Fic - What’s Waiting Beyond (5/7)

[konnichipuu]

Title: What’s Waiting Beyond (5/7)
Chapters: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [epilogue]
Pairings: KuroFai, SyaoSaku
Word count for this chapter: 8,022
Rating: NC-17 (whoops)
Warnings: hints at sex (that totally was unplanned for, they just can't keep to themselves), violence, gore, stupid silliness, semi-coherent rambling on technology
Summary: On one of his missions, Kurogane meets a strange woman at a devastated space station. The nightmares from his past return. And he somehow won't get rid of that particular idiot blabbering at him about dragons.
Author’s Note: This is a remix of the highly recommended Catch A Dragon By The Tail by
reikah. The plot catches up and stuff in this chapter! Hooray! (Plot, you're late.)


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__CHAPTER FIVE__

“I’ve merely come to find you,” Xing Huo said stoically, stepping out of the shadows, metallic sand grating under her boots. “These people wouldn’t have had to die hadn’t you taken to hiding yourself. My master’s patience is running out, Storm Bringer.” Her long, black dress shifted around her and came to a swinging stop as she stood still. She shook back her frizzy hair to put her pale, doll-like face into the light. “You have run for a long time from a decision that might be one of the most important to be made in the universe.”

“That’s rather conceived, don’t you think,” Fai said coldly. “There are more important things to the universe than who will be rightful King of the dragons.” The room seemed to shrink around the two humanoids, their presence filling the air so thickly that Kurogane could hardly breathe. A glance at the children told him that they felt no different, stunned silent where they stood. “It only has started to truly matter after Fei Wong started to kill races as though the universe belonged to him. Acid Spitter, this is the first time we talk face to face and I don’t even know your title - but even you have to see that Fei Wong’s plans are madness. You have to stop following him, or I will have to kill you, as well.”

“I don’t fear death,” she said. “I know that you have killed the King’s agents, wherever they appear, and I am prepared to die at your hands or at those of my master should I ever fail.”

“What is it that he promises to you?” Fai asked. “A long life? Rein over the universe? The ascension, of all insane things?”

“I don’t need promises to serve him,” Xing Huo said coolly. “To most of us, it is enough that he has freed us from our slavery to you, Storm Dragon.” Fai merely stared at her for a moment, his mouth working silently. Kurogane’s head snapped around to stare at the man. Too many things, too suddenly - he started to resent that Fai hadn’t prepared him any better for this.

“We have taught you,” Fai replied after a moment, his voice rising. “We have cherished and protected you - stupid child, how can you call this slavery? What do you even think the ascension does mean? When do you think it is supposed to happen? After having listened to all the wisdom a dying creature can give you?” Fai laughed self-depreciatingly. “It’s not something that can be taught - we merely tried to show you the way, but I see that you direly misunderstood everything we tried to convey to you.”

“You pretend that you don’t even know what your underlings were doing to us,” Xing Huo said, her face growing incredulous. “But did you truly not know, Storm Bringer? How cruel your faithful brethren have been? How they have extended their hands to pain us and to abuse the bond of servitude?”

“They’d never-“ Fai started but was cut short.

“You’re lying!” she erupted, fury in her eyes. “You knew, child of the Storm King! You knew what was happening!”

“I didn’t!” Fai bellowed. Both of them stared at each other, panting. The silence was so thick that it was hard to breathe. “Believe me when I say that we didn’t know about anything improper happening in the lower ranks,” he said, sounding almost apologetic in his anger.

“If this is true, then it is just as well that you will be killed and that another one will be King, hereafter,” she said in a low voice. Her gaze flickered over to Kurogane, and her features softened, ever so slightly. “Get your human out of here, if he means anything to you.” Fai looked confused for a moment, then his features contorted as though someone had emptied a bucket of cold water over his head. The thudding started at the same moment. Kurogane looked up at the ceiling, as booms shook the freighter, as though meteorites were raining down on the outside.

“Out,” Fai whispered, and then he whirled around, grabbing Kurogane by the shoulder and pulling him after him as he started running. “Out, out, out!” he roared. “Sakura-chan, Syaoran-kun, with me!” The ceiling above them showed cracks and then parts of it were ripped up. Kurogane heard Sakura’s shout as she was ripped up in the whirlwind, and he felt the air being ripped from his mouth.

It stopped abruptly as a bubble of blue energy popped up around them, big enough to contain him and the children, crackling and unrefined. Sakura would have hit the floor, hadn’t Syaoran been able to hold his balance better than her and be still on the ground to catch her fall. Fai ran until they reached the children, still pulling Kurogane behind him.

“Sakura-chan, how do we get to Kurogane’s ship, from here?” he shouted over the din. “Port 5B.”

“Er, wait,” her hands shook with shock as she pulled out the disk with the map, and she kept looking up to the ceiling, her eyes wide with fear. Fai ripped the device out of her hands and activated it with in a quick succession of pressed buttons, making the translucent, three-dimensional map of the ship pop up, once again. “Fai, what is coming for us?” she asked, her face slack with horror. The bangs still shook the ship as more and more of the ceiling was torn off.

“It’s not coming for you, and I’ll get you out of here,” he said, turning the hologram in the air, his eyes flickering over tunnels and halls as he accessed a route out of the dying ship. Kurogane remembered to put on his helmet and Syaoran followed almost immediately, whispering to Sakura to do the same. “Okay, okay, got it,” Fai murmured, sounding harassed. He closed his eyes lowering his head until his forehead almost touched the softly glowing orb before him. He extended one arm, and Kurogane had the feeling he could hear the magic sprouting from his fingers, sharp like the sound of a bell, as the orb around them retracted and then rushed out in a tunnel that formed a glowing way towards Kurogane’s ship. There was perspiration bright on his skin and his eyes seemed to glow in the same color as his magic as he opened them. “Follow the light, you will find Souhi,” he said, his voice tight with exertion.

“What about the people in the engine rooms?” Sakura asked, even as Syaoran started to pull her away.

“I’ll try my best to not let this harm them,” Fai said quietly. The ceiling above them finally gave out and Kurogane forgot to breathe. The giant head of a reptile, twice as tall as Kurogane himself at least, shoved in through the hole, its massive body following as it plummeted towards the ground of the hall.

“Run,” Kurogane bellowed at the children, and started to turn to follow them, as the form of the woman across the room started to change. He stopped in his tracks, eyes glued to her as he watched her upper body morph an stretch, expanding before his eyes in ways that made his head hurt. She grew upwards, snake-like neck stretching upwards, and then fell onto her four feet tale whipping out behind her. She was smaller than the other dragon, a lithe predator, black, and beautiful, and deadly.

Horns protruding from under her jaw, Acid Spitter, wingspan wide enough to fill the breadth of a torus-

Kurogane drew his sword, falling into an attack stance next to Fai, as the children scrambled away behind them.

“Get out of here, Kuro-chan!” Fai hollered, as the ground shook and the dragon spread its wings uselessly in the vacuum, jaws opening into what might have been a roar, had there been any air to let it travel. All that Kurogane could see through the pounding haze of rage was the smaller one behind him. Soft patch under the jaws, go for the eyes, watch the spiked tail - what were they breathing?

“Fuck no,” Kurogane growled.

“You don’t belong here,” Fai shouted at him, getting desperate. “Go look after the children, you stubborn human!”

“I won’t! Deal with it!” Kurogane roared back. Fai’s teeth were bared in a snarl that looked more frightened than threatening. “This is as much my fight as yours,” Kurogane spat. “And I don’t trust you to not get yourself killed, so I’m going to make sure you won’t!” Fai grabbed his hand, fingers pressing through layers of cloth hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t do this to me,” he pleaded. The black dragons fell into stance behind him, but Fai seemed to ignore them. “Don’t do this to me, don’t add to the deaths on my conscience. Please. You told me to stop running, and I won’t, this time,” he pressed a kiss to the visor of Kurogane’s helmet, and it would have been ridiculous in any under circumstances, but in this moment, Kurogane stared at him, stunned, resisting the urge to pull off his helmet and do this right. Fai used his moment of hesitation to shove at him with inhuman strength, making him stumble backwards. “It’s your turn to run. Stay alive.”

Kurogane started to reply, but broke off in a strangled shout of warning, as the bigger dragon behind Fai started to move, tearing across the room in a black blurr and breaking through the force field as though it was made of water. Kurogane needed only a moment to realize that it was not coming for Fai - it was coming for him. Fai turned barely in time, a roar erupting from his throat and throwing himself at Kurogane to push him out of the way, and then he was hugged in light so blindingly bright that Kurogane ripped his arms in front of his eyes even as he fell. He was thrown through the magical barrier as it sprang apart like a popped bubble, his ribs aching from the careless power that Fai had used in the heat of the moment, and he landed on his back hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. When the stars stopped dancing in front of his eyes, the black dragon pressed down atop a silver one, teeth digging into its shoulder. The silver dragon cried silently in the vacuum, blood springing up from broken skin and coating the black beast’s muzzle and the bright wings that were uselessly flapping.

Fuck. Fucking, goddamn fuck.

Kurogane hauled himself to his feet, grabbing for Ginryuu that had flown from his hand. His eyes fell on Xing Huo, who watched the fight silently from the back of the hall, tail swishing like that of a cat. She turned slowly to look at him, meeting his gaze from her black, emotionless eyes. And he recognized her. He knew it was her, he knew she had been the one to tear his home apart. His mind suddenly became clear and the situation almost translucent. He could give in to the over-powering rage that pooled in his belly and attack her, the demon mistress, the dragon that had taken away his childhood, and both him and Fai would die for his revenge. But he had a choice, at this point, and this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. The dragon blinked and time started again.

He turned on his heel, running for the beasts that were intertwined, trashing on the floor. The bigger dragon’s  teeth were wet with blood, and Fai’s trashing had become less vehement, eyes rolling up in its sockets and his pain reverberating in every fiber of Kurogane’s being, the way his voice had, earlier, even as no sound would travel in the vacuum. Beings that could live without oxygen would have found ways to communicate without sound. And Fai’s silent screams hit him in the chest like hammers, leaving him stumbling and slipping on the metallic sand.

He concentrated, focused, drowned the inner sound out in precise movements - this was what he was trained for, he could deal with combat situations, he could deal with pain - sword scraping through the dust as he dragged it behind, before he lifted it for an attack. He let loose a war scream and leapt high as he could - he saw the attacker’s eyes widen in surprise as they noticed the human, the beast’s jaws clamped shut around flesh and unable to move from its place without relinquishing its advantage - and he brought his sword down almost vertically, driving it deep into the dragon’s eye.

The reptile finally loosened its grip, screaming mentally, a sound so different and so full of hatred and malevolent, so bone deep that it left Kurogane’s teeth aching. It reared back and up, shaking Kurogane like a ragdoll as the man searched for a foothold on the beast’s snout, tearing a path through its eyeball as though it was a ripe fruit, shifting the hard lens and the horn ring around it as he went. Gore splattered his suit and almost obscured his vision, painting what had been white in dark red the consistency of syrup.

He felt the blade tear free and for a moment, time seemed to stand still as the raging creature flung him off his head. He was too high above the ground, he’d break every bone - and then, he turned in the air and realized he would never even reach that end, as Xing Huo leapt for him, her jaws ripped open to tear him to shreds in the air. Unthankful bitch, that could have been her eye, hadn’t he been generous, Kurogane thought. He started to rip Ginryuu up, ready to send a ki attack down her lying throat. Something like white sails hit him in the face, swiping him out of the air and cushioning his fall. He struggled in panic, disorientated for a moment, before he realized he was caught on the inside of Fai’s wing and sliding to the ground in a spot free from hate-filled, black dragons. He still hit the plastic beyond hard enough to make his knees scream in pain and he stumbled forward as he looked up, at the bleeding, ragged silver dragon above him.

“Fuck, you’re fast,” he panted unwittingly. He realized that even with the outer speakers activated the sound shouldn’t have reached Fai, but the dragon seemed to grin at him, understanding him, either way. Sending his voice directly into another person’s mind - did that make him able to read thoughts, too? That bastard, Kurogane thought. Fai’s initial opponent tensed before them, readying himself for another attack, as Xing Huo slunk in the background, snarling at Kurogane. The demon hunter realized only now how huge the dominant beast was. It was bulky and its head armed with horns and a heavy-set chin, teeth as long as Kurogane’s lower arms. It must have been at least 1.5 times the size of Kurogane. A Fire Breather, Kurogane realized, recognizing the form from the dragon book.

“I call upon the ancient rules,” Fai bellowed, pulling himself back into a position of defense, unharmed wing spread as though to shield Kurogane. For a moment, it looked like the black dragon would pounce, anyway. Then it reared its head back, snarling and blood still running down its face from its severed eye, mingling with Fai’s blood that was dripping from its teeth.

“The ancient rules,” the dragon spoke for the first time, derogatory laughter in its voice. It started to pace before Fai, as though held back through an invisible barrier. Fai was watching the both of them, and Kurogane realized that his chest was heaving with pain, and that there were spasm running through his body from his severed shoulder. “Weren’t those the rules your own blood had declared barbaric and prohibited, Storm Prince?”

“My father declared it barbaric that we kill each other over our honor,” Fai replied grimly. “But I don’t see how this situation could be resolved in any other way, Fei Wong Reed. The call to the council is sent, the gathering will follow once a planet has been chosen.” Kurogane opened his mouth to ask how this had worked, and Fai threw him a glance before he managed to produce a sound. “Psychic link with the elder dragons - a call upon the rules will always reach them. He can’t attack me, right now, without signing his own death sentence.” The black dragon came to a halt, staring at Fai with pure disgust, without question having heard the thoughts directed at Kurogane.

“You’ve been buying yourself time for far too long,” it said coldly. “But nothing will change your fate. You will die either here or in the arena. I can’t wait to squeeze the life out of you, Storm One.” It took off with a leap that shook the ground, catapulting himself out of the freighter through the hole in the ceiling. Xing Huo tensed to start after him, but hesitated as her gaze met that of Kurogane.

“I should have killed you the first time I saw you, human,” she rumbled, sounding pained. “But you made me think you humans could be different. I served my master badly.” Kurogane suddenly felt that it wasn’t the fact that she had not killed him, which she regretted, but the fact that she would have to. His stomach burned with pure, icy rage, hatred for her, who had the gall to treat him with pity. She followed her self-declared King, wings that had to be a pure atavism to the space-traveling species folded to her back. It were bare moments that they were out of the room, before the radio connection kicked in.

-gane-san? Can you hear me? the kid’s voice shouted over the crackling connection. The demon hunter almost jumped at the sudden words.

“Why are you still here, brat?” he asked with irritation.

The machines have been dead up to now, the kid answered, and we wouldn’t have left withou-

There was the sound of a minor fight for the microphone. Where are you? Why didn’t you follow us? Kurogane winced at the sharp worry in Sakura’s voice. Are you hurt?

“I’m fine, still at the damned freight hall,” Kurogane grunted. He threw Fai a look as the dragon dragged himself over to the middle of the room, pain written in the twitches and shivers that erupted under the scaled skin, in the way he was favoring his foot. His eyes were closed, as he sank down in the sand that was black with blood. “Come over here, to the closest dock, and prepare for a surgery for Fai,” he added and started towards the dragon. Sakura gave an affirmative and specified the dock they would land at. She mentioned something else, but he didn’t listen to her, anymore. A blue field erupted around the silver dragon and his form shrunk within a split second, forming the human that Kurogane knew. He still wore the orange suit, and the hand of his unhurt side pulled the helmet out of the dust that the demon hunter now realized he was kneeling over.

Kurogane came at him, touching the field, and then realizing that he could pass through without trouble. Seemed like he was not recognized as a threat. The radio connection sizzled and died as he passed through the blue light, and the numbers were projected against his visor shot up, recognizing breathable air where there should have been none. He creates his own atmosphere, Kurogane realized at the back of his mind, as he sank down next to Fai.

The man was shivering with blood loss and pain, his arm limp at his side as he tried to fasten the helmet with only one hand. Kurogane wondered how this whole mumbo jumbo worked - the suit was untouched, but Fai’s shoulder must have been bleeding under the layers. He stopped trying to understand all the magic that he had witnessed within the last hour, grunted and batted his fingers away as he helped him seal the suit. Fai looked at him out of tired, blue eyes, his face pale and coated in a thin sheen of sweat. Kurogane kept looking at him, burn rising in his cheeks.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “But you’re an idiot. If you’d stopped trying to look after me, this wouldn’t have happened.”

You’re not very good at admitting you’re wrong, are you, Fai breathed tiredly over the radio, closing his eyes. And it’s okay. I just need a few hours to collect myself before the fight. Kurogane stared at him incredulously.

“Self-healing powers, too,” he half-asked, half-stated. Fai snorted humorlessly.

If only, he said, pained smile on his lips, and his eyes huge and glassy. He had sunk together, boneless heap. It will just have to do. He breathed shallowly, before he lapsed into babbling, You should go back to New Tokyo with the children, stay in the protection of the princess. They probably won’t attack you, after this, as. they don’t need to draw me out of hiding, anymore, I can’t not show up without breaching the rules. I’ll leave in a bit, too, find a place to rest. Just need a moment in this form, too exhausting to have so much mass to sustain, right now.

“Yeah. No,” Kurogane said. Fai looked up at him in disorientation, and the demon hunter slung the dragon’s good arm over his shoulder and pulled him up. Fai bit down on a cry of pain and the force field around them wavered and died down, the bit of air inside being sucked into the vacuum and making the sand under their feet sputter. “You’re coming with me and get your sorry ass treated.” Fai laughed tightly and stumbled along.

Just leave me, Kuro-pon, he breathed, but let himself be half-carried through the airlocks that had automatically sealed themselves off, as the air had escaped the room. They made it through the empty hallways of the ship that were eerily untouched by the chaos that had come over the freighter in the last days, and up to the closest dock. Kurogane more shoved him than he climbed up the ladder and down into the ship.

Syaoran already was waiting to help them, pulling Fai up enthusiastically enough that the man had to bite down on another cry of pain.

“You alright, kid?” Kurogane remembered to ask, as he peeled off his helmet and the headphones.

“We both are,” Syaoran answered, never taking his worried eyes off Fai. He reported swiftly how they had found the ship and flown it over to the docking point, as they carried the hurt man over to a small storage room next to the engines. Kurogane switched on the lights - it was chaotic, filled with half-forgotten cargo, lockers against the walls with emergency suits, folding cots piled up next to a cleaning bucket in the corner. It wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t want to put Fai through the strain of gravity flipping, right now. Together, they lowered Fai onto a cot in the middle of the room, and Kurogane pulled off the gloves of his skintight suit before he started to help Fai out of his own.

“It’s okay,” Fai said, weakly batting his hands away. “I’ll do it myself.” His arms were shaking and Kurogane didn’t take him by his word.

“Yeah, just shut up and let me help you,” he replied. Fai started to protest but subsided under the demon hunter’s glare. “It‘s my fucking job to treat the people I pull out of wracks, and I’d be grateful if you’d just let me do that.”

“Whatever you say, Kuro-puppy,” he smiled weakly and let himself be stripped, standing up to step out of the suit at one point. Again, Kurogane noticed that his blood-stained white shirt hadn’t been touched by the dragon’s teeth, even as the skin beneath was torn open with teeth marks deep enough to form visible gashes even underneath the gore. Fai hissed as Kurogane peeled the cloth away, starting the bleeding once again. He hadn’t noticed Sakura entering until he heard a small gasp from behind him.

“Fai-san, I’m so sorry we couldn’t help you,” she said, sounding pained. “What happened to you?” Syaoran helped her with the an arm-full of emergency kit and a bowl with warm water that she had brought with her. Kurogane accepted both and started unpacking what he needed on the table close to them, pulling a chair up and having Fai sit down on the cot.

“Later, dear,” Fai replied with a strained smile and whimpered, as Kurogane started washing the wound a bit too harshly. “Kuro-pon, are you always this rough with your survivors?” he joked, his face pale.

Kurogane stopped in his tracks at the question. Heat started roaring in his ears, his vision whitening as he remembered Xing Huo, asking exactly the same question. That bitch. He had treated her, he had sheltered her, he had taken her to fucking New Tokyo, when she had been the one to tear open the very station he had been sent to save. When she’d been the one to let his mother die in front of his eyes. She had known. She had fucking known and she hadn’t even cared enough to not use him.

“Kuro-chan,” Fai’s words broke through the white noise in his ears, and Kurogane looked up, concentrating on those blue eyes, calm pools within the confused, angered haze of his mind. “Talk to me - what is it that upsets you?” Kurogane snorted in disgust, and washed the cloth, the warm water clouding red with the dragon’s blood. Same as human, Kurogane thought. Red, just red, no better, no worse.

“Nothing,” he grunted unconvincingly even to his own ears. “Stop squirming, I’ll give you painkillers.” Because painkillers had worked just fine for the last dragon that he had treated. She had been vulnerable under his hands, not even afraid, not even regarding him as a threat after all that she had done. He reached behind himself, knocking over the flask with pills with a loud clatter, and had to clamp his hands into fists to not hurl the whole tablet with medication to the ground in a fit of rage.

“Is there anything we can help you with,” Sakura asked fearfully.

“Can’t I have some fucking peace of mind, here!” Kurogane roared. The children shrunk towards the doorway, and Kurogane forced himself to draw a steadying breath. “Never mind, just… give me a moment. I’ll treat him on my own.”

“Okay,” Syaoran squeaked. He had put up with Kurogane’s temper for a few years, when he had been training at New Tokyo to become a demon hunter, but even without the fine-tuning to his mentor’s moods, he’d probably have realized that it was truly time to retract, right now. “We’ll be downstairs, taking up contact with the authorities about the evacuation and… other important things. Like… stuff.” He pulled Sakura out with him, before she could ask him any more questions about Kurogane’s health and state of mind. Kurogane sighed into the following silence, rubbing a hand across his forehead. When he turned around, Fai was still sitting at the edge of the cot, studying him wordlessly.

“What,” Kurogane grunted. He went over to the sink that almost vanished within the clutter of the storage room to draw a glass of drinking water. He handed Fai two pills and the glass and the man downed them without complain.

“This is about Xing Huo, isn’t it,” Fai said carefully, putting the glass aside. Kurogane suppressed the irrational surge of anger at even hearing that name.

“I’d have appreciated it if you’d warned me about the thought reading,” he grunted, and continued washing the grime off of the wounds. They were still bleeding, and fresh blood mixed with the warm water and trickled down Fai’s pale skin to soak into his pants.

“I try not to do it,” Fai said through gritted teeth. “And it’s harder in this form - human organs for psychic abilities are much smaller, you know. But I can’t help it if you’re thinking so very loudly, Kuro-min,” he grinned. Kurogane pressed down on the swollen skin a bit harsher than strictly necessary and Fai hissed and twitched.

“Thinking loudly, as if,” Kurogane grumbled. Fai had the gall to snicker. But what surprised Kurogane was that he didn’t get any more angry at Fai for it. He somehow felt calmer, having Fai in the room, simply going through the motions of dressing the wounds, settling his mind.

“You took her with you when you left Jade station, didn’t you?” Fai asked him silently. Kurogane didn’t answer, just pressed his palms to Fai’s upper body to make him turn around so that he could clean the back of his shoulder. The wounds were ugly, the teeth that had ripped them into pale skin crooked and jagged, meant to tear big chunks of flesh out of anything that was less tough than dragon skin. Kurogane noted how the curve of the puncture marks trailed off and was incongruent with the form of the dragon’s jaw, as morphing into human form had remodeled Fai’s body.

“You’re lucky your carotid artery wasn’t hit,” he mentioned as he cleaned the shoulder blade, wondering where exactly the wings would normally sprout from. Fai made a tight noise of agreement, obviously in pain. He’d have to give him something stronger, later. Make him sleep, if he was to fight again within a few hours. This was insanity, Kurogane realized. No one could fight like this.

“I treated her arms,” he said after a long pause, coming back to Fai’s earlier question. It was easier to say these things while he faced Fai’s back, watching his reaction without being watched. Fai gave an implied nod, moving as little as possible and shivering as cooling water ran over fresh wounds. Kurogane washed the cloth, and remembered her blood staining the water the way Fai’s did now. “Guess she hurt herself on her acid, melting a hole into the outer mantel. It was infected. She was pretty bad off.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Fai replied quietly. Kurogane huffed in irritation. “And even if you had, killing her wouldn’t have solved anything.”

“It would have saved those people up there,” Kurogane bit out, drawing a breath as he realized he was working up his temper, again. There were no enemies here to direct it at, just a wounded man. What the hell. He took a moment to wash the blood out of Fai’s dusty, dirty ponytail, before discarding the cloth in the bucket.

“Fei Wong would just have send someone else,” Fai replied, as Kurogane stood up to wash his hands off the blood in the sink, and picked the disinfectant out of the collection of the first-aid kit. “She’s nothing but a pawn, in this game. Her death would merely have stalled things.”

“Yeah, and still that’s exactly what you seem to have done ever since that Fei Wong guy took the power. Killing off mooks, running from him,” he replied, remembering the exchange with Xing Huo. Fai snorted.

“If I die, all of this is over,” he whispered. “I’m the last fighter of the Storm Dragons - and for all that we know the last one strong enough to challenge him, within the seven species. There will be no one left to stand up to him, after me. I’ve never wanted this.” Kurogane looked at him, gray and shaking and miserable, and searched for something to say.

“How’s the pain?” Kurogane asked gruffly. “You want a shot before I start stitching?”

“No needles!” Fai shouted over his shoulder, sounding panicked. “I’m fine!”

“King of the Dragons, afraid of syringes,” Kurogane snorted, and fumbled on the pair of glasses that were tucked away in an inner pocket of the first aid kit. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the change. He never really needed those glasses, but he used to wear them for the fiddly things, such as the few times he did have to stitch.

“I’m not going to be king,” Fai replied with amusement to his voice. “I’d be horrible, I’ve always been more of a scholar than a fighter. In case I win, I’ll be able to appoint a king within my bloodline, though.” He craned his neck, his eyes wide with fear as Kurogane drew an anesthetic up into a syringe. “C’mon, Kuro-min, I really don’t need one,” he said, shifting uncomfortably.

“You’re going to whine, and I don’t want to listen,” Kurogane answered, flicking the bubble of air out of the tube.

“Now you’re just being cruel,” Fai complained, leaning gradually away as Kurogane leaned in. “How about you just let it go. Kuro-pin, put the needle away - no, no, no, no,” he jumped up and inched away as Kurogane tried to grab him. Kurogane leveled a glare at him and Fai put on a pout. “Kuro-mun, just do the stitches, alright?”

“Stitching involves needles, too,” Kurogane said.

“Don’t remind me,” Fai said plaintively. “At least you don’t inject stuff under my skin, with those.” Kurogane grumbled and put the syringe aside, waiting for Fai to sit back down with his back to him.

“Okay, hold still,” he said, getting needle and thread out. Fai twitched and let his head roll forward carefully. Kurogane eyed him suspiciously, but he didn’t complain as the needle sunk into his skin. By the time Kurogane had finished his back and told him to turn around, his shoulders were tense with pain, again, and he was so pale his complexion looked slightly green. “That’s it,” Kurogane mumbled, and Fai mysteriously didn’t complain as pressed the needle against his skin to inject the anesthetic, this time. Fai sighed as the numbing effect set in, but refrained from watching Kurogane as he finished his work.

“You alright?” Kurogane asked, as he pulled the one of the last of the stitches shut. Forty-six stitches, he counted, two more and he’d be done. Fai hummed a confirmation, sneaking a quick look at what Kurogane was doing, after all. His eyes didn’t linger on the needle for too long.

“You look good in glasses,” Fai murmured, his lashes lowered. Kurogane glared up at him in annoyance. He couldn’t really deny the spike of interest in his belly, though.

“Shut up, you’re not in your right mind,” he grumbled, pulling the last of the stitches closed.

“You always look good, though,” Fai added. “The scowl, that is adorable.”

Kurogane wanted to snap at him for that part, but the look on Fai’s face made the words freeze in this throat. Kurogane was sure that at least part of the heat on his cheeks and the dilated pupils were due to the painkillers, and that rasp in Fai’s voice was mostly tiredness. He concentrated on the wounds, again, knotting the stitch up, realizing how much heat Fai’s skin radiated. Probably a light fever, too. He should put him to bed, and then he’d need to get out of here. He should get up to look after the kids, organize the evacuation. And he should stop thinking about the things he was thinking about.

He opened his mouth, but when righted himself, he suddenly was so close to Fai’s face that he felt the other man’s breath on his skin, smelled his sweat that was sour and stale. For a moment they hovered, both of them, looking at each other from a distance so close that their noses were almost touching. He could have pulled away, to get the wound knitters and the mull and then put Fai to sleep. He could have grumble and Fai would have laughed, even when he was tired and in pain, and then he could have watched Fai take off to a fight that he might not survive.

Kurogane huffed and closed the inch that was separating them, pressing their lips together, and Fai sighed, as though relieved and a bit exasperated, kissing back slowly. Fingers ran through Kurogane’s hair, threading through it softly and tangling in the short strands at the back of his neck. The kissing was so slow that it was almost chaste, and it shouldn’t send this much interest southwards, Kurogane thought. He shifted, kissing Fai more heatedly, combing hair behind Fai’s ear before he let a palm rest on the good side of his neck. Fai hissed as Kurogane brushed some part of him that was bruised and aching. They pulled away, flushed and hardly noticing anything but the other’s face.

“I’m sorry that I’m so tired, Kuro-love,” Fai said softly, kissing the tip of his nose. “But I’m glad you finally did that.” Kurogane felt his face heat up, and he grumbled and sat back in his chair, searching for the wound-knitting spray on the table to the side. It was as though some of the tension had fallen out of the air, to be replaced with a different kind of expectation. One that they would hardly be able to act on, right now and here.

“How’re you going to know when they find, what is it, an arena?” he asked. “What the hell are those ‘rules’ about, anyway?”

“Imagine it like a radio connection, just more stable, directly inside my head,” Fai hummed, letting Kurogane treat the stitches. He sighed. “How much of the history behind this do you want?” he asked.

“Basics,” Kurogane replied curtly.

“Arena fighting,” Fai started in his best narrator’s voice, “is a tradition, back from the days when dragons still lived on earth and were unable to travel space. Duels were a handy way to settle differences - once challenged, your opponent had to either accept or drop their demands, and as the duels were usually fought to the death, there was no one left to complain, afterwards. This was probably what made them the most popular way to determine a ruling gender among the dragons, too.

“A duel meant that two opponents would face each other within an appointed arena, mostly a flat plain of land, being watched over by the heads of the seven ruling tribes, the elders. There’s a set of strict rules to these challenges, and the condensed form of these form an ideology, a kind of war codex, that up to now has come the closest to religion that dragons ever developed. Breaching the rules would make you an outlaw and in most cases mean sure and imminent death, executed by the seven tribes.“

“Sounds like a cozy society you had going there,” Kurogane commented and padded Fai’s wounds with mull. Fai grinned wryly.

“These are stories from ancient times, and not even much in use, nowadays,” he sighed. “There have hardly been major differences between the major tribes, within the last millennia - the Flowright family has been holding the position of Storm King for as long as written history goes back, and we’ve settled into a form of ruling system in which the king is merely a figure in the background, and decisions are made by the elders of the major tribes. It involves more bickering and bureaucracy than fights to the death.”

“What’s that Fei Wong guy about, then?” Kurogane grunted.

“He overthrew the empire,” Fai said. “He assembled an army of the minor tribes and simply led war against the major ones. However, even as he’s holding the palace under his control, the tribes are not obeying him. He’s slaughtering them, and they simply refuse to obey, as long as he’s not proven himself worthy. He’s not even part of a species that would be considered worthy of even sitting in on the councils, never mention leading them, and he now tries to settle into the old system to gain the kind of influence he needs. Which means killing each and every of the Storm Dragons to prove his position on the long run.”

“If I get this correctly, he belongs to a race that you basically gave no rights to,” Kurogane mentioned. “To be honest, I’m not that surprised that this happened.”

“They have less rights to voice their opinions because they’re like children,” Fai exclaimed, rubbing a hand across his forehead. “They’re still cared for, but that doesn’t mean they need to make decisions over how we conduct state affairs! Ever since Fei Wong has been ruling, all he did was executing large parts of the major tribes and starting to slaughter other races that have started to gain psychic abilities, similar to those of the dragons. His sovereignty is based upon fear of losing his power again, to anyone, and he’s ready to kill whomever dares to threaten him. The minor races can barely handle the power they’re given. Including them in decisions that concern all of us is insanity!”

“Yeah. No wonder, as I say,” Kurogane repeated, finishing the bandages around Fai’s chest. The dragon groaned.

“I know,” he said. “I know. But it’s not that easy to fix.”

“Never said it would be,” Kurogane answered. He studied Fai’s sad face, mulling the flood of information he had just received over. Fei Wong Reed had been decimating the most powerful tribes, first. The Storm Dragons. “You’ve also lost your family in this war,” he said.

“Yeah,” Fai admitted silently, eyes flickering to the ground. “But not everyone, and most of them a long time ago.”

“Friends?” Kurogane asked hands balling into fists. Fai took a shaky breath, looking at him out of hollow eyes.

“More than you can imagine,” he said, pain thick in his voice. “So many humans died because I took up contact with them. So many deaths to spite me and to draw me out of hiding. I have been too late to help, too often.”

“Storm Bringer,” Kurogane said, his voice harsh to his own ears, repeating the words that his mother had mentioned in her bedtime stories and that he had believed to be mere fairy tales. “Protector of Suwa.” Fai closed his eyes, raw pain in his features. When he opened them, he looked only marginally more collected.

“I am so sorry, Youou,” he whispered.

“Do you hear me asking where you’ve been?” Kurogane snarled and stood up abruptly to step away from the dragon and towards the door. He looked back at him from the door frame, light cold in the small, cluttered room, and the powerful creature miserable and pale among the cluttered room. “Get some rest, either here or on the other level - there’s enough beds there that are free. And you should eat something, if you feel up to it, too,” he hesitated briefly. “And don’t simply vanish. Tell me if you get that call, or whatever.”

“Thanks,” Fai smiled his sad, fake smile. “I will.” Kurogane left before he felt the need to break something.

*****

Long after the hubbub about the evacuation had died down - things had proceeded fast after the reinforcements had arrived - and the kids had left Souhi, Kurogane lay awake in the darkness of his room. They were drifting aimlessly in space, only him and the dragon, after Sakura had decided they would be able to fly the freighter to its original destination, after all. (There had been a moment when they all had been very silent and pale, while Sakura almost collided with a small moon without even noticing, and Kurogane had made a mental note to never relinquish the controls of his ship to her.)

When the door opened and Fai entered, a silent shadow in the emergency lights, Kurogane didn’t say anything, and merely inched closer to the wall. The man climbed into the narrow bed beside him, favoring his hurt shoulder as he pressed against the heat of Kurogane’s body, breathing fast and shallow, and his eyes reflecting the bit of light that would reach them. Kurogane put an arm around him pulling him close, and Fai went still against him, holding his breath. Both of them were aroused, clearly, and they were too close to each other to even try to deny it, but neither acted on it.

“I don’t blame you,” Kurogane whispered into Fai’s hair, the darkness making the words come easily, even as they cut through the silence like something alien. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just bad with words.”

“It’s okay, I know that it hurts to lose someone,” Fai’s breath hitched, and he pressed his face into Kurogane’s shoulder. He shivered slightly, and the demon hunter ignored the wetness against his arm. They lay, wide awake, still, until Fai’s shivers subsided. He finally angled his head up, searching Kurogane’s lips, kissing him, mouth and tongue and desperately wandering hands, until Kurogane carefully rolled him onto his back to grind against him, making him moan and his breath shudder, and his fingers clutch at Kurogane’s back, murmur his name, over and over again, and different every time, until they both grew still and silent.

Sleep came swift and dreamless, Fai too close against him and his breath wet against Kurogane’s skin. Even as the comfort of sex couldn’t take away the impending danger over their heads, it made them forget, for a moment.

*****

He blinked into the dark, called from his sleep by something he couldn’t define. It smelled of wood, the rich straw of the tatami mats, and of wet soil and grass. It was nighttime, the habitat passing by the back of the planet and its shadow tinting the village in darkness. The rain machines were activated, filling the air with a light pitter-patter of falling water. No one was supposed to be up, but he somehow knew that that wasn’t true, tonight. Lights were flickering over the ceiling of his room, reflecting off the pond in the garden, and suddenly Youou was fully awake.

He climbed to his feet noiselessly, his naked soles sticky against the polished wood as he stepped out onto the porch and into the garden. There, by the water, amidst the weaving reed, his mother stood, dressed in a white yukata, face and palms angled up to catch the falling rain. For a moment he was squinting, trying to find out what she was doing - and then, suddenly, silver light was illuminating the garden, pouring through the artificial rain, painting her face and shoulders in brightness. Youou’s gaze shot upwards - and he held his breath.

The solar mirrors and the panes above flashed in light that didn’t originate from any kind of star. A twisting and turning body of light passed by as though alive, white light reflecting off its surface and blinding Youou. And then, behind the meters of translucent plastic and glass, something appeared that seemed to be the head of a creature, looking inside. Watching them.

“Mum!” Youou cried out, and he was running towards her before he noticed that he was moving, his feet flying over the grass. His mother turned around, face open with surprise. The atmosphere quivered and broke, and in a flurry of light, the creature disappeared. Youou clung to his mother’s yukata and stared up, searching the deepness of space for whatever it was that had visited them.

“Shhh,” his mother made softly, and as he turned to look at her, her gaze were still turned up towards the far light of the stars. “Don’t be afraid, Youou. You could feel him, couldn’t you?”

“Him?” Youou asked anxiously, angered by his own confusion. “What was that?”

She looked down at him, her face a bit sad and filled with gentleness, as she stroked a soothing hand through his hair. “You will find out, when you are older; you carry the knowledge to understand them within,” she said. “A bond connects the both of you, stronger than either of you know, yet. He will come to find you,” she leaned down to kiss his spiked hair. “When the time comes, protect him, and let him protect you, Youou. Hold him dear.”