Disclaimer: I disclaim it, all right. CLAMP, however, doesn't. They probably disclaim what actually happens to their own characters in the following writing, though.
Warnings: Have you read Tsubasa? Do you know who the characters Kurogane and Fai are? Well, they're going to interact. And frankly, if they were to do exactly this in the actual manga, there would still be people who called them not canon, so go ahead and read away. There is really, literally not any more KuroFai in here than is in the actual manga.
Oh. And this one is kind of short, too. It's no Heart Box.
-~-~-~-~-
He bows before her, knees and joints all bending and one false arm holding the sheathed sword before him, a whirring of mechanisms as it raises and rests on its end on the wooden floor. Red eyes stay on the ground, as though by doing so he is refusing to raise his weapon.
She smiles at him, brave and sweet and true all at once, and when she speaks it is in a tone that suggests she knows more about what has just been said than even the one who said it. Beside Princess Tomoyo, Souma stands with rigid limbs, shock and anger blooming on her face, betrayal in the curve of her brow and the tightness of her jaw.
Kurogane does not meet her eyes either.
"What do you mean by this?" Tomoyo asks quietly.
"I am sorry. I still serve you. But I believe… I do believe I've started to serve another as well." His voice is unreadable, blank.
"Treachery! God, treachery? From you, Kurogane? From you, I never, never expected this, I-"
A small hand is lifted and Souma goes silent. Kurogane's eyes still do not raise and stay fixed on the floor. The calloused pads of his fingers grip the sword though, knuckles white. When he speaks, it is as though the already harsh voice is the edge of a scream, a shout that explodes within the confines of his trembling muscle as anger churns in his blood.
"I am no traitor." And finally the eyes raise and find Souma's and pierce her, though she does not flinch. The glare is met head on. "Don't you dare call me a traitor. I serve Princess Tomoyo. I always have and I always will. There is just… shit, I don't know. I've just started serving someone else, too. Another royal, as well. No enemy of hers. He'll be a citizen, actually, but-"
It is at this point that Tomoyo begins to laugh, bringing one stiff fabric-clothed sleeve to her mouth and laughing, hard and loud, her head falling back as she does.
"Oho ho ho ho!"
Souma and Kurogane both stare at her blankly. Kurogane with some impatience, a flush tinting his cheeks, and Souma with complete incredulity.
She finishes, and purple eyes laugh, a mouth still smiling and the inside of one cheek biting back a larger grin so that the outside dimples. A scowl steals itself across Kurogane's accepting features.
"Well." She almost smirks. "Far be it from me to try to make a traitor of you, Kurogane. God knows anyone would fail."
There is a pause. He stares at her, still without emotion. "I did swear that it was only you." He said softly, after a moment.
"You gave me your life." Tomoyo said, and sweet in an almost cheeky way she added: "Not your soul."
Kurogane's eyes narrowed. "I started serving another. Besides you. I'm not getting married so don't use words like 'soul.'"
"Ok. I know." She smiled, and Kurogane glared. And his face was red because he was angry, and for no other reason.
"I started serving another." Kurogane repeated blankly.
Tomoyo bit her lip, trying not to laugh.
There was a long silence. Kurogane and Souma both stared at Tomoyo. Kurogane finally spoke, a crease of worry finding it's way onto his face. He used the edge of anger to cover it. "If anyone else tells you that they've started serving another, you have them arrested. That's just a stupid thing to accept without question."
"Oh for god's sake!" Souma roared, but Tomoyo was laughing again. With a wave of her hand she dismissed a very haughty Kurogane, who stormed from the room. He glared once over his shoulder as he left, eyes scanning the room as if to check and make sure there were no other soldiers intent on informing her of their duo loyalty.
When she had finally calmed down, Souma was still staring at her with incredulity on her face, fists clenched at her sides. Tomoyo seemed to take no notice of this, however, turning instead gleefully up at a highly confused Souma and saying cutely "It's sweet, isn't it?"
-~-~-~-~-
It was late at night when Kurogane arrived home, though Fai was still outside. His feet were bare, sunk into the grass as if they had roots. Pale toes were edged with dirt like rust, and a tiny apple was held in the center of one palm, cradled as if it were a fat gem, or a fragile egg.
Without a word Kurogane joined him, standing beside the mage as the other man gazed at the sky. Cicadas hummed. The apple was brought to his face, appraised. Fai spoke softly, and there was something almost harsh in his voice, though not particularly cruel. It was as though the edge of a knife had been cleaned, unsheathed, and revealed for what it was in the blunt emotion that lingered around the words.
"Sakura really loved apples, you know. I don't know how she got them originally, though. She lived in the desert, so it's not as if there were orchards. I suppose through trading…"
The apple was brought to Fai's lips, pressed to his nose for a moment and he breathed it in as though devouring its scent. And then teeth sunk in, and the fruit was so small half of it came away from the bite. The tiny hearts of the seeds rested in white pulp like ink spots on a paper.
And it was at this moment that Kurogane, face flushed and set in a red glare that clearly said 'don't you DARE make any kind of comment or joke about this' got down on one knee and gripped Fai's hand almost harshly, holding it merely inches away from his face.
The bit of apple fell right out of Fai's mouth and dropped to the grass between them. Kurogane didn't look up, instead choosing to ignore this.
Their hands were an odd assortment of colors. Going from right to left they were dark, and then one white slender thing with long fingers, pale as bone in the moonlight. And then metal, metal wires in a collection of faux tendons. Kurogane chose to focus on this, and to not meet Fai's eyes just yet.
"I, Kurogane Suwa, do hereby swear loyalty to Yuui of Valeria… and Celes, and at this point, Nihon. I swear to protect and serve Yuui, um, as well as Princess Tomoyo, from now until the day I die. I will faithfully protect, support, and defend him. I further swear that he will not die until after I am dead, either over my dead body or years after because he either got himself killed without me or… anyway, over my dead body."
"Kuro-"
"Shut up. I swear to protect him from all those who wish to harm him, including himself, at times. As a show of my devotion I give him my true name, Youou, which only a master of a warrior of Nihon may possess knowledge of."
There was a long silence after this, and Kurogane still held Fai's hand. Brown, white, silver…
His eyes lay on the ground, on Fai's pale toes nestled in the grass. The finger twitched against his palm, and he finally looked up, still glaring, daring Fai to comment at all and daring him not to.
Fai's face was completely unreadable, but at least there was no fake smile to mask it. All was blank, not even a line in any corner to mar the unwrinkled skin and betray any hidden emotion. Kurogane could still feel the hand in his and imagined he could feel its warmth even in the metal arm. He had never been more aware of something as simple as a hand in his own.
"That," Fai said slowly, deliberately and still emotionlessly, "was a loyalty oath."
"Yes." Kurogane said flatly, bluntly yet with a defensive edge. Sulking indigence in his glare like a child wronged. The first hint of a reaction flickered in Fai's face, perhaps amusement on the very edge of that straight lined mouth and Kurogane's eyes flew to it. There was another long silence. Kurogane considered dropping the hand, but he didn't.
"You… ah, you changed a few words, I'm guessing?"
"Yes." He repeated. Another silence stretched between them, and Kurogane refused to let his eyes leave Fai's wide blue ones. Blond eyebrows had practically risen to the hairline. "I thought it should… fit. Parts of it didn't really work. So I made it work." Blunt statements are always safest- if someone ends up laughing or hating you, they hate you for the truth and not for some knot in the lies you twisted for them; a mistake. He did not add that it was the truth, though he thought to for a moment. Anything involving him, there was no point in clarifying.
"Ah." Fai says, and the syllable is pondered.
Kurogane really thinks now that he should actually let go of Fai's hand before this gets any weirder or more awkward. Just as the pale hand is leaving his though, fingers grip around his more tightly, and suddenly Fai is kneeling as well, the apple thrown aside and the other hand in his against the metal one. Brown, white, silver, white…
"I, Yuui and sometimes Fai D. Fluorite, do hereby swear loyalty to Kurogane Suwa, apparently Youou, of Nihon and Nihon and at this point still Nihon."
There is a grin, a brilliant and real and almost playful and wicked smile forming on his face, collecting his teeth like small bright spots in the night and seeming to strain at the stitches of his cheeks and the eyes that shine, and Kurogane doesn't move.
"I swear to protect and serve Youou, um, as well as any Princess Sakura in any world, from now until the day I die. I will faithfully protect, support, and defend him. I further swear that he will not die until after I am dead, either over my dead body or years after, because he either got himself killed without me to fight at his back, or anyway over my dead body! I swear to protect him from all those who wish to harm him, including… well, never including himself, and never including myself, I think, anymore. I mean for me. Well, you too, clearly, but you know what I mean. As a show of my devotion I give him my true name, Yuui, even if this world and every other will still call me Fai, and he'll probably still call me Idiot or Mage or You since I will still be calling him Kuro-sama. But, really, I suppose what counts is that the use of that is there. And, as a new warrior of Nihon, I give it to only you."
There was yet another silence when Fai had finished, different from any of the others- different from the silences after Kurogane had dug under the first layer of him, different from the silence of Shura, different from the silence when teasing stopped being harmless and began to cross all those self drawn lines. Different from the silence after a life was saved, after "Good Morning, Kurogane." And after blood had wetted dry lips. After clones and death and a dead twin, after the death of an old king. The closest it came to was the silence after a lost arm, when the universe had seemed to stretch between them for an instant before a fist connected with a head.
Kurogane felt as if he could feel Fai's heart beating even though he only held his hands (brown, white, silver, white), and the heart seemed to beat perfectly within the spaces that Kurogane's heart paused, so between them blood was always pumping through their separate veins.
Fai's eyes shone, he smiled his true, his encompassing smile, and Kurogane did not look away from his face as he spoke, and his mouth was dry.
"I don't think it's supposed to work that way." He said, and his voice was so very quiet, he could feel it rumbling in his own chest, and he found he was grinning too. Cicadas still sang their rhythm as the two men kneeled before each other in the back yard before the small forest, the beginning of Princess Tomoyo's gardens, hands lined up and sandwiched between one another, fingers clutching without notice. Cicadas still sang and the night was silent besides, stars and the moon as a silver coin set into the velvet black.
"Yeah. Well. I made it work, didn't I, Kuro-sama?"
Kurogane let out the slightest huff of a laugh.
A/N: Um… ok, I don't know.
Well, anyway- this was written because a friend from the real world won my supposedly never-ending impossible game and actually managed to find my fanfiction dot net account, despite the very vague amount of hints. And we were talking, and she was surprised that out of the four stories I wrote, only two of them contain Fai, yet all of them contain Kurogane. And three of them are romance-ish. So yeah, you see the problem here.
I can honestly say I was just sitting at home after a party and I thought this up- might as well write it out. I laughed whilst writing it, but I don't know if you laughed- the way I see it this could either turn out being very nice or very stupid. Like, I personally believe this would never happen, because Kurogane is just too loyal to Tomoyo. He loves Fai, but I believe he's quite aware of that little factoid, unlike in this, where he's just the slightest bit confused. I did, however, like the idea of both swearing a loyalty oath, and Tomoyo being all gleeful about Kurogane getting a love life, because we all know he's never had one before.
Oh, and one more thing, since this is already the longest author's note ever: Would anyone read a really long, very hard to follow Tsubasa fic that was updated very, very rarely and contained almost no actual romance at all between Kurogane and Fai despite the fact that Kurogane was the main character? Because I have a plan, and I think it's a relatively good idea, but it will be very hard to follow if I do start uploading it. And because (as the person from the 'real world' knows) I have other writing responsibilities, it would be updated very rarely and contain many, many cliffhangers. So I'm not sure if I should even start uploading it, to be honest. Because whenever I explain it (like, um, above), it sounds really, really terrible. The plot, however, I think is interesting.
Review please! Reviews make me very, very happy!