Date Written: September 2, 2007

Summary: Little Kurogane makes a weird new friend.

Flo: I like this idea! And I hope to do something similar with Sakura and Syaoran next chapter! Though, I do keep meaning to make that entire family chapter… eh, I'll get to it.

WARNING! Lil' bit of shonen-ai. And I do mean "lil'."

ALSO! This could be considered AU or not. It's up to interpretation and I personally don't care either way. It's cute, so that's all that matters.

FINALLY! Kurogane is called Kurogane in this. Not Hage-whatever. I go by the manga, not anime. And as for Fay's language, the only real reason I chose Russian is because the only language I've taken (that I remember because I did take German) was French and I don't really think France has the artic like winters and snowy mountains depicted in Celes (no matter what Funimation says).

Hope you enjoy!

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The sun was beating down hard on Kurogane's neck that day. He figured he'd probably have some pretty bad sunburn after this. He wouldn't have minded as much had the fish actually been biting. It was getting closer to evening, and he'd been out there ever since the morning in order to catch some dinner for his mother. Of course, in order to do so, the stupid fish would had to have actually been there. He guessed yelling at the things didn't really help in the long run.

Kurogane looked up at the sky to see that the sun was beginning to make it's way west. Not a good sign. With a defeated sigh, he stood up and gathered his pole, then kicked at the water for not providing proper nourishment for the world. Particularly his mother. Fish was good for your health, after all. At least that was what everybody told him. Either way, it was tasty.

As he made his way back home, Kurogane desperately tried to think of what to say. A simple apology would be fine since it was an understandable situation, except it wouldn't make him feel better for not getting any dinner. Catching squirrels was easy, but he doubted his mother would be too happy with him carrying in a handful of dead rodents. He didn't even think he'd enjoy it. And he hadn't brought other materials to catch another edible animal with, so deer was out of the question. It seemed that they'd have to settle with tofu that night.

"Stupid fish!" Kurogane shouted as he kicked a small rock. Unintentionally, the rock went flying into a tree, ricocheting a bit into the forest, and finally landing on something that made an, "Ow!" sound. Kurogane paused for a while, surprised at this, before hurrying over to where the rock went. It wouldn't do him any good to not only not have dinner, but also cause someone a possibly traumatic injury.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked as he looked behind a tree where he thought he saw the rock go. His eyes widened a bit in shock when he saw who was hurt. At first, he thought it was a girl with the slightly long hair, but he quickly realized that it was in fact a boy. A strangely pretty boy with yellow hair, blue eyes, and white skin. Something Kurogane had never seen before. It was really weird.

The boy looked up at him, and Kurogane's stomach dropped when he saw a small trickle of blood run down his forehead. He was going to be in so much trouble with the way things were going.

Nobody has to know, though, right? he told himself. I can just patch him up here and everything will be fine!

With that happy idea, he looked more closely at the cut. His shoulders slouched at the realization that the thing needed to be cleaned up and he didn't have any soap with him, much less bandages. The right thing to do would be to take him back to his house and fix him up there. Secretly, of course.

"Sorry about that," Kurogane said with a sigh. The kid kept staring at him with his ridiculously big, blue eyes. It kind of annoyed Kurogane. Why wasn't this kid saying anything? "Hey, did you hear me? I said I was sorry!"

Then, to Kurogane's utter horror, the kid started to cry. It wasn't anything big, just a few tears with a lot of sniffling, but still, he made the kid cry! That was bad. Before he could say sorry (again), though, the kid was already leaving. That was bad. Who knew what would happen if he went into town like that? All he would have to say is that some boy with black, spiky hair and red eyes threw a rock at him, then started to yell, and everybody would automatically know who it was! Kurogane's butt would be sore for weeks. He had to stop him.

"Come back here!" he shouted. The kid looked over his shoulder and yelped when he saw Kurogane coming at him. He then ran to hide behind another tree, Kurogane running right behind it with him. With another yelp, the kid started to run around it, Kurogane still hot on his heels. This went on for about a minute before Kurogane thought of something. Once one of the branches was in sight again, he jumped up and quickly sat on top of it. As soon as the kid passed under it, Kurogane snatched the back of his shirt, pulling him down as he jumped off of the branch. Sadly, this resulted in more crying, seeing as how it had scared the living daylights out of him, bruised his butt, and he was now probably thinking that he was being kidnapped for more target practice.

It was not Kurogane's day.

"Stop crying!" Kurogane commanded, while trying to keep a good hold on him.

The boy calmed down a small bit to only look up at Kurogane and say, "к-какой?"

Kurogane stopped and stared at him. That wasn't Japanese. In fact, he didn't know what it was. Well, since the kid looked different, it was only logical that he spoke differently, he supposed. Still, this made things even more difficult. If they couldn't communicate, then how was he supposed to calm this kid down? Who knew what was going through his mind.

Well, first off, Kurogane knew that he probably shouldn't yell at him anymore. So he took a few deep breaths and counted to ten. Then, he loosened his grip on the kid's wrist and smiled. The kid hiccupped and peeked up at Kurogane from under his bangs. Kurogane made sure to smile even bigger in hopes of showing him that he didn't want to hurt him.

When the kid stopped squirming, he took this as a good sign and decided to try to get on the same level with him. "What's your name?" he said, immediately mentally slapping himself after he got a confused stare. Taking a different approach, he pointed at himself and said, "Kurogane." Still confused. "Ku-ro-ga-ne." He followed this by pointing at the kid and putting on, what he hoped, was a "question" face.

Something must have clicked, because the kid actually made eye contact and pointed at himself. "Fay," he whispered, then pointed at Kurogane. "Ku…ro…?"

"Ku-ro-ga-ne."

"… Kuro… goh… nee?"

"No! Kurogane!"

The kid, now presumed "Fay", shrunk back at the outburst and probably would have tried to run off again had Kurogane not still had his wrist. Composing himself once more, Kurogane just assumed that the last two syllables of his name weren't common in Fay's language. Besides, there were more important things to do. Like stopping that blood. The trickle now resembled a stream that parted at the nose. Admittedly, Kurogane was a little impressed with himself for having kicked that little rock so hard. He would never tell anyone that, though, for fear of getting yelled at.

Kurogane looked all around for a big leaf or something to at least wipe the blood away. When he glanced around Fay for something, he saw that he was mimicking him for some reason. It was kind of funny. However, he eventually gave up. He was in a pine forest, anyway, so he wasn't sure what he was trying to find. Instead, he took the cleanest part of his shirt and ripped it off as best he could. Only afterwards did he think of the consequences from his mother that might follow.

Fay, meanwhile, was still looking around on the ground as Kurogane was doing, so he took advantage of his distraction and started to dab at the cut.

"Ow!" Fay yelled as he slapped Kurogane's hand away.

"Don't do that!" Kurogane yelled back. He was rather offended that his good deed wasn't receiving any gratitude. Even if it was his fault in the first place. "I'm trying to help you!"

Fay merely covered up the spot and whimpered. He looked absolutely pathetic. And it made Kurogane want to help him even more for some strange reason.

He leaned in closer to Fay, who leaned slightly back farther and farther the closer Kurogane got, until falling onto his back with a weird squeak. Kurogane took this opportunity to put the cloth on the cut again while Fay's hands weren't covering it.

"OW!" Fay shouted, even louder.

Kurogane was getting very frustrated with things. He kept wondering what was wrong with this kid and that he thought it was fairly obvious he was trying to help. Something suddenly occurred to him, though. A closer look at the cut showed that there was a lot of bruising surrounding it, even with the cloth covering the cut itself.

With a, "Crap!" Kurogane immediately took the cloth away and helped Fay up, desperately apologizing. Fay didn't seem too convinced, even if he had understood him. He kept eyeing Kurogane like a kitten would some big dog. He looked completely terrified.

This was a very awkward situation. Kurogane wanted to help, he really did. Fay, however, probably thought he was a big bully. And with the language barrier, there wasn't anything he could do to assure Fay that Kurogane was sorry and that he wasn't going to do anything. At least, not on purpose.

As Kurogane glumly stared at the ground, something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Turning to get a better look, he saw that it was a flower. It was yellow, so it matched Fay's hair near perfectly. A weed, yes, but it was still technically a flower. And flowers were signs of peace, right?

Scrambling up, Kurogane rushed over to pick it and, holding it behind his back, ran back over to Fay, who looked like his brain might melt from confusion. Kurogane covered Fay's eyes to make it even more of a surprise, and held it up close to his nose before moving his hand away.

The look on Fay's face was priceless. His eyes widened as he stared at it, nearly cross eyed, until he gave Kurogane a questioning look. Kurogane grinned and motioned as best he could for Fay to take it. He hesitated, as if thinking it was some sort of trap, but soon took the flower and for the first time since Kurogane met him, smiled. It made Kurogane only smile bigger, happy that he finally seemed to understand.

"Большоеспасибо!" Fay said.

With the smile now directed right at him and only him, all Kurogane could do was scratch his nose as he looked to the side, trying to act like it wasn't that big of a deal. Which is it wasn't. What was a big deal was that Fay was still bleeding. Deciding to try again, Kurogane took the cloth and slowly moved towards Fay's nose this time. Fay flinched a bit, but relaxed when all Kurogane did was wipe the blood away as gently as possible. The cut itself took a while since Kurogane was so scared of freaking Fay out or hurting him again that he was barely touching the spot.

Finally, he deemed the cut cleaned as well as possible and began to get up. Fay stared up at him, appearing to wonder where he was going, until Kurogane held his hand out to him. Fay gladly took it and held onto it tightly with the flower still in his other hand.

Kurogane kind of wondered why he didn't let go once he was standing, but shrugged it off as him just needing something to help with his balance. As to why he himself was still holding Fay's hand, he decided that it was for Fay's sake.

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"Mom!" Kurogane shouted when he got home, Fay still with a death grip on his hand. His other hand that held the flower had wound itself around Kurogane's arm with near equal force. Kurogane accounted that to balance, too.

When there wasn't a response, Kurogane sighed and tugged Fay over to where they kept the medicine box. True, he could have gotten one of the servants to bandage Fay up, but his mother always did it best. So logically speaking, if she couldn't do it, then Kurogane was the next best thing since he was her son and all.

Easier said than done.

Originally, Kurogane thought that all you had to do was use that weird looking green paste from that plant that he couldn't remember the name of and then wrap a cloth around it with a kiss to make it better. What he didn't know was that there was a lot of different green pastes from plants that he couldn't remember the name of. Plus, he wasn't sure if the kiss part was really necessary.

As for whether or not he was allowed to go through the medicine box, well, that was a completely different story. He began to wonder if he would get in trouble, even though it was for a good cause.

"What are you doing?" someone suddenly said from behind him, making Kurogane jump.

"M-Mom!" he stuttered, trying to hide the box. "What are you doing here?"

His mother chuckled before saying, "Well, for one thing I live here and for another I heard you call me a little while ago."

"Oh… yeah."

"Who's your friend?" She crouched down a bit and tried to look around Kurogane at Fay, who was hiding behind the boy. "Did you bring home a forest spirit?"

"No, he's just weird. And he can't speak Japanese and I don't know where he came from."

"Is that so? Well, he might belong to the visiting party from up north. There were a few yellow haired people from what your father said. When he gets home we'll figure out what to do, but in the meantime, he can stay with us. What's his name?"

"Fay."

Fay looked at Kurogane, seeming to think that he was addressing him, which his mother must have found to be cute since she laughed again. "He appears to be very attached to you! Can you tell him that I need to fix his cut?"

"I can try but I don't think he'll get it."

Turning around, Kurogane sat Fay down and pointed at his cut. He then pointed at the medicine box, to his mother who was taking things out of it, and back to the cut. He wasn't positive if Fay got it or not. He figured, however, that Fay would be fine even if he didn't understand what Kurogane was trying to tell him. Everybody loved his mother. She was also a lot gentler than he was and really pretty, so she wouldn't scare him.

"This is going to sting," she said as she dabbed a cloth with the paste. "How about you hold his hand to make him feel a bit better?"

"Okay."

Fay must have understood that this was going to hurt once Kurogane took his hand, because his eyes went wide and he nearly cut off the circulation to Kurogane's hand. Had his mother not been there, Kurogane probably would have yanked his hand away and yelled at him, despite the fact that he would immediately feel bad for it afterwards.

Fay eyes shut closed once the cloth touched his forehead and he flinched from the sting, but didn't swat it away. It made Kurogane feel very proud of him for being brave. He himself had always despised that paste stuff. The only option his mother ever gave him to not get it was not climb too high in trees, or not try to walk on the slippery rocks at the river, or not touch cats when they hiss at you.

"Almost done," his mother said as she put the bandage on Fay's head, making him go cross eyed again to try to see it. She then leaned over and kissed the wound, making Fay jump and stare at her in confusion. It wasn't scared confusion, Kurogane noted. More like surprise and curiosity.

That made Kurogane confused. Why was he so surprised that his mother kissed his wound? From what he understood, a lot of mothers did that. Didn't Fay's?

"All better?" she asked with a smile. Fay kept staring at her and merely touched the spot as if there was something on it that he couldn't find.

"Yeah," Kurogane said for him. "Thanks, Mom! Can Fay and me go out to play?"

"If he feels like it. Don't push him to do anything he doesn't want to, okay?" His mother gave him that look, then, that usually meant she was serious with what she was saying.

"What do you mean by that?! It's not like I'm going to force him to eat a bug!"

"You know what I mean. He looks delicate, so no throwing rocks around… or kicking them."

Kurogane started at this and tried to act like he didn't know what she was talking about. He quickly gave up on that since she was his mom and mothers know everything, and tugged Fay to the direction of the yard. "Don't worry, I won't," he said as they left.

"Have fun!"

Kurogane smiled at her before shutting the door, then turned to Fay, studying him. Fay appeared to have decided to study him as well. Kurogane scratched the back of his head as he thought about how to figure out what Fay wanted to play when they couldn't understand each other aside from their names. Well, most of their names. He supposed that it would be easy to get a ball or something and if he tossed it to him, Fay would hopefully have the sense to catch it. Or at least roll it back and forth. But that sounded really boring. He would have much rather wrestled, except that warning his mother had given him had been said too short a time ago for him to claim he forgot. He growled as he angrily thought how ridiculously complicated this was.

Suddenly, he heard another growl.

He paused and looked around to see what did that. Finding no animal, he shrugged and sighed.

He then heard another sigh.

Deciding that no animal could sigh (at least to his knowledge), Kurogane turned face to face with Fay and noticed that his was trying to duplicate the annoyed scowl Kurogane was making. The only problem was that it looked like Fay was going to burst with laughter any second.

"Are you copying me?" Kurogane asked, his fists going to his hips to show his annoyance.

Fay put his fists on his own hips and said, "Ai yuh opy eeg meh?"

"What?"

"Vut?"

"Stop that!"

"Shtop vat!"

"I'm serious!"

"Aim sheer vus!"

"You don't even understand what I'm saying so why the heck are you trying to copy me?!"

"… Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah!"

"That does it!"

Kurogane lunged at Fay with the intention of tackling him to the ground to make him stop, but Fay somehow managed to dodge it and ran off, laughing hysterically. Had Kurogane not been so mad, he probably would have been happy to see Fay having fun instead of looking like a scared kitten. Instead, he ran after the boy, planning on making him pay for mocking him. Cut or no cut.

This chase went on for what seemed like forever and Kurogane didn't come anywhere close to even touching Fay. He had honestly stopped being angry with him and started having fun a long while ago, especially since this was a challenging game. Who knew that the kid had so much energy? Kurogane couldn't remember the last person who could keep up with him. Though, he thought that if he showed that he was having fun instead of still being mad, Fay might loose interest.

When they were making their way by the back part of the house for the ten thousandth time, Kurogane suddenly felt himself being picked up by the back of his shirt.

"Father!" he cheered when he quickly realized who it was. He didn't even have to look at his face to know who it was. He then started squirming to try and grab at his arm while the man only laughed.

"What you doing running around like a little scamp out here?" he asked while ruffling Kurogane's hair with his other hand.

"I'm not a scamp!" Kurogane protested. "And it was Fay's idea!"

"Fay?" his father repeated. Kurogane pointed over to where Fay was peeking from behind a bush. His father grinned at this and motioned for Fay to come out, which he did, but very slowly. "Now what have I told my trouble making son about forest spirits?"

"Nothing... And he's not a forest spirit!"

"He sure looks it to me. Are you a forest spirit, Fay?" He looked down at Fay, who was shuffling his feet and shyly glancing up at the tall man before quickly looking away. Kurogane's father could only chuckle at this.

"He's not!" Kurogane was saying as he kicked his dangling legs around. "Mom says he might be with some party from the north, or something."

His father thought about this for a moment before snapping his fingers. "I thought he looked familiar! Yes, Fay, here, was the little one who was meowing at the guards while I was at the capital a few days ago! It was quite a sight to see since the guards were having such a hard time trying to shoo him away without insulting Ashura-ou."

Fay suddenly perked up at that and, looking up at Kurogane's father, repeated, "Ashura-ou?"

He nodded. "Ashura-ou! I invited him to dinner in order to show our county's hospitality. He mentioned Fay a lot on the way here."

"Really?" Kurogane said. "What'd he say?"

"A lot of stuff that rascals shouldn't be told."

"I'm not a rascal!"

"And how do I know that?"

"Because I said so!"

"Well, I don't think that it's that important anyway." Kurogane huffed at this. "Now let's go inside and get you two washed up. Fay smells fine, but you, my son, smell as if you've been up to no good. You weren't kicking rocks around, were you?"

Kurogane ceased in his attempts to get free and gave his father a sheepish smile of defeat as the man scooped Fay up under his other arm and carried them both inside.

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Dinner went by with a lot of grown up talk and Kurogane feeding Fay the majority of the meal since he gave up on showing him how to use chop sticks. Why the kid didn't know how to was beyond Kurogane. Ashura-ou, meanwhile, seemed very happy that Fay had met Kurogane. And since he knew a good bit of Japanese, he was able to translate a few things Fay was saying, like, "You shouldn't frown so much or your face will stick like that." Kurogane's parents couldn't get enough of it. Yet for some reason, Ashura-ou wasn't able to translate to Fay for Kurogane, "You're weird." He had actually wanted to say something else to him, but he didn't want to get chastised by his parents for it later.

It wasn't long before they were saying their goodbyes to each other. The grownups were being all formal, while Fay and Kurogane stared at each other. Kurogane trying to figure out what he was supposed to say to someone who couldn't understand him, and Fay, from what Kurogane got, thinking they were having a staring contest. He hadn't blinked in what seemed like ages.

"Bye," Kurogane said. He held up a hand and waved it, hoping that that was a universal message. Fay looked at it and put his own hand on his, making Kurogane freeze. He then felt something in it and when he looked at him, Fay just smiled.

"Thank you again for the wonderful meal," Ashura-ou said as his horse was brought to him. "Fay, it's time to say bye to your new friend."

Kurogane was about to ask why Ashura-ou had told him that in Japanese when, "Okay, Ashrua-ou!"

Silence.

Kurogane's eyes widened and he snapped his attention back to Fay who was grinning like crazy. "Bye bye, Kuro-chan! I had lots of fun today, even if you did hurt me with a rock, and I hope me and you can play again some day!"

Before Kurogane got a chance to yell at him, Fay leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the nose, making him forget what he was doing all together. He then waved spastically at him as Ashura-ou hoisted him onto their horse and they trotted down the road, soldiers covering all sides of them.

Kurogane could hear his parents trying hard not to laugh, yet failing rather miserably, as he bit his lip to keep from shouting out his immense frustrations with the entire day. He instead looked into the palm of his hand to calm him down, where he held the yellow flower Fay had given back to him.

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1.) I don't speak Russain. So if those two little phrases were wrong ("What?" and "Thank you!") then blame the website that I got them from. And no, I don't want an explanation about them. And sorry if I sound pissy about it. Read below, please.

2.) Um, yeah, I had to come back to edit this because I originally said that the sun was making it's way east instead of west. So yeah, Kurogane, it would have been a VERY bad sign if the sun was heading east! Adds to what a bitch this was.

A/N: This was harder than it should have been. And way longer! Geez. -annoyed huff- I enjoyed writing Kurogane's dad, though. Other than that, it was a bitch! I hate to say it, but I'm glad I've finished. I wouldn't be surprised if it showed at the end, which makes me even more annoyed. But yeah, I've been updating like crazy. Expect a lot of my Tsubasa fics being updated soon.

And I've been debating whether or not to get a live journal. Any opinions on this?

You know what to do!

Please leave a review!

As always, CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is welcomed with flowers!