Archive of Our Own ^beta

No matter where you went in the palace, the birdsong was always there to greet you; that was one of the nicer aspects of Clow Country. He’d thought it strange at first, that so many birds would make the desert their home. But the waters that flowed beneath the city made the kingdom its own oasis, and the humans who lived here certainly weren’t the only ones taking advantage of that fact. The scent of jasmine was another thing which followed him from room to room here.

He concentrated a moment on the sweet, heavy aroma, the way he’d concentrated on the birdsong, and then he focused on the heat radiating from the wall at his back, through his light-colored tunic and into his bones. The heat carried its own scent, too, lighter than the blossoms and dry, like the sharp aroma of dust lilting out from the storage room just off the balcony. Everything had been covered in thin white sheets in there, a precaution against the ever-invasive sand, but he thought the vague, ghostly shapes resembled tables. Extra pieces set aside for royal banquets, no doubt, the way Tomoyo-hime had extra sets of -

“Ow.”

The softly hissed word slipped involuntarily from beneath his carefully endless train of thought, effectively derailing it. Golden eyes - never blue when he was feeding; always gold - shot upward to find his gaze, the puncture wounds in his forearm stinging as needle-sharp fangs were abruptly removed.

“No,” he murmured quickly, shaking his head slightly. His own eyes skated away from the gaze attempting to hold them, over the blonde’s shoulder to some unspecified point on the horizon. “It’s fine. Just - “

“- Scar tissue,” Fai realized, his voice slightly hoarse and entirely apologetic. “I’m sorry; it’s just that there’s a lot of -”

“Because it’s just above the gauntlet. Try higher, where the shoulder guard goes.”

Thin, warm fingers - always cold now, except for when he was feeding - ghosted lightly along the curve of Kurogane’s shoulder, silently asking permission. The ninja didn’t look; he simply nodded and set his jaw, keeping his expression blank as the sharp fangs sank into his skin again.

There was a figure moving on the horizon line, he realized now. It was too far away to see clearly, but he could tell from the way it moved that it was the prince, and that he was riding. Dreams, Kurogane recalled absently. He’d been having dreams, he’d said; prophetic ones, like the princess did, though not as clear. Her inquisitive green eyes had been clear - these weren’t dreams the siblings shared, then - but Touya had been on edge enough to take to patrolling the castle’s boundaries when his duties allowed, often accompanied by his friend. Yuya? Yuki? Something like that. The other blonde mage. The priest. Privately, Kurogane was willing to put his faith in Sakura’s visions. If she didn’t see anything worth fretting over, then they were probably fine. But it never hurt to have an extra set of eyes on the perimeter, so sometimes in the evenings, he’d -

“The veins are too deep here,” Fai murmured. His voice sounded the same, and yet different when he was like this; there was a charged undercurrent to it when he fed, like the undercurrent in the air during a lightning storm. A latent threat, but one present just the same. Kurogane wasn’t particularly proud of the fact, but it still made him shiver. “Maybe -”

Kurogane felt Fai’s blood-hot lips brush against his neck, but some automatic, self-preserving instinct kicked in, and he pushed the vampire away before he could think better of it. “No. Not there.”

And then Fai did something he’d never done before. He growled. The angry, warning sound finally brought the ninja’s eyes back around to meet Fai’s, golden irises now narrowed. The hand Fai had had on Kurogane’s opposite shoulder to balance himself tightened its grip, and for a moment long, vampiric nails dug through the fabric of the ninja’s shirt, pressing painfully into the skin below. The look in his eyes was challenging. Gazing into those blazing golden depths made Kurogane feel dizzy, a light-headedness that had nothing to do with blood loss. The hand he’d lifted to shove Fai away abruptly dropped, boneless. For a moment, Kurogane thought Fai would lunge forward and bite him anyway, and he knew that he’d do nothing to stop him.

But the moment passed. Fai blinked - once, twice; three times - and then, through an obvious effort of will, he turned his head away.

The hand clawing Kurogane’s shoulder dropped off as the mage sat back on his heels, and now it was his turn to carefully look at the middle distance as he raised an arm to wipe his mouth clean on his sleeve.

Kurogane waited a beat, reading the tense lines in Fai’s wiry body. Then he said quietly, “Don’t storm off.”

“Temper tantrums are much more your style, Kuro-tan.”

“Ok. But don’t.”

Even though the nickname was there, Fai’s own brand of reassurance, his tone was still off. Not raspy and metallic, the way it had been moments before, but guarded. They’d been getting better. Fai didn’t use that tone so often with him anymore.

Which made it all the more obvious when he did.

“You only want scars where you can hide them. I get that.”

He was trying to be diplomatic, now - another defense mechanism he often employed. Maybe he’d learned that at Ashura’s court, or maybe he’d picked it up somewhere else along the way. To Kurogane’s way of thinking, it wasn’t his most endearing quality.

Kurogane didn’t do diplomacy well.

“You think I’m ashamed of … this?” he extrapolated matter-of-factly. He was quietly flexing the arm Fai had been feeding from now, willing feeling back into his blood-deprived muscles.

“You can’t even look at me during. Do you think I hadn’t noticed that?”

“That isn’t why I don’t look at you.”

The loss of his other arm had severely limited Fai’s feeding grounds of late. Though the bond they shared granted Kurogane abnormal healing powers, the scars from previous feedings were still visible, the often-abused flesh unable to fully erase the marks now. He hadn’t really noticed it before. What was one more scar?

But of course, Fai had noticed. The mage reached out now to run his cooling fingers along the faintly raised marks, blue-gold eyes cloudy and far away - like a blind man obsessively reading the braille of his own condemnation.

“You’re … different when you’re feeding,” Kurogane explained quietly, even though Fai hadn’t asked. “I need to keep my head, because we’re both vulnerable, and I know it’s hard for you to gauge my limits on your own.” The word ‘limits’ caught a little in his throat. But the fact that he’d been able to say it at all meant that he’d changed, too. “But I can’t concentrate when I look at you. It’s some sort of vampire-predator thing, I guess. Some kind of … hypnotic energy. It makes me dizzy.”

Fai blinked again. Then he frowned. He still wasn’t looking at Kurogane, but his fingers had stilled at a point just above Kurogane’s wrist, and remained there. “... I wasn’t aware I was doing that,” he said after an apprehensive pause.

“You didn’t used to.”

Fai didn’t immediately respond to this. They both sat with their backs against the sun-warmed palace for a while, watching the ever-singing birds play among the tree tops below. There were no people, aside from the occasional glimpse of the prince and the priest off in the distance. They’d - well, Fai - had chosen this spot for his feedings for precisely that reason. No one ever entered the storage room attached to the balcony, and the gardens below had more or less run to riot. Places this big always had their forgotten corners.

Honestly, the sudden spike of self-consciousness had surprised Kurogane. He’d thought that after everything that had happened, they were finally past all that. But then, maybe it was hard, being surrounded by people so good and pure of heart. The king and queen were as sweet and loving as one would expect of Sakura-hime’s parents, and their subjects rightfully adored them. The servants were pleasant and efficient at their jobs, and kept the main body of the palace as pristine as the cool, light-colored garments everyone wore out of deference to the heat. Even the food was always sweet and nourishing and sat lightly in their stomachs. And what with the constant birdsong and blossoming flowers …

He looked over at Fai. Somewhat paradoxically, the mage never seemed more human than he did right after he fed. There was a healthy flush to his pale skin, a soft lustre to his luminous eyes, and all signs of weariness and stress had been brushed away. It wouldn’t last, Kurogane knew. Vampires were parasitic by nature. Without the life force of someone else, they withered, having none of their own to sustain them.

“Sometimes,” he mused into the quiet, half to Fai and half to himself, “I feel like I’ve given all this a lot more thought than you have.”

“Would you want to think about it, were you me?”

“Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?” Kurogane had ceased indulging in Fai’s occasional moroseness quite a while ago, and had no patience for it now.

“Oh, I think about it a lot, Kuro-wan. More than you know.”

“Indulge me in some theories, then.”

“Do theories really matter at this point?”

“This is my life every bit as much as it is yours. I think it would benefit us both to sort it out some.”

Touya had reappeared on the horizon again, and Fai watched him for a long time, obviously debating something internally with himself. Finally, after the shadows had considerably lengthened, he said, very quietly, “No, Kuro-pii; I think I’m done with theories. It’s answers that we need. And you’re right; this is about both of us now. So maybe it’s time that I went and found some.”

“I don’t understand.”

But Fai merely shook his head, and refused to say any more about it.

Kurogane’s dreams after a feeding were always strange.

He’d never been able to understand the idea that a vampire’s bite gave even while it took away. Why should it? It was his blood that was being siphoned off, after all; wasn’t the whole idea that he was supplying Fai with something he needed? But it was strange. In addition to the abnormally fast healing abilities and the way he could now sense Fai’s presence when he was near, there were the dreams.

They weren’t like normal dreams. There weren’t ‘scenes’, as such; no sense of being somewhere and conversing with someone, no fighting or hiding or traversing from one place to another. He never encountered strange manifestations of his daily events, never wandered the paths of old memories. No, the ‘blood dreams’, as he’d come to think of them privately in his own mind, were simply odd spectacles of color. Not normal colors, obviously. These were colors so rich, so deep, that they brought with them feelings, tastes, sensations - sometimes even sounds. He couldn’t control their shapes or their movements. He merely watched, like a spectator charting the progression of fireworks across an otherwise dark sky. Depending on what color had been most dominant, he’d wake in the morning feeling hungry, or happy, or wounded, or lonely; sometimes all those things at once, and many more besides.

Tonight, the colors were predominately blue.

They had a certain rhythm to their motion that reminded Kurogane of the sea, swaying back and forth as the waves of iridescence broke over the ridges of his bones. The sensation they brought was not of water, however; he felt as though he were drifting in a current of silk, like the fine ceremonial kimonos his mother used to wear on high holidays, minus the elaborate embroidery that had made them stiff to the touch. It was both comforting and not. The steady rocking sensation was soothing; the sense of helplessness made him feel panicked. But he knew better than to struggle. Like some tiny vessel lost in foreign waters, he knew that he’d capsize if he resisted the motion of the current. And if he capsized, he’d most certainly drown - plummeting down, down, down into the deep silken blue that would smother like his mother’s ceremonial robes.

When he awoke in the dark, small hours just before dawn, he felt at peace and found his cheeks damp with tears. Wonderingly, he touched his calloused fingers to the wetness, eyes blinking slowly as he tried to recall the colors that had put it there. But the dream was already slipping away, fragmented and lost, like dust motes in a sunbeam. All that remained, as he absently slipped one damp finger into his mouth, was the salty, sea-water taste of the sea.

“Do you think -”

Thwack

“- that the feeding -”

Thwack

“- tears open wounds -”

Thwack

“ - that aren’t necessarily physical?”

Fai lowered his bow as the last arrow head he’d released sank into the target, taking a moment to examine his handiwork before turning inquisitive blue eyes on his companion.

Inquisitive, Kurogane observed; but also wary.

Following a boastful conversation the previous evening in which all participants had been more than a little tipsy, Fai had somehow been lassoed into an archery competition with Yukito, the soon-to-be High Priest. And, determined that his blonde not lose out to the prince’s, Kurogane had dragged him out here to practice. Fai had been surprised to hear that a high priest possessed archery skills. Kurogane had simply shrugged, musing that power was power, and that it might manifest for the same individual in many different forms. Tomoyo-hime was certainly proficient with a bow. Souma had seen to that herself.

“What sort of wound would be non-physical?”

Kurogane was pleased to note that every single arrow had struck its target with deadly accuracy, though it didn’t surprise him. He’d had proof of Fai’s marksmanship before. That priest was going to get a run for his money.

Which was good, since Kurogane had already talked Touya into betting that lovely black horse.

“I don’t know. I was thinking maybe … a spiritual wound?”

The exact shade of Fai’s eyes often changed in accordance with the mage’s mood. Kurogane didn’t know if that was a vampire thing, or a mage thing, or a my-eyes-have-been-inside-a-different-person’s-skull thing, or maybe a combination of all those things. He’d never bothered to ask. Today, however, Fai’s irises were the exact same shade as the cloudless sky above them, and something about that fact gave Kurogane a vague feeling of vertigo.

“A spiritual wound?” Fai echoed. He began to walk in the direction of the target to retrieve his arrows, lightly traversing the shifting sand beneath his feet as though it were hard-packed soil. That light footed grace was one of the things that simultaneously impressed and annoyed Kurogane. He kept pace beside him as they walked, if with slightly less agility. There wasn’t a great deal of sand in Nihon Country. “You feel like I’ve been … ripping holes in your spirit?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. I mean, I’m not even sure how far I believe in the whole ‘soul’ concept.” He watched as Fai pulled the arrows from the target, leaving dark, bloodless gashes in the abused hide.

“Mm. Souls are real, Kuro-woof. I would’ve thought you’d have learned that by now, seeing how adamant Tomoyo-hime always was about saving yours.”

“That’s not what I meant.” They exchanged a look, and then Kurogane trailed after the mage as he headed back to the shooting line. “Of course, I believe in souls. Like, that essential core of a person. I’m just not sure that it’s a physical something that can be, I don’t know. Injured.”

“I put a soul in a jar, once.” Fai shot Kurogane a glance over his shoulder, one of those strange smiles that made it hard to tell whether or not he was joking.

“Why?”

“For a spell.”

They’d reached the firing line once more, and Fai dropped the arrows into the metal quiver embedded into the ground. “Shall I go again, or are you satisfied?”

“Go again,” Kurogane decided. “I want that horse.”

Fai snorted in amusement, but obediently nocked the first arrow. “So,” he said as he drew the arrow back and raised the bow, “you don’t think your soul is a physical thing. But you still think that I’m tearing holes in it with my teeth?” That wary, guarded tone was back in his voice.

“I wish you didn’t always assume the worst in everything that I say.”

Fai arched an eyebrow at that, but he was focusing on the target, and didn’t look at him. “Kuro-tan, you asked me if I was spiritually wounding you when I drank your blood.”

Thwack

“Yes. But I meant … we’ve journeyed through numerous worlds with pretty extreme ideas about vampires. But most of them agreed that vampires are damned. Which would have something to do with the soul, yes?”

Thwack

Fai concentrated on sighting along the next shaft, and didn’t say anything.

“Look, I’m only asking because of the dreams.”

Thwack

“... What dreams?”

“I don’t know. Weird dreams. Either you’re gashing open something in me, letting something else in, or -”

Thwack

“- you’re gashing open something in yourself, and letting it flow into me.”

Fai was frowning again. He paused in his firing to turn towards his companion, the hand not holding the bow propped on his narrow hip. “What are you talking about? What do you see in your dreams?”

Kurogane made a vague gesture with his hand. “I don’t know. Colors. Except, not … normal colors. Colors that … smell, and feel, and … taste like things.”

Fai’s expression became puzzled. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Kuro-pii. But it almost sounds like … you’ve never … wait.” He shifted his bow to the crook of his elbow and reached out to take a hold of Kurogane’s hand, pressing cool fingers into the ninja’s palm. “When I put your sword into your hand in … in Celes. Did you see any colors then?”

Kurogane thought about that a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t really remember. There was a lot going on. But you’re telling me that I’m seeing magic in my dreams?” He sounded skeptical.

“I don’t know what you’re seeing. But magic can be perceived that way.” Fai turned to retrieve another arrow from the quiver. “If it is magic, I don’t think you have to worry. Because rogue threads of magic wouldn’t come from a gash in you.”

Thwack

“Why would feeding hurt you?”

Fai simply smiled again.

“I have a better question,” he countered as he nocked his last arrow. “If I win this contest, and you get the horse, what do I get?”

Thwack

“What do you want?”

The mage’s smile became sly. “How about a kiss?”

“... A kiss?” It was Kurogane’s turn to sound wary. “From who, exactly?”

“Hmm. How about from Prince Touya? He is rather handsome.” Fai took a sideways glance at Kurogane’s mutinous scowl, and burst out laughing. “From you, you idiot. A kiss for a win.”

“... Is a kiss from me as good as a purebred Arabian gelding?”

Fai laughed again, already moving off in the direction of the target once more. “Dunno, Kuro-tan. Ask me again after I win.”

“- I have to go.”

“... Give me a break; it wasn’t that bad.”

Fai huffed a laugh - a soft, affectionate sound that Kurogane wasn’t used to yet, but that he knew he would never tire of hearing. He’d come to the stables to check on his prize, and then Fai had followed to claim his. The mage’s fingers were still tangled around the collar of Kurogane’s light jacket. This close to Kurogane’s face, he could smell the chalk Fai had dusted over his fingers to give them better purchase on the bow string. The dry scent mixed, not unpleasantly, with the sweeter aromas of horse and hay drifting in the cooling air around them. It was night now. The stable hands had already lit the lamps. For a brief moment, Kurogane became so distracted watching the rills of light catch the sun-brightened threads of gold in Fai’s hair that he forgot the mage had said anything at all.

“You’re dangerous,” Kurogane sighed, half in irritation, half in resignation, and mostly to himself. It was becoming increasingly hard to concentrate on anything at all when the damned mage was around, and to make matters worse, he wasn’t entirely sure that he minded.

“Yes,” Fai agreed, but the playful smile had faded from his pale features. At night, his eyes darkened to the color of a fading bruise, fathomless and dark and almost too large for his thin-boned face. “That’s why I have to go.”

Kurogane frowned slightly in confusion. “... What?”

Fai sighed. “Focus, Kuro-wan,” he teased lightly, but he was one to talk, since his cool fingers had strayed upward to lightly stroke the side of Kurogane’s face. “The answers you want; this … ‘spiritual gashing’. And, before, when I …” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he let his hand stray lower again, ghosting along the length of Kurogane’s neck beneath his collar. The there-but-not contact made the ninja shiver slightly. He was entirely willing to blame the cold.

“You were just looking for a better blood vein.” He wasn’t sure why he was arguing this.

“Not just that.”

Kurogane swallowed in spite of himself, and he knew Fai felt it.

“... Fine. But where are you proposing to run off to, exactly?”

Fai studied his expression quietly. “Touya isn’t wrong. There is something intruding on his land. But Sakura-hime doesn’t feel it, because it isn’t really a threat. I think the prince’s abilities are grounded in the present, whereas the princess -”

“Yes, yes, magic, fascinating. Tell me about the intruder.”

Fai’s mouth quirked in a faint smile. “Intruders, actually. You remember Kamui and Subaru, I assume?” He didn’t wait for confirmation. “They’re here. In Clow Country, I mean.”

“I don’t know if I want to deal with Kamui again with only one arm,” Kurogane said slowly. It stung his pride to say it, but it needed said. “And the kid’s still recovering from his injuries.”

“Which is why neither of you are coming.”

Crimson eyes narrowed. “I thought we were past all of that -”

“Don’t argue with me.” Those weird, metallic harmonics were back in Fai’s voice again, the way he sounded when he was feeding, and it had the same disorienting effect as it always did. The vampire blinked, giving Kurogane the impression that he hadn’t necessarily intended for that to happen, but he didn’t apologize. At least his tone was more or less back to normal when he added, “I’m not going to pick a fight, I’m going to ask questions. If they aren’t terribly keen on answering, I won’t push the point.”

“You’re not going alone.”

Fai quirked an eyebrow at him again. He looked both tired and faintly amused. “Do you honestly think you could stop me from doing anything right now?”

“Are you honestly suggesting you’d go through me to leave alone? Because that’s what you’re going to have to do.”

Fai sighed in irritation, but the fingers were back to stroking his cheek, and they were grudgingly affectionate. “I wouldn’t go through you, Kuro-pii; I rather like having you in one piece.” He smiled faintly, but Kurogane’s scowl never wavered. “What I could do, though, is drink deep enough to weaken your limbs. Or simply cast a spell that makes you fall asleep. I could trap you in a cage of thorns that would take you more than a week to break through. Or I could cast a spell on the entire palace, putting everyone to sleep except you - leaving you no choice but to stay and keep guard.”

“Or?” Kurogane growled challengingly.

Fai’s eyes narrowed in response. “Or I could send you - alone - to another dimension, and let you try to figure out how to find your way back.”

“Or you could just take me with you.”

“No. I couldn’t,” Fai sighed, thoroughly exasperated. “You really don’t understand, do you? I need them to tell me how to keep these weird instincts in check, before they hurt someone - you, specifically. But if either of them made any kind of move against you, I’d rip their throat out.” Those odd harmonics were back again. “And that would be counter-productive to the entire task at hand, don’t you see?”

Kurogane bristled. “I don’t need you to protect me, mage.”

“That’s not the point, you idiot. The point is, you’re mine, and I’m not going to let anyone else touch you.”

They both waited a beat for the last shuddering echo of that possessive snarl to die away. Then, very quietly and deliberately, Kurogane murmured, “Let go of my collar, Fai; you’re about to strangle me.”

Fai blinked again. Then he abruptly released Kurogane and stepped back, muttering a curse under his breath in a language Kurogane didn’t know and Mokona either couldn’t (or wouldn’t) translate.

“I’m sorry.” The mage’s voice was quiet and carefully guarded again. “I can’t control it anymore. The closer we get - emotionally, I mean … the harder it is.” He drew in a deep breath he didn’t necessarily need, then released it on a long, shuddering exhale. “I actually fantasize about marking every inch of your skin with my fangs, so that everyone will know you belong to me.” He sounded miserable. “Before, I assumed these sorts of feelings were about protecting my food source, but now, it’s like -”

“I’m your territory,” Kurogane supplied, because such thoughts had occurred to him as well. Without the constant threat of danger or disaster to distract them, it had been hard not to notice.

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Kurogane thought about this a moment, still scowling. Finally - reluctantly - he said, “Just get it under control. Go do what you need to do. I’ll wait.” Then, because seeing Fai look so unhappy made him want to violently punch something, he stepped into the space Fai had put between them and kissed him again.

“But just so you know, if you don’t come back, I’ll hunt you down and kill you myself.”

Fai let his pale head fall so that he could brace his forehead against Kurogane’s good shoulder, just for a moment - just a handful of heartbeats. Then he straightened, and his wry, enigmatic smile was back in place. “Understood, Kuro-tan. Understood.”

When Kurogane awoke the next morning, Fai was gone.

He wasn’t sure how he knew. He just did. That was another part of their bond that the ninja didn’t entirely understand. The first thing his mind did every morning upon awakening was reach out to touch Fai’s, and when it tried on this particular morning, there was nothing waiting there to grab hold of.

Fai still hadn’t returned by sunset that evening. Which left Kurogane back in the stables as the sun went down, idly grooming the solid black gelding, because being around horses, he’d learned, made him feel calm. Besides, horses were good to confide in. Unlike certain stupid blondes he could mention, they didn’t talk back.

“It’s funny,” he mused, running the stiff-bristled brush down the gelding’s graceful neck. “When I lost my arm, it was sort of like this. I was forever reaching out with it, trying to grasp something with fingers that weren’t there. My mind knew that the stupid limb was no longer there, but it took a long time for the rest of me to catch up.”

Kurogane spent the next two weeks practicing fencing skills with Syaoran, who was finally feeling up to the task. The boy had been reading a lot in the interim, it seemed. He’d gotten it into his head that there was a way to find the Sakura and Syaoran that they’d lost. Kurogane was skeptical about this. It wasn’t the same as running into an old friend from another dimension. He didn’t exactly understand all the details of their situation, but he knew it was much more complicated than that. But having a purpose had been good for Syaoran. It had helped him heal, and it gave him a concrete future to look forward to, one he didn’t have to spend constantly questioning who and what he was. The sight of his returning enthusiasm pleased Kurogane almost as much as his improved swordsmanship did.

Halfway through the second week, Syaoran asked Kurogane if he’d come with him on his impending journey.

“I know … your princess …” he faltered, looking at his mentor sideways through uncertain, hopeful eyes.

“I’ve got time,” Kurogane replied, and Syaoran’s bright smile said that he’d understood. “But not without -”

“- Fai-san, I know,” Syaoran assured him hurriedly. “I was going to ask him, too, of course. Couldn’t imagine going without him.” And he smiled at Kurogane again, this time in the same knowing way Sakura often did. Kurogane decided there was no point to being embarrassed at this stage.

During the fourth week of Fai’s absence, the prince asked Kurogane to accompany him on a hunting expedition. Kurogane wasn’t entirely sure whether he was being pitied or not, but, since he suspected the expedition itself had been the priest’s way of distracting Touya from his constant and thus far pointless vigilance, the ninja decided to let it pass. Kurogane and the prince were accompanied by four other young men, two nobles and two members of Touya’s personal guard - Kazuhiko, the youngest member and a self-proclaimed prankster, and Gingetsu, whose silent, stoic demeanor made him an instant favorite with Kurogane. They went in hunt of a ‘scrill’, a near-mythic, bull-like beast with wings, rumored to venture from its hidden lair only once every four months in search of food.

Kazuhiko passed the first leg of the journey loudly and cheerfully bouncing between talking about his pretty fiancee and debating the actual existence of the scrill with Prince Touya and the nobles. Touya himself seemed slightly skeptical, though the older of his aristocratic friends assured him that he’d been on previous scrill hunting parties before, and that it was quite real. In the end, the noble was right. And, much to everyone’s surprise, it was Kurogane who managed to outride them all and strike the killing shot, one arm and all.

“You’re supposed to let the prince do that,” Kazuhiko pointed out, though he accompanied the admonition with a friendly clap to Kurogane’s good shoulder.

“Yeah? Well, tell the prince to ride faster next time,” Kurogane grinned. Gingetsu startled them all by actually laughing out loud.

Touya himself seemed more amused than put-off. He even let Kurogane have the heart, rumored to give anyone who ate it the scrill’s formidable strength. As he bit into the tough meat of the organ, he could taste the thick, viscous blood on the back of his tongue, and wondered before he could stop himself whether Fai would be able to taste it, too, the next time he fed. After all, any strength Kurogane possessed was shared strength now.

Touya brought back the tusks of the mighty beast to give to the priest (for spell powders, he explained, though Kurogane couldn’t shake the suspicion that it was mostly to show off.) “You’d make a good knight, you know,” the prince told him as they rode back to the palace. The two guardsmen nodded their approval.

“I can’t stay.”

“The brat?”

“The brat.”

Touya sighed in resignation. “It’s always the brat, isn’t it? Alright, then. But you have to be the one to break the news to Sakura.”

Wednesday morning on the fifth week found him carefully and determinedly packing the rucksack he’d purchased from the market with a few clothes and the food Sakura had sent up from the kitchen. If that idiot mage wasn’t going to return on his own, then he’d just -

“Good morning, Kuro-pii.”

Kurogane jumped. He actually jumped. He, the greatest ninja in Nihon Country -

“You know, I’ve been thinking. I might just kill you anyway, safe return or no.”

If Souma ever heard about this, he would never, ever live it down.

Fai laughed.

“I’ve missed you, too,” he said dryly. He seemed to find some sort of invitation in Kurogane’s answering scowl, because he unfolded himself from the doorway and stepped into the room. He looked paler than he had the night before he’d left, Kurogane noticed. Otherwise, though, he seemed unharmed. And there was something different about the way he moved, soundless as smoke across the clay floor tiles.

Kurogane mentally added it to the list of Fai’s decidedly un-endearing qualities.

“Where the hell have you been? I was about to come looking for you.”

“I can see that.” Fai’s eyes (today the color of pretty wildflowers blooming in the scraggly patches of grass outside the palace, Kurogane noticed) flickered to the half-full pack on the bed. He ran his pale fingertips along the sheathed length of Ginryu as he drew closer, which had also been left waiting atop the rumpled blankets. Kurogane couldn’t quite shake the entirely absurd notion that the sword arched slightly upward into the touch, like some sort of lethal cat. “You said you’d wait.”

“I did wait. For five damn weeks. How long does vampire school last, anyway? The others have been ready to go for days. We were just about to leave without you.” Ok, that wasn’t strictly true, but there was no reason that Fai had to know that.

Fai cocked his head slightly to one side at the word ‘leave’, but he didn’t comment. “You’re not actually angry,” he informed Kurogane, taking another step closer. “You’re annoyed, but mostly relieved. I can feel it.”

That list of un-endearing qualities just kept getting longer and longer.

“So?”

Fai smiled. “So stop sulking, and kiss me.”

Kurogane did. Grudgingly.

“You’re not hurt,” he observed when they parted again. It was more a statement than a question, but Fai hummed his agreement anyway. “But you are hungry. I can feel it.” The last sentence was undeniably mocking.

“Because I bit your lip?” Fai asked, laughter lurking under the question.

“Because you bit my lip and then sucked on it.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m hungry for your blood, Kuro-puppy.”

Kurogane assured himself that he was not blushing. He was not. Ninjas did not blush.

“Fine. Then starve,” he muttered sullenly. “What happened with you and the twins, anyway? Did they help you?”

Fai tilted his head to the side again, obviously struggling to condense five weeks of stories into a handful of simple sentences. “Eventually, yes. Well - Subaru did. Kamui mostly just tolerated my presence. At the behest of Subaru. I’ll explain it all eventually, I promise. Right now, though … we should talk.”

“About?”

“About this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” Fai reached down to take Kurogane’s hand in one of his. “Come sit with me on the balcony for awhile.”

They talked for a long time, until the sun had crested the zenith of the sky and began its descent towards the horizon. Or, rather, Fai talked, and Kurogane did his best to listen. Being a mage, it seemed, had complicated things. (“When hasn’t it?” Fai had laughed, though the forced humor hadn’t entirely disguised the unease in his tone.) The vampire blood had been intended to step into the void left by his stolen magic; but now that his magic had been returned, things weren’t that simple.

“The dreams you have are part of this,” Fai explained. “The energies passed from me to you through the bond we share are supposed to be purely vampiric; they give you your healing abilities, and they’ll prolong your life. That sort of thing. But the magic is … corrupting those energies, I guess. Subaru doesn’t think that it’ll alter them necessarily. Your healing powers won’t suffer, it won’t change your lifespan. But it does give you glimpses of things that you wouldn’t normally see otherwise.”

“That’s it? Just weird dreams, then?”

“... Maybe. I’m not really sure. As far as this part of things go, all anyone can do is theorize. Personally, I don’t think a normal human would have the dreams you do in this situation. They’d see the colors, maybe, but the rest of it … the feelings and such … mage’s have an ability to translate the forces they encounter, for lack of a better phrase. And you’re doing that. I think you already have some magic blood in you, from your mother.”

His words tugged at the corner of Kurogane’s memory - some lingering dream fragment previously lost in the back of his mind - but he couldn’t quite catch a hold of it, so he let it go. “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

“I don’t know.” Fai turned a little to look up into Kurogane’s face. “I’m sorry. Like I said, this is all theoretical at this point. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Subaru helped me understand some of the vampire-related feelings I’ve been having, and he showed me ways of controlling them. Honestly, I think just knowing what they are has helped me deal with them. But there are other elements of this relationship that he couldn’t explain to me. That means, from here on out, things are going to be volatile. We’re not always going to be able to foresee problems, and when they do come up, chances are good that we won’t know how to deal with them.”

“So business as usual, then.”

Fai huffed a quiet laugh at that, but his expression remained serious. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“... Is this going to endanger the kid?”

“I don’t see why it would. And Syaoran is becoming a powerful wizard in his own right. I think he’ll be able to take care of himself.”

Kurogane nodded, satisfied. “Alright. No reason to let this change our plans, then. We’ll just deal with things as they come up. Same as always.”

Fai was silent for a long moment. Then he started, hesitantly, “The Dimension Witch -”

“-is dead.”

“Yes. But her powers - “

“No.”

“It only stands to reason that - “

“No. Don’t insult me.”

Fai huffed another one of his irritable sighs, but he said nothing. Night was approaching, and the air was cooling. He could no longer feel the heat emanating from the wall at his back - only a fading recollection of what that heat had once felt like - the same way that the warmth of the hand caught in his was mostly constructed from memory. But he was used to the cold. It didn’t really distress him, any more than the fact that the birdsong all around them now rang tinny and hollow in his ears. He could still see the threads of light and color running through everything around him, after all, still feel the magic humming hot under his feet and vibrating against the underside of his bones. There had been sacrifices, yes; so many sacrifices. But there had also been gifts.

He braced his cheek against Kurogane’s shoulder, just above the sleeve hanging empty below it.

So many gifts.

“I’ve been thinking …”

“About?” Kurogane’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle and reverential, as though he, too, felt the significance in this moment.

“I think you should name the horse ‘Blackie’ ….”