A/N: Hey-yo everybody! I had such a great time working on the Fai chapter of my Tsubasa fic One Soul that I wanted to explore the relationship of AU Fai and Kurogane a little further. For those who haven't read One Soul, it may help to read Chapter 4 of the fic, but it is absolutely not necessary. To briefly summarize, Tsubasa-universe Fai meets an older version of Kurogane in a new world after the mishaps of Tokyo, and learns a little bit about the life the two of them shared together in that world (based loosely on traditional Japanese/Chinese rice farmlands). This fic will give the fully story of the alternate KuroFai's history together, and will also incorporate a whole bunch of familiar faces (Yuuko, Clow, Ashura, Shashi, Watanuki, and Doumeki just to name a few). Hope everyone enjoys!

Rating: Early chapters are T, and later chaps will be M for sexuality, language, etc

Spoilers: Fai's physical appearance following Tokyo.

Disclaimer: My addition to the multiverse is from me, but characters and the dimensions belong to CLAMP and Yuuko.

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Prologue: To the Beginning

He had hoped this day would never come. Even if it was an impossible wish, it was still what he wanted over every other desire. The witch was forever repeating that the forward march of time was inevitable and that each dreaded or desired occasion would pass just as surely as any other moment, but Kurogane was quite all right with the idea of time stopping. The world could end now, for all he cared. It had done enough turning and pursuing of its tired course. It had witnessed enough death and destruction to be satisfied with itself; surely it had nothing left to offer.

But dawn came in any case, and Kurogane pulled himself out from underneath his sheets and put on his work clothes, covering his head with a faded sun hat that was a few months away from falling apart. The cupboards were nearly empty with no one but himself to stock them, but he retrieved a leftover rice cake wrapped in paper and polished it off with an indifferent lick of his lips. It tasted bland, like everything he made. Fai was the one who had given flavor, to this and to everything.

With his stomach settled, Kurogane dropped down to the floor and knelt on the cushion he had set in front of his family shrine. Portraits of his mother and father smiled at him from behind an array of flowers, and beside them, a young boy closed his eyes and smiled at thoughts he had never shared in words. At their center, a beautiful man grinned with unbearable ease, stretching his arms out to someone he had left behind, someone far beyond his reach.

Kurogane clapped his hands together and bowed his head. "Oi, it's been ten-" he began, but his voice fell short almost immediately. He shook his head. "You've been-" he tried again, but that, too, didn't work. He balled his fists.

People were beginning to move outside, finding their way to the fields of rice they farmed for hire, the endless stretch of land that had belonged first to the Reed family, and then had passed into the hands of the witch. She had been generous enough to give him the day off to spend some time at home, but he had refused, just as he did with everything she offered. He only worked for her in the first place because there was no other way to make money here, surrounded on all sides by her fields and houses. There was only one road that led away, but he could not take it as long those hands in the portrait reached out to him, holding him to the home they had made together.

"I have to go," he said, bowing his head to his tented hands. "Everything I have to say, I'll say... if I could see you again."

The face he loved smiled as it always did, hiding its shadows of pain behind the sweetness of soft, long absent laughter.

Kurogane dipped his sun hat over his eyes. It was just another day to anyone else. There was nothing inherently bad to the hours and minutes or the date on the hand drawn calendar that documented the passage of time. He was another day older, the work was beginning to wear on him, and his back ached. The past was in the past, and these were the only things that should concern him. He should retire. He should travel down the road and see where it goes.

Outside in the fields, the other workers gave him space. This was nothing new; the older he got, the more volatile his temper was, and he had lost all semblance of patience towards the fresh crop of workers popping up each season. Only a scattered few here even remembered this day ten years ago, or could recall what Fai's face looked like as he made his way through the fields, holding Kurogane's bento aloft with his pale face flushed with sunlight. Those that did bowed their heads as Kurogane passed through and began to settle into the day's work.

After an hour of mindless bending and stooping, gathering rice for the witch to sell for his wages, he straightened up and wiped his brow. The sun was steadily rising, and the water pooling around his feet did little to keep him cool. It would only get worse as the day progressed, as everything did. He would welcome some rain to keep his mind off things, to bring ripples to the water and his stagnant pool of thought.

Kurogane cupped his hand over his eyes after his face was dried. A figure was gliding down the road, wearing the same baggy farm clothes and sun hats that all the other workers wore, though his seemed out of place on his thin and lithe body. Kurogane couldn't see his eyes, but he appeared to be staring down at the road, not absently or in order to guide his feet, but with an almost single-minded anger as if he had some reason or another to resent it.

It's him, Kurogane thought. But it couldn't be. The voice of the witch rang in his ears. There is one wish that cannot be granted, though all humans who have someone they cannot bear to lose desire it. He had heard those words for so long that he could not believe what his eyes and heart were telling him. But that presence could not be denied. He had known it all his life, both gained and lost it, gone inside and explored its every crevice, and held it against his own. It's him. There were things that had changed inside him, but it had to be him.

The man looked up at him briefly. There was a black patch covering one eye, and the second was pale blue and narrowed. Kurogane wildly calculated in his head. He looked to be about twenty-one, give or take a few years. This was no reincarnation; the timetables didn't match up. But there was no mistaking that blue eye, the pursed lips, the resentment, the slightly curling hair, the aimless gait. His heart clenched. Fury overcame him, sweeping through his veins like fire. It had to be some kind of trick or joke, probably some wild scheme of the witch. This was a wish that didn't come true, not to him, not to anyone. It was not even his true wish; all he wanted was for his beloved to rest peacefully so that he could one day join him. Whatever this was in front of him was a perversion of his true desire, a mockery of it.

But still, the single eye froze him for a moment, drawing forth thousands of memories that reached out and grabbed him like the slender arms of the portrait, pulling him back into the lost embrace. They reawakened his mind, bringing him through different bodies and different times, dragging him to a familiar place, and then at last, back to the beginning.

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A/N: Thanks for reading! For anyone who has never read a multi-chap fic by me, I update regularly (once a week or every other week depending on schedule) and finish to the end everything I start. Thanks again!