The Wizards of Ceres: 16
Title: The Wizards of Ceres, chapter 16 - Bloodthirst
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: R overall, PG-13 in this chapter
Summary: In which Kurogane and Fai have a very painful but necessary conversation, and come to a meeting of the minds.
Author's notes: Fai gets a lot of flak from me, I'm afraid -- that's how I express affection towards my favorite characters, by heaping abuse on them. It's been that way in every fandom I've been in so far -- Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing, Edward Elric in FMA; the one I love the most is the one who gets put through the meat grinder. Fai is just the lucky one in this new fandom!
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
Kurogane recoiled, nearly lost his footing as he slammed painfully into the stone wall behind him. Suddenly he realized the source of the demon stench, the nauseating demon aura that he'd felt as soon as he was dropped down here. There was no other demon in this tiny cave -- only Fai. Those eyes, those horrible yellow eyes in that familiar face; there could be only one way to account for eyes like that. He remembered all that Seishirou had said, and it made a sudden terrible sense; if he could make demons out of animals, then why not out of men?
Now that Fai had raised his face Kurogane saw the tips of sharpened teeth in his mouth, under his ragged breathing; and gouges on his arms from the tracks of demon claws. His left eye seemed lost in shadows, bruises swelling it shut. The only mercy was that the man's form seemed otherwise unchanged, undistorted apart from the skeleton-gauntness of starvation. But that was no comfort; helpless and weaponless as he was, a man-sized demon could kill him just as easily as a normal one. Once again, he pulled helplessly at the rope binding his wrists behind his back, but it was as intractable as always; there was no give in it, it only bit further into his skin the harder he struggled.
Fai hadn't moved, just watching him from his dark corner. Kurogane swallowed revulsion and dread, and straightened up. "Hey, wizard?" he called cautiously. "Are you... yourself?"
He laughed again, the same half-crazy laughter as before. Thankfully, it cut off before it could rise too high. "You mean, have I lost my wits to blood-craze? Am I under the control of the Master of Demons? No." Kurogane breathed again, his shoulders slumping in relief, before Fai added in a sudden, spiteful hiss: "Not yet."
The first instinctive fear and hatred was fading, to be replaced with a horrified pity. How long had Fai been down here? It had been at least three weeks since he left Ceres, more than two since the anonymous note had reported he'd dropped out of contact. Now that Kurogane's eyes had adjusted fully to the light level in the cave, he could pick out other details. Fai was not naked, as Kurogane had first feared; he was wearing a crude-spun, undyed shift without color, like a patient's under-robe. Both the shift and his skin were crusted with dirt; how much of it was rock slime, shit, or dried blood Kurogane couldn't tell. But under the layer of filth, Fai's limbs were frighteningly thin; his bones jutted painfully out of his skin, and his face looked more like a skull than anything. Had Seishirou not bothered to feed Fai at all, in the time he'd been captive here?
His thoughts slid around, to the truth he'd been trying not to think too hard about. Oh yeah. Seishirou just had; the meal was him. A slab of meat, tossed down into a starving lion's pen...
"Don't come any closer!" Fai's voice snapped sharply as he took another step forward, trying to see better. He scrunched further against the wall, turning his head away as though avoiding Kurogane's gaze.
"Why not?" Kurogane challenged him, in a slightly shaky voice. "You said you aren't being controlled by him, didn't you?"
"No! But you... you smell like..." Fai's voice twisted in anguish. "Just stay back!" he shouted.
"The hell I will." Kurogane was starting to get hold of himself, and his brain was working again. "I need your help. I can't get these ropes off my wrist by myself, but I need my hands free if we're going to get out of here."
"Get out of here?" Fai laughed again, except this time it tailed off into a sob. "You never change, do you? You can't seriously think we can escape!"
"It looks like you never change, either," Kurogane said callously. "Have you even tried to escape? Or have you even bothered to move from that spot?"
There was silence from Fai, and then what sounded like a low-pitched moan of despair. Fai pushed himself to his feet against the wall and took a step forward, seeming to struggle against an invisible weight as he did so. He arched his neck, his head tipping back. The light shifted over his features as he moved... no, the light itself was changing, rising and falling in flux. The blue-white strands of light that covered the dungeon walls began to quiver and writhe, and the red-orange sigils that covered them brightened as if in response.
All at once there was a great wrench of air, like a clap of thunder, and the walls began to shudder and shake in response. Hastily, Kurogane ducked his head and sought some kind of cover, pulling futilely at his bound wrists in a fruitless attempt to shield his head from falling stones. He was acutely aware of his missing armor, flashing back to the landslide under the pass at Ceres. Shit! What was it with wizards trying to bash his head in with rocks?
But the cell had been designed to contain much heavier monsters than this, and though it trembled slightly, it did not break. The lights on the walls flashed as the air shook in time with Fai's struggles, as though thrashing against some invisible chains. Slowly, his struggles quietened, and the lights dimmed back to their former level. Fai curled up on the stone floor, shuddering and panting like a wounded animal.
"That's... my magic, on the walls," he whispered, barely loud enough for Kurogane to hear over the frantic pounding of his heartbeat. "What's left of it, anyway. Warded... he used the remains of the geas somehow, I don't know. I can't... I can't get it free, no matter how hard I try. So... so as long as you stay on the other side of the cell, you should be safe."
And he couldn't move away the place where his magic was pinned? It didn't make much sense to Kurogane, but then, he wasn't a mage and Fai was. And Seishirou was, too. "Fine," he said, his voice coming out more subdued than he'd like. "But if you can't come over here, I'm going over there. I still need you to take these ropes off."
"Are you mad?" Fai hissed. "Weren't you listening? I don't know -- how much longer I can control this!"
This being the bloodthirst, Kurogane didn't doubt. But his hands were already beginning to throb with the burning pain of lost circulation. If he couldn't get these bindings off soon, he wouldn't be able to use them when did -- if he didn't lose his hands entirely. Damn, why did Fai have to be so stubborn? Well, Kurogane could be equally stubborn. "Fine," he said. "So when you do lose control over it, and come after me no matter where in this cell I am, I'll be helpless to fight you off. Is that what you wanted?"
"No!" Fai denied, horrified.
"Then help me get these damn things off!" Kurogane tried to suppress the claustrophobic panic that wanted to creep into his voice.
There was silence from Fai's direction; Kurogane decided to take this for assent. Taking a deep breath, he stepped cautiously forward, until he was only a few yards away from Fai. Fighting against every self-preservation instinct, he turned around until his back was to Fai, presenting his bound wrists to the other man. His heightened senses caught the stutter in Fai's breathing, heard the shift and scrape of flesh and cloth against stone as he stood. A whiff of demon-stink gusted over him as Fai moved, and Kurogane stifled the instinctive urge to run like hell.
Hesitant fingers began to pick at the bonds on his wrist, sending flashes of pain through Kurogane's hands and up to his elbows. He felt something hot and damp trickle down his palm, from where the sharp ropes had cut; heard Fai's sudden, harsh intake of breath. An impatient noise, and then pain scored his arms as inhuman claws scrabbled against the rope, cutting the skin of his wrists.
Fai's breath was hot and foul against the back of his neck, and he felt the hair on his scalp prickle with horror. His senses did not lie to him; that was a man-eater standing behind him, close enough to end him with one savage bite to his vulnerable, un-armored neck. A spot of wet warmth fell onto the joint of neck and shoulders, and Kurogane shuddered, tensed to bolt, knowing he couldn't possibly move fast enough.
Then his arms were free, and he stumbled forward as his hands swung around forward, agonizing freedom after so long bound. Hard hands shoved him in the back of the shoulders, sending him staggering forward halfway across the cell with the force of it. Gods. For all that he looked like he could snap like a twig, Fai was strong, inhumanly strong, demon-strong. Why kid himself? If Fai really did come after him, hands or no hands, Kurogane didn't have a chance in hell of defending himself. "Now stay away," Fai hissed, sounding as shaken by the near-miss as Kurogane felt.
Kurogane was glad enough to retreat to the other side of the cell. There was work to be done. If Fai was truly pinned in place, Kurogane reasoned, then perhaps he had overlooked something. He took a few minutes to compose himself, and then began to search their little cell, looking for some means of escape -- or, at the least, something he could use as a weapon, or a tool.
A thorough search of the underground chamber turned up none of the latter. In some ways this pit was disappointingly unlike a real prison cell. There were no benches or dishes, no chains, no metal bars to be pried out of the walls -- no bones, even, from past prisoners. (Kurogane was secretly relieved not to find any of those; at least he had been Fai's first intended meal.) The most he could find were a few shattered chips of stone, too small and irregular even to make good tools, let alone weapons.
The trapdoor leading down here was high over Kurogane's head, but he managed -- with much scraping of knuckles and swearing -- to climb up the rough walls and precariously balance while he fruitlessly searched the hatch for some kind of access from this side. It was a heavy slab of stone reinforced with strong metal bars -- of steel, Kurogane recognized it, not even iron. If he'd had his swords perhaps he could have punched through it -- but then again, perhaps not.
Frustrated, he dropped down and began to examine the walls more closely. Now that he knew what he was looking at, the blue-white veins of light threading across the walls looked very familiar -- he recognized the color from the times he'd seen Fai work magic, flashes of brilliant power through the air. It was strange, unnatural, to see it laid out like this. As he looked closely, the threads of light seemed to be quivering, pulsing slightly; it reminded him of nothing so much as the exposed viscera of the cut-up animals on the slabs upstairs. The vision sickened him, and he had to back away for a moment, collect himself.
The red-orange sigils, on the other hand, were something entirely new and unfamiliar. They spread across the walls like malignant ivy, overlaying the white light, and somehow -- at least according to Fai -- pinning it in place. If he could destroy the shape of the sigils, could Fai recover his magic? Would that be enough to get them out of here? That's my magic -- what's left of it, Fai had said. No. It had to be enough.
He worked for what felt like a small eternity, trying to disrupt the sigils; smearing them, scratching them, trying to break them. It seemed like they were burned into the rock of the wall itself, and nothing short of destroying the rock would break the sigil.
But he wasn't about to give up. He retrieved his chip of rock and attacked the sigil again, trying to make at least a chip of a dent on it. On one wild swing he lost control of his makeshift tool, and it slid and scraped across the walls, right across one of the blue veins of light. Behind him, Fai whimpered.
He turned to apologize, and caught Fai watching him, and a chill passed through him as that lambent-yellow gaze met his, but this time not of fear. Fai quickly looked away, but this time Kurogane could not have missed it. Fai's right eye was unquestionably demon, brilliant yellow and split-pupilled, but his left eye was lost in the shadow, covered by a fall of filthy, matted-blond hair. He couldn't see the left eye at all, and black filth ran down the cheek like the dried trails of tears. Either it had been bruised so heavily that it had swollen completely shut, or...
"What the hell did he do to you?" Kurogane said, his voice coming out low and shaken. "Your eye..."
Fai gasped, and quickly turned his head so that the left side was hidden from Kurogane's sight. "Don't look," he said faintly.
That reaction was all the confirmation Kurogane needed, and fury began to build in the pit of his stomach, overwhelming the cold numb horror and shocked disbelief that had overtaken him. Anger not for his sake, this time, but for Fai's. "That sadistic bastard," he snarled. "Why did he do it? Just for kicks?"
A weak, hysterical giggle came from Fai's corner, although he still didn't unclench from his tight, self-protective curl. "For kicks? Oh, no," he said. His hand rose shakily to touch under his remaining eye. "Maybe you didn't know... The source of my magic power was in my eyes. Seishirou -- wanted that power. So he took it."
After a moment of silence, his voice came low; "He wanted to take -- the other half, too. But that would have killed me, and he didn't want me dead, not yet. He had too many other uses for me still. He... he told me about you, a little while ago, I... don't know how long. He said --" Fai broke off, swallowed noisily, and went on. " 'I'm bringing you a roommate. Let's see if you can keep this one alive, this time.' He already knew about..." Fai's voice broke down into a dry sob.
Kurogane stood still, unable to stop the images that were forming in his head. So. Of course, Seishirou would have read Fai's mind too, as easily as he'd plundered Kurogane's. Found out his most secret hurts and fears, and come up with a way to torture him more effectively than any knife or brand ever could.
Rage built up in Kurogane, so overwhelming that he could no longer contain it; he turned away from Fai, from the lights, and smashed his hand against the cold, eerily-glowing rock. The jolt of pain that flowed back up his arm did nothing to deter him; it only spurred his fury on. He smashed again and again, a wild outpouring of furious violence. Eventually he had to stop, force himself to stop before he broke every bone in his hand. He focused with some difficulty on the wall; all his furious violence had made not a dent.
He'd thought that the Master of Demons had thrown him down here to punish him, but he'd been wrong; he was no more than an afterthought to this. Seishirou had sent him down here to torture Fai, to punish and taunt him with the vision of what he needed and craved with supernatural force; and yet to reach out and take it would be a betrayal of all Fai had ever known. Afterwards, the guilt of what he had done would be a torment worse than any thirst, and it would be one that would be with him forever. Kurogane was no more than an instrument in Seishirou's plan; he'd been reduced to a puppet, a thing. Bait. Prey. And it was that degradation that infuriated him worst of all.
Anger was an old, old friend to Kurogane. Even as a child he'd had a short temper, which hadn't improved as he got older despite his mother's frequent chiding. After Suwa, of course, he'd borne away such a load of grief and rage inside him that despite his best efforts at discipline, over the years it had come to color everything he did. Anger was the only emotion he could express freely; it was his first reaction to almost any unpleasant stimuli or situation. He understood that well about himself, and did his best to control it where he could, channel it where needed.
But he had never, ever felt such rage as he did in that moment, when he understood exactly what Seishirou had done. Not since the night of Suwa's destruction had he felt such blind fury, such an overpowering need to lash out and destroy, the desire to obliterate the source of the insult entirely from the face of the earth.
But uncontrolled rage served no purpose -- no, it was worse than purposeless. Just like he'd tried to teach to Syaoran, hatred and anger could destroy you unless you were able to control it. He broke off mid-strike and stopped, planted his feet wide on the stone floor and braced his hands against the wall, breathing deep and hard, fighting for control.
If you could master it, instead of letting it master you, then it became your servant... you could use it to give you the strength, the determination to do what needed to be done. He took a long, slow breath, and raised his head, stared unseeing at the rough stone walls.
He was not going to play Seishirou's game. He was not going to let Seishirou use him; not to destroy Nihon, not to torture Fai. But what else was there to be done?
He couldn't escape from this cell by himself. He couldn't break through rock walls, and it was plain by now that the master of demons had no interest in feeding and watering his prisoners; he would leave them down here until one or both of them were dead.
Fai with his magic might be able to effect an escape, but that magic was trapped by the sigils, and Kurogane couldn't break those either; he had strength, but he didn't have the knowledge. Fai had the knowledge, but he was too weak and starved to use it to break free. Fai's hunger was driving him half mad, and his raging guilt and self-loathing was like to take him the rest of the way.
If Fai lost control of his hunger -- if he killed Kurogane -- then he might gain strength enough to survive, but it would break his mind; there would be nothing left of him. On the other hand, if he didn't lose control -- if he continued to fight back the inhuman instinct to feed -- then Fai would die by agonizing inches in front of Kurogane's eyes. And once he was gone, Kurogane had no doubt whatsoever that the Master of Demons would go ahead with his other gruesome plans, and Kurogane would be -- well, worse than dead, certainly.
Kurogane turned the possible outcomes around and around in his mind, searching for a way out of this trap. In the end, there was really only one thing that could be done.
Shit, he thought. I was afraid it was gonna come to this.
But being afraid wasn't an excuse.
"All right," he said, turning around and striding back to the center of the cell. "Okay. Here's what we have to do. I want you to..." He gritted his teeth, trying to come up with the words he never thought he'd hear himself say. "I want you to feed from me."
"What?" Fai's reaction was predictable; shock and outraged horror. "No! Do you want to die?"
"Of course I don't want to die," Kurogane snapped. "I'm not saying that you should actually go ahead and kill me! But if you take just some blood, not enough to kill me but enough to give you strength, then you can find some way to break the magical restrictions and -- "
"Are you out of your mind?" Fai demanded hoarsely. "You're supposed to be the expert on demons! Have you ever known a human to survive being fed on from one?"
Kurogane had not, so he avoided the answer. "You aren't a normal demon," he argued. "You're still man-size, hell, you're smaller than me. Demons are mindless and under the control of that asshole; you're not. I think you could stop before you killed me. I trust you to know when to stop."
"It's not just the blood," Fai hissed, his wide golden eye making his expression look wild and demented. "Or have you forgotten? The soul follows the blood!"
He hadn't forgotten. "Nobody's ever been just partly fed on," he countered, striving for patience and reason. "Maybe the soul doesn't leave the body until the instant of death. Or even if it does, then maybe I'd just lose part of my soul and be weakened, and still survive it."
"Maybe! Nobody knows!" Fai snapped. "You'd risk your life and your soul on stupid guesses? No!"
"Well, what's the alternative?" Kurogane snapped back, his temper flaring. "It's not like this is a choice between this and me living to an easy retirement. Believe me, I wouldn't be asking if that were an option! It's either this, or... or I end up sewn into one of those monstrosities upstairs. Do you think I like that idea any better?"
"Please," he said more quietly, when Fai didn't answer right away. It wasn't a word he used often, and he hoped it meant more to Fai when he did. "Listen to me. I don't want to die... but I'd rather take a chance that I might survive than know for certain that my death will be a horrible one. And this is the only chance I have to help you, too. You know you can't last much longer."
A shudder went through Fai's body, violent enough that Kurogane could see it from here. His hands tightened, enough to draw long scratches on his own arms. "No," he said, mindless, fervent denial. "No, no, never! Never again! I swore that I would never let it happen again! No!"
"Again?" Kurogane asked, cutting across Fai's ranting denial. "This is the second time you've said 'again.' What was the first time?"
Absolute silence in the underground cell, broken only by the harsh, ragged sounds of Fai's breathing. Kurogane was holding his own breath. "What was the first time?" he asked again, more quietly. "Ashura talked to me, did you know that? He told me everything about your childhood, when he first met you."
"He had no right to tell you that," Fai's voice whispered.
"Maybe not, but he did," Kurogane admitted. "Whatever you're afraid I might find out about you -- " Kurogane took a deep breath, swallowed. "I think I might already have an idea."
"Ashura doesn't know!" Fai's voice came out of the darkness like a lash. "I never told him -- how could I? If he knew -- if he knew the truth --" A break in his voice sounded suspiciously like a sob. "If he had known, he never would have taken me in after, he never would have..."
"What doesn't Ashura know?" Kurogane kept his voice as calm and persuasive as he possibly could. "Tell me. In a few days we might both be dead, no matter what else happens. What do you have to lose?"
Another deathly silence rang through the chamber; this time, not even Fai was breathing.
Finally Kurogane heard the sound of a raspy, shuddering indrawn breath, like the gathering of courage. When Fai spoke out of the darkness, his voice was low, almost dreamy.
"When the guards in black came to take us out of the nursery that night, they said -- they told us... that we were wrong. That we shouldn't be two, that only one of us was real. They took us away to the dark place and locked us in there, the two of us together. But they only ever gave us... enough food... for one."
Kurogane waited, hardly daring to breathe, for fear of interrupting the low reminiscence.
"It wasn't -- it wasn't so bad, at first. We, Fai and I, we always split the food exactly down the middle. Equally. Half for him and half for me. It wasn't perfect, we were hungry all the time, but... it wasn't too bad.
"But then... after long enough had passed, I don't know how long... maybe they started giving us less, as enough time went on -- or maybe we got bigger. It took less steps to get from one wall to the next, and we couldn't stand up straight any more without hitting the ceiling. And -- it wasn't enough any more. We weren't just hungry all the time, hunger was all there was, the little bit of food we got at meal times just made the emptiness worse. Fai got weaker and weaker, we both did, he started sleeping all the time now, he wouldn't answer me when I called for him."
Fai's voice was almost that of a child now, as he sank deeper and deeper into memories. "And then one day... they brought the food, as usual, and Fai was asleep. He didn't wake up when they put the bowl in, not from the light and the noise. I ate my half, as usual, but I was still so -- so hungry, and it hurt so bad, and I... and I ate the rest of the food myself, I ate Fai's share too."
He trailed off into silence; Kurogane stayed crouched near the wall, keeping as still and silent as he could. It was almost as though Fai had forgotten his presence, and was talking to himself -- or to his dead brother.
"So that then when he woke up later that night, and asked for something to eat, there was nothing to give him. He cried a little, in the darkness, but I had nothing... And the next time he went to sleep, after that, he wouldn't wake up at all -- not for all the times I shook or called him. He wouldn't wake up, and he went cold. All because I... I'm sorry, Fai, I'm sorry, I knew it was wrong... if only I had waited just a little longer, until Ashura came, you could have..."
Kurogane waited for him to continue, waited to hear the rest -- but Fai had lapsed into whispered, fervent apologies, rocking back and forth and shaking his head. Finally Kurogane accepted the fact that there was no more to the story, and that Fai had already revealed the truth he was so afraid of.
Now that he had the final piece, it all seemed to fall into place. Fai's behavior had never made any sense to him, not even after Ashura had revealed the tragic circumstances of his childhood. He'd met starved children before, but none of them as weird as Fai; they tended to hoard food, steal it, not avoid it. Not out of any greed or maliciousness, but from that persistent fear of going hungry.
But Fai's fear was different, and now Kurogane understood why. Fai wasn't afraid of his own hunger -- he was afraid of what it would do to others. Fai was fundamentally, irrationally convinced that if he gave in to his hunger, he would somehow harm or even kill those people he loved most in the world. He needed someone he loved and trusted to tell him it was all right, that it was okay to eat, or he'd ignore his hunger even to the point of self-harm.
It made sense. It was so like him. And it was all so stupid.
"That's it?" he asked incredulously. "That's all you've been punishing yourself for almost forty years over?"
"All?" In a moment Fai was on his feet in the cell, facing Kurogane, his grief and guilt transmuted into a storm of rage. "I murdered my brother! Don't you understand? He died because of me, because of my selfishness, my gluttony, my, my lack of control -- he died there, right in front of me! I killed him because I couldn't control my appetite, my hunger --"
"It wasn't your fault!" Kurogane was on his feet too, glaring Fai down. "You did not murder your brother! You were just a child -- a starving child! How could you even blame yourself for something that?"
"I was the only one there!" Fai shouted back, hanging on to his guilt like a favored toy. "Who else could have done it? Who else is there to blame?"
"Anyone!" Kurogane yelled, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "The guards who imprisoned you, the cooks who starved you -- the father who ordered you locked up in the first place! The mother who wouldn't protect you! Why is it so hard to accept that? Did you have so little control over your own life, that it was less frightening to believe that it was your fault your brother died than to accept the fact that there was nothing you could have done?"
That one scored a hit. Fai flinched and fall back, all the strength of his anger drained out of him now, leaving only old, twisting agony. "I should have been the one to die," he whispered. "It was true what they said. I am a demon, not a real child. I stole his life. He should have survived, not me!"
Kurogane twisted it back on him; cruelly perhaps, but he was running out of other options. "And if you'd been the one who never woke up, and he had survived instead of you, would it be the other way around? Would that have made him the demon, then? Would it then have been him who deserved to die and you who deserved to live? Or maybe you both would have died, and Ashura would have found two corpses in that cell instead of one. You can't know!"
Fai's face crumpled in misery. He turned his face away, whispered to the wall; "Why? Why didn't I just die?"
Kurogane had no idea if Fai was asking him or just talking to himself, and didn't particularly care "I'll tell you why," he said, advancing on Fai's position in the corner. "Why you lived and he didn't. It was because you wanted to survive. You still do; I can see it in you, for all you try to deny it. You've been trying to kill that wish for years and years, but you couldn't suppress it completely. It was why you lived and he didn't, and it's why you're going to feed from me now."
"No," Fai pleaded, but there was no force to it. He had nothing to stand on, and he was slipping. "If -- if I lose control, you'll --"
Kurogane stepped forward, over the self-imposed boundary line that Fai had drawn for himself, in the corner of this little cave. "You won't lose control," he said. "Because you're choosing this, and so am I. I'm offering. I'm volunteering. I want you to do this, Fai, you can't refuse me."
He stepped forward again. His heart was thundering in his chest; he could feel every thudding beat of it in his ears, in his arms, in his neck. There was no way Fai would not hear it, smell it. He could see Fai's eye dilate, taking on an almost human appearance as the cat-slit pupil widened. Saw him inhale deeply as though the air was full of sweet perfume, not the noisome stench of this close dungeon. Fai wavered and took a step forward, drawn almost against his will. How much strength of resistance could he have left in him, with the source of all he craved so very close? Not much, Kurogane thought. "No," he whispered, his voice full of anguish. "No, no, please, no no no..."
Kurogane caught him halfway, reaching out to take him by the arms, and then pull him close against his chest. Fai's skin was deathly cold; he couldn't tell if it was a mark of the demon blood, or just the chill of this horrid prison. Or just a sign of Fai's rapid fading. "Yes," he murmured, a steady counterpoint to Fai's litany of denial. He embraced Fai, pulled him tight, raised a hand to that matted hair and pressed his head close against his neck. "Yes. Do it. Now."
Gods, he'd wanted to hold him for so long, why did it have to come to this before he could do it? In spite of all his brave bluster to Fai earlier, he had no idea if he was going to survive this, or how horrible this death might be if he didn't. He was terrified, his insides quaking, his blood running cold with fear.
But fear was no excuse not to do what had to be done.
Fai's lips pressed against his neck; they were icy cold, too. He felt the other man take a sudden gulping breath, like a diver preparing for some deep and dangerous jump. And then sharp teeth scraped against the side of his neck, and bit down.
It hurt -- more than he'd expected. Really, the wound was no worse than any cut or bruise he'd ever had in battle, but then he'd had hot blood and adrenaline to keep him going. Now he could feel the horribly sharp points as they sank into his skin, the sudden burst of blood as the vessels were punctured. He stiffened up, fighting down against a screaming urge to push the predator away, defend himself. No. I offered. This is what I have to do. This has to be done...
The painful, dizzying pulling sensation at his neck seemed to spread through his whole body, until it felt like he was floating off his feet. His arms, too, seemed to be encased in a heavy languor; he couldn't have pushed Fai away now if he'd wanted to. The thought sent a spike of terror through him; he'd been injured often enough to know he hadn't lost enough blood yet for the blood-loss dizziness to be affecting him. This had to be the soul-drain starting, already. The dark underground cell seemed to darken further around the edges, rippling like the illusion of the garden above; only now it seemed that the illusion was not just what he was seeing, but the entire world, a mirage as thin as tissue paper. Any moment now it might tear, and dump him through to the darkness underneath.
The twisting darkness in his vision and the searing dizziness were terrifying; he tried to move or speak, and found he could do neither. Whispers of sound began to play in his ears, voices speaking a language that he couldn't understand, full of hidden meaning if only he could pin them down. Strange lights played over the inside of his eyelids, and he felt a sudden wrench of vertigo, as though he had been pulled abruptly outside himself.
He could see the scene inside the cell now, as though from a point outside himself. This had begun with Fai wrapped tight in his arms, his head bent down to expose his neck to the shorter man. Now he could see his own body, dark and solid but glowing with a lambent red energy; he had slumped to his knees, and only the strong embrace of Fai's arms wrapped around his back was keeping him up. Fai was bent over him now, his mouth still fastened on Kurogane's neck, still hungrily feeding.
Another wrench, and the interim view was gone; he saw only darkness, but the darkness was alive, thrumming with a melody that was both alien and familiar. Not the comfortable, familiar space of his own head; this was Fai's world now, full of brilliant, jagged beauty and the hectic babble of alien voices.
He couldn't see Fai, but he could feel him, hear him; sense him like never before. This was nothing like touching minds with Tomoyo in order to exchange words, nor even like Seishirou's casual rape of his memories. Fai's mind opened before him like a landscape; one paved with shattered, broken thoughts and memories, barely hanging together by a mass of shimmering threads.
He could feel the starvation, now, the unnatural combination of thirst and hunger that drove him wild, became an unbearable emptiness in his center and a ravening pain in his limbs. But he could also feel the horror, the revulsion at that alien feeling, at the monster he himself had become; the loathing, the grief and guilt and shame. All of it now was wrapped around the image of a man, tall and darkly imposing and beautiful. It took Kurogane several moments to recognize that image as himself, and he would have blushed if he could. It was completely unrealistic, too tall, far too handsome, and wrapped about with awe-inspiring sensations of superhuman competence, unflinching courage, and a boundless kindness all undeserved.
Was that seriously how Fai thought of him? Gods, this was embarrassing. I'm not anything like that tall, he complained. Nobody is.
A sudden shock, as his unexpected presence was registered. The godsawful self-image of himself shattered, swirling into a tempest of fragmented memories, feelings of embarrassment and chagrin and shame. I never wanted you to see me like this, Fai's voice whispered, seeming to come from the very sky and ground around him, shivering with grief and shame. I wanted to show you only the best parts of myself, so that you would think well of me. I wanted to impress you, charm you, dazzle you. I wanted you to love me, at least a little bit like the way I love you.
I can stand up to anything you can dish out. Kurogane's thoughts were suddenly loud and clear in the echoing landscape, obviously coming from a foreign source. I'll take all kinds of shit from you, but I won't accept half-truths or lies. It's got to be all or nothing.
The truth, then. A hectic swirl of images resolved in flickering sequence; that terrible morning in Ashura's chambers, as the king raged over Kurogane's disappearance. "You have betrayed me, Fai!" Ashura said, his dark eyes flashing with fury. "Why did you not report the change in the prisoner's location the instant you sensed it through the geas? Were you conspiring to help him escape? Is this how you repay me for all I have done for you? To think that you would choose this vulgar foreigner over me!"
No, no, I haven't betrayed you, my King, I swear it. Fai's thoughts swirled along familiar paths, into a quiet litany of guilt and self-doubt. Is he right after all? Was this my fault? Did I seek unconsciously to undermine him, was there something more I should have done? I don't even know myself any more.
A gray, depressed trail of remorse and self-blame resolved itself into the next day, when Fai knelt before the King's throne to receive his next mission: an envoy to the mysterious demon-powers in the west. "Bring me some allies to save my kingdom," Ashura instructed him, his voice curt with contempt. "If you can't even do that, then don't bother to come back."
Oh, my king, I tried, I tried...
That memory led to the next one, after days of dangerous travel overland, to arrive finally at the demon-master's court; he was politely received there, ushered into a meeting chamber surrounded by an elaborate illusion of a garden. He was just wondering where this mild-looking wizard found the power to run all those illusions on top of everything else, and why he would bother, when the dark-haired man stood up from his throne, and a golden pendant swung down from the chain on his neck. He'd looked up then, and saw the symbol there....
...and back years and years before, to a time when the world was a distorted, dimly-lit chaos populated by giants, and his twin. The dark soldiers, the strange new ones had come to get them from the nursery; the nursemaid had screamed, and then screamed no more. He was swept up by men wearing this signet, and so was Fai; he saw it clearly, as his face was caught painfully under the man's arm. They were taken away from the cozy warmth of the nursery, and thrown where it was always dark, and always cold. Why? Why were they doing this? Had they been bad? What had they done that was so wrong?
We were born. That's all! We were just born!
...and back again to the throne room, the seizing shock as recognition coursed through him; the abrupt tension that drove away the pretended friendliness of the master of demons, as he knew that Fai knew. Rising to his feet, raising his hand to defend himself, all the while knowing that he was too late, that with this geas on him he had no chance of defeating a master magician in his own lair.
And then it all broke down into chaos like nothing before, waves of heat, flashes of intensely burning light, the tearing strain of struggle against iron shackles and leather straps. Screaming, as the sharp knife cut into his eye, screaming and screaming with no hope that anyone would hear, that anyone would come --
Kurogane fought back against the nightmare tide of images and memories, struggling to get free. Enough, no more! he wanted to shout, but he seemed to have lost his voice; was losing all sense of himself. He was just one more fragment of consciousness in a raging storm of another man's soul. How long had he been here? How much blood had Fai taken from him? He had no way of knowing; he had no feeling at all of his body any more. Was he already dead?
A crackling fire, the twinkling stars through the canopy overhead. Fai's voice, whispering through the dark; the first time, he now realized, that Fai had ever truly been honest with him. What if you knew your death was the only thing that could save them?
Yes, he would. Yes, if he could not save himself, please let Fai at least be saved.
He heard his own words echoing back, although he couldn't tell any more whether it was his own thoughts forming the words, or just an echo of Fai's memories. I trust you to know when to stop. I trust you to know when to stop. I trust you trust you trust you to STOP!
A searing flash of comprehension; and then there was another almighty wrench as the contact was broken. Kurogane was back in himself again, freezing cold, unbearably weak, his eyes open and dry, fixed on a view of the dark stone ceiling. He tried to move, speak, and couldn't manage either; it was all he could do to take the next breath.
Fai's face filled his view, staring down at him with his one eye wide in something like astonishment. "Is that really all there is to it?" Fai's voice asked in his ear; but the man's lips hadn't moved.
Fai straightened up, still supporting Kurogane easily with one hand under his back. His other hand swept in a wide arc, and a roar of hot, focused ki followed along the path. He spoke, clearly and precisely, words in nihongo. "Chi ryu jin en bu."
Fire roared out in a widening spiral around them, hot red fire, Kurogane's fire. It beat against the walls and shattered them, the orange sigils shivering and winking out under the force of the blow. Fai gasped in something like pain as the streams of blue-white light, freed now from the wards that bound them, began to slide across the room back towards him. But Kurogane could feel the overwhelming relief, the cessation of agony, as his magic folded around him like wings, flowing back into its rightful place under his skin at last. The lights in the underground cell winked out, plunging them into natural darkness.
Fai smiled at him -- and Kurogane could feel it although he could not see it -- and turned halfway, still holding Kurogane in one arm. He drew a circle of blue fire in the air, and the air within shimmered and distorted -- too dark in here to see the darkness, now that the light of magic was gone, but he could blurrily see the shifting yellow fog that was growing within it. When it had grown to man-size, Fai calmly stepped forward, and the blackness of the stone cell vanished from around them in a surge of light.
~to be continued...
Pairing: Kurogane/Fai
Rating: R overall, PG-13 in this chapter
Summary: In which Kurogane and Fai have a very painful but necessary conversation, and come to a meeting of the minds.
Author's notes: Fai gets a lot of flak from me, I'm afraid -- that's how I express affection towards my favorite characters, by heaping abuse on them. It's been that way in every fandom I've been in so far -- Duo Maxwell in Gundam Wing, Edward Elric in FMA; the one I love the most is the one who gets put through the meat grinder. Fai is just the lucky one in this new fandom!
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
Kurogane recoiled, nearly lost his footing as he slammed painfully into the stone wall behind him. Suddenly he realized the source of the demon stench, the nauseating demon aura that he'd felt as soon as he was dropped down here. There was no other demon in this tiny cave -- only Fai. Those eyes, those horrible yellow eyes in that familiar face; there could be only one way to account for eyes like that. He remembered all that Seishirou had said, and it made a sudden terrible sense; if he could make demons out of animals, then why not out of men?
Now that Fai had raised his face Kurogane saw the tips of sharpened teeth in his mouth, under his ragged breathing; and gouges on his arms from the tracks of demon claws. His left eye seemed lost in shadows, bruises swelling it shut. The only mercy was that the man's form seemed otherwise unchanged, undistorted apart from the skeleton-gauntness of starvation. But that was no comfort; helpless and weaponless as he was, a man-sized demon could kill him just as easily as a normal one. Once again, he pulled helplessly at the rope binding his wrists behind his back, but it was as intractable as always; there was no give in it, it only bit further into his skin the harder he struggled.
Fai hadn't moved, just watching him from his dark corner. Kurogane swallowed revulsion and dread, and straightened up. "Hey, wizard?" he called cautiously. "Are you... yourself?"
He laughed again, the same half-crazy laughter as before. Thankfully, it cut off before it could rise too high. "You mean, have I lost my wits to blood-craze? Am I under the control of the Master of Demons? No." Kurogane breathed again, his shoulders slumping in relief, before Fai added in a sudden, spiteful hiss: "Not yet."
The first instinctive fear and hatred was fading, to be replaced with a horrified pity. How long had Fai been down here? It had been at least three weeks since he left Ceres, more than two since the anonymous note had reported he'd dropped out of contact. Now that Kurogane's eyes had adjusted fully to the light level in the cave, he could pick out other details. Fai was not naked, as Kurogane had first feared; he was wearing a crude-spun, undyed shift without color, like a patient's under-robe. Both the shift and his skin were crusted with dirt; how much of it was rock slime, shit, or dried blood Kurogane couldn't tell. But under the layer of filth, Fai's limbs were frighteningly thin; his bones jutted painfully out of his skin, and his face looked more like a skull than anything. Had Seishirou not bothered to feed Fai at all, in the time he'd been captive here?
His thoughts slid around, to the truth he'd been trying not to think too hard about. Oh yeah. Seishirou just had; the meal was him. A slab of meat, tossed down into a starving lion's pen...
"Don't come any closer!" Fai's voice snapped sharply as he took another step forward, trying to see better. He scrunched further against the wall, turning his head away as though avoiding Kurogane's gaze.
"Why not?" Kurogane challenged him, in a slightly shaky voice. "You said you aren't being controlled by him, didn't you?"
"No! But you... you smell like..." Fai's voice twisted in anguish. "Just stay back!" he shouted.
"The hell I will." Kurogane was starting to get hold of himself, and his brain was working again. "I need your help. I can't get these ropes off my wrist by myself, but I need my hands free if we're going to get out of here."
"Get out of here?" Fai laughed again, except this time it tailed off into a sob. "You never change, do you? You can't seriously think we can escape!"
"It looks like you never change, either," Kurogane said callously. "Have you even tried to escape? Or have you even bothered to move from that spot?"
There was silence from Fai, and then what sounded like a low-pitched moan of despair. Fai pushed himself to his feet against the wall and took a step forward, seeming to struggle against an invisible weight as he did so. He arched his neck, his head tipping back. The light shifted over his features as he moved... no, the light itself was changing, rising and falling in flux. The blue-white strands of light that covered the dungeon walls began to quiver and writhe, and the red-orange sigils that covered them brightened as if in response.
All at once there was a great wrench of air, like a clap of thunder, and the walls began to shudder and shake in response. Hastily, Kurogane ducked his head and sought some kind of cover, pulling futilely at his bound wrists in a fruitless attempt to shield his head from falling stones. He was acutely aware of his missing armor, flashing back to the landslide under the pass at Ceres. Shit! What was it with wizards trying to bash his head in with rocks?
But the cell had been designed to contain much heavier monsters than this, and though it trembled slightly, it did not break. The lights on the walls flashed as the air shook in time with Fai's struggles, as though thrashing against some invisible chains. Slowly, his struggles quietened, and the lights dimmed back to their former level. Fai curled up on the stone floor, shuddering and panting like a wounded animal.
"That's... my magic, on the walls," he whispered, barely loud enough for Kurogane to hear over the frantic pounding of his heartbeat. "What's left of it, anyway. Warded... he used the remains of the geas somehow, I don't know. I can't... I can't get it free, no matter how hard I try. So... so as long as you stay on the other side of the cell, you should be safe."
And he couldn't move away the place where his magic was pinned? It didn't make much sense to Kurogane, but then, he wasn't a mage and Fai was. And Seishirou was, too. "Fine," he said, his voice coming out more subdued than he'd like. "But if you can't come over here, I'm going over there. I still need you to take these ropes off."
"Are you mad?" Fai hissed. "Weren't you listening? I don't know -- how much longer I can control this!"
This being the bloodthirst, Kurogane didn't doubt. But his hands were already beginning to throb with the burning pain of lost circulation. If he couldn't get these bindings off soon, he wouldn't be able to use them when did -- if he didn't lose his hands entirely. Damn, why did Fai have to be so stubborn? Well, Kurogane could be equally stubborn. "Fine," he said. "So when you do lose control over it, and come after me no matter where in this cell I am, I'll be helpless to fight you off. Is that what you wanted?"
"No!" Fai denied, horrified.
"Then help me get these damn things off!" Kurogane tried to suppress the claustrophobic panic that wanted to creep into his voice.
There was silence from Fai's direction; Kurogane decided to take this for assent. Taking a deep breath, he stepped cautiously forward, until he was only a few yards away from Fai. Fighting against every self-preservation instinct, he turned around until his back was to Fai, presenting his bound wrists to the other man. His heightened senses caught the stutter in Fai's breathing, heard the shift and scrape of flesh and cloth against stone as he stood. A whiff of demon-stink gusted over him as Fai moved, and Kurogane stifled the instinctive urge to run like hell.
Hesitant fingers began to pick at the bonds on his wrist, sending flashes of pain through Kurogane's hands and up to his elbows. He felt something hot and damp trickle down his palm, from where the sharp ropes had cut; heard Fai's sudden, harsh intake of breath. An impatient noise, and then pain scored his arms as inhuman claws scrabbled against the rope, cutting the skin of his wrists.
Fai's breath was hot and foul against the back of his neck, and he felt the hair on his scalp prickle with horror. His senses did not lie to him; that was a man-eater standing behind him, close enough to end him with one savage bite to his vulnerable, un-armored neck. A spot of wet warmth fell onto the joint of neck and shoulders, and Kurogane shuddered, tensed to bolt, knowing he couldn't possibly move fast enough.
Then his arms were free, and he stumbled forward as his hands swung around forward, agonizing freedom after so long bound. Hard hands shoved him in the back of the shoulders, sending him staggering forward halfway across the cell with the force of it. Gods. For all that he looked like he could snap like a twig, Fai was strong, inhumanly strong, demon-strong. Why kid himself? If Fai really did come after him, hands or no hands, Kurogane didn't have a chance in hell of defending himself. "Now stay away," Fai hissed, sounding as shaken by the near-miss as Kurogane felt.
Kurogane was glad enough to retreat to the other side of the cell. There was work to be done. If Fai was truly pinned in place, Kurogane reasoned, then perhaps he had overlooked something. He took a few minutes to compose himself, and then began to search their little cell, looking for some means of escape -- or, at the least, something he could use as a weapon, or a tool.
A thorough search of the underground chamber turned up none of the latter. In some ways this pit was disappointingly unlike a real prison cell. There were no benches or dishes, no chains, no metal bars to be pried out of the walls -- no bones, even, from past prisoners. (Kurogane was secretly relieved not to find any of those; at least he had been Fai's first intended meal.) The most he could find were a few shattered chips of stone, too small and irregular even to make good tools, let alone weapons.
The trapdoor leading down here was high over Kurogane's head, but he managed -- with much scraping of knuckles and swearing -- to climb up the rough walls and precariously balance while he fruitlessly searched the hatch for some kind of access from this side. It was a heavy slab of stone reinforced with strong metal bars -- of steel, Kurogane recognized it, not even iron. If he'd had his swords perhaps he could have punched through it -- but then again, perhaps not.
Frustrated, he dropped down and began to examine the walls more closely. Now that he knew what he was looking at, the blue-white veins of light threading across the walls looked very familiar -- he recognized the color from the times he'd seen Fai work magic, flashes of brilliant power through the air. It was strange, unnatural, to see it laid out like this. As he looked closely, the threads of light seemed to be quivering, pulsing slightly; it reminded him of nothing so much as the exposed viscera of the cut-up animals on the slabs upstairs. The vision sickened him, and he had to back away for a moment, collect himself.
The red-orange sigils, on the other hand, were something entirely new and unfamiliar. They spread across the walls like malignant ivy, overlaying the white light, and somehow -- at least according to Fai -- pinning it in place. If he could destroy the shape of the sigils, could Fai recover his magic? Would that be enough to get them out of here? That's my magic -- what's left of it, Fai had said. No. It had to be enough.
He worked for what felt like a small eternity, trying to disrupt the sigils; smearing them, scratching them, trying to break them. It seemed like they were burned into the rock of the wall itself, and nothing short of destroying the rock would break the sigil.
But he wasn't about to give up. He retrieved his chip of rock and attacked the sigil again, trying to make at least a chip of a dent on it. On one wild swing he lost control of his makeshift tool, and it slid and scraped across the walls, right across one of the blue veins of light. Behind him, Fai whimpered.
He turned to apologize, and caught Fai watching him, and a chill passed through him as that lambent-yellow gaze met his, but this time not of fear. Fai quickly looked away, but this time Kurogane could not have missed it. Fai's right eye was unquestionably demon, brilliant yellow and split-pupilled, but his left eye was lost in the shadow, covered by a fall of filthy, matted-blond hair. He couldn't see the left eye at all, and black filth ran down the cheek like the dried trails of tears. Either it had been bruised so heavily that it had swollen completely shut, or...
"What the hell did he do to you?" Kurogane said, his voice coming out low and shaken. "Your eye..."
Fai gasped, and quickly turned his head so that the left side was hidden from Kurogane's sight. "Don't look," he said faintly.
That reaction was all the confirmation Kurogane needed, and fury began to build in the pit of his stomach, overwhelming the cold numb horror and shocked disbelief that had overtaken him. Anger not for his sake, this time, but for Fai's. "That sadistic bastard," he snarled. "Why did he do it? Just for kicks?"
A weak, hysterical giggle came from Fai's corner, although he still didn't unclench from his tight, self-protective curl. "For kicks? Oh, no," he said. His hand rose shakily to touch under his remaining eye. "Maybe you didn't know... The source of my magic power was in my eyes. Seishirou -- wanted that power. So he took it."
After a moment of silence, his voice came low; "He wanted to take -- the other half, too. But that would have killed me, and he didn't want me dead, not yet. He had too many other uses for me still. He... he told me about you, a little while ago, I... don't know how long. He said --" Fai broke off, swallowed noisily, and went on. " 'I'm bringing you a roommate. Let's see if you can keep this one alive, this time.' He already knew about..." Fai's voice broke down into a dry sob.
Kurogane stood still, unable to stop the images that were forming in his head. So. Of course, Seishirou would have read Fai's mind too, as easily as he'd plundered Kurogane's. Found out his most secret hurts and fears, and come up with a way to torture him more effectively than any knife or brand ever could.
Rage built up in Kurogane, so overwhelming that he could no longer contain it; he turned away from Fai, from the lights, and smashed his hand against the cold, eerily-glowing rock. The jolt of pain that flowed back up his arm did nothing to deter him; it only spurred his fury on. He smashed again and again, a wild outpouring of furious violence. Eventually he had to stop, force himself to stop before he broke every bone in his hand. He focused with some difficulty on the wall; all his furious violence had made not a dent.
He'd thought that the Master of Demons had thrown him down here to punish him, but he'd been wrong; he was no more than an afterthought to this. Seishirou had sent him down here to torture Fai, to punish and taunt him with the vision of what he needed and craved with supernatural force; and yet to reach out and take it would be a betrayal of all Fai had ever known. Afterwards, the guilt of what he had done would be a torment worse than any thirst, and it would be one that would be with him forever. Kurogane was no more than an instrument in Seishirou's plan; he'd been reduced to a puppet, a thing. Bait. Prey. And it was that degradation that infuriated him worst of all.
Anger was an old, old friend to Kurogane. Even as a child he'd had a short temper, which hadn't improved as he got older despite his mother's frequent chiding. After Suwa, of course, he'd borne away such a load of grief and rage inside him that despite his best efforts at discipline, over the years it had come to color everything he did. Anger was the only emotion he could express freely; it was his first reaction to almost any unpleasant stimuli or situation. He understood that well about himself, and did his best to control it where he could, channel it where needed.
But he had never, ever felt such rage as he did in that moment, when he understood exactly what Seishirou had done. Not since the night of Suwa's destruction had he felt such blind fury, such an overpowering need to lash out and destroy, the desire to obliterate the source of the insult entirely from the face of the earth.
But uncontrolled rage served no purpose -- no, it was worse than purposeless. Just like he'd tried to teach to Syaoran, hatred and anger could destroy you unless you were able to control it. He broke off mid-strike and stopped, planted his feet wide on the stone floor and braced his hands against the wall, breathing deep and hard, fighting for control.
If you could master it, instead of letting it master you, then it became your servant... you could use it to give you the strength, the determination to do what needed to be done. He took a long, slow breath, and raised his head, stared unseeing at the rough stone walls.
He was not going to play Seishirou's game. He was not going to let Seishirou use him; not to destroy Nihon, not to torture Fai. But what else was there to be done?
He couldn't escape from this cell by himself. He couldn't break through rock walls, and it was plain by now that the master of demons had no interest in feeding and watering his prisoners; he would leave them down here until one or both of them were dead.
Fai with his magic might be able to effect an escape, but that magic was trapped by the sigils, and Kurogane couldn't break those either; he had strength, but he didn't have the knowledge. Fai had the knowledge, but he was too weak and starved to use it to break free. Fai's hunger was driving him half mad, and his raging guilt and self-loathing was like to take him the rest of the way.
If Fai lost control of his hunger -- if he killed Kurogane -- then he might gain strength enough to survive, but it would break his mind; there would be nothing left of him. On the other hand, if he didn't lose control -- if he continued to fight back the inhuman instinct to feed -- then Fai would die by agonizing inches in front of Kurogane's eyes. And once he was gone, Kurogane had no doubt whatsoever that the Master of Demons would go ahead with his other gruesome plans, and Kurogane would be -- well, worse than dead, certainly.
Kurogane turned the possible outcomes around and around in his mind, searching for a way out of this trap. In the end, there was really only one thing that could be done.
Shit, he thought. I was afraid it was gonna come to this.
But being afraid wasn't an excuse.
"All right," he said, turning around and striding back to the center of the cell. "Okay. Here's what we have to do. I want you to..." He gritted his teeth, trying to come up with the words he never thought he'd hear himself say. "I want you to feed from me."
"What?" Fai's reaction was predictable; shock and outraged horror. "No! Do you want to die?"
"Of course I don't want to die," Kurogane snapped. "I'm not saying that you should actually go ahead and kill me! But if you take just some blood, not enough to kill me but enough to give you strength, then you can find some way to break the magical restrictions and -- "
"Are you out of your mind?" Fai demanded hoarsely. "You're supposed to be the expert on demons! Have you ever known a human to survive being fed on from one?"
Kurogane had not, so he avoided the answer. "You aren't a normal demon," he argued. "You're still man-size, hell, you're smaller than me. Demons are mindless and under the control of that asshole; you're not. I think you could stop before you killed me. I trust you to know when to stop."
"It's not just the blood," Fai hissed, his wide golden eye making his expression look wild and demented. "Or have you forgotten? The soul follows the blood!"
He hadn't forgotten. "Nobody's ever been just partly fed on," he countered, striving for patience and reason. "Maybe the soul doesn't leave the body until the instant of death. Or even if it does, then maybe I'd just lose part of my soul and be weakened, and still survive it."
"Maybe! Nobody knows!" Fai snapped. "You'd risk your life and your soul on stupid guesses? No!"
"Well, what's the alternative?" Kurogane snapped back, his temper flaring. "It's not like this is a choice between this and me living to an easy retirement. Believe me, I wouldn't be asking if that were an option! It's either this, or... or I end up sewn into one of those monstrosities upstairs. Do you think I like that idea any better?"
"Please," he said more quietly, when Fai didn't answer right away. It wasn't a word he used often, and he hoped it meant more to Fai when he did. "Listen to me. I don't want to die... but I'd rather take a chance that I might survive than know for certain that my death will be a horrible one. And this is the only chance I have to help you, too. You know you can't last much longer."
A shudder went through Fai's body, violent enough that Kurogane could see it from here. His hands tightened, enough to draw long scratches on his own arms. "No," he said, mindless, fervent denial. "No, no, never! Never again! I swore that I would never let it happen again! No!"
"Again?" Kurogane asked, cutting across Fai's ranting denial. "This is the second time you've said 'again.' What was the first time?"
Absolute silence in the underground cell, broken only by the harsh, ragged sounds of Fai's breathing. Kurogane was holding his own breath. "What was the first time?" he asked again, more quietly. "Ashura talked to me, did you know that? He told me everything about your childhood, when he first met you."
"He had no right to tell you that," Fai's voice whispered.
"Maybe not, but he did," Kurogane admitted. "Whatever you're afraid I might find out about you -- " Kurogane took a deep breath, swallowed. "I think I might already have an idea."
"Ashura doesn't know!" Fai's voice came out of the darkness like a lash. "I never told him -- how could I? If he knew -- if he knew the truth --" A break in his voice sounded suspiciously like a sob. "If he had known, he never would have taken me in after, he never would have..."
"What doesn't Ashura know?" Kurogane kept his voice as calm and persuasive as he possibly could. "Tell me. In a few days we might both be dead, no matter what else happens. What do you have to lose?"
Another deathly silence rang through the chamber; this time, not even Fai was breathing.
Finally Kurogane heard the sound of a raspy, shuddering indrawn breath, like the gathering of courage. When Fai spoke out of the darkness, his voice was low, almost dreamy.
"When the guards in black came to take us out of the nursery that night, they said -- they told us... that we were wrong. That we shouldn't be two, that only one of us was real. They took us away to the dark place and locked us in there, the two of us together. But they only ever gave us... enough food... for one."
Kurogane waited, hardly daring to breathe, for fear of interrupting the low reminiscence.
"It wasn't -- it wasn't so bad, at first. We, Fai and I, we always split the food exactly down the middle. Equally. Half for him and half for me. It wasn't perfect, we were hungry all the time, but... it wasn't too bad.
"But then... after long enough had passed, I don't know how long... maybe they started giving us less, as enough time went on -- or maybe we got bigger. It took less steps to get from one wall to the next, and we couldn't stand up straight any more without hitting the ceiling. And -- it wasn't enough any more. We weren't just hungry all the time, hunger was all there was, the little bit of food we got at meal times just made the emptiness worse. Fai got weaker and weaker, we both did, he started sleeping all the time now, he wouldn't answer me when I called for him."
Fai's voice was almost that of a child now, as he sank deeper and deeper into memories. "And then one day... they brought the food, as usual, and Fai was asleep. He didn't wake up when they put the bowl in, not from the light and the noise. I ate my half, as usual, but I was still so -- so hungry, and it hurt so bad, and I... and I ate the rest of the food myself, I ate Fai's share too."
He trailed off into silence; Kurogane stayed crouched near the wall, keeping as still and silent as he could. It was almost as though Fai had forgotten his presence, and was talking to himself -- or to his dead brother.
"So that then when he woke up later that night, and asked for something to eat, there was nothing to give him. He cried a little, in the darkness, but I had nothing... And the next time he went to sleep, after that, he wouldn't wake up at all -- not for all the times I shook or called him. He wouldn't wake up, and he went cold. All because I... I'm sorry, Fai, I'm sorry, I knew it was wrong... if only I had waited just a little longer, until Ashura came, you could have..."
Kurogane waited for him to continue, waited to hear the rest -- but Fai had lapsed into whispered, fervent apologies, rocking back and forth and shaking his head. Finally Kurogane accepted the fact that there was no more to the story, and that Fai had already revealed the truth he was so afraid of.
Now that he had the final piece, it all seemed to fall into place. Fai's behavior had never made any sense to him, not even after Ashura had revealed the tragic circumstances of his childhood. He'd met starved children before, but none of them as weird as Fai; they tended to hoard food, steal it, not avoid it. Not out of any greed or maliciousness, but from that persistent fear of going hungry.
But Fai's fear was different, and now Kurogane understood why. Fai wasn't afraid of his own hunger -- he was afraid of what it would do to others. Fai was fundamentally, irrationally convinced that if he gave in to his hunger, he would somehow harm or even kill those people he loved most in the world. He needed someone he loved and trusted to tell him it was all right, that it was okay to eat, or he'd ignore his hunger even to the point of self-harm.
It made sense. It was so like him. And it was all so stupid.
"That's it?" he asked incredulously. "That's all you've been punishing yourself for almost forty years over?"
"All?" In a moment Fai was on his feet in the cell, facing Kurogane, his grief and guilt transmuted into a storm of rage. "I murdered my brother! Don't you understand? He died because of me, because of my selfishness, my gluttony, my, my lack of control -- he died there, right in front of me! I killed him because I couldn't control my appetite, my hunger --"
"It wasn't your fault!" Kurogane was on his feet too, glaring Fai down. "You did not murder your brother! You were just a child -- a starving child! How could you even blame yourself for something that?"
"I was the only one there!" Fai shouted back, hanging on to his guilt like a favored toy. "Who else could have done it? Who else is there to blame?"
"Anyone!" Kurogane yelled, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "The guards who imprisoned you, the cooks who starved you -- the father who ordered you locked up in the first place! The mother who wouldn't protect you! Why is it so hard to accept that? Did you have so little control over your own life, that it was less frightening to believe that it was your fault your brother died than to accept the fact that there was nothing you could have done?"
That one scored a hit. Fai flinched and fall back, all the strength of his anger drained out of him now, leaving only old, twisting agony. "I should have been the one to die," he whispered. "It was true what they said. I am a demon, not a real child. I stole his life. He should have survived, not me!"
Kurogane twisted it back on him; cruelly perhaps, but he was running out of other options. "And if you'd been the one who never woke up, and he had survived instead of you, would it be the other way around? Would that have made him the demon, then? Would it then have been him who deserved to die and you who deserved to live? Or maybe you both would have died, and Ashura would have found two corpses in that cell instead of one. You can't know!"
Fai's face crumpled in misery. He turned his face away, whispered to the wall; "Why? Why didn't I just die?"
Kurogane had no idea if Fai was asking him or just talking to himself, and didn't particularly care "I'll tell you why," he said, advancing on Fai's position in the corner. "Why you lived and he didn't. It was because you wanted to survive. You still do; I can see it in you, for all you try to deny it. You've been trying to kill that wish for years and years, but you couldn't suppress it completely. It was why you lived and he didn't, and it's why you're going to feed from me now."
"No," Fai pleaded, but there was no force to it. He had nothing to stand on, and he was slipping. "If -- if I lose control, you'll --"
Kurogane stepped forward, over the self-imposed boundary line that Fai had drawn for himself, in the corner of this little cave. "You won't lose control," he said. "Because you're choosing this, and so am I. I'm offering. I'm volunteering. I want you to do this, Fai, you can't refuse me."
He stepped forward again. His heart was thundering in his chest; he could feel every thudding beat of it in his ears, in his arms, in his neck. There was no way Fai would not hear it, smell it. He could see Fai's eye dilate, taking on an almost human appearance as the cat-slit pupil widened. Saw him inhale deeply as though the air was full of sweet perfume, not the noisome stench of this close dungeon. Fai wavered and took a step forward, drawn almost against his will. How much strength of resistance could he have left in him, with the source of all he craved so very close? Not much, Kurogane thought. "No," he whispered, his voice full of anguish. "No, no, please, no no no..."
Kurogane caught him halfway, reaching out to take him by the arms, and then pull him close against his chest. Fai's skin was deathly cold; he couldn't tell if it was a mark of the demon blood, or just the chill of this horrid prison. Or just a sign of Fai's rapid fading. "Yes," he murmured, a steady counterpoint to Fai's litany of denial. He embraced Fai, pulled him tight, raised a hand to that matted hair and pressed his head close against his neck. "Yes. Do it. Now."
Gods, he'd wanted to hold him for so long, why did it have to come to this before he could do it? In spite of all his brave bluster to Fai earlier, he had no idea if he was going to survive this, or how horrible this death might be if he didn't. He was terrified, his insides quaking, his blood running cold with fear.
But fear was no excuse not to do what had to be done.
Fai's lips pressed against his neck; they were icy cold, too. He felt the other man take a sudden gulping breath, like a diver preparing for some deep and dangerous jump. And then sharp teeth scraped against the side of his neck, and bit down.
It hurt -- more than he'd expected. Really, the wound was no worse than any cut or bruise he'd ever had in battle, but then he'd had hot blood and adrenaline to keep him going. Now he could feel the horribly sharp points as they sank into his skin, the sudden burst of blood as the vessels were punctured. He stiffened up, fighting down against a screaming urge to push the predator away, defend himself. No. I offered. This is what I have to do. This has to be done...
The painful, dizzying pulling sensation at his neck seemed to spread through his whole body, until it felt like he was floating off his feet. His arms, too, seemed to be encased in a heavy languor; he couldn't have pushed Fai away now if he'd wanted to. The thought sent a spike of terror through him; he'd been injured often enough to know he hadn't lost enough blood yet for the blood-loss dizziness to be affecting him. This had to be the soul-drain starting, already. The dark underground cell seemed to darken further around the edges, rippling like the illusion of the garden above; only now it seemed that the illusion was not just what he was seeing, but the entire world, a mirage as thin as tissue paper. Any moment now it might tear, and dump him through to the darkness underneath.
The twisting darkness in his vision and the searing dizziness were terrifying; he tried to move or speak, and found he could do neither. Whispers of sound began to play in his ears, voices speaking a language that he couldn't understand, full of hidden meaning if only he could pin them down. Strange lights played over the inside of his eyelids, and he felt a sudden wrench of vertigo, as though he had been pulled abruptly outside himself.
He could see the scene inside the cell now, as though from a point outside himself. This had begun with Fai wrapped tight in his arms, his head bent down to expose his neck to the shorter man. Now he could see his own body, dark and solid but glowing with a lambent red energy; he had slumped to his knees, and only the strong embrace of Fai's arms wrapped around his back was keeping him up. Fai was bent over him now, his mouth still fastened on Kurogane's neck, still hungrily feeding.
Another wrench, and the interim view was gone; he saw only darkness, but the darkness was alive, thrumming with a melody that was both alien and familiar. Not the comfortable, familiar space of his own head; this was Fai's world now, full of brilliant, jagged beauty and the hectic babble of alien voices.
He couldn't see Fai, but he could feel him, hear him; sense him like never before. This was nothing like touching minds with Tomoyo in order to exchange words, nor even like Seishirou's casual rape of his memories. Fai's mind opened before him like a landscape; one paved with shattered, broken thoughts and memories, barely hanging together by a mass of shimmering threads.
He could feel the starvation, now, the unnatural combination of thirst and hunger that drove him wild, became an unbearable emptiness in his center and a ravening pain in his limbs. But he could also feel the horror, the revulsion at that alien feeling, at the monster he himself had become; the loathing, the grief and guilt and shame. All of it now was wrapped around the image of a man, tall and darkly imposing and beautiful. It took Kurogane several moments to recognize that image as himself, and he would have blushed if he could. It was completely unrealistic, too tall, far too handsome, and wrapped about with awe-inspiring sensations of superhuman competence, unflinching courage, and a boundless kindness all undeserved.
Was that seriously how Fai thought of him? Gods, this was embarrassing. I'm not anything like that tall, he complained. Nobody is.
A sudden shock, as his unexpected presence was registered. The godsawful self-image of himself shattered, swirling into a tempest of fragmented memories, feelings of embarrassment and chagrin and shame. I never wanted you to see me like this, Fai's voice whispered, seeming to come from the very sky and ground around him, shivering with grief and shame. I wanted to show you only the best parts of myself, so that you would think well of me. I wanted to impress you, charm you, dazzle you. I wanted you to love me, at least a little bit like the way I love you.
I can stand up to anything you can dish out. Kurogane's thoughts were suddenly loud and clear in the echoing landscape, obviously coming from a foreign source. I'll take all kinds of shit from you, but I won't accept half-truths or lies. It's got to be all or nothing.
The truth, then. A hectic swirl of images resolved in flickering sequence; that terrible morning in Ashura's chambers, as the king raged over Kurogane's disappearance. "You have betrayed me, Fai!" Ashura said, his dark eyes flashing with fury. "Why did you not report the change in the prisoner's location the instant you sensed it through the geas? Were you conspiring to help him escape? Is this how you repay me for all I have done for you? To think that you would choose this vulgar foreigner over me!"
No, no, I haven't betrayed you, my King, I swear it. Fai's thoughts swirled along familiar paths, into a quiet litany of guilt and self-doubt. Is he right after all? Was this my fault? Did I seek unconsciously to undermine him, was there something more I should have done? I don't even know myself any more.
A gray, depressed trail of remorse and self-blame resolved itself into the next day, when Fai knelt before the King's throne to receive his next mission: an envoy to the mysterious demon-powers in the west. "Bring me some allies to save my kingdom," Ashura instructed him, his voice curt with contempt. "If you can't even do that, then don't bother to come back."
Oh, my king, I tried, I tried...
That memory led to the next one, after days of dangerous travel overland, to arrive finally at the demon-master's court; he was politely received there, ushered into a meeting chamber surrounded by an elaborate illusion of a garden. He was just wondering where this mild-looking wizard found the power to run all those illusions on top of everything else, and why he would bother, when the dark-haired man stood up from his throne, and a golden pendant swung down from the chain on his neck. He'd looked up then, and saw the symbol there....
...and back years and years before, to a time when the world was a distorted, dimly-lit chaos populated by giants, and his twin. The dark soldiers, the strange new ones had come to get them from the nursery; the nursemaid had screamed, and then screamed no more. He was swept up by men wearing this signet, and so was Fai; he saw it clearly, as his face was caught painfully under the man's arm. They were taken away from the cozy warmth of the nursery, and thrown where it was always dark, and always cold. Why? Why were they doing this? Had they been bad? What had they done that was so wrong?
We were born. That's all! We were just born!
...and back again to the throne room, the seizing shock as recognition coursed through him; the abrupt tension that drove away the pretended friendliness of the master of demons, as he knew that Fai knew. Rising to his feet, raising his hand to defend himself, all the while knowing that he was too late, that with this geas on him he had no chance of defeating a master magician in his own lair.
And then it all broke down into chaos like nothing before, waves of heat, flashes of intensely burning light, the tearing strain of struggle against iron shackles and leather straps. Screaming, as the sharp knife cut into his eye, screaming and screaming with no hope that anyone would hear, that anyone would come --
Kurogane fought back against the nightmare tide of images and memories, struggling to get free. Enough, no more! he wanted to shout, but he seemed to have lost his voice; was losing all sense of himself. He was just one more fragment of consciousness in a raging storm of another man's soul. How long had he been here? How much blood had Fai taken from him? He had no way of knowing; he had no feeling at all of his body any more. Was he already dead?
A crackling fire, the twinkling stars through the canopy overhead. Fai's voice, whispering through the dark; the first time, he now realized, that Fai had ever truly been honest with him. What if you knew your death was the only thing that could save them?
Yes, he would. Yes, if he could not save himself, please let Fai at least be saved.
He heard his own words echoing back, although he couldn't tell any more whether it was his own thoughts forming the words, or just an echo of Fai's memories. I trust you to know when to stop. I trust you to know when to stop. I trust you trust you trust you to STOP!
A searing flash of comprehension; and then there was another almighty wrench as the contact was broken. Kurogane was back in himself again, freezing cold, unbearably weak, his eyes open and dry, fixed on a view of the dark stone ceiling. He tried to move, speak, and couldn't manage either; it was all he could do to take the next breath.
Fai's face filled his view, staring down at him with his one eye wide in something like astonishment. "Is that really all there is to it?" Fai's voice asked in his ear; but the man's lips hadn't moved.
Fai straightened up, still supporting Kurogane easily with one hand under his back. His other hand swept in a wide arc, and a roar of hot, focused ki followed along the path. He spoke, clearly and precisely, words in nihongo. "Chi ryu jin en bu."
Fire roared out in a widening spiral around them, hot red fire, Kurogane's fire. It beat against the walls and shattered them, the orange sigils shivering and winking out under the force of the blow. Fai gasped in something like pain as the streams of blue-white light, freed now from the wards that bound them, began to slide across the room back towards him. But Kurogane could feel the overwhelming relief, the cessation of agony, as his magic folded around him like wings, flowing back into its rightful place under his skin at last. The lights in the underground cell winked out, plunging them into natural darkness.
Fai smiled at him -- and Kurogane could feel it although he could not see it -- and turned halfway, still holding Kurogane in one arm. He drew a circle of blue fire in the air, and the air within shimmered and distorted -- too dark in here to see the darkness, now that the light of magic was gone, but he could blurrily see the shifting yellow fog that was growing within it. When it had grown to man-size, Fai calmly stepped forward, and the blackness of the stone cell vanished from around them in a surge of light.
~to be continued...