Chapter Four
Busy speculating the reasons for the ninja's sudden curiosity, Syaoran almost missed the cold glance Fai gave him when he walked in.
The magician stood over the stove, spatula in hand, watching a pair of pancakes sizzle in the pan. The smell of syrup saturated the tiny room, a single bottle of it sitting in the middle of the table. Three chairs had been shoved up against the table's surface, for the three plates laying on the three placemats next to three glasses of milk.
The meaning couldn't have been clearer if Fai had put up a neon sign declaring the intended occupants of the chairs.
"Morning, Kuro-pii," the magician said, forcing his lips up into a smile. His smile seemed brittle now, barely hiding the resentment under the cheerful expression. "I was just making breakfast, since Sakura-chan and Mokona will be up soon. Were you still close enough to understand everything the doctors said?"
Syaoran did not miss the fact that the magician had mentioned each member of their group except for him.
"Yeah," Kurogane said, the word sharper than necessary for the question he'd been asked. Syaoran watched the exchange with interest, wondering what had changed since last night, besides his trip to the hospital. Was Fai still brooding over Kurogane's decision to save him, or had he missed some other important detail after spending so much time alone in his room?
Fai reacted to the ninja's terse response, fingers tightening around the spatula until his knuckles turned white. "Well, that's good. I'm going to go wake Sakura-chan. If the pancakes start burning, flip them over."
Syaoran waited for the ninja to say something like "Why do I have to do it?" or "Take care of your own damn pancakes."
He didn't.
Syaoran walked over to the cupboard and picked out a plate for himself, guessing from the number of placemats that he wasn't welcome at the table. As he retrieved one of the pancakes from the stack, he heard a chair slide across the linoleum. He glanced over to see Kurogane dragging one of the chairs from the living room to the table, moving two other seats out of the way to make room.
"You don't have to do that," Syaoran whispered, eyes flickering over to Sakura's half-open door. He could see the vampire nudging her shoulder, trying to wake her up.
"You're eating breakfast with us."
"It doesn't bother me to eat alone."
"You're eating breakfast with us," Kurogane repeated.
He hesitated a moment longer, feeling his shoulders slump and his body shrink in on itself. Butterflies battered the inside of his stomach, chasing away his appetite.
The ninja didn't look like he was in the mood for disobedience; Syaoran took a seat in the chair, scooting away from the table as soon as the red eyes left him, so he wouldn't appear such a threat to Fai when he returned.
Kurogane had just sat down with his plate when Fai walked out of Sakura's room. The vampire paused in the doorway for half a second, losing his smile. Syaoran's muscles tensed, tugging at his wounded shoulder and making him wince.
"The pancakes haven't burned," Kurogane said, as if he cared about the state of their breakfast. His offhand statement forced Fai to respond.
"That's good."
Behind Fai, Sakura stood, looking at him for the first time in two days. If he hadn't known her so well, he wouldn't have noticed the tension in her back, or the way her nose twitched when she saw him.
He stared back, waiting to see what she'd do next. Tension hovered between them like two taut strings stretched across the dining room.
Very deliberately, she turned her head toward the pile of pancakes by the stove. He glanced down at his plate, hand fumbling for the syrup bottle. As his fingers tightened around the thin bottle, a jolt of pain shot up to his shoulder, almost making him lose his grip. Kurogane acknowledged the spasm with a quick glance.
Yep, he's pretty much the only one who doesn't hate my guts. Wonderful. He set the syrup down and took the first bite of his pancakes. They would've tasted better if his anxiety hadn't chased away his appetite, but they were edible. Sakura sat in the chair furthest from him, leaving Fai to sit on his right side.
No one spoke. No one looked at anyone else.
He ate his breakfast as fast as he could, the awkwardness boring a hole into his forehead to match the one in his shoulder. As he finished, he scooted the chair back and picked up his plate. "Thank you," he murmured, not sure if he was thanking Fai for the food, or Kurogane for not wanting him dead.
No one answered his thanks, leaving it open-ended. His chair squealed loudly across the floor as he pushed it toward the table.
He washed his plate and returned to his room, relieved as soon as the door shut behind him. He hadn't really thought of the closet-sized room as a sanctuary, but he hadn't really spent enough time outside it until now to fully experience the rest of the world. He turned the little handle above the knob to lock the door, then sat down on the edge of his bed, sighing in relief.
After a few minutes, conversation restarted at the dining table. He pressed his ear against the wall, wondering if they were going to mention the tension.
"These pancakes are wonderful, Fai-san," Sakura said, a little subdued for the comment.
"I'm glad you like them, Sakura-chan. And what about you, Kuro-rin?"
There was no answer to this, at least not that he could hear. Without the visual cues, he had no inkling of what the silence meant. Was it some sort of protest? Had Kurogane just shrugged?
No way to know, Syaoran decided, closing his eyes. Fai changed topics, talking to Mokona about how conveniently the marketplace had set up their food aisles. The long-eared creature responded with enthusiasm, as always.
The conversation went on until Sakura left the table and returned to her room. Syaoran heard the hinges groan as the door opened, feeling a pang of guilt as he realized just how much the princess had withdrawn from the others because of his existence.
Not wanting to intrude on what little privacy a closed door offered her, he removed his ear from the wall and laid down, staring up at the ceiling. His shoulder throbbed from the wear-and-tear of lifting his plate and pushing his chair toward the table. He wondered how much recovery time he had before the next fight. They usually went out to the arena every three or four days, to get money for this apartment. He didn't want to delay them long, but at the same time, he knew he'd only be a hindrance if he had to fight over the next few days.
Only be a hindrance for everything else, he thought, frowning. Only distract them every moment you're in their sight, and annoy them whenever they think about you. He sighed quietly. If they just looked at him . . . If the princess would just meet his eyes for a moment without looking away or getting irritated . . .
If she would smile just once while he was watching . . .
"Never. I will never love you."
"I know that," he muttered to himself. The Other had seldom needed to talk to himself, since everyone else would talk to him, but since he didn't have that luxury, he often ended up muttering half-formed conversations to himself. "Of course I know that. I'm not him."
He wanted to be. Even though he was horrified by the Other's recent activity, and resented him for stealing away most of his life, a part of him wanted so badly to be the Other, to be accepted by the rest of his group. The duality of his feelings regarding his copy unnerved him, made him wish things were not so complicated.
"But they are," he whispered. "And it's all your fault, for being unable to work around Fei Wang Reed's plan."
He remembered the feeling of being trapped, sealed away to be used at Reed's leisure, remembered how he'd turned to looking through his clone's eyes after just a few days. Even looking through the emotionless, socially inept experiences of the Other's eyes, he'd been able to free his mind from the captivity that had become his daily life. He'd been able to see the world as if through a child's eyes, soaking in every experience as if for the first time, learning how to feel again.
Meeting Sakura. Becoming friends with her.
Wanting to stay at her side, even if it meant traveling through every dimension in the multiverse.
He wasn't the same person I was. He developed only with the life he experienced after he showed up in Clow Country. But still, that life defined me just as much as my own, and I can't keep denying that. "I can't pretend I'm nothing like him," he whispered. "But I can still be who I was."