Next chapter on the 23rd of August.
The witch then looks to the original person who started this entire journey, standing behind them all.
"And you. Syaoran?" She asks.
Fai feels Sakura shift under his hands as he turns to look too.
The boy nods and then speaks.
"There is something that I want to get back." He says gravely.
There is something in his voice far more weary and aged than the clone had been. His entrapment has clearly left marks on him somehow.
His eyes move to the floor, "It may never come back," he continues, "but still,"
Syaoran looks over to Sakura, almost through Fai, and the princess tenses at having to make eye contact, looking away.
Fai thinks he understands.
She adjusts until she is looking only from the corner of her eye and doesn't have to look at him directly.
"If I can protect you I'd like to." He says, "I want to go with you."
Fai can tell that he's earnest, voice just a little softer. Sakura won't look at him.
There is quiet. Only days ago the mage would have tried to fill it but he doesn't care now- it won't protect him now- or them from him.
The witch closes her eyes and nods solemnly and slowly.
"I understand." She says and then, "Very well then, go. Just as you wish to. Continue on this path towards the things that you desire."
And she blinks out of the room, leaving it dead and silent, five people who shouldn't be strangers but find themselves them, avoiding each other's eyes in the dim light coming through a hole in the concrete walls.
Fai finds himself useless, a spare part as everyone goes about their ways, that man keeping to himself and helping with hunts, Syaoran going with him and Sakura as healed as she can be with the help of the people here.
He finds himself with her anyway over the last few days they spend there, Mokona sent with the others so that they don't have to hear the words she says to Fai.
They bubble with an almost bitterness which is unfamiliar to the princess, with pain and with determination.
In his less charitable moments he thinks that it must be the trauma of her injuries and her journey which cause it but, in the end, he understands more than any of them how much it hurts right now, to have been left behind.
He doesn't believe the boy is in the wrong, not really, but this is the use he can be to his princess and if there's anything he can do to ease her pain he will try it.
He tries to ignore the dry feeling in his throat.