Notes: This is my entry for the Livejournal Kuroxfai community's remix challenge. In this challenge, you had to take another author's fanfic (with their permission) and rewrite or expand upon it much the same way that a remix of a song is a reworked version of that song. I opted for an expansion on my chosen author's story, so if this fic seems familiar to you, that is because it is a 'remix' of Zelinxia's fic 'Waiting' - also posted to ffnet; search her username to find the story. This is the first chapter and more will be forthcoming; this remix turned into a kind of monster!

This fic contains, in no particular order: child neglect/abuse, death (they get better), violence, Kurogane's foul language, Kurogane and Fai hooking up, and happy endings.

The Endless In-between

Everybody says
Time heals everything
But what of the wretched hollow
The endless in-between
Are we just going to wait it out?
~ 'Wait It Out' - Imogen Heap

Once upon a time very far away from here, there lived a princess. And she was beautiful as beautiful is, with skin as white as milk and hair of a gold so pale it was almost silver, with lips as red as wine is red and eyes as blue as the sea and the sky.

And it so happened that the princess loved a prince - as princesses surely do - a prince from a faraway land. Her father the King approved of their union, and they were to be wed one fine spring day, and oh! but the princess was so happy she hopped and she danced and she sang every day before the wedding, hey-ho! And all the kingdom hopped and danced and sang with her, for love is love is love, and a princess in love is a very fine thing indeed! And for a time, it seemed that all would be wonderful in the world of the princess and the prince.

'tis is a sad truth however that for every fair princess and handsome prince there is a wretched villain, and not all hearts were gladdened to see her joy.

Her father the King kept several Wizards at his court, powerful men who wore black and never ever smiled, for all know that Wizardry requires one to sacrifice the ability to smile and laugh and feel simple joy. And this was especially true for the King's Chief Wizard, a tall pale man who never smiled, never laughed, and never cried; but he looked upon the beautiful princess with eyes that were still men's eyes, and he desired her. And as time grew so did his desire, and so too did his hate for the handsome prince, until the hollow in his chest where he, like all Wizards, had carved out his heart became filled with nothing but bile and desire. Tangled together all like snakes, they were, feeding themselves fat off his spite and his envy, and as the wedding drew closer and closer the snakes grew until they were too big for the empty space inside him.

(Look away now, my dears, I urge you: for this is not a story that ends well.)

And so it came to be that on day before the wedding the evil magician struck, and he stole away the beautiful princess in the dead of night, sealing away her voice so she could not cry out to her father or her prince or her guards. He ran West with her for days and days, until there was no more West to run to and all that was left was East, and there he stopped running. He built them a house, but no airy castle this; nobody would hop and dance and sing in the Hollow Wizard's home! And he placed the Princess at the top of the tallest staircase in the tallest tower of the tallest wing, with fierce guards upon the door and monsters prowling outside.

(It's not too late, you know, to lie: if you wish to believe it the Prince can still come to save his beloved, and all will be right!)

The wicked Wizard took the Princess to be his bride in this hellish home in a ceremony of black and ice; he had refused to return her voice and so the Princess was powerless to deny him, her keeper and her hated enemy. And though she wept every day for her father and her Prince, the Wizard had hidden his keep too well for them to rescue her, and within the year she bore her cruel husband twin sons: two infant boys with skin as white as milk and hair of silver-gold and eyes as blue as the sea and the sky, and magic like their father's that roared and burned.

The Wizard was pleased with his sons, and offered the Princess one wish to repay her for bearing them, swearing upon the blackened snakes inside his chest that he would do anything to grant her desires: but he had forgotten, of course, that she had never loved him, and neither did she love the demon-sons she had borne, beautiful and innocent of face but cold and black of heart just like their sire. The beautiful Princess wished for her death, and the Wizard was forced to deliver it, bound by word and oath.

(This can be the end of the whole cruel tale, if you like, simply close the book!)

The demon-twins kept living, for hellspawn do not die so easily, but it pained the Wizard to look at them; and so he kept them locked away in the tall tower that had been their mother's prison before them. The Princess had never given them names and the Wizard did not either, for every time he saw them he saw his beloved dead by his own hand, her face twisted into a final expression of hatred and loathing.

And the twin Princes grew up there, their hearts as chill and cold as the stone walls that bound them, their faces as innocent and beautiful as the mother who had never wanted them. They grew up as silent as the beautiful Princess, their voices stilled in their inhuman chests, and as they grew so did their magic. One twin saw the future in dreams, using the heretical powers of prophecy; the other could control the dance of ice and fire, the elements responding to his foul black magics, for it is always both burning and freezing in Hell.

Their power grew and grew, until one wintry day the Wizard was forced to deal with them in the manner with which one normally deals with demons: he took the one he deemed most dangerous, the one whose magic called to fire and flame like that of the cold world he came from, and he threw him from the tower window to die broken on the stones below. And it was said that his brother laughed until he cried, for in the cleansing of this evil the Hollow Wizard had removed the greatest threat to the power of this wicked monster child.

But even after he had gone, the remaining twin was not sated. He used his magics to summon a creature of ice and shadow, a great winged monster with hide as red as blood, with claws of onyx that clung deep to the cracks in the stone of the tower. The monster's name was Blacksteel, for its claws, and on the Demon Prince's instructions it tore the wall out of the tower and spirited its foul master away, the two of them bound together in hatred and evil.

For years they flew across the land, spreading bile and cruelty everywhere under the shadow of Blacksteel's mighty wings; until finally an army was raised to stop them by none other than the beautiful Princess' father, the good King. It was a wonderous and noble battle, and the dread beast Blacksteel slew hundreds of brave warriors, but finally the courageous knights of the kind King subdued the fell dragon with sword and magic. The good Prince himself led the sorte, the flash! flash! flash! swings of his silvery sword carving wounds in even Blacksteel's thick hide, and finally he drew his sword back to deliver a mortal strike to the monster's chest.

But alas, gentle reader, things were not as well as they seemed. For even as the handsome Prince's sword pierced Blacksteel's fetid heart, the Demon Prince let out a cry of feral rage, a baying noise not unlike the vicious wolves that prowl the very darkest forests; and with the cry the very air itself began to burn.

For the Hollow Wizard had made a mistake, all those years ago. It was not the fire-and-ice Hellspawn he threw from that tall and lofty tower. It was the other. And the Demon Prince approached Blacksteel and laid his hands upon the monster's chest, the better to steal his power, and none could stop him, for weapons melted within inches of his skin.

And as Blacksteel breathed his last, so did the Demon Prince speak his first word in this world, and that word was this:

Burn.

The elements of fire responded to their master's call, and the power of his evil was such that the brave, good knights did, and the battlefield burned with them. And the Demon Prince's power ravaged the landscape around for miles and miles and miles, burning away all signs of life and leaving aught but sand, and ash, and grief. And the Demon Prince burned his flesh all up with his terrible power, but o! For his crimes he was denied Heaven, and so although nothing was left of him but a damned skeleton, he walks still, in the far eastern desert his Hellish magic created.

And so the message here is a simple one, my friends, and it is the reason why even now those with magical talent are put to use by our brave king's Court Wizards. Magic is not a thing to be trusted to the innocents, for it carries with it always the taint of power, and power leads to ambition, and ambition leads to destruction. One only need look at the ancient city of the sun to see where magic leads. You may know it better as the Great Desert in the East, demolished in the rage and Hell-driven fury of a wizard too far gone to be saved. All the more reason to trust the wizards, yes? For surely, they act in the interests of our great King, and the children they preserve serve His Majesty's purpose as well as their small souls can.

Glory to the King.