Productivity!
Title: Family
Pairing: KuroxFai, SxS if you squint
Inspiration: A song I don't know the name of (Sorry!)
Rating: G
Summary: Fai loves his family.
Important: Set way in the future, way beyond Celes and all the angst we will most likely see there. Also, this is kinda an AU on the Cuban Missile Crisis too.
EDIT: Agh, I forgot one more thing. When I was reading through the first few books of Tsubasa the first time, I was somewhat teaching myself Russian, so I recognized the characters in Fai's speech bubbles as being Russian. Don't know if this has been addressed before or not, but I wanted to make sure people knew that I'm working off that assumption.
Fai leaned against the wall slightly, changing his posture as he continued reading the book situated in his lap. The corrugated metal that made up their little family’s living space weren’t too comfortable to lean against, but could be handled, especially when reading such interesting history. The mage skimmed through another page in what was nearly his language before interpreting it aloud to the Syaoran, who lay on his stomach, a sack of firewood under his chin, watching the blonde with trepidation.
“October 27, 1962,” the Celesian translated. “I fear for the worst: Neither Premier Khrushchev nor President Kennedy seem to be backing down; nuclear war seems to be right around the corner. What’s worse is that the U.S. easily has the advantage, should war be reached.”
Fai stopped reading for a second to glance up at the boy, who was hanging on the mage’s every word.
“I can’t keep up with who’s who, Syaoran-kun,” the mage complained, a melodramatic frown perching itself on his face.
“We are in what was the Soviet Union,” Syaoran explained, before motioning to the map he’d picked up the other day. A red tack had been placed through a large purple mass in the upper-right corner of the map. “They were putting ‘missiles’ in Cuba.” The boy motioned to a smaller blue blob far to the West of the purple mass. “Which threatened the United States of America, or the U.S.” The brunette’s hand moved North to a decently large green blob. “But that’s only what you’ve read to us, we don’t know where all the cities went, or how they went.”
Fai continued to frown before looking back down at the book.
“I don’t think this book says how,” the blonde explained. “The next date is October 28, then nothing else. And all the pictures in here show a city with a palace with domes, streets with---what were they called…”
“Cars,” the boy submitted, rising off his belly to sit with his legs crossed on one of the four tattered sleeping mats that filled a majority of the dirt floor and drawing a thin blanket around his shoulders.
“Only the strongest of magicks could take all those away, without leaving ruins.”
“Maybe it was those ‘missiles’,” Syaoran suggested, moving to the small stack of books that sat next to a three-legged side table with a candle perched precariously at its ledge.
The younger of the two searched hastily through one of the thicker books before he found what he was looking for.
“Here,” Syaoran stated, handing the tome to the mage. “You said that these ‘missiles’ had the power to wipe out whole cities; that’s what the book said.”
The blonde nodded before reading, a finger tracing over the lines of text “Atomic bombs were dropped by the U.S. on two Japanese cities in August of 1945: Nagasaki and Hiroshima.”
As if the names of the cities had called him, Kurogane stomped through the front door, pushing the metal roughly to the side, startling the current residents of the room. Behind the ninja, Sakura carried a small bundle, no larger than a ball of yarn, but held it as though it were the most precious of jewels.
“Kuro-rin!” Fai cried out happily to the man, a grin crossing his face. “And Sakura-chan! How was your day?”
The ninja muttered angrily under his breath, too low for the mage to hear, but Sakura piped up excitedly, “Today we got an apple!”
Fai’s eye brightened considerably, “Did you?”
By now, Syaoran had gotten to his feet and smiled at the princess. She shared the look, but held a slight blush in her cheeks. With an excited cry, Mokona also made its appearance, bouncing out from the pocket of Sakura’s worn and dirt-covered overalls.
“Tonight we’ll feast!” the white manjuu exclaimed, bobbing ecstatically in and out of the sleeping mats.
Fai grinned before he glanced over at the other man in the room. Kurogane had placed a thin folder of what looked like paper on the table and removed his patchy wool jacket before rubbing his hands together. Crimson eyes met a blue and the taller moved over to the rest of their group.
“You haven’t started the fire yet?” the ninja asked the mage, eyes motioning to the soot-covered wood stove that occupied the farthest corner of the small living space, its shaft leading up through the ceiling to the air outside.
“Syaoran and I both wanted to save firewood,” the blonde explained, his gloved hands moving animatedly. “So we decided we’d wait until you and the princess returned.”
Kurogane frowned, “You idiot, you two could’ve frozen to death.”
Fai smiled, somewhat sadly, “It would’ve been faster than starvation.”
“Are you hungry?”
Shaking his head, Fai murmured, “I’m not, but he is.”
The ninja chanced a glance at the boy sitting on the sleeping mat next to Sakura; both were happily busy explaining the day’s activities to each other, the princess still gripping the bundle.
“I’m surprised we’ve lasted as long as we have,” the blonde continued sadly. “Did Mokona sense the feather?”
The ninja shook his head, before explaining, “But it knows it’s here, somewhere.”
“And still no contact with Yuuko-san?” Fai asked, hoping for a more positive answer.
Kurogane turned away from the mage, his face stricken.
“No.”
Fai’s eye wilted at the sight of his love in such despair; Kurogane never gave up hope, and to the mage, that was the most heartbreaking of it all. The blonde reached over to the other man and laced his fingers with the ninja’s. The vampire leaned into the other man’s shoulder, placing his chin on Kurogane’s ragged wool sleeve.
“We’ll survive,” the mage whispered, “you’ve made sure of that.”
“I don’t know for how much longer,” the black-haired man murmured back, struggling slightly with the words, his fingers gripping Fai’s tightly.
The two sat in silence for a few minutes while the babble between Sakura and Syaoran continued.
“It’s dinnertime!” Mokona bounced around happily around the two on the mats.
Sakura’s widened in surprise for a second before she realized that she still had the apple. She quickly removed her mantle and spread her skirt around her, careful to cover her feet, which were bare and slightly red from the cold. With the care of a mother, she unwrapped the small white cloth from a tiny yellow apple, which could have easily fed the mutts that roamed the dingy settlement around them but not a family of four and a pet.
Fai planted a kiss on his love’s cheek before moving over to see what the excitement was about. Sakura glanced up at him from her place on the floor and beamed when the mage smiled at her.
“What a find!” the blonde proclaimed, “Kuro-tan! You must come see this!”
Kurogane slowly stood and crossed the short distance between his former position and that of the rest of the family. His eyes spied the fruit before he attempted a smile.
“Yeah,” the ninja tried. “It looks… delicious.”
“Now time to eat!” Fai proclaimed, taking a few steps to Kurogane’s sleeping mat and withdrawing a thin knife before returning to the group.
The mage gently took the apple into his hand and cut it into fourths. He handed a fourth to Syaoran, a fourth to Sakura, to Mokona, and Kurogane.
“But Fai,” the princess began to protest; before she remembered what Fai had told her a couple days before when their rations had run out. She turned back to the others and smiled slightly, “I hope you like it.”
Everyone ate their slice like it would be their last, although Mokona gulped all in one bite, as it was about all she could do at the moment; Sakura gently tore her slice piece by piece and ate slowly, Syaoran took small bites into his, and Kurogane glanced up at the mage before taking it in a couple bites, but savoring every bit.
When the meager meal was finished, Fai smiled gently at the younger of the two.
“Now, who was telling the story about that thief?” he asked, glancing between Sakura and Syaoran. “If you’ll continue, I’ll light the fire.”
“I know the story,” the princess explained, “but Syaoran was telling it; he always tells better stories.”
The boy smiled at her and continued the tale he’d begun a few nights ago. Fai lit the fire and slid over to Kurogane.
Syaoran eagerly told the story of a thief named Ali Baba and a secret place in the desert. Sakura gasped at certain parts and even hugged Mokona too tight once; the white manjuu had let out a cry of distress, signaling to the princess that air was needed to live. Kurogane grinned a couple times and made various remarks such as, “he deserved it” when a bad guy got himself killed. Fai simply drank it all in, the story, the princess, and the warm feeling that filled his insides, despite the snow that had been falling outside for a majority of the day.
After a few hours of this, Syaoran grew tired, and his story became more punctuated with yawns, which caused the princess to yawn, then Fai and Kurogane, and eventually even Mokona yawned.
“I think it is time for us to get our rest,” Fai attempted through another yawn. “We can finish tomorrow.”
“But what about the thief in the jar?” Sakura protested, rubbing some of the sleep out of her eyes.
“He’ll get what’s coming of him,” Kurogane predicted, grinning almost maliciously, which caused Fai to smile.
Despite all further protests, Fai let the fire simmer down and the candle to blow out. The kids moved to their sleep mats and said their goodnights. Mokona snuggled in with Sakura, who eagerly accepted the animal and kissed it lightly on the head. The mage and the ninja sat up a little longer, listening to the children’s breathing; waiting for the younger ones to fall asleep. When the tired breathing of the boy and the princess finally evened out, Kurogane turned to the blonde.
“Are you hungry?” the ninja asked.
“No,” Fai lied, smiling. “I won’t be until tomorrow.”
“That’s what you said yesterday.”
Fai continued to smile, “Did I? Oh, well, I’m still not hungry. I guess I was wrong.”
Kurogane frowned; unable to see the vampire’s face in the dark, unable to read what was most likely a lie written upon it.
“Tomorrow you’ll eat?” the ninja inquired, too exhausted and too wary of the children’s sleep to argue.
“Yes,” the mage agreed. “We must get our sleep now, Kuro-tan.”
Kurogane kissed the blonde gently on the temple, murmuring into Fai’s hair, “Thank you.”
Fai didn’t answer but scooted over to his sleeping mat and bidding his goodnight to the other man, “Goodnight Kuro-sama.”
The ninja followed suit and lay down on his mat. Fai couldn’t help but smile again. However, before he closed his eye he prayed to whatever god was listening for his family and with the same warm feeling from before, drifted off to sleep.
Pairing: KuroxFai, SxS if you squint
Inspiration: A song I don't know the name of (Sorry!)
Rating: G
Summary: Fai loves his family.
Important: Set way in the future, way beyond Celes and all the angst we will most likely see there. Also, this is kinda an AU on the Cuban Missile Crisis too.
EDIT: Agh, I forgot one more thing. When I was reading through the first few books of Tsubasa the first time, I was somewhat teaching myself Russian, so I recognized the characters in Fai's speech bubbles as being Russian. Don't know if this has been addressed before or not, but I wanted to make sure people knew that I'm working off that assumption.
Fai leaned against the wall slightly, changing his posture as he continued reading the book situated in his lap. The corrugated metal that made up their little family’s living space weren’t too comfortable to lean against, but could be handled, especially when reading such interesting history. The mage skimmed through another page in what was nearly his language before interpreting it aloud to the Syaoran, who lay on his stomach, a sack of firewood under his chin, watching the blonde with trepidation.
“October 27, 1962,” the Celesian translated. “I fear for the worst: Neither Premier Khrushchev nor President Kennedy seem to be backing down; nuclear war seems to be right around the corner. What’s worse is that the U.S. easily has the advantage, should war be reached.”
Fai stopped reading for a second to glance up at the boy, who was hanging on the mage’s every word.
“I can’t keep up with who’s who, Syaoran-kun,” the mage complained, a melodramatic frown perching itself on his face.
“We are in what was the Soviet Union,” Syaoran explained, before motioning to the map he’d picked up the other day. A red tack had been placed through a large purple mass in the upper-right corner of the map. “They were putting ‘missiles’ in Cuba.” The boy motioned to a smaller blue blob far to the West of the purple mass. “Which threatened the United States of America, or the U.S.” The brunette’s hand moved North to a decently large green blob. “But that’s only what you’ve read to us, we don’t know where all the cities went, or how they went.”
Fai continued to frown before looking back down at the book.
“I don’t think this book says how,” the blonde explained. “The next date is October 28, then nothing else. And all the pictures in here show a city with a palace with domes, streets with---what were they called…”
“Cars,” the boy submitted, rising off his belly to sit with his legs crossed on one of the four tattered sleeping mats that filled a majority of the dirt floor and drawing a thin blanket around his shoulders.
“Only the strongest of magicks could take all those away, without leaving ruins.”
“Maybe it was those ‘missiles’,” Syaoran suggested, moving to the small stack of books that sat next to a three-legged side table with a candle perched precariously at its ledge.
The younger of the two searched hastily through one of the thicker books before he found what he was looking for.
“Here,” Syaoran stated, handing the tome to the mage. “You said that these ‘missiles’ had the power to wipe out whole cities; that’s what the book said.”
The blonde nodded before reading, a finger tracing over the lines of text “Atomic bombs were dropped by the U.S. on two Japanese cities in August of 1945: Nagasaki and Hiroshima.”
As if the names of the cities had called him, Kurogane stomped through the front door, pushing the metal roughly to the side, startling the current residents of the room. Behind the ninja, Sakura carried a small bundle, no larger than a ball of yarn, but held it as though it were the most precious of jewels.
“Kuro-rin!” Fai cried out happily to the man, a grin crossing his face. “And Sakura-chan! How was your day?”
The ninja muttered angrily under his breath, too low for the mage to hear, but Sakura piped up excitedly, “Today we got an apple!”
Fai’s eye brightened considerably, “Did you?”
By now, Syaoran had gotten to his feet and smiled at the princess. She shared the look, but held a slight blush in her cheeks. With an excited cry, Mokona also made its appearance, bouncing out from the pocket of Sakura’s worn and dirt-covered overalls.
“Tonight we’ll feast!” the white manjuu exclaimed, bobbing ecstatically in and out of the sleeping mats.
Fai grinned before he glanced over at the other man in the room. Kurogane had placed a thin folder of what looked like paper on the table and removed his patchy wool jacket before rubbing his hands together. Crimson eyes met a blue and the taller moved over to the rest of their group.
“You haven’t started the fire yet?” the ninja asked the mage, eyes motioning to the soot-covered wood stove that occupied the farthest corner of the small living space, its shaft leading up through the ceiling to the air outside.
“Syaoran and I both wanted to save firewood,” the blonde explained, his gloved hands moving animatedly. “So we decided we’d wait until you and the princess returned.”
Kurogane frowned, “You idiot, you two could’ve frozen to death.”
Fai smiled, somewhat sadly, “It would’ve been faster than starvation.”
“Are you hungry?”
Shaking his head, Fai murmured, “I’m not, but he is.”
The ninja chanced a glance at the boy sitting on the sleeping mat next to Sakura; both were happily busy explaining the day’s activities to each other, the princess still gripping the bundle.
“I’m surprised we’ve lasted as long as we have,” the blonde continued sadly. “Did Mokona sense the feather?”
The ninja shook his head, before explaining, “But it knows it’s here, somewhere.”
“And still no contact with Yuuko-san?” Fai asked, hoping for a more positive answer.
Kurogane turned away from the mage, his face stricken.
“No.”
Fai’s eye wilted at the sight of his love in such despair; Kurogane never gave up hope, and to the mage, that was the most heartbreaking of it all. The blonde reached over to the other man and laced his fingers with the ninja’s. The vampire leaned into the other man’s shoulder, placing his chin on Kurogane’s ragged wool sleeve.
“We’ll survive,” the mage whispered, “you’ve made sure of that.”
“I don’t know for how much longer,” the black-haired man murmured back, struggling slightly with the words, his fingers gripping Fai’s tightly.
The two sat in silence for a few minutes while the babble between Sakura and Syaoran continued.
“It’s dinnertime!” Mokona bounced around happily around the two on the mats.
Sakura’s widened in surprise for a second before she realized that she still had the apple. She quickly removed her mantle and spread her skirt around her, careful to cover her feet, which were bare and slightly red from the cold. With the care of a mother, she unwrapped the small white cloth from a tiny yellow apple, which could have easily fed the mutts that roamed the dingy settlement around them but not a family of four and a pet.
Fai planted a kiss on his love’s cheek before moving over to see what the excitement was about. Sakura glanced up at him from her place on the floor and beamed when the mage smiled at her.
“What a find!” the blonde proclaimed, “Kuro-tan! You must come see this!”
Kurogane slowly stood and crossed the short distance between his former position and that of the rest of the family. His eyes spied the fruit before he attempted a smile.
“Yeah,” the ninja tried. “It looks… delicious.”
“Now time to eat!” Fai proclaimed, taking a few steps to Kurogane’s sleeping mat and withdrawing a thin knife before returning to the group.
The mage gently took the apple into his hand and cut it into fourths. He handed a fourth to Syaoran, a fourth to Sakura, to Mokona, and Kurogane.
“But Fai,” the princess began to protest; before she remembered what Fai had told her a couple days before when their rations had run out. She turned back to the others and smiled slightly, “I hope you like it.”
Everyone ate their slice like it would be their last, although Mokona gulped all in one bite, as it was about all she could do at the moment; Sakura gently tore her slice piece by piece and ate slowly, Syaoran took small bites into his, and Kurogane glanced up at the mage before taking it in a couple bites, but savoring every bit.
When the meager meal was finished, Fai smiled gently at the younger of the two.
“Now, who was telling the story about that thief?” he asked, glancing between Sakura and Syaoran. “If you’ll continue, I’ll light the fire.”
“I know the story,” the princess explained, “but Syaoran was telling it; he always tells better stories.”
The boy smiled at her and continued the tale he’d begun a few nights ago. Fai lit the fire and slid over to Kurogane.
Syaoran eagerly told the story of a thief named Ali Baba and a secret place in the desert. Sakura gasped at certain parts and even hugged Mokona too tight once; the white manjuu had let out a cry of distress, signaling to the princess that air was needed to live. Kurogane grinned a couple times and made various remarks such as, “he deserved it” when a bad guy got himself killed. Fai simply drank it all in, the story, the princess, and the warm feeling that filled his insides, despite the snow that had been falling outside for a majority of the day.
After a few hours of this, Syaoran grew tired, and his story became more punctuated with yawns, which caused the princess to yawn, then Fai and Kurogane, and eventually even Mokona yawned.
“I think it is time for us to get our rest,” Fai attempted through another yawn. “We can finish tomorrow.”
“But what about the thief in the jar?” Sakura protested, rubbing some of the sleep out of her eyes.
“He’ll get what’s coming of him,” Kurogane predicted, grinning almost maliciously, which caused Fai to smile.
Despite all further protests, Fai let the fire simmer down and the candle to blow out. The kids moved to their sleep mats and said their goodnights. Mokona snuggled in with Sakura, who eagerly accepted the animal and kissed it lightly on the head. The mage and the ninja sat up a little longer, listening to the children’s breathing; waiting for the younger ones to fall asleep. When the tired breathing of the boy and the princess finally evened out, Kurogane turned to the blonde.
“Are you hungry?” the ninja asked.
“No,” Fai lied, smiling. “I won’t be until tomorrow.”
“That’s what you said yesterday.”
Fai continued to smile, “Did I? Oh, well, I’m still not hungry. I guess I was wrong.”
Kurogane frowned; unable to see the vampire’s face in the dark, unable to read what was most likely a lie written upon it.
“Tomorrow you’ll eat?” the ninja inquired, too exhausted and too wary of the children’s sleep to argue.
“Yes,” the mage agreed. “We must get our sleep now, Kuro-tan.”
Kurogane kissed the blonde gently on the temple, murmuring into Fai’s hair, “Thank you.”
Fai didn’t answer but scooted over to his sleeping mat and bidding his goodnight to the other man, “Goodnight Kuro-sama.”
The ninja followed suit and lay down on his mat. Fai couldn’t help but smile again. However, before he closed his eye he prayed to whatever god was listening for his family and with the same warm feeling from before, drifted off to sleep.