Title: The Wizards of Ceres, chapter 20 - Home Again
Warnings: No warnings this chapter.
Summary: In which things end.
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Author's Notes: This story is now complete. However, there WILL be a sequel to this story. I've already plotted out most of it, though not all. The sequel will pick up a few months after this one leaves off, and will focus more on Sakura and Syaoran (although Kurogane and Fai will still get plenty of screen time; the balance will be more like it was in the original series) and will deal with Fei Wong Reed and his plans. However, before I start writing that one I want to take a break, and work on some other projects in this fandom. So, please keep an eye out for "The Heralds of the White God."
"How can you sit like that?"
Fai lost hold of his focus, and opened his eyes to see Kurogane staring at him with a mix of fascination and horror. He grinned. "It's good for concentration, Kuro-chan; and anyway, I don't see why you're complaining. It's not much different from the way you sit."
"I don't sit with my legs folded on top of each other and my feet tucked in like that," Kurogane objected. "You're going to lose feeling in your legs if you sit like that for long. Are your joints made of rubber or something?"
"Practice, Kuro-sexy," Fai sang out. "Besides, it helps created a closed circuit of energy, which maintains the body while the spirit is away. Although you aren't completely wrong; the first time I went out on astral travel using this pose, when I tried to stand up afterwards I fell on my face."
"I'm still not sure this is a good idea," Kurogane grumbled, and Fai knew that he was not referring to Fai's balance. "It's been weeks since we had any news, and you still can't reach that pale guy no matter how hard you try. What makes you think this is going to go any better?"
"Yukito and I know each other well enough that this method of spiritual communication usually isn't necessary," Fai explained - as he had several times before. "But even if I can't talk to him, I need to talk to someone. Something's wrong in Ceres, and I need to know what."
He knew Kurogane's concerns were more than just paranoia, but he said only, "That's why we're doing it this way instead of traveling there in person. Now run along and stop distracting me. I'm trying to concentrate."
Kurogane shrugged and wandered away, footsteps crunching through last autumn's dead growth. His arm was out of the sling and back in use, although Fai still caught him favoring it every now and then; otherwise, he was steadily regaining his strength. Fai closed his eyes again and returned to his disrupted pattern of breathing, bringing his body into a holding pattern so that his spirit could free itself.
It wasn't that he didn't share Kurogane's anxieties; there was no obvious explanation for why Yukito should be out of contact for so long, but there were several unlikely possibilities, each less pleasant than the last. The last they'd heard, the war was going in Ceres' favor; but the tide could have abruptly reversed itself, the heart of Ceres itself could be devastated. Or even Yukito alone could be in danger; if their unknown enemy sought to foster chaos, there was no faster way to rip the heart out of Ceres' defenses than to target him.
Or - more unsettling yet - perhaps he was the target, and Yukito was out of contact with him on Ashura's orders, for what purpose Fai dreaded to imagine. It was no secret that both he and Kurogane were in no good odor in their home countries these days; it was why they were reluctant to return directly home, lest they be further embroiled in this bitter war. Even an astral visit had risks, as Kurogane pointed out; but it was a risk they had to take. Seishirou's unknown master was still out there, a lingering menace that they could not ignore. Even with the demon master dead, Ceres and Nihon would never be truly out of danger until they found him and put a stop to his plans.
The problem was going to be finding him. There was no reason to think he was close by to the valley of demons, or indeed anywhere in the west; a warlock in full mastery of his powers could literally be anywhere. Kurogane had no idea where to even start looking, and Fai had not been able to trace any magic from Seishirou's workshop to its destination. They might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack - a haystack that could be thousands of miles away. They would get nowhere without more information.
He needed to talk to Yukito; the man was precognitive, and might have seen something or know something about their unseen opponent that they didn't. And so he determinedly put his doubts and worries out of his mind, and focused all his attention on separating his consciousness from his body. The physical world dropped out of focus as his attention shifted; and the astral plane wavered into place around him.
Travel in this state was a question of concentration, not distance or time; a matter of knowing where you were going and what you were searching for, as when he had entered Nihon to seek out the Tsukuyomi. Then he had needed Kurogane's guidance, his memories of the terrain in order to reach an unknown destination; but now his thoughts flew north like a homing pigeon, seeking out the familiar minds and vistas of his home country. And trying not to let his own apprehension at what he would find there poison him.
The palace at Ruval was strange and alien to him, full of shadows and blank spaces where his memories failed him and could not find a basis in reality. There! - at last, after what seemed like endless searching through the empty hallways, he heard the whisper of a familiar mind calling to his; another mage, reaching out his own thoughts to form a bridge.
The other's image flowed into place as the connection was established, and he felt a moment's startled surprise - the other was not Yukito, but Kazahaya, a younger wizard also skilled in mage talent. The boy was barely seventeen, and Fai had never spoken to him at length outside his training sessions; they had not otherwise had time to develop a close friendship. But at a time like this, anyone would do.
"Kazahaya?" he asked, when he had established a sufficient presence to speak. "What are you doing here? Where is Yukito?"
"Oh, lord Flowright, thank God it's you!" Kazahaya said almost at the same time. A wave of powerful relief accompanied the words, a common effect with mages not yet trained enough to separate rational thought from emotion - or too strongly upset to control it. "Where on earth have you been? Half the court thinks you're dead! The channels are in an unholy mess right now, and King Ashura is furious!"
Fai overrode this spate of words with an effort. "I've been out of touch. I was captured, and only recently escaped. What's been happening in Ceres? Why can't I reach Yukito - did something happen to him?" Dread seeped into his own end of the connection, despite his best efforts to the contrary. Nothing should have been able to harm Yukito, safe in Ruval, at the heart of all Ceres' network of protection spells and wards - but then, hadn't Kurogane thought so too? 'He reached through all our wards and our walls like they were nothing...'
"He's not here," Kazahaya answered. "He sent me back here to do what I could to keep everything together, and to be here in case you tried to contact him - although I really didn't think that you would, you vanished without a trace, and what he expects me to do with this mess -"
"What do you mean, he's not here?" Fai exclaimed. "Yukito can't leave Ruval, not for any reason. He's the focus of far too many spells that would collapse if he set foot outside the borders!"
"That's what I've been trying to say," Kazahaya complained. "He did. And they did. We've lost communication with every one of our gramerhains, and the boundary spells are completely disintegrated, and the roads are -"
"Why?" Fai demanded, somewhere between shock and horror. "Why would he do such a thing? Where did he have to go that was so urgent that he would rip out half our country's infrastructure like that?"
"To Nihon," Kazahaya said. "That's what I've been trying to tell you, if you'd listen. He went to Nihon, to try to hold back the demons - him and all the rest of the wizards. He had another vision - and I never would have thought the King would agree, but - we went, anyway."
A nagging, tickling feeling had begun to grow in the back of Fai's mind, like someone calling his name across a crowded room. "I think you'd better tell me what happened," he finally managed. "From the beginning."
The nagging sensation was growing worse, like buzz in his ear, or a burning itch. With difficulty, he managed to tear part of his attention away from his conversation with the young wizard to try and pin down the source.
His wards! Something had crossed them, and it was that feeling of disruption that had alerted him. He felt a momentary panic; he'd assured Kurogane that the wards would alert them well in advance of anyone approaching their location, and Kurogane had trusted him. But he hadn't counted on being deep into an astral trance when the warning came.
Frantically, he wrenched his mind back towards the body that hosted it, seated composedly in a sun-dappled clearing in the mountainside. He could still hear Kazahaya's words trickling into his mind, a faint counterpoint to the images he saw now. He saw what had crossed his wards, and saw Kurogane, prowling under the trees alongside the stream. At least, if Kurogane did not sense danger, then the approaching figure could not be a demon - no, he saw as he got a better look at it, not a demon.
He reached out to Kurogane through their link, quieter now but still present. "Kuro-sama!" he shouted into the other man's mind, causing him to start and drop his hand to his swords. He looked wildly around at Fai, confusion filling his mind as he saw that Fai's body had not moved - his eyes closed and his lips still. "Someone just crossed my outer perimeter, over the ridge five hundred yards to the east! A man - Nipponese, a soldier maybe, or a hunter. Not one of yours. He's looking for something."
"Is he hostile?" Kurogane growled aloud, turning to face the eastern ridge with narrowed eyes.
Fai hesitated, weighing impressions, intentions and potential responses. "Not to you," he finally answered.
"My lord?" Kazahaya was calling him from the other end of the link; the poor kid sounded panicked, imagining perhaps that Fai was about to come to some gruesome end in the middle of their conversation. "What's happening? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." He refocused himself to the other mage, re-establishing the channel with an effort; although part of his awareness was still on his surroundings, the cool shade and the approaching stranger. His channel with Kurogane was still alive; he could hear their voices clearly in the crisp mountain air. "What about Yukito's vision? When did this happen?"
"Oh - this started about four days ago. Yukito came to us and said that he'd had a vision, that an army of demons was going to attack Nihon very soon. He shared some of it with us - it was - hideous..." The communication momentarily tailed off in a sort of mental shudder, remembered horror and flickers of dark visions. Fai had no particular need to see the replay of those visions; he'd seem plenty of them close up. "He showed us and we all agreed, we had to stop it, or they would roll right through Nihon and come to us as well - "
Even as he listened to Kazahaya's excited narrative - it was hard to follow, as the boy was over-stressed and not controlling his end of the psychic link well, his emotions spilling over along with his words - he could still see and hear through his open channel with Kurogane, and he knew that Kurogane could hear him in turn. The aural feedback and doubled vision was disorienting, but he was reluctant to break the contact; if things went poorly with this confrontation, he might have to break out of the trance in a hurry.
Kurogane positioned himself between Fai's still body and the ridge to the east, setting a firm stance on the muddy ground, and put his hand on his sword, though he did not yet draw it. "Stop right there," he growled, as the stranger made his way up the hillside and became visible through the trees. "Who are you and what do you want?"
" - took the case to Ashura, asking leave to go, and you can imagine how well that went over, in the middle of an offensive campaign against the same country we wanted to go save -"
"Is that you? Lord Kurogane?" The man came forward, letting the sunlight spill onto his features. He was dressed in a lighter version of the black military armor the demon-hunters wore, mostly leather and chain links instead of iron plate. His black hair was bound with a ragged, dirty bandage around his forehead, and his right arm was supported in a blood-stained sling.
"I might be," Kurogane admitted cautiously. "Depends on who's asking."
"'Cause if so, you're just the man I've been sent to find!" the hunter said excitedly. He had a light, flavorful accent that Fai recognized - through Kurogane's filtering - as being native to the southern regions of Nihon. "I've come from Arisugawa, down south near Matsuyama. Princess Tomoyo sent me out here to find you and deliver a message. Said it was very urgent. You are Kurogane Demon-Queller, right? I mean, how many six feet tall demon hunters with red eyes are gonna be wandering around out here?"
" - told him point blank that if we didn't fight them from behind fortifications now, when they were weak and we were strong, then we'd be fighting them out in the open later, a hundred times worse."
"Yeah, that's me." Kurogane eased his stance fractionally, moving his hand away from the weapon hilt; but he stayed on guard, and did not move away from Fai. "What's the message?"
Instead of answering right away, the man peered around Kurogane, trying to edge around to get a good look at Fai. "Who's that you've got with you? The Princess didn't tell me you'd have anyone else with you," he said. "Hey, is that guy from Ceres? Is he one of them wizards? Is he doing some magic, sitting all folded up like that?"
" - you could see in Yukito's eyes that he was going to go, whether Ashura agreed or not, and we would have to go with him -"
His tone was oddly free of any hostility, only curiosity; but Kurogane's protective instincts spiked anyway. "It's none of your business who he is or where he's from - only that he's with me," he snarled, drawing a few inches of steel from the scabbard to show he meant business. "If you try anything with him, you'll try walking home from here with no legs."
"Ashura was furious. I've never seen him so angry! I was sure he was going to have Yukito exiled or executed on the spot - or at least strip us all of our posts then and there - "
"Hey! Easy, take it easy, I didn't mean no harm!" The man backed off, laughing and putting his hands in the air. "No reason for me to want to hurt him, anyway. War's over, didn't you know? I was just surprised to see one of those wizards out here, that's all."
"The war is what?" Kurogane exclaimed in shock.
"And then all at once, he changed his mind. He gave us leave. He said, go if we must, but be sure to make a damn good show of it, so that the Nipponese would see exactly how much they owed to us."
Fai, overhearing this, felt some of his own startlement bleeding back into his conversation with Kazahaya; between his and Kurogane's, it created an echoing feedback effect that momentarily rendered them both speechless.
"Over. Well, for now, anyway, and they're up in Himeji shrine signing a cease-fire right now. It's all in the message Princess Tomoyo sent me to bring you, you see."
Kurogane ground his teeth together, striving for patience. "Why don't you," he enunciated clearly, "just give me the message."
"It takes five days as the crow flies to get from Ceres to the southern Nihon border," Fai said. "How on earth did you - all of you - get there so fast?"
"Yukito had this vision - he took us all down to the tunnels under the palace. Did you know that there was a genuine, honest-to-God functioning legacy Clow ring artifact in the tunnels underneath the palace? The real thing! I'd only ever seen them talked about in books! And it works, even after all this time! All Yukito had to do was feed the activation channels power, and the whole thing spun right up, with no need to establish protocols or set up a remote locus - right under our noses the whole time, and none of us had any idea -"
"When the warning came from the capital every one of us left mobilized, mostly trying to get the peasants rounded up and out of there - no way we had enough people to mount any serious defense. But the miko of the Kishuu shrine there stayed behind. Gods of hearth and home! - what a woman! Cool as a cucumber as she faced down that demon horde all by herself, she knew exactly what was going to happen to her when her wards came down, but she didn't flinch. Boy! She was a real looker, too! Brains, beauty and bravery all in one package! Say, do you know if it's true what they say in the city - that the miko have to stay virgin in order to keep their powers -?"
"Stick with the point, please," they said in tandem, weary annoyance at the other's excited rambling flickering quickly across their link.
"The wildest rumors have been flying around, you wouldn't believe half of them if I told you. Half the country is convinced that we've been conquered, that the white witches from the north have overrun the whole country. The other half is saying that Princess Tomoyo called down a blessing on Prince Touya in the Shirasagi courtyard and a host of angels sprang out of the ground to do battle at his side! Now, I wasn't actually there, so I didn't see what really happened, but what I heard was -"
"We came out of the other locus of the portal in this filthy room with wooden walls - we only found out later that it was Shirasaki Castle. If we'd known that was there before now - but anyway, right outside in the courtyard there was a host of men waiting for us, with fresh horses all saddled and ready to mount. The one in front with all the fancy armor - Prince Touya, it must have been - greeted us all like he was expecting us. And you're not going to believe this, Lord Yukito just walks right up to him and hugs him -"
" - kissed him right on the mouth, from what I heard -"
" - like they'd known each other for years! That must have been some vision that Yukito had. Obviously they'd been in contact, who knows how or for how long? There was no time to stop and ask questions then, of course; there was no time to waste. Everything was ready for us - we mounted up and rode hell-bent for leather."
"- but I had better things to do. My unit was the closest garrison to the Pine Mountain Gate, when the alarm went up; that's where they hit us the hardest. They couldn't have picked a worse spot for the attack - we were stripped down to the barest minimum -"
"The demons were attacking the wards to the south, down the river from Shirasaki. They couldn't have picked a better spot from our point of view - it was only a few hours ride from the palace itself. If it had been further away, we never would have made it in time."
"We sent most of our people away, to try and get the civilians out - it was just a handful of us left, and the Kishuumiko. They warned us what was coming down, but I don't think any of us really had any idea, not until we saw them -"
" - could feel it from miles off, awful stuff. Like having lye poured right into your brain... I don't have to tell you what it feels like, I suppose... "
" - like the forest came alive, a wave of darkness coming out of the trees. Some of them were tall as houses, bigger than elephants, but they were all evil-looking creatures. Whoo-ee! If I never see one of those things again it will be too soon - but I don't have to tell you that, I guess..."
" - not a moment too soon. The wards were already coming apart like a house of cards, spells fraying like cheap lace - "
" - hit the walls like a battering ram, I almost went deaf from the noise, you could just see the cracks spreading through the stone as the whole thing started to come down. The men and I -"
" - were maintaining some kind of defense, but it obviously wasn't going to last long. Yukito pulled us all into a mindshare and we spread out half a mile each to cover as much ground as we could -"
" - would have been amazing if I hadn't been about to crap my pants, but the stone just buckled and the whole section of wall crumbled like a waterfall. There she was, standing all by herself against that tide of horror, and all I figured was that if I was gonna die, it might as well be for the sake of a beautiful woman - by the way, did I mention how gorgeous she was? And how brave? And - "
" - established wards gave up the ghost right about then, so Yukito put himself right in the breach and told us all to climb up to get the best lines-of-sight that we could - "
" - man all in white, with the weirdest eyes you ever did see, galloped right up to the Kishuu miko and nearly fell of his horse to get to her. Another guy rode up behind him with his sword out, and let me tell you how scared I was, I didn't even know that was Prince Touya till it was all over -"
" - managed to link with the wizard generating the barrier, and had us all feed him power - "
" - grabbed her by the shoulders, and shouted something over the noise of the rock falling. No idea what, but then the two of them lit up like a bonfire, except all blue, and the shield -"
" - no time for introductions, the demons hit the wards right about then, and killing them was all we could focus on."
"What a sight! I'll tell it to my grandkids, if I have any; on one side of the wards that horde of howling oni, and them wizards up on the wall blasting left and right with fancy spells. Incredible! Now I'm as much of a patriot as the next man, but me and all the rest of us soldiers who saw them up there - that's something we'll never forget. Barbarian witches those Ceres wizards might or might not be, but they sure don't lack for courage."
" - never been so scared in my life, thought I would be sick - "
"I'm not one of the elite hunters like you, I'm just an ordinary man - but I came closer to the oni during that battle than any sane man would want to. Oh - no offense meant, of course. Took some bad hits and busted my arm up good, but I'm still one of the lucky ones. I'm still standing, after all."
"Oh - and Karura is dead. I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of hard news, but I thought you'd want to know."
"They killed Rikou, though - he was a demon-hunter like you, I thought you should know. Of all the damn wastes!"
That was hard news. "What happened?" Kurogane asked. "Was it the demons?" Fai echoed.
"Yes. Oh - not directly killed by a demon, no. She was standing on top of a piece of wall that hadn't come down yet, in order to get a clear line of sight. One of the demons crashed into it, and the whole thing came down. We tried to warn her, but she didn't get clear in time - broke her neck under the rubble. Yukito cut her out of the link before the death energy could infect the rest of us, but we all knew when it happened."
"No, not even a demon! It was one of those damn wizards, if you can believe it. He was fighting on the ground when one of the demons released the swarm. He would have been fine - he was in full armor - but a wizard standing near by called down some kind of bolt of lightning on the swarm without even looking who was nearby. The lightning killed them, but then jumped to him, and he fried in his own armor."˙
"There was no time to stop and mourn. The walls were coming down in a dozen places by then, and we had our hands full in every direction. With the feedback coming in over the mindshare we could hardly tell friend from foe, but we couldn't afford to break out - we'd be sitting ducks if we had -"
" - not like there was any point in crying over it. The walls were leaking like a sieve, and Prince Touya was sending his troops - and ours - off in every direction trying to plug them. We lost more good men than Rikou that day, he wasn't the worst death by a mile. But I don't think a single man of us would have wished ourselves elsewhere."
"It went on for hours... I've never known anything like it. The stink made me sick. I wanted to be anywhere else in the world but there, but we had to be there - killing and killing."
"It went on for hours - not the longest battle I've ever been in, but the ugliest by a long shot. I think I can still smell the reek of oni in my sleep - probably will for years to come."
"You mean we won?" they asked in tandem.
"I'm standing here, aren't I? Any battle you walk away from is a victory, in my book!"
"If you can call it a victory. We stopped the assault, anyway - but a lot of the demons escaped, just ran off into the wilderness, and it's not like we gained much out of winning, at that. A return to status quo, at best. Eight of us went through that portal to Nihon with Yukito - "
"I never thought I would live to see the end of that day, but here I am - and all of southern Nihon is saved. The thought of what would have happened if they hadn't been there gives me the heebie jeebies, let me tell you. They're up in Himeji right now, being feted as the heroes of the hour - "
" - Karura, and Kakyou had some kind of bad brush with a demon - I don't know exactly what happened, Yukito had to cut him out of the link too. He's still breathing, but he's unconscious and he won't rouse. All of the rest of us are sick from spell overload and backburn. He sent me back through the portal to Ruval because I was the only one who could walk straight..."
"Prince Touya is signing the peace treaty with them now. Of course, who knows what the Empress is going to say about that when she gets back from Esui, I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that, but with Princess Tomoyo presiding over the whole thing, she can hardly argue -"
" - trying to wrangle out some kind of peace treaty in Shirasaki now, but Ashura says he won't consider himself bound to any writ penned by a traitor. Oh, Fai! What are we going to do? Everything is in a shambles up here, but Ashura won't allow me or Guru Clef or General Ko to even start on repairs, even if we knew where to begin!"
" - and there's plenty to keep Amaterasu and her army occupied on the southern border right now, what with rebuilding the walls, and defending the populace against the demons that did get away. Which brings me back to that message I had for you from Tomoyo, by the way..."
"You're only just now getting to that?" Kurogane growled wearily.
" - make him see reason, my lord? Ashura has been moping for days, talking about you - he says now that he realizes you are the only one who has truly been faithful to him. If he'll listen to anyone, he'll listen to you..."
"... so anyway, so many of us were injured or killed in the attack, that Tomoyo says that you're practically the last demon-hunter we have who's strong enough and powerful enough to hunt down the ones that escaped in southern Nihon. Since I wasn't going to do anyone much good in killing oni or rebuilding walls, not with this busted arm, she sent me out to find you and bring you..."
"...home, we need you more than ever to..."
"...do what nobody else can, Lord Kurogane. So, yeah, that's my message. Come back soon, because you're the..."
"...only one who can help us now..."
"Get home as soon as you can..."
"...as soon as you can..."
"...come home..."
As the sun sank down in the sky, for a long time they just held each other, not speaking. Kurogane had finally convinced the hunter to go away. Having delivered his message, the man obviously expected that they would leave together right away for Nihon, and had seemed very puzzled by Kurogane's insistence that he go back alone. Kurogane had finally solved matters by half-drawing his sword and telling him that he could leave with or without his head, his choice; the man had finally gotten the hint and departed, announcing that he would see the demon-hunter again back in Edo.
And will he? Fai wondered. And what about me?
At last, in the shifting bars of sunlight and shadow, Fai stirred in Kurogane's arms. He spoke quietly, each word seeming heavy on his tongue. "It took the three of us - Yukito, Clef and I - years to set up the network of wards and spells with Yukito as the focus. Without them, the upper villages will have no means of contact. They won't be able to call for help in a disaster, and they will have no way to get the supplies they need to survive. There's no way they will be able to complete that work without me. They need me - my fellow wizards, my people. I can't turn my back on them now. I have to go back home."
Speaking the words aloud made them real, chilled him with a cold dread. He raised his face towards Kurogane's, grasped his hand urgently. "You could come with me. Not as a prisoner this time, but as an guest, an honored representative from Nihon. You said you wanted to learn magic - there's no better place in the world for you to learn than the academy at Ruval, no better teachers you'll find anywhere. You can teach them about your kind of magic, teach them about swordfighting - they'll learn too, it'll do them good! Come back with me. Please."
Kurogane refused to meet his eyes, though his hand tightened around Fai's, matching grip for grip. After a long silence - too many breathless, hammered beats of Fai's heart - he said lowly, "Even with Seishirou dead, and the first assault against the walls beaten off, there's still so much more to be done. There's no way of knowing how many of the oni got inside the walls, and the peasants who live in southern Nihon would have no defenses against them. As for the ones beyond the walls, who escaped into the wilderness -" He broke off.
"The army is stationed there now," Fai pointed out.
Kurogane shook his head. "They're just ordinary men, they don't know, they can't - it would take dozens, a hundred of them to stop one demon. How many of them would lose their lives, their souls in the process? Too many of my comrades in arms are dead; only a handful of us are left. Right now, with so many of the oni running loose in the south... they need every one of us they can get. Not a single one of us can be spared."
"You're injured," Fai said urgently. "You need treatment, rest - surely they can't call on you to fight in this condition?"
"I can still move, I can still walk," Kurogane said, with a little shrug of his good shoulder. "I can still lift a sword and while I can do that... I can fight. But you," and now Kurogane lifted his eyes to meet Fai's, his ruby-red gaze piercing and full of urgency, "you can fight them with me. I know exactly what you're capable of. I'd have no fear about watching my back while you're there - I've never had anyone I trusted that way before you. Come back with me. Please."
Fai's breath caught, his vision misted with the brief pull of temptation to do just what Kurogane wanted; the two of them, working as a team, fighting in tandem... He drew a long, shaky breath. "I don't think I would be welcomed in Nihon right now," he said, his voice somewhat unsteady. "As an enemy subject, a wizard, and as a demon - I can't see them welcoming me there."
Kurogane started to object to that, but then closed his mouth; the lines around his eyes, the tightness of his jaw, spoke eloquently of his frustration. "They should appreciate you," he growled. "If not for you, Seishirou would still be alive, and they'd have lost everything."
Fai shrugged a little bit, uncomfortable with the praise. "Besides," he said. "Yukito - and the others - they put everything on the line. I still can't believe they... He risked his life to take this one chance, to save Nihon and to end the war. Ashura won't forgive them for that easily; he could still choose to strip them of their positions, or punish them for disloyalty. He might even... if there's any chance he'll listen to me, I have to intercede for them."
Kurogane turned his face away again. "I don't want you going back to him," he said, and his voice was sullen with a strange mixture of protective anger, and jealousy. "Not after he treated you like shit all these times. He sent you off to get tortured and killed without a second thought just because he thought you might have disobeyed him - what's he going to do to you when you stand up with the other mutineers against him? He might just decide to cut out the middleman and have you killed!"
"He won't do that," Fai said quietly. "No matter how angry he gets - he's invested too much in me. In all of us, the Wizards of Ceres. He needs us to keep his country going, to keep us strong against Nihon. We're too valuable for him to lose carelessly, and he knows it. That doesn't mean he won't find some other way to punish us, though. With a peaceful resolution in sight, the ministers won't back him for any more aggressive action. He can't push for more war - but he could still destroy any chance at peace. I have to fight for that chance. I owe the others that - we owe them everything."
"I still don't like it," Kurogane grumbled. "I've seen what he does to you, the scars he leaves on your spirit. I'm afraid for you, can't you see that?"
Fai laughed, startled and painful. "Afraid for me? Oh, Kuro-pon, let's think about this for a minute! You're going off to face a horde of maddened demons, injured and weakened, with no other demon hunters to back you up. The worst that can happen to me is that I'll get yelled at. The worst that could happen to you is that you could be horribly killed, and your soul will be lost to this world. In the balance of things, don't you think that I've got a little bit more to be afraid for than you?"
He kept his tone light, but Kurogane's body was still close to his, and he knew the other man could feel him trembling. His lover pulled him close, stifling the tremors against his own body, and for a moment he shut his eyes and buried his face into Kurogane's neck, inhaling deeply his scent and trying to block out the rest of the world.
"Is there nowhere we can go to be together?" Fai whispered hopelessly into Kurogane's shoulder.
"Nowhere in your country, or in mine," Kurogane said grimly. Slowly, he tensed up as though preparing for some great blow, inhaling deeply; then he put his hands on Fai's shoulders and pushed him back. There was an awful look on his face, like a man stepping into thin air over a cliff. "But if you ask me - if you ask me one more time - to say fuck it all, to throw it all away and go with you somewhere far away - then I'll go."
For a moment, Fai's heart leapt with a wild and ecstatic hope. Go away? To some far country, where no kings or duties could bother either of them? To cut all ties and be just themselves, Kurogane and Fai, not court wizards or demon hunters or all the rest, to be together - but at the same time, the hope was accompanied by an inexplicable flash of anger. How dare Kurogane lay the choice on him that way?
But knowing Kurogane, he knew just how much it had cost the other man to make this offer. And knowing Kurogane, he also knew what his answer had to be.
"I think..." he said, and it came out barely a whisper. Tears blurred in his eyes, frustration and hopeless regret. "I think that if you could do that - abandon your people and your princess, your duties and your country - then you would no longer be the man I fell in love with. Your loyalty, your honor - they make you who you are. To betray that would be to break you."
He saw the relief in Kurogane's eyes, the sudden release of breath and tension, and he knew that he'd made the right choice, even as his throat choked on the next words: "And... I think that if I could do the same... then I would no longer be a man that you could love."
Kurogane didn't answer, except to hold him tight again. Fai buried his face against Kurogane's shoulder, and concentrated on keeping his breathing even, on blinking back the prickling in his eyes.
"It won't be forever," Kurogane said softly, his deep voice rumbling through his frame. "Only a few weeks - maybe a month, until the worst of it is past. Once you've straightened things out with Ashura - once they have a chance to build some fortifications in the south, get some effective defenses on line - then you could come south again, or I could come to you."
"You can't know that," Fai whispered. "Once we go back to our home countries, things won't be under our control any more. It could be months. Or years." Or never.
"Not never," Kurogane said firmly. "If nothing else... there's still the matter of Seishirou's master."
Fai drew a long breath. "Ah. Yes, him." After a long moment he added, "Is it really okay - to just leave things like they are?"
"I don't see that we have any choice," Kurogane said, eyes narrowing. "If he was backing Seishirou, then he's lost a lot of his players on the field. It'll take him time to recuperate that loss, come up with some new crazy scheme for harvesting power. He's no more a threat to us now than he was before - and he'll still be here when we're ready to face him again."
"I can do research," Fai said, and his voice steadied as he did. "See if I can find any records in our archives that might lead to him - or if nothing else, try to learn more about conjuration. If we're going to find and destroy him, we'll need to know."
Kurogane nodded. "And I'll do the same," he said. "Until things calm down at home; until our other duties free us enough to pursue him. Until we can be together again. You'll be fine. I'll be fine. You'll see."
"You'd better be," Fai said. He could tell Kurogane was trying to reassure himself as much as Fai, trying to make it be true. He drew in a sudden, urgent breath. "Kuro-chan. I want you to promise me one thing."
Kurogane raised an eyebrow in invitation. Fai bit his lip, then blurted out, "Don't take any more risks, okay? Don't jump into more trouble than you can handle. I want you to promise me that you won't get into any fights you don't know that you can handle, and that when all of the demons are dead, you'll still be standing."
Kurogane nodded gravely, his eyes dark and contemplative. "All right," he said at last. "I promise. But in return, you have to promise one thing for me."
"Anything," Fai said immediately.
Kurogane snorted. "You didn't even hear what I was going to ask for. I want you to promise me, swear that when you get home to Ceres, you'll eat."
A bolt of fear and anguish shot through Fai, and he stiffened up. "I -" No, no, I can't. How can I promise that? Does he have any idea what he's asking? He got hold of the wild spasm of denial; of course Kurogane did. No one alive knew any better.
He bit his lip and swallowed hard, before he answered. "I can't... that's not just up to me," he said weakly. The logical part of his mind knew that he couldn't refuse, but his heart still rebelled. "It's - it's too heavy a burden to ask of anyone - I wouldn't even have asked it of you, if it hadn't been so -"
"I know," Kurogane said, with a dangerous flash of his eyes. "I think I know better than anyone else alive just what I'm asking. But if I'm promising to stay alive for your sake, then you'd damn well better give me something to come back to!"
Fai dropped his head, staring at the ground. Kurogane sighed, and pulled him close again, tucking his chin against his shoulder. "It's not just for me, you know," he said quietly. "You have people in Ceres who love you, who want you to be happy and well just as much as I do. It's not a burden on them, to help you and keep you alive. I know that they'll give you what you need, as long as you tell them what you need... and if you can bring yourself to accept what they offer."
"All right," Fai whispered reluctantly.
"Promise me," Kurogane insisted.
"I promise," he said. "I'll... do what I have to, to stay alive." So that you'll have something to come back to.
Dawn came.
And they went their separate ways.
Kurogane would follow the trail of his errant messenger until he caught up with him, and they would ride together back to Nihon. Fai had no companion, nor any trail to follow, but he needed none; the ley-lines tugged his heart north, and home, like a passenger pigeon.
He rode slowly, letting Bella pick away, eyes unseeing. The long knife shifted against his skin as he moved, and he remembered the previous night - their last night together.
"Don't argue with me on this," Kurogane had said, his voice steel. "If we have to go our separate ways, then we have to, but I'm at least going to make sure you start off on this journey well-fed."
Fai shook his head. "You're still weak from the blood you lose before," he'd said then. "And from the fight in Seishirou's lair. You can't weaken yourself any more before you go into another fight."
"I'll be fine," Kurogane shrugged this off. "I know my body better than anyone. I don't mean that you should drain me dry, like the last time. Just take a little bit. Enough to last you back to Ceres, and through whatever you have to face there."
Fai wavered; Kurogane sensed his weakness, and pressed the advantage. "I'll be able to focus on my task much better if I know you're all right," he argued, somewhat unfairly. "It'll be a weight off your mind, so I won't have any distractions."
"That's some awfully twisty-bendy logic there, Kuro-rin," Fai couldn't help but observe. "Whatever happened to my straight-as-an-arrow hunter?"
Kurogane snorted. "If you want to talk twisty logic? I'd say I learned it from the best."
As Fai tried to work out whether he'd just been insulted or complimented, Kurogane reached into his boot and drew out the long knife; the weapon he'd given to Fai on their first meeting, which had changed hands between them half a dozen times since. Holding Fai's eyes, Kurogane stretched out his arm, and brought the knife down to his wrist and made a clean, shallow cut.
Ruby blood sprang to the surface, and Fai's lips parted involuntarily as the bright metal smell sang through the air. The whole world seemed to come into focus, centering on that welling stream of blood; he found he'd moved forward without even intending to do so, and jerked to a stop, dragging his eyes back up to Kurogane's face.
"I won't force you to do anything you don't want to do," Kurogane said quietly. "But I made this offer. And it's going to flow whether you drink or not."
"Oh, Kuro-sama," Fai said, hopeless fondness filling his voice. "Whatever am I going to do with you?"
He stepped forward, and took hold of Kurogane's arm, feeling the solid heat of his flesh beneath his hands. He knew he ought to be disgusted, with himself, with what he was doing; but it smelled and tasted and felt like Kurogane, and that could only be right.
He pressed his mouth to the cut on Kurogane's wrist, and drank.
It was nothing like it had been before, that night in the dungeon. That had all been terror and pain, ravening hunger and frenetic desperation. He had hardly been aware of whose blood was in his mouth, of whose body drained lifeless in his hands. Now he couldn't not be aware of him, the quickening of his breath, the staccato beat of his pulse. Just don't let me hurt you, he thought.
Kurogane's own familiar thought came back almost immediately. I won't. Try not to underestimate me, will you?
Startlement pulsed between them both, at this unwitting revelation. The bond, it's back? He wasn't sure which of them had asked that. I thought it had gone away.
It must come and go with the blood, Fai reasoned, and felt an echo of Kurogane's agreement. The soul follows the blood. In a moment like this, two souls touch...
He could still taste the blood on his lips, sweeter than wine; could still feel it burn in his throat. Could still feel Kurogane's presence in his mind, beloved and inescapable. With every mile that passed between them, he felt it fade a little more, and his last hope that they could somehow maintain this connection over distance faded with it.
They both had their duties. They each had their loyalties. It was enough that they were no longer in direct conflict, each a danger to the other; it would have to be enough, at least until the time came that love and duty could lie together once more.
Surely it was the bright morning light, dazzling off the distant icecaps, that burned his eyes, blurred his vision? Fai shook his head, rubbing one hand over the persistent sting. No point in wallowing in misery; Kurogane surely wouldn't approve. Look forward, he'd say, keep your eyes on the job in front of you. Let tomorrow take care of itself.
Home, then, for now. Home.
~end.