Fic: This Cold Country (2)
Title: This Cold Country
Rating: T
A/N: For the kuroxfai late summer contest. Based upon my take of what might have happened had not both Kurogane and Fai’s mothers died in canon, and just what exactly would happen with the twins’ great magic.
Much thanks to Crys for the Kuro-quack nickname. X3
Warning - this isn’t happy.
Part one is here.
To practically everyone else save Kurogane Yuui is a perfectly rational, sane human being. A good king who sits at Council with his brother, listening to his councillors thoughtfully, offering suggestions, talking through ideas as Kurogane watches from the shadows, kept within sight always of one of the twins. Both of the brothers are clearly intelligent, diplomatic in a way Kurogane isn’t, drawing a wonder if it was something all royalty had to be good at - Tomoyo, dark-haired and delicate, had pure steel running through her frame, echoing in her voice when she gave direct commands.
As soon as the Council is done, however, Yuui is back to his usual idiotic self, draping himself across Kurogane and declaring himself bored, even as Fai hands him a pile of paperwork from the meeting and advises him to work through it soon. Yuui pouts and clings to Kurogane and says he wants to go play, but takes the paperwork and somehow wangles Kurogane into carrying it for him, although the shinobi himself has no idea how it happened. (He’s an assassin, not a packhorse.)
Yuui trills and flirts and skips all the way back to his chambers unburdened, but once they arrive there he does actually settle down to work, shooing Kurogane over to look at some books in the corner. Kurogane goes, grumbling, and they manage to last like that for an hour, and then Kurogane wanders across and sees Yuui has to have technically been done with his work for at least a good twenty minutes, and is now drawing stick figures and smiley blob-shapes down the side of some of the official documents. His white gloves are spotted with ink in places, and his voice is sickeningly bright as Kurogane’s shadow looms over him.
“Kuro-pon~!!”
“It’s Kurogane.”
“Kuro-pyun,” Yuui ignores him as usual, “did you come to check up on me? Kyaa, Kuro-tam loves me after all~!!” He flails his arms in what is supposed to be joy, Kurogane grabbing one wrist to avoid getting smacked in the face with it.
“Idiot,” he barks out reflexively, fingers curled around the slender limb in his grasp, feeling the thin bones beneath furred robes, expensive cloth. The cuff of Yuui’s sleeve has slid back, revealing the line of the stained glove beneath, drawing the shinobi’s attention. “You’re going to need t’change these.”
Yuui waved his free hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, Kuro-wan shall mother me so until I do and - Kuro-tan!” The name is blurted out in surprise, blue eyes wide beneath their owner’s mask as Kurogane looks at them, having just pulled off the glove on the hand of the king’s he held. His hand, now bare, is pale and fair, only a few shades of the snow Valeria is coated in. “W-what…” Words fail him.
“What?” Kurogane is blank, not understanding what has the other so shocked.
“You don’t…” Yuui gathers himself. “Kuro-cha is terribly forward.” He tries to pull his hand away from the man from another world, but Kurogane refuses to let go, still confused.
“Explain.”
“It’s…not proper etiquette to show skin to another, individuality.” Yuui fumbles a little. “Only lovers…” He trails off, but his meaning is clear.
Kurogane is curious. “So no-one’s ever held your hand before without wearing gloves?”
“They have, before the decree of the Masks was introduced, but that…” Yuui glances aside, “that was a very long time ago.”
Kurogane can remember holding hands with people - his mother, when she was trying to help him feel better, Souma, correcting his grip on his sword, Tomoyo, little and small and trusting, happily being guided around the palace by her larger companion. Skin on skin, holding hands - touching - was a human thing, a way to say ‘I’m here; I trust you’. How many had lived and died in Valeria without that simple form of communication?
Kurogane raises the hand he holds almost unconsciously, placing a kiss on the back like he’d seen foreign ambassadors to Nihon do to the Amaterasu and to Tomoyo, somehow…somehow trying to mend all that was wrong was this world’s way of thinking.
(“Lord Kurogane has his father’s kindness.” Tomoyo’s voice is sweet in the mind, her frame younger and smaller then but still just as decisive as ever, smiling after seeing her noble fetch down a younger girl’s ball that had become stuck in a tree.
“Tch,” Kurogane had looked aside. “She would’ve bawled the palace down if she hadn’t got her toy back - I didn’t need the headache.”
Tomoyo had only continued to smile at him, and under her scrutiny Kurogane had slowly started to blush.)
He turns over the hand he holds, not wishing to treat Yuui like a lady - the king is a man (albeit an annoying one) -, and so he presses his lips to the inside of the blond’s wrist, to the frantic beating through the tender skin, and hears Yuui’s breath catch.
Silence.
Still.
Yuui snatches his hand back, scalded, and Kurogane watches as the royal stiffly organises his documents, picking up the pile and heading for the door. “I need to deliver these.” He leaves, and doesn’t take Kurogane with him.
#
On the eighth day Kurogane is in Valeria, it becomes obvious Yuui is avoiding him. He has not seen the younger king since the day of the Council meeting, Fai - his guard whilst Yuui is elsewhere - vaguely replying that his brother was with their mother, who was ‘very sick’ at that time.
Kurogane is frustrated, sick of sitting idly by attempting to read, in no way soothed by the crackle of the nearby fire. He drops his book to the floor with a thump, glowering impatiently over at the blond king sitting at a desk on the other side of the room working through some paper or other, trying to bore through the man’s skull to get some answers. “Why haven’t you killed me yet?”
Fai doesn’t glance up at him, tone perfectly even. “What makes you think I’m going to kill you?”
“Don’t you generally kill the people coming to kill you?”
There’s a pause, Fai setting down the pen he’d been using to write with, and propping his chin up with one gloved hand. The fire’s light catches his hair, gleams off the smooth curve of his mask. “Why haven’t you killed me yet, then Lord Kurogane? Or my brother, for that matter? It’s what you came here to do, isn’t it?”
“I need my sword.” The answer is prompt.
“You don’t need a sword to kill someone, Lord Kurogane.”
“I need that sword to kill you.” Ginryuu was charmed; it would cut through magical defences the same as flesh. It took a special sword to kill a special magician.
“So you’ve chosen - I am the twin that you’re going to kill?” The firelight hides whatever expression Fai might be wearing; the monarch is completely unreadable.
“I -” Kurogane pauses, floundering. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course not,” Fai agrees, and goes back to his paper.
Feeling chastised, Kurogane bends down to pick up his book again to pretend to read a little more. The room descends back into quiet.
#
It takes a fortnight for Kurogane to eventually run into Yuui again - and it’s a literal run, Yuui hurtling along the corridor without looking where he’s going and running straight into Kurogane’s chest. Unbalanced, the collision knocks Kurogane over, and he lands in a tangle of limbs and cloth and fur with the blond, Yuui flush against him, breathing hard from his run. Red and blue meet through the masks and there’s a dreadful quiet, but Fai is there and gently helps his brother to his feet, passing a hand down his twin’s robes and suddenly they are smooth, uncrumpled, perfect again.
“Are you alright?” Fai’s voice is a murmur, his touch light on Yuui’s elbow, but his brother is still looking at Kurogane, still as the shinobi raises himself from the floor. “Yuui?” Fai sounds concerned, and - slowly, ever-slowly - Yuui turns to look at him.
“Fai…I…” a sudden false smile breaks out over the young man’s face, curving up the mask’s lips, “how lovely it is to see you! Were you taking Kuro-pon out walkies?” Kurogane growls on cue and swipes for the idiot, Yuui laughing and ducking the blow easily, hiding behind his brother as Kurogane advances on them both. “Bad dog, bad dog~!”
Kurogane makes a grab for Yuui but ends up holding the wrong brother, Yuui’s laughter doubling at the mildly perplexed look both his brother and their guest/prisoner have adopted, cooing ridiculously temporarily out of harm’s way.
“Fai, is there something you’re not telling me~?” His tone is teasing, but Fai only smiles back, more amused by Kurogane’s answering snarl - Yuui’s antics don’t bother his sibling anymore, but Kurogane is certainly fair game (for them both, when both are in the mood).
“You-!” Kurogane reaches for Yuui but again the king evades him, dashing down the corridor with no care for dignity. “Get back here!”
Yuui is still laughing, waving gaily as he stays stubbornly just ahead of his pursuer. “Kuro-chuu has to catch me fiiiiirst~!”
Kurogane dives after him, still snarling, and Yuui takes off again, both of them speeding down the corridor, scattering servants as they go. Fai follows behind somewhat more sedately, hearing the servants gossip, thinking, musing. Yuui will keep Kurogane occupied he knows; it is safe to attend to his duties again, to call in upon his mother. Yuui will keep Kurogane occupied and -
And Fai doesn’t want to think about it, his head aching with the memories of terrible dreams. He goes to his tasks, and leaves things well enough alone.
#
Kurogane catches Yuui when the blond dashes into a room with only one exit - the entrance, a dead-end. He shuts the door behind him, sealing them both in, grabbing at Yuui and finally succeeding in snagging the blond’s arm, dragging the other closer.
“Kuro-chan~!” Yuui is breathless from their race, something close to genuine mirth glowing in his blue eyes, hanging in his voice. He’s probably smiling but the mask hides it - the masks hide everything for and from everyone and Kurogane suddenly hates them. This is a world of liars, a crowd of the plural people, not a single individual among them. Something must be showing on his face because Yuui repeats his words, although more curious now, wondering why the shinobi hasn’t growled out an insult yet. “Kuro-chan…?”
Kurogane reaches up and, ignoring Yuui’s gasp, takes off his own mask, feeling the thing melt into a blob in his hand. He drops it to the ground, scowling at it. “I hate that damn thing.”
“Kuro-rin is a naughty boy and needs to put his mask back on.” Yuui’s words are playful; his tone is not. He looks away from his companion, refusing to look at the taller man.
“Are you so scared of seeing my face?” Kurogane challenges.
Stiffly: “It’s against the law.”
“You write the laws.” Yuui refuses to look at him still, and an awkward silence hangs between them. “…The first time we met, you said I was handsome.”
“‘My noble ninja’…” Yuui echoes the words of the past.
“How long is it since you’ve called someone other than me that? Since you’ve said someone’s beautiful or pretty.”
Yuui doesn’t sound pleased. “You can’t really describe a mask as being beautiful, Kuro-ru -” he halts, catching the shinobi’s point. “…It’s against the law,” he repeats again, more weakly, his argument frail and not even surviving the breath it takes to leave his lips.
Kurogane takes his chin, gets the other to look at him. “Idiot, do you even know what your own face looks like anymore?” Silence again but the answer is obvious - no.
Yuui’s opposition trickles out of him and Kurogane reaches out for the royal’s face. He can hear the other breathing, soft breaths that quicken when he brushes back the gold hair from the other’s face, fingertips sliding back behind Yuui’s ears to grasp the edges of the mask. Kurogane pauses there for a little while, letting the other bow his head slightly, offer protest if he really does not want this, but Yuui stays silent, remains still, and Kurogane draws off his mask.
It comes away easily, melting into a small palm-sized blob in the shinobi’s palm the moment it is no longer touching Yuui’s face, and Kurogane puts it to the side, raising his hands again, framing the prince’s face before him but just not touching the skin, unsure of how the blond would react, given how just taking off a glove had caused the other to bolt for two weeks.
Yuui looks up at him, feeling the heat radiating from the Nihon man’s palms, and his expression, although bared, is unreadable. So many emotions chase through his eyes, across his features - he’s fair, terribly fair, and lovely in a way that men rarely are.
“Why…” words fail Kurogane temporarily, searching his companion’s expression, pursuing some fleeting emotion within him, some strand that’s beautiful and awful and confusing all at once, “why must you wear a mask?”
Yuui doesn’t speak. He watches Kurogane as Kurogane watches him, flinches slightly as the taller man finally touches his face, fingers warm and surprisingly gentle. It’s the first time in….so terribly long someone has touched his face, the nerves singing and shivering, feeling Kurogane’s warmth, the eddies in the castle cool against his heated cheeks.
“…You’re blushing,” Kurogane tells him almost wonderingly and Yuui raises his own wondering hand, feeling the softness of his own skin, the warmth spreading along his cheekbones, the sudden itching in his eyes. He’s not about to -
Yuui’s eyes are tear-bright and he looks stricken, confused, lips somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “You -”A breath and he pulls away, out of Kurogane’s grip, fumbling a little unsurely for his mask, bringing it up to his face again, letting it cover him. If he’s crying the mask hides it flawlessly, Yuui impersonal once more, and his gaze is direct as he faces the foreign man. “You’re going to kill me in four days; Fai saw it a long time ago.” Kurogane jolts, and Yuui continues. “Did you forget the reason you came to this world?”
Kurogane had. If…if only for a moment he - his mission had always been an absent preoccupation, lurking at the back of his thoughts, but only now it hit him what it truly meant and -
“It’ll be mine and Fai’s birthday party.” Yuui continues on, slamming the truth home to the other man, slamming down a wall between them. It hurts - thick, glittering ice where moments before had been a softer warmth. Yuui is joyless. “Please don’t get blood on the cake.”
#
Fai comes to Kurogane later that night in the rooms allocated to the shinobi, having stayed with his brother as Yuui had wept on his lap, waiting until his twin had fallen into restless sleep. The dreams are bad for both of them, but at least Fai knows what he sees is the truth - or one version of the truth, anyway. Yuui can only be plagued by nightmares.
Kurogane is awake when Fai comes to him, sitting on the edge of his bed, red eyes watchful through the dim lighting of the room. He’s waiting, so Fai spares him aimless small talk and gets to his point.
“Next week my brother and I celebrate our birthday. On that day…it’s traditional to make a wish on your birthday but - those wishes aren’t necessarily supposed to come true. Sometimes though…if someone has enough magic, they can change the way things are unconsciously - it’s usually only small things but with Yuui and I we’re…” The king sighs. “We’re always getting stronger, day by day by day. And if we wish strongly for something, it’ll come true. If we wish unconsciously for something, it’ll come true. And what we wish for -” he breaks off, to breathe, to think. Kurogane graciously lets him have the quiet. “Lord Kurogane, do you have any idea of the amount of assassination attempts my brother and I have been subjected to since our births? I’ll give you a clue - the answer has three digits in it. But still, the attempts keep coming. They’re necessary. You’re here to kill at least one of us, because combined we’re too strong, even if we lived on other worlds. Our genetics bind us together, and make us twice as dangerous.”
“I know this.” Tomoyo had told Kurogane - the princess did not order a death if she could help it, avoid it but -
“In my dreams,” Fai speaks again, a little more quietly, “I saw you kill my brother on our birthday- I saw Yuui die. I want you to kill me instead.” Kurogane freezes. He’d never - “I keep - in all my dreams I see such strange things….worlds that are, and worlds that were but now aren’t, and worlds that will be - Yuui always…it’s always Yuui that -” the king stops, unable to finish his sentence. “I want you to kill me.”
“I’m not a dreamseer.” Kurogane can offer no comfort, taken aback by the twins’ acceptance of death, of parting. This is a cold world, in more ways than one. “I don’t know what will happen.”
“Kill me.”
Kurogane pushes the request aside, more disturbed by the entreaty for death than he’d like to admit. “…If you wish so much for death, why is it that you didn’t give me my Ginryuu? It could’ve been done before the party, before things get dangerous -”
“Forgive me for wanting to spend as much time with those I love, if you will, Lord Kurogane.” Fai’s voice is slightly dry. “Forgive me for attempting to guarantee the future - changing a vision is always a tricky thing, best left to the last minute.”
Kurogane understands more than he would like to, and the future seems as bleak as the grey clouds outside threatening a blizzard.
Fai looks to them, sees their heavy, chilling promise. “We didn’t ask to be born. We didn’t ask for this.” But they’d accepted it, slowly.
“No,” Kurogane agrees quiet, quiet, gruff voice muted. Valeria is a frozen country. “We never do.”
#
The party had been an elaborate one, the great hall hung with flowers and drapes, polished to perfection. The great fires had been roaring, blasting heat out to the far corners of the room, the people laughing and dancing, the drink flowing, the food plenty. The Queen Mother had been in attendance, escorted on each side by her children, their hair all the same flyaway shade of burnished gold. The royal family had worn robes of white and blue and gold, the twins had smiled and laughed and danced and been the perfect hosts, the perfect kings.
The magic in the hall had been oppressive, building, building, pressing down on Kurogane’s ears and head and heart, the dark man having kept to the shadows, Ginryuu returned to him, sheathed at his waist. Had. Then.
The cake had been beautiful, wheeled out of the kitchens on a great cart, layered and tall and iced and Fai and Yuui had approached it, hand-in-gloved-hand, Yuui dropping the palm to applaud the skill of the chefs, Fai echoing him. Both of their voices had rung hollow but the crowds hadn’t heard it, swarming around their sovereigns, letting the two cut the cake, make their wish, and Kurogane had been swept up with them, disorientated, and - at the end, two masked blonds had stood before him, identical in every way, their masks hiding their identity, silent. Kurogane hadn’t been able to tell which of them was which.
And then they’d made their wish -
Hand-in-gloved-hand, the twins, the magicians, the -
The world had rumbled, the building shaking, and the crowds had screamed, flinging themselves about and away to get out of the way of falling masonry. Around the twins power built and grew, the two young men with eyes of brilliant blue, magic raw and spilling about them, cracks in the ceiling, cracks in the floor, screams as people looked outside and saw cracks in the sky, other worlds pulsing and pushing through, angry, pulled towards implosion, destruction -
Two was one too many. Two had always been one too many in Valeria, a country dragged to misery for its own stupidity, superstition, discrimination. Perhaps -
It had been too late to ruminate, to ponder, the cracks in reality having grown larger, wave after oppressive wave whipping through existence, the twins’ power. What had they wished for, to cause such chaos? What wish was so terrible it could end all the worlds?
Kurogane had pushed himself through the power, smacked with stone, with debris, with raw magic, feeling it sting and burn and try to claw the skin from his bones, hot needles piercing and sharp. Before him had been the twins, lost in their own strength, swallowed by the maelstrom, and he hadn’t known which was which, because they were identical, alike in every way, masked and -
There are tears now, masks ripped off and tears streaming from one set of blue eyes, one voice hoarse from a wordless cry, a wail, a lament, bowed over a cooling corpse and sobbing, sobbing. The twins are identical, save that only one of them is still breathing, the other glassy-eyed and bloody. Ginryuu is on the floor and Kurogane does not have the strength of will left in him to pick up the sword still stained with blood, torn between relief that the sky has gone back to normal, the power has died down, and grief, that for all of this, one had to die -
He didn’t even know which brother he’d killed.
The living one is still crying, and everyone has been flung away from him, lashes of his sole strength flaying anyone to step within a five metre radius of him and his fallen brother. Keening, the sound of a broken heart being killed again and again -
Valeria has witnessed two murders today.
Eventually, the sounds stop, the surviving twin’s voice lost, his eyes red and aching and unable to shed another tear. It’s a small world that’s ended, but it’s a dear world all the same, one pale hand wrapped around a paler lifeless one, gloves ripped away, masks fallen to shreds. There’s no need anymore. There’s no use anymore.
Kurogane approaches slowly, and the magic parts to let him through. He pulls off his own mask and lets it drop to the ruined floor, mixing with blood and dust and tears. The twin on the ground looks at him, and his eyes hurt so much Kurogane can hardly bear to look at them, but he does all the same, accepting the guilt, taking the agony.
“You were supposed to kill me.” The blond’s voice is too hoarse to tell which it is Kurogane is speaking to.
Kurogane crouches down, on level with the other. “Your brother would’ve said the same thing.”
“We wished to be together.” An impossible wish - the fates are cruel. The king before him chokes, his head hanging, his golden hair stained with his sibling’s scarlet. “I hate you.”
Kurogane had expected the comment, but it hurts all the same. “I know.” He can’t apologise - millions of people have been saved with the death of one, but still -
“You should’ve killed me.” His companion has found tears again, slow and steady trickles down his face. “Why didn’t you kill me?” He buries his head in Kurogane’s shirt, clinging to the shinobi, uncaring of the rest of the world. “I hate you; I hate you.”
Kurogane holds him, lets him tremble. “You were wearing masks…I didn’t know which -” he stops awkwardly, realising the insensitivity of his remark, but the blond he’s holding is already raising his head, lips twisted in a bitter parody of a smile. Something about that smile makes Kurogane think of jagged edges of ice and metal, screaming birds falling from the sky with their wings ripped off. It’s not a mask anymore, a real face, but Kurogane no longer has any desire to see it. Irony plunged in its knife and twisted the blade for the most devastating effect.
“You don’t know which brother you killed.” The sole King of Valeria’s voice is dark, angry, amused, and still Kurogane doesn’t know who it is.
“…No.” He admits, feeling the blood on the floor seep into his clothes. He doesn’t look at the corpse.
“…Yuui,” the blond tells him shortly, blue eyes dead. “You killed Yuui. I’m Fai, Lord Kurogane.”
Valeria is a world full of liars; Kurogane can’t tell whether ‘Fai’ is lying or not - but why would he?
“…I’m sorry.” The words are meaningful and meaningless all at once.
They are maskless, gloveless, dusty, covered in blood. Bared of everything, kneeling beside a dead man in blood and tears. “I hate you,” Fai says again, and lays his head back down against Kurogane’s chest. He continues to tremble. “I hate you.”
Kurogane holds him tighter, and hurts. Valeria is a cold, bloody country. “I know.”