Chapter One-Hundred Twenty-Eight

Barren. Even that word seemed too tame to encompass the creeping death that had destroyed Suwa. The disaster their enemy had brought on this place hadn't been limited to demons and fires; it had included a lingering blight on the land, a sickness that seeped from the earth itself and made the once fertile lands devoid of life.

It was worse than Kurogane had expected. He hadn't been here since leaving for Shirasagi Castle as a boy. For years, he'd avoided this place, going so far as to ask Souma to deal with any demon attacks in the area. But he'd read the reports—he hadn't divorced himself from his birthplace so completely that he couldn't do that. A few years after the disaster, he'd offered the area up as farmland. When the farmers had reported back to say that the ground hadn't yielded even the barest hint of life, Kurogane had given up on any attempts to restore it. He'd told himself that the wilderness could take this place.

Apparently, the wilderness had decided not to take him up on the offer.

The boy stayed close to his back, never in his line of sight. Probably wallowing in guilt, he thought, a tinge of twisted satisfaction coiling in his chest. Anger came to him more easily than anything else, and he found himself grinning savagely.

"It wasn't enough to burn it down, was it?" the kid whispered behind him. "He had to make sure it could never come back."

Kurogane turned to see the boy standing several meters behind him, hands clenched, staring at the dusting of ash on the ground. A moment later, he lifted his head, quiet fury in his dark brown eyes. It surprised Kurogane enough to squash the visceral satisfaction in his heart. "You mean the sorcerer who did this?" he asked, hoping the question would prompt the boy to say something else.

"Fei-Wang Reed. He couldn't make you his pawn, so he turned this place into a wasteland out of spite."

Kurogane raised an eyebrow. He'd never heard the boy sound so bitter. "You all right?"

"I hate him."

You're going to hate him even more after today, Kurogane thought, letting his hand rest on the kid's shoulder. "I hate him too. Let's go. You stay," he said to the meat bun, picking her up by the ears and carrying her over to the horse. With a stern look, Kurogane left the creature, taking the lead.

The boy followed, walking stiffly. Kurogane wasn't sure if it was anger or pain that made the kid's legs so wooden. He was betting a little of both. They reached a twist in the road, and Kurogane paused. "It gets worse past this point." Worse, not because the destruction was any more complete there than it was here, but because up ahead there were memories attached to the destruction.

"Are you going?" Syaoran asked.

"Yeah."

"Then I'll go, too."

Kurogane nodded and started walking again. As they turned, he saw the marketplace where the inferno had started. He wasn't sure whether it had begun as a result of something their enemy had done, or if, made clumsy by panic, one of the villagers had knocked over a lantern and started the blaze. It hardly mattered now, as he dragged his feet through almost an inch of ashes. The wind should have carried these away a long time ago, he thought, crouching down and grabbing a handful of the stuff. Even if this place is protected from the wind by the hills, the ash should have washed away in a storm or gotten ground into the dirt. How is it still here?

He stood, letting the ashes slide through his fingers, and kept moving. His senses extended outward, ears straining to hear something besides the intrusive silence. When that yielded nothing, he closed his eyes, trying to sense any auras. He felt the boy behind him, a bright torch, burning with energy, and his own aura, murkier but still healthy, human. Focused as he was, he should have been able to feel rodents underground or birds. But like the silence, the absence of life pressed on him like a blanket wrapped so snugly that it became suffocating. Gods, I hate magic, he thought. "There's nothing here," he growled. Then, as he kicked a charred piece of some market stall across the ground, his voice rose. "There's nothing here!"

Hands closed around his fist, small and warm and unmistakable. He glanced back as Syaoran urged his fingers to unfurl by massaging his hand. "We can go."

"Not yet, we can't." He yanked his hand away, stalking forward. Wisely, the boy didn't try to touch him again. Kurogane wasn't a child. He didn't need to be comforted. He'd come all the way out here, and damn it, he was going to find closure. So he didn't stop, didn't slow down, until he left the ruins of the marketplace and made it to the edge of the village. Even if he hadn't recognized the area by the way the road curved, by the way the land rose and fell, he would always know this place.

His home.

"You must have seen this place in my memories," he said as the boy caught up with him.

The kid swallowed thickly, stepping closer to him. "I remember."

Kurogane pointed to a gnarled tree trunk with long-barren branches. Like everything else, it looked dead, brittle. "I used to climb that tree all the time. My mother would scold me whenever I climbed too high—she always thought I'd come crashing down one day and break my neck. And there." He pointed toward a pile of splinters on the ground, all charred and on the brink of turning to ash. "When Suwa burned, one of the demons stepped on that part of the house and the walls broke apart like they were made of twigs."

"Kurogane-san . . ."

He pointed to a gray rock not far from the house. "That's where I stood, holding my mother's body while I struck down a hoard of demons. Sometimes, I dream about that night—about the fire and the blood and the stench of smoke—but I can barely remember the fight at all. And there"—he pointed toward a darker patch of dirt in the middle of the wreckage—"is where my mother was killed." Old anger rushed through his chest at the words. Saying it reminded him that he had something to finish, something to prove. Fei-Wang Reed had tried to make Kurogane his pawn. Whatever else had happened, he could not let that insult stand. If he got the chance, he'd stick a sword in the monster himself, just to know how it felt to have his blood running down his hands.

"They loved you so much."

The words ran so contrary to his budding rage that it took him a moment to process them. He turned toward the boy. "What?"

"Your parents . . . I saw them when the Other opened the memory book in Recourt. I think that if they'd gotten to choose how to die, they'd have been glad to die protecting you."

"They could have lived!" he roared, feeling something snap inside him. "They could have lived long lives and been happy! If that bastard with the bat-sword hadn't killed them, they'd still be here!"

Syaoran cradled Kurogane's hands in his. He didn't speak, didn't flinch when Kurogane jerked his hands away. His eyes radiated serenity as his arms dropped to his sides. The lack of reaction made Kurogane pause, and rather than shouting, he stared at the boy, stricken. He's not afraid of me. The thought flowed through his mind, leeching away his anger. He used to flinch every time I raised my voice. He always looked like he expected me to hurt him. Why is it different now?

The kid stepped forward, arms circling around Kurogane's armored torso. The height discrepancy made the gesture awkward, but after a moment, Kurogane returned the embrace.

"It's okay to feel hurt," the kid murmured. "And it's okay to feel lonely. You don't have to turn it into anger."

His hands tightened into fists, knuckles pressing against the boy's ribs. He wanted to lash out, to hurt someone the way he'd been hurt, to go back to the way he'd been before Tomoyo had sent him away so he could kill and maim and never, ever feel. But beneath the boiling surface of his anger, an ocean of pain churned, drowning him from the inside, and it hurt, and it shouldn't have because it had been so long since he'd lost his parents. He should've been able to shut out the pain, to mask it behind a wall of rage so tall and impenetrable that even he wouldn't be able to see what was inside.

And he couldn't.

"Bullshit," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "What good is anger if you can't use it to push aside everything else?"

"Pain teaches you empathy. Loneliness teaches you how to reach out to others." The boy's hand moved in circles, the pressure barely noticeable through his armor. "And yes, it hurts. Sometimes, it hurts so much that you don't know what to do with it all. But the reason you brought me here, the reason you reached out for help, was because you weren't sure you could handle it on your own." The kid pressed his forehead against Kurogane's chestplate. "I know what that's like. I don't think I'd be able to face our battle in Clow alone. Not just because I don't think I'm strong enough, but because if I didn't have someone to keep me from turning back, I don't think I'd be brave enough to do it."

"You're wrong," Kurogane growled, sliding back to rest his hands on the kid's shoulders. "I was wrong. I shouldn't have called you a coward. A coward would never have gotten involved with someone like me."

Surprise lit up the kid's eyes as his cheeks reddened. A flicker of insecurity chased the shock as he looked down. "There are still times when we're together that I'm afraid to touch you because I think you'll pull away. I'm afraid that you'll just stop caring about me."

"Kid, you'd have to do something pretty awful to make me stop caring about you."

The boy's fingers flexed. "Like what?"

Kurogane frowned. "I don't know, something bad. You don't have a bunch of dark secrets, do you?"

For a moment, the kid froze, his whole body rigid. "It's not . . . They're not secrets. They're just things that I don't like to talk about. Things from before I met you."

Well, that figures, Kurogane thought. The rest of us all have horrible, traumatic histories. Why wouldn't the kid have things he doesn't want to talk about? He sighed, pulling the kid closer and tousling his hair. "I pretty much figured something bad must have happened to you for you to end up stuck in a tube for seven years. But if you're not ready to talk about it, then I won't ask."

"I . . . appreciate that."

"Good. Now, let's get out of here. I've seen enough."

The boy nodded, slipping out of his embrace and walking briskly toward the place where Kurogane had left their horse. He seemed eager to leave this place behind.

Kurogane cast one last glance at the splintered, broken building he'd once called home. He tried to imagine what it could have been, if the demons had never attacked—if he'd instead spent a few more years under his parents' watchful eyes, smiling, fueled by love and dedication rather than revenge and rage. He might have turned out better, less angry. But if his peaceful life had never been shattered, he might never have met Tomoyo, might never have been sent on this journey. Might never have met the kid.

"Kurogane-san, are you coming?" the boy asked, watching him from half a block away.

It was worth it, he thought, meeting the boy's eyes. Maybe it hurt, but it was worth it. "Yeah, I'm coming." He turned away from the house and started walking toward the kid. When he caught up, he let his hand tangle in the boy's hair, ruffling it so it stuck up at every angle.

When he left his home behind, he didn't look back.