Fanfic update ^+^
Title: The Road Back to You - Chapter 2: Home
Fandom: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles
Characters: Kurogane, Fai, Mokona, Tomoyo, Nokoru, Yumi
Prompt: 090. Home
Word Count: 4,498
Rating: Mature
Summary: At the end of Tsubasa, Fai runs away and leaves Kurogane alone. So very alone. Left with nothing to do but return to Nihon, Kurogane realizes he misses his new family. After sensing Fai may be in danger, Kurogane reunites with Mokona and begins travelling again.
The first stop is a place Kurogane is familiar with, and conversations with an old friend reaffirms his conviction to find Fai.
Author's Notes: Kurogane is still angsting it up like a CLAMP character, still has a slight coat fetish, and a character from the last chapter makes a triumphiant return. Oh, and there are still major spoilers for everything up to the current chapters of Tsubasa.
Chapter 1
Big damn table here
The manjuu had at least managed to land him on his feet for once; maybe it was a bit easier since it only had one person to think about. It also had managed to land him in the middle of a busy highway directly in the path of a large zooming something or other, and if he would have had time to think about something other than his imminent death and lamenting that he would never get to see Fai again, he would have recognized the object as a car. The object managed to stop a mere few inches away from him, and, relieved to still be alive, he directed his anger at the white thing on his shoulder for the near premature end of his journey. “Oi, shiro manjuu! You nearly got us both killed.”
“Mokona is sorry. Mokona still can’t control where we land.” One of these objects sped past him shouting obscenities at them. Mokona jumped into the safety of his cloak as he finally took the opportunity to look at the world they had landed in. The tall buildings and objects flying by overhead looked vaguely familiar to him. A pale, blue scarf fluttered across his memory, and the pain returned to his chest.
“Kurogane?” He knew that voice. He turned around to look at the person standing next to the object that had nearly run him over.
“Tomoyo?” At least he thought it was Tomoyo. The girl, he mentally corrected himself, woman standing next to the car looked like Tomoyo. She had the same dark hair only a little bit longer, and she still had the same compassionate eyes of Tomoyo. This woman was tall and had more the body of Souma than any Tomoyo he had ever known. His mind had to have been playing tricks on him. The probability of visiting the same world twice was next to impossible, or so he had been led to believe. There was no way that woman was Tomoyo, and he could not possibly be in…
“Is Sakura-chan with you?” the young woman asked, running towards him and trying to peer around him. Yes, it was definitely that Tomoyo. She was quite blatantly ignoring him as she looked around for the princess.
“No, she’s not with me.” He watched her face fall briefly, but she quickly brightened up again.
She clasped her hands together under her chin and asked hopefully. “At least Fai-san is with you, right?” She seemed so absolutely certain that the blonde was traveling with him, and he tried not to let his pain show at the mention of his name.
“No. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“Syaoran-kun?” she followed, but he could see she was starting to lose faith that he had brought any of her friends back with him. He shook his head, his own mind still fixated on the missing blonde. He wouldn’t try to pretend he did not miss the children as well, hearing those names had also been painful. It was a different kind of pain though; his feelings for the children and the feelings he had for the blonde were incomparable. Tomoyo dropped her hands and gave a dejected sigh. “I suppose you’ll have to do.” He knew he should be offended and on some level he was that she viewed his arrival as being so insignificant; however, he also understood because his being there was evidence that he preferred the blonde’s company to his own. He still couldn’t understand how the princess was her favorite when he had such a deep connection with a Tomoyo in another world. It seemed to work against the idea of the same soul existing the same way in another universe. As far as he could tell, the same soul was shaped by varying life experiences. He knew he would not settle until he had found his Fai again, the one who had been transformed into a vampire that had fed off his wrist to be changed back into a normal human again, or as normal as the mage had ever known.
“Mokona’s here too!” the manjuu piped up, hopping out of his cloak and into Tomoyo’s arms.
“And I’m very happy to see you, Mokona,” Tomoyo told the thing with a smile, giving it a quick kiss.
“Get out of the road!” somebody yelled as their car went speeding past.
Tomoyo smiled up at him. At least she was still shorter than him. “Kurogane, I request you stay with us for the duration of your stay in our world. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you some questions,” she said as she walked back to her open car door. Without having anywhere else to stay, he followed her to the car.
“Only if I get to ask you one question,” he conditioned as he crawled into the car next to her, slamming the door shut behind him. It was a larger car than he was used to, and it reminded him more of those train things than the car he remembered driving when he had been in the world before.
“You remember Nokoru, don’t you?” She pointed to a blonde man sitting across the cab from them. Kurogane instantly decided children should never grow up. Tomoyo with breasts was disorienting enough, but this boy looked nothing like he remembered. “Nokoru, do you remember Kurogane?”
The blonde stared at him for a moment and took a sip from his wine glass. “Yes, he was with that cute girl who won the Piffle Race the year that special feather was offered as a prize. I never forget a beautiful girl.” He thought he say Tomoyo nodding in agreement out of the corner of his eye. “That’s a nice cloak. Does it belong to a girlfriend of yours?”
He hadn’t realized he had been unconsciously stroking the coat with his fingers until the man mentioned it. He curled his hand into a fist and rested it on top of it. “No.”
“It’s very pretty,” the man commented before offering him a glass of wine which he refused. He gave it to Tomoyo instead. “Where did you find it?”
“Another world.” He noticed Tomoyo picked up the sleeve to investigate the stitching. Mokona was watching her carefully; Kurogane was subtly trying to pull it back towards him and out of her reach.
“Oh, that’s right. That girl left for another world. That was why I haven’t seen her around.”
“Kurogane, I would like to ask you about world traveling at some point,” Tomoyo said, putting the sleeve back down. He made sure the entire cloak was on the other side of his body and completely out of reach of her inquisitive fingers. His Tomoyo had been playing a risky game when she touched it; this Tomoyo had no rights to be touching it at all. “First, we will let you rest when we get back to the house, but I want you to remember to talk to me before you leave.”
“Tomoyo is still obsessed with the idea of finding Sakura-chan again, and I can’t blame her.” The easiest way to see her again would be to strike a deal with the Dimensional Witch, but Kurogane was going to make sure he did not plant that idea in her head. He didn’t want Tomoyo to undergo the same torture he was about to undertake. She was not connected to Sakura the same way he was connected to Fai, and he was going to make sure it remained that way. Besides, vampire Sakura sucking on Tomoyo was too much for his brain to handle.
“Well, it’s just a silly dream of mine,” she admitted. “My husband knows that.”
“Husband?” That was the final breaking point for his poor brain. There was no way this could be Tomoyo. Tomoyo was not in love with Sakura, was not tall, did not have breasts, and Tomoyo certainly did not get married to a blonde twat. It was like if his Tomoyo would have met and married Fai only without the jealous rage and half as much confusion.
“You would have found out eventually.”
“Our families wanted to consolidate our fortunes,” Nokoru offered in an attempt at explanation. The only part Kurogane understood was that it had been the families’ decision. “Tomoyo and I are luckier than most since we’re such good friends.” Kurogane suddenly received a vision of what his life would be like had his parents not died. Married to some stranger from a family who had too many daughters most likely, and maybe, just maybe, he could have learned to be happy with that had that been all he had ever known. But it was a life without Fai and knowing what he did now, he realized a life without the mage would not have been much of a life at all. Then again, he might never have had to deal with the pain of losing two families that were important to him. His hand was petting the coat again, and he knew he was going to do whatever he had to to get the second family back again. He would not admit defeat until one of them was no longer breathing. “… and with modern technology, in order to produce an heir we don’t even need to have sex.” He had been so lost in thought he hadn’t even realized the blonde had been giving him a breakdown of his and Tomoyo’s relationship. At the junction of Tomoyo and sex, his already broken mind just completely stopped working. He spent the rest of the trip in utter silence, the attempts Tomoyo and Nokoru were trying to make in cheerful conversation flying right over his head. Mokona had crawled back into his lap and nuzzled down into the cloak, right next to the sword.
“Ah, we’re here,” Tomoyo said as the car lurched to a stop. “Remember, feel free to stay with us for as long as you need to.” Someone came around to open the door for them, and Kurogane was the first one out. He still didn’t like being enclosed in small spaces; it was one of the few things he and Fai had always managed to agree upon. He didn’t know which building he was supposed to be heading towards. They all looked the same to him, and none of them looked like a place he thought anyone would want to live in. “This way.” Tomoyo led him to the door of one of the buildings, and Nokoru held the door open for them. Kurogane thought maybe it was one of those “apartments” he had heard about during his travels.
“Which floor do you two live on?” The sun was pouring in through the western windows, at least he assumed they were the western windows, the sky was slightly darker than it had been when he had first landed in this world.
“The entire building is ours,” Nokoru said as a few men in suits approached them. As two of them removed Nokoru’s and Tomoyo’s coats, one of them reached out and placed his hands on the coat in his arms. He clutched the cloak closer to his chest and took a few steps backwards. His one hand tightened its grip on the hilt of the still concealed Souhi, and he glared at the man, daring him to try to do that again. The man seemed to sense his hostility and looked back to the two in charge for guidance.
“It’s quite alright. He’s our guest, and we don’t know how long he’ll be staying with us. He can keep his things with him,” Tomoyo reassured the man. With a nod, he and the other two carrying the coats disappeared from the entrance way. “Do you mind if we hold off our conversation until tomorrow?” He shook his head and loosened his grip on the sword, fingers moving to bury themselves in the folds of the white cloak. “Nokoru and I already ate dinner and need to get some rest. We’ll send some food up to your room in case you’re hungry.” He decided to make the best of people taking care of him when he could. He knew there was not always going to be people who already knew him or places where he could take the time to rest and sleep at night. “Yumi!” A teenage girl he was fairly sure he had never met in any world before with curly brown hair bounded into the room. She was wearing a black dress and the same type of apron Fai had donned while making breakfast for them in this world. “Yumi, this is Kurogane.” The girl waved energetically at him. Finally, something he was used to: young, energetic girls who were only fourteen years old, even if this one disturbingly already had large breasts. “He’s going to be staying with us for a little while. Could you show him to one of the guest bedrooms and then have someone send some food up to that room for him?”
“Sure thing! Does he have any luggage?”
“No, he’s traveling light now a days.” Not as light as he would have preferred. Not as light as a giggle that still haunted him from the distant past.
As the two he was no longer familiar with left the room, the girl bounded eagerly over to him. “Right this way, Kurogane-san,” she said, leading him over to a wall. After the wall slid open, the girl stepped eagerly through. Hesitating for a moment, he pulled the cloak closer to him before he followed her. He twitched when the wall closed again behind him. He still hated all these strange contrivances. “Where are you from?” she asked with a smile. He actually jumped when the room they were in started moving.
“Some place far away.” It was the vaguest answer he could think of as his eyes darted around the four walls.
“How do you know Tomoyo-san?” He really wished he could get out of the strange, moving room.
“I was in the race a few years ago,” he said, taking a step backwards in time with a deep breath in, “the one with the special feather as the prize.”
“Wow, you must have been incredibly young when you entered! I heard about that race from my parents. I was far too young to remember it.” More time must have passed in this world than he initially thought; he wondered if he would wind up in other worlds he had been to in vastly different times. Was there the possibility of running into the version of him in the past that was still traveling with his family?
The wall opened again, and he gratefully followed the girl outside. “You can use this room.” The girl opened the door and gestured for him to go inside. “I’ll make sure the chef sends up something special for you. Anything in particular you want to eat?”
“Whatever you send up is fine.”
“Have a good night, Kurogane-san!” The girl waved cheerfully to him before she pulled the door shut, ensuring him at least a little bit of privacy until somebody brought him the promised food. With a sigh, he threw the cloak and sword onto the large four poster bed before sitting down on it. Food might be good; he hadn’t been eating much while he had been in Nihon, but he knew he would need fuel in order to find the blonde.
Mokona hopped out from underneath his cloak and started bouncing around on the bed. “Oi, where have you been hiding?” The white thing buried itself into one of the pillows. It bounded back to him and placed it its paws on his thigh.
“Kurogane looked troubled. You looked like you were thinking about Fai, so I wanted to stay as close to you as possible.” He placed his hand behind the thing’s head and collapsed to his back. “Did I hear we were getting food?”
“Yes, we’re getting food.” After that he thought he would try to get some rest. He was torn between whether he wanted sleep to elude him or not. He almost wished it would. If he slept, he would be sure to dream, and memories of Fai might sneak into his dreams. He cleared his mind and stared up at the ceiling while he waited for the promised food.
Eventually, someone knocked on the door, and he got up to open it. A young man pushed a cart filled with covered plates into the room, leaving instructions to simply push the cart back into the hall when he was done with it. As soon as the man was gone, he lifted the cover on one of the plates. It was some type of pastry. Fai used to make it for him all the time. He put the lid down and made his way back to the bed. Mokona hopped over to the food cart to investigate. “Kuro-rin, aren’t you going to eat anything?” He didn’t want anything anymore. “Kurogane.” The white thing someone managed to balance one of the plates on its head and carried it over to the bed. “You have to eat something. Your need your strength if you’re going to find Fai.” Strange how the person who had become most important to him was always taking away and giving back the thing he had always thought was most important in life.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Kuro-chan, are you following me?” the blonde called back over his shoulder. He continued walking in the lanky man’s footsteps until Fai stopped and turned around. “Did you ever think maybe I don’t want you to follow me?” he asked with one hand resting on a slim hip, a mock challenge lurking behind the blue eyes. He stopped and simply stared back at his occasional lover; he never knew what the status of their relationship was.
“Idiot. We’re sharing a room.” With a small smile, the blonde turned and continued walking down the hallway to their room.
“Mommy and Daddy have to share a room or else the children will start to worry that they no longer like each other,” Fai teased as they stepped into their shared bedroom.
“You don’t like me,” he responded gruffly as Fai pulled his light blue scarf off. “Not in the way you say you do.” Fai had sauntered over to him and pulled the scarf around Kurogane’s neck, holding onto each end and pulling down so Kurogane was forced into kissing range. He let the scarf go when the ninja tried to pull away.
“I like some things about you,” he whispered, running his hands up and down Kurogane’s chest. He tried to ignore the feelings of those light fingers that had gone down and slid up under his shirt, caressing his skin.
“What if those aren’t the things I want you to like me for?” He barely managed to catch the uncertainty flicker across the man’s face.
“Why do you have to make everything so difficult? Why can’t amazing free sex with no strings attached be enough for you?” Fai had grabbed both ends of the scarf still draped around his neck and began pulling him gently towards the bed. “Anyone else would accept it without complaints.”
“I wouldn’t say this is exactly a ‘no strings attached’ relationship.” Fai was sitting on the bed, crawling backwards and pulling Kurogane along with him.
“Don’t be silly. We both know you’re going to go back to your princess Tomoyo when this journey is over.” Yes, but he had already been planning on taking Fai back with him and acclimating the blonde to Japanese life. He was going to tell him that, but Fai had otherwise occupied his mouth with his tongue, and Kurogane’s hands were fumbling at the fastening on the Fai’s pants.
“I have to admit, I really like you for this,” Fai gasped as Kurogane moved his mouth to the slim neck, one hand making it’s way inside Fai’s pants as the other pushed the lanky man’s shirt up. “You’re so wonderfully attentive,” he managed to get out before Kurogane’s mouth closed over a nipple. Panting heavily, Fai arched up against him, exposed arousal brushing against Kurogane’s stomach.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Kurogane, could you please stay until dinner? I’m sure you’re anxious to continue traveling to wherever it is you are going, but I would love to talk to you for a little bit, and I need to go to work now,” were the words Tomoyo spoke to him when he had somehow managed to find her and her husband the next morning. He had reluctantly agreed and within minutes they had excused themselves and were out the door. He had given the coat and sword to Mokona’s mouth for safekeeping, and the manjuu hopped onto his shoulder when he decided to step outside a short while later.
“Kurogane, do you really think Fai is in this world?”
“If he was, he wouldn’t be here anymore.” He somehow managed to convince someone to let them borrow one of the many cars Tomoyo and Nokoru owned. “But if he was here at all, I want to know. How long he was here, how he looked, if he said anything while he was here.”
“Will that help?” Mokona asked as it hopped to the passenger side of the vehicle. That had always been Fai’s seat before, with Mokona in the back with the children.
“Yeah. It will help.”
He spend the better part of the day driving around the city, by the place where he and the princess had bought parts for their racers; he stopped at the place where the five of them had set up their home. The building itself was gone, but the lot was still vacant. It had been at that place where the first words were spoken about the five of them being a family. They had all thought about it before, subconsciously they must have all realized they were an odd sort of family, but none of them had dared to say anything until they had been in this world for a while. Family. A family with a mommy who had only been pretending to love daddy and a son who had no soul of his own.
“Kuro-tan, we should go now,” Mokona said once the sky had become the same color as it was when they had arrived. He hadn’t realized he had been sitting there that long, staring at the spot where their house used to be, thinking about all the things their family had gone through together.
“Yeah, we should be getting back.” He could answer whatever questions Tomoyo might have for him, ask his question, then move onto the next world as soon as dinner was over. He was going to find his family again if it took him the rest of his life. He had been an idiot for not realizing how important it was to him. He managed to find his way back to Tomoyo and Nokoru’s home. He handed the keys to the man waiting for him at the door, and the girl who had shown him to his room the night before offered to show him to the dining hall where his hosts apparently were waiting for him. Mokona hopped along beside him, chattering something about food and how good the chef in this place was. Yumi smiled and told them she would make sure to pass along the compliments.
“Kurogane-san, we’re so glad you could join us,” the blonde greeted him as he sat down at the table. “I know Tomoyo’s been looking forward to this conversation with you all day; she could barely concentrate on her work.” They had even set a place for Mokona at the table.
“I hope you don’t mind, but there are certain things I just have to know. Feel free to ask me any questions you would like in return. I’d like to help on this new journey of yours if I can.” She paused for a few minutes as a few servants came in and placed dishes in front of them. He did not even realize what it was he was eating and had no desire to know. “First of all, I have to know what happened to Sakura-chan.”
“She managed to get back to her home world with Syaoran.” Or at least Yuuko had assured him that the children had arrived safely in their desired world. He occasionally wondered about the safety of the children, but most of them time he was more occupied with thoughts of the blonde.
“What about Fai? What happened to him since we last saw you?”
“Well, he lost his eye, I turned him into a vampire that could only feed on my blood in order to keep him alive, we managed to get his eye back which negated the vampire blood, and he had several near mental breakdowns along the way. Now I have no idea where he’s gone. He just left me one evening.” They seemed a bit disbelieving, but it was to be expected. He had not believed in the existence of vampires before.
“And you, Kurogane?” Did you ever manage to make it back to your Tomoyo and your home?” she asked politely.
“Yes, I did get to see Tomoyo again. But I think it would be more accurate to say that my home ran away from me in the process.”
“Is there anything you would like to ask me, Kurogane?”
“Has Fai been here at all since the last time we were all here together?”
“I’m truly sorry. The last time I saw Fai-san was when the five of you were here.” He had really only wanted to know if he looked healthy, but he would have to find out about that elsewhere. “I take it that is why you are now traveling by yourself. You are searching for your home.”
“Yes.”
“Then please, do not let us detain you beyond dinner this evening. We wish you the best of luck on your journey, and please give our regards to Fai-san when you find him again.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Mokona perched on his shoulder, taking shelter from the heavy rain under his cloak. He had made sure to place Souhi at his belt as soon as they arrived in the new world. The only thing they could see around them was the tall, wide trees that an entire family could have lived inside the trunks comfortably. He was already standing in a puddle of water an inch high, and the rain was still falling. “This isn’t a world we’ve been to before.” Absolutely nothing seemed familiar about this place.
“No, Mokona has never been here before.” He was soaked already. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this world very much.
“Let’s see what we can find,” and he stepped forward into the rain.
Second chapter is done. Remember to feed the hungry author with reviews.
Fandom: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles
Characters: Kurogane, Fai, Mokona, Tomoyo, Nokoru, Yumi
Prompt: 090. Home
Word Count: 4,498
Rating: Mature
Summary: At the end of Tsubasa, Fai runs away and leaves Kurogane alone. So very alone. Left with nothing to do but return to Nihon, Kurogane realizes he misses his new family. After sensing Fai may be in danger, Kurogane reunites with Mokona and begins travelling again.
The first stop is a place Kurogane is familiar with, and conversations with an old friend reaffirms his conviction to find Fai.
Author's Notes: Kurogane is still angsting it up like a CLAMP character, still has a slight coat fetish, and a character from the last chapter makes a triumphiant return. Oh, and there are still major spoilers for everything up to the current chapters of Tsubasa.
Chapter 1
Big damn table here
The manjuu had at least managed to land him on his feet for once; maybe it was a bit easier since it only had one person to think about. It also had managed to land him in the middle of a busy highway directly in the path of a large zooming something or other, and if he would have had time to think about something other than his imminent death and lamenting that he would never get to see Fai again, he would have recognized the object as a car. The object managed to stop a mere few inches away from him, and, relieved to still be alive, he directed his anger at the white thing on his shoulder for the near premature end of his journey. “Oi, shiro manjuu! You nearly got us both killed.”
“Mokona is sorry. Mokona still can’t control where we land.” One of these objects sped past him shouting obscenities at them. Mokona jumped into the safety of his cloak as he finally took the opportunity to look at the world they had landed in. The tall buildings and objects flying by overhead looked vaguely familiar to him. A pale, blue scarf fluttered across his memory, and the pain returned to his chest.
“Kurogane?” He knew that voice. He turned around to look at the person standing next to the object that had nearly run him over.
“Tomoyo?” At least he thought it was Tomoyo. The girl, he mentally corrected himself, woman standing next to the car looked like Tomoyo. She had the same dark hair only a little bit longer, and she still had the same compassionate eyes of Tomoyo. This woman was tall and had more the body of Souma than any Tomoyo he had ever known. His mind had to have been playing tricks on him. The probability of visiting the same world twice was next to impossible, or so he had been led to believe. There was no way that woman was Tomoyo, and he could not possibly be in…
“Is Sakura-chan with you?” the young woman asked, running towards him and trying to peer around him. Yes, it was definitely that Tomoyo. She was quite blatantly ignoring him as she looked around for the princess.
“No, she’s not with me.” He watched her face fall briefly, but she quickly brightened up again.
She clasped her hands together under her chin and asked hopefully. “At least Fai-san is with you, right?” She seemed so absolutely certain that the blonde was traveling with him, and he tried not to let his pain show at the mention of his name.
“No. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“Syaoran-kun?” she followed, but he could see she was starting to lose faith that he had brought any of her friends back with him. He shook his head, his own mind still fixated on the missing blonde. He wouldn’t try to pretend he did not miss the children as well, hearing those names had also been painful. It was a different kind of pain though; his feelings for the children and the feelings he had for the blonde were incomparable. Tomoyo dropped her hands and gave a dejected sigh. “I suppose you’ll have to do.” He knew he should be offended and on some level he was that she viewed his arrival as being so insignificant; however, he also understood because his being there was evidence that he preferred the blonde’s company to his own. He still couldn’t understand how the princess was her favorite when he had such a deep connection with a Tomoyo in another world. It seemed to work against the idea of the same soul existing the same way in another universe. As far as he could tell, the same soul was shaped by varying life experiences. He knew he would not settle until he had found his Fai again, the one who had been transformed into a vampire that had fed off his wrist to be changed back into a normal human again, or as normal as the mage had ever known.
“Mokona’s here too!” the manjuu piped up, hopping out of his cloak and into Tomoyo’s arms.
“And I’m very happy to see you, Mokona,” Tomoyo told the thing with a smile, giving it a quick kiss.
“Get out of the road!” somebody yelled as their car went speeding past.
Tomoyo smiled up at him. At least she was still shorter than him. “Kurogane, I request you stay with us for the duration of your stay in our world. I hope you don’t mind if I ask you some questions,” she said as she walked back to her open car door. Without having anywhere else to stay, he followed her to the car.
“Only if I get to ask you one question,” he conditioned as he crawled into the car next to her, slamming the door shut behind him. It was a larger car than he was used to, and it reminded him more of those train things than the car he remembered driving when he had been in the world before.
“You remember Nokoru, don’t you?” She pointed to a blonde man sitting across the cab from them. Kurogane instantly decided children should never grow up. Tomoyo with breasts was disorienting enough, but this boy looked nothing like he remembered. “Nokoru, do you remember Kurogane?”
The blonde stared at him for a moment and took a sip from his wine glass. “Yes, he was with that cute girl who won the Piffle Race the year that special feather was offered as a prize. I never forget a beautiful girl.” He thought he say Tomoyo nodding in agreement out of the corner of his eye. “That’s a nice cloak. Does it belong to a girlfriend of yours?”
He hadn’t realized he had been unconsciously stroking the coat with his fingers until the man mentioned it. He curled his hand into a fist and rested it on top of it. “No.”
“It’s very pretty,” the man commented before offering him a glass of wine which he refused. He gave it to Tomoyo instead. “Where did you find it?”
“Another world.” He noticed Tomoyo picked up the sleeve to investigate the stitching. Mokona was watching her carefully; Kurogane was subtly trying to pull it back towards him and out of her reach.
“Oh, that’s right. That girl left for another world. That was why I haven’t seen her around.”
“Kurogane, I would like to ask you about world traveling at some point,” Tomoyo said, putting the sleeve back down. He made sure the entire cloak was on the other side of his body and completely out of reach of her inquisitive fingers. His Tomoyo had been playing a risky game when she touched it; this Tomoyo had no rights to be touching it at all. “First, we will let you rest when we get back to the house, but I want you to remember to talk to me before you leave.”
“Tomoyo is still obsessed with the idea of finding Sakura-chan again, and I can’t blame her.” The easiest way to see her again would be to strike a deal with the Dimensional Witch, but Kurogane was going to make sure he did not plant that idea in her head. He didn’t want Tomoyo to undergo the same torture he was about to undertake. She was not connected to Sakura the same way he was connected to Fai, and he was going to make sure it remained that way. Besides, vampire Sakura sucking on Tomoyo was too much for his brain to handle.
“Well, it’s just a silly dream of mine,” she admitted. “My husband knows that.”
“Husband?” That was the final breaking point for his poor brain. There was no way this could be Tomoyo. Tomoyo was not in love with Sakura, was not tall, did not have breasts, and Tomoyo certainly did not get married to a blonde twat. It was like if his Tomoyo would have met and married Fai only without the jealous rage and half as much confusion.
“You would have found out eventually.”
“Our families wanted to consolidate our fortunes,” Nokoru offered in an attempt at explanation. The only part Kurogane understood was that it had been the families’ decision. “Tomoyo and I are luckier than most since we’re such good friends.” Kurogane suddenly received a vision of what his life would be like had his parents not died. Married to some stranger from a family who had too many daughters most likely, and maybe, just maybe, he could have learned to be happy with that had that been all he had ever known. But it was a life without Fai and knowing what he did now, he realized a life without the mage would not have been much of a life at all. Then again, he might never have had to deal with the pain of losing two families that were important to him. His hand was petting the coat again, and he knew he was going to do whatever he had to to get the second family back again. He would not admit defeat until one of them was no longer breathing. “… and with modern technology, in order to produce an heir we don’t even need to have sex.” He had been so lost in thought he hadn’t even realized the blonde had been giving him a breakdown of his and Tomoyo’s relationship. At the junction of Tomoyo and sex, his already broken mind just completely stopped working. He spent the rest of the trip in utter silence, the attempts Tomoyo and Nokoru were trying to make in cheerful conversation flying right over his head. Mokona had crawled back into his lap and nuzzled down into the cloak, right next to the sword.
“Ah, we’re here,” Tomoyo said as the car lurched to a stop. “Remember, feel free to stay with us for as long as you need to.” Someone came around to open the door for them, and Kurogane was the first one out. He still didn’t like being enclosed in small spaces; it was one of the few things he and Fai had always managed to agree upon. He didn’t know which building he was supposed to be heading towards. They all looked the same to him, and none of them looked like a place he thought anyone would want to live in. “This way.” Tomoyo led him to the door of one of the buildings, and Nokoru held the door open for them. Kurogane thought maybe it was one of those “apartments” he had heard about during his travels.
“Which floor do you two live on?” The sun was pouring in through the western windows, at least he assumed they were the western windows, the sky was slightly darker than it had been when he had first landed in this world.
“The entire building is ours,” Nokoru said as a few men in suits approached them. As two of them removed Nokoru’s and Tomoyo’s coats, one of them reached out and placed his hands on the coat in his arms. He clutched the cloak closer to his chest and took a few steps backwards. His one hand tightened its grip on the hilt of the still concealed Souhi, and he glared at the man, daring him to try to do that again. The man seemed to sense his hostility and looked back to the two in charge for guidance.
“It’s quite alright. He’s our guest, and we don’t know how long he’ll be staying with us. He can keep his things with him,” Tomoyo reassured the man. With a nod, he and the other two carrying the coats disappeared from the entrance way. “Do you mind if we hold off our conversation until tomorrow?” He shook his head and loosened his grip on the sword, fingers moving to bury themselves in the folds of the white cloak. “Nokoru and I already ate dinner and need to get some rest. We’ll send some food up to your room in case you’re hungry.” He decided to make the best of people taking care of him when he could. He knew there was not always going to be people who already knew him or places where he could take the time to rest and sleep at night. “Yumi!” A teenage girl he was fairly sure he had never met in any world before with curly brown hair bounded into the room. She was wearing a black dress and the same type of apron Fai had donned while making breakfast for them in this world. “Yumi, this is Kurogane.” The girl waved energetically at him. Finally, something he was used to: young, energetic girls who were only fourteen years old, even if this one disturbingly already had large breasts. “He’s going to be staying with us for a little while. Could you show him to one of the guest bedrooms and then have someone send some food up to that room for him?”
“Sure thing! Does he have any luggage?”
“No, he’s traveling light now a days.” Not as light as he would have preferred. Not as light as a giggle that still haunted him from the distant past.
As the two he was no longer familiar with left the room, the girl bounded eagerly over to him. “Right this way, Kurogane-san,” she said, leading him over to a wall. After the wall slid open, the girl stepped eagerly through. Hesitating for a moment, he pulled the cloak closer to him before he followed her. He twitched when the wall closed again behind him. He still hated all these strange contrivances. “Where are you from?” she asked with a smile. He actually jumped when the room they were in started moving.
“Some place far away.” It was the vaguest answer he could think of as his eyes darted around the four walls.
“How do you know Tomoyo-san?” He really wished he could get out of the strange, moving room.
“I was in the race a few years ago,” he said, taking a step backwards in time with a deep breath in, “the one with the special feather as the prize.”
“Wow, you must have been incredibly young when you entered! I heard about that race from my parents. I was far too young to remember it.” More time must have passed in this world than he initially thought; he wondered if he would wind up in other worlds he had been to in vastly different times. Was there the possibility of running into the version of him in the past that was still traveling with his family?
The wall opened again, and he gratefully followed the girl outside. “You can use this room.” The girl opened the door and gestured for him to go inside. “I’ll make sure the chef sends up something special for you. Anything in particular you want to eat?”
“Whatever you send up is fine.”
“Have a good night, Kurogane-san!” The girl waved cheerfully to him before she pulled the door shut, ensuring him at least a little bit of privacy until somebody brought him the promised food. With a sigh, he threw the cloak and sword onto the large four poster bed before sitting down on it. Food might be good; he hadn’t been eating much while he had been in Nihon, but he knew he would need fuel in order to find the blonde.
Mokona hopped out from underneath his cloak and started bouncing around on the bed. “Oi, where have you been hiding?” The white thing buried itself into one of the pillows. It bounded back to him and placed it its paws on his thigh.
“Kurogane looked troubled. You looked like you were thinking about Fai, so I wanted to stay as close to you as possible.” He placed his hand behind the thing’s head and collapsed to his back. “Did I hear we were getting food?”
“Yes, we’re getting food.” After that he thought he would try to get some rest. He was torn between whether he wanted sleep to elude him or not. He almost wished it would. If he slept, he would be sure to dream, and memories of Fai might sneak into his dreams. He cleared his mind and stared up at the ceiling while he waited for the promised food.
Eventually, someone knocked on the door, and he got up to open it. A young man pushed a cart filled with covered plates into the room, leaving instructions to simply push the cart back into the hall when he was done with it. As soon as the man was gone, he lifted the cover on one of the plates. It was some type of pastry. Fai used to make it for him all the time. He put the lid down and made his way back to the bed. Mokona hopped over to the food cart to investigate. “Kuro-rin, aren’t you going to eat anything?” He didn’t want anything anymore. “Kurogane.” The white thing someone managed to balance one of the plates on its head and carried it over to the bed. “You have to eat something. Your need your strength if you’re going to find Fai.” Strange how the person who had become most important to him was always taking away and giving back the thing he had always thought was most important in life.
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“Kuro-chan, are you following me?” the blonde called back over his shoulder. He continued walking in the lanky man’s footsteps until Fai stopped and turned around. “Did you ever think maybe I don’t want you to follow me?” he asked with one hand resting on a slim hip, a mock challenge lurking behind the blue eyes. He stopped and simply stared back at his occasional lover; he never knew what the status of their relationship was.
“Idiot. We’re sharing a room.” With a small smile, the blonde turned and continued walking down the hallway to their room.
“Mommy and Daddy have to share a room or else the children will start to worry that they no longer like each other,” Fai teased as they stepped into their shared bedroom.
“You don’t like me,” he responded gruffly as Fai pulled his light blue scarf off. “Not in the way you say you do.” Fai had sauntered over to him and pulled the scarf around Kurogane’s neck, holding onto each end and pulling down so Kurogane was forced into kissing range. He let the scarf go when the ninja tried to pull away.
“I like some things about you,” he whispered, running his hands up and down Kurogane’s chest. He tried to ignore the feelings of those light fingers that had gone down and slid up under his shirt, caressing his skin.
“What if those aren’t the things I want you to like me for?” He barely managed to catch the uncertainty flicker across the man’s face.
“Why do you have to make everything so difficult? Why can’t amazing free sex with no strings attached be enough for you?” Fai had grabbed both ends of the scarf still draped around his neck and began pulling him gently towards the bed. “Anyone else would accept it without complaints.”
“I wouldn’t say this is exactly a ‘no strings attached’ relationship.” Fai was sitting on the bed, crawling backwards and pulling Kurogane along with him.
“Don’t be silly. We both know you’re going to go back to your princess Tomoyo when this journey is over.” Yes, but he had already been planning on taking Fai back with him and acclimating the blonde to Japanese life. He was going to tell him that, but Fai had otherwise occupied his mouth with his tongue, and Kurogane’s hands were fumbling at the fastening on the Fai’s pants.
“I have to admit, I really like you for this,” Fai gasped as Kurogane moved his mouth to the slim neck, one hand making it’s way inside Fai’s pants as the other pushed the lanky man’s shirt up. “You’re so wonderfully attentive,” he managed to get out before Kurogane’s mouth closed over a nipple. Panting heavily, Fai arched up against him, exposed arousal brushing against Kurogane’s stomach.
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“Kurogane, could you please stay until dinner? I’m sure you’re anxious to continue traveling to wherever it is you are going, but I would love to talk to you for a little bit, and I need to go to work now,” were the words Tomoyo spoke to him when he had somehow managed to find her and her husband the next morning. He had reluctantly agreed and within minutes they had excused themselves and were out the door. He had given the coat and sword to Mokona’s mouth for safekeeping, and the manjuu hopped onto his shoulder when he decided to step outside a short while later.
“Kurogane, do you really think Fai is in this world?”
“If he was, he wouldn’t be here anymore.” He somehow managed to convince someone to let them borrow one of the many cars Tomoyo and Nokoru owned. “But if he was here at all, I want to know. How long he was here, how he looked, if he said anything while he was here.”
“Will that help?” Mokona asked as it hopped to the passenger side of the vehicle. That had always been Fai’s seat before, with Mokona in the back with the children.
“Yeah. It will help.”
He spend the better part of the day driving around the city, by the place where he and the princess had bought parts for their racers; he stopped at the place where the five of them had set up their home. The building itself was gone, but the lot was still vacant. It had been at that place where the first words were spoken about the five of them being a family. They had all thought about it before, subconsciously they must have all realized they were an odd sort of family, but none of them had dared to say anything until they had been in this world for a while. Family. A family with a mommy who had only been pretending to love daddy and a son who had no soul of his own.
“Kuro-tan, we should go now,” Mokona said once the sky had become the same color as it was when they had arrived. He hadn’t realized he had been sitting there that long, staring at the spot where their house used to be, thinking about all the things their family had gone through together.
“Yeah, we should be getting back.” He could answer whatever questions Tomoyo might have for him, ask his question, then move onto the next world as soon as dinner was over. He was going to find his family again if it took him the rest of his life. He had been an idiot for not realizing how important it was to him. He managed to find his way back to Tomoyo and Nokoru’s home. He handed the keys to the man waiting for him at the door, and the girl who had shown him to his room the night before offered to show him to the dining hall where his hosts apparently were waiting for him. Mokona hopped along beside him, chattering something about food and how good the chef in this place was. Yumi smiled and told them she would make sure to pass along the compliments.
“Kurogane-san, we’re so glad you could join us,” the blonde greeted him as he sat down at the table. “I know Tomoyo’s been looking forward to this conversation with you all day; she could barely concentrate on her work.” They had even set a place for Mokona at the table.
“I hope you don’t mind, but there are certain things I just have to know. Feel free to ask me any questions you would like in return. I’d like to help on this new journey of yours if I can.” She paused for a few minutes as a few servants came in and placed dishes in front of them. He did not even realize what it was he was eating and had no desire to know. “First of all, I have to know what happened to Sakura-chan.”
“She managed to get back to her home world with Syaoran.” Or at least Yuuko had assured him that the children had arrived safely in their desired world. He occasionally wondered about the safety of the children, but most of them time he was more occupied with thoughts of the blonde.
“What about Fai? What happened to him since we last saw you?”
“Well, he lost his eye, I turned him into a vampire that could only feed on my blood in order to keep him alive, we managed to get his eye back which negated the vampire blood, and he had several near mental breakdowns along the way. Now I have no idea where he’s gone. He just left me one evening.” They seemed a bit disbelieving, but it was to be expected. He had not believed in the existence of vampires before.
“And you, Kurogane?” Did you ever manage to make it back to your Tomoyo and your home?” she asked politely.
“Yes, I did get to see Tomoyo again. But I think it would be more accurate to say that my home ran away from me in the process.”
“Is there anything you would like to ask me, Kurogane?”
“Has Fai been here at all since the last time we were all here together?”
“I’m truly sorry. The last time I saw Fai-san was when the five of you were here.” He had really only wanted to know if he looked healthy, but he would have to find out about that elsewhere. “I take it that is why you are now traveling by yourself. You are searching for your home.”
“Yes.”
“Then please, do not let us detain you beyond dinner this evening. We wish you the best of luck on your journey, and please give our regards to Fai-san when you find him again.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Mokona perched on his shoulder, taking shelter from the heavy rain under his cloak. He had made sure to place Souhi at his belt as soon as they arrived in the new world. The only thing they could see around them was the tall, wide trees that an entire family could have lived inside the trunks comfortably. He was already standing in a puddle of water an inch high, and the rain was still falling. “This isn’t a world we’ve been to before.” Absolutely nothing seemed familiar about this place.
“No, Mokona has never been here before.” He was soaked already. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this world very much.
“Let’s see what we can find,” and he stepped forward into the rain.
Second chapter is done. Remember to feed the hungry author with reviews.