Title: Whipping Boy
Rating: R
Spoilers: Up till Nihon arc.
Pairing: SeishirouxFai (implied Fai/Kurogane, Seishirou/Subaru)
Warnings: Angst, torture and references to rape. Bad things ahead.
Author's notes: This was written for the CLAMP anonymeme on livejournal. The prompt was "Seishirou can't catch up to Subaru, so he kidnaps Fai and uses him as a guinea pig in Subaru's place."

The sound of his own breath, rattling in his ears, was at once distant and too loud; it was the only thing he could hear in the entire world. This world. Where were they now? What day was it? He was losing track of things, little by little. He had a strange vision of time, place and memory all skittering out of his hands, like little imps laughing and wriggling away. Nonsense. Fai made an effort to bring things together; tried to take stock of himself.

How many days had it been since then? He was losing track. If this was morning and not tonight, that would make this the fifth day - or was it the sixth? (Or maybe the tenth.) Why hadn't anyone come for him yet?

He was laid out on a metal table, lights from somewhere shining into his face. No change there. He was hungry and thirsty or some odd combination of both; whatever this vampire craving was, for blood and life. Patches of skin itched and burned maddeningly on his chest, belly, throat, face, and he would have scratched or rubbed at them if he could.

Both of his hands were pinned fast to the table by a metal stake driven through the backs, through the palms into the metal surface. They were not just plain rods; they seemed to be worked with some sort of symbols or sigils, not that he could examine them closely from this angle. Whatever it was made them very effective; none of his newfound vampire strength was any use against it, and the wounds on his hands could not heal while the foreign object remained, impaling his flesh. He could feel it trying to heal, the struggle between his unnatural regeneration and whatever enchantment had been placed on the stakes. But as long as he didn't try to move them, they didn't hurt too badly, right now. Just an incessant, unending ache in his hands, in his bones.

He ached, he was tired, he was afraid. He wanted to go home. Where was home, any more? Not Valeria, for countless years frozen and lost in the snow. Not Ceres, dead and gone and collapsed now in a skelter of magic gone insane. He would have been lost in Valeria, if not for Ashura; he would have been dead in Ceres, if not for Kurogane. His home must be with Kurogane now, with Syaoran and Sakura and Mokona, to go wherever they went. (And why had no one come for him yet?) Maybe his home was Nihon now; he didn't know. He'd only had a few days in Nihon, terrible days of waiting for Kurogane to wake up, but he thought he might have felt at home there. The palace had been beautiful and elegant, the people kind, the sky lambent and glowing with haze and the dark rooms of the castle serene and inviting. Any place that Kurogane loved so much he was sure he could learn to love too.

But Seishirou had arrived on the fourth day (from the night Ceres had been destroyed, the night his world ended and started again and he counted all his days since then.) Syaoran had attacked him for the feather he held, and been soundly rebuffed. He'd come seeking vampires and found Fai; and when he learned that the ones he sought were not in this world he'd seized Fai and left, and all Fai's struggling had been in vain. He'd spent too long learning to hunt vampires, to fight them and overpower them and bind them to his will.

Even at the thought of the dark hunter, with his mismatched glassy eyes, Fai wanted to curl into himself; but the first aborted twitch of muscles sent screaming pain up his arms from his hands, and he abandoned the effort. Futile. Seishirou had spent years and years and years learning about vampires, their strengths, their weaknesses. How to restrain them, how to control them... how to hurt them. And here he was, like a butterfly on a pin, exhibit A in Seishirou's most recent experiment; the first chance he'd gotten, the hunter had explained on the first day, to put all his theories to the test. His first chance to see how much pain a vampire really could take and still survive, he said, and Fai didn't doubt him at all.

Perhaps if Fai had still had his magic, he could have resisted - fought Seishirou off, found some way off this table, out of this world. But he'd given all that up when he came to Nihon, because he wanted Kurogane to live and be whole. He didn't regret that sacrifice now, he couldn't. But if he was going to be honest, he'd made it expecting that the others would be there for him; that he'd have allies to fight by him and support him and help him when things got bad. And they were bad, days and days now at the hands of this madman, and still Kurogane hadn't come.

A scuffling footstep sounded over the bare floor, and Fai's eye flew open, adrenaline cutting through the sluggishness in his body and mind. His arms tensed, and his hands twitched despite his efforts to be still; the movement tore them a little more, and blood trickled onto the table below, but the wound quickly closed, or tried to. His breath quickened, rapidly approaching hyperventilation as repeated conditioning between the approach of that sound and pain made itself known. Fight or flee, except neither was an option right now.

Seishirou wavered into view; his vision was still blurry around the edges, and smiled down at him. It was a blank unpleasant smile that covered murderous intent; an I'm-going-to-hurt-you-now smile. Fai couldn't help but wonder, looking up into his face, if his own smiles had ever looked that ugly to the others, so transparently a treacherous lie. "Ah," he said. "I see you're awake. Did you sleep well?"

No answer was expected; not that Fai could have spoken, even if he'd had anything to say that Seishirou wanted to hear. Seishirou had forced this gag into his mouth the first night he'd caught him, a wire contraption that forced his jaw open and depressed his tongue. The metal sides of the gag cut into the corners of his mouth every time he turned his head, but it healed. It always healed. That was why he was still here.

"How are we doing this morning?" Seishirou said, in a pleasant, conversational tone of voice. He reached down and settled his hand around the front of Fai's neck, rubber-gloved fingers resting on the pulse of the veins. Pressing down slightly, he glanced at the watch on his left wrist, counting seconds.

Those hands moved over Fai's chest and throat as they tested other vitals, checking temperature, pinching the skin to check for dehydration. They were cold and clinical, and Fai watched him warily, trying to gauge his mood, guess where he planned to go from here. He wondered if Seishirou planned to rape him again. A part of him almost hoped so; it didn't hurt too badly, and it healed quickly. And while Seishirou's attention was focused on that, he wasn't coming up with new and creative ways to hurt him. But there was no heat, no lust in Seishirou's eyes on him right now; no interest, in fact, at all. He knew, he knew he was not the one that Seishirou wanted to see.

"Hmm," the other man said at length, almost talking to himself as he thought aloud. "Vital signs are lower than they were last night; considerably lower than the day before. You seem to be running down a bit, my friend. I wonder if I didn't make too hasty an assumption with regard to the burns? Perhaps it's merely natural degeneration kicking in."

Yesterday (or was it two days ago?) Seishirou had made the discovery that injuries caused by fire did not heal as fast as those inflicted by other sources, and he had spent the rest of the day (and that night?) elaborating on that discovery. Seishirou was very... methodical, mapping out every different option on unprotected stretches of Fai's skin. Burns caused by heated objects had the same slowing effect on regeneration as open flames; burns caused by chemicals, however, did not. Mage fire generated from eldritch power sources caused the same damage as mundane fire; but the invisible, biting fire that Seishirou named electricity did not. All day and all night... and why had no one come to get him yet...

"Perhaps all you need is a little pick-me-up," Seishirou said. He reached down out of Fai's line of sight, and picked something up; a metal object that glinted sharply in the overhead lights.

He reached towards Fai's face and Fai's breath froze in his chest, anticipating a cut; but the man drew back his sleeve and sliced the scalpel across his own skin instead, drawing a bright line of blood. His free hand squeezed painfully under Fai's jaw and throat, forcing him to tilt his face upwards, as he lowered the cut arm to Fai's mouth.

Blood flowed into his mouth, thick and salty and hot. The taste and smell of it filled his nose, choking him. He'd drunk blood before, Kurogane's blood, but this was different, this was all wrong. Where Kurogane's blood had been sweet, this was cloying; where Kurogane's blood had been savory, this was rancid. And while Kurogane's blood had warmed, this burned like acid going down.

But with the gag in place he could neither close his mouth against it nor spit it out; it was either swallow or choke. Swallow he did, gagging helplessly on the thick fluid; how was it that this could feel like more of an invasion, a violation than when had casually raped him? All his life he'd wanted to belong to someone; to be cherished and protected, and owned. But not by this man, this mad-eyed, cold-hearted man who looked right through him and didn't even see him, didn't even care.

"The fascinating thing about vampires," Seishirou remarked as the blood flowed, as though they were two old friends continuing a long-standing conversation; "is that not every world has them. In fact, true vampires are spawned only on a few of the many worlds, and even then most of the time the populace doesn't even know about them. And yet, despite this scarcity, the legends of vampires continue to proliferate throughout the universes. There is not a single world I have been to that doesn't have at least legends of the vampyr, in one form or another.

"Of course, most of these legends and stories are just that - fictions, based in ignorance or meant for entertainment. But hidden among the garbage data are some truths, the real information about the real creatures. Gathering those truths - sorting through that data to find out what is real and what is false - that was my mission."

Fai's breathing stuttered, as his stomach was seized by powerful cramps. He coughed, retched weakly, tried against all odds to roll onto his side, up onto his knees so that his body could rid itself of the unwanted material. It was useless; in the end all he could manage was to turn his head to one side as his stomach tried to turn itself inside out, vomiting back up the blood.

Seishirou had drawn back from the table, watching cold-eyed as his body was racked with convulsive spasms. Dark, dying blood flowed from Fai's mouth, puddling on the table and staining his hair. In a final series of coughs, he managed to expel the last of the blood from his throat and lungs, and was able to draw a wheezing breath again.

"Of course," Seishirou was saying, as the ringing in Fai's ears began to die down; he strained to listen, to attend. "Limited creature that you are, you can only feed on one source, can't you? Not like the true vampires, who can feed from any source." His expression darkened in contemplation of this, his tone ringing with the jealousy of a cuckolded lover.

Seishirou looked down at Fai as if seeing him for the first time, and chuckled. "Not that I'd expect you to be able to tell the difference, of course. You're not quite the real thing, now are you?" The rubber-gloved hand brushed up over his throat, setting against the side of his face, and his thumb traced underneath Fai's one remaining eye, as if to underline the depth of his flaws. Terror welled up suffocatingly in Fai's chest and throat - no, no, please not that, he was only just regaining his sight after the last time - "A flawed, imperfect thing."

Abruptly Seishirou shifted postures, swinging his weight down to slam on the table, his face barely a foot from Fai's, all hint of amicability gone. Fai could breathe again, short, hyperventilating breaths. "You're no more than a knockoff, a cheap substitute," he hissed, face distorted with disgust and anger. "No more than a pale shade of the real thing. So why is it - why - do I keep running across you time and time again, and never him?

That's not fair. They'd crossed paths with Seishirou a grand total of two times, in all their journeying - and the first time had been long before Kurogane made his diabolical, desperate bargain. But there was no appeal to reason in Seishirou's face; Fai knew that expression. It was the look of a man in the grip of a long obsession, years-long, all-consuming. Fai knew that look well, as he ought to have; he'd been in the grip of such an obsession himself, for all the long years of his life.

Even after all Seishirou had done to him, Fai couldn't find it in him to hate the man; he just wanted Seishirou to leave him alone. He wanted to get out of here, to go back to the place he belonged - to the people who looked at him and saw him for who he was, not the whipping boy for another. He wanted someone to come and save him. Surely he'd been patient, surely he'd held out as long as he could. However many days it had been, surely he'd waited long enough. Why hadn't anyone come?

Kurogane was strong and smart and a survivor. Fai knew - even he could be taught, by repeated example - that Kurogane cared about him, Kurogane would not just let him suffer and die alone. He knew Kurogane would come for him if he possibly could - but what if... what if he couldn't...?

Seishirou was an accomplished hunter with years of experience traveling the dimensions; who knew what tricks he had to discourage pursuit? Who knew if they had jumped between times as well as worlds; six weeks, six months, six years into the future? Who could help him now? Mokona could not choose which world they traveled to, else Kurogane would have arrived home long before. Sakura was laid low by his own hand, unable to help anyone, even herself. Syaoran - this new Syaoran - Fai hardly knew, but heaven knew he'd given the boy little enough reason to risk himself on Fai's own behalf. Princess Tomoyo, too, had given up her magic on their behalf. Yuuko might be able to help, but would require a price. A sacrifice.

Kurogane had sacrificed again and again to pull Fai out of messes of his own making; he'd almost died last time, rent apart and bled nearly dry. Maybe even Kurogane had finally reached the limits of how much he could give up for Fai's sake.

"I suppose it's to be expected," Seishirou said, slowly regaining his self-control. Disgust and disappointment warred on his features, before being smoothed away into a blank mask, sinisterly smiling. "But this does throw serious doubt on the use of all my data. You're too weak, and only getting weaker - I can't be expected to use you as a baseline with any kind of reliability."

Then why not let me go? Fai wanted to ask him wearily, but he read the answer in Seishirou's eyes even if he could have spoken the thought aloud.

"I'll keep you as long as you last, then," Seishirou decided. He drew one finger through the puddle of bile and blood on the table, lifted his hand to inspect how the dark liquid beaded and ran down the slick material of the glove. "I do wonder, what properties would your half-vampire blood have? True vampire blood, of course, you already know; marvelous regenerative qualities, magical potency, even immortality. But even in an adulterated form, it might be useful - when you are no longer of any other use, I suppose, I might as well open you up and drain every drop for other experiments."

The thought at last seemed to excite him, a burning fire kindling in his eyes as he imagined all the uses that vampire blood could be put to. He ran the same gloved finger down Fai's torso, over the ribs and hollowing stomach, leaving a red streak against the backdrop of red burns and white skin. His hand moved to grip Fai's hip, hard enough to leave a bruise, if he'd been human. With a sudden movement he pushed himself up over the table, supporting himself on one hand as he loomed over Fai. "Waste not - want not, no?" he whispered.

Fai inhaled as deeply as he could, closing his eye and letting his head fall back against the table. He didn't want to watch Seishirou's face when he did this; not the cruelty and lust that came over his features, but more than anything how he looked right through him, imagining another's face superimposed over his.

Neither of them had what they wanted, in this cold and sterile place. Seishirou wanted another, lashed out all his frustrated fury on the only target he could reach, but took not even the least bit of satisfaction from it. Fai wanted to be away from here, home and safe, with his family and loved ones again. Away from this madman, this bed of pain, this killing hunger and cold indifference. And he wanted - he closed his eyes and wished, as fervently as he had ever wished before in his life - he wanted someone to come for him soon.

~end.