Disclaimer: I don't own Tsubasa. You see that word right there in the title of this website? FAN. I am just a FAN.

A/N: So, I wrote this during Math class today when I was bored; it amounted to six pages in a notebook. Basically, it took forever and it is ridiculously long and wordy without much going on. You would probably have to be equally bored to read it.

Windswept

It was a quiet night in the Shirasaki palace, and all but the night guards, a certain ninja, and the princess were fast asleep. No assassins attempted to breach the walls, and no wars were waging outside of them. The foreign diplomats who had plagued the palace with their strange customs, unintelligible languages, and marriage proposals in the previous weeks had all gone back to their respective countries after the summer festivals had ended. The palace garden was now calm and quiet, almost disturbingly serene. The only noises were caused by the fountains that poured sweet, cool water in long streams that wound their way around the garden like silver snakes. The night air was cool and the tree branches blew softly in the wind, scattering cherry blossom petals on anything in their wake.

One such petal caught and tangled in the long, dark hair of the princess resting on a bench at the stream's bank. She lowered her eyelids, examining the speck of pale pink wound through her hair. She considered the petal for a moment, and then plucked it out and dropped it into the stream in front of her. It landed on the surface of the stream and then floated in circles for a while before being carried along with the current. Tomoyo continued to sit in the garden and watch all the while as the stream pulled the little petal away from her until it was just a faraway fleck in the dark water. She crossed her stocking-clad feet at the ankles and began swinging them back and forth. The bench was so high and her legs were so short that her feet didn't touch the ground.

Kurogane chuckled as he watched the tiny princess. She was so small for her age, and always had been. Sometimes, Kurogane felt as though she was so small and fragile that he would break her if he even touched her, even though he was supposed to be protecting her. Kurogane's job was to guard Tomoyo from assassins and dangerous people, but sometimes he felt like he was more dangerous than any of the so-called threats to the crown. Thankfully, Tomoyo was determined to make him less so (Fai was as well, but he usually went about it by testing the restraints of Kurogane's self-control, A.K.A. getting on his last nerve) and try as he might to resist, he was unable. He laughed again, almost audibly this time. Tomoyo was strong, sometimes.

These days, Kurogane felt consistently awestruck. He was amazed at how the princess managed to surprise him over and over, whether it was actually knocking him down with a hug or using Fai as a model for furisodes. Tomoyo wasn't as delicate as she looked; she could be noisy and whiney, she smacked him in the head when he tried to kiss her while Amaterasu was present, and she squealed endlessly over Sakura's cuteness. Soma said that Tomoyo was quite a handful, and Fai said he hardly knew how Kurogane could fall in love with someone like her. Kurogane thought the magician was joking about that, especially considering he picked up on Kurogane's infatuation with the girl almost instantly while they were in Piffle (and proceeded to tease him about it).

She turned, her paleface standing out against her dark hair and the deep blue robe she wore. Her violet eyes met his and stayed there. "I know you're there just about as well as you know when I'm around," she said, continuing to swing her feet back and forth, tiny hands clasped in her lap.

"You shouldn't be out here without a guard," Kurogane said, frowning a little as he approached her and sat on the bench next to her, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. Kurogane rarely sat straight up, which had recently led to Tomoyo and Fai making fun of him for being a ninja with bad posture.

"I have a guard," Tomoyo said, "who do you think you are?"

"Uh… your lover?" Kurogane replied, although it was probably too strong of a word. "And because of that, your sister likes you to have another guard when I'm around." Amaterasu was wholeheartedly against leaving Tomoyo alone with Kurogane, as expressed by her many death threats against him. He left this part out.

"I still don't see why that is," Tomoyo said nonchalantly, "I feel safest with you, anyway." She leaned forward and he leaned back, so, before Kurogane could protest, Tomoyo slid her hands around his arm and laid her head on his shoulder. She could feel him tense, and she just moved closer to him, pressing her side against his. He tugged his arm out of her grip and she pouted until he wrapped it around her shoulder. "So, when are you three leaving again?" she asked.

"I dunno. Depends on what the puff ball does," he replied. "We'd better say here for a while though; last time we were only here for like five minutes."

"It was twenty-three hours and thirty minutes," Tomoyo corrected him.

"Whatever," he said dismissively.

They sat in silence for a few moments. The moon shone through the clouds, a pale sliver that looked as though it had been sliced out of the velvety black sky by a knife. More cherry blossoms fell, landing in Tomoyo's hair and their clothes. Kurogane turned his head so that his cheek was pressed against her hair and Tomoyo gently toyed with his mechanical left arm. This arm had some subtle differences from the first one, which had been broken beyond repair during the battle with Fei Wong Reed. Kurogane managed to get a new one when they took a short trip back to Piffle. One such difference was that it fit properly and now Fai was much less worried about whether his shoulder hurt. Tomoyo was fascinated with the metal arm, something that Kurogane was not surprised by. After all, her double from another dimension was the one who made it in the first place.

The wind began to blow faster, disturbing the wind chimes that hung from the nearby trees. Tomoyo's hair danced in the wind as well, and the flower petals resting on them blew away; white specks in the dark night. Tomoyo shivered and pressed closer to Kurogane, releasing the cold metal arm and wrapping her arms around his warm body. "We should go inside," he said, yawning. "It's getting late, and you've got to be tired by now."

"Yeah," she said, her voice a bit muffled because her face was buried in his shirt.

Kurogane swept her into his arms and began walking back to the castle. She was feather-light, so small that he barely noticed her weight. He wondered how in the world she ever managed to crash into him and knock him flat on his back earlier that week. He shook his head in exasperation. He was going soft. He supposed he should have known it was bound to happen someday; after all, a man couldn't be a ruthless killer and a warrior forever. As much as he tried to prevent it, he became close with the people he began traveling with, so much so that every time they reached Japan, he was torn between staying there and continuing to journey.

The curse that Tomoyo put on him was part of the reason he wasn't so heartless anymore, of course, but not the whole. Being unable to kill in worlds like Koryo and Yama was an almost painful withdrawal, but he got over it. Fai and the kids were most of what had changed him, that and the fact that he missed Tomoyo and wanted to do whatever he could to get back to her. Fai, Syaoran, and Sakura had become, dare he say it, his family. Yes, Fai was annoying and a liar, Syaoran had a clone, for goodness sake, and Sakura fainted without warning (he wouldn't even mention how annoying Mokona was), but he cared for them regardless. He might have even gone so far as to say he loved them.

Kurogane considered them his family more than he did Tomoyo's sister, he thought wryly. Of course, he loved Tomoyo and so he dealt with Amaterasu, but he would never think of her as his sister in the way that he thought of Fai as his brother. Fai was becoming a little less convinced that Kurogane was his "husband", although he still called him "daddy" sometimes, and acted more like an annoying little brother. Kurogane forgot that Fai was older, most of the time.

As he walked into the palace, Kurogane ignored the guards at the door. He thought that they should be used to things like this, because it was Tomoyo, after all, and she told everyone anything about everything. He was surprised that the entire palace didn't know about their relationship. The guards didn't stare at him for long, because they, like most people, ran at the sight of Kurogane's death glare.

Thankfully, Kurogane avoided Amaterasu, Soma, and Fai on the way to Tomoyo's bedroom. Amaterasu would probably attempt to stab him, Soma would tell Amaterasu where he was, and Fai would tease him about being "such a good puppy, bringing her up here". Kurogane wanted none of these things, so he shut the door to Tomoyo's room tightly behind him. He laid her on the bed, now rather used to having to carry her back to her room at night. He'd done it since he was fourteen, and had no idea what Tomoyo did when he wasn't there. Sometimes he felt as though she fell asleep just so he could carry her back to her room, but, strangely, he did not mind.

Tomoyo's eyes fluttered open just as she saw Kurogane's back retreating out the door. She pouted; he hadn't given her a kiss. She just rolled over, deciding that she would get one in the morning. When everyone was watching.