Author's Note

I know you guys are probably wondering why this story is rated M when, ten chapters in, none of the content is outwardly violent or sexually explicit. Just wanted to tell you not to worry. We're getting there. Things tend to get dark pretty quickly once I hit a certain point in every story, which is why everything I write is rated M, even if it starts out relatively benign. Anyway, thanks for reading this far, and I hope you guys are enjoying it.

Chapter Ten

Kurogane changed out of his dripping clothes, throwing them in the laundry basket in the corner of the room.

Damn it, he thought. Where the hell is that kid? He looked at the blindfold he'd given the kid, lying across his bed as a reminder of how anything that happened to that brat would be his fault.

He put on a dry outfit, then sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. "Damn it."

Fai peered in through the door, the last person in the world Kurogane wanted to see right now. The mage didn't have to forgive the kid, but he didn't have to treat him like that, either. Kid probably overheard that argument and thought he'd be better off out there. Shit.

"I saved you a sandwich from dinner," the magician said, subdued.

He sighed. "If you think you're helping Sakura by trying to get rid of the kid, you're even more of an idiot than I thought."

Fai flinched as if the insinuation actually insulted him. It was a moment before he spoke. "You didn't find anything, then?"

"No."

Another silence. The mage retreated without a word.

The ninja almost followed him, just for the sake of having a good, potentially violent argument. Almost.

When he hadn't found the kid in the lobby, Kurogane had searched the surrounding area, starting at the park they'd used for training. He'd half-expected the kid to go there, since it was familiar. When the kid hadn't turned up at the park, he'd gone looking around the battle dome, even checking with the receptionist at the built-in hospital to see if he'd been admitted. None of those locations had panned out; he'd spent the rest of the day wandering around as far as Mokona's translation range extended, expecting the kid to at least have had the brains to stay where he could be understood.

His search hadn't yielded a single clue. If the kid had wandered out of range, there wasn't much he could do. The brat would have to communicate at some point. That meant he'd need to return.

Unless he's dead. The possibility of the kid getting hit by those metal boxes called cars had crossed his mind, but if the kid had made it back with the blindfold without getting hit, he probably wouldn't have wandered into traffic while he could see. Maybe I was wrong.

He shook his head, annoyed at the thought. He was seldom wrong.

But if I was . . . Shit. Just shit. He stood up and headed out to the living room. The window there had a wider view of the world outside. If the kid was coming back, there was at least a fifty percent chance he'd pass the building on that side.

Fai was sitting on the edge of the couch, looking a bit like a beaten dog. Kurogane could only guess the problem based on their fight this morning. In hindsight, calling the vampire a bloodsucking monster was probably not his best idea. He'd meant it, of course, but it had been unwise to say so.

"Sakura-chan went to sleep an hour ago," the magician said. "I think her body is starting to give out again. The sooner we find another feather, the better off she'll be."

"Hasn't that always been the case?"

"I suppose so. In the beginning, anyway. Even as well as she's doing now, she won't be at full strength until she gets all her feathers back."

"And until then, we need every bit of help we can get," Kurogane said, not even trying to be subtle.

To his surprise, Fai agreed. "Syaoran agreed to help us look for the rest of the feathers. That doesn't make me any less wary of him, but it might help at some point later on. If he comes back."

Kurogane nodded. "He'll do whatever it takes to stay in our good graces."

"It's still strange to me, though. He's not as adamant about finding the feathers as the other Syaoran was. I don't know if he's naturally less driven, or if he feels the necessity isn't as great as it was in the beginning. It could be that he has other goals in mind, harmful or not. It'd help to know just what our adversaries are planning for us."

"It'd help," Kurogane agreed. "but it's not necessary. Even if we were to find out we were just pawns in a game, we'd probably still do what we've been doing, collecting feathers for the princess. In the end, it doesn't matter who we're up against. Our goal's not changing."

"No. I suppose not. You're still trying to go to your home world, and I'm still trying to run from mine. We'd end up doing this on our way there, regardless."

Finally, you get my point, Kurogane thought, thinking these past few weeks would've gone a lot easier if they'd just had this conversation right off the bat.

"When we first started this journey, you said something to Syaoran," Fai murmured. "You said, 'Don't expect me to stick my neck out for you. Don't expect me to help you.' At the time, it didn't really surprise me that you'd say that; you weren't the most outgoing of us, and that kind of thing was right in line with what I knew of your personality. But at some point, that changed. You went out of your way to help that kid, training him in Outo, helping him find the feathers. You said you wouldn't go out of your way for him. So why now? Why, when this isn't the same kid we spent most of our journey with?"

Kurogane felt his eyes narrow. "What's it matter?"

Fai frowned. "It doesn't, I guess. I just expected that what you said back there would hold true for me, too, especially since you hated me so much."

"What are you getting at?"

"Why did you save me in Tokyo? Why not just let me die?"

He shrugged. "I told you, we need every bit of help we can get. If that means keeping you around, even in this condition, I'll do it. Who knows, it might pay off one day."

The vampire was silent for a moment, staring at his feet. A sound from the hall made them both glance up.

Is it him? Kurogane wondered, just as the door swung open.

Passing over the threshold was like passing through the ribbon at the end of a race. Syaoran staggered into the apartment, stepping gingerly across the patch of linoleum that made up the entryway. As he entered, two figures rose up from their seats on the couch, figures he recognized without having to look directly at them.

The larger of the two figures skirted past the arm of the couch, approaching him with one arm extended as if to help. Syaoran glanced up to see Kurogane wearing an expression he'd never seen him wear. "Damn it, kid, I thought you were dead."

"Oh," he said, not sure what the correct response to that was.

"You're bleeding," announced the second figure. Hearing Fai's voice aimed at him shocked him enough to look past the ninja.

"Sorry," he whispered, glancing down to see how much blood he'd tracked into the entryway.

"Sit down and hold still," Kurogane instructed, offering a hand and easing him down to the floor. The sheer relief of being off his feet made Syaoran sigh. "Shoes off."

"I'll get blood everywhere."

"Doesn't matter."

Fai slipped into the bathroom a few feet away and returned with a roll of bandages and antiseptic. He set those down by Kurogane's feet, then gathered up a roll of paper towels to wipe the blood away. Syaoran slipped his shoes off, wincing as the leather pulled at his brown-crusted socks. Dreading the next part, he peeled the first sock off, ripping away some of the scabs with it. If pain could be quantified and measured in particles the size of sand, he'd have had enough of it to build a small fortress.

A quiet sigh pierced the air beside him. "Why'd you walk so far while your feet were like this?" Kurogane demanded.

"I'm sorry."

"I asked you a question."

"I . . . don't know," he lied. "It didn't seem this bad before." The ninja picked up the bottle of antiseptic and dipped a cotton ball in the solution. All the mental preparation in the world couldn't have stopped his body from writhing in agony when the stinging liquid came down on his abraded feet.

"Easy, kid! Your feet are going to get infected if they don't get treated."

"I found the aspirin," Fai said, handing Syaoran the bottle. He hastily unscrewed the cap and swallowed two of the fat pills. "I'll get you some water."

"I think I've had enough water for a while," he muttered, trying to maintain his good humor through the pain. It wasn't a very convincing attempt, even soaking wet as he was. After over an hour of walking through the rain, his clothes and hair were sopping wet, and he couldn't stop shivering.

Fai brought him a glass anyway, to wash down the aspirin. He drank deeply, surprised he was thirsty after an hour in the rain, and more surprised that the magician was offering him help.

"This is going to hurt," Kurogane warned him, holding up a freshly doused cotton ball. He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the onslaught of pain.

He wasn't disappointed. The antiseptic burned and bubbled against his skin, moving deep into his broken blisters and sending waves of heat through his foot. Instinctively, he kicked, almost knocking over the brown bottle in the process. His lungs seized up, as if he was about to cry, but no sound came out.

This torture went on for almost five minutes before Kurogane started wrapping bandages around his ankle. "You hurt anywhere else?"

He thought about lying, just to avoid the pain of the antiseptic in his wounds, then decided they'd figure out what was wrong either way. "I think I ripped open my shoulder again."

Within moments, his soaked shirt was lying across the floor, leaving the equally soaked bandages in plain view. After two nights, they were stained with dry blood and a clear, sticky liquid that had been oozing out of the wound. "Shit," Kurogane muttered.

"I'm sorry."

"Quit saying that and hold still." The ninja started peeling bandages off.

Either the painkillers were starting to take effect, or his body was going numb with adrenaline, because the pain in his feet and shoulder was starting to go away. He closed his eyes, leaning against the wall. Distantly, he was aware of the peeling bandages and the stinging antiseptic, but as he started to go numb, those things ceased to matter.

"Kid?" someone asked him, though he couldn't really comprehend who was speaking. "Kid, you all right? Hey, kid!"

The voice slipped away into some distant abyss, and he was dreaming again.