Winds of Recollection

Alaya's poor brain had taken a lot of abuse that day.

First there had been that message from whoever the male voice that sometimes spoke to her was, then the female voice, Rie, then the weird words that had brought her here to the Dungeon of Doom and now, after all that, she found herself once again bombarded with a flood of thoughts that weren't her own.

Squeezing her eyes shut against the onslaught of images, she concentrated on breathing until everything around her seemed to have formed itself into more solid surroundings. She was standing on something, and that told her that whatever was going on had to be an illusion; she'd been kneeling and on her way to falling when last she checked.

Opening her eyes hesitantly, she stared around once again at complete blackness, but somehow she knew that this darkness wasn't just because there wasn't enough light to see by. It was because there was nothing to see.

Brushing off yet another fact she knew without ever having learned, she turned this way and that, trying to find something in the nothingness around her.

"Please," she heard a broken whisper plead from behind her, and turned to find a familiar lanky form lying on the ground (or whatever it was) with the black nothingness curling up around him like ropes or nets, restraining his movement and preventing him from getting up, which he was desperately trying to do. He was looking in the opposite direction from where she stood, with one arm raised in front of him, reaching out to more people who were standing a few meters away…

Alaya's blood froze in her veins.

O-0-O

"The guard tripped and fell over a clumsily placed object in the pitch darkness," Beth dictated, her words coming to life as Rie typed them into the computer. The writer thanked her good fortune that they had already found out that dictation worked just as well as her typing things in herself. That was quite convenient when her health—never very good—was too poor to allow her to sit up. It was also convenient when trapped in a creepy doom-castle, light-years and worlds away from her laptop. She listened as a Black Suit strode towards the hallway past her cell.

"His luck was truly bad that day," she whispered, her voice no more than a breath, impossible to hear from more than a few inches from her lips. "He fell awkwardly, his leg twisting so that he tumbled over and slammed into the grating of the cell he was walking past."

The guard tumbled over with a crash and Beth's smile, invisible in the darkness, had a real cat-that-ate-the-canary look to it.

"By the time his head cleared and he had managed to fumble his way back to his feet," she intoned, more thinking than saying the words as she nipped her hand silently through the bars.

[He was so flustered] Rie typed with a matching grin, [that he didn't even notice his missing keys.]

O-0-O

There was so much blood.

Alaya had to forcibly wrench her eyes away from "the other Fai" so that she wouldn't faint. She, who had never had a problem with even the most grievous of injuries, had one now.

"Fai," she whispered dryly. Her voice broke and was quite inaudible. She swallowed once, twice and a third time, trying to wet her throat enough to speak. "Fai," she tried again, a little louder as she stumbled forward and knelt at his side. "It's not real, Fai. It's an illusion, okay? I know where we are for real, and it's nothing like this. Well, maybe; it's dark there too, and just as cold…" she was babbling, she realized, and stopped at once, trying instead to rip away the black bonds that were holding him down. It was no use. They were like steel girders and wouldn't so much as flex for all her tugging.

She felt like the breath had been stolen from her lungs and her whole body was shaking. Fai didn't seem to even realize she was there as he continued to strain forward, murmuring words as though the Black Suits—she hadn't noticed them until right then, but there were several—could hear him from their distance, or would care if they did.

"Please," he wept, "please take me instead; let him go!"

"It's not real!" Alaya tried to exclaim, putting her hands over the blonde's eyes to break his stare from what it was glued to… his lookalike… Her voice was catching in her throat and she had to keep reminding herself not to look. She felt like she was going to throw up.

The man ignored her. In fact, it was like he couldn't see or hear her at all.

"You're causing this, Yuui," announced a deep voice she didn't recognize. It wasn't coming from anywhere she could see. It was probably someone speaking from outside the illusion. "It's your fault your brother suffers."

'His brother… Of course!' Alaya exclaimed mentally. That made so much sense. Kori must have looked up the wrong brother, and that was why it just wasn't him on the pictures.

"Oh shove it!" she bellowed aloud. "Like that makes any sense! This is the fault of the one perpetrating it: You! If you have any guts at all, get out here and show your ugly face instead of hiding like the filthy, cowardly swine you are!" Finally her voice made the sound she wanted it to, booming around the empty space like a physical manifestation of her rage. Her frozen blood had thawed and come to a rolling boil, a feeling she greatly preferred.

'Don't look,' she reminded herself. 'Just don't look at him and you won't faint.'

"C'mon you dumb blonde," she snapped gripping his shoulder and shaking him.

Really though, she should've known better after everything that had happened that day.

She had lost count of how many times her mind had been flooded with someone else's thoughts, but this was certainly the worst of them all. The man's anguish and desperation, his pain and despair washed over her and she was rendered insensible.

O-0-O

Beth's long, brightly-colored gipsy skirt had little metal bangles at the ends of the drawstrings. She had to keep them tightly clenched in her fist as she ran to muffle the sound. The long curving hallway seemed endless; surely she wasn't as bad of a runner as all that! It was just a very long hallway, right?

O-0-O

Fai's distress and agony was interrupted just a bit by the feeling of someone touching his mind.

'That accursed doctor again,' he thought with almost no energy, and glanced over to his side where the connection had come from. He froze.

She was barely visible, as if he couldn't quite look straight at her, but he still knew who it was.

"Alaya?" he exclaimed softly. He couldn't put any force behind his voice. His throat was raw from his cries. She apparently couldn't hear him as she lay passed out on the ground at his side.

His eyes widened as he realized what must have happened.

As though his senses had been on hold for the last few minutes, he heard echoes of everything she had said, and saw how she had tried to cover his eyes and eventually took hold of his shoulder to try and snap him out of it.

The spell was wearing thin; he could see through the figures of the Black suits and also through… he shouldn't have looked, he realized, and turned his face away so quickly he hurt his neck. The physical pain brought him more into reality though, and his surroundings faded even more.

Unfortunately, the spell wasn't set up to break that easily.

"Like the filthy, cowardly swine you are!" Alaya's voice crashed though his mind again, and the feeling of nostalgia that accompanied it was so inexorably strong that he found himself swept away into the throes of another illusion… But this one was bitingly real.

"There you will go," the Sovereign's voice boomed through the Audience Chamber of Castle Valeria, "not to live, but to exist. For the more you twins suffer, the more we shall prosper from the distress of the accursed twins! If either of you balk at this fate…"

Like there was any chance of that happening, Yuui thought dully. He knew that even though it meant a future of endless separation and torment, neither he nor his brother would ever make a decision that would jeopardize the life of the other.

He looked at Fai beside him, whose expression mirrored his own, as certainly did his thoughts. They reached out and clasped each other's hands, needing no words to express their decision.

"What a load of nonsense!" bellowed a high yet carrying voice from behind the twins. Yuui turned his head, looking past the spear-carrying guards towards the big double door. It was open by just enough for the smallish girl who stood before it to squeeze through.

She had long brown hair pulled beck in a high ponytail, and fantastic dark eyes that burned so dark that Yuui was fairly confident that if he was close enough to see their color they'd be slate black.

"Curse of the twins, yeah right!" she scoffed, striding forward with her little hands clenched at her sides. She had silver bangles around her wrists, over what looked like sleeves, or handless gloves that came up to her elbows and were made of some dark blue fabric. Her shirt, sleeveless, high-necked and form-fitting, was made of the same cloth, as were her shorts; so short that they barely deserved the title. Brown leather boots laced up her calves almost to her knees

A bizarre outfit, Yuui thought. He could tell from the touch of Fai's hand that his twin felt the same. She looked like she had come to Valeria, the ice country, not expecting it to be cold.

"You filthy coward," she spat, glaring furiously at the Sovereign as she came level with and then slowly passed the twins. Yuui's eyes were riveted on her back; it was covered in blood! There were two vertical slashes on her shoulder blades.

Shorter though she was than the man enthroned on the dais before her, her expression showed in no uncertain terms just how much she was looking down on him. her voice showed no pain from her wounds. "Pinning the misfortune on children; aren't you ashamed of yourself? You know full well that the hardships this country is facing are the result of your own poor leadership, and you would cover that up by forcing them to take the blame? And for what; being born? How ridiculous. I've never heard anything so idiotic. It would seem that 'responsible adults' aren't. A king's duty is to serve his people in every way he can. How dare you make a mockery of this; how dare you force the blame on them for your lack of wisdom?"

Her words were a low, venomous hiss, but they seemed to fill all the space in the room, in the same way that a plume of smoke may not look like it is heading in one direction, but it can be smelled there nonetheless.

"You are not worthy," she intoned, stopping in front of where the twins stood and putting a foot up on the dais, "to occupy that throne."

O-0-O

"Alaya; Fai!" Sakura cried from back in the dungeon, shaking the two of them. "What do I do?"

"First off," came a familiar voice, "be careful you do not touch the magician's skin." The desert princess whirled to face the speaker in the doorway and blinked in shock. She was…

O-0-O

"Fai," a voice whispered from nowhere, shattering the memory like a glass façade and leaving him in the complete nothingness of the first illusion, Alaya still lying unconscious by his side. "Fai, you need to bring Aaliyah and come back now."

The wizard looked around in vain. No one, it seemed, had the courtesy to speak where they were both audible and visible. It didn't matter though; he knew the voice, though he had only heard it once before.

"Alright Beth," he replied, taking hold of Alaya. He carefully focused only on her and a desire to get out, back to the real world. Not anything else. He very carefully did not look up at where his brother was probably still suspended, very deliberately did not allow himself to think of this as leaving him behind.

He felt a slight pull, like a hand on his shoulder was tugging him backwards, and with a rush of color and sensation, he found himself back in the dungeon.

O-0-O

Sakura jumped forward again from where she had sat to be out of the way as the brunette woman in the long skirt had worked some sort of verbal spell under her breath. Fai was stirring, finally, though Alaya remained apparently unconscious.

"Thank goodness!" the sandy-haired girl exclaimed.

"You lot," the woman commanded the guards in the corners who had only now started to react to what was going on, "cancel previous orders, pattern delta-gamma-epsilon-theta." The Black Suits retracted from their ready positions and stood once more to attention.

"Impressive," Dr. Kyle's strained voice was part grudgingly impressed, part malicious. "Where did you pick that one up?"

"The code?" the brunette replied conversationally, looking up to see the man leaning against the doorframe, blood dripping from the bullet wound in his leg. "I made it up. It's pretty handy, no?"

"You made it—" he started, but cut off as he saw Fai sit up; Alaya's inert form slumped across his lap.

"You!" he exclaimed, "How did you escape my spell? You were close to breaking point!"

But the bleary-eyed wizard did not even respond. Sakura scurried around behind him, trying to undo the heavy ropes and free his hands.

"Sakura, you're here too?" he said, hesitant to believe the evidence of his own senses. Normally it'd be Kuro-mew and Syaoran doing this sort of thing, rather than "pretty princess" and "scary princess." (Not that he would ever categorize them like that out loud.) Sakura nodded tearfully.

"Are you hurt, Fai?" she asked worriedly.

"Not a scratch," he replied, flashing her his trademark smile and hoping she didn't notice his split lip. Her forlorn expression said she didn't believe it though, and he had enough respect for her to let it drop off his face. "What happened to Alaya?"

"Aaliyah's just mentally exhausted, that's all," replied Beth. He recognized her voice and turned to congratulate her on her apparent escape, but was rendered speechless with shock when he saw what she looked like. She ignored this and placed the tips of her fingers gently on the rebel princess's forehead. She seemed to concentrate for a moment, and then relaxed and sat back on her heels. "She'll be just fine."

"Beth Nottingham," Fai Wang Reed's voice boomed through the room. No one—not even Kyle—had seen him enter, but he was suddenly there, looming over the four intruders and escapees like the grim reaper. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"The pleasure's all yours, butt-chin," she shot back. "You could have just sent an e-mail you know; or a letter if you're too technologically illiterate for that. You didn't have to go to all the trouble of this chain of prisoners just to get in contact with me." Her voice was low and ominous, each individual word colored crimson with rage brewing just below the surface, like a volcano looking for someplace to break through and erupt.

Fei Wong smiled, his eyes boring down into hers, but her expression reflected no fear for the man who held her captive. She looked up at him through her eyelashes in a glare that almost had physical heat to it.

Sakura reflexively shrank closer to Fai and Alaya. The tension was rising so quickly it could almost be felt, like the electrical charge in the air just before a lightning storm.

"I wanted to be certain of your cooperation before bringing you my request," he explained amiably. The man radiated malice; the hair on the back of Sakura's neck was standing all on end.

She did not even respond, as if words would not do justice to the indignation she wanted to express. The two glares did not lessen in intensity by as much as a waver of the eyes or a blink of the eyelids.

O-0-O

Too many spells… too many thoughts not her own… Alaya felt like she was swimming in a never-ending torrent of feelings when she first passed out. She did her best to keep her head above water, as it were, clinging to simple things like her own name and Alphonse's.

After some time the tide receded and she was able to remember more complex things, like Fai and trying to rescue him, and what she had seen inside his mind… Even in her twisted dream she wanted to throw up.

Why had they done that to him? If she had seen a quarter of that done to Al… she shuddered at the thought of what she would have done to make it stop, and slowly began to swim her way up through layers of unconsciousness.

Her head ached as she came too. Not just a little throbbing, but the onslaught of a migraine, pounding and pulsing and stinging through every nerve, making it impossible to concentrate on anything. It took some time for her to realize she was waking up, and even more time to remember where she was, and still more to be able to hear the voices of the people around her speaking over the clamor filling her maltreated brain.

Eventually she cracked an eye open—a mistake, she realized too late as the faint light of the torches in the room pierced through her iris like a knife—and caught sight of a knee near her head, almost as if she were lying across someone's lap…

After that, consciousness was much easier to grasp. The headache receded to the normal pounding that accompanies waking up from an unnaturally deep slumber, and she sat up, rubbing a hand across her dry eyes.

"What's going on?" she moaned softly.

"That is a rather long story," Fai's voice responded dryly from somewhere very close to her left ear. "But it would seem now you and Sakura are prisoners as well."

"Oh no they are not," a familiar voice replied irritably. "I can tell you one thing, Fei Wong, if you don't set these three loose this very minute, you'll get absolutely no help from me, no matter what you want or how much you're paying. They go free, right now, do you understand?

Honestly," she seethed, "just how inept are you people? I was right here! You could have talked to me any time you wanted! Anyway, I'm a business person! I would have negotiated with you. But no, you had to go and do your brainless-villain-thing…" Here her speech became much less coherent, with her muttering things under her breath and interrupting herself. "Kidnap and torture them… and then you expect me to help you? Good grief man, you need to be introduced to the concept of tact… heck, brains might do you good as well… dumb hairdo… what are you, and owl with that monocle? All you are is the Lord of Bat-Guano, and you'll never be anything else…"

The man with the side-burns who stood beside that Kyle fellow stared thoughtfully down at the speaker through the monocle, ignoring her enraged tirade.

"Do you really think you're in any position to make demands, Nottingham?" he asked threateningly. "These people are important to you, yes? I doubt someone as elusive as you would have come out of her den if that were not the case. If you do not comply with me, they will be made to suffer; you can be sure of that."

Alaya wrenched her strained eyes from the speaker—Fei Wong, apparently—to look at the owner of the voice that had given her and Sakura directions only a few minutes ago.

"Then hear this," the girl replied in a voice that was little more than a venomous hiss, "I can be gone from here in an instant if I so chose; harm them and I shall vanish without a trace, rendering all your effort a waste!"

"Oh my—" Alaya exclaimed, her mind not able to accept the image of the girl's profile that her eyes were sending to it.

Nottingham turned her face at the noise, looking straight at her.

It was impossible! Totally impossible!

"You…" Alaya breathed. "You're… me!"