This is not the 10th of January. Next chapter should be on the 14th of February if I can catch up by then.
Their first fight is scheduled three days later.
The days are long and dragging, pulling at Fai's patience with living with every quiet minute that goes by.
Syaoran and that man spend a lot of time outside, acquiring food and slipping the odd packet of pills to Mokona who spits them out later, painkillers and vitamins and things which are closer to sweets than medicine.
Fai is left with Sakura. Not that he would have chosen any differently.
He doesn't say much but she seems content enough to fill the space when the others aren't around.
Her thoughts are largely feverish, edged with the nonsensical, but she tells him things that he knows she hasn't told anyone before.
The princess tells him about the holes in her memories multiple times, passing out whenever she gets close to admitting the truth that her body knows. Every time she wakes up and looks at him with those same lost eyes he wonders whether he would have enough magic now to alter those memories and either put someone else in that place, fill the gaps, or even suppress the witch's price.
Before it would have been possible and now he regrets not doing it, not spending all his energy and time and health on these people and then disappearing.
It would have been better for him to not have let this happen, not to have let them suffer, and yet he did it knowingly.
Fai knows, just as the witch did at the time that feels so long ago now, that he could have travelled himself, gathered the feathers by himself, returned them to the princess, returned the princess and the boy to their homes, returned that man to his country and then be left with little, enough to run still for a while.
And yet he didn't.
He's always been such a coward and the evidence has only piled up around him, closing in as he's kept going, kept putting in half-hearted efforts.
The selfishness too is something he wishes he had abandoned. Without it perhaps Fai would still be alive and none of these people would have had to go through the pain that they have on this journey up until now.
He watches the princess' eyes flutter open again, confused and refocusing on him from the stained old mattress they've found to lay her on. He feels unworthy.
Then she smiles, rough around the edges, tired, and takes his hand, the closest one to her, in between her frail hands.
"I'm sorry that I'm putting you all through this. If I'd been able to let him go-" she says, voice raw but earnest. And then she is out again, body limp, eyes flickering shut like a candle snuffed out, saved for later.
He feels disgusting but she holds his hand in her sleep and he doesn't have the heart to take it from her.
Her hand is warm and soft, slightly clammy.
He hates that he enjoys it so much. He doesn't deserve it.
And yet he clasps her hand back, squeezing lightly enough that it won't hurt her, guilt burning a hole in his chest which matches the dryness of his throat.