[TRC] Otherworld, 2/2

[mikkeneko]

Sheesh, stupid LJ's post limit.

Continued from Part 1...

 Syaoran feels uneasy; there's the sense of someone watching them, always watching, and a dark presence that hovers just outside of reach. But there are no people in the streets, and the houses that they pass are dark and tightly locked up or boarded, without any hint of movement in the windows.

He's worried about Sakura; she's moving slowly, as though hurt, but she refuses to tell him what's wrong. He glances over to see her biting her lip, her brow furrowed as if in concentration or pain; and he ventures to ask, "Princess Sakura? Are you all right?"

She glances up at him, then quickly away, but he can't miss the flash of pain in her green eyes, and his concern grows. "Syaoran," she says in a small voice, "do you think all this is my fault?"

"What do you mean? How could it be?" Syaoran asks, startled.

"Because of my feather," Sakura whispers. "Whenever something strange happens in a world we come to, it's always because the feather landed there... and sometimes it causes terrible things to happen, like what the Ryanban did in Koryo."

"But that wasn't your fault at all!" Syaoran objects. "It's - it's other people who have such bad hearts, that as soon as they get hold of a feather they want to do evil with it. The feathers - they're part of your soul, there's nothing evil about them! The only way they could cause bad things to happen is if -"

"Did you hear that?" Sakura interrupts urgently.

Syaoran stiffens, one hand going to his sword. "What?" he asks.

Sakura is silent, and this time Syaoran can hear it too; distant noises, thumping and crashing, as of some kind of scuffle. It's coming from a large building up ahead, and as they strain to peer through the mist they can see a flicker of movement in one of the windows on the third floor.

"That could be Kurogane or Fai-san!" Sakura cries, and she turns towards the building and breaks into a limping, jerky run.

"Princess, wait!" Syaoran sprints after her, and barely has time to notice the words engraved on a plaque above the building doors - Alchemilla Hospital - before he catches up to Sakura and grabs her shoulder. "Let me go first. It could be dangerous!"

The stairwells are all locked and boarded up, but the elevator still runs. It makes a horrible grinding noise as it starts up, and its progress is jerky and slow; but gradually they rise up to the third floor, and with a shove of his shoulder, Syaoran forces the sliding lift doors apart.

At the end of the dimly-lit hallway are two - bodies, locked in a fierce melee. Syaoran isn't sure if it's right to call them both men. The bigger one, who obviously has the upper hand, has a strange, distorted, monstrous silhouette. Instead of a human head, he is crowned with a huge, triangular cage of metal, dark iron stained with streaks of red - rust, or blood.

He's wearing only a filthy, red-stained apron from the waist down; his chest is bare, revealing a powerful upper torso and arms. In his right hand he's wielding a huge rusty knife, as tall as Syaoran himself, impossibly huge and unwieldy for a weapon. His hand seems to run into the hilt of the knife and fuse there, with streaking veins running up into his arms, no sign of a break between metal and flesh.

His other hand is fisted in the hair of his victim, displaying a casual, brutal strength as he swings the other body around and smashes him against the wall. There's a faint, strangled scream of pain, and the triangle-headed monster drags him back to the floor again by his hair, raises the knife for a fatal blow. But the flashing pale hair of the struggling figure, the familiar-looking clothing - "It's Fai!" Sakura screams, and Syaoran breaks into a run.

He runs up shouting, adding the momentum of his charge to his swing. The monstrous figure turns to meet him with an unnatural quickness, brings the giant, rust-coated knife to bear and blocks his swing with a resounding clash of metal. The scrape of blade against blade as he slides towards the hilt brings an ache to Syaoran's teeth, and although he pushes with all his might, this monster is far stronger.

In desperation, Syaoran lashes out with his right foot, hoping to catch the enemy off balance. Faster than he can follow, the free hand comes up and catches his foot, squeezing hard as if to crush the bone; but in doing so he had to release Fai's blond hair, and the man stumbles forward, going to his hands and knees on the slimy floor. Sakura dashes forward and grabs his arm, tugging frantically to get him to his feet, and they stagger together down the hallway towards the dubious safety of the elevator.

They make the lift doors and she hits the button to close them; "Syaoran!" she yells down the hallway. He glances over his shoulder and sees the sliding doors; in a final burst of strength he kicks away from the pyramid-headed man, and bolts down to the elevator just in time. With a nauseating lurch and grumble, the lift begins to move, and they watch their enemy slide out of side above them. He makes no attempt to follow.

Back on the ground floor, they leave the lift standing open and hurry to the first unlocked door in the hall, a dingy-looking bathroom. Syaoran stays out in the hallway, on guard in case the monster appears again. Fai is still lurching and stumbling with every step, and he hasn't spoken a word to either of them; Sakura wonders if he's been injured. "Fai?" she asks him timidly, shaking his shoulder.

Fai raises his head level with Sakura's gaze, and Sakura screams; under the familiar fall of golden hair, there is no face. Instead of the familiar features and laughing blue eyes of their older companion, there is just a smooth white expanse of skin. From that blank, pale nothingness, she can hear faint and muffled tiny cries.

Fai reacts to her scream, pushing her away and stumbling a few steps with his arms blindly outstretched; he trips, and cracks his head against the sink as he falls. It would almost be funny if it weren't so hideous; and her screams bring Syaoran running.

"Sakura, what's happening? Are you all - " Syaoran breaks off as he catches sight of Fai's face, and his tanned face goes a pale greenish color. "Oh, god," he whispers, and swallows hard in the silence.

"It's still Fai," Sakura insists, clenching her hands hard against the shaking that wants to rattle her bones. "It's still Fai, and he needs - needs us to free him." She looks down at the knife clutched in her lap, not wanting to believe what she knows they have to do.

Syaoran follows her glance down to her lap, and catches her meaning immediately. "Princess, no," he begs her, grabbing her arm. "There has to be another way!"

"Who else in this world is going to help us?" Sakura cries out. "We have to help ourselves - we have to help each other."

Slowly, he nods, although she can see the sickness in his eyes at what she proposes. "What do you want me to do?" he asks quietly.

She takes a deep breath, sets her jaw and picks up the knife, clutches it so hard in her hand that her knuckles go white. "Hold him down," she whispers.

Fai tries to fight them as they wrestle him to the ground; blinded as he is, he's still agile and strong, and it takes all Syaoran's efforts to pin his arms to his sides, straddling him as he sits firmly on his chest. "Do it fast," he warns her in a tense voice, bracing his feet against the gritty concrete floor for purchase.

Sakura nods, and tears are squeezing out of her eyes as she kneels by Fai's head, brushes the hair away from that horrible, empty blankness. "Please be in there, Fai," she whispers, and holding the knife in both hands, she brings the tip of the blade down to cut into the smooth skin where his eyes should be.

The man's body convulses and flops like a beached fish; Syaoran shouts and struggles for a few minutes, pinning him to the ground. "Hurry!" he shouts, and Sakura abandons her two-handed grip on the knife to grab Fai's chin, holding his head still so he can't thrash around as she cuts.

There is no blood, for which Sakura sends up prayers of thankfulness as the blade bites deeper. Instead the blank skin has the texture of overcooked meat, the times she'd tried to practice cooking at the café in Outo. Cooking lessons, with Fai teaching her. Please be all right, please, she begged no one in particular, as she scores a deep line from the top of Fai's face to the bottom, then from side to side.

She grabs the flap of loose skin and begins to tear it, and it gives way under her hand like flimsy cloth, releasing a stench of long-dead meat trapped under the surface. The flesh is coming away in flaps and strips now, and the sight of the ragged hole in Fai's face makes her squeeze her eyes shut, then blink them back open as she must focus on seeing her task through. Her fingers, grabbing through the crumbling flesh, touch smooth hard skin again; and she cries out in relief as the outermost layer begins to come away at last revealing Fai's true face - nose, lips, cheeks and eyelids - underneath.

The outer growth of flesh still sticks and binds in several places, and she has to bring the knife carefully to bear to cut them away; but Fai is no longer struggling under their hands, and now Syaoran is helping her to grab handfuls of the disgusting stuff and fling it away. At last they are able to clear the dead skin away from his eyes; and after a few minutes of squeezing his eyes shut, forehead furrowed with tension, Fai blinks them open and looks up to meet hers. They are blue, blue, and Sakura's eyes overflow with tears to see them.

Muscles tensing, Fai abruptly pushes her and Syaoran aside and springs to his feet, stumbling over to the row of sinks and bending over them, retching violently into the basin. Sakura hovers worriedly, hands darting out to push his hair back from his face, but otherwise unsure what to do. It's a long minute before he recovers, sinking slowly down to his knees and clinging to the edge of the sink. "Oh god," he says faintly, to no one in particular. "I've been needing to do that for hours."

There is a handkerchief in Sakura's jacket pocket from the last world, and she goes to wet it at the rusty sink. The pipes screech and clank as the water runs through them, and she doesn't think she'd dare drink it, but it should be all right for cleaning. She uses the wet handkerchief to finish cleaning Fai's face; he's panting hard now, sucking breaths in and out of his lungs like he's just run a marathon. "Sakura-chan," he says as she presses the damp cloth against his skin, his voice a faint croak. "Syaoran. Th-thank you… thank you."

"Are you all right now?" Sakura whispers timidly, wiping the cloth over his face. He reaches up puts his hand over hers, taking the handkerchief away from her to wipe his own mouth; he catches her eyes and smiles, and she almost cries again to see it.

"What happened?" Syaoran asks, and Fai coughs a little as he turns to the boy, blinking watering eyes into focus.

"I'm not sure," he said faintly. "Things have been strange ever since we came to this world - I woke up in this hospital, but couldn't find any of you. Did you wake up together?" He gave them a questioning look.

They shake their heads no. "I had to search to find Syaoran," Sakura says. "There were people at first… but there aren't any now. I don't think they were quite real," she said quietly.

Fai nods bleak agreement. "What about Mokona?"

"Mokona's here," Sakura says, bringing out the little creature; it's still stiff and cold as a doll in her hands. "But something's wrong. I can't get Mokona to talk or respond at all. Can you…?"

Fai takes Mokona and examines it gravely, but then shakes his head and Sakura's heart sinks. "Whatever's wrong with Mokona is the same thing that's wrong with the world," he says. "I think we have to find the center of whatever's causing it and stop it, before things will go back to normal."

"Do you think…" She blurts out the words almost without meaning to, the fear that's been hovering behind her tongue the entire time they've been in this world. "Do you think it's my feather that's causing this? That's making the town so strange, the people… the way they are? Is - are all these terrible things… because of me?"

Fai is silent for a long moment, and he's always been so kind, just the lack of immediate reassurance makes her want to cry. "I don't know, Princess," he says gently, at last. "The feathers are powerful and can do some very ugly things, if they're put in the wrong hands. We'll just have to find it and see."

She falls silent; and it's left for Syaoran to say, "But where is the feather? How can we find it without Mokona?"

"I don't know," Fai says, "but I have an idea of where we can look." He stands up, and leads the way over to the small, barred window; through it, he points silently to the high, sharp silhouette of the bell tower, its triangular black peak jutting upwards to the sky.

Syaoran gasps. "I've seen that before!" he says. "I saw it when I first woke up in the school, too."

"Yes," Fai says. "It's the only place that can be seen from anywhere in town. If there's any place in this world that is completely real, it will be there."

---

They walk through the strange, silent town in the direction of the bell tower that they all saw. The mist seems to part a little ways around them, then close in behind. They can sometimes see faint movement through the fog - dark shapes slinking along low to the ground, letting out a growl that sounds more like a buzz of static; or occasional shadows passing by above them. With the three of them together and on guard, though, nothing seems to want to assault them.

Although they can clearly see the spire of the cathedral, it's harder to reach it; all of the town's roads seem straight, all of the intersections right-angled, and yet the paths they pick seems to twist away from the center of the town each time. They spend what seems like hours backtracking, or traveling in what feels like circles, and the spire of the bell tower never gets any closer.

"This way," Fai says, turning them abruptly to the left; there's little of his usual carefree exuberance in his voice. It's a while before she notices that the new route he's taking them on is following a stream of liquid running through the gutter alongside the street; and a while more before she notices that it's blood.

They come around a corner and the street opens up before them into a broad square; the cathedral looms ahead, the familiar shape of the bell tower rearing starkly against the sky. Sakura cries out in horror; strewn all across the plaza, and the steps leading up to the church door, are dozens of corpses. All of them show signs of violent death; many barely retain a human silhouette, faces hacked and limbs hewn off, thrown far away from the main body.

"The townspeople…" Sakura chokes out; Syaoran is by her side, pulling her tight against him and shielding her eyes with his hands as though he can block the sight seared into her memories. "All because of my feather… all because of me… Why? Why would anyone do this?"

Slowly, stiffly, Fai turns around; she sees his face, and his expression is drained of all color, as his stark-wide eyes fix on the shadows of an alleyway on the other side of a plaza. "He's here," Fai whispers.

Scrape, they can all hear it, the unmistakable scrape of a blade that is too heavy to lift being dragged over concrete. He emerges from the shadows, the huge pointed black mask making a slow arc as he turns of face them. The trail of blood that they've been following trickles from under his feet, dripping from the chips and grooves on his gigantic knife. It scrapes along the ground with each step, and with each step his head jerks, as though the weight of the monstrous iron mask is unbearably painful.

"It's the killer!" Syaoran shouts, and grabs at Sakura with one hand as he clutches the hilt of his sword with the other. "He's too strong to fight him, we've got to run!"

Fai shakes his head; his skin is nearly as pale and sallow as the strands of hair that go flying. "No," he croaks out. "You don't understand. It's him. It's Kurogane."

"What?" Sakura gasps.

The man in the pyramid mask staggers forward another step, into the full light that spills from the cathedral door, and it is unquestionably him. The broad chest and shoulders are the same familiar ones of Syaoran's teacher; the scar on his left hand, when he brings it around to grip the handle of his blade, is Kurogane's scar. But the right hand - the hand should wield a sword that protects - is engulfed by the pulsing, malevolent growth from the giant sword. Tendrils like cables, or growing veins, wrap upwards from the blade and pierce and burrow into Kurogane's arm, sealing the unholy union.

"Syaoran, stay back, with Sakura," Fai says, as the sharp point of the metal mask swings around towards them. His voice, though calm, is loud enough to pierce the inhuman scream that comes from under the mask as he sees them. "You aren't strong enough to face him head-on."

"But, Fai, last time he nearly killed you!" Sakura cries out, as Syaoran falls back into a guard position before her. "You really think you can beat him?"

"No. I can't beat him," Fai says, and his blue eyes are calm and determined, his face serious and set.

He leaps forward, placing himself between the children and the brutal, bloodthirsty monster who was once their friend. And while Sakura watches, fascinated, the strangest dance she has ever seen between them begins.

Kurogane - it's still so hard to believe that it is Kurogane, behind that blood-stained iron mask, welded to that deformed and twisted weapon. Yet, he has all of Kurogane's bewildering speed, hacking fast and deadly despite the great size of his sword.

But as fast as Kurogane is, Fai is just as fast; he twists and dodges, somehow managing to avoid the path of the filthy blade each time. An inhuman snarl rips from underneath Kurogane's mask, and he charges forward with a series of brutal thrusts, each one more than enough to impale Fai like a piece of meat on a skewer.

Sakura has to force her gaze away from the deadly dance the two of them are engaged in, and grabs Syaoran's arm. "Syaoran!" she shouts in his ear, pulling his attention away. "Look at that sword! That's what's gotten hold of him, that's eating him alive. We have to separate him from the weapon, and then he'll be freed too, I'm sure of it!"

"Separate them? How?" Syaoran cries; then his frame stiffens under her hand. "Princess, you can't mean -"

She presses the hilt of her knife into his hand, closing his nerveless fingers around it. "We don't have time to think of something else! Fai is in danger. Hurry!"

Somehow, Fai is able to anticipate each of Kurogane's motions, moving in almost perfect tandem with him. Not only has he managed to avoid the jagged edge of the knife each time, but he's actually closing the distance between them, each deft dodge and twist getting further into Kurogane's personal space until he's within arm's reach.

Kurogane rears back, and with a bestial roar, the ugly blade comes whistling around to slice the mage's head from his shoulders. Fai ducks, and brings one hand up to meet the swing - not to stop or block the blow, but to deflect it, batting it harmlessly aside and leaving Kurogane wide open in front of him.

Fai doesn't have a weapon; he doesn't need one. He twists with a fluid movement and closes the final space between them, his knees hitting the floor almost at a pace with Kurogane's feet. Fai's arms go around Kurogane's waist, in an incongruously tender embrace; and his eyes close as he nuzzles his face against Kurogane's stomach, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the skin above his groin.

And now Kurogane stumbles. For just a moment, the berserk movement of his sword arm falters and fails; the tip of his blade drops to the floor and fouls there, as the wicked point of the triangular metal mask swings down. For just one moment Kurogane wavers, the homicidal fury is dampened, as he regards the man kneeling before him and tries to remember who he is.

"Now!" Sakura screams, and Syaoran bolts forward as though fired from a spring; he brings the knife over and down with a swift hard strike, and a pure metal sound rings through the air as the knife cracks and shatters.

Blood arcs and sprays through the air as the giant blade flies end-over-end through the air and clatters to the ground. It writhes and smokes like a dry brand thrust into flame, the huge rust-corroded outer shell melting away to reveal the slender curved spine and wrapped hilt of Souhi.

Kurogane, too, screams as he drops to his knees, clutching at the severed stump of his wrist and the dripping, trailing cables that lash like angry snakes seeking their prey, as if they could rejoin with their cut ends again. Smoke begins to pour out of the vents and holes of the twisted metal mask, and the iron edges begin to crumble away even as they watch.

Syaoran and Fai both spring into action; Fai seizes the bleeding arm and begins to apply pressure, to staunch the bleeding, while Syaoran batters away at the rusting mask to try to free his teacher of its dark bindings. So it's only Sakura who's watching the knife - which was dropped unheeding to the dust and scattered by a careless kick - and first sees the gleam of white light shining from its cracked blade.

In her arms - almost forgotten after all these hours - Mokona stirs, blinks, and then opens its eyes wide. "Mekyo!" it says in a startled voice, jarring the other three from their vigil. "There it is! Sakura's feather!"

Fai is still holding onto Kurogane's wrist with both hands; and the big man's face, although free of the painful metal prison, still looks groggy and not entirely aware of his surroundings, or surely he would resist. But Syaoran paces over to the knife and after a moment's hesitation, reaches down to take it. In his hands the battered case shatters further, the last of the metal splinters falling away and the pure, untainted white light of the feather floating upwards.

"How...?" Syaoran asked disbelievingly, and Sakura's mouth gapes as she watches it. It was there the whole time? In her very hands?

Syaoran rises and walks over to her, carrying the feather almost reverently, all his attention focused on her. Beyond him, Kurogane and Fai don't even seem to be paying attention; they're completely wrapped up in each other. Bright blood stains the cuffs and pants of Fai's white traveling clothes, but he keeps on working grimly over Kurogane's hand, applying a tourniquet and a pad of bandages to try to slow the deadly bleeding.

Kurogane has collapsed on the floor and Fai is kneeling over him, supporting his head off the filthy grime. Kurogane's face is turned into the mage's hip, refusing to meet any of their eyes; but his left hand is gripping Fai's arm tightly, as though he fears that if he lets go, he'll be lost.

Fai curls over him, his left hand holding still tight to Kurogane's wrist but the fingers of his free hand brushing oh so lightly over the spiky tips of Kurogane's hair. "Kuro-bun," he sys quietly, the words barely carrying over the distance, and the emotions in his voice are strong and unfathomable. "You overdid it, as usual."

Syaoran stops in front of her, with the feather held in his outstretched hand; it exerts a compelling, almost magnetic force. She's worried about Kurogane, wants to go to him, but she can't take her eyes off the feather… and as she steps forward it rises in the air to meet with her, to burrow into her chest and be part of her again.

---

She was eight years old, sitting up in her four-poster bed in her bedroom in the palace. A crescent moon and stars shone through the windows, normally a lovely sight, but it brought no comfort to her tonight; she clutched the feather-filled down comforter to her chest and cried.

"Hey, calm down already," Touya said to her; gruff as always and too uncomfortable to openly show affection. "It was just a dream."

"But - I - was - so - scared!" she got out between sobs, snuffling into the silk duvet. "It - all - felt - real!"

"But it wasn't real!" Touya's voice was strained with impatience, as he tried to argue reason against the unreasonable. "You're fine now, aren't you? There's nothing to be scared of, is there?"

Movement in the doorway of her bedroom; the nursemaids hovering in the corridor beyond, as her father stepped through the curtained doorway and dismissed them with a quiet gesture. "Sakura," he said in his deep, gently restrained voice. "I heard you had a bad dream."

She nodded, then hid her face in the pillows again; embarrassment at bothering her father now warring with the lingering terror and misery.

"It was just a nightmare," Touya told their father with some asperity. "I already told her that."

"But it felt real!" Sakura burst out. "It did! No matter how much you say and say it wasn't real, it still felt real and I'm still scared!"

Touya gave a long sigh of exasperation; he started to speak again, but stopped at a shake of their father's head. The King moved over to sit on the edge of Sakura's bed, and pulled the edge of the blanket away from her face, taking her small hands in his big ones. "Sakura," he said gently. "Look at me."

She looked up, and wonders now how she could ever have forgotten the look on his face, or the words he said to her then. "Some people are born with a very rare gift to see the future in dreams," he told her quietly. "It is a wonderful power, but also a terrible one, to see a nightmare and know that it may someday come true... and not only that; but what is dreamed to be true cannot be changed.

"But while you cannot stop destiny, you can soften it. You will always have others by your side to share the burdens and ease the pain. Never forget that whatever fear you face in dreams, sooner or later the dream must end, and you will see morning again side by side with the people you love."

---

She comes back to herself on the filthy floor of the dust-covered church, Syaora's arms encircling her as her companions converse in heated tones. "But nothing happened to Mokona!' the little creature was exclaiming. "Mokona was talking and talking, but you couldn't hear!"

"But that's impossible!" Syaoran says loudly. Away from her, Fai speaks in a softer voice that she can't make out.

"Yes, that's exactly it!" Mokona says in its shrill, unmistakable tones. "Everyone got separated when we fell into this world. Mokona tried hard to keep us together, but something else was pushing us apart, hard! Mokona thinks that we all went into worlds that were slightly apart from each other. Everyone heard and saw things that were a little different - even each other."

"But then how were we able to get back into the same world again?" Syaoran asks.

"The feather," Sakura whispers, and Syaoran's grip tightens on her protectively as he realized she's awake. "I had it in my hand the whole time."

"Every time you cut one of us with it, the barrier between worlds was also cut," Fai reasons, then smiles and shrugs as the others all turn to stare at him. "Or so it seems."

"Well that's great and all," Kurogane says in a hoarse voice; it's the first he's spoken since he last tried to kill them, and Sakura looks at him a little apprehensively. He looks like the normal Kurogane-san again, though, tired and filthy and his face lined with exhaustion and pain. "But couldn't you have found a better way of 'cutting the barriers' that didn't also involve chopping off my hand?"

"Your hand?" Mokona bounds over, and tweaks its ears at the makeshift bandage that Fai has been winding around the ninja's wrist. "But Kurogane's hand is fine."

"Wh -" Kurogane's own words cut off in a strangled sound of disbelief; he flexes his forearm and wrist, then rips away the bloody bandage to reveal his own hand, whole and unharmed once more.

"The bite on my leg disappeared, too!" Syaoran exclaims; and although she has to put her hand under her own shirt to confirm it, the cloth stiff and crackling with dried blood, she knows the stab wound in her stomach is gone as well.

There's a sound behind them, like someone drawing in a deep breath; they whirl around, ready to confront a new enemy, to see a small figure standing on the lintel of the church door. It's a child, around seven and eight years old, dressed in a long white nightgown and with bare feet. They think - from the clothes and the draggled black hair that grows to the elbows - that it's a female, but something in the face and the eyes makes it impossible to be sure.

"Who are you?" Syaoran demands, stepping in front of Sakura. "What do you want from us?"

"I don't want anything from you," she says in a clear, thin voice that has a strange buzzing overtone to it, like a recording being played back at the wrong frequency. "I'm so glad that you're all safe, and have found what you're looking at. Now you need to leave."

"You don't want the power of the feather for yourself?" Fai asks, his brows raising with surprise. "Now that's a first."

"You're just going to let us go?" Kurogane's voice is heavy with sarcasm and suspicion, matching the dark scowl on his face. "And you expect us to just quietly turn tail and leave, after everything you did to us?"

"We didn't do anything to you," the girl says, and her voice is surprised. "You did it to yourselves. And you've made the most awful mess of the town, and caused problems for everybody here. It really would be best if you just left right now."

"Wait," Sakura blurts out, and she edges forward, holding out her hand towards the strange girl. "Please - I'm so sorry for everything. But I have to know! With - with the feather gone, will your town go back to normal? Will everybody be all right again?"

The girl stares blankly at Sakura for a moment, then throws her head back, black tresses flying, and laughs. Sakura shifts from foot to foot, shooting a look of mute appeal at her companions.

The laughter stops abruptly as if cut off by a knife, and the girl is smiling at them again. "I don't think you understand at all," she says. "The feather - if that's what it is - didn't make our town the way it is. The feather was holding us in. So please, take it and go away. Now."

There's really nothing else to say; the travelers avoid each other's eyes, but their hands still creep to hold each other close; and as the magic of the transportation circle begins to swirl around her, Sakura is the only one who looks back at the church. The girl in the doorway is gone; if indeed she was ever there at all.

And then they are gone, dispelled as easily as a bad dream; and the town is silent once more.

---

He spoke of tortured souls
So outrageous the toll
You can lose all you have
He refused to give in to the town that takes all
Survive, you must have the will
This movie doesn't end the way we want all the time
She's gone, and fear has overcome
He was walking the mile, he was walking alone

Now it's too late, too late for me
This town will eventually take me
Too late, too late for me
This town will win
That misty night, that dismal moon
The dead search for their kin
While angels sing in endless dark
The dead seek out sin

---

~end.

In some ways I wish I'd had more time to work on this. The pacing feels a little too quick; I would have liked more time to build up the suspense, and work on some of the subtler themes. As it is, the 'nightmare' that each person is trapped in is one generated by their companions; none of them starts out in their own (though I won't say who got whose, it should be easy enough to tell.) And the act that broke each of them out of the nightmares foreshadowed what will eventually happen to them in the series (possibly because it was the magic of the feather that broke them out, and the feather contains Sakura's dreamseer nightmares.)

Trying to come up with a way for them to face and defeat pyramid!Kurogane was tricky, since both the original Pyramid Head and Kurogane are essentially undefeatable in combat. Simply allowing Kurogane to defeat them and then relying on his essential love for them to overcome the bloodthirst and madness he'd fallen into wouldn't have worked either. I think the 'surprise blowjob tactic' works on a number of levels, but it did lead to the following omake with one of my chat friends:

~fairytale lights and music~
Sakura: Oh, prince Fai! Whatever shall we do! Poor Sir Kurogane has been overtaken by an evil enchantment!
Fai: Don't worry, Princess, I shall free him with a kiss of true love!
Syaoran: But how? The curse means that his face is covered by a mask of iron!
Fai: I never said I was going to kiss him on his face!

Comments

[fieldofclover.livejournal.com]

"Fai: I never said I was going to kiss him on his face!"

PFFFFFFTT~!

Here I was, all terrified and creeped out -I've read this before, and yet it still has that same, gutwrenching punch that it did on first reading- and feeling slightly sick like I always do after a bad dream...

...and then that, and now I'm grinning like a loon :D How do you do this? Make me terrified one second, and emotional the next, and the rolling on the ground laughing the second after that?

(By being a brilliant writer, that's how.)

This continues to amaze me and probably will for a very long time.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

What can I say? Nobody can cheer up a room like Fai can :D

[fieldofclover.livejournal.com]

To be sure. <3

Oh, Fai. Never change.

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

This was a great story :DDDDD

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!