Title: The Devil's Brew
Pairing: Kuro/Fai
Author's notes: Written for the 2015 KuroFai Olympics. I was on team Fantasy, prompt: Coffee AU. :)
So apparently, there was a period of time in which coffee was outlawed in London (and a number of other European cities) due to its association with liberal and revolutionary sentiment. Sort of like hippies in coffee shops today, but with more guillotining.
In the dark - and it was always dark - the lights of Edonis picked out the city's bones and sinews in a flickering, guttering network of streets and canals. From the many lighthouses perched precariously on the rocks to guide trade ships safely to dock, to the stark chemical lights blazing over the never-sleeping docks and warehouse district, to the bobbing gas-lamps that lit the roads leading back into the city proper, the lights of Edonis never went out.
And it was a city that needed those lights, because it was far enough north that half the year was spent cloaked in darkness. Their proximity to the sea and the river-mouth kept the worst of the north's wintry fury at bay, but in exchange for a neverending damp chill that swept upwards from the harbor to cloak the city's lights. Edonis was rich - the constant flow of trade from the docks up away the river made it so - but it was dark, soaking damp, and fucking cold.
All of which, Kurogane thought, made the Hierophant's decision to outlaw the sale or purchase of coffee within city limits a fucking crime against humanity as far as he was concerned. You might as well try to outlaw fire.
Not that he wouldn't try, Kurogane thought, in the private safety of his own mind. That pompous windbag thinks the sun shines out of his ass already.
Kurogane clenched his fingers in the leather straps of his satchel, staring morosely at the fronstpiece of the Fiddler's Green Coffee-House. The windows were dark and empty, the once warm and bustling dance-floor now cold and silent, and a shining square of parchment nailed to the front door proclaimed the cause.
BY ORDER OF
THE HIEROPHANT
GATEKEEPER TO THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM
this establishment is hereby CONDEMNED
on the suspicion of BLASPHEMY, SEDITION,
and CONSORTION WITH WITCHES
Nor was it the only one. Those horrid, hateful proclamations had been springing up all over the city like mushrooms in a warm spell, choking off one after another of the city's coffee houses.
It had been no surprise that the Moon Rabbit café had been shut down first of all; its proprietors Yukito and Touya, well-to-do bachelors with an unhealthy disdain for tradition, had served up a rousing menu of coffee, pancakes and abolitionist demagoguery. But that had been only the first. The Green Apothecary went under next, the public-house-and-chemist that sold a wide variety of 'remedies,' including coffee, in an attempt to find a legal loophole in the ban. After that had been the Four Clovers, the late-night coffee shop that Oruha had run in close tandem with the brothel next door.
The whorehouse, incredibly enough, had stayed open. Kurogane wondered bitterly why, if the Hierophant wasn't so concerned about blasphemy and sin, he hadn't bothered to shut down any of the pub-houses or brothels that dotted the canal-ways.
No, it was only the coffee-houses that had earned the Gatekeeper of Heaven's ire, and Kurogane was pretty sure he could guess why; alcohol might be the devil's piss but it left people slurring and staggering, more likely to pass out cold in the gutter and be frozen by morning than to plot revolution. It was only in the coffee-houses, kept hot with braziers and steaming mugs of brew, that the students and scholars stayed awake long into the dark hours to talk of politics and reform.
"Hellfire." Kurogane turned away, still muttering bitten-off profanities under his breath. Consortion with witches indeed. As if any idealistic university student needed to be a witch, or a witch-lover to declaim about witch rights. It was the hot topic among the city's libertines, always had been, but that didn't mean that any of them were going to do anything about it. After all, none of them ever had yet.
Personally Kurogane had nothing against witches, so long as they stayed in their covens where they belonged - the gated-off, briar-choked enclaves on the borderland between city and wilderness which was the only place the witchblooded were (barely) tolerated. They weren't doing anyone any harm there, after all, aside from the affront they presented to Heaven simply by existing (and Kurogane thought that if God had a problem with their existence, then He could take care of that himself.)
No, the witchblood were fine so long as they kept to themselves. It was only when they tried to mix and mingle with normal folk that people got... hurt.
Kurogane pushed the thought resolutely away, hiding from it like the dimmed moon slid behind a veil of clouds. It was too early in the morning to entertain such thoughts. It was too early in the morning to be anything more than late at night. God, I need some coffee, Kurogane prayed fervently, and let his steps turn away from the Fiddler's Green to carry him off down the streets.
He was nearly run down by a squadron of paladins going the other way, up towards the Hierophant's Keep atop the cliff, and Kurogane stepped to the side of the road to let them pass. He inclined his head slightly to the gleaming square cross on their armor, but kept one wary hand on his sword, just in case. While paladins weren't supposed to turn their righteous wrath on anyone except criminals (or witches, same difference) the Church's military enforcers tended to be rather... loose in their idea of what constituted a crime.
As a common worldly sell-sword, a veteran of many scrapes and battles not at all fought in the name of the Lord, Kurogane was something of a natural enemy (or at least competitor) to the paladine order. Kurogane had no desire to take a penance to the face this early in the morning; the paladins claimed that the holy fire only burned in the presence of sin, and therefore anyone struck by it must be by definition a sinner, but since Kurogane had yet to see anyone the penance didn't work on, he was inclined to take that argument with a grain of salt.
He waited until the last of the paladins had gone by, then turned down a narrow alley to take him to a different part of the city. This one was higher, dryer (relatively speaking; nothing in Edonis was really dry) and further away from the lifeline of commerce that ran from the city's docks to the highway north, so it was a shabby and cheap area despite the relative lack of noise and smell. Here, at least, there were still some windows still shining with bright and cheery warmth.
Kurogane stopped beneath a hanging wooden board, the picture of a black cat drawn on it to announce the name to the illiterate. He pushed open the door, to be greeted by a blast of heat and human noise.
The Cat's Eye Cafe was packed tonight, far more so than was normal for a venue so small and so off the beaten path. The coffee itself was good - mostly lacking the floating chunks of char or sand that often characterized the drink - but the lack of other spectacle had, up until now, kept their patronage fairly low. Now, the combined heat of lanterns, boiling pots, and packed bodies nearly blasted Kurogane off his feet as he entered - but at least it was a change from the cold.
Out of habit Kurogane scanned the crowd, one hand resting near the hilt of his sword as he kept his eye out for threats. He caught a few familiar faces, men known to him in a professional capacity - fellow sell-swords, security hires or bouncers; Kazuhiko, Gingetsu, and Bols - and exchanged reserved nods of respect for them before moving on. A flash of gold caught his eye, instantly drawing his attention; after a moment he recognized Noriko, one of the young scions of nobility, taking up a table with two of his friends from university lost deep in earnest discussion. But for the most part, the crowd of patrons wore the coats and boots, the hoods and scarves of dockworkers, porters and other laborers who kept the city's lifeblood flowing. Here, they gathered in hopes of the city returning the favor.
A young woman with ginger hair tied in a kerchief wriggled expertly through the crowd, smiling as she caught Kurogane's eye. "Welcome to the Cat's Eye... Tavern!" the waitress said, her voice catching only slightly on the last-minute substitution. "What'll be your pleasure, sir?"
"What's all this 'tavern' bullshit?" Kurogane said dryly, stepping inside and pulling off the bulky canvas overcoat that everyone in Edonis wore to keep off the clinging fog. "I came to see my friend Sakura, who works at the Cat's Eye Cafe."
Sakura grinned at him, her smile bright and innocent in a fresh, young face. "I don't know what you're talking about, sir," she chirped brightly. "We are a reputable bed and breakfast establishment, which serves a variety of entirely legal beverages to our patrons."
Kurogane snorted, letting the moment of levity fade. "Like that's going to make a difference when the paladins come pounding down your front door," he said.
Despite his proclamations of doom and gloom, Sakura's cheer was as unblemished as ever. "Oh, I'm sure everything will be all right," she said breezily. "You want your usual, Sir Kurogane?"
"Yeah, yeah," Kurogane waved her off with a mutter, and Sakura smiled again and bounced back towards the kitchen. She was back within a minute with a heavy, steaming mug of dark liquid - a variety of reputable beverages, my ass, people only come in here for one thing and it's all you've got on the pot anyway - which she set in front of him.
Kurogane inhaled deeply, letting the steam wash over his face and into his lungs, and nearly moaned aloud with relief. Coffee, thank fuck, he could still get a mug of coffee in this wretched city. The Hierophant could fuck off, the witchbloods could fuck off, and the stupid idealistic university kids who wanted to turn this heavenly gift into a point of political contention could fuck the fuck right off.
He downed half the mug in the first long swallow, feeling the thick bitterness burn in his mouth and throat all the way down, feeling the rush of heat sweep over him from his head to his feet. He had just set the mug down for a moment, clearing his throat, when the sound of a sudden rush of rippling music came from the corner behind him. His back stiffened as though the notes had been a hail of arrows, mouthed a profanity he didn't quite voice, and turned to crack an eye over his shoulder. Just his fucking luck - the fucking bard was here tonight.
Kurogane couldn't fail to recognize the man; tall and willowy, dressed in garish red and orange silks, with a crimson hat topping ridiculous pale blond curls. He dressed to stand out, to entertain, to draw the eye of every man in the house to fixate on his performances, and it wouldn't have been half so irritating if he didn't look so damn good while doing it.
"Why, hello there, Kuro-brute," the bard said, his bright blue eyes twinkling with a mocking laughter barely concealed. "Fancy meeting you here! What brings you to the Cat's Eye today? Looking for a merry tune, perhaps, courtesy of Fai Flowright?"
Well, it made sense. Just as the coffee-houses closing down had forced Kurogane into an increasingly narrow range of selection to find his daily fix, so the bard who depended on public audiences for his daily bread was also forced into the same company. Kurogane growled and turned his back on the man, gripping his mug in both hands with a disgruntled huff. Please, God, don't let him sing, he prayed fervently upwards. Please just let me get through one mug without any singing -
Apparently, he'd used up his daily quota of miracles in getting the coffee he'd prayed for earlier, because Fai laughed out loud behind him, and struck up a new song on his lute.
Fai sang, "There is a lady from the south,
Who makes her living with her mouth,
She's the town crier, she's the town crier!"
Kurogane nearly choked on his coffee. He shot the bard a nasty glare, but Fai ignored him and went on gleefully to the second verse.
"There is a girl from Somerset,
Who makes her living getting wet,
She's a fisherwoman, she's a fisherwoman!
"There is a woman down the block,
Who -"
Kurogane slammed his pewter mug onto the table and cut him off before they could learn about the woman who raised chickens. "You've got a lot of nerve, singing that song in the company of a young lady!"
"Who, Sakura?" Fai laughed, the repetitive chords of the bawdy song dissolving into a long descending scale. "She works in a public house, she's heard worse than that."
Kurogane snorted. "Yeah, probably from you," he accused.
"Probably!" Fai grinned, as immune as ever to any kind of criticism or insult.
He let out a sigh. It was too much to hope for any kind of public decency from the blond minstrel. After all, he made his living from public performances, hardly any more respectable than the poor women in his song. He visited taverns and tap-houses, sang in public squares, but Kurogane had mostly seen him around on the coffee-house circuit - well, before the paladins had closed them all down, anyway. It was just the insult ground into the injury, that the increasing pressure on the city's cafes would also force him into closer proximity with Fai Flowright.
The hell of it was, Fai actually had a pretty decent voice - and he was witty and eloquent (two qualities a bard could hardly do without, Kurogane supposed.) He could talk like a Chapel minister when he was moved to do so, his blue eyes glowing with inspiration and every movement of his hands and body like a dance. Like any good performer Fai knew how to appeal to the emotion in people, how to stir them and inspire them.
If only he hadn't decided that those talents were best used by annoying the piss out of everyone.
Or, well, maybe not everyone.
Just Kurogane.
And he couldn't play that lute for shit, either, Kurogane thought spitefully. How was it that nobody ever seemed to notice that he only actually ever played two or three notes, with his singing voice taking up the rest of the melody?
He was messing around with the awful lute again now, strumming it in mindless chords while he fiddled with the tuning (to no improvement, to Kurogane's ear.) "So, Kuro-pon," he said lightly, "What brings you to the Cat's Eye today?"
"Fiddler's Green was closed down by the paladins." Kurogane frowned down into his mug. God, he didn't want to think of what would become of this city when the last of the coffee-houses were shut down.
"Mm, so I heard." Fai's attention all seemed to be on his lute, eyes and hands glued to the tuning pegs, only his voice any indication that he was paying any attention to the conversation. "It's almost suspicious, you know, the way the Hierophant wields rumors of witchbloods to shut down dissidents. It's almost like he doesn't care about witches at all, and only uses their threat as a whip to keep the rest of the populace from resisting his yoke."
Kurogane grunted noncommittally. Fai glanced at him from underneath his eyelashes. "There are some people who think that the Hierophant's greed and tyranny are a stain on the reputation of the Chapel," he murmured. "There are some people who think that if Fei Wong Reed went back to concerning himself with holy concerns of the Heavenly Kingdom, and left the city's earthly concerns to be tended by earthly men, then it would do both earth and heaven a world of good."
Kurogane choked on his drink. "Oh god, you're a Separatist," he groaned. It was probably inevitable, spending all his working hours among the students and the Reformationists, that he would have picked up some of their politics. A fate that up until now, Kurogane himself had been able to avoid. "There are some people who say the world would be better if it rained beer instead of water, but that doesn't make it so. Me, I'll stick to my coffee, thanks. In peace and quiet."
Fai made a disapproving tsk noise in his throat. "You've got quite an addiction there, my friend," he said, his voice mock-chiding. "You know, they say that coffee is the Devil's brew, and that it only grows in fairy rings where witches have danced."
"Well." Kurogane contemplated the last of his coffee at the bottom of the mug, the way the liquid reflections played off the slick black surface. "Is it?"
"No, no. It grows quite naturally on the savage shores of Barbaria," Fai assured him earnestly. "Still, Sakura does wonders with the drink, doesn't she? It must be magic!"
Kurogane stiffened, and glanced around without turning his head; thankfully, nobody else seemed to be paying attention to their conversation. "Don't even joke about that. Sakura's not a witch," he warned.
"Of course she's not," Fai scoffed. "She doesn't have horns."
"Don't be dumb." Kurogane snorted. "Witches don't have horns."
"Oh?" Fai said airily. "You're an expert on what witches look like, are you?"
"They look like normal people," Kurogane said sharply. And he would know. "They couldn't exactly hide among the general populace if they looked weird, now could they?"
"Well, they could if the differences were all hidden under clothes." Fai fluttered his eyelashes at Kurogane, the firelight reflecting off fine gold strands as he wriggled around in his seat, apparently trying to replicate some kind of sexy shimmy. His grin widened, turned sly. "They say that witch women have sideways vaginas, you know."
Kurogane froze with his mug halfway to his lips, once again left contemplating the sinful mysteries in its black depths. "...How would that even work?" he said after a long minute.
"Well, they must be different from us somehow, mustn't they?" Fai shrugged. "Otherwise, why would the Hierophant have to spend so much coin and blood protecting the world from them?"
The words were caustic, bitter, but no hint of it leaked into his light and breathy tone. Which was the performance, Kurogane wondered? Was he pretending an interest in politics in order to appeal to the sympathies of his clientele, or pretending a clinical detachment from passions too close to his own heart?
"Maybe he's protecting them from the world," Kurogane said at last, coming out of visions of a gnarled tree at sunset, of long swaying shadows cast by the blood-red sun.
Fai snorted. "Or maybe he's protecting his own coffers. The Hierophant sells permits to practice white magic, but for an ungodly sum. He makes a fortune off of noblemen who want to protect their witchblood children, while the poor or dissidents are herded into pens like animals."
Kurogane let out a sigh. "The world is what it is," he said. "Complaining about it won't change it."
"No," Fai agreed, a peculiar lack of emphasis on his words. "Complaining won't."
A weighted silence fell between them then, surrounded on all sides by the laughter and conversation of the other patrons, the atmosphere picking up as more men came in from the rain and warmed up. Someone shouted for a song, and Fai waved in response, to the cheers and clapping of all.
He pushed himself out of the chair and then paused, giving Kurogane a sideways glance. "You know, Kuro-sama, you're not so bad for a sellsword," he said, one side of his lips curling up as he delivered the backhand compliment. "Perhaps you and I ought to form a partnership. You could come with me on my tavern circuit and protect me from bandits!"
"There aren't any bandits in the city," Kurogane felt obliged to point out. "Just paladins."
"And that's not just as bad?" Fai said with a snort. "Think about it, anyhow."
Kurogane did think about it, even as Fai clambered back up on the wooden stage and took a seat. As he adjusted his garish clothes, fiddling with his cuffs and cravat and fluffing his sunshine hair. It wouldn't be so bad, he thought, spending more time with Fai. Regular work was not to be scoffed at, and the thought of seeing Fai more than just in passing in social circles…
But then he remembered that Fai was a bard, an actor and performer. He made his living by making people like Kurogane feel special and wanted. It was never safe to assume that anything he said was anything he really thought, or felt. Kurogane shook his head. "I don't think so," he said, not raising his voice above the crowd.
Fai was watching him for a response, though, and his face fell a little as the words reached him. He shook it off quickly, though, tossing back his hair and raising his lute into his lap. "Oh, Kuro-woof, you're so cruel," he said, now projecting his voice to be heard all across the tavern. "All I want is a guard-puppy of my very own, and you won't let me have it. That reminds me of a song..."
Oh God, Kurogane thought in a moment of horrified clarity, not this song.
"I love my Little Kitty," (Fai sang, pushing his voice up into a ridiculous falsetto to imitate a young girl singing. He cast a bright smile across the room to Sakura, who flushed and giggled and smiled back.)
"Her heart so clear and true,
She comes with me to chapel,
And sits upon the pew,
The Father says, "Why go about
With that girl of yours?"
I tell him that I go about
With Sakura because
"Daddy wouldn't give me a bow-wow! bow wow!" (Fai threw all his impressive range into howling the chorus.)
"Daddy wouldn't give me a bow-wow! bow wow!
I've got a little cat
And I'm very fond of that
But I'd rather have a bow-wow
Wow, wow, wow, wow!"
By the time Fai got to the second chorus, the entire coffee-house was joining in, bawling along to the hellishly catchy dog sound effects. It sounded like an entire cityfull of hounds had suddenly decided to break out in song, except for Kurogane, who gritted his teeth and dug his nails into the pewter mug and congratulated himself on not having murdered everyone in the entire café.
The noise level was so atrocious, in fact, that even Kurogane's sharp ears didn't hear the crash of the front door being kicked in; his first clue was the sudden draft of cold, wet air piercing through the coffee-house's warmth. Others noticed it a second later, and the song and cacophony died away as heads turned in a rippling wave to face the door.
A tall, imposing figure in bulky chain-mail stood in the door, half a dozen other silhouettes crowded behind. They wore helmets that obscured their faces and eyes, but no one needed to know faces or names to recognize the blazing red emblem on each of their surcoats: the square Solomon's Cross of the paladine order.
"Well." The lead figure reached up and took off his helmet, releasing a smooth rippling fall of dark hair, bound by a golden tassel, over his shoulder. He looked around the coffee-house, and his elegant features curled into a sneer of disgust. "What a wretched lot of reprobates we have here tonight, don't we?"
Rondart. Kurogane recognized the voice and face together, and a spike of anger shot through him. The Revered Sergeant Kyle Rondart; barred by his low birth from true knighthood and festering in constant resentment for it, he took out his frustrations on the common folk whose authority he could lord it over. A thug and a bully, he represented in Kurogane's view the worst of the paladine order - it might contain good and holy men seeking only to do God's work, but Rondart wasn't one of them.
By the dark mutters going around the coffee-house, Kurogane wasn't the only one to share this opinion; but as Rondart stepped forward, six more paladins in full armor filled in behind him, spreading out in a steel-edged phalanx. Rondart looked around, that same cruel smile tugging at his lips, and raised his voice. "By the authority of the Hierophant," he shouted. "I declare this building condemned!"
God's blood, not this place too! The very last of the coffee-houses in the city, snuffed out by one bully's whim. "What for?" someone yelled out from the back of the crowd.
Rondart turned towards the voice, smirking; it was clear he'd been hoping for some defiance to quash. "Defying the mandates of the Gatekeeper of Heaven," he intoned piously. "Providing aid and succor to dangerous revolutionaries, and fomenting rebellion against the right and holy order of the world. Every man here is in defiance of the Hierophant's edicts, and Judgment is upon you."
"You can't do that," Fai said from his place on the stage, his voice tense and devoid of any of its usual humor. It made sense, Kurogane supposed; this was the last of his income, after all. "You have no evidence!"
"Perhaps you're unclear on how this works, minstrel," Rondart turned his patronizing sneer on Fai. "The Paladine Order does not require evidence. If you wish to contest these charges in court, you can produce your own evidence. Until then, it's to the Tower with the lot of you!"
Hellfire. He couldn't just sit back and let this happen. Kurogane stood up slowly, pushing back from his table and standing above the rest of the crowd. He threw back his cloak to expose his sword-hilt, but took care to keep his hands away from it. "Look, nobody here was fomenting anything," he said, trying for diplomacy. "Except maybe beer. They were just singing a stupid song about little doggies, for God's sake."
Rondart scowled. "Who the devil are you?" he demanded. Light winked and sparkled from the thin wires around his eyes, spectacle-frames without fragile or dull occluded glass to weigh it down. Kurogane recognized it as an enchantment, one of the rare few left in the city made by the witches who held permits from the Chapel to practice their art. Far, far too expensive for someone on a paladin-sergeant's pay, and Kurogane couldn't help but wonder where he'd gotten his hands on it.
"Kurogane," he said, and then added reluctantly; "…of Suwa."
"Of Suwa, eh?" Several of the other paladins stirred and murmured recognition at the name, and Rondart's sneer actually faded several degrees as the name sank in. Kurogane almost wished that it hadn't. "...I've heard that name."
I thought you might, Kurogane thought, dull hatred coursing through him. The question was, which part of the story had he heard?
The right part, apparently, because Rondart frowned thoughtfully in Kurogane's direction. "Your father was a good paladin, strong and well-respected in our order," he said. "By his name, you can go free, master Suwa."
With his eyes trained carefully on Rondart, Kurogane almost missed Fai's reaction to the news about Kurogane's parentage, the look of shock and betrayed hurt that crossed his face. He caught just a flicker of it, out of the corner of his eye, but he had no time to spare to wonder what it could mean.
Rondart glanced around at the crowd, which was already mysteriously thinner than it had been upon his entrance. Kurogane didn't know what windows or back doors they were escaping out of, but he silently urged the rest of the patrons to follow suit while he still held the paladin's attention. Rondart's face curled back into its usual haughty sneer. "But this den of iniquity must still be shut down!"
Sakura came forward with a gasp. "Please, sir, this is my home," she said, wringing her hands in her apron. "I'll have nowhere to go -"
Faster than a striking snake, Rondart's gauntleted hand shot out and grabbed Sakura's upper arm. The little waitress squeaked dismay and tried to pull away, but to no avail. Rondart's cruel smile was back, twisting and coiling in his dark eyes.
"Don't worry about that, little miss witch, there's plenty of lodging for you at the Tower," Rondart purred, and pulled Sakura closer to him. "You'll even get room service."
Fai leapt to his feet, face darkening with fury as he shouted. "Get your hands off her -"
He was late. Kurogane didn't even bother with words.
He hooked his foot under the leg of the table behind him and kicked it forward. The heavy wood screeched over the rush-covered floor, as scalding liquid spattered in a wide arc; men leapt backwards, shouting in alarm, as Kurogane leapt forward. He led with his fist, his substantial bodyweight lending his swing powerful momentum as he cannoned directly into Rondart's astonished face. The wire-frame spectacles folded under the blow with a sound like cracking ice as the enchantment broke; and so, much to Kurogane's satisfaction, did Rondart's teeth.
The Sergeant stumbled backwards, spitting blood and enamel; he clapped one hand over the bleeding wreck of his face and whirled towards his men. "Kill them!" he shouted, voice garbled but unfortunately not enough.
Paladins surged forward, several of them circling around to try to get a better vantage behind him. He couldn't face them in all directions at once, unfortunately. Kurogane did his damndest not to let that happen, moving back and forth over the dirty coffee-house floor in a deadly dance. He was a big man, a heavy man in heavy armor and he used that to his advantage, throwing all his weight behind a punch or a kick that knocked his opponents back or sent them stumbling, lest they lose their footing and go down entirely. Tables, chairs, trays, and pewter mugs also became weapons; instruments of blunt force or missiles. Chivalry and honor in battle were all well and good, but dirty fighting got things done.
Kurogane sensed a movement behind him a moment too late to counter it, and flinched forward in an attempt to roll with the blow - but none came. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the paladin slump bonelessly to the floor, a glinting metal dart sticking out of the neck joint of his armor. Another whirl of motion went flitting by his vision, and he followed the path back to see Fai, standing up on the stage and with a hand that glinted with wicked metal points. What's that idiot doing, getting himself into a fight between warriors? Kurogane growled to himself; out loud, he shouted "Take Sakura! Get to safety!"
"No!" Rondart shouted, staggering back into the fray. He was armed for battle, finally, shield unmoored from his back and across his chest, short-sword at the ready. "I'll burn their corpses if I must, in payment for this heresy! Let none escape alive!"
Well, shit, was as far as Kurogane got even in his head before Rondart was on him. The other man was swinging blindly - blood streamed down his face from his ruined spectacles - but he was still a threat, the kite-shaped shield covering most of his chest as he hacked forward with the silver-edged sword.
Kurogane blocked it with his own sword, and metal clashed and jangled as the blades slid against each other and locked at the quillions. For a moment, the two men strove against each other, not a challenge of finesse or righteousness but sheer, bloody strength of muscle.
Kurogane won, of course.
A savage twist of his arms wrenched the sergeant's sword free of his hands. He shouted in outrage, and his empty hand clenched into a first that began to glow with white-edged red light. Kurogane recognized the blood-tinged glow of a penance just seconds before it was launched towards him, and barely managed to interpose his arm in front of his face in time.
The holy fire struck him with a shock worse than burning, worse than ice, and his arm went numb from the elbow down. Kurogane fell back and Rondart pressed his advantage, an unhinged laughter bubbling up from his throat and falling, along with drops of blood, from his shattered lips.
Rondart's empty hand darted behind his shield, and came up with a glittering poniard. He brought it down towards Kurogane's face - overhand - and Kurogane's one remaining good arm snapped up to squeeze him by the wrist.
Rondart shouted in outrage as his swing was blocked, then screamed as Kurogane's grip crushed his wrist. He battered at Kurogane with his shield - blows Kurogane barely felt against his numbed, useless arm - but to no avail; Kurogane twisted his grip around, and drove the dagger down with a sickening crunch into Rondart's throat.
He leapt back as the sergeant fell to his knees, blood fountaining from his neck and mouth. For a moment, as sometimes happened in these brawls, all was suddenly still, as though friend and foe alike were shocked by the grim reality of bloody death. Kurogane took advantage of the moment, switching his sword from his useless right hand to his left and starting towards the open door.
And then stopped, when another band of paladins came crowding in through the door. Behind him, those foes he had knocked down yet not finished had regained their footing and their wits. An ugly, savage mutter went through the paladins as Rondart's body collapsed to the floor, blood seeping into an ugly mud on the floor.
Against some opponents, Kurogane knew quite well, having the numbers on their side could actually be an advantage to the swordsman. Inexperienced foes would get in each other's way, crowd each other, or hang back while their fellows rushed forward one or two at a time to be handily dispatched.
Unfortunately, the paladins weren't that type of opponent. They were trained and disciplined to fight as a unit, to lead with their holy fire in order to stun and sear their enemies into helplessness before they closed in. They surrounded him on all sides now, shields up, helms down and swords glittering at the ready, and Kurogane's right arm was still useless.
He'd faced worse odds. But not recently, and not having already taken such an injury. Hellfire, this was going to be difficult.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a pale shadow of movement. Up on the stage, silhouetted by the fire behind him, Fai straightened up from his crouch and spread his arms, hands now empty. Kurogane wanted to swear at him to grab Sakura and get out while he could, but he didn't want to draw the paladins' attention to him. Would the bloody bard have sense enough for once in his life to do it himself?
Apparently not; because instead of turning to flee, Fai drew himself up with a blaze of furious determination in his face. One hand moved apart from the other, drawing out a glint of silver light, and for a moment Kurogane thought he had one last knife. Then he thought Fai was, for some ludicrous reason, pulling a long silver wire from his lute. Then, as the shimmering ribbon grew and grew and grew, he no longer knew what to think.
Time hung suspended in a moment, and Kurogane watched with an almost lazy, detached curiosity as the silver ribbon wreathed through the air as lightly as smoke. It thickened as it grow, becoming solid and round, and the end of it seemed to take on a shape of its own - almost an animal's head, a white-fire snake with long trailing fins streaming from its eyes.
The fiery snake wended its way around the room, still in that slow, drawn-out moment; it crept around the outside of the circle of paladins surrounding Kurogane, questing its way gradually inwards. At the endpoint of its circle it stopped and turned inwards, regarding Kurogane with an almost innocent curiosity; the head had grown larger, and more distinct, since it had emerged from Fai's palm, and the jaws and snout and streaming tendrils now made up the glittering face of a dragon.
Time sped up again. One of the paladins shouted a warning, another turned towards Fai, sword raised and hands glowing bloody-red. Fai clenched his hands together, and the silver ribbon snapped.
The ring of light collapsed inwards, and in an instant the gentle fire changed to lightning. It surrounded the paladins and burrowed inwards, crackling along the steel rings of the chainmail and grounding itself in the breastplates in sheets of blinding flame. The paladins screamed as they were roasted alive inside their armor, Fai's wrath knowing no mercy.
It seemed to go on forever, but in reality it was probably only a few seconds before the bodies finished seizing and dropped, the last few sparks crackling over half-melted links. The stench of charred meat filled the room, mixing nauseatingly with the deep brown scent of burnt coffee.
"Hellfire," Kurogane breathed, and this time it was not so much a profanity as a description.
The rest of the patrons had gone, somewhere, aside from a few whose bodies littered the floor with wounds inflicted by paladin swords. The only ones left were Fai, Sakura, Kurogane and the corpses; Fai ignored both of the latter as he turned instead to the white-faced girl hovering near the wall. "It's all up now, Little Kitty," he told her. "We've been smoked. Quickly, get your bag and your kit - if we can get out in less than a quarter bell, we should be safe from pursuit. We'll have to go underground, meet up with Kamui and Subaru under the government building."
Kurogane started as he recognized the place Fai had so casually namedropped. The old government building, a grand edifice of stone with two towers flanking a hall, had been abandoned and derelict ever since the Hierophant had seized power. Although the windows and doors were nailed and boarded up, rumor had it that it was still used as the stalking-ground for the elusive Dragons of Earth, the most persistent cell of revolutionaries still left in the city.
What in hell had he stumbled into?
Sakura nodded quickly, her cinnamon hair bouncing around her face, and dashed off towards the stairs. Young and innocent as she was, she clearly was much less surprised by what Fai had just done than Kurogane was.
That left Fai and Kurogane alone in the café, standing amidst the blood and char and smoking bodies. Kurogane gripped his sword, lifted it automatically, then lowered it again. Fai glanced over at him - the look in his blue eyes a searing appraisal, judgment and dismissal in one - and turned away, striding over towards the back wall of the café where it backed against the hillside. He raised a hand, which flared silver-blue, and in one swift blow punched through the brick wall to reveal a patch of darkness behind.
"You... you're a witch!" Kurogane didn't normally like to repeat the bloody obvious, but he was still stupefied by the night's revelations. "And - a revolutionary?"
"So observant of you, Kurogane," Fai said crisply, yanking his hand downwards and tearing a path of darkness through the rapidly-crumbling wall. All joking and teasing was gone from his manner, as were the despised nicknames, and Kurogane hadn't realized how much he'd want them back until they were gone. "You'd be right at home in the chapel with the rest of the paladins."
"But -" Kurogane gestured helplessly with his sword towards Fai's attire, then gave up and sheathed it. It was awkward, doing it left-handed on the opposite side, but he wouldn't be able to do anything else while he was swinging it around. "Then why this whole gobshit 'bard' routine?"
"What better way to hide in plain sight?" Fai asked with a shrug. The hole in the back wall open enough to his satisfaction, he stepped away and began quickly shimmying out of his bright red and orange clothes. Underneath the fluffy frills was a bodysuit of dark-stained leather, grey so dark it was almost black, and boots.
"Nobody questions why a bard would spend all his time in taverns and coffee-houses, moving around constantly and taking messages from one waypoint to the next. These glad rags -" he pulled one up between his hands, and a wistful expression flashed briefly over his face before he let it fall - "make me more invisible than magic ever could." He reached down to the fireplace, apparently oblivious to the heat of the glowing coals, and scooped up two handfuls of sooty ash, rubbing them through his hair to turn the bright blond a dull grayish brown.
A clattering noise on the stairs heralded Sakura's return. Her apron had been replaced by a dark woolen cloak and heavy boots, a sturdy backpack slung over her shoulders. This was no panicked flight, Kurogane realized; this was a planned evacuation.
"Is Sakura...?" Kurogane hesitated over the word, still guarding his tongue by habit. It was no small thing, in Edonis, to accuse another person of witchblood; even if the person you were accusing them to was blatantly open in use of witchcraft themselves.
"One of us? Yes." Fai's eyes flashed at him again, then the blond man turned away. He was striding about the room, collecting lanterns, opening their bowls and splashing the oil out on the wooden beams. "A witch? No." He glanced down at the lantern in his hand, and a flash of blue-white jumped from his fingers to the bowl, which suddenly overflowed with more oil than it could possibly have held even without burning for hours first. Handy trick, Kurogane thought bemusedly.
"Witches aren't the only ones who want to see the Hierophant toppled from his golden throne, and the wrongs he's done righted," Sakura cut in, her voice firm and hard despite its youth. She hurried towards the trashed remains of the kitchen, opening a cupboard and sweeping its contents into her open pack. "I made a promise years ago that I'd help the witches, and I mean to see it through."
She fastened down the pack and added it to her burden, then turned and came over to Kurogane. "The Cat's Eye Cafe was a good haven for witchbloods while it lasted, but it's over now," she said quietly. "Thank you for protecting me tonight, Kurogane. Thanks for - for everything, everything you've always done for me."
"You shouldn't linger," Fai said, as he pulled two of the packs off of Sakura's shoulders and slung them over his own. "This place has five minutes before it goes up in flames. If you get out on the street now and run, you should be able to disappear in the docks before the paladin reinforcements arrive."
He turned towards the dark hole in the wall, and Sakura pattered after him. "Goodbye," Sakura called out to Kurogane, giving him a nervous smile and a small wave. "God bless and keep you, if we never meet again."
Kurogane stared after them for a moment, as the tall figure and the short one disappeared into the shadows behind the wall. Tunnels, he realized; they must hook up with the understreets from here. Edonis was built on a delta, not on solid rock, and over time the entire city gradually was sinking into the mud flat. The only solution the city planners had found was simply to build on top of it, adding more stories to buildings and roofing over streets, turning roads to sewers and rooftops to roads. It was a system used by thieves and beggars, the poor, the desperate - and the daring. The underground, in every sense of the word.
And he was just standing there, staring while the two most fascinating, affectionate and infuriating people he knew in this city vanished into it.
"Wait!" Kurogane called out, running after them. He stepped beyond the verge of shattered brick and stumbled, caught by a sudden drop in the ground beyond. "Hold up!"
Thankfully his eyes adjusted quickly, even to the half-twilight of the tunnels beyond. The two fugitives stopped and turned towards him, and he knew it wasn't just his imagination that Fai's eyes glowed blue in the dark. Glowed blue with angry suspicion, right at this moment. "What for?" Fai demanded. "So you can turn us in and get back in the good graces with the Gatekeeper of Heaven?"
Sakura tugged at his arm and said something to him softly; Fai looked away, chastened but still wary. Kurogane moved towards them, picking his step carefully. "I want to go with you," he said.
"You?" Fai demanded incredulously. "I thought you said you didn't want to get involved. And that was before I even knew you were one of them. Your father was a great and noble paladin, they said. Slayer of many a monstrosity, I'm sure." He sneered, but his blue-glowing eyes were full of betrayed hurt and question. "Why would the son of a man like that want to associate with us dirty witchblood revolutionaries?"
"... My mother was a witch."
The words were out before he could stop them, before he had time to rethink this plan, before he could stop himself from uttering the secret he'd carried in silence all his life.
He'd managed to catch Fai unawares, at least; turnabout for the bombshell Fai had dropped on him up in the café, he selfishly thought. "Wha -?" Fai gasped. "Your father…How?"
Kurogane shrugged, a restless motion that accomplished nothing, and looked at the muddy ground. He still hadn't regained any feeling in his right arm; would he ever? He couldn't think about that now. "They fell in love," he admitted quietly. "They kept it a secret all my life. My father protected her from the rest of the paladins, right up until he died." He took a deep breath. "Two months later my mother was arrested, and hanged in the shadow of Tower Hill."
"...I'm sorry." The spite was gone from Fai's voice, now, his expressive blue eyes showing only sadness and uncertainty. He took a step towards Kurogane, one hand wavering in the air between them.
"My father fell in love with a witch, and got only blood and tears in return," he said. "I didn't want there to be any more tragic loves between witchbloods and humans. But what does it matter what I want? Tragedies are going to go on happening anyway, whatever I do. Unless the world changes."
He looked up, met Fai's luminous eyes head-on. "If you think you can make a go at that," he said, "then I'm with you."
Fai took one more step and reached out, hesitantly closing the distance between them. He touched Kurogane's right arm, and the faintest tingle signaled life returning to the limb; Kurogane flexed his hand, and managed to wrap his fingers around Fai's.
"Are you sure?" Fai whispered, his eyes searching Kurogane's face. It was like seeing a new man in his old friend's place, all pretence and show stripped away. "You'll be a fugitive, an apostate. All the armies of the Chapel will be stacked against you, and the Gatekeeper himself will lay a curse on your name. Are you really sure this is worth that?"
"No," Kurogane answered, "But on the other hand, the Hierophant outlawed coffee. So fuck that guy."
Fai let out a breathless burst of laughter, and Kurogane smirked at the success. In one swift motion, he clasped Fai's forearm, then pulled the smaller man flush against him. Fai stiffened, grabbing at Kurogane's shoulders for balance, and Kurogane dove right in and kissed him.
Above them, some unknown mechanism ground to a halt, spat sparks, and the room behind them suddenly roared into flames. Fire jumped eagerly into the spilled pools of lamp-oil, licked up into the oil-soaked wooden beams, and within seconds the café was an inferno. Kurogane and Fai ignored it, Fai's arms sliding around Kurogane's neck as they deepened the kiss.
At last the heat from the burning room became too much to ignore and they broke apart, firelight dancing along Fai's flushed and breathless form as he stared deeply into Kurogane's eyes. Kurogane stared back. "I'm beginning to think that I'm my father's son," he admitted. At least when it comes to beautiful witches.
Fai laughed, dispelling the tension. From further down the tunnel, Sakura called out to them. "Come on, hurry!" her voice came faintly back to them. "Before the tunnel fills up with smoke!"
With another glance backwards at the burning remains of his old life, Fai followed her down the abandoned passageway. Kurogane went in step with him, their hands still joined together in the dark, prepared to follow him all the way into Hell.
~the end.