Title: Grounded
Rating: G
Pairing: Some Kuro/Fai, Kuro/Tomoyo of a sort
Timeline: Volume 22 of the English translation, in Nihon.
Author's notes: Just a little playing around with the characters, getting to know them. Fai's POV.
They've been six days in Nihon, and Fai still feels uncomfortable around Princess Tomoyo.
It's not jealousy, although Fai knows Kurogane thinks it is. Or if it is jealousy, he doesn't know whether he is jealous of her for having him, or him for having her. Fai has few enough beloved people in his life that he could never begrudge other people their own, and he knows that the bond that he shares with Kurogane is nothing remotely like what Kurogane shares with Tomoyo.
What they have is what they are, individuals in pain and isolation together. But what Kurogane has with Tomoyo belongs not just to her, but through her to every man and woman under her rule, to the very bones of the land beneath their feet, to the souls of the honored dead who have come before them. Kurogane's service is sworn not just to the princess, but to all she stands for, and her service to him is her service to them.
It makes clear at last a lot about Kurogane, whom he had watched fascinated from a distance before but never, never understood. That loyalty which goes back and back and down and down through years and miles, steady and unmoving, that continuity that links him with something so much greater than any one person can be. It explains so much about how Kurogane can be how he is, so sure and so fearless, knowing that battle may come and pain may come and even death may come and it will never be able to strip away from you that certainty of who you are.
And Fai understands Kurogane so much better now, having come to this place, and he looks at Kurogane and he thinks: you've kept faith all your life, and they've kept faith with you; your parents died, and it hurt, but that came from the outside, and you swore to revenge yourself for them with strength that came from within. You've had faith all your life and you know nothing, nothing about what it means, not to have this. You have your Princess, as Syaoran had his, and she holds you to your past, to your home, to all the love that you've ever known...
Princess Tomoyo makes Fai uncomfortable, because Fai loves Kurogane, and he looks at Princess Tomoyo, serene and beautiful. And a part of him can't help but wonder how badly Kurogane will be hurt, when she -- someday, inevitably -- betrays him.
~end.