Chapter Eleven

"Kid, you all right? Hey, kid!"

"He's out," Fai muttered, dabbing the antiseptic onto the broken blisters. The cotton ball fizzed, dripping blood. "He walked a long way; I'd imagine he's exhausted."

"He shouldn't have gone so far. He was just outside the door. Why leave again?"

Fai said nothing, unrolling more bandages and wrapping them around the boy's swollen feet. Because he'd rather face this kind of pain than stay here knowing he's not welcome, the magician thought, feeling the first stirrings of pity he'd ever felt for this Syaoran. A world where you find yourself unwelcome is no world to live in.

"What do you think happened to him?" Fai asked, just for something to talk about. Kurogane finished stripping the rain-soaked bandages off the boy's shoulder, revealing an oozing wound. Fai examined it carefully, noting the discolorations around the cut, the puffy red edges of the wound. That'll need antiseptic.

"Who knows? Maybe he'll tell us when he wakes up."

And maybe he won't. The words went unsaid, but they both heard him. Fai had pressed his point often in the past few days. The kid kept secrets, secrets that concerned all of them. Would it be such a surprise that he'd chanced across another valuable piece of information he was unwilling to share?

Kurogane dumped some antiseptic over the boy's wound and started wrapping it. "Get a towel. He'll get sick if he doesn't get dried off."

Fai ducked into the bathroom and retrieved a towel. He handed it to the ninja, who went straight to drying Syaoran's hair. Fai watched this with mild fascination. If he'd watched the scene knowing only what he'd known about the ninja the day they'd met, the act of compassion would've seemed unnatural.

"Don't expect me to stick my neck out for you. Don't expect me to help you. I won't do it!"

"What the hell are you grinning about?"

"Nothing," Fai said, his smile widening. The first real smile in days. "You've just changed so much since I first met you."

The ninja rolled his eyes, picking the boy up off the floor and taking him over to the couch. Syaoran didn't stir.

With his features slackened in sleep, Fai could almost forget this kid wore the same face as the one who'd betrayed them in Tokyo.

"It's late," Kurogane said, covering the kid with a blanket. "C'mon."

Fai followed the ninja to their shared room, surprised when Kurogane turned the lights on instead of just lying down like he normally did. As Fai watched, the ninja took his sword out of the sheath at his hip and moved the blade across his arm. A thin line of blood popped up against his bronze skin.

Fai stared at the red, the rest of the world fading away around him. His fingernails shifted at the ends of his fingertips, growing longer and heavier. The fibers of the carpet suddenly became a little clearer to his eyes, the edges of the walls a little more defined. The sensation, the need, overpowered him, left him stunned and motionless.

"You might as well get on with it," Kurogane said, as if he was offering him a glass of water instead of . . . Fai's throat tightened up.

"I'm not . . ."

"Drink. Before I lose my temper and withhold it out of spite."

The blood ran down the side of the ninja's arm, threatening to drip onto the floor. Fai actually felt it when his resolve crumbled. It was like his body was a piano wire stretched too tight, finally snapping under the pressure. He knelt down, ashamed and humiliated by the intensity of his bloodlust, and lowered his lips to the precious crimson liquid, drinking deep.

Being magically bound to another person came with interesting side-effects. One of them was the ability to sense the other's emotions, especially in times of close contact. As soon as the blood splashed across his tongue, Fai sensed the acute stress Kurogane was under. It was all concentrated within, bound up in a tight ball somewhere at the ninja's core. Some of it, he knew, was left over from previous worlds, but much of the stress was new, caused by the recent circumstances. Most dominant were the threads of worry, tangled about the dark-haired man's heart.

You were really worried about this Syaoran, weren't you? Fai thought, directing the words toward the ninja until he realized Kurogane wasn't getting the same feedback from the blood exchange as he was. Instead, the ninja was staring at the wall, wearing that distant expression that came only when he was deep in thought. Once he isolated that emotion, the details behind it jumped into clarity.

The concern Kurogane expressed on the surface was a pale shadow next to the vast expanse of worry he'd been feeling a few minutes ago. The kid was back, and that had been enough to relieve his fears, but as Fai probed deeper into the ninja's thoughts, he realized some of the concern had remained even after Syaoran had returned, shifting its focus. Instead of being worried about the kid being dead, the ninja was worried about the kid's emotional well-being.

Fai looked up again to see the thoughtful look on Kurogane's face being replaced by a dazed look. Quickly, he withdrew, realizing how much blood he'd taken in his abstraction.

"Sorry."

The ninja waved off his apology, still looking vaguely dizzy. "Just go to sleep."

Fai curled up on the mattress on the floor and closed his eye, blue again now that his need for blood had been sated. Across the room, the ninja threw a blanket over his shoulders and did the same.

A spot of heat over his face disturbed him enough to wake him up. Syaoran's eyelids fluttered, head shrinking away from the brilliant streaks of light stabbing at his eyes. Instantly, he knew the light was wrong for his room. If anything, the light should've been hitting the door, not his bed, pushed up against the wall.

He sat up, lifting a hand to shield his sensitive eyes. The movement pulled at his shoulder, and he winced, wondering how much longer it was going to take to heal. The pain distracted him from his surroundings, and it took him several seconds to realize where he'd slept.

They must've carried me here after I passed out, he thought, looking down at the beige couch. He caught sight of his bandaged feet. He remembered the first few coils of white being wrapped around one foot, but he didn't remember finishing the bindings. So they did that, too. He sighed and let his toes trace the carpet. The light pressure sent a stab of pain through his feet. His throat tightened in response.

Quit acting so weak, he told himself. Your clone stabbed you in the leg a few weeks ago; this should be nothing.

Slowly, he eased himself into a standing position, biting his lip as sparks of agony shot up his legs. His arms reached out to the surrounding furniture to support some of his weight. Still, it took him almost a minute to make it to his bedroom.

Once inside, he took a break, plopping down on the small cot and leaning the back of his head against the wall. He waited for the pain to drain away from his legs, then moved toward the pile of clothes he'd acquired since coming to Infinity. He stripped off his dirty clothes, still damp from the rain, and dressed, vowing to bathe later today when his feet hurt less.

For a while, he just sat there, sorting through things. The pain in his feet, the two days he'd spent wandering around, meeting with Seishirou . . . I have to tell them about that, he thought to himself. We might not be able to get the feather, but I still have to tell them. He'd do that during breakfast, he decided. Kurogane would drag him to the table, if he had to, and as long as he was forced to sit there, Syaoran figured he might as well break the silence. But for now, it's time to rest.

He closed his eyes, surprised he didn't nod off immediately. Then he realized he hadn't dreamed last night, like he usually did. "First decent night of sleep I've had in ages," he murmured to himself. Perhaps the lack of nightmares meant his clone wasn't out killing people at the moment. That was comforting.

Beyond his door, a pair of footsteps creaked across the floorboards. A moment later, the sound of pots and pans clanging together filled the air. Breakfast, he thought, stomach snarling. Even with the meal he'd consumed yesterday, his stomach felt like a barren pit.

Accustomed to being called out to meals, the urge to get up and join whoever was cooking startled him out of his relaxed state. Of course, he'd be little use in the kitchen, crippled as he was. Even so, the thought persisted, weaving its way into every other thought. If he went out there and actually talked to someone, there was a chance they might not hate him so much.

"You're not usually so optimistic," he told himself, then bit his lip at the commotion in the kitchen stopped. Had someone heard him talking to himself? Very quietly, he muttered, "Awkward."

The music of sizzling pancakes and scraping spatulas resumed, and he pulled himself to his feet, using the bed frame for support. Every step a trial, he moved to his door and pressed down on the metal handle. The door swung wide, and he took his first step out into the living room.

He'd expected Fai to be cooking, like he always did. As it turned out, it was Sakura.