-T-I-M-E-
-F.A.I.-
He can hear the screaming, and the talking and the clang of sword against sword. He can hear people crying, and he can feel the blood soaking into his clothes, spilling from the cold, empty hole where his eye should be. He can feel the empty feeling that shouldn't be in his heart, but it is and it's been there for some time but now it's worse. Because the emptiness had only just recently been filled and now he's empty again.
He can hear and he can feel, even though he should be dead and if not dead he wishes he could at least be unconscious, because this is horrible and he doesn't want to be awake during this.
Fai wants to sleep; he just wants to fall into a deep, dark place where he doesn't hear the screams and he doesn't hear the battle. Somewhere where he can forget the pain and the emptiness and the sore feeling in his chest that feels like his heart was ripped out instead of his eye.
He wishes he could control time, so he could just fast forward to a time when this is all over and everything is right again. When the princess is smiling and Kurogane is yelling at him and Mokona is joking and Syaoran…..Syaoran - their Syaoran, not the one who has left him to die like this - was laughing and giving him the happiness that he never thought he would have.
To just speed up time, so that everyone - the people he cares about, no matter how much he tried to keep them out of his heart and his thoughts and his worries - could just bypass this horrible, sick joke. He just wants everyone to forget this.
But he won't forget this, he never will forget the pain in his empty eye socket or the pain in his limps or the pain in his chest that he tells himself is not his heart. And he won't forget the cold, emotionless and expressionless eyes that stared straight through him with no recognition.
And the princess will never forget the pain of losing the one she loves, of seeing the one she cares so much about hurting the others she has befriended and relied on.
And the warrior will never forget the feeling of becoming the mentor and the 'father'. He will never forget that his scary and frightening façade had not worked this time, and the one who had been able to break through and become someone the warrior felt the need to protect was the one currently fighting him.
No, they will never forget, and so Fai doesn't want to fast forward through time. He wants to rewind. Backbackbacksofar, so far back in time that this is just a horrible nightmare that could never come true.
Back to the laughs and the jokes and the nicknames and the joy that is no longer found in that small and broken family. Back to when Syaoran was their Syaoran and there was no blood and no pain and no screams and no tears and no emptiness.
He doesn't even care that he has let people in, because it was worth it just to feel the emptiness inside him fill up slowly - slowly but surely - until he felt he belonged and he didn't want to run anymore. He doesn't care, because he knows how good and how wanted that feeling is, and he doesn't want it to leave.
He wants it to go onandonandon and he just wants to have that fullness that Syaoran - his Syaoran, their Syaoran - has given him. Given to a coward like him, who didn't deserve it but has received it anyway. He knows that he shouldn't ever feel the happiness the boy has given him, but he wants it. He just wantsitsobadithurts and he wants to go back, back to the laughs.
Away from the blood, because it's killing him, and it's killing them, and they're dying.
And he wishes sobadsobadohgodsobad....
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...that he could control time.