Title: Yama snippets
Pairing: Kurogane x Fai, pre-pre-slash you could call it.
Words: 374; (10064 total and counting)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: General, in general; for this one, a bit of angst
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?
Fai's got used to the schedule and the fighting, whatever it might be for. And that is good and safe and proper, but this is still a war, and he's fighting men with light hair, some of them very young, and the enemy king bears the name Ashura, and Fai still dreams.
And what he dreams is this.
It's after sunset and he's shooting arrow after arrow at a distant tree. The target, small and made of straw, is swinging from the force of all the impacts, and so does its shadow against the torn, cracked bark. The arrows stick out from it at odd angles, and they seem double more when reflected against the tree, and soon they are double again as Fai empties his quiver.
When he walks over to the tree he sees that the fletching is red and black, and there is blood spattered on the dark ground, still dripping sickly in small puddles. And the puppet is living still, and the puppet is Fai, his Fai, and he's looking up with blind eyes, bleeding, crying, losing his flesh in chunks, tearing up to his small, white bones.
Fai's hands are covered in warm blood and shaking, and when he wakes his throat burns from the held-back scream, and his entire body quakes when he scrambles from underneath the blankets.
"Oy!" Kurogane says beside him, a liquid, solid shape blurred in the dark, and Fai gets up and stumbles from the tent, gasps in his chest.
He wanders aimlessly until the image of his bleeding, rotting brother fades away from his mind. He walks for a long time, and the dawn finds him stretched near by the river, hands plunged in icy water, numb.
Fai wants to bring his brother back, and after all these years it seems that it might soon happen at last. But Fai feels doubly guilty now, because he doesn't want to hurt the children and doesn't want to think about the final outcome, not at all.
He gets by through the day by carefully not acting out of place, and it's easier here, because he can smile and pretend knowing that Kurogane will not, cannot ask, and that the people do not know to look.