HAI THAR
Story: Black cat, white mage - Part 10
Pairings: Kurogane/Fai, Sakura/Syaoran, Yukito/Touya, the usual suspects.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, crack pairing rearing its ugly head again (although still extremely obscure), wild flying Mokona
Summary: A lost princess. A mage running away from his past. A crippled warrior doing his best to forget the man he used to be. And a young man carrying a terrible curse. All of them are inevitably drawn into an adventure where love might save them... or doom them.
Note: Well, you see, since I was planning on coming out of excile and starting to make sense again, have another chapter. Enjoy! Cut quote from a poem by Sappho, often called "Like the gods", although this translation is a bit different.
***
They decided to enter through the southern gate, not really because it was closest, but because it was the smallest and least heavily guarded. Admittedly this made it the more obvious location for an ambush, but if that was the case then they were prepared for it, and the ambushers would at least not be spoiled for backup. Besides, the southern gate lead straight into the city park, into which four people could easily get lost.
Kurogane listened to Fai expansively explaining this as they walked, saying nothing. To their right the sea heaved like a huge breathing being, tinted red by the sun, which was now a mere sliver cresting the horizon. The sea was alive, and it had its own voice; it would sing, or mumble, or roar, or whisper and it would never be completely silent. Being born and raised in the deep forests bordering on Nihon, he remembered how disconcerting he’d found this when at first he’d arrived at Drottensburg to be initiated. He’d spent many sleepless nights tortured by nerves and the ceaselessly speaking voice of the sea.
He had taught him to love it, just as he’d taught Kurogane to love so many other things about the world which he’d never thought he would. Just like he’d taught him to love so many things about himself that he’d never thought he would. It was hard to understand, now, how he’d been able to look at himself and think he was a whole person before then. How could you be whole, when there were parts of yourself you refused to see, to respect, to love?
On their own accord, his eyes sought out Fai’s lithe frame, and his mouth twitched with a grimace that he barely managed to swallow down. There was something about him, like a man dancing on the edge of a knife, running along the crest of a wave, balancing on the tip of a flame. Moving too fast, only parts of him glinting briefly in the sunlight while most of him was in shadow. Kurogane wasn’t sure how he could tell from just watching Fai during this brief period of time, except that he recognized the behaviour as one he had attempted himself once, when he was clumsy and young and stupid. When he was incomplete. Cutting himself in two on the edge of a knife, drowning in the wake of a wave, burning at the heart of a flame.
Fai was just much, much better at it.
That was to say, he’d practiced being a fool until it almost was an art in itself.
Was that why Kurogane was so damn attracted to him? Not that he was attracted to idiocy, of course, but simply the fact that from their very first meeting he’d known what was wrong with Fai, and that in itself made him want to... fix him. Make him whole. Complete the circle, in a way, by giving Fai what he himself had once been given.
Stupid fucking thoughts. Fai was a stranger. Why did he have to keep reminding himself of that? What insight he had was probably less related to his past experiences and more to the fact that he’d kept his fighting skills well honed. The Sight never fully went away, he’d heard veterans say when he himself was just a pup, and if you kept yourself in fighting shape it would always stay strong, no matter if the voices of the Gods had gone silent.
Not that they truly had. Kurogane just wasn’t listening anymore.
He remembered what he used to say, when Kurogane was angry and confused about the state of the world; when nightmares about his parents woke him up and he could not reconcile his faith with the horrors he’d seen. The Gods love us, he’d said, stroking Kurogane’s sweat-slicked hair away from his forehead with a gentle hand. They created this world for us out of love, and if we call out to them, they will listen. But they are not like us. They understand what we want, but not what we need. They are not like parents, who can make things right for us. Making the world right is our own responsibility, and they cannot do it for us. All they can do is try to help. And we have to help them help us.
Kurogane had not truly understood what his lover had meant by that. Not until blood was pulsing from his arm and his vision was going black, and right next to him the man he loved was dying. Not close enough for him to reach out and touch, but close enough for Kurogane to see the colour fading from his skin as his eyes, once the deep, dusky blue of summer night, froze to flat and lifeless mockeries of their old selves. Like glass marbles. Like the painted eyes of the marble statues standing vigil in the temples.
His mother’s dying gasp ripped through his head, his father roared in helpless anger, and the one thing that still made sense in his world slipped out of his grasp forever. The only thing he wanted. The only thing he needed.
And he prayed. Prayed for things to be different, prayed as his consciousness started slipping, prayed like he never had before, with tears streaming down his cheeks and his chest heaving in sobs. Prayed to gods who didn’t know good from evil, who couldn’t tell that the man dying right then was the best man who had ever given his life to their service. Gods so utterly blind that just when Kurogane finally gave up hope, his voice rattling away into nothing, and he prepared himself to die... then they couldn’t even allow him that small dignity.
They healed him. They brought him back. They couldn’t fulfil or even understand his wish to bring back a man who was already too far gone for any prayers to help, but they could give Kurogane back a life he didn’t want anymore. A life in which he was shamed and reviled; in which he was forced to take the blame, which was wrong, even though he knew that it truly was his fault. It was wrong because the guilt was such that it belonged to him, and it wasn’t anything which anyone was allowed to make an example of. But that was what they did. They took the blood that had mingled with his lover’s and the tears he’d cried during his last prayer, and they had painted the world with it, and things that had belonged to Kurogane, and Kurogane alone, had been thrown out into the sunlight for everyone to see.
Many men who left the Templars closed their minds to the voices of the gods, because it was hard enough to live an ordinary life without having the eternal minds of celestial beings whispering to you, reminding you whenever you did something you knew in your heart was wrong that they could see you, they knew your heart, and they were sad for you. They did not judge, did not condemn; they left that up to you. But they grieved.
This did not bother Kurogane, because he’d lived his whole life as if his parents were watching over his shoulder; anything that would shame him would shame them, and so he did not do it. The gods had no reason to mourn on his behalf, any more than they mourned for every human being when they were hurting. He did not shut them out.
But he would no longer listen to their voices as he had in the past, would no longer seek them within himself whenever he felt as if he was wavering, whenever the world darkened and every path he could take looked dreary, bleak and cold. They had once been his fixed point, the place where his soul was always at peace, the place where a man had moved in and made him understand life like he never had before. But when he’d cried out to them, when he’d needed them the most... They had not helped him, but that was understandable. His lover had been beyond help the moment the dagger pierced his flesh and the poison entered his blood, Kurogane knew that. No, the thing that had turned him away from them forever had been their lack of understanding. He’d heard their voices in his head as he pleaded with them, the arm that was no more burning as he ached for his sword, too weak to end his own agony.
Why does this man matter more?
Why would you die rather than see him do the same?
Why is his death more horrible than the thousands of other deaths that we witness, that we mourn, that we cannot prevent any more than we can prevent his?
Why are you asking us to let you die? When we can help you and not him, why would you ask us to sacrifice the one thing we can save?
Why are you so selfish?
Like children, or maybe like animals. He’d been told that for all their wisdom, their minds were simple, but this? This was a mockery. A joke. He’d trusted his life, his soul to them, had tried to understand them, a drop of water yearning to understand the sea. But as it turned out, they could never even begin to understand him, nor did they seem to want to.
And then he could no longer trust his soul to them.
But the Sight remained, their last blessing and their last curse. He could see without seeing, could close his eyes and still know where everything was, as if the world was a part of him and he of it in a way that was directly tangible. And he could see things for what they were, see beyond seeing. He’d known at once that Syaoran’s illness came from his eye. He’d seen the dark horror and shame lodged within the creature the boy once had been, gasping on the ground and glaring at him, just another thing in his life which hadn’t gone right.
He hadn’t seen Fai’s magic, and that worried him. He should’ve been able to, but it was as if Fai had found a way of keeping it all inside, just like he did with everything else, until the very fact that his mask was so perfect was what gave him away. No human had no cracks or flaws, but Fai was like an animated statue.
What Kurogane had noticed that his eyes were wrong. Those crazy bright green eyes were all wrong in his face. So in a way, he guessed he had noticed Fai’s magic, even if he hadn’t exactly known about it.
There was something about Little Cat too, but those lay too deep for him to see. Someone like a High Priest might be able to, but not him. All he got were hints and tints, all vague and hazy. Sometimes there was a sketchy something hovering in the air behind her back, but that was almost invisible to him, and probably too abstract to understand in anycase. Other times, there was someone walking behind her, his hand on her shoulder, leading her. Someone else sometimes walked in front of her, never looking back, but sometimes moving his head as if listening for her steps. Sometimes voices called for her, distorted but desperate.
Fai had companions like that too. Sometimes a child, reaching out but never touching before turning away in sadness. Sometimes a man, leaning over his shoulder. Whenever that happened, Fai suddenly froze, his pupils dilating, his face turning paper-white before the mask once more slid into place.
At least Kurogane knew about Syaoran’s silent watchers now. The other Syaoran he sometimes saw clear as day, dead-eyed and focused. That was the curse. The indistinct figure that sometimes hovered in the air above him. That was whoever had cursed him. And the young man that sometimes seemed to be frozen in the air right behind him, caught in the middle of a leap, his arms stretched out... that had to be his brother.
Fai spun around, laughing at something Little Cat had said and walking backwards as if falling on one’s narrow, leather-clad, well-shaped ass was something that happened to other people. Kurogane shook his head angrily, trying to clear it. The more he thought about the Sight, the clearer the images would become, and he really didn’t need to be haunted by ghosts when walking into a city. He tuned out the voice of the sea, as he’d learned to so many years before, and passed the voices of memory to the place where he kept the voices of the Gods, far away from his heart and even further from his thoughts.
Before him, the gate opened into the fragrant shadows of the rose garden, the evening guards laughing and passing a jug of what was probably weak cider between them. Either that, or he hoped there would be an inspection. Getting drunk on duty ought to be a hanging offence. Fai was raising his hand in a hailing gesture, about to speak, when suddenly a round, white projectile hit him square in the chest, propelling him backwards as he let out a startled gasp.
Kurogane’s first thought, idiotically enough, was: Snowball? This was of course immediately dismissed, seeing as it wasn’t fucking winter you asshead. The next thought, weapon, arrived at the same time as his sword did in his hand. But that too was dismissed when he realized the thing was squealing. Which left only one option.
“An animal?” he demanded, incredulous.
The thing looked up, glaring at him with eyes that were for a moment large lavender orbs, before narrowing into indistinct slits. “Mokona is not an animal!” it proclaimed, sounding indignant, even hurt. “Mokona is a Mokona!”
Kurogane stared. Syaoran stared. Little Cat stared, open-mouthed in shock. And just for a moment, Fai’s mask ripped apart and showed absolute, bone-numbing terror. Then it was overtaken with sorrow, and anger, and longing, but all of these emotions were only parts of something much larger, something that screamed silently in his eyes as he stared at the small creature clinging to his chest as if its life depended on it.
Love?
And then his arms were around it, pressing it to his heart, and even though Kurogane was sure he was going to squish the thing to a white pulp, it did not seem to mind. It was sobbing loudly, though, and a damp spot was spreading on the front of Fai’s shirt.
“Yuui Yuui Yuui Yuui Yuui Yuui Yuui,” the creature was chanting over and over like a mantra, its voice pitiful and broken. Fai, still looking overwhelmed, tilted his head forward and appeared to whisper something in its ear. It looked up, its small, tear-drenched face twisted up in confusion.
“But why? Yuui...?”
Fai shook his head firmly, and the thing relented. “Fai?” it suggested hopefully. Fai smiled in return, a smile that was just as glossy and impenetrable as all the rest, but with a lot more genuine warmth behind it.
“Mokona,” he said, and yes, his voice was definitely wobbling a bit. “I thought I’d never see you again. I... I thought the Circle had you destroyed.”
Mokona shook its head, but it was shaking, clearly distressed. “Mokona... Mokona has been sleeping. And then he woke Mokona up.”
Fai’s face froze, the smile turning to wax. “Who?”
“Ashura,” the creature moaned. “He woke Mokona up and told Mokona to go to you. Mokona... Mokona had to. Mokona is Fai’s familiar. But now Mokona is afraid. Mokona is afraid that maybe he is coming after you too and it will all be Mokona’s fault.”
Kurogane was sure Fai wasn’t breathing for a whole minute. But then he drew a huge, gulping breath, and the smile on his face was almost manic as he turned to them. “We need to find a room right now, Kurogane. We all need to find one right now. Do you understand?”
Kurogane nodded. He did understand. He understood that Fai hadn’t called him by some idiotic nickname. And all his senses, including the Sight, told him that if that was the case, there were only two things that Fai could be thinking of doing right now. Killing him, or saving his life.
He could only hope it was the latter.