Mirror, Mirror

Summary: Fuji falls through a mirror one day and lands in a complete different world. Sometimes, while doing a favor for someone else, you realize that they're actually doing a favor for you.

Warnings: Shounen-ai

Pairings: Atobe x Fuji

Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis is not mine.

Thanks for all your support, everyone! I'm very happy for all the reviews and favorites! And this chapter is a bit longer, too, so I hope you all like it. It kind of reveals a bit about the storyline. Please read, review, and enjoy!

Chapter 4: The Magician of Long Ago:

"What was it you wanted to talk about?" Yukimura asked, sword still poking dangerously at Atobe's neck. But Atobe was too absorbed in the supposed doorway to care. "And what are you staring at so intently?"

Atobe's eyes were focused on the door. More focused than even Yukimura had ever seen them. "Wasn't that…wasn't that just Fuji at the door?"

"Was it?" Yukimura asked, now interested in the doorway, also. His sword carelessly clattered to the ground, not caring if Atobe had just set him up in a trap to corner him or not. He knew Atobe wouldn't lie about something like that. "I heard the door, but I assumed it was Jiroh, or perhaps Ryoma."

"Maybe we should check," Atobe said, not even waiting for a response before walking toward the door.

He swung it open and was about to walk outside, when Yukimura said, "Watch it."

Atobe looked down, and indeed, there was a forgotten lantern on the floor, flame still flickering brightly in the darkness. He stepped over the lap hurriedly and walked into Fuji's room. As he had expected, it was empty, and the lantern was missing. It had been Fuji, and he had left without intending to come back. "Come on," he said to Yukimura. "We have to find him before he finds the throne room." He let a flame explode from his hands hastily to light the way, and it stayed in his outstretched hand.

The two cousins flew through the hallway, almost as if they were actually flying. "Where do you think he is?" Yukimura asked.

"Well, he's not in the throne room already. This castle is huge, and Fuji couldn't have possibly found it in a couple of seconds. I couldn't even walk there so quickly. I don't think he knows where it is, either. So judging by the direction in which the lantern was facing when it was put down, I'd say he went this way."

"And what about the corners?"

"Fuji wouldn't turn a corner when he was blinded by whatever emotion caused him to run."

Yukimura shrugged in the midst of running. "Makes sense." Their cloaks fluttered loudly behind them, though they didn't care, because they knew no one could hear them. "But this hallway just leads to a balcony at the end."

"Then if we run quickly enough, perhaps we can corner him as he walks onto the balcony," Atobe said. They were right, of course, as they turned the corner, because that was the only option, and saw Fuji's cape rippling in the harsh wind blowing outside. He was standing at the edge of the balcony, with his hands gripping the railing.

Atobe stopped Yukimura and he alone made the trip across the balcony to where Fuji was standing. "Looking for the throne room?" Atobe asked quietly, startling Fuji.

"And so what if I am?" Fuji replied lethargically.

Atobe pointed behind him to where Yukimura stood, still not noticed by Fuji. "It's the other direction."

"Thank you for that tidbit of information," Fuji said, as he started to turn away from the balcony. Atobe grabbed his wrist, though, just before it was out of reach.

Fuji turned and looked at Atobe with those blue eyes of his that were almost glittering, even if he was as tired as he was now. "Before you leave," Atobe said, "would you at least stay for tonight? I don't care if you never want to come back, but would you at least stay here for tonight?"

Fuji looked at Atobe long and hard. This was totally and completely different from the arrogant, narcissistic Atobe he knew in his own world. Atobe was being quiet, gentle, and…caring? Fuji's thought, even in the mood he was now, was that if Atobe from his world, or anyone that knew Atobe found out about it, the narcissist would never live it down. And that caused Fuji to laugh, right there, on the spot.

Atobe stared at him with wide eyes. Laughing? Now? He had read enough stories; he wasn't going to be one of those people that got thoroughly pissed and ask him 'what the hell he was laughing at'. And yet, he couldn't resist the urge. "What the hell are you laughing at?"

Fuji was still chuckling, but he said, "Nothing, really. You're expression there, though, was completely different from the 'you' of my world."

"How can you be so lighthearted at a time like this?" Atobe asked, more curious than annoyed.

"Saa…perhaps I have already made my decision," Fuji said softly, falling into Atobe's embrace. "I'll stay here, at least for tonight."

------------------------------

Fuji gathered his things hastily, not that there was much to gather. He just changed back into the clothes he had come in, folded up the clothes that the princes had let him borrow, and placed them neatly on the bed. Fuji looked out the open window (of course it was open, after all, it was just an arch shaped opening in the wall) and noticed that it was overcast and hazy that day. They were pretty high up in the castle and Fuji could see that the ground below him was covered by a thick layer of fog. He figured that the floor of the castle he was on was also hidden by the fog, if he were looking at it from outside. The treetops barely poked out from beneath the 'clouds'.

Fuji stepped out of his room, finally ready. He wouldn't be seeing that room again, and Atobe took his hand outside. "Why are you leaving?" Atobe asked quietly.

"I don't belong here," Fuji said. "I belong in my own world, with my own type of people."

"So you're afraid of not fitting in? Is that it?" Yukimura asked, suddenly appearing on the other side of Atobe. Honestly, Fuji thought, were those two ever apart?

"No, it's not that," Fuji said. "I'm afraid of being a bother."

The two cousins thought that out solemnly and continued to lead Fuji to the throne room where the mirror was that he had first come into this world by. "We're here," Atobe said. The room was quiet, and all that could be heard were the sounds of the steps that the three boys made as they navigated across the room. None of the other cousins were awake, Fuji knew, because he had requested that only Atobe see him off, so that he wouldn't have to see the melancholy faces of the other princes. But of course, he should have known that Yukimura would also be there.

"So…I guess I'll be going now," Fuji said, walking toward the mirror slowly.

"I'm sorry that you can't find it in your heart to help us," Yukimura said. "Perhaps…in another life, we'll meet each other again. Perhaps in that life, we might actually be able to be loved," he continued. "You're a rare beauty, Fuji Syusuke. A beautiful rose…don't forget that."

Fuji was still turned away from the two cousins. He had a hurt look on his face, and his emotions were mixed at Yukimura's last statement. He wiped a tear away hastily, hoping that neither of the other boys had seen it, and stepped into the mirror without hesitation.

As soon as he knew Fuji was all the way through the mirror, Yukimura dropped his sullen façade and smirked. He crossed his arms. "Isn't it disappointing?" he asked Atobe. "That Fuji Syusuke is so gullible. To fall for an act like that, seriously. We could've done better; don't you think so?"

Atobe also smirked. "Oh, we'll surely see him again."

Yukimura dramatically pulled aside his cloak so that it flapped to the side, resulting in a loud, striking noise. "Okay, everyone!" he commanded. Eight faces appeared from behind pillars and other miscellaneous objects placed around the room. The eight faces of the other princes and Shizuma. They were all grinning or smiling excitedly. "Plan Get-Fuji-to-Return-to-our-world: COMMENCE!"

------------------------------

Fuji stepped through the mirror gingerly. It was a strange feeling, walking through a mirror. It was almost like walking through air, as if the glass just wasn't existent. Except when you thought about it, you were walking through glass, so psychologically, it affected you a bit, and it felt a lot different than walking through air. Fuji saw black when his face entered the mirror, but as soon as his whole body was in it, he was immediately sitting on his own bed, next to Tezuka, with a textbook in his lap. Huh??

"Tezuka?" he said. Tezuka looked up from his studying at Fuji.

"Yes?" he replied.

"W-What are we doing?"

"Studying, why?"

Fuji glanced at the mirror. Still covered? But how? He had left the blanket in the other world. He knew that time didn't pass here when he was in the mirror world, but when he stepped back into this world, he had expected to actually step into the world. "But—the mirror—? I fell in, and…"

"Are you okay?" Tezuka asked him.

Fuji nodded slowly, partly to answer Tezuka's question, but also partly because he kind of understood. Tezuka didn't remember anything he saw, huh? How clever. Fuji shrugged. Well, it didn't matter now. He wasn't going back, anyway, and he left it at that.

------------------------------

Fuji walked to school with his best friend, Kikumaru Eiji, in the bright morning sun. It was (obviously) a sunny day, not at all like the hazy day he had seen in the mirror world…wait, why was that on his mind? Fuji told himself that he would clear his mind of all thoughts of the mirror world…and Atobe. He would never remember it again. Ever. But was it possible to make one forget about something, though it was only during a period of one night that made such a difference in one's life?

Fuji sighed. He wanted to go back to that world, so badly, so desperately. He missed everyone, and he had promised that he would help them. And Yukimura's words had cut deep into his heart. Had that been the blue haired boy's intent? Fuji's mind was racing. What had they wanted him to help with? Finding some sort of orb…? With 'shatters all over the surface and two white markings, though the pattern was unknown'. He didn't know if something like that evenexisted in his world. And if it did, it had to be pottery, or something that Fuji wasn't familiar with. It was miracle that Fuji even knew all nine princes in real life.

He finally came up with a compromise with himself. If he found the orb, he'd bring it back to them, and if he didn't, he wouldn't go back. It was as simple as that. But what he didn't know was that a certain nine princes and a younger girl were working behind the scenes to try and get him to come back.

Fuji suddenly felt very, very sleepy. He was almost to the point where he couldn't stand. In fact, Fuji noticed, he was falling. Hecouldn't stand. Why was he so sleepy? He had gotten a good night's sleep last night. What was going on? His last thought was that it was a good thing that Eiji was there before falling into a deep slumber.

------------------------------

Jiroh grinned widely. "It worked! It worked!!!" he shouted from the corner of the throne room. That was where the nine princes spent most of their time when they were together, since it was a comfortable room in a safe part of their household, and there was enough room in it to fit all the necessities of the nine of them. Plus, Fuji's mirror was in it, and for now, they needed to keep tabs on the mirror. Their plan right now was to bother Fuji in the real world until he figured out that it was them and come back.

And by 'bother', they didn't mean any normal means of bothering. Every one of the princes had a special magical ability, and Jiroh's was to make anyone or anything fall asleep at any time, as long as he had seen their face before. The princes, since they were isolated from almost all of their society because of the curse, had a lot of time to practice their magic, and now they had all reached the most advanced level in their world. So they sought to figure out how to activate the magic in another world. Fuji would be a perfect 'guinea pig' for their experiments, and since their plan was to 'bother' him, it was like hitting two birds with one stone.

"It worked! He's asleep!" Jiroh shouted, sitting up from his pile of blankets.

"Yeah, he is…I've confirmed it," Shizuma said from her table in the center of the room. She was currently looking into a crystal ball, where she saw everything. And since she had already seen Fuji's face, now she could see him any time. But if Fuji came back and learned magic himself, he could block her out at any time he wanted to, which was what the nine princes mostly did.

"Wow, that was quick," Yukimura said. "I'm impressed, Jiroh. You've been practicing, haven't you?"

Jiroh nodded his head. "If I can make Fuji fall asleep in another world, then I can make anyone fall asleep!"

"Unless they block you," Atobe said.

"Right, but my spells can penetrate some of the best defenses!" Jiroh said proudly.

"But not all," Yukimura said. "Otherwise, that wouldn't be fair. Even the most powerful magicians can't penetrate all guards, and some of the most powerful magicians also can't guard everything." Yukimura knew a lot about magic, though he wasn't the 'mage' of the family. That was Saeki. But Yukimura was the most knowledgeable; everyone agreed on that one. Every magician could choose which guard spells they could not penetrate, and some magicians chose it to be the weakest ones simply because most of their opponents would not think about using them. Every time they used a spell, they could change which guard spells that they would not be able to penetrate. So, if you were going to use spells quickly and frequently, then you would have to be a very quick thinker, or else you wouldn't be able to hit, because by that time, the opponent would know which guards he had to put up and you wouldn't be able to penetrate any of them. The world of magic was a very fast paced world, which might have been why Fuji had felt so bewildered.

Even with the quick thinking, though, it was still better for any magician to be on the offensive than the defensive. The guarder, or the one on the defensive, would have to guess which guards to put up every time their opponent attacked. They could put up as many guards as their energy let them sustain at one time, and once the guards were removed, their energy would go all the way back up and they would be able to put up new ones. If two very skilled magicians were fighting each other, it was definitely better to be on the offensive because the only ways the defensive person would get on to the offensive would be to wait for the offensive to mess up (wait for them to accidentally not change their guards), or guess correctly at almost every guard and have enough energy to attack right away. And most of the time, skilled magicians did not mess up.

Attacks, spells, and guards only depleted your energy for a little while, so you could continuously attack. But if you got hit, your energy was depleted until you healed yourself, which could not be done during a battle, since all healing spells took time and the world of magic was so fast paced. So, every time you got hit, you would be able to sustain fewer guards at one time, or do less spells, attacks, or enchantments at a time. Sometimes, if the magician was very skilled, before they got hit, they could sustain almost every guard they knew at once. But it was very detrimental to get hit. If your energy went down to zero, you died. So most of the time, two magicians fought until one surrendered, died, or escaped. Some magicians were so skilled that they would be able to do healing spells in the middle of a battle, but that was rare. And no magician in any world was able to bring back the dead, no matter how powerful they were.

Most magicians fought in groups, with healers, fighters (attackers, offense), defenders (to protect the healers), and rangers (far away attackers). Healers usually dedicated their studies to healing spells, so that they would be able to do them quickly. The nine princes were different, though. Each of them had a different, special spell that they could use. They could each choose to study about their own special spell, or study regular magic instead, and most of them chose to study their own spells, or abilities. Since Saeki's ability was magic, he could do far much more magic than even the strongest magician in the country (currently), and he had a lot of energy, too.

Yukimura also knew more about the legend of the strongest magician, the one that created the orb, or the one who Fuji was a reincarnation of than his cousins did, and perhaps even more than that girl Shizuma did. He had no idea how he knew so much, but he did. Each royal generation was required to have exactly nine sons, and it didn't matter whether one family had all the sons, or whether one each family had one, but there always had to be exactly nine. If there were girls born, then after all nine sons were born, the girls would be somehow transported to a different world (this is all that their world knew how to do in terms of traveling between worlds) and become theprincesses of that world. That spell, though, could only be used once, because after it was used, the maximum energy of the user would be permanently depleted to the point where they wouldn't have enough energy to use it. Most of the time, the user even died.

The nine princes would always be the most magically able out of every being in the country, and they usually fought together. There would mostly be the nine of them, and there would always be another magician that would serve them, and that magician would always be the most powerful magician in the world. But the magician was not allowed to fight alone, or without the princes, unless he could beat the princes in a battle alone (one against nine). It was kind of unfair, but the magician alone should always be more skilled than each of the princes alone, and it wasn't possible to be better alone than the nine of them. Normally, the magicians were fine with this, since it was tradition, until one magician was born.

One magician was different. He was particularly strong and skilled, even more so than any of the previous magicians. He always studied his spells and attacks, hoping one day to be able to fight alone. But when he got older, his teachers told him the truth: he was only born to serve the princes and aide them in battle. He had been enraged by this, and by now, he was very strong, so he challenged the princes to a battle together. It had been a close match, but in the end, he had surrendered, almost dead.

He had stolen away to a secret place, and instead of healing himself, he had used the last of his energy for a spell that could only be done when one was looking death in the eye. He created the cursed orb, and cast it away to a place only known by him. The orb wasn't originally intended to be found by the princes, it was just to make someone else's life miserable, like how his life had only been made to serve the princes. He created it, cast it away, and then died.

Later, he was reincarnated, and somehow learned of the orb again. He told the fortune teller of that generation to keep an eye on the orb and let him know if anyone found it. Many generations, years, decades, and centuries went by, and reincarnation after reincarnation was created, new princes were born over and over again, but no one ever found the orb. Finally, when the fortune teller turned her eyes away from the orb for one moment, it disappeared, and the boys found it in their backyard. So somehow, the curse eventually ended up placed upon the nine princes of which the magician hated so long ago.

But this time, many things were different, too. The parents of Yukimura and Jiroh were now dead, the father dying of an unknown cause, and the mother never to be found again only a couple months after Yukimura's birth. The magician was nowhere to be found, though Yukimura remembering something in his past that had to do with this mysterious magician. He couldn't remember what, though. So they had just set on a quest to find the magician at all costs, Yukimura keeping the uncertain feeling to himself.

Uber...cliffie/mystery! What is this unsettling feeling that Yukimura is having? Stick with this story, and you'll find out! Oh, and if you find this confusing in any way, I'm really sorry! I guess the videogamers will get it a bit more than others, but I'm not sure. xD;; Please be courteous and review before you fave/alert. Thanks!