a/n; Well hello there, readers, and welcome to the completely revamped and re-uploaded version of Little Sibling. There were a lot of reasons for why I chose to start over on this fic, but the main one is definitely the writing itself – I first started this fic almost three years ago now, and given that I was a vastly different person then and just starting out as a fanfiction writer, the story ended up being far below my expectations of quality. My standards have greatly increased since two and a half years ago, and looking back at the earlier chapters of Little Sibling, I couldn't help but feel dissatisfied. And thus, this overhaul has occurred.

Before I begin, I want to apologize to my previous readers of this fic, who have been kept waiting a very long time for it to be continued. A lot has been going on in my life, but I feel like that isn't a good excuse for essentially ignoring this story for months. I said it in the beginning, and I'll say it again – I will never abandon this story.

That being said, to old and new readers alike, I hope you can enjoy this new and improved version of Little Sibling, and if you're not too mad at me (or too disinterested, either one), I hope you'll drop me a review. Thank you.

The darkness stabbed at him like a knife.

He tried to move, to speak, to do anything to drive away the sharp aching of his eyes, yet, nothing – his body was useless, a shapeless contour in the dark. Where am I? He thought quietly. Where is this place…?

A sudden pain in his wrist cut through the darkness and the throbbing of his head, and his eyes at last flashed open.

Rain. He hadn't noticed it, distracted by the pain he felt, but now he could see it clearly, could feel it as it drenched him with frost-bitten glee. The rain fell in heavy sheets on his face, large droplets illuminated by the pale light of a fat moon staring down at him from the sky, as if they were trying to pin him to the muddy ground.

Said mud painted his pale face as he slowly turned his head, fighting against the aching throb that would have him remain immobile, and tried to find any kind of clue as to where he was. The parts of the ground not covered in mud seemed to be taken up dried, crumpled leaves and clumps of shriveled grass, scattered liberally as if to obstruct his vision, and the various twisting shapes of something he could not immediately define. He squinted through the darkness, the pale moonlight providing just enough illumination for him to make out the gnarled, twisted roots of a long-dead tree, a grotesque husk that seemed to be duplicated throughout the forest he found himself in.

Suddenly, something struck him as being wrong.

It wasn't that the trees themselves felt particularly out of place, despite their grotesque forms, and the ground itself held no secrets for him as far as he could tell. Then, what was it? He asked himself, but no answer immediately came to his fog-laden head. He twisted in place, his mind feeling thick and heavy, thoughts slow as he tried to shake himself of the remnants of sleep.

His movements earned him yet another flare of pain from his wrist, a pain that only worsened when he attempted to move it. He turned carefully to the right in an attempt to discover the cause, only to find that said wrist had somehow gotten entangled in a nasty briar patch, the thorns of which were viciously digging into the soft flesh and drawing a copious amount of blood for its efforts. Carefully, he reached his hand over and started to free himself, the thorns inflicting even more cuts and injuries as he did so, a violent protest against his actions. Eventually, he won the battle and his wrist was freed from its imprisonment, the blood on both his hands mixing together as it was washed away by the heavy rain.

With the pain now subsided, he decided to make an effort to sit up, damp leaves and muddy dirt clinging to the back of his brown petticoat as he did so. His vision danced as a sense of dizziness overwhelmed him for a moment, forcing him to steady himself to keep from falling.

Where in the world am I…?

His thoughts felt heavy and slow, as if his mind were trapped in a drug-induced haze, and he had to struggle to recall just where he was and just why he was there. Once again, a feeling that something was very wrong flared inside his mind, causing him to look around. He slowly surveyed his surroundings, the gnarled trees, the crumpled leaves and dead grass, the red dirt…

Red dirt?

He blinked, the rain obscuring his vision just a bit, before he began to drag himself across the muddy ground to a bare patch he had spotted. The spot was relatively free of mud and foliage, allowing him to observe the rain-accosted dirt beneath. It seemed normal at first, just a patch of damp dirt of poor quality, but as he looked closer the soil betrayed small patches that gleamed a slimy red. The colour was quickly washed away, as if the rain itself were trying to cover for some sort of crime, but it was too late – he knew what he had seen.

Blood…, he thought slowly. Fresh blood…

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. Something was wrong. Something besides the blood. Why couldn't he think?

He sat back on his knees, staring upwards into the rain, as if the clouded sky may hold some sort of answer to his questions. He blinked into the droplets that attacked his face, soaking his clothing and his golden hair, tracing the stars silently as he attempted to find his answers.

….stars?

It was as if a curtain had suddenly been lifted from his mind, leaving it clear and unobstructed. His thoughts returned in full force, and with them the answers that he had been grasping for. The stars, the moon, the blood…!

Of course, stars shouldn't be visible during the rain, and neither should the moon, for under normal circumstances they would be covered by the clouds. And yet, they were there – it was the clouds that were missing, the rain falling from empty space as if some mischievous god were throwing water on the world. But why? How?

He looked around once more, hoping for some sort of explanation to go along with his deductions, yet instead he was met with a slight stab of panic as he realized that it wasn't just the clouds that were missing from this world—

I'm alone, he thought. Why? Where are the others? He stood up hastily, nearly tripping over his unused limbs as he turned full circle in his search, half expecting that they would show up just as he did so. They didn't.

Syaoran, Sakura, Kurogane and Mokona were nowhere to be found. He was alone.

Fai was alone.