The Wizards of Ceres: 6
Title: The Wizards of Ceres, chapter 6 - The Wide World, Part I
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: R in later chapters. This chapter; PG-13.
Summary: In which Kurogane and Fai set out on a journey, and have an argument over a rabbit.
Part 1 - Chapter I - Chapter II - Chapter III - Chapter IV - Chapter V
Part 2 - Chapter VI - Chapter VII - Chapter VIII - Chapter IX - Chapter X
Part 3 - Chapter XI - Chapter XII - Side Story: The Prince of Valeria - Chapter XIII - Chapter XIV
Part 4 - Chapter XV - Chapter XVI - Chapter XVII - Chapter XVIII - Chapter XIX - Chapter XX
Starting the next morning, Kurogane was determined to put his new companion to the test, see what fighting skills he already possessed and which he had aptitude for. The first part of that testing was to get rid of all his weapons, and divest Fai of his (not that he was carrying any except the tantou, much to Kurogane's aggravation) and pull them both out into the middle of the clearing.
Fai looked around them, bemused. "What are we doing, Kuro-rin?" he asked cheerfully.
"First," Kurogane growled, "you don't call me rin, or chan, or any of those other stupid nicknames you come up with. My name is Kurogane. Say it right, or we're not going any further."
Fai folded his arms over his chest, looking thoughtful, then shook his head. "No," he said, "I don't think I can. That name is much too long and difficult for me to be able to remember. And besides, I think the other nicknames suit you better, since such a big, scary warrior needs an extra-cute name to make up for it -- "
He cut off there because Kurogane took a swipe at him, and he had to duck, or end up face first in the mud. "That wasn't nice, Kuro-pyon," he protested.
"There! Just then!" Kurogane jabbed a finger at him. "That nickname was as many syllables as saying my damn name would have been! Aren't you supposed to be a wizard? Isn't memorizing and remembering words supposed to be the sort of shit you do for a living?"
Fai pondered this, then shrugged. "Well," he said cheerfully, "I guess my head is so full from all the things I have to remember, I don't have the room left over to keep anything else in it!"
Privately, Kurogane thought this was likely.
"So what are we doing?" Fai persisted, a sing-song whine in his voice that grated on Kurogane's nerves already. "It's early. Couldn't we be sleeping?"
"Normally at this hour I'd be in the saddle," Kurogane said. "But before I go anywhere with you, I need to know how good you are in a fight." His initial guess was going to be 'not very,' but he'd at least give Fai a chance to try; maybe he had some undeveloped martial potential that Kurogane could work with.
"Okay," Fai said agreeably. "Are we going to fight something?"
"Right now you're going to fight me," Kurogane said, with a sharp smile. "I want to test you in hand-to-hand first, see what your basic strength level is. Once I've determined that, we'll move on to weapons."
"Fight you?" Fai looked Kurogane over from spiky-armored head to iron-plated toe, looking dubious. "I don't think I like this idea..."
"Don't worry. I won't hurt you." Kurogane let his smirk grow into a broad, evil grin. "Too much."
He lunged forward, keeping his first blow openhanded so as not to impact Fai too hard -- but Fai was not there. He'd ducked to the side, so quickly and smoothly that Kurogane almost didn't realize he'd moved until his hands had closed on open air. "Stop that," he growled, and swung again, this time with a closed fist.
"Oh," Fai said, and dodged again, this time fetching up several yards away, "Why?"
"Hit me back!" Kurogane commanded, his gleeful anticipation of a spar beginning to fade into annoyance. "Or at least stand still so I can hit you!"
"But I don't want to," the wizard said. "Either way, it looks like it would hurt."
"That's the idea!" Beginning to get pissed off, Kurogane pivoted and rushed at Fai, using all of his combat speed and resources, determined to pin Fai down. But somehow Fai evaded every move, weaving to the side and backwards, forcing Kurogane to keep extending after him. After several frustrated minutes of this, Kurogane was at the edge of the clearing, breathing hard, and Fai was crouched on the limb of a tree, looking down at him.
"Cut the crap!" Kurogane shouted up at him, venting his frustration by hitting the tree, hard enough to make it shake. "You said you wanted to learn how to hunt oni -- well, this is part of that!"
Fai tilted his head and looked down at Kurogane. "I don't think I understand," he said in a puzzled tone. "Are you saying that if a demon tries to hit me, I should let them? That doesn't sound like a very good thing to learn."
"You have to learn to take a hit!" Kurogane insisted. "So get down from there!"
"I really think I'd prefer to learn not to be hit in the first place," Fai said thoughtfully. "If you don't mind, Kuro-pon."
Kurogane did mind. He continued to chase Fai around the clearing for an hour, before he finally gave up.
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They tried swords next.
"You hold onto this end, right, Kuro-pin?" Fai said brightly.
Kurogane gritted his teeth, corrected Fai's grip, and wondered why he had wanted a lunatic for a partner on this patrol in the first place.
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He tried knives next, because if Fai was going to carry one, he might as well learn how to use it.
This went slightly better; at the very least, Fai stopped clowning around and actually seemed to take the lesson seriously. The reach on the tantou was much shorter than the long sword, barely a third of the distance, and consequently much lighter. Kurogane considered the knife something of a last-ditch defense anyway; if anything got close enough for you to use it, you'd damn well better know how to.
Since he didn't particularly feel like being repeatedly stabbed while Fai practiced, he upended a fallen log, tacked on a piece of red cloth at approximately heart height, and declared it a target dummy.
He showed Fai the basic strokes of parry, thrust and counter, set him to practice on the log, and stepped aside. When he thought Fai was absorbed in his task, attention focused on his weapon and his rhythm, he slipped behind him. Another thing that Fai was going to have to learn, and the sooner the better, was to develop a situational awareness of things behind him and to the sides. He couldn't afford to be taken by surprise.
It was Kurogane was surprised, however, when he pounced -- and stumbled forward to find himself holding nothing. Only the brush of blond hair against his arm signaled where Fai had ducked and twisted away. He whirled around to see the mage bounding across the clearing, moving much faster than Kurogane had thought him capable with, and scale the nearby tree with an ease that made him look like he was levitating up the side. Then he twisted around, half-hanging from the limb, to look straight at Kurogane. He was smiling.
Then something dark and sharp was coming straight towards him, and Kurogane instinctively ducked to the side. The blade that Fai had been practicing with struck dead center into the heart-target of the training dummy and hung there, quivering.
"Sorry, Kuro-chan," Fai called cheerfully. "You surprised me."
"Hmph," Kurogane straightened up, unwilling respect warring with his feelings of annoyance at being had. "I guess, if you're totally useless in hand-to-hand, climbing a tree when an enemy comes at you isn't the worst response."
Fai laughed, and Kurogane scowled as he ripped the tantou back out of the training dummy. "But that still doesn't change the fact that you only had one weapon and you threw it away, you dumbass!"
"If it wasn't meant to be thrown, why is it balanced for throwing?" Fai said reasonably.
"If you didn't mean to learn, why did you come out here in the first place?" Kurogane countered, but Fai just shrugged.
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Kurogane did carry a bow, disassembled, among the gear packed onto his horse. He didn't use it often, as kyuudo wasn't his strongest discipline; but there were times when it came in handy, and his training encouraged him to keep in practice on all his skills and to maintain all his gear in good order. Still, the wood was a little stiff when he unwrapped it from its sackcloth, the coiled bowstring a little dry. He dragged Fai over to it and showed him how to care for the weapon, to oil the bow and wax the string until it was stiff, how to brace the bow to string or unstring it without warping the wood.
Fai seemed to get the hang of this quickly enough, and Kurogane moved the target to the far end of the clearing and instructed Fai on how to hold the bow, how to draw it and nock the arrow. Fai seemed to have no trouble pulling it back, which surprised Kurogane a bit; this bow was short, had to be on order to carry it on a horse, but a heavier draw to make up for the lack of force. Maybe he had some aptitude after all.
He had Fai practice stance and posture for an hour before he finally broke out the arrows, valuable steel-tipped iron arrowheads.
"Bring the arrow up to your face, and sight along it, down your arm," Kurogane instructed. "When you release the string, be careful not to graze yourself with it; it's got a lot of force behind it and you can lose the skin off your face or your arm that way. Don't be upset if you can't hit the target at first, there's a lot of variation in the wind and the height of the drop."
"Okay," Fai said, raising the point of his arrow and adjusting his grip on the string as instructed.
Kurogane walked around him, squinting at his posture, before he nodded grudging approval. "Good enough," he said. "All right, shoot."
Fai released the arrow. Kurogane followed it across the clearing, and blinked as it struck dead in the center of the target's "heart." He was about to comment on the luck of the shot, when a hiss and a twang from beside him whipped his attention back to Fai; the mage was moving smoothly and rapidly, drawing each arrow and releasing it in quick enough succession that two of them were in the air at once; and all of them landed on the heart-target, inches away from each other.
"It's really a lot easier when the target isn't moving," Fai said cheerfully, lowering the bow.
Kurogane stared at the target, and back at Fai. He bit back on the first two replies that came to mind, the first being glaringly obvious, and the second unnecessarily profane. Finally, in a tone of voice that was almost calm, he said, "Why didn't you tell me you already had training with the bow?"
Fai grinned at him cheekily. "But Kuro-teacher was enjoying himself so much!"
Clearly, Kurogane was going to have to check his initial assumptions about Fai's fighting prowess, if they were both going to survive this trip.
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He was forced to revisit a number of his initial assumptions, over the next few days.
The weapons' training was the first. The second was when, later that evening, he ran a mental calculation of how long his food supplies would last when split two ways, and wondered aloud where they were going to get enough food to last the circuit.
Fai had given him a bemused look, and walked off into the woods.
He returned an hour later with an armful of food, autumn forest harvest; greens, mushrooms, a variety of nuts, some thick and juicy root vegetables. Kurogane had been impressed despite himself. He spent plenty of time on patrol, but he usually carried his food with him. It wasn't that he didn't know how to live off the land in a pinch, but he wasn't very good at it, and it was time-consuming enough that didn't like taking time from traveling or tracking to hunt or gather.
Fai cooked the dinner, too, which was probably just as well; like hunting, Kurogane knew the basic idea of cooking, but it was something he didn't like doing. He even consented to peel the potatoes that Fai handed to him, looking forward to a change from oat hardbread and dried jerky. He sniffed at the appetizing smells coming from the stewpot, and said, "Hey, how about some fresh meat to go with that?"
"Do you have any?" Fai inquired.
"No, but I figured you could..." Kurogane raised his knife hand and wiggled his fingers in the air. "I mean, you called up a horse out of thin air, right? You could probably get us a rabbit or a goose or something we could eat."
"I probably could." Fai put the lid back on the stewpot, and wandered away, standing at the edge of the clearing with his arms folded over his chest and sucking at his lower lip. Kurogane gave the stewpot a wary look and kept peeling, hoping it wasn't going to burn or explode or something.
After about five minutes, Fai unfolded his arms, bent over, and picked something off the ground. When he turned around he was holding a rabbit in his hands, carefully supporting the small body in his arms. "Will this do?" he asked.
Kurogane was pleased, but also unnerved. It was one thing to hunt a rabbit, and another to have it hop right up to the cooking pot. "Fastest way to hunt I ever saw," he remarked.
"Uh huh," Fai said, and bent his head over the rabbit. "He was running away from a fox, that was why he was in the area. He got separated from his brother when the fox attacked."
Kurogane blinked. "How do you know that?"
"He told me." Fai's lips curved in a smile, and he gently touched the rabbit's ears. "His name is, mm, I guess Juniper is a good translation. He came from a warren not too far from here, but it was destroyed in a mudslide after the last heavy rain. He escaped with his brother and a few others, and since then they've been searching for a new place to live. He's hoping the fox didn't get his brother, but he hasn't found him yet."
Kurogane stared, knife paused mid-scrape. After a moment Fai lifted his head and smiled brightly at him. "So, shall we have him for dinner?" he said.
"You expect me to eat him after everything you just said?!" Kurogane threw the finished potato onto the plate. "I don't want to hear the name and life story of something I'm going to eat! Why did you have to tell me that?"
Fai tilted his head, looking puzzled. "What difference does it make?" he said. "It still would have been true, even if I didn't tell you."
"Augh! No! Just -- just put him back, okay? Let him go find his brother!" He was beginning to really hate magic. Or maybe he just hated magic when Fai did it.
Fai shrugged. "If you say so, Kuro-pu." He carefully placed the rabbit back on the ground; it stood stock still for a moment, as if confused, before starting and bolting back into the underbrush. Kurogane thought he could sympathize.
Kurogane rubbed at his forehead, not sure if the headache that was coming on was from hunger, or just Fai-induced. He turned back to peeling the roots that Fai had brought in, picking up the next one. "All right, we'll just eat vegetable soup, then." He gave Fai a sour glance. "Unless you're going to tell me next that this potato's name was Larry, and he was working to save money to buy medicine for his desperately sick mother, or something like that."
Fai laughed, emptying the bowl of peeled carrots into the stewpot. "Of course not, silly Kuro-bunbun. Potatoes don't have names."
"Good."
"They mostly just call each other 'Hey, you.' "
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"I think the stew is almost ready," Fai said, and came over to serve it. He dished it out onto a plate, and handed it over to Kurogane. "Here you go, dinner's up."
Kurogane glanced at the amount of soup left in the dish, and went digging in his own pack for the traveling supplies; they could space them out a good deal longer with gathered food, and the dried hard food would be a lot more palatable with fresh hot food to accompany it. He split the total methodically between the two of them, and handed Fai back his portion.
For a moment Fai looked confused; it always gave Kurogane a feeling of satisfaction to share his confusion, even if, as now, he had no idea what the problem was. "But this was for you," he said.
"What were you planning to eat, then, grass?" Kurogane narrowed his eyes at Fai, remembering that they'd had this conversation before. He modulated his voice to a commanding growl "Sit. Eat."
Fai did so, looking faintly stunned. Kurogane glared at him until he actually took the first bite, then turned to his own food. He had no idea why Fai wouldn't eat unless specifically told to, but considering that Fai also talked to rabbits, that was hardly the weirdest thing about his new companion.
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Weapons training continued each day, in the evenings after they'd made camp but before they lost the autumn light completely. Since swordsmanship was clearly hopeless, and Fai still refused to stand still and let Kurogane evaluate him in hand-to-hand, he focused both of their efforts mainly on kyuudo. Kurogane hoped, somewhat forlornly, that if he could make enough of the principles stick, then maybe some of that knowledge would transfer over to the other disciplines.
He dragged Fai over a thorough explanation of how the bow and arrows were made, how to care for and maintain them, and even the basics of how to construct new ones in an emergency. Fai absorbed it all with a cheerful good will, and it didn't take Kurogane too long to get into an easy mentor-student relationship with him, not unlike the dynamic he had with Syaoran.
True, Fai was older than his ward -- Kurogane estimated him in his late teens, on the cusp of adulthood -- but in some ways that was just as well. There was none of the confusion and conflicted drives of adolescence in him; for all his sometimes childlike silliness, at other times he could show a gratifying maturity. Fai learned things so quickly that within a few days Kurogane decided to teach him some of the more advanced ki techniques that he used in fighting oni.
"Inhale as you draw the bow back," Kurogane instructed him. "The breath is the source of your energy. You need to focus it into your center, feel it move through your arms and down the weapon. Don't try to move too fast, or you'll lose it."
Fai complied, although Kurogane could tell by his bemused expression that he wasn't quite getting this. "What am I shooting at, Kuro-ki?" he asked, half-complaining.
"Nothing, right now; you don't release the shot until your ki is ready. You need to focus your attention on the point of the arrow, just beyond where it's nocked at your bow. That's your point of ignition."
"How am I supposed to ignite it?"
"You have to gather energy and heat from everywhere in your body, and then release it at the same time you release the arrow," Kurogane said. "Try it now. Focus."
Kurogane crossed his arms and sat back, watching with narrow eyes as Fai tried. He could see the shift of stance and posture as Fai inhaled, drew the bow slowly back; by half-closing his eyes he could see the build of energy in the wizard's muscles, through his center. He wasn't very good at it, Kurogane observed with a certain hint of smugness; the flow of ki was shaky, the shape not well controlled. But it was a start.
"Now," Kurogane said, when after several tries he thought Fai was getting a handle on it. "Focus that energy on the tip of the arrow, and release it at the same time you release the string."
He was watching Fai's face and his ki at the same time, which was how he was able to see it; Fai's brows pinched in, the bemused expression turning into something more frustrated; all at once the gathered energy from his center dissipated, dissolving back into the rest of the body. Fai let out a huffed breath, an exasperated sound, and released the shot; the arrow zipped away, blurring through the air to strike the target, where it burst into blue flames.
Kurogane stared at the arrow, then at Fai, for a stunned moment before he managed to put together what happened. Fai lowered the bow and smiled brightly at him. "What the hell was that?" Kurogane growled.
"That was what you wanted. Right? For the arrow to be on fire?" Fai's eyes were wide and innocent, although his breathing was a little faster than usual.
"Not that way! You cheated -- you used magic!" Kurogane snarled. He stormed over to the target and upended the prepared battered bucket of water over it, before it burned down half the forest.
"But you wanted to me to use magic," Fai pointed out from behind him, but Kurogane was too furious by now to be drawn into the familiar argument.
"I wanted you to learn to do what I was telling you to do, not to take shortcuts and half-measures! You lost control of your ki -- I saw it break. You have to learn to control it!"
Fai sighed, a resigned and weary sound that Kurogane thought much better suited to his own mood. "Kuro-ki, are the oni particularly weak to one type of fire versus the other?"
"What?" Kurogane turned back to him, bafflement mixing with fury; in other words, a typical argument with Fai.
"I mean, is there something special about fire generated by ki, that hurts the oni especially?"
"They're weak to all kinds of fire." As far as Kurogane knew, anyway; he only tended to see the effects of his own attacks on them.
"Then what difference does it make whether it's fire from ki techniques, or from some other method? I did think the arrow was very useful," Fai offered. "A very efficient weapon, to carry the spell from one place to another. Much more energy efficient than trying to focus it to travel over distances by itself."
"That's not the point!"
"What is the point, then?"
"The point is that you're supposed to be learning this technique!"
"But I can't do this technique. It would be pretty awful to get into a fight and then not be able to do it, don't you think?"
"And you're never going to be able to do it, you'll never master it if you take lazy shortcuts and cop out. You have to practice! You start out weak, and by putting hard work into it, you become stronger! That's what the process of learning is!"
"I don't agree with that," Fai said.
Kurogane stopped, and then said through his teeth, "What do you mean you don't agree with that?"
"It's just that the world is always full of more things to learn," Fai said. "Everyone's different. Some things are always going to be easy for some people, impossible for others. I've studied just one subject for years and I know I've barely scratched the surface of everything that's out there. I could live a hundred lifetimes and still not learn everything there is to know. And we don't have a hundred lifetimes; we only have a short time before we'll have to fight another demon again. So why should I waste so much time beating away at one thing which I don't have the talent for, when I could move on to something else that's more useful for fighting them?
He smiled cheerfully at Kurogane. "That's my philosophy, anyway."
Kurogane growled. "Fine, if that's your philosophy -- that's fine. But we're done here."
Fai lowered the bow, blinked at Kurogane. "Done for the night?"
"Done for good," Kurogane snapped. "If you're ready to train by my philosophy, and learn things my way, then I'll teach you. Otherwise, I won't."
Fai thought about this for a moment, and Kurogane waited, confident that his threat would bring Fai into line. But then Fai nodded cheerfully and agreed. "Okay," he said.
"What?" Kurogane yelped, stared at him. "But -- I thought learning demon-hunting was what you came out here to do! You're telling me that you're just giving up?"
"Oh, no," Fai assured him earnestly. "I'm not giving up. I'll just have to find some other way to learn from Kuro-teacher."
"Like what?"
"Well, if we find a demon, then you'll have to fight it, won't you? And then I can learn from observing you, see what you do, and learn those moves from myself."
"Argh!" Kurogane resisted the urge to hit something. Like the mage. "You -- Look, there's no way in hell I'm going to get into a fight with you watching my back, if you don't know what the hell you're doing!"
"Then you'll just have to keep teaching me, won't you?" Fai smiled at him innocently.
"Or I could just just beat the lesson into you!"
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They'd been traveling together for a week when a stream that they'd been following for days suddenly opened out into a broad pool. Gravel-bottomed, the water flowed gently and mostly clear through the shallow gulch until it poured over a rock overhang a hundred feet away. It was about a yard deep at its deepest point, and they could both see the shadows of fish moving in the gentle current.
Kurogane's mind immediately began contemplating the possibilities of those fish, but Fai exclaimed, "A bath!"
"A bath? Out here?" Kurogane demanded. "Are you crazy, wizard?"
"What, you don't like baths?" Fai made a pretend-disgusted face. "No wonder Kuro-chan is so stinky all the time."
Kurogane growled, stung by the insult to his hygiene. "Don't be obnoxious. Of course I bathe -- when I'm home, in a city, where it's safe. Do you have any idea how stupid it would be to take off all my armor and splash around in the water for half an hour? If any oni showed up, I'd be fish bait."
"Well, maybe," Fai conceded magnanimously, "that's the case when you're by yourself. But there are two of us now! If you're really that worried, we can take turns, one of us standing guard all the time. If anything showed up, one could hold it off while the other one got his weapons and armor back on."
Kurogane made a disparaging noise. "If anything showed up, I could hold it off, yes. I'm not so sure about you."
"I'm hurt. I'm wounded. Kuro-chan doesn't have any faith in me. He's so cruel, so mean." Fai sniffed dramatically, and big crocodile tears welled up in his eyes, but by this time Kurogane was used to this, and was no more moved by his displays of fake hurt than by his fake smiles.
"Uh huh. I've known you for less than a month, wizard, and while you may say you've killed a oni, I didn't see it happen. Once we get in a fight together and I see how well you hold your own, then maybe I'll change my mind."
"Fair enough," Fai said good-naturedly, the fake tears disappearing as fast as they'd come. "But I have faith in you, so even if you don't want to take a bath, I still will. And you'll stand lookout just like a good guard dog."
"I'm not a dog!" Kurogane objected, but it was too late. Fai had already sat down on the riverbank and was unlacing his boots. Kurogane rolled his eyes, and dropped his pack on the gravel bar. Obviously, they weren't going to get out of here anytime soon.
Although the days were getting shorter and the weather bleaker, the woods were airy and open right now; the trees, mostly oaks, had shed many of their leaves, and those that remained were a bright yellow that seemed to catch and magnify the weak sunlight. It wasn't exactly warm, however, and Kurogane eyed the water with a certain amount of distaste. "Won't that be that cold as hell?" he asked with a shudder.
"Not really," Fai replied sunnily. "You should come in and try it!"
"I thought I was supposed to be standing guard?" Kurogane shot back. Fai laughed, and splashed the water, although it didn't travel far enough to get more than a drop or so onto him. Kurogane rolled his eyes, and settled back on the sandbar, all hope of a quick and efficient swim quickly fading.
The last piece of Fai's clothing landed in a heap beside his armor, and Kurogane, who had been curious about this for quite some time, reached out and picked up one of the pieces, turning it over in his hands. It was light, much lighter than Kurogane's own, but he could feel the difference in hardness just by holding it, and had little doubt that it could stand up to a blow.
There was that odd bluish cast to it, an almost oily sheen; it almost reminded him of the steel heart of Ginryuu, if you could make a suit of armor the same way you could make a greatsword. It felt slightly warm to the touch, and Kurogane wondered if that was just the leftover body heat, or the remnants of some enchantment. For a moment, he felt intensely jealous of Ceres' metalworkers, if they could give everyone a suit of armor like this.
He looked up, mouth open to comment on the craftsmanship; and it stayed open, then, as his train of thought was derailed by the vision in front of him.
Fai was naked, thigh-deep in the water, and that was in a strange way shocking enough. On some unconscious level, ever since their first encounter, Kurogane had thought of Fai as some weird kind of male-female hybrid; the pretty face, the long robes, and more than anything the magic just triggered female associations for him that were too strong to break, and he'd found himself unconsciously protecting Fai as though he were a woman. Now he was confronted with the very undeniable fact of Fai's maleness, it floored him, having the last of those assumptions blown away.
But that wasn't what took up most of his attention. The rest of Fai's skin was as pale as his face and hands had been; more so, if anything, because Fai somehow had managed to develop a slight sunburn in even this weak autumn sun. The hair on his legs and arms and back was so pale and fine as to be nearly invisible, and that just made the black lines of the tattoo stand out more, a broad and intricate design that covered his entire back, curving lines over the tops of his shoulders, down over his chest and his arms.
It was beautiful, and not just the aesthetics of the design, or the stark crisp contrast of black ink on white skin. It was beautiful on Fai's skin in a way it never could have been on a flat sheet of paper, curving gently around his body, moving and shifting as he breathed, flowing like water over muscles and bones as Fai shifted and flexed. There was a grace to the way he moved that reminded Kurogane of a deer, or a swan; not brute strength, but balance and elegance and a wholly natural assurance of movement.
It was endless moments before he could tear his attention away from the tattoo, and looked up to see a bright blue gaze narrowly intersecting his own. He realized too late that he'd been obviously staring, and quickly said, "Your tattoo. I don't remember seeing that before. Where'd it come from?"
Fai twisted around, glancing over his shoulder at the stylized design. "Why," he said, "how did you know I didn't used to have it? When did you see me naked before now to be sure? Have you been peeping?" He flashed Kurogane a sly grin, cocking his head coyly to the side.
Kurogane scowled, exercising all his discipline not to blush. "In case you had forgotten," he said, "first time I saw you, your shirt had been pretty much cut in half by an oni, and you almost were too at the same time. I got a good look at that cut, and definitely would have remembered seeing that marking there."
"Kuro-wan has such a good memory," Fai observed, but he wasn't meeting Kurogane's eyes.
"So, where'd it come from?" Kurogane persisted.
Fai didn't respond for a moment, attention on the splashing water, but he finally answered, "Well, you're right. I actually got it in my home country, before I came to look for you. And it isn't a permanent tattoo. It's a geas."
"A what?"
"A geas, a magical prohibition. They're usually invoked for a certain task, and once that task has been fulfilled, they disappear." Fai looked over at Kurogane, and smirked. "You see, if I was going to come and learn demon-hunting from Kuro-ko, I thought it wouldn't be quite right if I could do things he couldn't. So this marking restricts my magic, so I can't cast most spells. That way I have to learn from you, and do things the way you do them, instead of just using magic all the time."
Kurogane blinked, and narrowed his eyes. "But you still are doing some spells," he objected. "And, cutting off your magic so that you can learn fighting? Isn't that awfully extreme?" This news gave him extremely mixed feelings; while he thoroughly agreed with the idea that Fai should learn to do useful things the real way, demon hunting was the sort of thing you had to approach all-out, and placing artificial restrictions to make it harder smacked of treating it like a game, not taking it seriously.
"It's only a restriction; it doesn't cut off my magic completely. If things get too dangerous I can still do magic in a pinch. Anyway, it's only temporary. I'm an apprentice, remember?"
"Hm." Kurogane frowned. Something about Fai's easy assurances didn't quite add up, but he doubted he'd get much further by pushing him when he wasn't sure what the right questions were to ask.
"Never mind that now," Fai said, from much closer than Kurogane had expected; he started, and looked up just in time to catch a wave of water full in the face. "Your turn for a bath!"
He sputtered, trying to clear his eyes so that he could grab the wizard and wring his arrogant neck, but Fai just danced out of his reach and laughed. "Now, come on, you might as well," he chided him. "You're already wet, so if you don't take off your armor to dry, who knows what will happen? It might rust! And besides, there's nothing worse than the smell of wet dog!"
It was a good thing he'd dispelled any stupid notions about needing to feel protective about Fai, Kurogane decided, because he was going to kill him.
----------------
Kurogane's bath ended up being much shorter than Fai's had been, since he didn't waste time mucking around, and being out of his armor still made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Or maybe that was the way Fai stared intently at him the whole time he was bathing, but under the circumstances, Kurogane couldn't really complain without looking like a howling hypocrite.
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"Hey, Kuro-chan?" Fai asked.
Kurogane grunted annoyance, but he had long since learned that if he refused to respond to the annoying nicknames, there'd never be any conversation. Which might not be so bad, really, except that when there was no conversation the stupid wizard felt the urge to fill the silence with chatter and occasionally singing and all things considered it was really just easier not to stand on principle on the nicknames. "What?"
Fai stared into the fire, his chin rested on his folded arms. His expression was unusually pensive. "How do you think you want to die?" he asked.
"I don't."
Fai cast him an amused glance. "Everybody dies sometime, Kuro-chan."
"Yeah, probably. But I'm not going to be offered a say in it, so what's the point in being morbid?"
"But out of all the ways that you might possibly die, which do you think you would want, or at least, mind the least?"
Kurogane thought it over. "Old age, peacefully, in my sleep. In bed with someone's wife, preferably my own."
Fai vented an exasperated sigh, which gave Kurogane at least a small spike of satisfaction to share the headache. "Yes, but what if you couldn't choose that?"
"If I can't choose, then why are you even asking me?"
Fai threw a piece of firewood at him. "Kuro-chan, you are such a pain."
"I'm a pain?" Kurogane demanded, deflecting the missile. Now he was remembering why he hadn't wanted to respond to the nickname in the first place. Conversations with Fai always seemed to give him a headache. "Who was it who slowed us down for hours this morning by hiding my gear in a tree?"
Fai ignored him, turning back to the fire. "I would have thought you'd like to die in battle," he said. "Preferably defending someone you cared about."
That did strike a chord, and Kurogane frowned as he stared intently into the fire as well. "I'd hate that," he said after a moment. "That would be awful."
Fai blinked, and cast a startled glance in his direction. "Really? I thought that was something that mattered a lot to you. All heroism and glory and that sort of thing."
"Yeah, but..." Kurogane scowled. "If I died in battle fighting for something I wanted to protect... that would mean that I failed. And then whatever I'd been protecting would die too. That would be the worst, knowing as you died that you couldn't save them."
Fai frowned back at the fire. "But what if you knew that it was the act of you dying itself that would save them?"
Kurogane thought about his duty to protect Tomoyo, protect his people, and shook his head. "Things like that don't happen in the real world," Kurogane said. "So why waste time trying to think of such a contrived situation?"
Fai shot him an unreadable look, but thankfully, didn't argue the point.
After a moment, Kurogane added, "I guess I wouldn't mind too much dying in battle, if it was against a worthy, honorable opponent... and anyone I cared about were far away, at the time."
"So that they wouldn't get hurt?" Fai inquired.
"So that they wouldn't have to watch."
There was silence for a long time over the fire between them, broken, of course, by Fai. "Know how I'd want to die?" he said.
"I didn't ask."
"I'm thinking number one method would be drowning in a giant vat of beer. Good beer, by preference, but I'm not too picky."
"I did not ask."
--------------------------
They had both been asleep, for hours, or at least, the fire was banked and they'd been drawn into themselves and silent for hours, when Fai's quiet voice broke the silence. "I think I'd want to be killed by someone who cared for me," Fai said.
Kurogane roused from his light doze, and blinked in the darkness, rolling the words over in his head. He wasn't entirely sure he hadn't dreamed them, and yet, that was too bizarre for anything his sleeping mind could conjure up. Had to really be the mage. "That makes no sense whatsoever," he said at last.
A low laugh. "I didn't necessarily say it made sense, just that it's what I'd want. Who else could you trust to do it right, not to drag it out too long or hurt too much? We're with people who love us on the day that we're born; why should the last moments of our lives be any less intimate?"
Kurogane was a little more awake now; it was on the tip of his tongue to ask if Fai was joking, but he realized before he asked that he wasn't. "That's pretty damn selfish," he said. "If it was someone you cared for, why the hell would you put them through that? And if someone cared about you, why the hell would they kill you in the first place?"
"But you always get hurt the most by the people who care about you," Fai's voice came out of the darkness, soft and sad. "If we care about someone, we give them the power to hurt us, more deeply than any enemy could. Remember how it feels when someone you love leaves you, or dies. Would it have hurt so much if you didn't care? Doesn't it hurt worse than any burn you could get from fire, or any wound you could get in battle?"
Kurogane didn't answer for a long time, and for a change, neither did Fai. The wizard lay staring upwards, at the stars just barely glimmering visible beyond the branches. Fai said, "Maybe if --"
"Go to sleep," Kurogane growled, voice rough and ragged.
"But don't you think --"
"Shut up. Go to sleep," Kurogane said, and punctuated his point by kicking a pile of sand over the remains of the fire, plunging them into even deeper darkness. "Stop talking."
For once, the wizard did.
to be continued.
Author's Notes:
By the way, these versions of Kurogane and Fai aren't completely serious, of course. Kurogane has his own playful side and actually quite enjoys jokes and comedy. And Fai, although he has a lot of problems with food, has NO problems with liquor! Left to himself, he'd only ever drink liquor and never eat.
But for various reasons these sides of them just never get a chance to show in this story. Kurogane doesn't play around when he's on duty or in danger, and pretty much all the time we see him in this story, he's either on duty, a hostage of war, or having a major conflict with his monarchs, none of which are situations he's able to relax and act casually. Fai, meanwhile, is not allowed to drink liquor when he's injured and taking medicines -- and pretty much all the time we see him, he's either out in the middle of nowhere where there is no liquor, or too badly injured to drink!
Also: Fai is a dirty liar.
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: R in later chapters. This chapter; PG-13.
Summary: In which Kurogane and Fai set out on a journey, and have an argument over a rabbit.
Part 1 - Chapter I - Chapter II - Chapter III - Chapter IV - Chapter V
Part 2 - Chapter VI - Chapter VII - Chapter VIII - Chapter IX - Chapter X
Part 3 - Chapter XI - Chapter XII - Side Story: The Prince of Valeria - Chapter XIII - Chapter XIV
Part 4 - Chapter XV - Chapter XVI - Chapter XVII - Chapter XVIII - Chapter XIX - Chapter XX
Starting the next morning, Kurogane was determined to put his new companion to the test, see what fighting skills he already possessed and which he had aptitude for. The first part of that testing was to get rid of all his weapons, and divest Fai of his (not that he was carrying any except the tantou, much to Kurogane's aggravation) and pull them both out into the middle of the clearing.
Fai looked around them, bemused. "What are we doing, Kuro-rin?" he asked cheerfully.
"First," Kurogane growled, "you don't call me rin, or chan, or any of those other stupid nicknames you come up with. My name is Kurogane. Say it right, or we're not going any further."
Fai folded his arms over his chest, looking thoughtful, then shook his head. "No," he said, "I don't think I can. That name is much too long and difficult for me to be able to remember. And besides, I think the other nicknames suit you better, since such a big, scary warrior needs an extra-cute name to make up for it -- "
He cut off there because Kurogane took a swipe at him, and he had to duck, or end up face first in the mud. "That wasn't nice, Kuro-pyon," he protested.
"There! Just then!" Kurogane jabbed a finger at him. "That nickname was as many syllables as saying my damn name would have been! Aren't you supposed to be a wizard? Isn't memorizing and remembering words supposed to be the sort of shit you do for a living?"
Fai pondered this, then shrugged. "Well," he said cheerfully, "I guess my head is so full from all the things I have to remember, I don't have the room left over to keep anything else in it!"
Privately, Kurogane thought this was likely.
"So what are we doing?" Fai persisted, a sing-song whine in his voice that grated on Kurogane's nerves already. "It's early. Couldn't we be sleeping?"
"Normally at this hour I'd be in the saddle," Kurogane said. "But before I go anywhere with you, I need to know how good you are in a fight." His initial guess was going to be 'not very,' but he'd at least give Fai a chance to try; maybe he had some undeveloped martial potential that Kurogane could work with.
"Okay," Fai said agreeably. "Are we going to fight something?"
"Right now you're going to fight me," Kurogane said, with a sharp smile. "I want to test you in hand-to-hand first, see what your basic strength level is. Once I've determined that, we'll move on to weapons."
"Fight you?" Fai looked Kurogane over from spiky-armored head to iron-plated toe, looking dubious. "I don't think I like this idea..."
"Don't worry. I won't hurt you." Kurogane let his smirk grow into a broad, evil grin. "Too much."
He lunged forward, keeping his first blow openhanded so as not to impact Fai too hard -- but Fai was not there. He'd ducked to the side, so quickly and smoothly that Kurogane almost didn't realize he'd moved until his hands had closed on open air. "Stop that," he growled, and swung again, this time with a closed fist.
"Oh," Fai said, and dodged again, this time fetching up several yards away, "Why?"
"Hit me back!" Kurogane commanded, his gleeful anticipation of a spar beginning to fade into annoyance. "Or at least stand still so I can hit you!"
"But I don't want to," the wizard said. "Either way, it looks like it would hurt."
"That's the idea!" Beginning to get pissed off, Kurogane pivoted and rushed at Fai, using all of his combat speed and resources, determined to pin Fai down. But somehow Fai evaded every move, weaving to the side and backwards, forcing Kurogane to keep extending after him. After several frustrated minutes of this, Kurogane was at the edge of the clearing, breathing hard, and Fai was crouched on the limb of a tree, looking down at him.
"Cut the crap!" Kurogane shouted up at him, venting his frustration by hitting the tree, hard enough to make it shake. "You said you wanted to learn how to hunt oni -- well, this is part of that!"
Fai tilted his head and looked down at Kurogane. "I don't think I understand," he said in a puzzled tone. "Are you saying that if a demon tries to hit me, I should let them? That doesn't sound like a very good thing to learn."
"You have to learn to take a hit!" Kurogane insisted. "So get down from there!"
"I really think I'd prefer to learn not to be hit in the first place," Fai said thoughtfully. "If you don't mind, Kuro-pon."
Kurogane did mind. He continued to chase Fai around the clearing for an hour, before he finally gave up.
----------------
They tried swords next.
"You hold onto this end, right, Kuro-pin?" Fai said brightly.
Kurogane gritted his teeth, corrected Fai's grip, and wondered why he had wanted a lunatic for a partner on this patrol in the first place.
----------------
He tried knives next, because if Fai was going to carry one, he might as well learn how to use it.
This went slightly better; at the very least, Fai stopped clowning around and actually seemed to take the lesson seriously. The reach on the tantou was much shorter than the long sword, barely a third of the distance, and consequently much lighter. Kurogane considered the knife something of a last-ditch defense anyway; if anything got close enough for you to use it, you'd damn well better know how to.
Since he didn't particularly feel like being repeatedly stabbed while Fai practiced, he upended a fallen log, tacked on a piece of red cloth at approximately heart height, and declared it a target dummy.
He showed Fai the basic strokes of parry, thrust and counter, set him to practice on the log, and stepped aside. When he thought Fai was absorbed in his task, attention focused on his weapon and his rhythm, he slipped behind him. Another thing that Fai was going to have to learn, and the sooner the better, was to develop a situational awareness of things behind him and to the sides. He couldn't afford to be taken by surprise.
It was Kurogane was surprised, however, when he pounced -- and stumbled forward to find himself holding nothing. Only the brush of blond hair against his arm signaled where Fai had ducked and twisted away. He whirled around to see the mage bounding across the clearing, moving much faster than Kurogane had thought him capable with, and scale the nearby tree with an ease that made him look like he was levitating up the side. Then he twisted around, half-hanging from the limb, to look straight at Kurogane. He was smiling.
Then something dark and sharp was coming straight towards him, and Kurogane instinctively ducked to the side. The blade that Fai had been practicing with struck dead center into the heart-target of the training dummy and hung there, quivering.
"Sorry, Kuro-chan," Fai called cheerfully. "You surprised me."
"Hmph," Kurogane straightened up, unwilling respect warring with his feelings of annoyance at being had. "I guess, if you're totally useless in hand-to-hand, climbing a tree when an enemy comes at you isn't the worst response."
Fai laughed, and Kurogane scowled as he ripped the tantou back out of the training dummy. "But that still doesn't change the fact that you only had one weapon and you threw it away, you dumbass!"
"If it wasn't meant to be thrown, why is it balanced for throwing?" Fai said reasonably.
"If you didn't mean to learn, why did you come out here in the first place?" Kurogane countered, but Fai just shrugged.
----------------
Kurogane did carry a bow, disassembled, among the gear packed onto his horse. He didn't use it often, as kyuudo wasn't his strongest discipline; but there were times when it came in handy, and his training encouraged him to keep in practice on all his skills and to maintain all his gear in good order. Still, the wood was a little stiff when he unwrapped it from its sackcloth, the coiled bowstring a little dry. He dragged Fai over to it and showed him how to care for the weapon, to oil the bow and wax the string until it was stiff, how to brace the bow to string or unstring it without warping the wood.
Fai seemed to get the hang of this quickly enough, and Kurogane moved the target to the far end of the clearing and instructed Fai on how to hold the bow, how to draw it and nock the arrow. Fai seemed to have no trouble pulling it back, which surprised Kurogane a bit; this bow was short, had to be on order to carry it on a horse, but a heavier draw to make up for the lack of force. Maybe he had some aptitude after all.
He had Fai practice stance and posture for an hour before he finally broke out the arrows, valuable steel-tipped iron arrowheads.
"Bring the arrow up to your face, and sight along it, down your arm," Kurogane instructed. "When you release the string, be careful not to graze yourself with it; it's got a lot of force behind it and you can lose the skin off your face or your arm that way. Don't be upset if you can't hit the target at first, there's a lot of variation in the wind and the height of the drop."
"Okay," Fai said, raising the point of his arrow and adjusting his grip on the string as instructed.
Kurogane walked around him, squinting at his posture, before he nodded grudging approval. "Good enough," he said. "All right, shoot."
Fai released the arrow. Kurogane followed it across the clearing, and blinked as it struck dead in the center of the target's "heart." He was about to comment on the luck of the shot, when a hiss and a twang from beside him whipped his attention back to Fai; the mage was moving smoothly and rapidly, drawing each arrow and releasing it in quick enough succession that two of them were in the air at once; and all of them landed on the heart-target, inches away from each other.
"It's really a lot easier when the target isn't moving," Fai said cheerfully, lowering the bow.
Kurogane stared at the target, and back at Fai. He bit back on the first two replies that came to mind, the first being glaringly obvious, and the second unnecessarily profane. Finally, in a tone of voice that was almost calm, he said, "Why didn't you tell me you already had training with the bow?"
Fai grinned at him cheekily. "But Kuro-teacher was enjoying himself so much!"
Clearly, Kurogane was going to have to check his initial assumptions about Fai's fighting prowess, if they were both going to survive this trip.
--------------------------------
He was forced to revisit a number of his initial assumptions, over the next few days.
The weapons' training was the first. The second was when, later that evening, he ran a mental calculation of how long his food supplies would last when split two ways, and wondered aloud where they were going to get enough food to last the circuit.
Fai had given him a bemused look, and walked off into the woods.
He returned an hour later with an armful of food, autumn forest harvest; greens, mushrooms, a variety of nuts, some thick and juicy root vegetables. Kurogane had been impressed despite himself. He spent plenty of time on patrol, but he usually carried his food with him. It wasn't that he didn't know how to live off the land in a pinch, but he wasn't very good at it, and it was time-consuming enough that didn't like taking time from traveling or tracking to hunt or gather.
Fai cooked the dinner, too, which was probably just as well; like hunting, Kurogane knew the basic idea of cooking, but it was something he didn't like doing. He even consented to peel the potatoes that Fai handed to him, looking forward to a change from oat hardbread and dried jerky. He sniffed at the appetizing smells coming from the stewpot, and said, "Hey, how about some fresh meat to go with that?"
"Do you have any?" Fai inquired.
"No, but I figured you could..." Kurogane raised his knife hand and wiggled his fingers in the air. "I mean, you called up a horse out of thin air, right? You could probably get us a rabbit or a goose or something we could eat."
"I probably could." Fai put the lid back on the stewpot, and wandered away, standing at the edge of the clearing with his arms folded over his chest and sucking at his lower lip. Kurogane gave the stewpot a wary look and kept peeling, hoping it wasn't going to burn or explode or something.
After about five minutes, Fai unfolded his arms, bent over, and picked something off the ground. When he turned around he was holding a rabbit in his hands, carefully supporting the small body in his arms. "Will this do?" he asked.
Kurogane was pleased, but also unnerved. It was one thing to hunt a rabbit, and another to have it hop right up to the cooking pot. "Fastest way to hunt I ever saw," he remarked.
"Uh huh," Fai said, and bent his head over the rabbit. "He was running away from a fox, that was why he was in the area. He got separated from his brother when the fox attacked."
Kurogane blinked. "How do you know that?"
"He told me." Fai's lips curved in a smile, and he gently touched the rabbit's ears. "His name is, mm, I guess Juniper is a good translation. He came from a warren not too far from here, but it was destroyed in a mudslide after the last heavy rain. He escaped with his brother and a few others, and since then they've been searching for a new place to live. He's hoping the fox didn't get his brother, but he hasn't found him yet."
Kurogane stared, knife paused mid-scrape. After a moment Fai lifted his head and smiled brightly at him. "So, shall we have him for dinner?" he said.
"You expect me to eat him after everything you just said?!" Kurogane threw the finished potato onto the plate. "I don't want to hear the name and life story of something I'm going to eat! Why did you have to tell me that?"
Fai tilted his head, looking puzzled. "What difference does it make?" he said. "It still would have been true, even if I didn't tell you."
"Augh! No! Just -- just put him back, okay? Let him go find his brother!" He was beginning to really hate magic. Or maybe he just hated magic when Fai did it.
Fai shrugged. "If you say so, Kuro-pu." He carefully placed the rabbit back on the ground; it stood stock still for a moment, as if confused, before starting and bolting back into the underbrush. Kurogane thought he could sympathize.
Kurogane rubbed at his forehead, not sure if the headache that was coming on was from hunger, or just Fai-induced. He turned back to peeling the roots that Fai had brought in, picking up the next one. "All right, we'll just eat vegetable soup, then." He gave Fai a sour glance. "Unless you're going to tell me next that this potato's name was Larry, and he was working to save money to buy medicine for his desperately sick mother, or something like that."
Fai laughed, emptying the bowl of peeled carrots into the stewpot. "Of course not, silly Kuro-bunbun. Potatoes don't have names."
"Good."
"They mostly just call each other 'Hey, you.' "
----------------
"I think the stew is almost ready," Fai said, and came over to serve it. He dished it out onto a plate, and handed it over to Kurogane. "Here you go, dinner's up."
Kurogane glanced at the amount of soup left in the dish, and went digging in his own pack for the traveling supplies; they could space them out a good deal longer with gathered food, and the dried hard food would be a lot more palatable with fresh hot food to accompany it. He split the total methodically between the two of them, and handed Fai back his portion.
For a moment Fai looked confused; it always gave Kurogane a feeling of satisfaction to share his confusion, even if, as now, he had no idea what the problem was. "But this was for you," he said.
"What were you planning to eat, then, grass?" Kurogane narrowed his eyes at Fai, remembering that they'd had this conversation before. He modulated his voice to a commanding growl "Sit. Eat."
Fai did so, looking faintly stunned. Kurogane glared at him until he actually took the first bite, then turned to his own food. He had no idea why Fai wouldn't eat unless specifically told to, but considering that Fai also talked to rabbits, that was hardly the weirdest thing about his new companion.
--------------------------------
Weapons training continued each day, in the evenings after they'd made camp but before they lost the autumn light completely. Since swordsmanship was clearly hopeless, and Fai still refused to stand still and let Kurogane evaluate him in hand-to-hand, he focused both of their efforts mainly on kyuudo. Kurogane hoped, somewhat forlornly, that if he could make enough of the principles stick, then maybe some of that knowledge would transfer over to the other disciplines.
He dragged Fai over a thorough explanation of how the bow and arrows were made, how to care for and maintain them, and even the basics of how to construct new ones in an emergency. Fai absorbed it all with a cheerful good will, and it didn't take Kurogane too long to get into an easy mentor-student relationship with him, not unlike the dynamic he had with Syaoran.
True, Fai was older than his ward -- Kurogane estimated him in his late teens, on the cusp of adulthood -- but in some ways that was just as well. There was none of the confusion and conflicted drives of adolescence in him; for all his sometimes childlike silliness, at other times he could show a gratifying maturity. Fai learned things so quickly that within a few days Kurogane decided to teach him some of the more advanced ki techniques that he used in fighting oni.
"Inhale as you draw the bow back," Kurogane instructed him. "The breath is the source of your energy. You need to focus it into your center, feel it move through your arms and down the weapon. Don't try to move too fast, or you'll lose it."
Fai complied, although Kurogane could tell by his bemused expression that he wasn't quite getting this. "What am I shooting at, Kuro-ki?" he asked, half-complaining.
"Nothing, right now; you don't release the shot until your ki is ready. You need to focus your attention on the point of the arrow, just beyond where it's nocked at your bow. That's your point of ignition."
"How am I supposed to ignite it?"
"You have to gather energy and heat from everywhere in your body, and then release it at the same time you release the arrow," Kurogane said. "Try it now. Focus."
Kurogane crossed his arms and sat back, watching with narrow eyes as Fai tried. He could see the shift of stance and posture as Fai inhaled, drew the bow slowly back; by half-closing his eyes he could see the build of energy in the wizard's muscles, through his center. He wasn't very good at it, Kurogane observed with a certain hint of smugness; the flow of ki was shaky, the shape not well controlled. But it was a start.
"Now," Kurogane said, when after several tries he thought Fai was getting a handle on it. "Focus that energy on the tip of the arrow, and release it at the same time you release the string."
He was watching Fai's face and his ki at the same time, which was how he was able to see it; Fai's brows pinched in, the bemused expression turning into something more frustrated; all at once the gathered energy from his center dissipated, dissolving back into the rest of the body. Fai let out a huffed breath, an exasperated sound, and released the shot; the arrow zipped away, blurring through the air to strike the target, where it burst into blue flames.
Kurogane stared at the arrow, then at Fai, for a stunned moment before he managed to put together what happened. Fai lowered the bow and smiled brightly at him. "What the hell was that?" Kurogane growled.
"That was what you wanted. Right? For the arrow to be on fire?" Fai's eyes were wide and innocent, although his breathing was a little faster than usual.
"Not that way! You cheated -- you used magic!" Kurogane snarled. He stormed over to the target and upended the prepared battered bucket of water over it, before it burned down half the forest.
"But you wanted to me to use magic," Fai pointed out from behind him, but Kurogane was too furious by now to be drawn into the familiar argument.
"I wanted you to learn to do what I was telling you to do, not to take shortcuts and half-measures! You lost control of your ki -- I saw it break. You have to learn to control it!"
Fai sighed, a resigned and weary sound that Kurogane thought much better suited to his own mood. "Kuro-ki, are the oni particularly weak to one type of fire versus the other?"
"What?" Kurogane turned back to him, bafflement mixing with fury; in other words, a typical argument with Fai.
"I mean, is there something special about fire generated by ki, that hurts the oni especially?"
"They're weak to all kinds of fire." As far as Kurogane knew, anyway; he only tended to see the effects of his own attacks on them.
"Then what difference does it make whether it's fire from ki techniques, or from some other method? I did think the arrow was very useful," Fai offered. "A very efficient weapon, to carry the spell from one place to another. Much more energy efficient than trying to focus it to travel over distances by itself."
"That's not the point!"
"What is the point, then?"
"The point is that you're supposed to be learning this technique!"
"But I can't do this technique. It would be pretty awful to get into a fight and then not be able to do it, don't you think?"
"And you're never going to be able to do it, you'll never master it if you take lazy shortcuts and cop out. You have to practice! You start out weak, and by putting hard work into it, you become stronger! That's what the process of learning is!"
"I don't agree with that," Fai said.
Kurogane stopped, and then said through his teeth, "What do you mean you don't agree with that?"
"It's just that the world is always full of more things to learn," Fai said. "Everyone's different. Some things are always going to be easy for some people, impossible for others. I've studied just one subject for years and I know I've barely scratched the surface of everything that's out there. I could live a hundred lifetimes and still not learn everything there is to know. And we don't have a hundred lifetimes; we only have a short time before we'll have to fight another demon again. So why should I waste so much time beating away at one thing which I don't have the talent for, when I could move on to something else that's more useful for fighting them?
He smiled cheerfully at Kurogane. "That's my philosophy, anyway."
Kurogane growled. "Fine, if that's your philosophy -- that's fine. But we're done here."
Fai lowered the bow, blinked at Kurogane. "Done for the night?"
"Done for good," Kurogane snapped. "If you're ready to train by my philosophy, and learn things my way, then I'll teach you. Otherwise, I won't."
Fai thought about this for a moment, and Kurogane waited, confident that his threat would bring Fai into line. But then Fai nodded cheerfully and agreed. "Okay," he said.
"What?" Kurogane yelped, stared at him. "But -- I thought learning demon-hunting was what you came out here to do! You're telling me that you're just giving up?"
"Oh, no," Fai assured him earnestly. "I'm not giving up. I'll just have to find some other way to learn from Kuro-teacher."
"Like what?"
"Well, if we find a demon, then you'll have to fight it, won't you? And then I can learn from observing you, see what you do, and learn those moves from myself."
"Argh!" Kurogane resisted the urge to hit something. Like the mage. "You -- Look, there's no way in hell I'm going to get into a fight with you watching my back, if you don't know what the hell you're doing!"
"Then you'll just have to keep teaching me, won't you?" Fai smiled at him innocently.
"Or I could just just beat the lesson into you!"
--------------------------------
They'd been traveling together for a week when a stream that they'd been following for days suddenly opened out into a broad pool. Gravel-bottomed, the water flowed gently and mostly clear through the shallow gulch until it poured over a rock overhang a hundred feet away. It was about a yard deep at its deepest point, and they could both see the shadows of fish moving in the gentle current.
Kurogane's mind immediately began contemplating the possibilities of those fish, but Fai exclaimed, "A bath!"
"A bath? Out here?" Kurogane demanded. "Are you crazy, wizard?"
"What, you don't like baths?" Fai made a pretend-disgusted face. "No wonder Kuro-chan is so stinky all the time."
Kurogane growled, stung by the insult to his hygiene. "Don't be obnoxious. Of course I bathe -- when I'm home, in a city, where it's safe. Do you have any idea how stupid it would be to take off all my armor and splash around in the water for half an hour? If any oni showed up, I'd be fish bait."
"Well, maybe," Fai conceded magnanimously, "that's the case when you're by yourself. But there are two of us now! If you're really that worried, we can take turns, one of us standing guard all the time. If anything showed up, one could hold it off while the other one got his weapons and armor back on."
Kurogane made a disparaging noise. "If anything showed up, I could hold it off, yes. I'm not so sure about you."
"I'm hurt. I'm wounded. Kuro-chan doesn't have any faith in me. He's so cruel, so mean." Fai sniffed dramatically, and big crocodile tears welled up in his eyes, but by this time Kurogane was used to this, and was no more moved by his displays of fake hurt than by his fake smiles.
"Uh huh. I've known you for less than a month, wizard, and while you may say you've killed a oni, I didn't see it happen. Once we get in a fight together and I see how well you hold your own, then maybe I'll change my mind."
"Fair enough," Fai said good-naturedly, the fake tears disappearing as fast as they'd come. "But I have faith in you, so even if you don't want to take a bath, I still will. And you'll stand lookout just like a good guard dog."
"I'm not a dog!" Kurogane objected, but it was too late. Fai had already sat down on the riverbank and was unlacing his boots. Kurogane rolled his eyes, and dropped his pack on the gravel bar. Obviously, they weren't going to get out of here anytime soon.
Although the days were getting shorter and the weather bleaker, the woods were airy and open right now; the trees, mostly oaks, had shed many of their leaves, and those that remained were a bright yellow that seemed to catch and magnify the weak sunlight. It wasn't exactly warm, however, and Kurogane eyed the water with a certain amount of distaste. "Won't that be that cold as hell?" he asked with a shudder.
"Not really," Fai replied sunnily. "You should come in and try it!"
"I thought I was supposed to be standing guard?" Kurogane shot back. Fai laughed, and splashed the water, although it didn't travel far enough to get more than a drop or so onto him. Kurogane rolled his eyes, and settled back on the sandbar, all hope of a quick and efficient swim quickly fading.
The last piece of Fai's clothing landed in a heap beside his armor, and Kurogane, who had been curious about this for quite some time, reached out and picked up one of the pieces, turning it over in his hands. It was light, much lighter than Kurogane's own, but he could feel the difference in hardness just by holding it, and had little doubt that it could stand up to a blow.
There was that odd bluish cast to it, an almost oily sheen; it almost reminded him of the steel heart of Ginryuu, if you could make a suit of armor the same way you could make a greatsword. It felt slightly warm to the touch, and Kurogane wondered if that was just the leftover body heat, or the remnants of some enchantment. For a moment, he felt intensely jealous of Ceres' metalworkers, if they could give everyone a suit of armor like this.
He looked up, mouth open to comment on the craftsmanship; and it stayed open, then, as his train of thought was derailed by the vision in front of him.
Fai was naked, thigh-deep in the water, and that was in a strange way shocking enough. On some unconscious level, ever since their first encounter, Kurogane had thought of Fai as some weird kind of male-female hybrid; the pretty face, the long robes, and more than anything the magic just triggered female associations for him that were too strong to break, and he'd found himself unconsciously protecting Fai as though he were a woman. Now he was confronted with the very undeniable fact of Fai's maleness, it floored him, having the last of those assumptions blown away.
But that wasn't what took up most of his attention. The rest of Fai's skin was as pale as his face and hands had been; more so, if anything, because Fai somehow had managed to develop a slight sunburn in even this weak autumn sun. The hair on his legs and arms and back was so pale and fine as to be nearly invisible, and that just made the black lines of the tattoo stand out more, a broad and intricate design that covered his entire back, curving lines over the tops of his shoulders, down over his chest and his arms.
It was beautiful, and not just the aesthetics of the design, or the stark crisp contrast of black ink on white skin. It was beautiful on Fai's skin in a way it never could have been on a flat sheet of paper, curving gently around his body, moving and shifting as he breathed, flowing like water over muscles and bones as Fai shifted and flexed. There was a grace to the way he moved that reminded Kurogane of a deer, or a swan; not brute strength, but balance and elegance and a wholly natural assurance of movement.
It was endless moments before he could tear his attention away from the tattoo, and looked up to see a bright blue gaze narrowly intersecting his own. He realized too late that he'd been obviously staring, and quickly said, "Your tattoo. I don't remember seeing that before. Where'd it come from?"
Fai twisted around, glancing over his shoulder at the stylized design. "Why," he said, "how did you know I didn't used to have it? When did you see me naked before now to be sure? Have you been peeping?" He flashed Kurogane a sly grin, cocking his head coyly to the side.
Kurogane scowled, exercising all his discipline not to blush. "In case you had forgotten," he said, "first time I saw you, your shirt had been pretty much cut in half by an oni, and you almost were too at the same time. I got a good look at that cut, and definitely would have remembered seeing that marking there."
"Kuro-wan has such a good memory," Fai observed, but he wasn't meeting Kurogane's eyes.
"So, where'd it come from?" Kurogane persisted.
Fai didn't respond for a moment, attention on the splashing water, but he finally answered, "Well, you're right. I actually got it in my home country, before I came to look for you. And it isn't a permanent tattoo. It's a geas."
"A what?"
"A geas, a magical prohibition. They're usually invoked for a certain task, and once that task has been fulfilled, they disappear." Fai looked over at Kurogane, and smirked. "You see, if I was going to come and learn demon-hunting from Kuro-ko, I thought it wouldn't be quite right if I could do things he couldn't. So this marking restricts my magic, so I can't cast most spells. That way I have to learn from you, and do things the way you do them, instead of just using magic all the time."
Kurogane blinked, and narrowed his eyes. "But you still are doing some spells," he objected. "And, cutting off your magic so that you can learn fighting? Isn't that awfully extreme?" This news gave him extremely mixed feelings; while he thoroughly agreed with the idea that Fai should learn to do useful things the real way, demon hunting was the sort of thing you had to approach all-out, and placing artificial restrictions to make it harder smacked of treating it like a game, not taking it seriously.
"It's only a restriction; it doesn't cut off my magic completely. If things get too dangerous I can still do magic in a pinch. Anyway, it's only temporary. I'm an apprentice, remember?"
"Hm." Kurogane frowned. Something about Fai's easy assurances didn't quite add up, but he doubted he'd get much further by pushing him when he wasn't sure what the right questions were to ask.
"Never mind that now," Fai said, from much closer than Kurogane had expected; he started, and looked up just in time to catch a wave of water full in the face. "Your turn for a bath!"
He sputtered, trying to clear his eyes so that he could grab the wizard and wring his arrogant neck, but Fai just danced out of his reach and laughed. "Now, come on, you might as well," he chided him. "You're already wet, so if you don't take off your armor to dry, who knows what will happen? It might rust! And besides, there's nothing worse than the smell of wet dog!"
It was a good thing he'd dispelled any stupid notions about needing to feel protective about Fai, Kurogane decided, because he was going to kill him.
----------------
Kurogane's bath ended up being much shorter than Fai's had been, since he didn't waste time mucking around, and being out of his armor still made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Or maybe that was the way Fai stared intently at him the whole time he was bathing, but under the circumstances, Kurogane couldn't really complain without looking like a howling hypocrite.
--------------------------------
"Hey, Kuro-chan?" Fai asked.
Kurogane grunted annoyance, but he had long since learned that if he refused to respond to the annoying nicknames, there'd never be any conversation. Which might not be so bad, really, except that when there was no conversation the stupid wizard felt the urge to fill the silence with chatter and occasionally singing and all things considered it was really just easier not to stand on principle on the nicknames. "What?"
Fai stared into the fire, his chin rested on his folded arms. His expression was unusually pensive. "How do you think you want to die?" he asked.
"I don't."
Fai cast him an amused glance. "Everybody dies sometime, Kuro-chan."
"Yeah, probably. But I'm not going to be offered a say in it, so what's the point in being morbid?"
"But out of all the ways that you might possibly die, which do you think you would want, or at least, mind the least?"
Kurogane thought it over. "Old age, peacefully, in my sleep. In bed with someone's wife, preferably my own."
Fai vented an exasperated sigh, which gave Kurogane at least a small spike of satisfaction to share the headache. "Yes, but what if you couldn't choose that?"
"If I can't choose, then why are you even asking me?"
Fai threw a piece of firewood at him. "Kuro-chan, you are such a pain."
"I'm a pain?" Kurogane demanded, deflecting the missile. Now he was remembering why he hadn't wanted to respond to the nickname in the first place. Conversations with Fai always seemed to give him a headache. "Who was it who slowed us down for hours this morning by hiding my gear in a tree?"
Fai ignored him, turning back to the fire. "I would have thought you'd like to die in battle," he said. "Preferably defending someone you cared about."
That did strike a chord, and Kurogane frowned as he stared intently into the fire as well. "I'd hate that," he said after a moment. "That would be awful."
Fai blinked, and cast a startled glance in his direction. "Really? I thought that was something that mattered a lot to you. All heroism and glory and that sort of thing."
"Yeah, but..." Kurogane scowled. "If I died in battle fighting for something I wanted to protect... that would mean that I failed. And then whatever I'd been protecting would die too. That would be the worst, knowing as you died that you couldn't save them."
Fai frowned back at the fire. "But what if you knew that it was the act of you dying itself that would save them?"
Kurogane thought about his duty to protect Tomoyo, protect his people, and shook his head. "Things like that don't happen in the real world," Kurogane said. "So why waste time trying to think of such a contrived situation?"
Fai shot him an unreadable look, but thankfully, didn't argue the point.
After a moment, Kurogane added, "I guess I wouldn't mind too much dying in battle, if it was against a worthy, honorable opponent... and anyone I cared about were far away, at the time."
"So that they wouldn't get hurt?" Fai inquired.
"So that they wouldn't have to watch."
There was silence for a long time over the fire between them, broken, of course, by Fai. "Know how I'd want to die?" he said.
"I didn't ask."
"I'm thinking number one method would be drowning in a giant vat of beer. Good beer, by preference, but I'm not too picky."
"I did not ask."
--------------------------
They had both been asleep, for hours, or at least, the fire was banked and they'd been drawn into themselves and silent for hours, when Fai's quiet voice broke the silence. "I think I'd want to be killed by someone who cared for me," Fai said.
Kurogane roused from his light doze, and blinked in the darkness, rolling the words over in his head. He wasn't entirely sure he hadn't dreamed them, and yet, that was too bizarre for anything his sleeping mind could conjure up. Had to really be the mage. "That makes no sense whatsoever," he said at last.
A low laugh. "I didn't necessarily say it made sense, just that it's what I'd want. Who else could you trust to do it right, not to drag it out too long or hurt too much? We're with people who love us on the day that we're born; why should the last moments of our lives be any less intimate?"
Kurogane was a little more awake now; it was on the tip of his tongue to ask if Fai was joking, but he realized before he asked that he wasn't. "That's pretty damn selfish," he said. "If it was someone you cared for, why the hell would you put them through that? And if someone cared about you, why the hell would they kill you in the first place?"
"But you always get hurt the most by the people who care about you," Fai's voice came out of the darkness, soft and sad. "If we care about someone, we give them the power to hurt us, more deeply than any enemy could. Remember how it feels when someone you love leaves you, or dies. Would it have hurt so much if you didn't care? Doesn't it hurt worse than any burn you could get from fire, or any wound you could get in battle?"
Kurogane didn't answer for a long time, and for a change, neither did Fai. The wizard lay staring upwards, at the stars just barely glimmering visible beyond the branches. Fai said, "Maybe if --"
"Go to sleep," Kurogane growled, voice rough and ragged.
"But don't you think --"
"Shut up. Go to sleep," Kurogane said, and punctuated his point by kicking a pile of sand over the remains of the fire, plunging them into even deeper darkness. "Stop talking."
For once, the wizard did.
to be continued.
Author's Notes:
By the way, these versions of Kurogane and Fai aren't completely serious, of course. Kurogane has his own playful side and actually quite enjoys jokes and comedy. And Fai, although he has a lot of problems with food, has NO problems with liquor! Left to himself, he'd only ever drink liquor and never eat.
But for various reasons these sides of them just never get a chance to show in this story. Kurogane doesn't play around when he's on duty or in danger, and pretty much all the time we see him in this story, he's either on duty, a hostage of war, or having a major conflict with his monarchs, none of which are situations he's able to relax and act casually. Fai, meanwhile, is not allowed to drink liquor when he's injured and taking medicines -- and pretty much all the time we see him, he's either out in the middle of nowhere where there is no liquor, or too badly injured to drink!
Also: Fai is a dirty liar.