Title: Yama snippets
Pairing: Kurogane x Fai, pre-pre-slash you could call it.
Words: 1428 (1636 total and counting)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General, in general; you could say this chapter has a bit more action
Spoilers: Fai's backstory, Kurogane's backstory, and the events up to and including Yama
Disclaimer: I own nothing; Clamp does. Isn't that lovely?
Summary/Notes: First chapter, in which Fai and Kurogane reach Yama and meet the Yasha clan. We're not shown how that happens in the manga, but I assume they were transported to the same place as Syaoran and Sakura were (meaning the castle in the sky). Theoretically they could have got there during the "day", between battles, but we don't know whether the castle is accessible during the day, or if it even exists (I seem to remember Ashura-ou mentioning that the castle only appears at night, but I could be wrong, or he could have been referring to the transportation to the castle itself).
The one flashback we get of them at the time is of them standing peacefully in their Shara clothes, figuring out that Mokona is out of range and that's why they can't understand each other, but I didn't take that literally, instead thinking of it as a representation of their 'plight' that Fai was trying to put across to the children at the time. Maybe he wanted to gloss over the horrid details, yes?
When the smoke clears, the world is barren and Kurogane knows they've skipped to yet another country. The kids are nowhere to be seen again – instead, there are hundreds of men fighting each other in the dead of night, not very far away.
Some garbled sounds come from his left and Kurogane wants to groan because the mage doesn't make sense.
"What?" he bites off, more of a test than anything, and when Fai turns his way, frowning and concerned, Kurogane mutters a curse. The meat-bun isn't close enough he has the time to think, and then the soldiers notice them; swords and spears are thrust their way, and there is nothing left but to fight back.
He draws Souhi with ease and faces his opponents, two blond men, heavy built and weighed down by their armour; they aren't too much of a trial, but more keep coming, one after the other, and never seem to stop. A little to his right now, the mage ducks and twists in his way, using a stolen sword to block the strikes that many dark-haired men throw at him.
Kurogane grins, slashing and tearing, and in a little while he clears a path. The mage meets him halfway and they stand back to back; the men around them stare, confused. Then they start the attack again, blond men to him, the others to the mage, fighting among each other too, and Kurogane finds that strange – and then there is a light, and thick smoke rises (what, again?) and when everything settles there are trees all around and mountains in the distance, and only black-haired men are left.
Sword still held up, he shifts his stance and readies one of his attacks; the men level axes and spears at them, and he waits for a question that won't make any sense – and almost falters from the strain when he does hear the words. The dialect is strange and old, and most of everything seems to break off in the wrong place, but he can understand. He can't believe their luck.
"We're not your enemies," he says, keeping it clear and simple; Souhi is at the ready, ki gathering and held in check.
"Why fight us, then?"
"How came you to the moon castle?"
"Why is that one so fair of face?"
"Why did you fight together, if you're not one of them?"
"How come we do not know your face, if you are one of ours?"
The questions pour down on and on, each answer drawing out another, so that two minutes in they are still held at spear-point, and Souhi is still drawn and ready; but they are also still unharmed, and that's a good thing in its own.
"He doesn't know the language," Kurogane says when they decide to focus on the mage, and this causes an uproar. Fai smiles benignly back at them, eyes wary and his shoulders tense, and when the men seem bent on starting off the stream questions once again, Kurogane decides he's had enough.
"Bottom line!" he shouts back. "We're not your enemies! We've never seen you or the other guys before, and we're just passing though! Let us go on our way, and we'll start looking for our friends and then get away from this place for good!"
Spears still levelled, the men start trading glances while the things they ride keep pacing in one place; Kurogane's arms begin to ache. Then, finally, the lines part to make room for what could be the leader. The man is tall and wide, dark hair bound at his nape, and he looks at them with a wary eye.
Kurogane growls under his breath.
"We cannot let you pass," the man begins, raising a pacifying hand at Kurogane's growing frown. "We do not know you, wherever you may come from, and we cannot, in all faith, let you roam free among our people. And while you may not look to be of the Ashura clan," he points at each of them in turn, "that one does; and as, if we are to believe you, he does not know our language, we cannot question him."
Kurogane wants to lash out, knock most of the men down, head for the trees and worry about clans and countries later; but then the leader makes a sign for the spears to be lowered and they are put away, grudgingly so.
"However," the man adds, "we will not harm you, either." Not yet hangs in the air, and Kurogane doesn't budge. "For now, you will walk with us, under our guard and our protection, and in the coming hours we will decide what should be done."
He finishes his little speech with a curt nod, and Kurogane deigns to scowl at him for a while longer. At length, he lowers his sword in one slow move, sheathing it carefully. The leader turns away at that, and Kurogane watches with narrowed eyes as a group of eight men lead their mounts to surround them, pausing expectantly. When they reach for their swords again, he grabs Fai's arm with a curt huff and follows in the others' tracks.
They head towards a settlement, towards the precious people they couldn't be allowed to meet, and Kurogane wonders just how long they will have to wait before things start moving again. Beside him, the mage walks with the same wary look, eyes darting here and there, taking everything in.
And Kurogane's arms still ache.
They're not led to a dungeon, much to his surprise. Instead, it's an open entrapment with wooden posts and nets, and one guard at each corner; it looks much like a sheep-pen, and Kurogane snorts in disbelief. With this much leniency, the men had might as well have set them free – the guards wouldn't hold them, much less the sentries watching them not so covertly from twenty yards away. But, he remembers, they have no other place to go, and can't afford wandering off on the odd chance that the kids (and that meat bun!) will come this way as well.
What's more, the holding pen is laughable when compared to these men's general look, and even, Kurogane grants, to the look of their might-be leader. No man in his right mind would leave them so unguarded – which means that they are being watched, carefully, and everything they do or say could win or lose them points.
Fine, Kurogane thinks, seating himself against one of the posts. He crosses his legs and sets Souhi beside him (they had even left him his sword) looking on straight ahead - and, incidentally, towards the mage.
The mage, who still hasn't wiped off his little frown, and looks as if he's grasping at straws every which way but grabbing hold of none. Kurogane can't even begin to explain what's happened (not that it's all too clear to him, or that there's all that much to tell) and he half-sighs, half-groans, annoyed.
Fai looks his way at that, drinking up every detail, and Kurogane really hopes the meat bun will be along soon.
xxxxx
They've been kept in the pen for five straight days. Kurogane tries to explain something to him at first, but after several frustrated tries he gives up with a scowl and (probably) a curse.
Fai's eyebrows itch from all the confused frowning. The lack of… everything begins to get under his skin.
There is nothing to do. The men ask nothing of them, only deliver food and water in two short stops each day, ignoring them completely; Kurogane just sits there, and Fai is slowly going crazy because he doesn't know what's going on, and how can Kurogane just sit there and not say a word? (not that Fai would have understood it, but at least he would have had something to focus on) It must be a contest of patience, one he knows that he's losing, because it's already a struggle not to walk around the pen each day. He doesn't move though, doesn't let it show.
He also hasn't said a single word since they'd arrived.
He knows one thing: something takes place at night, something magic-related – he can feel the air crackling with it as the moon rises, and there is something in the sky that pulses, writhes and keens. But there is nothing else, and Fai waits for some answers because waiting is all that he can do, and, after all, what he's done best for all these years.
More notes/begging: This chapter is probably the first I ever wrote of the fic, which means it was written about ten months ago. Since then I've tweaked and nudged and changed the wording and the pacing so many times that I have no idea if it's any good. Everything about it bothers me, but I also have a niggling feeling that it's not all that bad, and therefore I shouldn't go through the ordeal of writing it from scratch. So. Please tell me what you think about it, character-wise and wording-wise and general-writing wise, or just say whether it bothers you or not, because it's driving me crazy. Thanks.