Maboroshi no Yume
Or
Dreams of the Phantasm
The hands at his neck where large and dark, with long fingers tangled in his shirt collar. Slowly, the grip loosened and the hands found their way to his throat—hands hot and callous-rough, with strong fingers interlocking around his pale neck. His own hands came up to encircle those dark wrists, an action of instinct. His own long fingers gripped, but nothing else. He did not fight for his freedom. He did not fight his death.
Those hands pressed in, those fingers tightened, bruising and crushing. His own grip tightened, but that was all. But soon, as his strength left him, his hands loosened, slipped—
Fai awoke with a little cry, sitting up in his makeshift bed of large jungle leaves next to Sakura's. He blinked in the darkness, the little fire almost dead, just making out the faint shape of the sleeping princess with Mokona in her arms. Syaoran would be on her other side, then. A thousand tiny voices called softly to the night, hidden in the impossible knot of blackness that transformed into trees during the day. He shivered, involuntarily bringing a hand up to his neck, remembering.
"What's the matter with you?" the growl of Kurogane scaring the jungle voices into a temporary silence.
Fai put a grin into his voice that he didn't feel. "Oh, so you're awake, Kuro-pon? Watching over us?"
The ninja sat across the fire against a tree, a mere shadow in darkness. "Don't call me those stupid names," he said, without the usual snarl.
"Kuro-rin sounds tired," Fai said to the night. His own eyes closed, he couldn't deny that he was tired, too. But if he slept, would he dream?
Suddenly a hot hand pressed against his face, and he felt in that moment a rattle of silver fear. But it passed as a callous-rough thumb brushed across his cheek, wiping away a trail of tears he hadn't noticed until then.
"I can tell when you're crying," Kurogane breathed into his ear. "You don't have to hide it from me."
Kurogane was large and dark in the shadows, and Fai shivered again. When he awoke in the brightness and safety of morning, with the children at his side and Kurogane hunched across the pile of ash and embers, he would never know what of the night before had been real.
If any of it had been real at all.