Title: This Cold Country
Rating: T
A/N: For the kuroxfai late summer contest last year. (It's been up on my LJ for a while - I only really just now thought of posting it here. ;;;) Based upon my take of what might have happened had not both Kurogane and Fai's mothers died in canon, and just what exactly would happen with the twins' great magic.
Much thanks to Crys for the Kuro-quack nickname. X3
Warning - this isn't happy.
Now I say again: two remain
But, of course, they're part of you now.
– Koushun Takami
The puppets clatter and dance on their strings to the beat of children's laughter, porcelain-white faces with curving lips and bright eyes, clapping gloved hands that bare not an inch of young skin to the cold. Around the square their mothers and nannies shop and linger, baskets on arms and boxes borne in servants' grasps, crisp commands echoing over the frosty ground, gossip and happenstance traded almost on par with the silver coins spilling from heavy purses, glittering gems.
'Did you hear-? Did you know-? You'll never guess-!'
Kurogane breathes out dragonsmoke into the falling snow, gloved fingertips pulling his hood further up over his face to ward off the chill and the snow, feeling the pervading cold snake its way through his bones even as the little children before him keep laughing, entranced by the puppets of the show in the square's centre and unbothered by the weather. This is their world, their home, and they'd been brought up in it, but still it stings a little that such children can float on by, unaffected, whilst Kurogane himself huddles further into his borrowed furs and tries to hide the most of his shivering.
"Kurogane-san," a familiar voice gives warning of the approach of a familiar figure - even though she is dressed in the long, decorative robes this strange country seems to favour, sweeping lines that have a different elegance to the Nihon style Kurogane has known all his life.
"Souma," it is good to see the other shinobi, an excuse for him to stamp his feet and express all the gruff impatience he'd felt whilst waiting for her for a good hour, snow frosting his lashes and fussing children grating on his ears as they were dragged away from the puppet show too early for their liking. "Did you find -?"
The woman shakes her head at him as soon as she is close enough, her own low hood only letting him glimpse the thin line of her mouth, displeasure at her own failure to retrieve the information they sought. "This whole country is founded on magic, Kurogane-san. It's a much more common trait than in Nihon - everyone possesses it, from the royalty on down to the lowliest-born babe." Souma radiates an impatience Kurogane could only echo – when Tomoyo had presented the mission to them the day before it had sounded a simple task to track down the two magicians she'd dreamed of, but half a day in and a whole world away her two shinobi keep drawing up blanks. Even with the gift of charmed anklets to translate for them the task seems impossible; they're looking for two people amongst thousands, hundreds of thousands.
"Mister, mister," a tiny hand pulls at the edge of Kurogane's cloak, the man looking down to see one of the children has wandered over from the show, a girl by the sound of her voice, the ringlets of her hair. Kurogane fights off the urge to forcibly detach the child; he has nothing against children in general, but the shifting masks everyone in this country wears – white, snow-white, with a single bead of colour in the centre of the brow – remind him too much of the old tales of youkai and yuurei, pale wraiths without identity or purpose. "Mister," the girl's voice is piping, drawing the attention of some of her little friends, "are you a ghost?"
Kurogane stares at the child. "What?"
The girl points up, straight up, to the narrow band of skin visible under Kurogane's hood, his face. "Mother says only dead people don't wear masks."
Souma flinches as one of the girl's friends screams at the mention of ghosts, heads all around the square swivelling around to stare at the two cloaked figures surrounded by children, young accusing fingers pointing as the shrill noise is taken up by the whole group –
"Ghost! Ghost!"
The adults stare, the children scream, the guards with shining helmets and weapons glittering like the frost appear, almost shimmering into existence – perhaps, they had come that way; they are hard to focus on, even though their white faces are flat and cold. Kurogane puts his hand to his sword beneath his cloak, Souma to her moon-blades, but there are children in the way and their consciences ringing in their ears, and more and more guards surrounding them every second they stand there.
"Ghost," says the little girl who had started the mess, young voice taking on an edge of awe-laced fear, right before her friends pull her back and away from Kurogane, the puppets stopping their show.
The snow whirls down, faster and faster, blurring sight and putting Kurogane and Souma more on edge. There are threads of magic in the wind that drives the snow on, foreign symbols they have little to no defence against. It yanks down their hoods, exposing their unmasked faces – such a blasphemy in this strange world - and coating their hair in tiny flakes of frozen white.
'Put down your weapons.' The voice comes with the snow, frosted and flat and something heard not with the ears, but the mind. Magic, issued from one who expects to be obeyed.
"Like hell," Kurogane snarls back, feeling the cold touch his high cheeks, his lips, his nose. He tightens his grip on his sword – Ginryuu -; beside him, Souma does the same with her own blades. Their message is clear – they refused to be disarmed.
'Put down your weapons,' the voice repeats once more. 'We will not warn you again.'
It was really, Kurogane reflects, quite unfair for magicians to make that sort of demand when their opponents couldn't even see them anymore. A good, visible target for retaliation would be nice, something he could point his sword at and slaughter.
"We refuse," says Souma clearly, dark eyes looking all around her for the hidden foe through the lines of blurring white falling from the sky.
'Then,' speaks the voice, 'we place you formally under arrest for the bearing of arms and of being without a mask. You will be escorted to the dungeons, there to await trial.'
Kurogane scoffs – magic or not, one blow from his sword will send all the guards tumbling, falling to the ground like finely-dressed dominoes. "You and whose army?"
'We won't need an army,' the voice assures him, and then pain clamps down tight around Kurogane's mind, bright and bold and blazing, arctic fire that rips across his thoughts and instinctively has his hands falling from his weapon, clutching at his head to try and relieve the agony. Blearily, Kurogane can see Souma suffering as well beside him, the thunk as her blades hit the snow-covered ground, the world whirling and dizzying as both of them fall to their knees –
Unconsciousness, when it comes, is a relief.
Kurogane can remember clearly the look on his mother's face when he'd told her he was going to be going to another world, the widening of her eyes, hands loose and lax in her lap. She'd recovered well – she is a lady, after all -, lips curved and knowing in a way that seemed akin to all mikos.
"The Tsukoyomi favours you, son."
"You mean," Kurogane had retorted, grumbling a little as he sipped at his green tea, "she likes using me as her errand boy."
His mother had laughed, a lovely sound. "Some things will never change."
Kurogane wakes to cold again, to hard stone and dimness and the echo as his boots scrape the floor he's lying on, cheek pressed to the rock beneath him. His head still aches, throbbing from the magical assault it had undergone an undeterminable amount of time earlier – the room Kurogane has been placed in has no window, the space lit by strange glowing globes on the walls; the shinobi has no idea how long he had been knocked out. He has no idea where Souma is either – pushing himself up to his feet and glancing around himself he can see is quite alone in the empty room, Ginryuu removed from his waist.
"So you're awake?" A lilting voice draws Kurogane from his analysis of the room, the man whirling around to glare at what had been a featureless wall behind him – it is marked with an open doorway now, a single androgynous figure dressed in robes of white and gold just beyond the threshold on the other side.
The figure's face – like all the other's of the country – is covered with a white mask, a magical construct that moulds to the wearer's skin and moves with it, completely concealing the identity – and in this case the sex - of the one behind it. The person's words had been soft as well, an even pitch that could work for either gender. All Kurogane had been able to draw from was that the stranger is young – younger than him, probably.
"Where am I?" The shinobi demands without preamble, blunt. "Where is my companion?"
"You are an esteemed guest in the dungeons of the royal palace of Valeria." There is a smile in the words of the stranger, something touching on lazy that irks even as the person leans against the lintel of the door, nonchalant to the space between their 'guest' and them. "Your companion is in another cell, perfectly safe, but she's still out-cold. Do all people from your world have such low magical resistance?" Kurogane narrows his gaze and wonders how the stranger knows he is not from this world, and the stranger laughs, still lilting. Kurogane thinks the stranger might be a boy, wispy as the blond hair that is combed back away from the other's face. "Don't scowl so~! You look so handsome when you're not scowling."
…Although, with that sort of comment, the stranger can just as easily be female.
"Does the scary ninja have a name?"
Kurogane glares (this person knows too much) and steps forward, standing on the other side of the door's threshold opposite the stranger, his captor or jailor, he wasn't sure which. He's easily a head taller than the assumed boy, broad-shouldered where the other is slender. Looking down he can see the other really is blond – Kurogane's mother had told him stories about pale demons once with pale skin and fair hair. The shinobi would wager this foreign creature before him would fit the description perfectly, but that is unverifiable due to this country's – Valeria's – strange fashions, the stranger covered from throat to foot, masked, robed, gloved.
This is not a country of individuals.
The stranger tilts his head up to meet Kurogane's gaze, and his eyes are wonderful, terrible blue. There is power in that gaze, a power belied by the languid leaning the Valerian is still doing against the lintel, uncaring of the fact his captive could reach out and throttle him in less than a heartbeat. Kurogane has never seen eyes like that, not on all the mikos in Nihon.
Could…this boy…?
Kurogane still glares, working things through in his mind. "This isn't a social call."
The shinobi can hear the pout in the other's voice. "How rude~!! Sir Blacky needs to learn some manners."
"'Blacky'?!" Kurogane is reaching up to choke the other before he's even had time to properly think about it, rage-fuelled instinct lashing out and being helplessly denied when his hands, instead of wrapping around a slim neck, smacked into an invisible barrier, a kekkai dividing him from the now-laughing stranger.
"What else am I to call you~?" The stranger has straightened up, his eyes aglow and his lips curving through the mask, laughter still bubbling from him, airy, light. "Mysterious Sir Blacky refused to give me his name!"
Kurogane has never wanted to slaughter someone so much as now.
"…Kurogane." He eventually growls out his name, if only to shut the stranger up. "Kurogane-tono."
"So Sir Blacky is a lord…" the statement is breathed out, and then the stranger claps his hands. "My most noble ninja~!"
The urge to kill is still strong.
"Saaaa, Kuro-gon is scowling again!! Shame, shame!"
"My name is Kurogane." The man from Nihon enunciates his syllables slowly and clearly, convinced he's speaking to an idiot.
"Kuro-ga-neg?"
A twitch. "Kuroga-ne." Is this really his 'trial'? The idiot before him is certainly trying enough.
"Kuro-gag-nu?"
"Kurogane."
There's a pause. "…Kuro-puu," the stranger says eventually, ignoring Kurogane's instinctive baulk. "Don't you think that's cuter?"
Kurogane slams one hand against the barrier between them, ignoring the tingling feeling it sends shooting up his arm. "I don't care if it's 'cuter'!! My name is Kurogane!!" The moment he got out of this cell –
"Kuro-pon is so grouchy…"
Kurogane still wants to shriek, but something else springs to mind, pulling him away from his need to yell. "How is it that you know of my job and my origins, but not my name or status?"
The stranger seems almost disappointed, losing his sport. "…My brother is a dreamseer. He saw your deportation from your world and your arrival in this one, but not much else."
Dreamseers…Kurogane can understand, as both his mother and Tomoyo shared the streak alongside their miko abilities. Sometimes their visions possessed a startling clarity, other times what they saw was clouded, confusing flashes that were endlessly vague.
"…You're too early, Kuro-pya, for what my brother saw." The quiet words draw Kurogane from his musings, attention focusing on the stranger again. "A whole year too early, in your time."
"You know what I'm here for." It isn't a question.
There's a smile again, but it's more twisted, dry, the mask showing the curve but lessening its magnitude. "It isn't hard to guess, when a princess of another country sends two of her best assassins on an errand. She's not the first to try and take responsibility for saving all the worlds. Hopefully, she'll be the last."
"Then you know where the magicians are."
The blue, blue eyes shine again, pools for drowning men, and the stranger's voice is low, soft as a snowflake. "Kuro-myu is cleverer than that."
"You." Kurogane's earlier suspicion comes back to the forefront of his mind. "You're -"
"It's time to say bye-bye for now, don't you think?" The smile is back, sweetly insincere, and Kurogane growls when he sees the stranger write glowing symbols into the air, the Valerian script. These pass through the barrier and encircle Kurogane, the shinobi struggling, not knowing what the other was doing.
"Wait -"
"Bye-bye," breathes the stranger, and then the magic in the writing flows in, over and under and around Kurogane, pulling him down until he's suddenly smacking into the ground again, breathing in grass and cherry blossoms and –
And he's sitting in the Imperial gardens at Shirasagi, at home in Nihon, with a groaning Souma coming to beside him. And it hits him -
The masked idiot hasn't given him back his sword.
A lot of powerful magicians and mikos are dreamseers, though it isn't a requirement. Visions can come when called or at random, flashes and sequences depending on the strength of the dreamseer, the certainty of the present or future that they see. Dreamseers often dream of people they don't know, important twists in fate, occasionally coming around to their own loved ones. Dreamseers dream of other dreamseers, connected across the many worlds by their common bond of magic, bright sparks that call out to each other. It isn't uncommon for a dreamseer to predict the birth of a great miko or magician, to send out blessings and warmth to the unborn child still cradled in its mother's womb, another potential addition to the community. Those with magic but without the ability to dreamsee can still feel their brethren across the worlds, although they cannot predict the time of their coming. Everyone is connected.
No-one knows when it was, exactly, that people started dreaming of the Twins, or who exactly it is that had had the first dream of them, but suddenly dreamseers across the worlds are united in strong images of two blond boys, perfectly identical, stupidly powerful, as yet unborn. Magicians across worlds wake up crying, torn between happiness and a vague despair, feeling the power building as the Twins are conceived and begin to grow, and their power grows and swells with them. When they are finally born they are strong, ridiculously strong, and as they grow they keep getting stronger, flourishing into their magical prowess, easily outstripping their elder counterparts.
The dreamseers keep dreaming, and dream of the Twins, elder, adult, blond, blue-eyed and beautiful, and see magic to come so strong it rips apart all the worlds, completely without the consent of the two who wield it. Together, united, they will be too strong for their own good; their own strength will drive them insane, kill them and kill everyone with it with their impossible wish. For the safety of everyone –
Across the worlds, those who can dreamsee send their assassins, alone, in pairs, in flocks, from the moment the Twins are born. All of the assassins fail, driven away by the strength of the children, the Twins fiercely protective of each other, holding onto each other as they grow up, as they grow stronger, as they follow a fate that should not have been, but is. (Is it so bad, to wish to be together?)
Tomoyo-hime, Nihon's Tsukoyomi, is a dreamseer, and she sees the Twins. She sees everything ending for their sake, and her heart tears a little for them – but there is nothing she can do. There are too many lives at stake –
She sends Kurogane and Souma to Valeria, to do as they can.
"Kuro-paa!" A warm body hits Kurogane's the moment he arrives back in Valeria, having waited out the year a certain idiot had told him of even though he'd grouched and grumbled and complained all the while, much to the amusement of both his mother and Tomoyo. (The latter case he can understand – Tomoyo has Always Been Like That -, but the former is as incomprehensible as always. He'd lost Ginryuu. Ginryuu, the family sword, his late father's sword. Why doesn't his mother care more..?
"Don't worry," she'd said, and smiled, kissing his brow.)
"You." Kurogane is not in the mood for niceties, pulling at the lanky frame that's wound itself laughingly around his neck and pushing back with his grip on the other's hips – he can't tell by his sight alone because the stranger is still masked, but the voice is the same, the hair is the same, the stupid nicknames are the same.
"Kuro-pon," the hypocritical stranger from the cell smiled up at him, nameless, irritating, fake, "you came back."
"My sword."
The stranger – boy – man brings his hands together, as if to pray. "Did you miss me?"
"My sword."
"I was so lonely without Kuro-pii~!! I told Fai all about the grouchy puppy in the dungeons and he was quite disappointed he never got to meet you so I said I'd take you to him as soon as you arrived -"
"Give me back my goddamned sword."
The stranger wiggles out of his grip, slipping to the side and hanging off of the taller male's arm. "Let's go to dinner! You kept me waiting so long and I'm terribly hungry now – Kuro-tan is such a terrible person to keep his date waiting like that. I should scold you, I should, I should, but I shan't because true love is blind and I shall just have to accept that Kuro-wan is just like that and -"
"Do you ever shut up?" Kurogane interrupts when there's a pause between words, but his companion – his target – only laughs at him again, grating on the shinobi's nerves, sharpening the blade of Kurogane's temper in an impressive display of sparks.
"Here," something pale and white is withdrawn from one of the stranger's pockets, held up to Kurogane's cheek. The shinobi can't help but flinch as it moves onto him, spreading across his face, and he raises a hand to claw it off, sure his companion is trying to kill him – "It's a mask; it won't hurt you."
Kurogane drops his hand automatically at the reassurance, and then he inwardly kicks himself, and tries to pry it off again. He does not know this man beside him, this man who knows what he's here to destroy – why should he feel safe in what is technically his enemy's company? There are no reassurances in this strange world, none –
"It's done~!" His target chirps out the words, poking Kurogane's – now masked, covered - cheek with one finger and causing the shinobi to smack it away. "Now let's go eat! I want cake."
…Alright, there was one reassurance. Some people could always be trusted to remain annoying.
Kurogane shakes his head – the mask is like a second skin, moving with his muscles. It feels strange. "I'm not going to dinner with you."
His companion gasps. "Kuro-chii is standing me up?! I'm hurt; I'm wounded, I -"
Kurogane puts one hand over the idiot's mouth, holding the words in even as the man – the magician – continues to try and mumble away. When the mumbling finally stops he removes his hand, meeting a pout with a glare of his own. "Get this damned mask off of me and give me back my sword."
His companion is stubborn in his own way. "Not until you come to dinner with me."
"I don't know your name." As if it really mattered.
"Yuui," the name rolls out, foreign and strange, slipping off the tongue as easily as the blond plucks a pair of gloves from another pocket, offering them to Kurogane and hurrying on before the shinobi can offer protest again. "Kuro-chin should put these on, else he'll be flung out of Court -" they're at Court? "It's not illegal, like not wearing a mask, but it's terribly bad etiquette."
Kurogane pulls on the gloves – reluctantly, but he needs Ginryuu and a pair of gloves (probably) won't kill him - as Yuui links arms with him, the shinobi trying to shake his personal limpet off and away as they began walking, Kurogane semi-dragged out of the room he'd transported into and out into a grand hallway. "Why does everyone have to wear a mask?"
"The Queen Mother decreed it," Yuui says lightly, "when she was Regent. Valeria was such a terribly superstitious place; everyone had to be unique, individual. Wearing a mask made sure no-one was individual, and so society lost its scapegoats."
Distracted, some thread of the story nagging at him, Kurogane consents to being led down another corridor, this one a little busier, servants passing by in muted, understated furs to keep them warm in the cold country and yet still largely unnoticed. Kurogane glances at them, at their white masks, at the different coloured spots on their brow, the only thing differing from mask to mask. He reaches up to touch his own brow, not certain if he had a colour there at all – Yuui's mask was totally blank. "What are the marks for?"
"Decoration – they change from day as the wearer wills it. 'Crimson for health, green for the wealth, for the chaste there is yellow and brown. Rose for the looks, blue for the books, and white for the ones with the crown.'" Yuui recites the words smoothly, with the ease of something that has been learned by heart, at a young age, even as he stops at a set of great doors, guards on either side snapping to attention.
Kurogane's gaze is drawn to the blond's brow again. "So you -"
Yuui pushes open the door, and Kurogane's following words are lost, drowned in the sudden rush of noise that hits them, a great hall at dinner, plates clattering, chairs scraping, trays being lifted and shifted by scuttling servants.
"Your Majesty."
"King Yuui!"
People – courtiers – stop what they are doing and bow, Yuui waving a hand laconically for them to rise, to continue with what they'd been doing. This continues even as he's still clutching at Kurogane, pulling the shinobi up the large hall to the far dais, the high table.
Kurogane is quietly furious – seething. "You're the King."
Yuui is oblivious to his anger, or pretends to be anyway. "No." Kurogane is about to argue, angry the other could deny something so obvious, but they've stopped at the dais and someone is rising from their seat to greet them, gold-haired, white mask blank, fair and slim and – and – Yuui looks up at him again. "I'm one of them. This is my twin brother, Fai."
Evening, dinner done, and the setting sun over the snow-capped mountains sets the horizon on fire, Yuui humming under his breath as he looks out of the window, his brother beside him, quieter, still. Kurogane sits in a chair close to the fire in the secluded room they're in, and waits for the attention of the kings to be bestowed upon him again – he'd tried speaking before, moving, but he hadn't received so much as a glance, the silence in itself a quelling feeling in the air.
The shinobi ponders as he waits, about the mission Tomoyo had first given him over a year before, the mission he'd resumed, insisting Souma would be unnecessary. He would be quicker by himself, he'd assured her, efficient, separating the twin magicians his princess had dreamed of with the only true certainty that the many worlds could offer –
("People die, Youou." A hand on his cheek from the past, one of his father's underlings, trying to comfort him, to stop his endless pleas for someone, anyone to bring back his dead parent. "All we can do is mourn, and know they are in a better place."
"But chichue liked it here," he'd insisted. "With us.")
He comes back to himself to gloved fingers in his hair, pulling back his head as two sets of rather serious eyes study him.
"I want Ginryuu," he says automatically, blurting out his demand like a young child, repetitive.
"Prisoners aren't allowed pointy things." It's Yuui that speaks, recognisable by his voice, tone bordering on self-righteous amusement. It's his brother that's holding their 'guest'.
Kurogane glares. "I'm a prisoner?"
"We can't let an assassin be armed." Fai's voice is lower than Yuui's, still soft, yet still firm. "We can't let an assassin have free reign around the royal palace ."
'We won't make your task an easy one,' Fai doesn't say, but the words hang in the air regardless. He is the dreamseer, the one with the sight, the one who had seen, and clearly the vision must've been a one displeasing to him. To love your brother above all the worlds –
"I'll babysit~!!" Yuui suddenly springs at Kurogane from the side, startling loose Fai's hold as the more energetic twin leaps into the shinobi's lap.
"Hell no." Kurogane shoves him onto the floor, relishing the thud the blond makes upon impact.
"Mouuuuu," Yuui whines from the ground, clutching at Kurogane's trousers under his robes and attempting to sob dramatically into the shinobi's knee, "Kuro-chuu is so terrible to meee! Fai, Fai, tell Kuro-tu he has to be kinder to me or you'll turn him into a duck."
Fai looks down at his brother, his tone mildly curious and far too calm for Kurogane's liking. "Why a duck?"
Yuui looks up at him, teary-eyed and radiating melodrama. "I want a pet duck."
"But I thought you wanted to babysit."
"I can babysit a duck." Yuui is perfectly earnest.
"But you'd probably lose a duck," Fai points out reasonably, "and then the cooks would catch it and kill it and you'd be inconsolable for days."
"I'm not an 'it'." Kurogane growls, interrupting the two brothers.
"You're not a duck right now either," says Yuui from the floor –
"But it can be arranged," Fai finishes, and Kurogane glowers but takes the implied advice and shuts up, though not before hurling out one last complaint.
"He's not old enough to watch me." He refuses to call it 'babysitting'.
Yuui puts a hand on his knee. "I'm older than Kuro-duck." The shinobi looks disbelieving. "It's true! Kuro-quack is so distrustful -"
"-With good reason -" thieving magicians taking his sword –
"- And so cruel!"
Kurogane eyes him. "Then how old are you?"
Yuui flaps a hand at him. "That's a rude question to ask."
"You're not a woman."
Yuui ponders for a moment more before pushing himself up, leaning across Kurogane to whisper his reply into the shinobi's ear, the only real feature of the face the mask didn't cover. His answer done, the blond king perches himself rather smugly on the edge of Kurogane's seat, expressing a certain glee at the blank look flickering in red eyes.
"He's not lying," Fai chimes in before Kurogane can raise the query.
Kurogane is silent, stunned, trying to work out just what to say.
Yuui takes his hand, triumphant, and holds it up in the air. "I'm babysitting~!" He declares again, and Kurogane lets him, too shocked to protest.
"They don't like twins in this world," Fai tells Kurogane the following day off-hand, when they're sitting at breakfast in the Kings' private quarters and the shinobi is pulling at the mask on his face again, still trying to adapt to the sensation of wearing it. Yuui has not joined them yet – apparently the younger sibling likes his sleep. "But because we were royalty they decided not to kill us at birth, as is the practice for others. I think they were waiting until we were a little older to decide which of us would be the better heir, and then they would've killed the spare."
Kurogane looks up at the blond beside him, Fai delicately cutting what looks like a peach into tiny segments, removing the stone and setting it to the side of his plate. Kurogane wants to know why the Valerian royals are entertaining him instead of killing him, but he doesn't want to prompt them into action until Ginryuu is once more in its sheath. "…Your parents approved?"
"Father died of sickness a month or so after we were born." Fai could be talking about the weather. "Mother poisoned the late king, our Uncle, and assumed Regency. No-one can prove that she did it, of course. Mother is…" a delicate pause. "Mother can be a little strange."
"And she's the one who decreed everyone should wear a mask?"
"From birth until death," Fai agrees. "Everyone is identical, and so the social stigma of identical children is removed. Only the dead are without masks."
"That's why everyone thought Kuro-chama was a ghost the first time he came here," arms wrap themselves around Kurogane's neck from behind, damp hair touching the thin sliver of skin between chin and throat, a familiar head of gold propping its chin on the shinobi's shoulder. Yuui has arrived at last, still warm from a bath. (He made a dreadful babysitter.) "Kuro-toto, the grouchy poltergeist."
"It's Kurogane." Kurogane tries to shake Yuui off of him but the king clutches on, playfully ruffling the shinobi's short spiky hair and ducking effortlessly the fist aimed at his face.
"But that's not cute at all," Yuui is a demon, raised in an icy hell, stealing the food from Kurogane's plate with no heed to the indignant squawks that follow his action.
"It's not supposed to be 'cute'!!"
"But tall, dark and brooding Kuro-myu needs a cute nickname, or everyone shall think he's far too growly to play with~!" Yuui laughs at the other's temper, darting out of reach when Kurogane grabs for him, the Nihon man's chair screeching on the floor as he makes a sudden dive for the gleeful king.
Kurogane ends up chasing Yuui around the table for the rest of breakfast, swearing and going through a range of curses as the blond constantly eludes him.
Fai, calmly, remains in his seat, and finishes eating his peach.
To practically everyone else save Kurogane Yuui is a perfectly rational, sane human being. A good king who sits at Council with his brother, listening to his councillors thoughtfully, offering suggestions, talking through ideas as Kurogane watches from the shadows, kept within sight always of one of the twins. Both of the brothers are clearly intelligent, diplomatic in a way Kurogane isn't, drawing a wonder if it is something all royalty had to be good at – Tomoyo, dark-haired and delicate, has pure steel running through her frame, echoing in her voice when she gives direct commands.
As soon as the Council is done, however, Yuui is back to his usual idiotic self, draping himself across Kurogane and declaring himself bored, even as Fai hands him a pile of paperwork from the meeting and advises him to work through it soon. Yuui pouts and clings to Kurogane and says he wants to go play, but takes the paperwork and somehow wangles Kurogane into carrying it for him, although the shinobi himself has no idea how it happened. (He's an assassin, not a packhorse.)
Yuui trills and flirts and skips all the way back to his chambers unburdened, but once they arrive there he does actually settle down to work, shooing Kurogane over to look at some books in the corner. (He cannot read them, but the language is interesting to look at, and some of the books have pictures.) Kurogane goes, grumbling, and they manage to last like that for an hour, and then Kurogane wanders across and sees Yuui has to have technically been done with his work for at least a good twenty minutes, and is now drawing stick figures and smiley blob-shapes down the side of some of the official documents. His white gloves are spotted in places with ink, and his voice is sickeningly bright as Kurogane's shadow looms over him.
"Kuro-pon~!!"
"It's Kurogane."
"Kuro-pyun," Yuui ignores him as usual, "did you come to check up on me? Kyaa, Kuro-tam loves me after all~!!" He flails his arms in what is supposed to be joy, Kurogane grabbing one wrist to avoid getting smacked in the face with it.
"Idiot," he barks out reflexively, fingers curled around the slender limb in his grasp, feeling the thin bones beneath furred robes, expensive cloth. The cuff of Yuui's sleeve has slid back, revealing the line of the stained glove beneath, drawing the shinobi's attention. "You're going to need to change these."
Yuui waved his free hand dismissively. "Yes, yes, Kuro-wan shall mother me so until I do and – Kuro-tan!" The name is blurted out in surprise, blue eyes wide beneath their owner's mask as Kurogane looks at them, having just pulled off the glove on the hand of the king's he held. His hand, now bare, is pale and fair, only a few shades of the snow Valeria is coated in. "W-what…" Words fail him.
"What?" Kurogane is blank, not understanding what has the other so shocked.
"You don't…" Yuui gathers himself. "Kuro-cha is terribly forward." He tries to pull his hand away from the man from another world, but Kurogane refuses to let go, still confused.
"Explain."
"It's…not proper etiquette to show skin to another, individuality." Yuui fumbles a little. "Only lovers…" He trails off, but his meaning is clear.
Kurogane is curious. "So no-one's ever held your hand before without wearing gloves?"
"They have, before the decree of the Masks was introduced, but that…" Yuui glances aside, "that was a very long time ago."
Kurogane can remember holding hands with people – his mother, when she was trying to help him feel better, Souma, correcting his grip on his sword, Tomoyo, little and small and trusting, happily being guided around the palace by her larger companion. Skin on skin, holding hands – touching - is a human thing, a way to say 'I'm here; I trust you'. How many have lived and died in Valeria without that simple form of communication?
Kurogane raises the hand he holds almost unconsciously, placing a kiss on the back like he'd seen foreign ambassadors in Nihon do to the Amaterasu and to Tomoyo, somehow…somehow trying to mend all that was wrong with this world's way of thinking.
("Lord Kurogane has his father's kindness." Tomoyo's voice is sweet in the mind, her frame younger and smaller then but still just as decisive as ever, smiling after seeing her noble fetch down a younger girl's ball that had become stuck in a tree.
"Tch," Kurogane had looked aside. "She would've bawled the palace down if she hadn't got her toy back – I didn't need the headache."
Tomoyo had only continued to smile at him, and under her scrutiny Kurogane had slowly started to blush.)
He turns over the hand he holds, not wishing to treat Yuui like a lady – the king is a man (albeit an annoying one) -, and so he presses his lips to the inside of the blond's wrist, to the frantic beating through the tender skin, and hears Yuui's breath catch.
Silence.
Still.
Yuui snatches his hand back, scalded, and Kurogane watches as the royal stiffly organises his documents, picking up the pile and heading for the door. "I need to deliver these." He leaves, and doesn't take Kurogane with him.
On the eighth day Kurogane is in Valeria, it becomes obvious Yuui is avoiding him. He has not seen the younger king since the day of the Council meeting, Fai – his guard whilst Yuui is elsewhere - vaguely replying that his brother was with their mother, who was 'very sick' at that time.
Kurogane is frustrated, sick of sitting idly by attempting to read, in no way soothed by the crackle of the nearby fire. He drops his book to the floor with a thump, glowering impatiently over at the blond king sitting at a desk on the other side of the room working through some paper or other, trying to bore through the man's skull to get some answers. "Why haven't you killed me yet?"
Fai doesn't glance up at him, tone perfectly even. "What makes you think I'm going to kill you?"
"Don't you generally kill the people coming to kill you?"
There's a pause, Fai setting down the pen he'd been using to write with, and propping his chin up with one gloved hand. The fire's light catches his hair, gleams off the smooth curve of his mask. "Why haven't you killed me yet, then Lord Kurogane? Or my brother, for that matter? It's what you came here to do, isn't it?"
"I need my sword." The answer is prompt.
"You don't need a sword to kill someone, Lord Kurogane."
"I need that sword to kill you." Ginryuu was charmed; it would cut through magical defences the same as flesh. It took a special sword to kill a special magician.
"So you've chosen – I am the twin that you're going to kill?" The firelight hides whatever expression Fai might be wearing; the monarch is completely unreadable.
"I -" Kurogane pauses, floundering. "It doesn't matter."
"Of course not," Yuui agrees, and goes back to his paper.
Feeling chastised, Kurogane bends down to pick up his book again to pretend to read a little more. The room descends back into quiet.
It takes a fortnight for Kurogane to eventually run into Yuui again – and it's a literal run, Yuui hurtling along the corridor without looking where he's going and running straight into Kurogane's chest. Unbalanced, the collision knocks Kurogane over, and he lands in a tangle of limbs and cloth and fur with the blond, Yuui flush against him, breathing hard from his run. Red and blue meet through the masks and there's a dreadful quiet, but Fai is there and gently helps his brother to his feet, passing a hand down his twin's robes and suddenly they are smooth, uncrumpled, perfect again.
"Are you alright?" Fai's voice is a murmur, his touch light on Yuui's elbow, but his brother is still looking at Kurogane, still as the shinobi raises himself from the floor. "Yuui?" Fai sounds concerned, and – slowly, ever-slowly – Yuui turns to look at him.
"Fai…I…" a sudden false smile breaks out over the young man's face, curving up the mask's lips, "how lovely it is to see you! Were you taking Kuro-pon out walkies?" Kurogane growls on cue and swipes for the idiot, Yuui laughing and ducking the blow easily, hiding behind his brother as Kurogane advances on them both. "Bad dog, bad dog~!"
Kurogane makes a grab for Yuui but ends up holding the wrong brother, Yuui's laughter doubling at the mildly perplexed look both his brother and their guest/prisoner have adopted, cooing ridiculously temporarily out of harm's way.
"Fai, is there something you're not telling me~?" His tone is teasing, but Fai only smiles back, more amused by Kurogane's answering snarl – Yuui's antics don't bother his sibling anymore, but Kurogane is certainly fair game (for them both, when both are in the mood).
"You-!" Kurogane reaches for Yuui but again the king evades him, dashing down the corridor with no care for dignity. "Get back here!"
Yuui is still laughing, waving gaily as he stays stubbornly just ahead of his pursuer. "Kuro-chuu has to catch me fiiiiirst~!"
Kurogane dives after him, still snarling, and Yuui takes off again, both of them speeding down the corridor, scattering servants as they go. Fai follows behind somewhat more sedately, hearing the servants gossip, thinking, musing. Yuui will keep Kurogane occupied he knows; it is safe to attend to his duties again, to call in upon his mother. Yuui will keep Kurogane occupied and –
And Fai doesn't want to think about it, his head aching with the memories of terrible dreams. He goes to his tasks, and leaves things well enough alone.
Kurogane catches Yuui when the blond dashes into a room with only one exit – the entrance, a dead-end. He shuts the door behind him, sealing them both in, grabbing at Yuui and finally succeeding in snagging the blond's arm, dragging the other closer.
"Kuro-chan~!" Yuui is breathless from their race, something close to genuine mirth glowing in his blue eyes, hanging in his voice. He's probably smiling but the mask hides it – the masks hide everything for and from everyone and Kurogane suddenly hates them. This is a world of liars, a crowd of the plural people, not a single individual among them. Something must be showing on his face because Yuui repeats his words, although more curious now, wondering why the shinobi hasn't growled out an insult yet. "Kuro-chan…?"
Kurogane reaches up and, ignoring Yuui's gasp, takes off his own mask, feeling the thing melt into a blob in his hand. He drops it to the ground, scowling at it. "I hate that damn thing."
"Kuro-rin is a naughty boy and needs to put his mask back on." Yuui's words are playful; his tone is not. He looks away from his companion, refusing to look at the taller man.
"Are you so scared of seeing my face?" Kurogane challenges.
Stiffly: "It's against the law."
"You write the laws." Yuui refuses to look at him still, and an awkward silence hangs between them. "…The first time we met, you said I was handsome."
"'My noble ninja'…" Yuui echoes the words of the past.
"How long is it since you've called someone other than me that? Since you've said someone's beautiful or pretty."
Yuui doesn't sound pleased. "You can't really describe a mask as being beautiful, Kuro-ru -" he halts, catching the shinobi's point. "…It's against the law," he repeats again, more weakly, his argument frail and not even surviving the breath it takes to leave his lips.
Kurogane takes his chin, gets the other to look at him. "Idiot, do you even know what your own face looks like anymore?" Silence again but the answer is obvious – no.
Yuui's opposition trickles out of him and Kurogane reaches out for the royal's face. He can hear the other breathing, soft breaths that quicken when he brushes back the soft gold hair from the other's face, fingertips sliding back behind Yuui's ears to grasp the edges of the mask. Kurogane pauses there for a little while, letting the other bow his head slightly, offer protest if he really does not want this, but Yuui stays silent, remains still, and Kurogane draws off his mask.
It comes away easily, melting into a small palm-sized blob in the shinobi's palm the moment it is no longer touching Yuui's face, and Kurogane puts it to the side, raising his hands again, framing the prince's face before him but just not touching the skin, unsure of how the blond would react, given how just taking off a glove had caused the other to bolt for two weeks.
Yuui looks up at him, feeling the heat radiating from the Nihon man's palms, and his expression, although bared, is unreadable. So many emotions chase through his eyes, across his features – he's fair, terribly fair, and lovely in a way that men rarely are.
"Why…" words fail Kurogane temporarily, searching his companion's expression, pursuing some fleeting emotion within him, some strand that's beautiful and awful and confusing all at once, "why must you wear a mask?"
Yuui doesn't speak. He watches Kurogane as Kurogane watches him, flinches slightly as the taller man finally touches his face, fingers warm and surprisingly gentle. It's the first time in….so terribly long someone has touched his face, the nerves singing and shivering, feeling Kurogane's warmth, the eddies in the castle cool against his heated cheeks.
"…You're blushing," Kurogane tells him almost wonderingly and Yuui raises his own trembling hand, feeling the softness of his own skin, the pink warmth spreading along his cheekbones, the sudden itching in his eyes. He's not about to –
Yuui's eyes are tear-bright and he looks stricken, confused, lips somewhere between a smile and a grimace. "You -"A breath and he pulls away, out of Kurogane's grip, fumbling a little unsurely for his mask, bringing it up to his face again, letting it cover him. If he's crying the mask hides it flawlessly, Yuui impersonal once more, and his gaze is direct as he faces the foreign man. "You're going to kill me in four days; Fai saw it a long time ago." Kurogane jolts, and Yuui continues. "Did you forget the reason you came to this world?"
Kurogane had. If…if only for a moment he – his mission had always been an absent preoccupation, lurking at the back of his thoughts, but only now it hit him what it truly meant and –
"It'll be mine and Fai's birthday party." Yuui continues on, slamming the truth home to the other man, slamming down a wall between them. It hurts – thick, glittering ice where moments before had been a softer warmth. Yuui is joyless. "Please don't get blood on the cake."
Fai comes to Kurogane later that night in the rooms allocated to the shinobi, having stayed with his brother as Yuui had wept on his lap, waiting until his twin had fallen into restless sleep. The dreams are bad for both of them, but at least Fai knows what he sees is the truth – or one version of the truth, anyway. Yuui can only be plagued by nightmares.
Kurogane is awake when Fai comes to him, sitting on the edge of his bed, red eyes watchful through the dim lighting of the room. He's waiting, so Fai spares him aimless small talk and gets to his point.
"Next week my brother and I celebrate our birthday. On that day…it's traditional to make a wish on your birthday but – those wishes aren't necessarily supposed to come true. Sometimes though…if someone has enough magic, they can change the way things are unconsciously – it's usually only small things but with Yuui and I we're…" The king sighs. "We're always getting stronger, day by day by day. And if we wish strongly for something, it'll come true. If we wish unconsciously for something, it'll come true. And what we wish for -" he breaks off, to breathe, to think. Kurogane graciously lets him have the quiet. "Lord Kurogane, do you have any idea of the amount of assassination attempts my brother and I have been subjected to since our births? I'll give you a clue – the answer has three digits in it. But still, the attempts keep coming. They're necessary. You're here to kill at least one of us, because combined we're too strong, even if we lived on other worlds. Our genetics bind us together, and make us twice as dangerous."
"I know this." Tomoyo had told Kurogane – the princess does not order a death if she can help it, avoid it but –
"In my dreams," Fai speaks again, a little more quietly, "I saw you kill my brother on our birthday– I saw Yuui die. I want you to kill me instead." Kurogane freezes. He'd never – "I keep – in all my dreams I see such strange things….worlds that are, and worlds that were but now aren't, and worlds that will be – Yuui always…it's always Yuui that -" the king stops, unable to finish his sentence. "I want you to kill me."
"I'm not a dreamseer." Kurogane can offer no comfort, taken aback by the twins' acceptance of death, of parting. This is a cold world, in more ways than one. "I don't know what will happen."
"Kill me."
Kurogane pushes the request aside, more disturbed by the entreaty for death than he'd like to admit. "…If you wish so much for death, why is it that you didn't give me my Ginryuu? It could've been done before the party, before things get dangerous -"
"Forgive me for wanting to spend as much time with those I love, if you will, Lord Kurogane." Yuui's voice is cool. "Forgive me for attempting to guarantee the future – changing a vision is always a tricky thing, best left to the last minute."
Kurogane understands more than he would like to, and the future seems as bleak as the grey clouds outside threatening a blizzard.
Fai looks to them, sees their heavy, chilling promise. "We didn't ask to be born. We didn't ask for this." But they'd accepted it, slowly.
"No," Kurogane agrees quiet, quiet, gruff voice muted. Valeria is a frozen country. "We never do."
The party had been an elaborate one, the great hall hung with flowers and drapes, polished to perfection. The great fires had been roaring, blasting heat out to the far corners of the room, the people laughing and dancing, the drink flowing, the food plenty. The Queen Mother had been in attendance, escorted on each side by her children, their hair all the same flyaway shade of burnished gold. The royal family had worn robes of white and blue and gold, the twins had smiled and laughed and danced and been the perfect hosts, the perfect kings.
The magic in the hall had been oppressive, building, building, pressing down on Kurogane's ears and head and heart, the dark man having kept to the shadows, Ginryuu returned to him, sheathed at his waist. Had. Then.
The cake had been beautiful, wheeled out of the kitchens on a great cart, layered and tall and iced and Fai and Yuui had approached it, hand-in-gloved-hand, Yuui dropping the palm to applaud the skill of the chefs, Fai echoing him. Both of their voices had rung hollow but the crowds hadn't heard it, swarming around their sovereigns, letting the two cut the cake, make their wish, and Kurogane had been swept up with them, disorientated, and – at the end, two masked blonds had stood before him, identical in every way, their masks hiding their identity, silent. Kurogane hadn't been able to tell which of them was which.
And then they'd made their wish –
Hand-in-gloved-hand, the twins, the magicians, the –
The world had rumbled, the building shaking, and the crowds had screamed, flinging themselves about and away to get out of the way of falling masonry. Around the twins power built and grew, the two young men with eyes of brilliant blue, magic raw and spilling about them, cracks in the ceiling, cracks in the floor, screams as people looked outside and saw cracks in the sky, other worlds pulsing and pushing through, angry, pulled towards implosion, destruction –
(Is it so wrong to wish to be together?)
Two was one too many. Two had always been one too many in Valeria, a country dragged to misery for its own stupidity, superstition, discrimination. Perhaps –
It had been too late to ruminate, to ponder, the cracks in reality having grown larger, wave after oppressive wave whipping through existence, the twins' power. What had they wished for, to cause such chaos? What wish was so terrible it could end all the worlds?
Kurogane had pushed himself through the power, smacked with stone, with debris, with raw magic, feeling it sting and burn and try to claw the skin from his bones, hot needles piercing and sharp. Before him had been the twins, lost in their own strength, swallowed by the maelstrom, and he hadn't known which was which, because they were identical, alike in every way, masked and –
There are tears now, masks ripped off and tears streaming from one set of blue eyes, one voice hoarse from a wordless cry, a wail, a lament and requiem both, bowed over a cooling corpse and sobbing, sobbing. The twins are identical, save that only one of them is still breathing, the other glassy-eyed and bloody. Ginryuu is on the floor and Kurogane does not have the strength of will left in him to pick up the sword still stained with blood, torn between relief that the sky has gone back to normal, the power has died down, and grief, that for all of this, one had to die –
He doesn't even know which brother he has killed.
The living one is still crying, and everyone has been flung away from him, lashes of his sole strength flaying anyone to step within a five metre radius of him and his fallen brother. Keening, the sound of a broken heart being killed again and again –
Valeria has witnessed two murders today.
Eventually, the sounds stop, the surviving twin's voice lost, his eyes red and aching and unable to shed another tear. It's a small world that's ended, but it's a dear world all the same, one pale hand wrapped around a paler lifeless one, gloves ripped away, masks fallen to shreds. There's no need anymore. There's no use anymore.
Kurogane approaches slowly, and the magic parts to let him through. He pulls off his own mask and lets it drop to the ruined floor, mixing with blood and dust and tears. The twin on the ground looks at him, and his eyes hurt so much Kurogane can hardly bear to look at them, but he does all the same, accepting the guilt, taking the agony.
"You were supposed to kill me." The blond's voice is too hoarse to tell which it is Kurogane is speaking to.
Kurogane crouches down, on level with the other. "Your brother would've said the same thing."
"We wished to be together." An impossible wish – the fates are cruel. The king before him chokes, his head hanging, his golden hair stained with his sibling's scarlet. "I hate you."
Kurogane had expected the comment, but it hurts all the same. "I know." He can't apologise – millions of people have been saved with the death of one, but still –
"You should've killed me." His companion has found tears again, slow and steady trickles down his face. "Why didn't you kill me?" He buries his head in Kurogane's shirt, clinging to the shinobi, uncaring of the rest of the world. "I hate you; I hate you."
Kurogane holds him, lets him tremble. "You were wearing masks…I didn't know which -" he stops awkwardly, realising the insensitivity of his remark, but the blond he's holding is already raising his head, lips twisted in a bitter parody of a smile. Something about that smile makes Kurogane think of jagged edges of ice and metal, screaming birds falling from the sky with their wings ripped off. It's not a mask anymore, a real face, but Kurogane no longer has any desire to see it. Irony plunged in its knife and twisted the blade for the most devastating effect.
"You don't know which brother you killed." The sole King of Valeria's voice is dark, angry, amused, and still Kurogane doesn't know who it is.
"…No." He admits, feeling the blood on the floor seep into his clothes. He doesn't look at the corpse.
"…Yuui," the blond tells him shortly, blue eyes dead. "You killed Yuui. I'm Fai, Lord Kurogane."
Valeria is a world full of liars; Kurogane can't tell whether 'Fai' is lying or not – but why would he?
"…I'm sorry." The words are meaningful and meaningless all at once. Destiny is unavoidable - what will be, will be.
They are maskless, gloveless, dusty, covered in blood. Bared of everything, kneeling beside a dead man in blood and tears. "I hate you," Fai says again, and lays his head back down against Kurogane's chest. He continues to tremble. "I hate you."
Kurogane holds him tighter, and hurts. Valeria is a cold, bloody country. "I know."