, pulling back his head as two sets of rather serious eyes study him.

“I want Ginryuu,” he says automatically, blurting out his demand like a young child, repetitive.

“Prisoners aren’t allowed pointy things.” It’s Yuui that speaks, recognisable by his voice, tone bordering on self-righteous amusement. It’s his brother that’s holding their ‘guest’.

Kurogane glares. “I’m a prisoner?”

“We can’t let an assassin be armed.” Fai’s voice is lower than Yuui’s, still soft, yet still firm. “We can’t let an assassin have free reign around the royal palace .”

‘We won’t make your task an easy one,’ Fai doesn’t say, but the words hang in the air regardless. He is the dreamseer, the one with the sight, the one who had seen, and clearly the vision must’ve been a one displeasing to him. To love your brother above all the worlds –

“I’ll babysit~!!” Yuui suddenly springs at Kurogane from the side, startling loose Fai’s hold as the more energetic twin leaps into the shinobi’s lap.

“Hell no.” Kurogane shoves him onto the floor, relishing the thud the blond makes upon impact.

“Mouuuuu,” Yuui whines from the ground, clutching at Kurogane’s trousers under his robes and attempting to sob dramatically into the shinobi’s knee, “Kuro-chuu is so terrible to meee! Fai, Fai, tell Kuro-tu he has to be kinder to me or you’ll turn him into a duck.”

Fai looks down at his brother, his tone mildly curious and far too calm for Kurogane’s liking. “Why a duck?”

Yuui looks up at him, teary-eyed and radiating melodrama. “I want a pet duck.”

“But I thought you wanted to babysit.”

“I can babysit a duck.” Yuui is perfectly earnest.

“But you’d probably lose a duck,” Fai points out reasonably, “and then the cooks would catch it and kill it and you’d be inconsolable for days.”

“I’m not an ‘it’.” Kurogane growls, interrupting the two brothers.

“You’re not a duck right now either,” says Yuui from the floor –

“But it can be arranged,” Fai finishes, and Kurogane glowers but takes the implied advice and shuts up, though not before hurling out one last complaint.

“He’s not old enough to watch me.” He refuses to call it ‘babysitting’.

Yuui puts a hand on his knee. “I’m older than Kuro-duck.” The shinobi looks disbelieving. “It’s true! Kuro-quack is so distrustful -”

“-With good reason -” thieving magicians taking his sword –

“- And so cruel!”

Kurogane eyes him. “Then how old are you?”

Yuui flaps a hand at him. “That’s a rude question to ask.”

“You’re not a woman.”

Yuui ponders for a moment more before pushing himself up, leaning across Kurogane to whisper his reply into the shinobi’s ear, the only real feature of the face the mask didn’t cover. His answer done, the blond king perches himself rather smugly on the edge of Kurogane’s seat, expressing a certain glee at the blank look flickering in red eyes.

“He’s not lying,” Fai chimes in before Kurogane can raise the query.

Kurogane is silent, stunned, trying to work out just what to say.

Yuui takes his hand, triumphant, and holds it up in the air. “I’m babysitting~!” He declares again, and Kurogane lets him, too shocked to protest.

“They don’t like twins in this world,” Fai tells Kurogane the following day off-hand, when they’re sitting at breakfast in the Kings’ private quarters and the shinobi is pulling at the mask on his face again, still trying to adapt to the sensation of wearing it. Yuui has not joined them yet – apparently the younger sibling likes his sleep. “But because we were royalty they decided not to kill us at birth, as is the practice for others. I think they were waiting until we were a little older to decide which of us would be the better heir, and then they would’ve killed the spare.”

Kurogane looks up at the blond beside him, Fai delicately cutting what looks like a peach into tiny segments, removing the stone and setting it to the side of his plate. Kurogane wants to know why the Valerian royals are entertaining him instead of killing him, but he doesn’t want to prompt them into action until Ginryuu is once more in its sheath. “…Your parents approved?”

“Father died of sickness a month or so after we were born.” Fai could be talking about the weather. “Mother poisoned the late king, our Uncle, and assumed Regency. No-one can prove that she did it, of course. Mother is…” a delicate pause. “Mother can be a little strange.”

“And she’s the one who decreed everyone should wear a mask?”

“From birth until death,” Fai agrees. “Everyone is identical, and so the social stigma of identical children is removed. Only the dead are without masks.”

“That’s why everyone thought Kuro-chama was a ghost the first time he came here,” arms wrap themselves around Kurogane’s neck from behind, damp hair touching the thin sliver of skin between chin and throat, a familiar head of gold propping its chin on the shinobi’s shoulder. Yuui has arrived at last, still warm from a bath. (He makes a dreadful babysitter.) “Kuro-toto, the grouchy poltergeist.”

“It’s Kurogane.” Kurogane tries to shake Yuui off of him but the king clutches on, playfully ruffling the shinobi’s short spiky hair and ducking effortlessly the fist aimed at his face.

“But that’s not cute at all,” Yuui is a demon, raised in an icy hell, stealing the food from Kurogane’s plate with no heed to the indignant squawks that follow his action.

“It’s not supposed to be ‘cute’!!”

“But tall, dark and brooding Kuro-myu needs a cute nickname, or everyone shall think he’s far too growly to play with~!” Yuui laughs at the other’s temper, darting out of reach when Kurogane grabs for him, the Nihon man’s chair screeching on the floor as he makes a sudden dive for the gleeful king.

Kurogane ends up chasing Yuui around the table for the rest of breakfast, swearing and going through a range of curses as the blond constantly eludes him.

Fai, calmly, remains in his seat, and finishes eating his peach.

#

The second part is here.

Happy Birthday to SJ~

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:23:11 GMT

As the subject says~ <3.It's archangelunmei's birthday, and I was determined I was going to mark the day somehow. ^w^ So, a little gift for you - *bows*

Title: Vision
Rating: PG/K+
A/N: Everytime Eagle, Lantis and Hikaru come up in conversation with SJ, little lovehearts and cries of 'OT3' do as well. Aside from it being incredibly amusing and rather adorable, it's terribly informative as well. X3 So - here, your OT3, SJ. It's not terribly obvious, and could be taken as friendship as well, but it's my first time playing with these three, and I was getting the hang of them. ^^;; *might come back to this canon/world again*
Set in the TRV-verse, in Infinity (long) after the main cast have been and gone to Celes.

The quiet whirr of mechanical wings is audible the moment Lantis sets foot through the great greenhouse doors, the balmy warmth inside a perfect contrast to the sleet currently raining down from the grey, smoke-filled skies over Infinity. The imported trees inside are lush and growing, the metal-winged birds commissioned to make the place feel more ‘natural’ flitting from branch to branch, occasionally voicing a synthetic string of cheeps, trilled melodies that are set to play at random. It’s a peaceful jumble of sound, layer upon layer peeling back as Lantis winds his way through the arched pathways of the greenhouse, pushing aside the rich foliage to the paved pavilion at the greenhouse’s heart.

Infinity doesn’t really know it, but the pavilion really is the heart of the country in so many ways. Tucked away behind walls of glass, in a capital of brick and steel and stone, with a literal army of machines that can wipe hundreds out in the dark back-alleys the country is famed for, muffled gunshots, knives slid sweetly through the ribs. The Vision family – puppeteers and strings both for all of Infinity, scheming, strategising and manipulating all ways of life.

(The country should just be thankful the family head was such…a pleasant young man.)

The wrought iron table is set close to a bank of gorgeous red flowers, an embellished fence beside dividing the pavilion from a pool where silver fishes swim – they’re made of metal as well. (It’s been a terribly long time since anything lived in Infinity save sallow-eyed humans searching for some way to while away their time; even the rats have long since fled the sinking ship.) Little splashes occasional flick up from the pool’s surface, drawing an absent smile from the sandy blond seated at the table watching the antics in the water, his chin perched idly on the back of his hands.

“Eagle,” Lantis draws to a halt a few steps away from the table and the youth seated there glances up at him, smiling a little more definitely, but raising one finger to his lips, a shushing motion.

“You’ll wake her.” A nod from the head of the Vision family in a certain direction draws Lantis’ attention to the wicker couch not far from the table, shaded by leafy palms so that the one resting on it may sleep sweetly, without the glare of the greenhouse’s artificial lighting in their eyes.

“Hikaru -” Lantis takes in the girl’s relaxed form, the slight smile gracing her features, the comfortable sprawl of her body along the couch, blanket draped lovingly around her tiny frame. He frowns slightly, glancing at his employer from the corner of his eye. “…I thought she had patrol duty this afternoon?”

“I kidnapped her.” Eagle looks wholly unrepentant.

“All afternoon?”

“Indeed.”

Lantis restrains a sigh, too used to the blond. “And what did you tell Ryuuzaki-chan, when she undoubtedly inquired where her patrol partner was?” There is a brief pause. Lantis eyes his employer a little more pointedly. “You did tell Ryuuzaki-chan you were taking Hikaru, didn’t you?” If he hadn’t, and Umi had grabbed hold of Fuu, the world is likely to be ending – painfully – for someone somewhere in Infinity. (The two girls take their adoptive big sister responsibilities seriously, and are forces to be reckoned with even when they aren’t holding sharp swords in their hands.)

Eagle tilts his head and dimples, and it’s all too easy to envision the proverbial butter refusing to melt in his mouth. “I sent Geo.”

…It’s little wonder then, that Geo regards Eagle as a demon sent directly from hell.

Eagle, with the air of an angel, docilely offers Lantis the teapot on the table before him, his eyes alight with that glitter of amusement most people who know him have come to fear. Eagle lives, apparently, to make sure others curse him. “Would you like something to drink?”

If Lantis were a weaker person, he would dearly like to dump the teapot over his employer’s head. (That would, however, make a noise, and probably wake up Hikaru – who really needs to rest more.) So Lantis sits, and lets Eagle pour him tea, and tries so very hard not to think about how Geo will rant later about Eagle’s tricks yet again later that evening.

It’s peaceful, for a little while, and Lantis knows why Eagle had the greenhouse built, this pretence at the natural world that Infinity has lost. Eagle’s regained just a little of it – even if it’s all a lie it’s a sweet one, a vision of the future that the country’s uncrowned king will forcibly take everyone towards. Eagle is young but Eagle is determined, stepping through the shades of grey to drag Infinity out of the black. This is Eagle’s world, and he – alongside those who faithfully love and serve him – will make sure it’s a good one.

Outside, the sleet finally stops coming down, and the sky clears a little. Looking up through the greenhouse’s panes, cup of tea in hand, Lantis fancies he can see the evening stars.

Fic: Ever After (10.1)

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:49:26 GMT

Chapter X

Once upon a time, back before most stories began, there was a little dark-haired boy – a prince – who woke one day in his bed knowing he’d had a terrible dream. It lingered bitterly in his mind, a vision of the future, and was to plague his sleep for years to come. Distraught, he flung himself into study, researching the arcane to try and prevent what he had dreamed coming to pass, and at length he became a great magician, renowned throughout all the lands.

Once upon a time, a stupidly, ridiculously long, long time ago, there was a girl. She had no real name ad no-one quite knew where she had come from – some say she had walked straight out of a dream. The prince-magician certainly thought so, then a grown man, hearing of a beautiful young lady on the edges of his parents’ kingdom, someone who could see the future when she stretched out her hand, read fates by the tilt of a head or the wish of a heart. He went to her and watched her tend her garden of butterflies before making himself known, omitting his royal title he took her hand and kissed it, greeting her like an old, dear friend.

“I don’t know you.” She seemed mildly perplexed by his behaviour, letting the handsome stranger have her hand for the moment as she studied him, peeling apart the threads of destiny around him.

“But I’ve known you,” he told her in reply with a smile, “for such a terribly long time.”

“Then you can wait a little longer for a friendly reunion,” she retorted with a dryness he’d fallen for years before he’d known her, “as right now I’ve other idiots to attend.” And she flung him out of her house.

With his parents’ permission, the magician went away for a very long time, leaving the kingdom, going to explore distant lands. He learned even more while he was out there, but still he could not find the answer to the dream that had plagued him since his youth. Eventually, he concluded, the world he lived in simply did not have the solution in it yet.

The prince returned to his kingdom a long time later in secrecy, his head full of strange thoughts and knowledge, something changed about his eyes. The girl – now a woman, still beautiful, even wiser than she had been when he’d left – saw it immediately when he entered her house, taking his face in her hands and frowning at him.

“What…have you done?”

He wouldn’t tell her, but the whole kingdom was gossiping about the new man who had appeared at the palace with royal blood, a prince, according to the rumours, who had been hidden away from the public eye – some mistress’ child? The royal family had acknowledged him, legitimised him, the magician-prince’s new younger brother.

“I’m still looking,” he explained to her eventually, nonsensically, refusing any and all details to her immediate frustration. “I promise.”

“Magicians,” she fumed, taking the bottle of sake he’d offered her as a gift and pouring some out into two cups, “should not make promises lightly.”

Once upon a time, a good few years after tears and loss and heartbreak, the magician found an answer, an arrowing pain that went on unceasingly for all of them, a long, weary, winding road of suffering to disaster. He was King of what had once been his parents’ country, the crown a bitter, lonely thing. He had no heir of his own – the throne would pass to his cousins upon his death, his father’s relations.

He dreamed more than ever, fast asleep whilst wide awake, drawing solace from the celestial guardians he’d made with his magic, stirred into livelihood with the sun, resting in the moon’s cool arms. Prophecies, visions…he took what they showed them as his punishment, just desserts for his actions, and quietly he planned, searching for the strongest path in the future, the brightest, some way to undo the transgressions that had been done.

He grew older, wearier, even though his magic left him looking forever young. Eventually, a path became clear to him, and as he felt himself dying he dismissed his guardians despite their distress, sending them to the royal family with their orders, and split his soul in two, sending the first out as a light, a child that was to born in the future, a boy, Fujitaka. He would have no memories, no magic of the life before, blameless, pure.

The other half…the other half was born too, half-grown, stepping from the split as a young boy, the child who had first dreamed the terrifying dream aeons ago. His smile was ageless and sad, half-forgotten memories lingering in his mind, his incarnation’s magic hanging around his shoulders. He was called Eriol, and he went away from the kingdom, taking his misfortunate magic with him, and made himself two new guardians, too heartsick to be totally alone.

He came back, after a long while had passed, for a visit of sorts. He left his guardians behind him and found his way to a very special shop in the middle of a sacred lake in the middle of the Enchanted Forest, and he met a woman there. A very beautiful woman with no real name and a broken heart, and the boy understood why it was he had instinctively created his guardians in the image of butterflies.

She froze when she saw him, and then he saw the flare of anger in her eyes. “Get out.”

“This shop can only be found by those who have need of it,” he told her calmly. “I have a wish.”

“I cannot grant it,” she snapped. “Now get out.”

“Yuuko -” She turned her back on him, and the children she had made watched him stonily, flanking her either side. “I am not him. I have his magic; I have his memory, aged as it is, but I am not him. Why do you think I could see past your barrier, enter this shop? Your wish does not extend to me.” Eriol paused, seeing the other remained unmoving. “Please, Ichihara-san, you know even better than I what exactly has been done. My previous incarnation saw a way to undo it – to end the dream at last.”

Yuuko turned, slowly, reluctantly, and he saw her eyes were hazy with the threads of the future, hitsuzen. “…They’re crying,” she said eventually, softly. “All the children are crying.”

Eriol’s smile faded completely, his face solemn. “I’m sorry.”

Yuuko eyed him contemplatively, then waved a hand. “…You’re not him.” She turned, and headed for the kitchen in her home, motioning for Eriol to take a seat. “I’ll be back soon – I have the feeling this conversation is going to require a strong drink.”

Once upon a time, so many, many years later, there was a dark-haired boy who was really coming to a sort of home when he entered Yuuko’s shop but didn’t know it, who woke on his futon one day knowing he’d had a peculiar dream. He’d dreamt of a girl, green-eyed and lonely, sitting in a great tree surrounded by sakura blossoms. She was sad but she had smiled for him, comforting him when she realised he was lost.

The boy found a feather in the garden that day when he was tending the plants there, something warm and soft that glowed with power, and took it to Yuuko. The woman declared it was his, and asked him what he would do with it, and so Watanuki asked Yuuko how he could give gifts to people in dreams. She told him, for the price of him fetching the highest-growing apple on the tallest tree in the entire forest, and that night, Watanuki gave the feather to the girl in his dreams. He knew it was hers, somehow, by the warmth the feather had emitted, and he smiled when she smiled, taking his hands and thanking him, giving him her name – ‘Sakura’.

The following day, Watanuki asked Yuuko how he could help Sakura. She told him how and he made a wish, giving away most of his memories of his life in Nihon, of Sakura herself, a future price.

Yuuko walked in Sakura’s dreams that night, and gently explained why it was that she wouldn’t see Watanuki again for a very long while. The princess had looked shaken, guilt-stricken that someone could give away so much for her, but looked up bravely when Yuuko laid a hand on one shoulder.

“Everything will be alright,” she said firmly, as if speaking the words would make things so.

“Everything will be alright,” Yuuko agreed, and left the princess to her dreams.

#

“Yuuko-san,” Watanuki could have such a terribly grim face when he was serious, dream-lost eyes sharpened, focused in a way they weren’t ordinarily. It was such a pity it took just as grim events for that side of the child to show – purpose could be found elsewhere, in situations that didn’t carry such heavy costs. “Yuuko-san, I have a wish.”

Yuuko picked up the untouched drink she’d poured herself a little earlier – red, red wine. She wasn’t much of a wine drinker, getting through more traditional sake, occasional some stronger whisky for the burn, but…oh, anything would do right now. Yuuko looked down at her glass, seeing her own pale face reflected back up at her from scarlet depths. “You can’t afford it.”

Watanuki, naturally, like many others before him, couldn’t accept that. “Yuuko-san -”

“You can’t afford it,” Yuuko repeated, flicking one finger against her flute of wine, the glass ringing out once with a high, lonely note. The black Mokona, still sleeping beside on the couch, gave a sleepy murmur, low discontent, and then rolled over and fell back into the depths of slumber. “With the knowledge you possess you would trade me not for an eye but for a life – you can’t afford it.”

“Yuuko-san…” Watanuki was aghast, glad he was sitting down already, the world tilting alarmingly as his thoughts raced. “Yuuko-san, please. Isn’t there something I can do?” This was his fault; he had to fix things somehow.

Yuuko’s eyes softened slightly as she looked at her employee, at Watanuki, and once more put down her drink. There would be a time for alcohol later –

Later, only a little later, Yuuko stood on the edge of her island and watched Watanuki disembark from the boat he’d rowed over the lake to the other side, a pale figure in the night. He was running practically as soon as his feet touched dry land, speeding off into the dangerous forest to certain peril because…because he was Watanuki, and he was a martyr and he had such a terribly, terribly pure heart.

It was a wonder he hadn’t managed to kill himself yet.

Mokona, woken from his nap when Yuuko had told Watanuki what it was he had to do, sat on the witch’s shoulder and watched Watanuki go, his long ears drooping around his round body, soft and sad. “Watanuki really doesn’t remember, does he?”

Yuuko reached up to touch the little creature’s blue earring with a sigh, stroking a long fingertip down one black ear to offer what little comfort she could. “No,” she felt old. Old and weary, and her heart was tired. “No, he doesn’t.”

Mokona’s voice was small, snuggling into Yuuko’s petting, seeing his friend disappear beneath the forest trees. “Will Watanuki be alright?”

For a few moments, Yuuko didn’t answer. When she finally did, she was turning back to her house, Mokona a warm presence pressed against her neck. “Come, Mokona…I think it’s time to wake up Syaoran-kun, don’t you?”

#

His head ached, a steady throbbing behind his eyes, banging him into rude consciousness against his will. As his eyes slowly opened all his other aches and pains decided to make themselves known, as well as the freezing cold hardness of whatever it was he was lying on.

“It is generally,” spoke a voice, cool and clipped and vaguely sardonic, “considered bad manners to drop into a dinner uninvited.”

Kurogane made a low grumbling noise that could’ve been either agreement or a curse, pushing himself up onto one elbow and automatically glowering in the direction the voice had come, not even bothering to focus before letting his displeasure be known.

A violet gaze – slitted and cat-like and painfully not human – looked back at him disdainfully, letting Kurogane slowly regain his focus on the abnormal whiteness of the stranger’s face, the long silver braid of the stranger’s hair, the huge, white, feathery wings folded behind the stranger’s back, impressive even whilst not spread out to their full length.

This guy was an –

“You’re also late,” rumbled another voice behind the winged guy (quite a way behind too, by the sounds of it – the room had good acoustics, then), but Kurogane was still trying to get his head round the fact he was busy glaring down an angel to look for the source right then. “Sakura saw your arrival a good few weeks back.” There was a vague squeak – another voice, clearly Not Expecting To Be Brought So Suddenly Into The Conversation -, and something that sounded like someone attempting to vanish into their seat – the rub of the fabric was quite distinctive. “Well,” said the rumbling voice a little more quietly, clearly speaking to the squeaking one, “you did. You made me save him some of the takoyaki,” here the speaker turned vaguely accusing, tones of mourning being adopted, “and he didn’t turn up to eat it. Takoyaki.” Clearly, Kurogane had performed some cardinal sin by missing the takoyaki-deadline.

“I can’t say I knew I was expected.” Kurogane finally looked past the stony-eyed angel, his focus regained but his head still throbbing, taking in the long expanse of a tremendous wooden dining table, a teenage girl with auburn-brown hair sitting perched in a large chair at the head, a golden – winged – lion sitting on the floor at her side.

…His life just kept getting weirder by the second, didn’t it.

The lion turned to the girl, perfectly conversational. “Can I eat him?”

The girl sounded scandalised, and smacked the lion on the nose. “Kero-chan!”

The angel stood from where he’d been crouching over Kurogane, opening out his wings – that was an awe-worthy wingspan – and flying the length of the hall they appeared to be in to reach the lion – ‘Kero’ - and girl, standing on the opposite side of the child’s chair to the great cat.

The girl – ‘Sakura’, if the lion’s earlier comment and the squeak had been anything to go by – looked up at the angel. “Is he alright, Yue-san?”

‘Yue’ folded his wings closed once more and assumed an air of utter disinterest, perfectly reflected in the dryness of his tone. “He’ll live.”

Kurogane, from his position on the floor of the other end of the floor, growled at the comment and pushed himself up to his feet, reaching a little unsteadily for Souhi on his belt – damn the magic, the idiot mage’s or otherwise, for affecting him so! -, only to discover his sword wasn’t there. (Somehow, somewhere, the deities were laughing at him. Or maybe just Yuuko, the bitch.)

“I’m so glad you’re okay!” Sakura seemed to have paid absolutely no attention to Kurogane’s ill-temper, pushing back her seat with a horrible screech, ignoring her guardians’ winces and dashing down the hall towards the shinobi before Yue could reach out and grab hold of the back of her voluminous dress.

“Mistress!”

“Sakura!”

Both lion and angel swept their wings wide, taking to the air after Sakura, but Kurogane had been taking even steps towards the oncoming girl and the youth herself was quite quick considering the weight of all those frills she was wearing.

Sakura reached Kurogane before Yue and Kero reached Sakura, bowing down rather energetically before the shinobi – to the sound of Yue’s rather outraged cry of ‘Mistress!’ - and smiling up at him.

“My name is Sakura – it’s so wonderful to finally meet you!!”

“Sakura-hime,” Yue corrected stiffly, alighting at the girl’s side and shooting a rather poisonous look at Kurogane. (So much for indifference.) “Mistress, your supper will be getting cold.”

Kurogane ignored the angel, looking down at the girl – the princess. She had to be around Tomoyo’s age, but they looked nothing alike. “…You know of me?”

“I…saw you,” Sakura explained a little hesitantly, absently twisting one of the frills on her dress with one hand, “in a dream. That’s how we knew you were going to be coming.”

So it had been less that the girl had saw and more that she had seen – the princess was a seer. (Brilliant. Another one.)

“…Kurogane,” Kurogane finally replied in a mutter, seeing the likelihood of Yuuko being the one behind his current misfortune trebling in an instant.

“I beg your pardon?” Sakura looked politely confused, green eyes hitting the lights in a manner many would probably dub ‘sweet’ and reminded Kurogane far too much of Tomoyo. Although the Tsukoyomi and Sakura were so physically different this…this girl before him couldn’t help but strike a pang of homesickness in Kurogane, a brief longing for the home he hadn’t seen for half a year.

“My name,” the shinobi reiterated, a little more clearly the second time around, “is Kurogane.”

“Oh,” Sakura blushed a little, sensing that that answer should’ve been obvious, but covered her actions up again with another quick bow (Yue hissed again). “Then welcome to castle Leval, Kurogane-san!” Her smile was pleasant, open and warm. “Would you like some supper?”

The fog around Watanuki shifted rather ominously, strange chittering echoing around shadowy trunks; flickers of movement lost to the night and blurred landscape. This end of the forest was even worse after the sun went down, colder and danker, Watanuki shivering as he put one step in front of the other, the hairs of the nape of his neck rising with the knowledge that he was being watched by an endless number of unseen, angry eyes. Nothing came close to him though, warded away by the silver flower pinned to his shift-front that he’d plucked from the area earlier in the day, the cause of this mess. The miasma around this area made him feel sick.

‘This way is fey territory,’ stupid Doumeki – couldn’t he have been more specific? Everyone in the world didn’t communicate through monotone; stupid idiots should volunteer information before it became necessary, so that people were warned ahead of time. ‘Some fey are worse than others.’

Stupid Doumeki. Idiot bird.

“My, my, my,” the airy voice curled through the fog, low and amused and sending another round of shivers down Watanuki’s spine, the youth ducking under one of the off-white ropes that dangled from the trees around him, heavy, sticky loops and strands. He – they reminded him of something, but he just couldn’t – not quite – “have you brought my flower home, little thief?” The voice was louder, closer, and Watanuki looked up.

A young woman sat on a loop of the rope that bedecked the forest around them some way above Watanuki’s head, tumbling gold curls around her pale face framing her black eyes, thick and dark and coldly unforgiving. She smiled when she saw she had Watanuki’s attention, leaning forward a little in her seat and smiling with red, red lips thoughtfully pursed.

“Well, aren’t you cute?”

Watanuki frowned up at her, his stomach lurching uncomfortably. “Who are you?”

“It’s rude to call upon a lady without first finding out her name.” The woman chided him, wagging one long finger as a rebuke. “It is ruder still, however, to take what doesn’t belong to you. Really, child, didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” She smiled again, the expression failing to reach her eyes, seeing Watanuki’s flinch. “Don’t you already know who I am? I would wager some part of you has already guessed…” The woman stood on her loop, perfectly balanced, mild currents of air blowing the wispy black dress she wore around her stocking-clad legs. One gloved hand reached out to loosely grasp the rope holding her aloft, its owner’s expression imperious as she looked down from above. “The humans call me Jorougumo, boy, the Spider Queen. The flower you wear upon your breast belonged to my underlings and kin - adorning it like you have was a good way to call our attention; my brethren take a certain pleasure in taking their revenge on those who flaunt their offences against us.”

Watanuki looked at her. “It’s just a flower -”

“To you perhaps,” the Jorougumo interrupted, “but then the perpetrator of a crime rarely feels the same way as the victim. Those flowers are precious to us - we grow them from our webs to use and trade throughout the forest.”

“You took Doumeki’s eyesight.”

“The eagle?” Watanuki nodded. “I heard he was a messenger of Ashura-ou’s Court – what was he doing with such a strange human child as yourself?”

Watanuki looked at the Jorougumo steadily, though his insides were whirling unpleasantly – he felt like he was going to retch, just wanting to sink onto his knees. “Please give his eye back.”

The woman shook her head. “He took my flower.”

Watanuki could feel his desperation rising. “That was me!”

“Then he is guilty by association.” The Spider Queen smiled, something sweet that was totally at odds with the situation. “You’re such a kind boy. Did you come all this way to help your friend?”

“Please,” Watanuki repeated, “give his eye back.” The Jorougumo turned away. “If you must, take mine instead!! Just…please give the eye back.”

The woman before him paused, turning back to the human and leaning forwards, curious. “Is that bird so very important to you?”

“He…” Watanuki sagged slightly. “It’s my fault his eye is gone.”

Ropes of white flew in from nowhere, lashing themselves around Watanuki’s waist and arms and sharply yanking the youth up into the air, Watanuki struggling until he was raised to the height of the Jorougumo, the woman placing a long, pointed fingernail in the soft skin below his right eye. This close her presence was overwhelming, the miasma in the area bringing Watanuki to the verge of passing out. “You’re offering your eye to me in trade, as simply as that?”

“I -” Watanuki swallowed when she pressed a little harder with her nail, feeling his Adam’s apple bump against the chain of the pendant he wore about his throat. The web binding him stung and burned, searing where it touched his skin. “I am.”

The Jorougumo leaned closer, hair falling around her face, raising her palm and covering the boy’s right eye, dropping his glasses to the floor. Her skin was cold. “It won’t ever come back.”

“I’ll make the trade.”

The Jorougumo pressed harder against his eye, Watanuki crying out as pain suddenly burned in his socket, white ripping through his skull. When he came back to himself it was to blurry vision, divided in two. On his right side he saw himself, blinking and bleary, on his left the Jorougumo, cradling a small smoky-blue sphere in her hands. That…was his eye? As he watched her (and watched himself through the eye she held) she raised the sphere to her red lips, parting them and swallowing the ball, his right eye descending through dark and then –

Nothing, his connection to the eye disappeared completely, the sphere dissolving inside the smiling creature before him.

“I hate this.” Watanuki looked at her, alarmed, the Jorougumo shaking her head. “I will return your friend’s eye; you have paid for it – but what is to stop me from taking more from you? You wandered so naively into my lair - why should I not take more? You clearly give no value to your own person – I would be doing you a favour, to remove the responsibility of yourself from your hands.”

Watanuki’s mouth dried up. “I -”

“Does no-one love you, boy,” the Jorougumo asked him coolly, “or do you just not care? You make a mockery of any affection bestowed on you by treating your own existence like trash to be thrown away.”

“That’s not true.” Watanuki clenched his fists, trying to focus, trying to stay awake.

“Oh, but it is.” The Spider Queen cradled his face with her hands, black eyes foreign and cold. “Your eye was so very delicious. Since nobody loves you, should I take your left one as well?”

“Let him go.”

Watanuki recognised that voice, glancing down to see a familiar head of brown hair, Syaoran glaring up at the Jorougumo, his sword held out before him. Watanuki had no idea what he was doing there. “Syaoran-kun…”

The Jorougumo looked up from Watanuki, glancing down to the forest floor. She smiled. “So many cute boys are coming to visit me today. I should be quite flattered.”

“Let him go,” Syaoran repeated, tightening his grip on his weapon.

“Or else?” The woman sweetly enquired, laughing when the youth shifted into a more aggressive stance. “This is what I like.” She flicked her hand and more thick strands of her web shot down at Syaoran, aiming to capture the brunet the same way they’d done Watanuki.

Syaoran evaded them, leaping from rope to rope and using them as platforms as he went up, vaulting into the air and slicing at the sticky strands that held Watanuki in place. Freed, Watanuki dropped, flailing and clutching onto part of the web nearest to him and digging his fingers in to stop his fall, hissing as the substance it was made of burned his skin, weakening his grip. His vision was already hazy, the miasma choking, and unconsciousness only an eyeblink away –

Watanuki was out cold when the pain and pressure around him finally got the better of him, his grip slackening as he let go, still quite a way above the forest floor, and plummeted towards the ground.

The moon was high in the sky when Yuuko entered the room where her patient was laid, Syaoran solemn-eyed as he knelt at Watanuki’s bedside, deep in thought. Yuuko didn’t speak to him as she went to place Watanuki’s repaired glasses beside the sleeping youth’s pillow, within easy reaching distance for when Watanuki awoke. Her long dress rustled slightly as she knelt on the opposite side of her customer, the only sound in the room.

“She…” It was Syaoran who broke the silence, eventually, not looking at anything in particular, his voice quiet. “The Jorougumo…she didn’t fight, after I caught Watanuki-kun.”

Yuuko folded her hands in her lap, her long hair loose and trailing about her knees. “Perhaps her point had already been made.” Syaoran looked confused. “No creature,” Yuuko elaborated slowly, “is disconnected from everything in the world in which they live – none. Every occurrence is an event divided into two, action and reaction, a process of give and take. Simply by existing you force others to acknowledge your existence, and bonds that are made – however briefly – do not easily break. All is half and half with responsibility borne for both sides. Watanuki-kun…” Yuuko paused for a few seconds, taking in the slumbering visage of the bandaged youth, the eye-patch covering Watanuki’s right eye. “Watanuki-kun still needs to learn this.”

Syaoran nodded slightly – assent. “What is the price for his treatment?”

“It’s already covered.” Yuuko uncurled one of her hands, and something white and blue and glowing rested there, drawn from the air itself, apparently, by the witch. It was the Zashiki-warashi’s pendant, her gift to Watanuki. “This was not the use that that girl intended the necklace for, but I think she will be glad that it is aiding Watanuki-kun all the same.”

Again, Syaoran nodded. The Zashiki-warashi, from what he’d seen of her, would be thankful to help Watanuki in any way. “…What should I do with this?” He raised the faded silver flower that he’d lain on his lap, some of the vibrant red of the inner core of the bloom dulled with time and wear. He’d almost crushed it when he’d carried Watanuki back to the shop, this flower that Himawari would never receive, struggling against the strange feeling that swept through him when he came into close contact with the other boy.

“I asked you to retrieve Watanuki as your third and final quest,” Yuuko replied, tucking the pendant she held back out of sight. “I never specified you had to stop the Jorougumo from taking his eyesight completely, or indeed any other part of his body. That was your own doing, your own services rendered to Watanuki, and so that precious flower is his payment to you.”

“I don’t want it.” Syaoran did not want payment for helping a friend.

“Yet you must accept it,” Yuuko said sternly. “Services rendered must be paid for, and prices demanded, however unconsciously, must be received.” When Syaoran still looked reluctant the woman reached across, plucking the flower from the boy’s grasp. “I will hold this in trust for you, until the time that it is needed.”

Syaoran couldn’t see himself needing a flower anytime soon. “Thank you, Yuuko-san.”

The witch rose to her feet, the flower still between her fingertips, and towered over both of the children who were so much closer to the ground – in height, in age, in weariness and wisdom. The moon bleached her pale skin white, her hair darker than the night sky outside. “I apologise that your night tonight is such a busy one, Syaoran-kun, but we must move on now.” Syaoran looked up at her inquiringly. “You have finished paying your price to me.” The boy was instantly on his feet, Yuuko moving to the door and ushering him out ahead of her, sliding the frame noiselessly back into place behind her so that Watanuki could rest, undisturbed. She led them to her main lounge and Syaoran was first in, stopping only a few paces into the room and staring at a familiar blond figure on the witch’s couch, not understanding why the man was there at that time of night, cradling what looked like a cup of sweetened tea.

“Fai-san?” The man looked up from his – untouched – drink, and his face was just as pale as Yuuko’s, probably worse. He wasn’t smiling, his eyes utterly blank, and Syaoran didn’t understand. “Fai-san, why are you here?”

“For the same reason everyone comes to see Yuuko-san,” the mage replied, lips curved with a distant bitterness as he watched the woman herself walk into the room, her own expression still serious, solemn. “I made a wish.”

Second part here.

Tsubasa 230...

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:46:55 GMT

So Asschin is to Clow as Watanuki is to Syaoran – Fei Wong was created to fill the gap Clow left when he went to another dimension to pay his price of time for his unconscious wish to keep Yuuko alive. Asschin was formed from that wish, and so he’s just a little obsessed with keeping it up – it’s basically his whole existence. (If Yuuko dies, so does he?)

On another point – dear Lord Kurogane had some pretty pages to himself this time around. Very pretty, and I’m much more a Fai fan. He got to do the dramatic last blow to Asschin, and so he’s vindicated – but…oh. Afterwards, when Fei Wong has crumbled, he drops his sword. He drops his sword, his precious Ginryuu, his father’s blade, and grabs Fai. Cue squealing.

As for the Syaorans – they’re in nothing with no-one. That big black background is what we last saw in XxxHolic, when they hand the glasses back to Watanuki, so we can expect to see him again in the upcoming Tsubasa chapters. And with Watanuki comes Doumeki – and his magical timey-wimey egg, that nothing comes out of. …Come on, CLAMP. Be kind and put the pieces together in the way I’m thinking you’re putting them.