Slightly longer chapter today, 'cause I may not get around until updating until late-ish tomorrow... I'm going out right after work. Also, you know how I said in the summary that there was six parts total? That is what we call in my country a filthy lie. At the moment it's looking more like 10, plus an epilogue, so uh... sorry?

Thank you to everyone who's been reviewing, by the way! You guys are kind of awesome and I really appreciate the feedback. I'm not very good at responding to reviews via the ffnet format, but I really do love seeing the review alert notification in my inbox. It makes my day! :D

That said, that's enough of my rambling - here's the next chapter!

Title: Ash on the windowsill
Rating: PG-13.
Pairing: Kurogane x Fai
Summary: AU. It's the end of the world, and Fai is still keeping secrets.
Warnings: this fic contains mentions of child abuse, some (minor) character death and some quite probably inaccurate medical jargon.
Other notes: This fic is complete - I will be posting a new chapter every day as I go through and edit it.


Fuuma was halfway up a ladder when Kurogane got in, hammering inexpertly at the roof tiles and looking, if not confused, then certainly bewildered in a jovial manner. He had a huge bruise over one side of his face that he hadn't had when Kurogane had last seen him. Kendappa was leaning against the wall at the bottom of the ladder, looking sour, but when she saw him she nodded at him.

"There he is," she said. "Kurogane, tell Fuuma what you told me about the meeting yesterday."

Kurogane squinted up at the ladder. "This can't wait? I just got off patrol." He held up the wet, dripping sack by way of proof; blood was soaking through the bottom of the bag and mixing with the ash on the ground.

"If we let you go you'll go home and sleep, and then I'll be on patrol and it'll have to wait for ages. So. Tell him now."

Kurogane sighed. "It was that idiot from the east side again, the one who won't stop accusing the short bastard with black hair of stealing his stuff. He wanted a couple of us hunters to go around and 'deal with' the thief."

There was a pause while Fuuma worked out who Kurogane meant. "What did you say to that?" he called down eventually.

Kurogane snorted and said, candidly, "I told him to go fuck himself."

"Not surprised," Fuuma said, amused. He banged heavily on the roof aimlessly with the mallet and scowled when a tile slipped free and crashed to the ground a few inches away from Kendappa's foot. "This is harder than it looks when Kamui does it."

Kendappa snorted. "He's making you do the housework, huh?"

"He said if I didn't make myself useful in the next thirty seconds, he was going to hit me in the face with this mallet," Fuuma said. He peered down at them from the top of the ladder. "I said he looked cute when he was angry, he hit me in the face with the mallet. I suppose he did warn me."

"You can't get fairer than that," Kendappa agreed. "So what did that annoying bastard say about you refusing our services?"

"He whined. I said we're here to hunt the ash beasts, not act as some fucking police force, and if we are gonna act as a police force, who's going to be making the fucking laws and paying our wages?"

"I'm not joining any brand-new police," Fuuma said. "I was a car thief before the first storm."

Kendappa lifted her eyebrows. "Really? Operating out of the capital?"

"Yep."

"Ever steal a black Puma convertible from the east train station? Had a violin in the back seat?"

There was an awkward pause in which Fuuma's guilt became rather implicit.

"You bastard," Kendappa said, without heat. "I loved that car."

"It paid my rent for three months," Fuuma said.

"The violin or the car?"

"The car. The violin I kept until my neighbour broke it 'cos I was keeping him up practising. Sorry."

"Well, it wasn't my violin," Kendappa said, with a philosophical shrug. She lifted a hand and waved down the street at the clinic as its doors opened. "Hey, Subaru."

"Hi," Subaru said. He glanced at them briefly. "Have you seen Fai?"

"He's probably hiding from Touya, if the shouting this morning was anything to go by," Fuuma said.

"What shouting?" Kurogane demanded.

Subaru looked at him for a long moment, and as always whenever he saw the kid, Kurogane was struck by the thought that Subaru had survived rather more than most. There was a kind of tense maturity to his features that sometimes made Kurogane wonder if Subaru wasn't actually older than he was. "Yukito has diabetes. He had a... a crash, a bad one, because he didn't have enough insulin in his body, and Touya found out. He was... is... kind of mad about it."

"That skinny blond bastard was keeping it a secret?"

Subaru nodded, gesturing quickly with one hand. "He said he was going to see Oruha, but he isn't back yet. It's been hours."

Kendappa shrugged, but Fuuma stiffened. "Hours?" he said. "He can't have been hours. Ora died this morning. I was just helping Tomoyo bring her kit over to Kazuhiko's to sew a funeral shroud."

Subaru and Kendappa exclaimed at this news, but Kurogane just narrowed his eyes. Like they hadn't seen it coming. He shifted the sack of ash beast parts to his other hand. "When was the last time any of you saw him?"

"Ten thirty," said Subaru. He checked his watch. "That was about three hours ago."

"He can't have gone far," said Kendappa. "Maybe he's gone to walk it off. Give him a few hours, then let's start worrying."

"He's already had three hours," Subaru said. "I wanted to ask him a question about some of the terms in Yukito's patient file... "

"I'll find him," Kurogane said. "Let me ditch these beast bits and I'll haul the idiot doctor out of wherever he's gone."

"I'm sure you will," Kendappa said, with a sly sort of smile. She shielded her eyes with one hand and peered up the ladder at Fuuma. "Do you even know what it is you're supposed to do on a roof, or are you just hitting it with a hammer?"

"That isn't what you're supposed to do?"

Kurogane left them to it then, heading to his own small house across the street from the clinic. He dumped the sack just inside the back door; there'd be blood all over his floor he'd have to deal with later, but finding the idiot doctor came first. It'd be just like Fai to be sitting in some stupid place being all melodramatic because one terminally ill patient had died. At least now he knew why Fai had requested those pancreases.

Now he just had to find the idiot and drag him out of hiding. Even if it required quite a literal definition of 'drag'.


Syaoran was doing his homework when Subaru came in, dragging his feet and obviously exhausted.

"Evening," he said, and was rewarded with a small, tired smile; Subaru closed the back door behind him and came into the house proper, shrugging his cloak off and peeling his mask up over his head.

"You're working late," Subaru said. He paused, one hand resting on the back of the chair next to Syaoran for balance as he took off his shoes, and his nose twitched as he sniffed. "What's that smell?"

"Dinner," said Syaoran. "When I came down to feed the hens this morning one of them was dead."

"So you just threw it in the pot?" Subaru was looking at him, his eyebrows drawn together; Syaoran twisted in his chair as his housemate made his way over to the heavy iron cookpot wedged on the grate over the hearthfire. "It could have died of anything -"

"It choked to death," Syaoran said. "I took it in to school and Souma said we could cut it up and perform an autopsy. it was kind of gross."

Subaru was staring at him. "So your whole class hacked our chicken to pieces, after it choked on something, and your reaction was still to throw it in the pot?"

"I didn't want to waste the meat!" Syaoran protested. "It's been ages since we had any meat that wasn't ash beast."

Subaru looked at him. "Which hen was it?"

"San," said Syaoran. "She wasn't the best layer anyway, Ichi produced like three times as many eggs."

Subaru pulled on the oven mitt hanging from its hook by the hearth and lifted the lid on the pot, peering inside. Syaoran waited to see if he'd say anything else; he had that look on his face, like Syaoran had done something weird and Subaru didn't quite know how to reprimand him for it.

Instead, Subaru let the lid fall and said, "I'm really hungry."

"So it's okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine."

Syaoran shoved his homework across the table, clearing a space for Subaru to sit down, and scrambled to his feet. "I'll get it ready now! If you want to sit down, that is."

"Thank you. It's been a long day."

"Is Yukito going to be okay?"

"Yeah," said Subaru. "But I have no idea where Fai went off to. Kurogane said he'd go find him, but if he did, he hasn't brought Fai back yet." He sighed, steepling his fingers.

Syaoran pulled out two plates from the shelf and set about the business of dishing out the chicken. It smelled wonderful. Maybe Sakura would like some; he should offer... "Can diabetics eat chicken?" he asked, hoping for innocuous and unsure if he hit the mark. Subaru smiled faintly and nodded.

"They can-" he started to say, but had to stop when someone knocked on the door, hard. He frowned. "Were you expecting company?"

"No." Syaoran spooned out some potatoes to go with the chicken. "Were you?"

"I'll get it."

Syaoran listened with half an ear at Subaru got the door, portioning out some chicken to take over to Sakura's tomorrow, but stopped abruptly when a very familiar voice growled, "I'm telling you, I searched all over the fucking village and couldn't find him!"

"You think he's left the village?" Subaru sounded disbelieving. "Kurogane, he didn't take anything. His room is just the same as it was when I got him up. Why would he leave the village with no water, food, spare clothing... he doesn't even have a weapon!"

"'cause he's a fucking idiot," Kurogane growled. Syaoran carefully set the chicken down and crept over to the door, sticking his head in from the side to see what was going on; Subaru stepped aside to let him approach. Kurogane was dressed in full hunting gear - black and red, his shirt with the stiff leather panels sewn on to provide more protection - and he wasn't just armed with his usual handguns and sword; he had a bulky backpack over one shoulder. Syaoran gaped.

"You aren't going to go beyond the walls to find him," Subaru said, sounding doubtful. "The deep forest..."

"It's just a forest," Kurogane said impatiently. "I can handle myself. And someone has to go track that fucking idiot down and bring him back.

Syaoran swallowed. "You should wait until the morning," he said, and Kurogane turned that formidable gaze on him but without the heat he reserved for adults like Fai. "Um, I spoke to Sorata and Arashi on the way home from school - they're predicting another storm at eleven pm, a harsher one. It's not wise to go out in it..."

"How harsh is harsh?" Kurogane demanded.

"Like the one from six months ago?" Subaru asked. "When the ash monsters got inside the walls?"

Both of them were tense, but they relaxed a little when Syaoran shook his head. "More like three months ago," he said. "Sorata thinks it'll be the kind of storm that comes with thirty-five monsters, not twenty."

Kurogane paused. "It's Fuuma and Kendappa on patrol tonight. They can cope."

"You're not still going?" Subaru asked. "If Fai really is outside the village - how are you planning to track him through the ash?"

"He'll've gone through the forest. The branches there keep off the worst of the fall. And if he's smart, he'll have sheltered in one of the natural caves. I'll find him," Kurogane said. "I'll take one of the dirt bikes, it shouldn't take long."

"I think you ought to reconsider," Subaru said quietly. "I want... I would like Fai to return as much as anybody, if not more, but this is dangerous, don't you think?"

Kurogane let out a huff of exasperation. "You work out what those medical terms you needed to ask him about were?"

"Eventually," Subaru said. "Yukito told me where to find the medical textbooks in the schoolhouse when he woke up. But -"

"We need him," Kurogane said firmly. He took a step back from the door. "We won't be long."

"Why do you care so much?" Subaru said, suddenly. "This is more than just concern for the only qualified medic in the village, isn't it?"

There was a long pause before Kurogane said anything. Syaoran leaned against the door frame, digging his fingers into its wooden perimeter, and waited, curious. It seemed for a time as though they weren't going to get an answer; then, just as Subaru reached out for the door handle, obviously about to wish Kurogane good luck with his ill-fated mission, Kurogane spoke.

In a subdued voice, he said, "'cos he matters."

Subaru was watching him with his old eyes. Looking back and forth between them - Subaru, slight, fresh-faced and yet so quietly stoic at times; Kurogane, fire and scars - Syaoran found himself wondering which of them had the more experience with the school of hard knocks. He thought Subaru would shut the door then, but instead he said, with still dignity, "Good luck, Kurogane."

"Yeah," Kurogane said. He hefted his pack. "Fine."

Subaru pushed the door closed softly, and Syaoran heard it click with a kind of finality. For a moment they both stood there together in silence in the entrance, then Subaru sighed. "I think I need to move into the clinic until Fai returns. Will you wrap dinner up for me while I collect my stuff?"

"Eat it now," Syaoran said. "While it's still hot." He curled his fingers loosely around the door handle, stood on tiptoes and peered out through the little warped glass window. "Do you think he'll find Fai in that storm?"

Subaru didn't say anything, and maybe that was answer enough. How typical, Syaoran thought, that two of the people he respected most in the village should up and vanish on the same day. He had never been religious - from what he could remember, his whole family had been the same - but right then, he wished he could be the type to just believe.

It would be nice to have some reason to be confident that they would return.


He found Fai's black bag hanging from a tree-branch at one side of the road. It was lightly coated in ash, but otherwise undamaged; Kurogane shoved his goggles impatiently on top of his head and reached for it, his brow furrowing as he opened the flap. Inside was a pretty chaotic jumble of pockets and shapes, but he could see pretty clearly why Fai had left it there, poised and waiting for the lumberjacks in the village to find it after the storm on their way to the logging grounds.

He'd ripped a page out of his notebook, the one he carried with him anywhere, and wedged it in the zipper. It read, in his flowing, liquid handwriting: Yukito's needle is in the inner pocket. Also spare vial of insulin. Return to Clinic.

I'm sorry. - F

That was so fucking typical, Kurogane thought. He slung the bag back up where Fai had left it - he wasn't going back and the work crew would spot it quickly. It didn't do anything to change his resolve to lug that selfish blond moron back with him, even if he had to knock Fai out and throw him over the back of the bike. He pulled his goggles back down as he curled his fingers around the throttle - kicked the stand up and let his wrist turn, felt the engine shuddering underneath him. He'd strapped his pack to the back and he had, by his estimate, enough petrol to get him sixty miles. That would be more than enough to catch a man on foot.

You could always take a bicycle, Tomoyo had said, when he'd stopped in to see her. She'd been knitting or crocheting or whatever the hell it was she did with all that thread. They're easier to place, and most likely easier to maneuver in the deep forest, Kurogane.

Can you picture me on a bicycle? Kurogane scowled, and then scowled further when Tomoyo giggled, covering her mouth with one tiny hand. What?

Oh, just the mental image of you attempting to pedal one of our more... normal sized bikes. Her purple eyes had been sparkling. You'd give yourself concussion hitting yourself with your own knees!

He'd glared but nothing else. Tomoyo was... Tomoyo. Kurogane didn't have much, but Tomoyo had come through the storm with him, and she was too special to disrespect.

Kurogane, she'd said, her face growing serious as she lowered her hands, progress on her work stilled. When you find Fai -

I'll punch him in the fucking face, Kurogane grumbled, and then when she raised one fine eyebrow, added, Sorry. In his effing face.

I'm not sure that that's much of an improvement, Tomoyo replied smoothly. Kurogane, when you find Fai, will you do one thing for me?

What?

Remember what your mother said.

Kurogane blinked, caught off-guard. She always could do that to him. Why?

Purple eyes lifted, met his calmly. It will be important. Will you do that?

He shrugged. I... maybe. I guess. If he doesn't act like fuck - like a moron. I don't know.

That's all I wanted to ask, Tomoyo said. She smiled, lifting up her work. It's dangerous in the woods, and cold. Bring extra water. You ought to bring this, too -

I am not wearing a fucking bobblehat.

Kurogane!

I'm not! Kurogane glared at the offending item, but Tomoyo only laughed, and well.

(The bobblehat was at the very bottom of his pack. It was black. The bobble was red, and Kurogane was grudgingly aware of the fact that Tomoyo had won again.)

He had to go slow over the mixed ash, mud and leaves that made the forest floor even more slippery than usual. Subaru had asked him how he would find Fai; Kendappa had insinuated that he might want to ask Yuzuriha to accompany him, not so much for her survival skills - although she had plenty of those - but more for Inuki, one of the very few domesticated animals the village had left aside from their hens and goats. His nose would make things easier, Kendappa had said, and Kurogane snorted. He didn't need a tracking dog.

It wasn't like he knew one hundred per cent where the fluff-brained moron would go. It wasn't like he knew one hundred percent what was even going on with the flake. But Kurogane had a pretty good idea, in both cases.

Fai had gone straight to Oruha's after bailing on Yukito and Touya. Kazuhiko had said - in a queer, stiff, colourless voice - that he had seen the doctor that morning, although he had been unable to give an exact time. "This morning has been a blur," he said. "It was after dawn. Before Fuuma turned up."

That had given Fai a three hour window in which to run away. The storm had picked up after Kurogane had returned - that had been about one in the afternoon; Kendappa and Fuuma had covered that evening's storms since Kamui was still on enforced bed-rest from having his chest drained, and Souma was covering for Yukito at the schoolhouse until Saiga and Subaru decided his blood sugar levels were fine and that he could go home. Kendappa and Fuuma knew Fai was missing, so they would have been looking out for him; they'd missed his bag, which meant this direction had been the blind spot in their patrol. They'd've left the road to the gate guard, who would'nt've seen the bag due to the way the road curved. Fai was also not entirely stupid for all he liked to play pretend. He'd run away, not gotten lost. He'd be keeping to the woods, and there was only one direction he could have travelled in that would not have gotten him noticed by Kendappa and Fuuma - west, toward the mountains.

Kurogane knew that area. Not recently - but he'd led their band of refugees over the mountains and to the village after the first storm, relying on crackling, broken radio transmissions and Tomoyo's dreams; back before Sorata and Arashi had been able to forecast the ash storms for them and all they'd had to rely on was there being cover nearby. Fai had come that way too. He knew, as Kurogane did, about the derelict houses left en route; about the natural shelters, particularly in the rocky river regions. He'd be smart enough to head in that direction.

Kurogane's fingers stayed curled around the throttle and didn't once bear down. He had to stay slow unless he wanted to tip the bike over, he knew that... but it was harder than he thought.

There had been a forest out back of his childhood home, back in the old country to the far south. His parents used to let him loose to play in it. "Only," his father had always said, "If you see any men in black and blue, you need to come right home."

Later he'd found out that the soldiers of the Emperor's Guard wore uniforms of black and blue, but by then his home forest had been anything but that. By then his parents had been keeping canned food and survivalist's gear by the back door. 'Just in case.'

Maybe this forest had once been like his old one. Maybe not. He'd never been here in the before, he didn't know; but now it was a grim, silent place, grey and black with only a smudge of green here and there, at the heart of the tree's canopies. The ashfalls had steadily decimated the populations of most wild animals. When they'd first arrived at the village, there had still been some birds, a few ragged deer, some squirrels and rabbits. Not any more.

Kurogane had never been intending to sneak up on Fai; an impossible feat with the bike growling and rumbling like a dragon as it edged across the forest floor. It wasn't a surprise when he crested one swell in the forest floor and glanced down, down; past the upright sticks of Northern trees, narrow and straight-backed and dense, and saw the flash of pale grey that he recognized almost instantly for what it was: a cloak. He'd made it maybe five miles out of the village. Not bad, considering the pauses he'd've had to make for the storms.

Kurogane pointed the nose of the bike downhill and released the brake.

Fai was running through the trees, and in this at least he wasn't pretending. His head was down, his boots kicking up clods of dirt; he was fast, too, fleeting and swift between the tree trunks like some kind of wild creature. Something natural as he sprinted, skidding a little and grabbing hold of one of the trees, spinning around its trunk to keep some of his momentum as he changed course slightly. It was just too bad that in some things, nature - even magic - couldn't keep up with technology. Kurogane's dirt bike screamed as he let it go, the trees whisking past him and the sun blinking in and out of his vision as he chased the fleeing man, one long sunset moment drawn out forever as Fai ran and Kurogane pursued, man in white trying to escape and man in black making ground, getting closer to catching him with every breath, with every thumpthumpthump beat of a frantic heart -

His outstretched fingers caught hold of Fai's cloak. He hauled the bike to a stop, the sudden weight coupled with Fai's slenderness yanking the man backward on his arse, rolling and skidding across the forest floor and freeing him from Kurogane's grip; he leapt from the bike as soon as it came to something like a stop - Fai was still sliding across the floor, mud and ash staining his pale cloak dark, something like shock on his face - and Kurogane skidded the last few inches on his knees, eyes narrowing; it was no different to trapping an ash beast for butchering -

(except yes, it was, in every detail) -

- And then the blurred, complicated moment somehow came to an end; Fai on his back, Kurogane leaning over him. One of Kurogane's hands wrapped tight around both of the idiot's skinny little wrists; blue eyes blinking, startled in a way that would have been comical at any other point. "Gotcha," Kurogane said, with some satisfaction. He hadn't even broken anything.

And to tell the truth he'd expected Fai to smile that stupid smile; to pull testingly on Kurogane's grip and then give up as he always did, laugh that stupid laugh, and then say something he didn't mean, words he thoughtlessly wore like some unloved jacket, put on for the occasion and back in the closet when no longer needed. "I didn't know you liked this sort of thing, Kuro-sama~!" Fai might trill, or: "Well, all you had to do was ask, Kuro-dominant."

Instead Fai jackknifed violently in his grip, a scrawny knee catching Kurogane in the stomach and forcing the air out of him with a surprised woof! as Fai fought with all his strength, pulling away from Kurogane and skittering over the ground, wild, almost berserk in his struggle to get away. It was no more use than a suffocating fish flopping on the ground; it took more than a kick to the solar plexus to make Kurogane let go. Instead he tightened his grip, yanking Fai toward him while the thin man made a noise like an angry cat, jerking savagely away from him.

"Calm the fuck down!" Kurogane roared. Fai snarled at him, an expression of pure defiance, blue eyes blazing; Kurogane gave him a hard little shake. "Calm down, you fucking idiot, I'm not letting you go until you stop!"

Some part of Fai evidently still existed in the mind of whatever the hell this... this thing wearing Fai's face was. Fai subsided, although Kurogane could feel the tension in those arms.

"Are you done?" Kurogane demanded. "Whatever it was that made you come out here, it was stupid. Let it the fuck go." He squeezed Fai's wrists to punctuate that last sentence, and Fai snorted.

"I'm not going back," he said, defiance and contempt married in his voice. "Let me go, Kurogane."

Kurogane froze. Fai's voice was icy and nasty, but it wasn't the tone that sent that sudden spike of worry through his chest. Kurogane. How long had he been objecting to those stupid names? Five years now? "No," he said, slowly.

"Let - me - go," Fai repeated, enunciating each word with seething clarity. "I'm not going back, so just let me go - let me go!"

"No." Kurogane pulled Fai toward him; Fai hadn't been anticipating it and landed with his face in Kurogane's shoulder. Immediately he tensed up and began squirming. Kurogane didn't care. "Village needs its medic. You're coming back with me."

"No! Let go!"

"Quit whining," he said. It was tricky to get his belt off with one hand, but he managed it; even harder to get that belt around Fai's wrists when Fai realised what he was up to and renewed his struggles. Still, Kurogane had trussed up tougher, meaner prey than Fai. Some of them had spat literal acid.

Once done he stepped back to admire his handiwork, hands on his hips. Fai flexed his wrists, glared up at him from behind a hank of sweat-damp blond hair. "If you don't let me go - and soon, Kurogane - I will make you regret it," he snarled.

"Yeah, no," Kurogane said. "You're needed back there. Whatever bullshit reason made you go running off like a coward - I really don't care."

"You will," Fai said. Some of the venom had drained from his voice; he still sounded pissed, but now he seemed tired too. "Just let me go. I had my reasons. The village doesn't need me as much as it thinks it does."

"I think they know what they need," Kurogane said. He bent over, grabbing Fai by his wrists and hauling him roughly to his feet. Fai was one of the taller men in the village, but Kurogane still had several inches on him and a whole lot of muscle mass. "Come on. To the bike."

"No," Fai said. He refused to move when Kurogane shoved at him - just went over on his arse again, glaring at Kurogane the whole time - and finally with a disgusted Tch! Kurogane bent and hauled him up, lifting the idiot bodily off the ground and throwing him over his shoulder. Fai squawked like a bird. "Let me go, Kurogane! Let me go, you bastard!"

"Nope," Kurogane said. He couldn't resist a smirk at Fai's thrashing; the man couldn't get free, and some payback for all that Kuro-sama and Kuro-ash bullshit was long overdue him, as far as he was concerned. "We got a couple hours to go. If you're going to keep up like this..."

"Last chance," Fai growled, and well, Kurogane really just did not care. He turned toward the bikes.

He'd taken maybe two steps, possibly three when something stopped him. There was a strange feeling to the air; a kind of energy... He raised his right arm, squinted along it. Fai had gone oddly limp and quiet, and Kurogane found himself wondering about that, even as he curiously lifted his head and sniffed -

Moments later Fai hit the ground for a third time as Kurogane dumped him in order to roll away. The lightning bolt that struck the ground a split-second later made it probably a good move.

He came to his feet several feet away, hunkered instinctively into a fighting pose. Ginryuu had come out of its sheath without him really thinking about it, so used to drawing steel in the presence of danger. Fai was watching him from his side amidst the dirt, but there was a smouldering four-foot wide circle of blackened, dry earth between them.

Fai didn't look smug. Kurogane would grant him that. "Huh," he said, still staring at the spot where the unnatural bolt had struck - out of a clear grey sky! "So you're a war mage."

"Yeah," Fai said quietly.

"That would have been good to know earlier," Kurogane snapped. He shifted his weight, swept Ginryuu forward and low. "Think of how many more ash beasts we could've killed!"

"My magic doesn't work properly anymore, Kurogane," Fai hissed. "The first storm broke it all."

"You did that," Kurogane argued, pointing at the smoke roiling gently out of the scorched earth.

"Not by choice. I missed," Fai said, defiance sparking in those blue eyes. Maybe he hoped Kurogane would be afraid and leave, in which case he was a moron and he didn't know Kurogane at all; or maybe he hoped Kurogane would choose bravado and try to force him back, and he would be able to use those lightning bolts again. He was an idiot either way.

Kurogane let his gaze linger on the spot Fai had hit for a while as he mapped out his options quickly in his head, and then sighed, straightening up. Fai was watching him closely. He couldn't let the idiot go off on his own. But he wouldn't just try to drag him back; evidence suggested that would end poorly. He sheathed Ginryuu. "Fine," he said. "Have it your way. If I can't make you come back, I won't." Fai's eyes brightened with victory, and he'd kicked Kurogane in the stomach and tried to fry him alive, so it didn't bother him at all to crush it with the words, "I'll just follow you until you decide to go back. Idiot."

"What?" Fai was looking at him like he'd grown a head or announced that actually, he really preferred chasing chickens to fighting.

Kurogane paused, thinking quickly. His eyes quickly passed over Fai's narrow, dirty frame on the floor. "'Cause you left your bag back by the village," he said. "Do you have any supplies? You didn't even bring water. What kind of idiot goes out into a world with no safe water except rain and doesn't bring extra?"

"No," Fai said, still sounding softly surprised. "Well, yes, I didn't - I meant that's not why."

The wind picked up, the only noise in the bone silence. It blew through Kurogane's hair, gentle and cool against his face. "Does it matter?"

"Yes." Fai watched him carefully. "Yes, it does. I can understand chasing me to bring me back... but why accompany me? Won't they need you too?"

"Yes," Kurogane said simply. "So you'd better change your mind soon. As for why... welll..." He squirmed. Those eyes - blue, so blue, like the sky never was these days - were fixed on him. They made thinking somewhat... strange. "Nobody should go out of the village alone. It's dangerous."

Fai swallowed. "Yes," he said, in a quiet, low voice. He glanced away. "It is."

Kurogane took a cautious step around the black patch, but the hair on his arms remained resolutely flat, and he couldn't smell ozone. Fai didn't resist when he bent down and undid the belt buckle. It had left a pale mark behind on Fai's wrists, and Fai rubbed at them irritably as Kurogane re-fastened the belt around his hips.

"So what's next?"

"You don't have a plan?" Fai blinked at him.

Kurogane shrugged. "You were the one who left."

"Oh" Fai said, sounding wary. He shielded his eyes and glanced up at the sky. "There's another storm coming soon. See the clouds on the horizon? I suppose we ought to find shelter."

Kurogane bent over the bike, gripping its handlebar and using it to tug it upright. "There was a cabin about a half-mile from here," he said. "If it's still standing, it'll do."

Fai bit his lip. Some of his bravado seemed to have fallen from him when Kurogane had told him that it was dangerous to go alone, like he hadn't expected that to be the answer and didn't know what to make of it. He kept shooting Kurogane quick, darting glances.

"Cabin it is," he said, and well, that was that. Kurogane bent low, giving the bike a shove, and Fai fell into step on the other side of him, still giving him those little sidelong looks.

Sometime soon Kurogane meant to find out just why the fuck it was Fai had fled. He didn't really care much about how he had to do it, but it had to be done. For now, they needed to get under shelter.

After all, the oncoming ash storm didn't care about reasons, whys and whyfores.


-tbc