The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories (draft) - Part 19
Oh man did this chapter ever take longer than I was planning. ^^; It's not even the chapter itself that was the problem, but I was off work with a killer headache for half of last week, still a bit woozy for the rest of the week and at a few too many parties or being distracted via chat by certain people who kept throwing fantastic crack ideas at me over the weekend. That kind of week really chips down on your remaining hours of fic-editing productivity.
Anyway, on the upside, what I've got to post is the first of the backstory chapters, and if it seems unusually long to people, that would be because it clocks in at slightly north of 4000 words - roughly double most of the chapters I've posted so far. For the record, the flashback chapters collectively switched into present tense so many times when I was trying to write them that eventually I just gave in and let them have their way (comforting myself with the thought I could go back and fix them in the final copy. *cough*) Either way, the backstory chapters have come out in rather a different style to the rest of the story so far, which I hope won't wind up being too jarring.
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Side Story 1
Sakura is the first thing Syaoran remembers, though their meeting is lost to him along with everything else from his earliest years. All he has left now is the emotion - the connection and the burning need to protect, and he’s clung to that ever since, even though he’s long forgotten what it means.
By contrast, Sakura has never been allowed to forget anything - not even from those earliest moments when the world was still huge and blurry and strange. However, there’s little in her memory to differentiate those early days, jumbled together in a haze of familiar routine. The first thing she can pinpoint - the first that mattered in any concrete way - was Syaoran, her Syaoran. It wasn’t a momentous meeting - simply two lines of tiny children, one of boys and one of girls and all so young that even the best made among them were still unsteady on their feet - passing each other in the hallway. That was not the first time that her group had seen any of the boys, but to that age they’d had precious little opportunity to interact, and on that day the two lines remained to each other one of the most fascinating mysteries their limited world could provide. Even then, all the little girls were a little different - so were the boys - so as they passed, there were just a few of the ones who’s steps were the firmest, the brightest and most alert among them, who turned their heads to watch the other procession go by before turning back the way they were going. When Sakura turned, a boy at the end on the other side did likewise, and by chance, their eyes met and caught there. Both continued to crane their necks to watch each other, silent and curious, until one group rounded a corner and passed out of sight.
Sakura remembers wondering - not wondering anything specific, just wondering - about that boy for a long while after that.
Their world was sharply limited - no more than a series of pale, white rooms for sleeping, eating, taking class and for play - but they were always well cared for by the adults charged with looking after them. They may have been more like pets to them than children, but if so, they were beloved pets, to be handled gently when they needed to be examined, spoken to with soft, encouraging words and smiled at, even if they hadn’t mastered the skill of smiling back; and when members among their number collapsed suddenly and did not get up again or would hold their heads and begin crying louder and louder and never stop until they were carried away, their caretakers would mourn for them, sometimes even weep for them in sight of the other silent girls and boys. Then, the next day, the fallen girls would appear in the classroom again, right on time, semi-transparent to Sakura, standing listlessly in corners that should never have been big enough to hold as many faces as she sometimes saw, as if they never knew quite where else there was to go.
There were boys like that too, though Sakura saw less of them. When she passed by the lines of boys in the corridors, she’d often see one or two of the empty boys following along at the end, or between the others - even walking right through their solid counterparts sometimes. She always turned to watch those lines, in case she might see the one she’d already come to think of as her boy with them, but by the time she drew level with the transparent ones at the end, she would look away, not wishing to see how long their unblinking eyes might have followed her. No-one else paid them any attention, so she tried to follow that example. Clearly the empty ones were something that was not meant to be seen.
She did not wonder about them either, not that she remembered. She would not have known how to phrase the questions she would have had - they were simply something that was there. It was not until she was older that she began to understand that the reason no-one else paid them any attention was that no-one else saw them but her. The way those pale eyes so often turned to her, Sakura came to feel that maybe they saw no-one else but her too.
Time passes slowly for the very young. A year is half of forever when you’re only two years old. Although Sakura’s memory may be perfect, she could not have said how long it was that they lived in those rooms - how many classes she sat in or how many story books they were read, though it must all be there somewhere in her memory still, if she only dared to recall it. She had no baseline against which she would have been able to judge whether she and her peers learnt faster than other children did, or how fast they grew. Her world was too limited for her to be able to imagine what else was beyond it, or beyond the worlds of the stories they were told, the books they read and the videos they were shown in those lessons. Even as the numbers of the living dwindled and the empty ones grew, they were all she knew.
As they grew, their routine changed. Play sessions were held in larger groups, and they were allowed to mix with some of the boys of their own physical age. Not all the children seemed to understand how to play. Some might sit in the middle of a ring of toys and simply stare at them, the way they stared at everything when there was no-one to prompt them for some specific sort of behaviour. However, it did not take long for Sakura and Syaoran to learn to find each other during those times, and she and he were always among the brighter ones. Syaoran himself was not so good at coming up with games, but he followed willingly through what she demonstrated, and in a room of tiny faces that had scarcely a difference between them, he soon learned to look at her as if she was the only one that mattered - and by then, no-one mattered to her more than him.
They rarely spoke in those earliest days. It was the same for all the children when left to their own devices - speech was something the adults had taught them, something they used when spoken to, to answer their questions, recite lines, facts or poetry when instructed. The words she knew did not feel like they were hers - not nearly as much as Syaoran was - and between just the two of them back then, words weren’t needed.
(Once, when one of those empty girls had been watching her from only a few paces away all session, Sakura held out one of her toys and tried to invite her to play, but the girl simply stared at it every bit as blandly as the worst of her living peers, and before long, Sakura gave up again.)
Their lessons too began to change as they grew older. The girls’ were becoming much harder. It was no longer all rote learning and simple problems, now they were set tasks that demanded creativity, and with this new challenge, many of the quieter ones began to fall further behind. Meanwhile, the boys began to learn martial arts. Sakura only saw it in bits, and she did not quite see the point to those exercises. There was fighting in the stories they were told sometimes, but it had seemed every bit as unreal to her as everything else they contained. Before this, it had been rare that any of them had been encouraged to be competitive.
Any of the boys could learn to repeat the moves by rote, but to win a match required creativity, and like the girls, there many of them floundered. Her Syaoran had never been much gifted with imagination, but at this task, it seemed that his body learned faster than his mind. He could react to dodge almost before a blow had been aimed, found ways to avoid and counter that he had never been taught. His instructors were all very pleased with him, and although she still did not quite understand, Sakura found herself strangely proud, and all at once beginning to wish she had something she could excel at as well as he.
It was Syaoran Sakura told about the empty children when at last she could bear to keep the secret no longer. It was difficult to find a way to explain it to him so that it would make sense; her education hadn’t given her the words she needed. Syaoran listened, and looked obediently into the corners she pointed out that should have been filled with half-visible bodies, but all he could do was confirm for her that she saw them and no-one else. Still, he was Syaoran - it never occurred to him to disbelieve her, and in his own peculiar way, he understood.
It was obvious to him how much the empty children bothered her, and for a while after he made it his mission to understand what she meant as well as he was able, to do anything he could to help. He would have her point out to him where they were in the room and would stare at those places for ages as if he could induce himself to see them by shear force of will. The spirits remained just as invisible to him as ever, but when some of them began to look back at him, Sakura began to worry. Perhaps Syaoran didn’t need to be able to truly see them to interest them - perhaps simply the way he seemed to be staring at them lately was enough to get their attention. Once she saw three of the empty boys all turn to watch him walk across the room at once, their eyes never leaving him though he never even glanced their way, and the sight scared Sakura so badly that she didn’t ever dare answer Syaoran’s point any of them out to him again. Her every sense had always told her there was something horribly, horribly wrong with those empty ones, and to lead them to take an interest in someone so dear to her could only be a very bad thing.
***
Sakura didn’t see the accident when it occurred, nor was she or any of the others in her class ever told what had happened, but when it took place there was a crash so loud that even the dullest of her classmates looked up in surprise, and when the alarms began it send all their caretakers into a state of confusion. The panic did not last long, but for sixteen days after that, a section of one of the corridors was closed off and locked, and all the classes were forced to take longer routes around it.
The differences to that stretch of corridor when it opened again later were subtle. A section of the pipe-work running along the wall was shiny and new in contrast to the pipes around it, and there were raised welding lines still visible along the joins. To Sakura alone, the differences were far more profound. In the centre of that corridor there now stood three of the empty girls, like none Sakura had ever seen before. Whereas the other empty ones were indistinguishable from their solid companions, these three had trails of blood dripping down their arms and staining their pretty dresses. One had part of her head caved in, a second had a hole through her chest and an arm missing, and the third had vicious burns all over one side of her body.
Up to that moment, Sakura had barely begun to wonder whether the empty children were the dead. She and the others had been taught about the concept of death in her classes. Occasionally the children had been read ghost stories, though she herself had rarely much enjoyed them. The connections between the familiar and the world revealed in her lessons were not as obvious to her young mind as perhaps they might have been, but she would have made them on her own given a little more time. Faced with a sight such as this, there was no longer any mystery. What had happened in this corridor was suddenly horribly clear to her - what happened to all the girls and boys who were taken away and did not return. The three ghost girls before her were the answer to every question she’d never dared to ask.
And they would not move out of her way.
Sakura knew she could have walked right through them. She’d been forced to do so countless times before when there was no way around, eyes squeezed shut until she was past. But faced with such a grisly sight, she couldn’t bear to take another step. All she could do was stare in horror and fall to her knees on the floor, no will left in her to fight the tears collecting in her eyes. The line behind her was forced to stop and wait in confusion, unable to see what the problem might be.
There Sakura stayed until she felt gentle arms lifting her up, finally bringing her out of the daze she’d sunk into long enough to see the sad faces of two of their caretakers leaning over her - those same sad expression they always wore when one of their girls or boys collapsed out of the blue. While a moment before Sakura would have been certain nothing could scare her more than the dead children, now she was proven wrong. She knew what happened now - she was going to be taken away like all the children who fell one day and did not get up again - she’d become one of the empty children herself, the ones who never changed or smiled, and Syaoran would never be able to see here again - wouldn’t even know when she was there.
No longer paralysed, Sakura panicked, struggled and screamed and cried out Syaoran’s name, but to no avail. The people who held her were many times her height and strength, and her behaviour could only make her seem to have gone even madder, beyond all help. In glimpses, Sakura thought she saw the empty ones everywhere around her now - more than she’d ever seen before, all focused on her with more intensity than she’d ever had to endure - did they know? Did they realise she was about to become one of them? Was that why they’d come?
Then somewhere in the midst of it all, she heard Syaoran’s voice calling back to her in reply.
In her surprise, Sakura stopped struggling and found the holds on her loosened enough when she went limp to let her turn her head towards the sound - and there was Syaoran, being held back even has she was in his mad efforts to get to her. There was barely a moment’s relief in seeing him. Far from being able to help, her fears could only rise yet again as she realised she’d only gotten him in trouble too. It seemed certain now they’d both be taken away, and the thought that Syaoran would at least be able to see her if he became just as empty as she was no kind of comfort at all.
However, Syaoran wasn’t quite in the same predicament as her. He knew how to fight, how to twist out of a difficult grab, and as none of the men and women trying to restrain him had ever taken direct part in any of the boys sparring matches, none realised until it was too late just how well he’d learned. He should have been far too small and light to have any hope against them, but he fought as though it was the only thing he’d ever learned how to do, and though it seemed every moment of freedom he achieved should be his last, he kept struggling on. Even the captors who’d held Sakura began to abandon her to help with this far more difficult charge. All around, the ghosts began to turn his way once more. Even as Sakura’s terror had united them with purpose, Syaoran could show them how to act and what needed to be done.
As one, all those ghosts were beginning to come to fight by his side. Wherever Syaoran threw a kick or a punch, a dozen other arms or legs struck beside him. More and more they came to his aid, until to Sakura he was barely visible inside a thick cloud of half-seen bodies. It took barely a few quick blows now for Syaoran to disable anyone who came at him - the confusion among their caretakers was growing into panic as they realised there was nothing that could stop him anymore. By the time he reached her, even Sakura was scared of what he might do, but from the storm cloud of wailing ghosts he emerged, holding out a hand to her urgently. Sakura took it and found her feet somehow to follow him. She didn’t know what else to do.
Even to Sakura, what happened after that - how they escaped the Complex - always remained hazy. She was half-dragged and half-carried away, the ghost-cloud that surrounded them grown so great that nothing could stand long in their way - even solid walls were mown down by the protective anger of the dead. Sakura saw the greater Complex outside those few familiar rooms only in unmemorable snatches as they ran past, people running left and right to get out of the way.
When they reached the outside at last, Sakura looked up for the first time at a pale sky that went on forever overhead, and felt certain they would both be swallowed up by it if they took another step. The need to run had not yet left Syaoran though, and he urged them on into the grey hills ahead. He no longer spoke aloud, not even to encourage her to follow, nor did he even notice how his own body sagged with fatigue now with every step. Whenever she looked at him directly it wasn’t only his face she saw - a dozen other ghost faces shimmered alongside him, just barely out of alignment with his features. Even her own Syaoran had been taken by them.
With strength she hadn’t known she still possessed, Sakura let out a cry and launched herself to knock him to the ground. She called his name over and over again, begged the ghosts to give him back to her. She offered them anything, promised never to ask them anything else ever again, until even her voice failed.
Around them, the storm began to calm, and Sakura felt Syaoran move a hand to rest against her hair and softly whisper her name.
They stayed there together like that, curled in the little hollow where they’d fallen, until the sun rose the following day.
Syaoran was never the same again after their ordeal. When the dead left him they took much of his memory away with them, though Sakura did not have the chance to fully discover this until much later, and many of those dead children who’d followed them out never left him at all. They’d always be there around him, the faintest suggestion of an afterimage, visible to no-one but her. But he was alive, he was still her own Syaoran and he always would be, and as long as she had that much Sakura never felt she had any right to weep for anything they’d lost.
***
They woke the next morning cold, sore and as lost as any two people could ever be. The Complex still loomed out of the landscape behind them, but they felt no inclination to go back. Neither had any shoes, and the clothes they wore were designed for a life of indoor wear. They had no clear idea at the time whether there was anything else in the world for them to run away to.
When they reached the junk pile at the end of a long day’s walk, they were both worn ragged with fatigue and parched with thirst, Sakura’s bare feet so red with blisters that every step hurt. The dull grey of the deadlands had stretched out all around them as far as they could see all day - the old junk pile was the only thing in sight that looked like it might offer them any kind of shelter, and barely that. There was nothing welcoming about the heaps of broken machine parts when they got close enough to see them as more than a blur.
There was so little keeping them on their feet by the time they arrived at its base that they didn’t even see the man standing there until they’d nearly walked right into him. It was the sound of something falling off the junk pile that made Sakura look up from her dazed fixation on the ground in front of her feet, but it wasn’t the fallen machine part that made her let out a cry of surprise. Only paces ahead of them stood a tall man with short-cropped dark hair. He couldn’t have been any more aware the children were coming than they’d been of him, their soft feet had made little noise, and he didn’t turn to look at them until he heard Sakura cry out. He was dressed in a cloak of some kind of heavy material and had the kind of face that defaulted to a scowl. To Sakura he seemed huge and terrifying.
He was no less threatening to Syaoran either. The boy had been dragging on his feet until that moment, but as soon as he and the man had seen each other he’d leapt in front of Sakura and launched himself at the stranger in a flying kick. The man simply leaned to avoid him, and while Syaoran was still in mid air, caught him with a punch to the stomach that knocked the boy to the ground at his feet. Syaoran did not try to get up again, just stared helplessly at the man standing over him. No-one had ever disabled him so fast before.
As the man took a step towards him, Sakura let out another cry and threw herself over Syaoran.
“No, please - please don’t hurt Syaoran anymore!” she begged. “He doesn’t mean anything bad - he’s only trying to protect me, please!”
The man was not obviously moved by this display, but something in his face did soften a bit. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he told Sakura when she dared look up at him again.
Another clatter from the junk pile made Sakura look up even higher to see a second man whom she hadn’t noticed before, just in the act of leaping lithely back down to the ground. He was dressed much the same as the first man, but he had soft, white hair and a face far more accustomed to smiling than frowning. He was certainly all smiles when he joined the other three.
“Well, what have we here?” he asked, crouching down to put himself on the children’s level. “Oh, aren’t they sweet? Are we keeping them?” Most of this was directed at his companion, who rolled his eyes. “You don’t suppose they’ve anything to do with all that disturbance we picked up before, do you?”
“You’re the expert,” said the darker man, dryly. Sakura felt like she must have done something personally to offend him, from the way he looked at her, though she couldn’t begin to imagine how.
“Oh, you know what the accident reports are like - all techno-babble and code in need-to-know speak,” said the pale man, waving a hand dismissively. “It could’ve meant anything! But introductions must come first, surely. The name’s Fye D. Flowright,” he told Sakura, addressing her directly for the first time. “And my not-so-charming companion here is K…”
“Kurogane,” finished the other man firmly.
“Why don’t you tell us your names?” Fye suggested, without missing a beat.
Sakura blinked at him, and later, she’d identify that moment as when it had first started to feel like she and Syaoran might have a place in this great wide world after all.
Anyway, on the upside, what I've got to post is the first of the backstory chapters, and if it seems unusually long to people, that would be because it clocks in at slightly north of 4000 words - roughly double most of the chapters I've posted so far. For the record, the flashback chapters collectively switched into present tense so many times when I was trying to write them that eventually I just gave in and let them have their way (comforting myself with the thought I could go back and fix them in the final copy. *cough*) Either way, the backstory chapters have come out in rather a different style to the rest of the story so far, which I hope won't wind up being too jarring.
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Side Story 1
Sakura is the first thing Syaoran remembers, though their meeting is lost to him along with everything else from his earliest years. All he has left now is the emotion - the connection and the burning need to protect, and he’s clung to that ever since, even though he’s long forgotten what it means.
By contrast, Sakura has never been allowed to forget anything - not even from those earliest moments when the world was still huge and blurry and strange. However, there’s little in her memory to differentiate those early days, jumbled together in a haze of familiar routine. The first thing she can pinpoint - the first that mattered in any concrete way - was Syaoran, her Syaoran. It wasn’t a momentous meeting - simply two lines of tiny children, one of boys and one of girls and all so young that even the best made among them were still unsteady on their feet - passing each other in the hallway. That was not the first time that her group had seen any of the boys, but to that age they’d had precious little opportunity to interact, and on that day the two lines remained to each other one of the most fascinating mysteries their limited world could provide. Even then, all the little girls were a little different - so were the boys - so as they passed, there were just a few of the ones who’s steps were the firmest, the brightest and most alert among them, who turned their heads to watch the other procession go by before turning back the way they were going. When Sakura turned, a boy at the end on the other side did likewise, and by chance, their eyes met and caught there. Both continued to crane their necks to watch each other, silent and curious, until one group rounded a corner and passed out of sight.
Sakura remembers wondering - not wondering anything specific, just wondering - about that boy for a long while after that.
Their world was sharply limited - no more than a series of pale, white rooms for sleeping, eating, taking class and for play - but they were always well cared for by the adults charged with looking after them. They may have been more like pets to them than children, but if so, they were beloved pets, to be handled gently when they needed to be examined, spoken to with soft, encouraging words and smiled at, even if they hadn’t mastered the skill of smiling back; and when members among their number collapsed suddenly and did not get up again or would hold their heads and begin crying louder and louder and never stop until they were carried away, their caretakers would mourn for them, sometimes even weep for them in sight of the other silent girls and boys. Then, the next day, the fallen girls would appear in the classroom again, right on time, semi-transparent to Sakura, standing listlessly in corners that should never have been big enough to hold as many faces as she sometimes saw, as if they never knew quite where else there was to go.
There were boys like that too, though Sakura saw less of them. When she passed by the lines of boys in the corridors, she’d often see one or two of the empty boys following along at the end, or between the others - even walking right through their solid counterparts sometimes. She always turned to watch those lines, in case she might see the one she’d already come to think of as her boy with them, but by the time she drew level with the transparent ones at the end, she would look away, not wishing to see how long their unblinking eyes might have followed her. No-one else paid them any attention, so she tried to follow that example. Clearly the empty ones were something that was not meant to be seen.
She did not wonder about them either, not that she remembered. She would not have known how to phrase the questions she would have had - they were simply something that was there. It was not until she was older that she began to understand that the reason no-one else paid them any attention was that no-one else saw them but her. The way those pale eyes so often turned to her, Sakura came to feel that maybe they saw no-one else but her too.
Time passes slowly for the very young. A year is half of forever when you’re only two years old. Although Sakura’s memory may be perfect, she could not have said how long it was that they lived in those rooms - how many classes she sat in or how many story books they were read, though it must all be there somewhere in her memory still, if she only dared to recall it. She had no baseline against which she would have been able to judge whether she and her peers learnt faster than other children did, or how fast they grew. Her world was too limited for her to be able to imagine what else was beyond it, or beyond the worlds of the stories they were told, the books they read and the videos they were shown in those lessons. Even as the numbers of the living dwindled and the empty ones grew, they were all she knew.
As they grew, their routine changed. Play sessions were held in larger groups, and they were allowed to mix with some of the boys of their own physical age. Not all the children seemed to understand how to play. Some might sit in the middle of a ring of toys and simply stare at them, the way they stared at everything when there was no-one to prompt them for some specific sort of behaviour. However, it did not take long for Sakura and Syaoran to learn to find each other during those times, and she and he were always among the brighter ones. Syaoran himself was not so good at coming up with games, but he followed willingly through what she demonstrated, and in a room of tiny faces that had scarcely a difference between them, he soon learned to look at her as if she was the only one that mattered - and by then, no-one mattered to her more than him.
They rarely spoke in those earliest days. It was the same for all the children when left to their own devices - speech was something the adults had taught them, something they used when spoken to, to answer their questions, recite lines, facts or poetry when instructed. The words she knew did not feel like they were hers - not nearly as much as Syaoran was - and between just the two of them back then, words weren’t needed.
(Once, when one of those empty girls had been watching her from only a few paces away all session, Sakura held out one of her toys and tried to invite her to play, but the girl simply stared at it every bit as blandly as the worst of her living peers, and before long, Sakura gave up again.)
Their lessons too began to change as they grew older. The girls’ were becoming much harder. It was no longer all rote learning and simple problems, now they were set tasks that demanded creativity, and with this new challenge, many of the quieter ones began to fall further behind. Meanwhile, the boys began to learn martial arts. Sakura only saw it in bits, and she did not quite see the point to those exercises. There was fighting in the stories they were told sometimes, but it had seemed every bit as unreal to her as everything else they contained. Before this, it had been rare that any of them had been encouraged to be competitive.
Any of the boys could learn to repeat the moves by rote, but to win a match required creativity, and like the girls, there many of them floundered. Her Syaoran had never been much gifted with imagination, but at this task, it seemed that his body learned faster than his mind. He could react to dodge almost before a blow had been aimed, found ways to avoid and counter that he had never been taught. His instructors were all very pleased with him, and although she still did not quite understand, Sakura found herself strangely proud, and all at once beginning to wish she had something she could excel at as well as he.
It was Syaoran Sakura told about the empty children when at last she could bear to keep the secret no longer. It was difficult to find a way to explain it to him so that it would make sense; her education hadn’t given her the words she needed. Syaoran listened, and looked obediently into the corners she pointed out that should have been filled with half-visible bodies, but all he could do was confirm for her that she saw them and no-one else. Still, he was Syaoran - it never occurred to him to disbelieve her, and in his own peculiar way, he understood.
It was obvious to him how much the empty children bothered her, and for a while after he made it his mission to understand what she meant as well as he was able, to do anything he could to help. He would have her point out to him where they were in the room and would stare at those places for ages as if he could induce himself to see them by shear force of will. The spirits remained just as invisible to him as ever, but when some of them began to look back at him, Sakura began to worry. Perhaps Syaoran didn’t need to be able to truly see them to interest them - perhaps simply the way he seemed to be staring at them lately was enough to get their attention. Once she saw three of the empty boys all turn to watch him walk across the room at once, their eyes never leaving him though he never even glanced their way, and the sight scared Sakura so badly that she didn’t ever dare answer Syaoran’s point any of them out to him again. Her every sense had always told her there was something horribly, horribly wrong with those empty ones, and to lead them to take an interest in someone so dear to her could only be a very bad thing.
***
Sakura didn’t see the accident when it occurred, nor was she or any of the others in her class ever told what had happened, but when it took place there was a crash so loud that even the dullest of her classmates looked up in surprise, and when the alarms began it send all their caretakers into a state of confusion. The panic did not last long, but for sixteen days after that, a section of one of the corridors was closed off and locked, and all the classes were forced to take longer routes around it.
The differences to that stretch of corridor when it opened again later were subtle. A section of the pipe-work running along the wall was shiny and new in contrast to the pipes around it, and there were raised welding lines still visible along the joins. To Sakura alone, the differences were far more profound. In the centre of that corridor there now stood three of the empty girls, like none Sakura had ever seen before. Whereas the other empty ones were indistinguishable from their solid companions, these three had trails of blood dripping down their arms and staining their pretty dresses. One had part of her head caved in, a second had a hole through her chest and an arm missing, and the third had vicious burns all over one side of her body.
Up to that moment, Sakura had barely begun to wonder whether the empty children were the dead. She and the others had been taught about the concept of death in her classes. Occasionally the children had been read ghost stories, though she herself had rarely much enjoyed them. The connections between the familiar and the world revealed in her lessons were not as obvious to her young mind as perhaps they might have been, but she would have made them on her own given a little more time. Faced with a sight such as this, there was no longer any mystery. What had happened in this corridor was suddenly horribly clear to her - what happened to all the girls and boys who were taken away and did not return. The three ghost girls before her were the answer to every question she’d never dared to ask.
And they would not move out of her way.
Sakura knew she could have walked right through them. She’d been forced to do so countless times before when there was no way around, eyes squeezed shut until she was past. But faced with such a grisly sight, she couldn’t bear to take another step. All she could do was stare in horror and fall to her knees on the floor, no will left in her to fight the tears collecting in her eyes. The line behind her was forced to stop and wait in confusion, unable to see what the problem might be.
There Sakura stayed until she felt gentle arms lifting her up, finally bringing her out of the daze she’d sunk into long enough to see the sad faces of two of their caretakers leaning over her - those same sad expression they always wore when one of their girls or boys collapsed out of the blue. While a moment before Sakura would have been certain nothing could scare her more than the dead children, now she was proven wrong. She knew what happened now - she was going to be taken away like all the children who fell one day and did not get up again - she’d become one of the empty children herself, the ones who never changed or smiled, and Syaoran would never be able to see here again - wouldn’t even know when she was there.
No longer paralysed, Sakura panicked, struggled and screamed and cried out Syaoran’s name, but to no avail. The people who held her were many times her height and strength, and her behaviour could only make her seem to have gone even madder, beyond all help. In glimpses, Sakura thought she saw the empty ones everywhere around her now - more than she’d ever seen before, all focused on her with more intensity than she’d ever had to endure - did they know? Did they realise she was about to become one of them? Was that why they’d come?
Then somewhere in the midst of it all, she heard Syaoran’s voice calling back to her in reply.
In her surprise, Sakura stopped struggling and found the holds on her loosened enough when she went limp to let her turn her head towards the sound - and there was Syaoran, being held back even has she was in his mad efforts to get to her. There was barely a moment’s relief in seeing him. Far from being able to help, her fears could only rise yet again as she realised she’d only gotten him in trouble too. It seemed certain now they’d both be taken away, and the thought that Syaoran would at least be able to see her if he became just as empty as she was no kind of comfort at all.
However, Syaoran wasn’t quite in the same predicament as her. He knew how to fight, how to twist out of a difficult grab, and as none of the men and women trying to restrain him had ever taken direct part in any of the boys sparring matches, none realised until it was too late just how well he’d learned. He should have been far too small and light to have any hope against them, but he fought as though it was the only thing he’d ever learned how to do, and though it seemed every moment of freedom he achieved should be his last, he kept struggling on. Even the captors who’d held Sakura began to abandon her to help with this far more difficult charge. All around, the ghosts began to turn his way once more. Even as Sakura’s terror had united them with purpose, Syaoran could show them how to act and what needed to be done.
As one, all those ghosts were beginning to come to fight by his side. Wherever Syaoran threw a kick or a punch, a dozen other arms or legs struck beside him. More and more they came to his aid, until to Sakura he was barely visible inside a thick cloud of half-seen bodies. It took barely a few quick blows now for Syaoran to disable anyone who came at him - the confusion among their caretakers was growing into panic as they realised there was nothing that could stop him anymore. By the time he reached her, even Sakura was scared of what he might do, but from the storm cloud of wailing ghosts he emerged, holding out a hand to her urgently. Sakura took it and found her feet somehow to follow him. She didn’t know what else to do.
Even to Sakura, what happened after that - how they escaped the Complex - always remained hazy. She was half-dragged and half-carried away, the ghost-cloud that surrounded them grown so great that nothing could stand long in their way - even solid walls were mown down by the protective anger of the dead. Sakura saw the greater Complex outside those few familiar rooms only in unmemorable snatches as they ran past, people running left and right to get out of the way.
When they reached the outside at last, Sakura looked up for the first time at a pale sky that went on forever overhead, and felt certain they would both be swallowed up by it if they took another step. The need to run had not yet left Syaoran though, and he urged them on into the grey hills ahead. He no longer spoke aloud, not even to encourage her to follow, nor did he even notice how his own body sagged with fatigue now with every step. Whenever she looked at him directly it wasn’t only his face she saw - a dozen other ghost faces shimmered alongside him, just barely out of alignment with his features. Even her own Syaoran had been taken by them.
With strength she hadn’t known she still possessed, Sakura let out a cry and launched herself to knock him to the ground. She called his name over and over again, begged the ghosts to give him back to her. She offered them anything, promised never to ask them anything else ever again, until even her voice failed.
Around them, the storm began to calm, and Sakura felt Syaoran move a hand to rest against her hair and softly whisper her name.
They stayed there together like that, curled in the little hollow where they’d fallen, until the sun rose the following day.
Syaoran was never the same again after their ordeal. When the dead left him they took much of his memory away with them, though Sakura did not have the chance to fully discover this until much later, and many of those dead children who’d followed them out never left him at all. They’d always be there around him, the faintest suggestion of an afterimage, visible to no-one but her. But he was alive, he was still her own Syaoran and he always would be, and as long as she had that much Sakura never felt she had any right to weep for anything they’d lost.
***
They woke the next morning cold, sore and as lost as any two people could ever be. The Complex still loomed out of the landscape behind them, but they felt no inclination to go back. Neither had any shoes, and the clothes they wore were designed for a life of indoor wear. They had no clear idea at the time whether there was anything else in the world for them to run away to.
When they reached the junk pile at the end of a long day’s walk, they were both worn ragged with fatigue and parched with thirst, Sakura’s bare feet so red with blisters that every step hurt. The dull grey of the deadlands had stretched out all around them as far as they could see all day - the old junk pile was the only thing in sight that looked like it might offer them any kind of shelter, and barely that. There was nothing welcoming about the heaps of broken machine parts when they got close enough to see them as more than a blur.
There was so little keeping them on their feet by the time they arrived at its base that they didn’t even see the man standing there until they’d nearly walked right into him. It was the sound of something falling off the junk pile that made Sakura look up from her dazed fixation on the ground in front of her feet, but it wasn’t the fallen machine part that made her let out a cry of surprise. Only paces ahead of them stood a tall man with short-cropped dark hair. He couldn’t have been any more aware the children were coming than they’d been of him, their soft feet had made little noise, and he didn’t turn to look at them until he heard Sakura cry out. He was dressed in a cloak of some kind of heavy material and had the kind of face that defaulted to a scowl. To Sakura he seemed huge and terrifying.
He was no less threatening to Syaoran either. The boy had been dragging on his feet until that moment, but as soon as he and the man had seen each other he’d leapt in front of Sakura and launched himself at the stranger in a flying kick. The man simply leaned to avoid him, and while Syaoran was still in mid air, caught him with a punch to the stomach that knocked the boy to the ground at his feet. Syaoran did not try to get up again, just stared helplessly at the man standing over him. No-one had ever disabled him so fast before.
As the man took a step towards him, Sakura let out another cry and threw herself over Syaoran.
“No, please - please don’t hurt Syaoran anymore!” she begged. “He doesn’t mean anything bad - he’s only trying to protect me, please!”
The man was not obviously moved by this display, but something in his face did soften a bit. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he told Sakura when she dared look up at him again.
Another clatter from the junk pile made Sakura look up even higher to see a second man whom she hadn’t noticed before, just in the act of leaping lithely back down to the ground. He was dressed much the same as the first man, but he had soft, white hair and a face far more accustomed to smiling than frowning. He was certainly all smiles when he joined the other three.
“Well, what have we here?” he asked, crouching down to put himself on the children’s level. “Oh, aren’t they sweet? Are we keeping them?” Most of this was directed at his companion, who rolled his eyes. “You don’t suppose they’ve anything to do with all that disturbance we picked up before, do you?”
“You’re the expert,” said the darker man, dryly. Sakura felt like she must have done something personally to offend him, from the way he looked at her, though she couldn’t begin to imagine how.
“Oh, you know what the accident reports are like - all techno-babble and code in need-to-know speak,” said the pale man, waving a hand dismissively. “It could’ve meant anything! But introductions must come first, surely. The name’s Fye D. Flowright,” he told Sakura, addressing her directly for the first time. “And my not-so-charming companion here is K…”
“Kurogane,” finished the other man firmly.
“Why don’t you tell us your names?” Fye suggested, without missing a beat.
Sakura blinked at him, and later, she’d identify that moment as when it had first started to feel like she and Syaoran might have a place in this great wide world after all.