Next chapter on the 6th of December.
The rest of them follow some way behind, walking back to that room under the ground where they watch the feather be swallowed by the water.
Fai trails further, watching from the corner of the room.
Sakura's face is set into a cold determination, the new Syaoran's into thinly masked guilt for the pain he's caused and Mokona is silent, held by the boy, frowning.
The only constant is that man.
He stands in the middle of Sakura and Syaoran as if by his presence he could fix things, still just as determined to return to his home, his princess.
Fai looks away as that man turns around, meeting his eyes for a moment that hurts too much.
He feels his fists tighten, nails in his palm, the heat of blood which stops far more quickly than it used to.
A small part of his brain says that that red-eyed man has changed the most but he ignores it, shuts it down immediately, as Mokona sprouts wings and they are sucked into a vortex, into the fate which Fei Wang wished for them.
Fai thinks for a second that he could hate that man more than he hates himself.
There's no worth in the thought and no utility.
He buries it in blankness and lets all thought slip away as they are deposited into pouring rain and onto hard ground, black and pitted, grit scattered across the surface.
For a moment his arm and hip and thigh burn, ears ringing with the pain of scraping across the surface as he grits his teeth and closes his eyes.
It vanishes as he stands, becoming nothing as his cursed body heals itself.
His trousers and shirt are torn and bloodied but beneath it the skin is perfect, missing the marks which had for so long confined the magic he is now missing.
Fai hears a clatter and a groan as Syaoran stands too, pulling himself up against the side of a building and with that man's hand extended to him.
Mokona drops into Sakura's lap, the injured princess lying in an indent in a pile of wet cardboard boxes.
Fai offers his hand only to her, wraps it around her frail shoulders when she accepts and the other under her legs.
He holds her close to his chest and feels, at a distance, the knowledge that he loves her.