Kyuuketsuki
By SMYGO4EVA

It was nighttime. Kurogane had just finished talking to Syaoran about Sakura and how he should just refer to her as a princess, the princess that he had always known she was but never seemed to account for in his own heart. To him, Sakura was still the one that he deeply cared about, whether she was a princess or not, and Kurogane had tried to make him realize that in this game, things were more serious and that high-strung emotions would get him caught in the crossfire.

Usually Kurogane had his emotions in control – he didn't really have a problem with that. Syaoran did, though. He often let his emotions govern his actions, as well as his heart. His heart, and its own actions, could change in an instant. Even if this was not the Syaoran they had been traveling with, his heart, which in more ways than one was akin to his own, was still the same as it had ever been.

This time – Kurogane was not so sure about his own heart.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kurogane could see the door closing behind the mage, whose hand was grazing the doorknob, as if searching for an excuse to leave, and then slipping from it, as if he had changed his mind.

If there was one person whose thought process he'd never fully understand, it was Fai's.

"Sakura-chan's sleeping. With Mokona. Want to drink something?" Fai asked, something indistinguishable in his tone.

"Sake." Kurogane replied, curt as ever.

Fai didn't seem to notice, in his own, special way. "Can't be helped..."

Kurogane stopped in his tracks. In the most direct and firm voice he could muster, he said,

"You drink too."

Pause.

The air changed slightly.

Fai was silent. He knew that it was coming. He just didn't know what to do about it.

Dutifully, Kurogane got out his sword, which made a thin and ever flowing line of crimson appear on his wrist, cascading freely down his arm and dripping onto the ground. "Don't drink if you don't want to. I'll just let it flow like this."

The crimson was tantalizing to the magician, and seeing that this would sustain his life and the warrior, he closed his eye briefly and opened it again, an imprisoning smile across his face. "It really can't be helped, right? Kurogane?"

With that said, the once sapphire eye had changed into golden once Fai's lips met Kurogane's wrist, the warrior's self-inflicted wound slowly being lapped up by the mage's tongue, every taste bud meeting its metamorphosis as Fai drank more and more of Kurogane's blood, its nutrients a sanguine elixir to his thirst. Kurogane stands still, not taking the sight in, and not wanting to.

"Have you noticed?"

"Yeah?"

"We're being watched."

"Our opponents in chess? Or maybe...."

"The ones who have been watching our journey until now?"

While they talk, Fai continues to drink, just until he has his fill of Kurogane's life essence, and just up until he is stricken with the blue crossroads of the warrior's veins in his arms. The warrior, naturally the stoic one, tries not to pay attention to the mage, who now has the form of a vampire, a blood drinker, whose mouth and tongue were now on his wrist, sucking him dry, making him even more vulnerable than ever. He tried not to grimace.

Fai stops.

A little bit of blood has gotten onto his right hand, where he had been holding onto Kurogane for support. It shined under the dim lights of the room they were in.

"Whoever they are…"

His golden eye low, his bloodlust takes a hold of him once more, and he licks the blood off of his hand, relishing the taste of the other one last time.

"…I won't let them hurt us anymore."

Without a second thought, and without saying anything more, Fai leaves, his gaze focused on nothing but the door as he left Kurogane with his thoughts, the thoughts that he had been trying to deny for the longest time.

There was nothing to say. There was nothing that could be said.

Kurogane blinked. He looked back at his wrist. The wound where Fai had just been was now cauterized. There was now nothing more than what looked to be a simple, measly scratch.

A scratch.

That's what it was.

That's what this whole thing was.

A scratch.

And nothing more.