Notes: Meant to post this earlier, got sidetracked, apologies. Anyway, one more chapter to go after this one. This is the point where it occurred to me that writing KuroFai AU is an ever-expanding exercise in "You know what Fai's backstory could use? More life-scarring trauma."

oOo

He came upon the door sooner than he had expected. The torches were still there, flames shining brightly in the darkness, but the statues had disappeared. The door was wide open and Kurogane could see nothing beyond it but a deep impenetrable darkness. He unsheathed his sword and cautiously stepped through the doorway.

As he crossed the threshold the air felt fuzzy and thick around him, like walking through a fog. The sensation lasted only as long as it took him to step through the door and then he stumbled forward as if something had spit him out. Kurogane turned to look back the way he had come, only to find that the open door had disappeared completely. There was nothing behind him but smooth black stone barely seen through hazy gray mist.

"No way to go but forward, huh?" Kurogane said with a grim smile.

You should not have done this. Erebus's voice was oddly subdued. Kurogane ignored him and moved forward into the unknown, letting his senses guide him. The cavern he was in seemed unimaginably wide, lit sparsely by the same birdcage lamps that had decorated the tunnel. The only sound besides his own footsteps was the steady dripping of water off the knife-sharp stalagmites jutting down from the unseen ceiling. The air felt hot and stale, like being inside of a furnace. Ancient tapestries hung here and there from the walls, edges all frayed, each one bearing an image of black bat on a field of red.

There was something glowing white in the distance and Kurogane found himself drawn towards it. As he got closer he could see that he had reached some kind of strange wide pool. It was glowing with a ghostly light and there were intricate patterns of silver dust etched into the floor surrounding it. There was a deathly chill emanating from the pool and Kurogane thought he could almost hear sounds coming from inside it, a steady hum of whispered voices. Against his better judgment he found himself stepping over the silver sigils and staring down into the depths of the pool, the shining dust scattering beneath his feet as he approached the edge.

Haunted eyes stared back at him and Kurogane recoiled. There were humans down there — hundreds of them, their forms white and indistinct, skin translucent like ghosts, faces contorted with expressions of pain and despair, their hands reaching out helplessly into the air.

Souls, Erebus's voice hissed in his mind. Those are human souls.

"The hell?" Kurogane stepped backwards. The faces were still staring up at him and there was something strangely familiar about them that he couldn't quite place, something ancient hovering on the edge of a memory long clouded by decades of illusion and time. He could almost hear their voices now, a chorus of agony and pleas humming like an insistent buzz in his ears. "What kind of sick bastard would do something like this?"

And this is the person you were going to ask for help, Erebus said mockingly. Such wisdom.

Kurogane opened his mouth to give a scathing reply when a sudden, horrifying thought occurred to him and he found himself looking back into the pool, scanning each face for a pair of mismatched eyes and a false smile. As he studied each face Kurogane began to feel more and more that there was something familiar about the trapped souls staring mournfully back at him and a chill crept along the back of his neck.

Fai was nowhere to be seen and Kurogane let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He stepped away from the pool, even more determined than before to find Fai and get the hell out of here.

As he backed over the outermost of the markings the silver dust suddenly swirled up around him like a hurricane. Kurogane barely had a moment to utter a curse before it solidified and wrapped itself around his arms and legs, serpent-like, forming itself into chains as it did so. Kurogane found himself forced onto his knees, Ginryuu falling from his fingers. He strained against the silver chains but even with all his demon strength they refused to give. He was well and truly bound.

"I see we have an intruder." A deep male voice rang out from the shadows. Kurogane raised his head and glared as a man came into view, dressed all in black and red. "Welcome, last survivor of Suwa."

"Who the hell are you?" Kurogane demanded, eyes narrowing. "How do you know me?"

"You may call me Fei Wang Reed," the man said with an exaggerated bow. "Lord of the Underworld. You should know me, yes? You were seeking me, after all. As to how I know you…how would I not?" He smiled and there was nothing like warmth in it. "You looked into the Pool of Souls? They should have been familiar to you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kurogane growled, ignoring the small voice in the back of his mind that told him the other man was speaking truly. There had been something there, something he didn't want to recall…

"You haven't even figured it out yet, have you?" Fei Wang's smile was mocking as he stepped towards the Pool of Souls. The markings that had been smudged by Kurogane's careless approach re-formed themselves beneath him as he stepped over them. "I have been looking for you for a very long time. The thousandth lost soul of Suwa." Fei Wang glanced back towards Kurogane. "The souls that are trapped here are all your kindred, after all. All those humans who were killed by the plague of shadows…their souls have remained here, trapped, ever since that day."

"What….?" The thing that had been hovering on the edge of his memory finally became fully, horrifyingly clear. The woman who had sewn the tear in his mother's best kimono, the fisherman who had let Kurogane ride on his boat as a child, the old couple who brought offerings to the shrine every morning…they were all there and more, all staring back at him out of hollowed eyes.

A strange feeling prodded insistently at the back of his mind and Kurogane found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the Pool of Souls. There was something he was missing about all this. Something very important, still hovering just beyond his reach.

"That is how the plague works, after all," Fei Wang said. "All the infected end up here in my domain eventually. I'm surprised it took you so long to get here."

"I'm not infected," Kurogane snapped, looking away at last from the lost souls.

"Really?" Fei Wang raised an eyebrow, smirking. "I believe you are mistaken, Kurogane. It is not the same as the usual infection, that is true. That creature inside you is likely the reason why you haven't come to me earlier than this. But make no mistake, you are infected with the plague. You have been infected for a thousand years." He stepped closer so that he was face to face with Kurogane. "I can see it inside you. It hasn't killed you yet the way it should have, but that's no matter. You are still the last ingredient that I have been waiting for so long to retrieve."

"I don't know what you're talking about, bastard," Kurogane growled, struggling uselessly against the chains. He eyed Ginryuu but his arms were still bound tightly at his sides, unable to reach the sword.

"I don't suppose you do." Fei Wang moved away, chuckling to himself. "There is somewhere I want to go, you see. A place where miracles may occur." He stared off into the distance, a strange light burning in his eyes. "I have only been there once and have been denied any return, despite being more than worthy of it. Still, I did not despair. I simply sought a new path." He looked down towards the Pool of Souls. "A thousand souls, bound by time and place, chained to the Underworld. Those were the components I required. The plague was a stroke of luck — a thing of the Underworld somehow brought to the world of the living, which binds itself to a person's very soul and infects the body from the inside out. As those souls began to appear in my domain, I realized that fate had indeed smiled upon me. All I needed to do was be patient and a thousand useful souls would be mine. But in this, I was defeated." He glared sharply in Kurogane's direction. "I was missing one final soul. All seemed lost… until I became aware of one last survivor of Suwa, still living in the human world, still infected with the plague, dragged nightly into the Underworld and released back to the human world each morning, All I needed to do was lure you down here permanently and then at last everything would be set into motion. Once all the proper spells have been set in place, I will be able to open that door once more."

"How do you even know about the damn plague?" Kurogane growled, a sudden suspicion creeping up upon him. "Suwa, the prison….was that your doing, you bastard?"

"Oh, don't be so foolish, Kurogane," Fei Wang scoffed. "I expected better from you than that. I am merely a collector of souls, limited in the scope of my interference with the human realm. No, the one who caused the plague that devoured Suwa, the one who infected your disgusting prison…that was none other than a single little plague rat, one who has been by your side for some time. He was the one who brought you to me, after all. Isn't that right?" He turned as another figure emerged from the shadows.

Fai stepped forward into the light, head down, tattered black cloak now clearly adorned with the symbol of a black bat on a field of red. Kurogane could only stare at him.

"Surely you aren't surprised?" The mockery in Fei Wang's voice made Kurogane's blood boil. The Lord of the Underworld ran a hand down Fai's unresisting face. "This one has been my puppet from the very beginning. Who do you think arranged matters so that he would be sent to your prison? Who do you think informed him of the existence of one of the Doors to the Underworld? I admit, I did not expect to be so lucky as to find you living in the exact location of one of the Doors, but that was unsurprising. Though that demon of yours is clearly some low-ranking Underworld beast, it is still pulled naturally towards its home. It is only expected that you would someday end up in a place where you could at last enter my domain in body as well as spirit. I merely needed to send my agent to you to give you that last required push."

Fei Wang laughed and Fai flinched almost imperceptibly, head still down, eyes averted.

"And now, at last, I have the final component I have been seeking." Fei Wang gestured towards the shadows and two humanoid figures seemed to manifest from out of the gloom, dark-haired women with strangely forgettable faces that immediately reminded Kurogane of the man who had brought Fai to the prison in the first place. "I must complete the final preparations for the ritual. Take our guest and make him comfortable, so that he may savor his last moments with us." The women stepped forward and took hold of the silver chains that held Kurogane bound, pulling him forward. Kurogane set his heels in resistance, but even the human-shaped constructs were somehow stronger than him. The two dragged him forward past Fei Wang, who smiled gloatingly at him as he passed.

Fai did not even look at him, and Kurogane was carried away into darkness.

oOo

They left him in an empty cell made all of the same hard black stone as the rest of the cavern. The moment he was thrown inside sharp black spikes jutted down from the ceiling and rose up from the floor, forming bars to keep him held inside. As soon as the bars were in place the chains that held him abruptly disintegrated, becoming nothing more than a fine silver powder coating the floor of the cage. The women turned away from him without even so much as a second glance, melting into the shadows and leaving him alone in the dark cell.

Erebus was laughing at him and Kurogane aimed an irritated punch at the bars. To his surprise they shattered immediately under the force of the blow, only for new bars to take the place of the old ones, nearly taking off Kurogane's hand in the process. The sight of them only made Kurogane more annoyed and he pounded at them again and again, not caring that he was accomplishing nothing more than making his knuckles bleed. It made him feel slightly better, at any rate.

And that is what you get for being such a trusting fool, Erebus snorted. Betrayed, captured, sacrificed.

"I didn't ask you," Kurogane growled, lying back against the far wall of the cell with an irritated huff.

As the red haze in his head began to clear Kurogane found himself growing calmer. He took a deep breath and did his best to take stock of his surroundings in the dim light. The room the cell was in was mostly empty save for dust and some old bones piled haphazardly along the walls. There was only a single small birdcage light dangling from the ceiling but the longer he sat the more his eyes were becoming used to the darkness. Kurogane leaned back against the cold stone and watched the shadows play against the walls. Now that he was here, surrounded by darkness and silence and his own thoughts, some things were beginning to make sense.

Kurogane looked down at his bleeding hands. Even in the half-light they were still the same as always, without any sign of the ashen coloring that first indicated infection.

His father holding him by the wrist, hands covered in ash and soot.

Fei Wang had said he was infected. Though Kurogane trusted that bastard as far as he could throw him, it would be foolish to assume the man was wrong. After all, the bastard's entire plan apparently hinged on Kurogane being infected. But there were none of the symptoms, none at all. His hands were not black, his mind was still sane — or as sane as it could be, at any rate, with the demon inside him.

And then there was the Pool of Souls itself…

Kurogane had recognized the faces in that place, that he knew. The souls of his people were undeniably trapped there, had been trapped there for over a thousand years. He had seen them with his own eyes. But as he turned the situation over in his mind, Kurogane finally found himself able to grasp at the thing that had eluded him before: his father's soul had not been there. It wasn't simply a matter of Kurogane overlooking it. He knew, knew with every fiber of his being, that his father's spirit was not trapped in the Pool of Souls, even though he also knew that his father had been infected with the plague at the end.

Infected with it, but had not died of it.

The sound of cloth brushing against the floor alerted him that someone was approaching. Kurogane looked up as Fai stepped into view, his golden eye oddly bright in the light of the single candle he held. They stared at each other in silence for a long moment.

"Kindness is thrown away upon the evil," Fai said said at last, a painful smile etched onto his face. His voice was uncharacteristically hoarse. "Why did you come back, Kurogane?"

The use of the full name made him pause for only a moment.

"Why did you let me go?"

Fai's hands clenched and he looked away without answering.

"Why do you think I came back?" Kurogane continued, relentless. "I came back for you."

"You're more mad than I am, then," Fai retorted sharply. "I told you I wasn't someone who deserved to be saved."

"Since when do I listen to you?" Kurogane snorted. "Idiot."

"If you'd start yelling at me, it would make this much easier," Fai said darkly. "I betrayed you, after all. I've been betraying you all this time."

"And you tried to let me go," Kurogane said.

"I know." Fai lowered his head. "You saved me, back at the Drowning Sea. I was only repaying that debt."

"Don't give me that crap," Kurogane said. "What the hell is wrong with you? You dragged me all this way, just to let me go for saving you when you didn't want to be saved?"

"You shouldn't have saved me!" Fai said, suddenly angry. He smiled then, sickly and pale. "You realize it now, right? I'm the one who did it all. Your country, the prison…that was all because of me. I infect everything I touch."

"You weren't anywhere near Suwa," Kurogane said. "I would have recognized you."

"But I was." Fai moved closer to him. "Do you remember how the infection started, Kurogane? Who the first one to fall ill was?"

"What the hell does that…" Kurogane trailed off as memory came back. His mother, running from the shrine with bare feet, dragging him behind with her bag of herbs, called to tend to a man who had collapsed in a field. The man lying there in the dirt with lank hair and black fingers—

—milky pale eyes staring out at him from the Pool of Souls, the face of that first victim frozen in a rictus of pain—

"One of the villagers," Kurogane said dismissively. "But he was born in Suwa. You couldn't have gotten near him without-"

"Think harder," Fai said.

"He's just returned from the mountains." A frantic woman talking to his mother as they carried the man to his sickbed. "He wanted to see what was left there."

"He went up into the northern mountains," Kurogane said. "There were supposed to be ruins up there, from some ancient country or some crap like that."

"Celes," Fai interjected. "Its name was Celes."

"That country was destroyed before my ancestors ever even founded Suwa," Kurogane said slowly.

"I know." Fai smiled again. "I told you I'd been alive longer than you, Kurogane. I've been alive so long, I don't even remember my own name anymore." He covered his face with his hands for a moment. "I didn't mean to do it. I didn't want to hurt anyone anymore. Everyone in that country was long dead, so I thought that if I simply stayed there then nothing bad would happen again. But one day a person appeared, digging through the ruins. I stayed away from him as best I could, but that didn't matter. Just being that close to me was enough. I could see it on him, as he left, that he was already infected. And even so…I let him go. I let him go and your country was destroyed because of it."

"Plague destroyed my country," Kurogane said flatly. "Not you."

"Weren't you listening, Kurogane? I am the plague." Fai laughed, the sound desperate and just a touch unhinged. "A plague that destroyed your country…and my own."

He stared deep into the candle flame and when he spoke again his voice sounded like someone lost in a dream.

"There was a village in an ancient country." The candle was reflecting shadows in Fai's eyes as he spoke. "I don't remember its name. No one living does. But in this village, there was a young woman, recently wed, recently pregnant. She went for walk in the woods one evening, that girl, and did not return home even though the sun had long set. The villagers searched for her, calling her name as they scoured the woods. They found her two days later. Her stomach had doubled in size and she was already in labor, though she had not been expected to give birth for months. It was a long and hard delivery, but when all was said and done she had given birth to healthy twin boys. Each had one blue eye and one gold." He pressed a pale hand over his blue eye, as if there was something he could see with it that he no longer wished to look upon. "She named those children Fai and…and…" He shook his head. "I don't remember the other. I erased it."

Fai's smile was full of an ancient bitterness and his fingers played lightly with the candle flame..

"The rumors spread like a wildfire throughout that village, about the birth of the cursed twins whose eyes were the eyes of a demon. Strange plagues followed on the heels of those rumors, crops drying in the fields, animals dropping dead in their pens, water becoming fouled and undrinkable. And when at last even the village children began to grow ill with a disease no doctor could name, the villagers decided they could endure no longer. They chased the girl and her children away from the village with torches and pitchforks, burning their house and slaughtering anything living that was found within. But even so, the mother escaped with her children, her demon-cursed children."

Fai paused for a moment and his golden eye was a bright full moon in the candlelight.

"They fled the village and ran, ran as far as they could go. They stowed away aboard a ship bound for a faraway land beyond the sea. Three days into the voyage the sailors began to grow ill and they found the intruders hiding with the cargo. The mother and her children were dragged into the light and thrown overboard into the dark seas to die. But they did not die." There was a deep regret in Fai's voice that made Kurogane's hands clench. "They lived. They washed ashore on an island with no name, and the mother led her children into the mountains on the island's northern side. It was there that she died with her children by her side."

Fai closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing.

"Mother had thought — had hoped — that the island was uninhabited, but she was wrong. People lived up in those mountains, people with fine fur cloaks and long dark hair. Fai and I tried to stay away from them. We knew, by then — we knew that all the misfortune that had happened was because of us, and that being near all those people would only lead to further misfortune. So we hid. We scraped and scavenged for food and ran away if anyone came too close to us. In that time we began to notice one man more than any other — a man with long black hair and the finest fur cloak, who always seemed to be near where we were hiding. Sometimes we would be hiding in the bushes and he would turn and look towards us, and then leave food lying on the ground behind him. We didn't touch it. We couldn't get close to anyone, not again.

"It was my fault, in the end." Fai shook his head. "The winter nights were cold and we couldn't find any food. Every day it felt harder to get up, until finally one day I felt like I couldn't do it anymore. Fai shook me and called my name, but I was just too tired, I couldn't reply. I thought that I would die there and then maybe it would be all right, maybe I would take the curse with me and then Fai could go live with those people with the warm cloaks. But Fai wouldn't let that happen. He went and he found that man, the one we had never let see us before, and asked him to save me."

Fai's seemed to have almost forgotten Kurogane's presence, speaking as if compelled by something deep inside. There were shadows staining his eyes.

"The man's name was Ashura, and he ruled that small mountain kingdom. It was called Celes, he told us, and he wasn't afraid of us when we told him we were cursed. He believed in things that were stronger than curses, he said. He took us in and fed us and gave us warm clothes and raised us as his own. He didn't fear us. He should have."

"The plague was different, then. Animals grew sick, and children, but the people of Celes had intimate knowledge of herbs and remedies and managed to save many of the fallen. Ashura thought that would be enough, that we would be no danger once he was able to find the right remedy that would cure the plague completely. But as we grew older, things began to change." Fai gave a heavy sigh that seemed to shake his whole body, like a winter wind through a dead tree.

"It was because there were two of us. The demon…wasn't supposed to be split in two like that. It didn't have the strength to release the plague in its fullest form, but it did have the power to do…other things. It was weakest in me. People near me didn't seem to get sick as quickly. But Fai…it just took him over, one day. Everyone who came into contact with him after that would come down with the shadow plague as you know it, and they would die. Only I could stay with him and be unaffected. And Fai had…changed. Sometimes he would be himself, be the Fai I loved, and sometimes he would be the demon. It would possess him and he wouldn't even be able to talk right, would just keep…repeating things, old songs, nursery rhymes, and his eyes weren't right. And then it would look at me and it—he—" Fai gave a convulsive shudder, unable to continue. When he spoke again, his voice was strained.

"When he was himself, Fai saw the bruises and told me to stay away from him. But I couldn't. I couldn't let him face that by himself, locked away from everyone. And then one day the demon had him again and he—it was holding me down and it spoke to me. Not in verse and quotes like usual. It didn't even open its mouth. But I heard it." Fai pressed a hand over his golden eye. "I heard it. It told me that it was dying. It couldn't sustain itself like that, split in two. It told me that if things stayed that way, it would die and Fai would die with it."

Fai lowered his head, blond bangs covering his eyes.

"I only wanted to protect him, that was all. The way he had protected me. I didn't want to believe the demon, but as time went on I could see it. Every time Fai came back to himself he was weaker than before. He told me not to worry, told me I should go and be with Ashura and the rest of the people who cared for us, so I wouldn't be hurt again. He told me he would be fine, but I knew he was lying. He was scared and he was going to die, and there was nothing I could do. So the next time the demon took him over, I spoke with it and I made a deal."

Fai went silent for a moment and Kurogane with sudden clarity remembered the dream from the night after Fai had fallen from the stair, of the figure in the tower and the black thing that had consumed it.

"I took all of it," Fai said quietly. "All of the demon that was possessing Fai…I let it have me instead. Outside of a human body it wouldn't be able to sustain itself, but it could survive the transfer between Fai and myself because I already had part of it in me. I thought for certain that I would be able to save Fai that way. I didn't care what happened to me after. I had planned to leave, to run as far away from Celes and other people as I could, to live by myself until I died and took the demon with me. But you've always been right, Kurogane: I am an idiot. I trusted a demon and everyone I loved paid for it. Even with half of its essence already inside me, I still couldn't endure the possession. I lost consciousness and awoke to find Celes a land of the dying and the dead, overrun with the plague I had caused, fully formed at last."

He shivered slightly and pulled his tattered cloak closer.

"I found Fai and Ashura in the throne room, as if they were waiting for me. Their hands were black with infection."

Fai met Kurogane's eyes at last.

"Do you know what they told me, Kurogane? They told me that they didn't blame me, that it wasn't my fault, that I hadn't known. And then Ashura gave me his sword and asked me to kill them both, before the plague had fully taken over. He told me that it would save them, as if it wasn't already too late. But what more could I do for them? I killed Ashura first, and he smiled at me to the end. Then I went to Fai and…" He shuddered again, half-choking on his own words. "Fai was still weakened from the demon but he was able to move nonetheless. He held me and kissed my forehead and he apologized. Apologized, to me, to the person who had doomed him. And then he let me run the sword through his heart."

Fai's entire body was shaking now, a convulsive tremble as if he might fall apart.

"With my own hands I killed the two people I loved the most in all the world and they thanked me for it." Fai shook his head again. "After that I went down into the heart of the country, killing every infected person I came across. Ashura asked me to. I couldn't refuse his last wish, not when it was all my fault. I kept hoping that I would find someone, anyone, who was still alive and whole, but…nothing. The entire country had been ravaged. I could do nothing but kill them, and when I was done I went back into the palace and locked myself in the highest tower and stayed there. I hoped I would die there."

He raised a shaking hand and pressed it against one scarred ear.

"That was when I heard them…the voices of the people of Celes, the ones whose deaths I had caused. They wouldn't stop yelling at me, wouldn't stop screaming in my head. I couldn't sleep, couldn't think. It was so loud thought I would go mad." He smiled thinly. "Maybe I did. I don't even remember now, what silence sounds like. No matter what I do, those voices will never be quiet."

"And that's why you're helping that Underworld bastard?" Kurogane said at last. "So he'll take your damn voices away?"

Fai laughed like a man walking to the gallows.

"Why would I do that?" Fai's voice was frantic now. "I deserve to hear them. This is my punishment for destroying a country, for willingly letting a demon taint me. I don't have the right to ask for this curse to be taken from me No…my agreement with Fei Wang was something different." Fai smiled sadly. "He said he will let me hear them again."

"What?"

"All these voices in my head…so many voices, but the two I want to hear the most I never can." Fai ran a hand along the bat symbol emblazoned on his sleeves. "I had locked myself in that tower for so long I'd forgotten what any other voice sounded like, even my own. That was when Fei Wang spoke to me and made me a promise. I would go out into the world and find you, and in exchange he'd use his powers to let me hear them again." Fai pressed a hand to his ears. "All these voices in my head, but I have never heard Fai and Ashura again. I don't care if it's only to curse me, to hate me, anything, I don't care. I just—I just want to hear them again."

There was silence again, and this time it was Kurogane who laughed. Tsukuyomi's voice echoed in his ears and at last he understood.

"Those who died by your hand and his in that prison were saved. Those who died by your mother's hand in Suwa were saved."

"You idiot." He could remember it properly now. The words his mother had spoken to him before she had died, the words Tsukuyomi had undoubtedly spoken first to her and later to him. Why his father's spirit had not been imprisoned in the Pool of Souls. "That guy, your Ashura. He told you to kill him, right? You really think he'd do that just to punish you?" Kurogane snorted. "I looked into the Pool of Souls. It's supposed to be the place where souls who've died of the plague get trapped, right? But my father's soul isn't there, even though he was infected when he died… because the plague's not what killed him. My mother killed him, and she told me to kill the remaining people in Suwa who were infected, the same order your king gave to you." He stared evenly up at Fai. "My mother was a priestess. In her dreams she could speak with her goddess, so she knew things someone like you or me couldn't. I don't know if that Ashura guy knew these kinds of things or not, but I'll bet he did." I saw it in my dream, the voice of the man on throne rang in his head. "The only souls that get trapped by the plague are those who die of it. Those who are killed by someone else, though, before the infection's reached its final stage…those souls go wherever the hell souls end up. That's why you can't hear your king or your brother anymore. Because you saved them."

"I…" Fai stared at him through haunted eyes, then shook his head wildly. "No. You don't know anything, Kurogane. You shouldn't even…" He shuddered hard, hand covering his eyes. "You don't know anything. You should just hate me and forgot about me."

"I don't waste my energy on hating morons," Kurogane stated.

"You hated your father, though, right?" Fai said. "That demon in you…that's what keeps you from being fully infected by the plague. He probably did it to save you, the same way I tried to save Fai. And instead it failed and cursed you. I'm no different than that."

"I might have hated him, yeah," Kurogane said. "But that was a long time ago. I didn't understand things then, didn't know what the hell was going on. But a lot of things have become clearer to me recently and I know better now. Someone who's being protected without knowing it can't understand the actions of the person protecting them until it's too late. There's no point in blaming either person for that. And if you've lived longer than me, you should know better than to keep dwelling on crap from the past." He met Fai's haunted gaze steadily. "A thousand years ago I failed to save the people of Suwa so I tried to blame everything on the demon and hide myself away somewhere where my strength wouldn't change anything. I'm not going to sit by and do that anymore. If it's in my power to save someone, I'm going to do it. Even if they're an idiot who doesn't want to be saved."

Fai stared down at him, face unreadable in the candlelight, smile wavering like a mirage in the distance.

"Maybe we're both idiots," Fai said at last. He seemed to be fighting with something in his head and his eyes were staring at and through Kurogane, as if they were fixed upon something deep within the other man's body. Fai stepped closer so that he was leaning against the bars, face to face with Kurogane.

"What are you-" Kurogane barely managed to speak the words before Fai reached through the bars and pulled him forward into a kiss.

It was sudden, unexpected, and Fai pulled away almost immediately. But Kurogane could feel a strange, fuzzy lightness in his chest, and the demon in his head went silent as a tomb.

"I'm sorry," Fai said, standing up and stepping away. His face had gone chalk white in the candlelight. "I didn't want any of this." He turned to leave and Kurogane suddenly recalled his dream of Fai's memories again.

"It will always be this kindness of yours that wounds you most of all [—]."

"Yuui," Kurogane said and Fai's head snapped back as if struck, eyes wide. "Your name was Yuui."

Fai stared at him for a long moment and then left the room as if running away, leaving the candle behind. Kurogane sighed heavily and leaned back against the back wall of the cell, one hand reaching up to touch his lips. He could still feel the lingering sensation of Fai's warmth upon them.

"We really are both idiots," Kurogane said into the silence.