[TRC] The Third Thing (PG; post-series; Yuui/Tomoyo) 2/3

[mikkeneko]

Title: The Third Thing
Rating: PG
Warnings: None really. Mild angst, sweetness.
Spoilers: Post-series, spoilers for the Nihon arc.

Author's Notes: At the end of The Curse of the Twins, Yuuko suggested to Yuui that he might be able to fight off his curse with the help of someone who loved him. A number of people wished in the comments that he would be able to find someone to make him happy, but for a long time I simply didn't know who. Yuui/Syaoron (popular in Holitsuba) just never appealed to me, and having him meet an alternate version of Kurogane and fall in love just seemed to cheapen the difficulties of their canon relationship. Instead, I wondered, how strange would it be if somewhere, one of the versions of Yuui/Fai was actually not gay?

<- Previous

And so Yuui stayed in Shirasagi castle as the seasons progressed, as the days grew longer and peaked and began to wane. The fine, warm weather turned muggy and hot, the sun shining hazily in a brass sky overhead as the plants drooped and faltered.

As weeks turned to months, Yuui became increasingly antsy. Normally he never stayed in one place for more than four weeks, a time limit he'd worked out by careful trial and error. One week was the absolute minimum it took him to recover his strength enough to do another world jump; three was about the maximum before his curse of ill luck started to take effect.

The Witch of Many Worlds had told him that the miasma of ill luck was not a curse, in the sense of a spell of ill intent placed on him by an enemy; rather, it was a manifestation of his own magical power, carrying out the self-destructive wishes of his unconscious mind. Perhaps she had meant the explanation to help him, but for Yuui, it only furthered his feelings of helplessness and frustration. How could he escape the curse when he knew he carried it inside of him? How could he free himself of the guilt and self-loathing that poisoned him when he knew for a stated fact that the suffering occurring around him was his fault, and his alone?

The clothes that Princess Tomoyo had made for him so kindly suffered the first effects; although he continued to care for them as mindfully as in the first days, not a day could go by without him tearing the sleeve of a kimono, or spilling some stain upon the silk, or breaking the cord of his getasandals, or splintering another set of chopsticks. The residents of Shirasagi smiled tolerantly at his foreign clumsiness, but every minor incident only added to Yuui's bleak depression; he knew he was not being careless.

Summer brought horseflies to the shaded gardens of Nihon, ugly black and red biting things that irritated the courtiers and maddened the horses. They were worse than usual this year, Yuui heard one courtier comment. Less rain fell than usual, and the ponds sank low in their stone confines, the surface crusting over with thick algae.

On the last day of the seventh month Yuui unexpectedly stumbled and fell down the main staircase from the front gates; people ran to help him but he waved them off, smiling and laughing to conceal the pain in his arm and the tight anxiety knotted in his stomach. The palace physician diagnosed a fractured wrist, wrapped it securely, and warned him to be more careful; Yuui smiled and thanked him.

In the weeks that followed not a day went by without Yuui hearing the echoing crash of some pottery breaking or wood splintering. On the night of the new moon a fire caught in the southern wing of the palace, leaping up from some careless cook's failure to cover a pan of hot oil properly. They were able to evacuate the people in time, and beat the fire out before it spread to the rest of the complex; but the whole southern wing was ruined, and a heavy pall of smoke and soot hung over the rest of the palace.

It was then Yuui knew that he had to go, brother or no brother. No one had died - yet. He had to leave before that changed.

He should at least say farewell to his hostess first, explain himself, and apologize. Misery was a tight knot in Yuui's throat as he made his way to her quarters, through the palace corridors that had become all too familiar to him over the past few months. At last, after so many years of searching, he had found a lead that might bring him to Fai - only to lose it again. The depressed resignation over his own helplessness was underscored by a further terror: even if he truly found his brother again, would he even be able to stay with him?

"Come in, Yuui-san," the Princess' gentle voice called from the chamber beyond; Yuui flushed with embarrassment as he realized he'd been hovering outside her door like a spy for almost ten minutes.

Sheepishly, he slid the door aside and came inside. Tomoyo was sitting in the window seat overlooking the garden; her hair was down and she was dressed in a less formal version of her ceremonial robes. She had a gold-spattered fan in her hand which she was waving slowly, strands of her hair fluttering in the light breeze. One of her little maids sat nearby, embroidering a wide panel of silk. "What is it, Yuui-san?" she greeted him, then smiled her usual gentle smile. "Have you torn another seam that needs to be repaired? I'm beginning to think you do it just to have a reason to come see me."

She meant it as light teasing, but Yuui flinched all the same. "No. That's not why," he said. He bowed formally, lowering his eyes to the rush floor. "Princess, I am sorry, but I must beg leave of your hospitality now. It is time for me to depart."

The fan stilled, and Yuui straightened up in time to see a look of dismay flit over Tomoyo's face before she suppressed it. She took a slightly shaky breath. "Of course, you are a free guest, and I cannot hold you here," she said. "But why? I thought that seeing your brother - Fai - was one of the three things that you sought. It has only been a few months since your arrival. He will come back, I promise."

"I do want to see him. It was - I wanted to -" He was getting hopelessly tangled in his explanation, hope and longing and regret clogging his tongue. He took a breath, and started over. "Princess, I'm afraid I have not been entirely honest with you," he said forlornly.

Tomoyo said nothing, but she gestured to a low cushioned seat on the other side of the window. Yuui sat down, for some reason thinking back on the strange interview years ago he'd had with the Witch of Many Worlds which had started his fantastic world-traveling journey. The Witch had already known about him - she'd known most of his life's history before he ever showed up at her cave. Where to start?

"I am under a curse," he began, "a curse that has followed me from my childhood onwards, to every world I've traveled in an effort to escape it. The curse is one of ill luck - not just for me, I wouldn't mind so much if it were just me, but for everyone around me. What begins as small mishaps - a torn sleeve, a dropped dish, a spell of bad weather - soon escalates into life-threatening catastrophes. I have only been here for a few months but already the troubles are starting."

"I would not have said our troubles were particularly severe," Tomoyo said, sounding somewhat surprised. "In a city of wooden houses, fires are a common hazard. And the weather, while perhaps unpleasant, is well within normal range for this time of the year."

Yuui shook his head firmly. "That fire was no accident, Princess," he said. "Six weeks is the longest I have ever been able to safely stay in one place without major disasters beginning to happen around me. It will only get worse the longer I remain. I've seen ships sink in calm seas, stone buildings collapse, houses burn down in the pouring rain and lightning strike out a clear sky. It is unmistakable."

He glanced at Tomoyo's maid, then away. She was with child, although it was possible even she did not know it yet; to a sensitive magician, the new life showed. In past times when he had been stuck in one place and unable to move on in a reasonable period of time, he had seen far too many sorrows overcoming what should have been such a joy: miscarriages, stillbirths, live births that should not have been. He could not bear to see that happen again. "Even in so short a time I have become fond of this world, Princess, and of you; that is why I must leave."

Tomoyo set down her fan and abandoned her casual posture, sitting with her back straight and her hands in her lap. "You should have told me this much earlier," she said sternly, her mouth set into a grim line.

"I know. I'm sorry," he said humbly. "I hoped - I hoped it would be different this time."

"It certainly could have been," Tomoyo said crisply. "Do you not understand who I am? As the Tsukuyomi, the one who reads the darkness of the night and guides my people among the paths of the stars, curses of ill luck are most certainly within my sphere of control! How do you expect me to do anything to counter your curse if you do not even tell me it exists?"

Yuui's mouth hung open and he blinked in astonishment; he'd never heard the gentle priestess with such an edge of steel in her voice. He coughed and tried to speak again. "Well - I didn't think you could - do anything about it," he protested. "I even took my case to plead before the Witch of the Worlds to beg for a solution, and she could not help me." Except, he thought, to advise him to find someone to love him. He'd been searching the dimensions for his lost brother ever since, in hopes of doing just that; but it was a bit of a Zeno's paradox when he was forced to move on from every place in such a short period of time.

Tomoyo's dark eyebrows flew up. "Yuuko could not do anything to help you?" she said. Yuui had already known that Tomoyo knew of the witch; it was a surprise, however, to hear that they were on a first-name basis. "Would not, or could not?"

"Could - could not," Yuui said hesitantly. The curse, according to her rather unsatisfactory explanation, was Yuui's own old guilt and self-loathing rather than any true malediction. "She told me - she told me that it was born of my own magic, working against me."

"I see," Tomoyo said, and her voice was calm and under control again. "If she could not remove the curse, then it's unlikely that I will be able to either. However, that does not mean that there is nothing I can do to alleviate its effects. I have a considerable amount of power on my own, Wizard Flowright, and the knowledge to ward against many forms of ill luck. Perhaps we can counter the symptoms, at least, long enough to search for a true cure."

"But - I couldn't," Yuui protested. "You said it yourself, your magic is for the sake of protecting and guiding your own people."

"As it always has been," Tomoyo said softly. "But the two need not be mutually exclusive. After all, if you mean to live here long enough to reunite with your brother, then you will also be one of my people, and deserving of my protection."

Tears flooded Yuui's eyes, taking him by surprise, and he blinked rapidly to try to get himself under control. "I... thank you, Princess," he whispered, not daring more volume than that.

"Come on," Tomoyo said briskly, rising to her feet and gathering the sleeves of her robe. Her maid quickly jumped up behind her, prepared to carry the train and keep it out of the dust. "There are still plenty of hours left in the day, and I have no other ceremonies to attend to. Let us retire to the great shrine and see what can be done about your ill luck."

---

The next week was a time of wildly mixed emotions for Yuui, wild hope veering into crushing disappointment and then rising again. The ritual of blessing Tomoyo performed for him did seem to help, at least in the short term; all that night and the next day, the falls and fumbles and breakages ceased. For one night Yuui slept peacefully, untroubled.

By the fourth day, however, the familiar symptoms of ill luck were beginning to creep back, and Yuui's optimism began to wane as it appeared that Tomoyo's magic could only afford a temporary fix. Again she performed a blessing on him, and again the troubles ceased; but they began to return ever faster, buying him only one day of peace.

"It is as if there is some force which resists me," Tomoyo said on the third attempt to counter his curse. She had experimented with several different approaches - both generalized good fortune and stronger spells of protection, but they all seemed to be equally effective, or ineffective. "The stronger I attempt to make my binding, the harder it pushes back against me."

Despite her frustration, there was a light in Tomoyo's eyes, a tone of professional interest in her voice; she seemed to view Yuui's curse as a challenge to be overcome rather than a bane. Yuui himself was more pessimistic; he'd tried dosing himself with many various 'cures' in his youth, and it had only ever come to naught in the end.

The struggle of great magics seemed to be reflected in the weather; the shimmering haze of heat spiked, then broke with the approach of a great thunderstorm. The residents of the castle could see it coming from miles across the grass plains, and despite the ominous grey darkness smudging the air beneath it, most of Shirasagi's residents viewed its coming as a relief against the heat.

When the storm arrived, it brought a torrential downpour. The sound of the rain on the roofs almost drowned out the thunder, and calls of consternation rose from all over the castle as the rain found its way through leaks and holes never previously noticed.

Worse, the ground was shrunken and hard from the weeks of drought and heat. The water quickly filled the ponds and streams and, rather than being absorbed into the ground, formed flash floods that overran every gutter and turned the streets into rivers.

Yuui sat on the edge of the verandah outside of his room, heedless of the sheets of rain that the wind blew over him. He should go, he knew. He should never have let Tomoyo persuade him to stay - she didn't understand the magnitude, or the implacability of his curse. It was irresponsible to let himself be persuaded; irresponsible and weak. He'd let his own petty desires rule over the good of others, and now -

A slithering crash and a female shriek sounded from somewhere in the castle - Yuui's heart began to pound when he realized it was the direction of Tomoyo's rooms. He gathered his soaking kimono up and galloped through the corridor in the direction, heart in his mouth.

The ceiling had caved out in the corridor, termite-chewed wood giving way under the weight of water. No one had been hurt, but a dozen people were on their knees picking up splinters while half a dozen men with ladders tried frantically to patch the hole in the roof. Tomoyo was standing nearby, and her eyes widened as she saw Yuui.

"Wizard Flowright!" she called out, and came over to grab his arm. She had to shout to make herself heard over the noise of the rain coming through the roof. "Go down to the footpath near the castle gates, and follow it along the hill until it comes to the bridge. The dam overlooking the east district of Edo has needed repair for years - it won't hold up to this much rain. Do what you can to keep the floodwater back until all the townspeople can evacuate!"

She spoke with commanding authority; Yuui was inescapably reminded that she was the sister of the Empress. "Yes, Your Highness," he said; all thoughts of leaving had fled. He took a step back and bowed, then turned and strode off into the rain, ignoring the water soaking into his clothes.

It had not been hard to find the dam she meant - the river building up behind it was roaring with a sound louder than the thunder. Miraculously, the dam still held, although water spurted through half a dozen holes or over notches gouged into the top. Yuui climbed out onto the top of the dam and felt, under his feet, the creaking and shifting of earth and masonry under the enormous pressure of the flood.

He realized at once that the problem was even worse than the Princess had said. The river snaking down towards the city had long since overrun its banks; it had joined with another channel, and expanded to suck in a deep but narrow lake. The resulting torrent which strained against the cracking dam, once it was released, would crash down not only over the city but into the palace itself.

This would have been easier if he'd known to come out here before today; he could have set wards to reinforce the structure far beyond its outwards flimsy appearance. As it was, it was simply a question of sheer brute force: thrusting his magic deep into the earth around and under the lake, fighting back against the pressure of the water. Blue light blossomed around him, an eerie contrast to the lightning that flickered and danced in the clouds above; muttered incantations of power rolled ceaselessly from his lips, unheard in the din.

The rain was not cold, but the gusts of wind traveling over the lake slammed against him until his limbs were leaden and his body was numb. In the struggle against wind and water he almost lost sight of his body completely, all his attention focused on the fierce storm overheard and the furious, crushing pressure of the flooding lake against the dam.

It was too much for any man - even a wizard. Water sheeted over the dam to join the floods in the city streets, but the sheer crushing weight of the lake would overwhelm him and then the dam. He should just give up, let it go, use what magic remained to him to fly to safely; or, better yet, transport himself out of this world and leave it behind forever.

No! a part of him rebelled, and he dug his magic in grimly. He would not yield. The princess had bade him to hold this dam and he would, no matter what the sky threw at him - no matter what his curse of ill luck threw at him. All his life he'd been shoved and beaten and pushed around, by his family and by his curse and by his ill fate and he'd gone along with it as passively as a leaf carried along by a river, accepting exile and defeat with barely a struggle. Everything that he had ever loved had been taken from him. No more! Here he had been welcomed, he had found acceptance, he had found peace and he had found hope for the first time in decades. By all that was holy, this was his home and here he would hold!

He lost track of how long he'd stood there, bracing his body, mind and soul against the shrieking power of the storm and the crushing pressure of the floodwaters that he strove to hold back. Even when the world went black around him and the roar of water finally dimmed, he clutched obsessively to the spell-threads he had sent down to strengthen the dam. He would not fail! He would not...

---

Yuui woke to the feel of sunlight on his face. Without opening his eyes he knew that he was back in his guest quarters in Shirasagi Castle, tucked into his bedding with a cool heavy compress on his forehead. Which was all comfortable and good, except that every inch of his body felt as though it had been beaten by sticks, and he was as weak as a newborn kitten. He barely managed to open his eyes enough to squint a blurry view of the sunbeams piercing the room, let out a breath that was half a moan, and let them fall closed again.

"Shhh. Lie still," someone commanded him from nearby. It was not Tomoyo, but one of her ladies - Yuui recognized her voice from visits to Tomoyo's quarters, but couldn't place a name. Gentle hands smoothed the sheet around him, and briskly began to change the compress out for a fresh one. "All is well. The storm has passed."

"The -" Yuui's voice clogged in his throat, but he could not muster the strength to cough. "Dam? Safe?" he managed to whisper.

"Yes, safe." The woman's voice took on a slight tinge of awe. "They found you on the top of the dam, which had been turned into solid stone twenty yards deep into the ground. The castle and the town are safe, and the floodwaters have gone down."

Like the floodwaters, Yuui could feel that his own magic had dropped almost to nothing - he was as drained and weak as right after making a world-jump, and he would be for the next week. Despite that, however, a feeling of great peace pervaded his body, and he found himself drifting back to sleep.

He hadn't failed. Even if the danger had been brought on by his own curse, his magic had been of use for once; he had protected them.

---

The next week was a busy one for Tomoyo. She had many pressing duties of her own to attend to - recovery and repair from the storm as well as a sudden spate of ceremonial obligations attending the break of summer - but she made an effort to drop by at least once or twice a day to visit the wizard in his convalescence.

"Yuui-san," she said after one week, "how are you feeling?"

"Much better today, thank you," he said, smiling back at her. He was sitting up on his futon against a padded board with a book of kanji in his lap, and a fair view of the garden beyond his door. Despite the destruction the storm had brought, Shirasagi was rebuilding; torn foliage grew back with bright leaves and flowers, and freshly-sanded new wood filled in the gaps of the fences and roofs.

"I am glad to hear that." Tomoyo adjusted her sleeves, settling back a bit on the cushion. She had not come by today for a simple chat. "I hoped you would feel strong enough to discuss a certain matter."

"What is that?" Yuui asked cautiously.

"Your curse," Tomoyo said bluntly, and she watched his smile dim and his eyes drop. "Yuui-san, you may not have been in a state to notice it, but for the last week there has hardly been a mishap around the castle."

"Really?" he asked with some astonishment. His bright blue eyes blinked rapidly. "Pardon me, Princess, but I… don't see how that can be."

"Neither can I," Tomoyo said, "but I have some ideas. Wizard Flowright, when you first told me of your curse, you said that it does not normally start to manifest in a new world for some time - that you see a grace period, so to speak, each time you change worlds."

"Um… yes," Yuui said after a moment's thought. "I can usually expect at least a week, perhaps two, before bad things start to happen in my vicinity. After that, however, they escalate steadily, both in range and in magnitude. It's after the first month that things really start to get bad... as you've seen."

"And you also said, when you first came to this world," Tomoyo reminded him; "that traveling between worlds was a great and exhausting work of magic for you, and that you cannot perform another such great feat again right away."

"Yes, that's also true," Yuui answered. "By the middle of the second week I usually have enough strength to jump again. I don't normally stay in any world longer than a month."

"And after expending all your magic on holding back the flood, once again you are drained and weak, and there has not been any evidence of ill luck for seven days," she prodded him.

"Er… yes?" Yuui's tone was willing, but bewildered. He honestly did not see the connection. Tomoyo sighed, and laid it out for him in plain terms.

"Yuui-san, I believe that your curse is linked to your magic much more directly than you previously thought," she said. "You have powerful magic; I felt it when you first crossed into this world, and I watched as it steadily increased in force until being in the same room with you was like standing in the eye of a hurricane. When you do not use it, your magic begins to spill out like a vessel overflowing with water, warping the world around you in unpredictable and unlikely ways.

"Traveling worlds, which only the strongest of magicians can do - let alone do on a regular basis! - drains away your magic for a time. Your miracle when you saved the city from the storm -" Tomoyo saw him flush a faint pink at the praise, and had to hide her own smile, " - had a similar effect. Right now when I look at you, you seem contained, at peace. The waters have not risen high enough to press against the dam, not yet. But they are rising again."

She stopped a moment to consider the effect her words were having on the blond wizard. He looked faintly stunned, as though she had whacked him upside the head with a board. "But - the Witch of the Worlds said -" he began, then stopped.

"What did she say?" Tomoyo prompted him.

Yuui closed his eyes, looking fragile and exhausted, and Tomoyo felt a strange surge of motherly concern - no, she corrected herself, not motherly. An urge to embrace him gently and kiss his forehead, and reassure him that he was not the blight he thought himself to be. "She said that - my brother and I -" he said in a low mumble, and Tomoyo got the impression that he had not meant to say this aloud. "That the two of us together had too much power - and that is why one of us had to die. Why one of us always must die."

For a moment Tomoyo was certain that he would weep, and then she worried that he did not. For all the heartbreak in his voice there were no tears; it was an old, dried-up kind of sadness that allowed no rain to fall, no healing growth to take place. When he opened his eyes and looked up at her again, his beautiful blue eyes were as dark as old wells. "Because together, we had enough magic to crack the world apart."

"Well," Tomoyo said after a long moment of silence, making her voice deliberately light to get past the moment, "then we must certainly put our heads together and think of some physic that will cure this ill. Because your brother is due to return here sooner or later - and I like this world, and would rather not see it crack apart."

Yuui breathed out a light laugh, and Tomoyo's heart eased as she saw him straighten up from his hunch, the sadness retreating a little from his eyes. It could not be fully erased, but she could help push it back for another day. "Well then, oh wise doctor," he said in a dry tone to match hers. "What medicine would you apply?"

"As to that, I actually have something that I believe will serve." Although she maintained the airy tone, her throat was a bit dry and her palms slightly damp as she reached up and beckoned her lady-in-waiting over, and murmured shortly into her ear. The maid nodded, bowed and hurried off, and Tomoyo readjusted her robes about her and looked at Fai more seriously.

"Years ago, in another kingdom, there was a king who also had a very powerful court wizard," she began, telling the story like a fairytale. "For his own reasons - and though he was a complex man, in his heart he meant well - he wanted to curb the magic of his wizard, so that his power would not become too great. The king was skilled and wise in magics of his own, and so he devised a marking - a tattoo which covered the wizard's back, which would wrap around him and limit his strength."

"He must have been a learned magician indeed to accomplish something like that," Yuui remarked. "I should like to visit this kingdom sometime."

Tomoyo shook her head. "Alas, he has passed on," she said regretfully, "and his kingdom passed with him. But the marking - a rare and powerful item - came into the hands of the Witch of Many Worlds, and from there passed to her successor."

Yuui seemed to be undergoing a struggle or debate with himself; hope battled with anxiety on his delicate features, in the tension of his shoulders and bunching of his fists. But then a calm passed over him like a cloud over the sun, and he looked her clear in the eyes. "Princess, I would do anything to be free of my curse, and to be able to stay here without harming this land," he said in a quiet but firm voice. "I am not afraid of a little pain. If it's you who holds the needle, I won't mind."

Tomoyo was temporarily taken aback, and then a chuckle burst out of her before she could stop herself. "Forgive me," she said with a gasp. "I did not mean to mislead you. It is not necessary to recreate the tattoo. Such markings have a life of their own, you know, and this one came to me from the Witch of Dimensions alive and whole."

At last the maid arrived with the box; it was long and wide, but flat, and the wood of the lid had elegant kanji of holding and protection burned into the wood. She took it in her lap and held it there for a moment, feeling the thrum of magic emanate up from the wood. "I believe that this can help you," she said quietly.

Yuui was shaking his head, a look of doubt on his face. "No, this won't work," he said. "You were right when you said that markings of power have a life of their own. If this was created by this king for a specific man, then it can't simply be passed around like a spare kimono."

"Not under normal circumstances, no," Tomoyo agreed easily. She glanced downward, and folded back the lid of the box. The marking of the phoenix glowed within, the black lines of the tattoo standing out with an unseen light of their own. She dipped her hands in the box, and urged a little power out of her own fingertips to lift the marking free. It slithered over her hands like the finest silk, her skin tingling where it touched, as she lifted it into the air. "But this marking will accept you, I think. You see, the King who created it was King Ashura of Ceres; and the wizard at his court was your brother, Fai Flowright."

A small noise escaped Yuui, and when she looked up at him once again she saw his features transformed by the same pain and longing as when she had first revealed to him that his brother would be coming back to this world.

Yuui didn't speak - it didn't look like he could. He blinked back blue eyes full of tears, and Tomoyo decided to act on his prior assent. She rose and paced around behind him, the marking hanging lightly in the air above her palm. Moving the board aside, she laid her hands on his shoulders - on the kimono that she had made for him - and pushed him forward.

Silk whispered over skin as she oh so gently lowered the collar of the kimono over his shoulders, letting it fall down his back. The skin of his back was smooth and white, even paler than his face and arms which were exposed to sun and wear, but the muscles under it were firm and well toned. When her fingertips brushed over his skin it was as smooth as the silk had been, and made her palms tingle faintly. She was glad he could not see her blush; that was not only magic. It was unseemly for princesses to blush, let alone High Priestesses in the middle of a magical ritual.

"There is nothing to fear," she murmured. "Let the marking that was meant to end your brother's curse instead be the cure for your own. After all, wasn't that the second thing that you were searching for?"

The marking settled over Yuui's back in ripples and waves, and although she automatically reached to smooth them down with a bit of binding magic, it wasn't necessary. Without a seam the blank ink bonded to his back, the long curves wrapping around his shoulders and ribs and the tail trailing down his spine as though it had been made for him. And in a way, it had.

Yuui took a deep shuddering breath, and his blond head bowed as he raised his hands crosswise to clutch at his own shoulders. "It feels…" he said, and his voice was a bare whisper. His fingers spasmed tight, and his back shook. "It feels like him."

Now the tears did come, where before they had been blocked. Now Tomoyo did kneel behind him and put her arms over his shoulders; kiss his hair softly, and tell him it would be all right.

~to be continued.

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