Title: Otherworld
Rating: R
Spoilers: No specific spoilers. Set in an unspecified time period after Outo but before Tokyo.
Summary: If dreams are another one of the worlds… then what about nightmare?
Author's Note: Written for the Halloween challenge on kuroxfai_pop, which was to rewrite a horror movie, story, or game with the TRC characters. I'm not going to up front and say which horror game this is, but it should be pretty obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with it.
"So you're awake after all?" one of the ladies - nurses - chatters to you happily. "How are you feeling, sweetie?"
"Oh, fine, I feel just fine," you say glibly, and when she raises her eyebrows in polite disbelief, you hasten to improvise: "Just a little bit dizzy, lightheaded… What happened to me?"
"Well, that's what I was going to ask you," the nurse says, putting her hand on your forehead, then on your wrist to take your pulse. "They found you passed out in the street, and when they couldn't find an ID card or a phone on you or anything else, they brought you here. Is there anyone you want to contact, sweetie? Anyone who might be missing you or worried about you? We have a phone in the office you can borrow…"
Your smile gets a little tight when she asks that, but she's just trying to be kind, to do her job. You say, "Well - I don't need a phone, no. But I need to find my friends. Were they with me? There were two children, a boy and a girl, both brown-haired - and another man, black hair, tall, probably the world's worst patient…?"
"Well, I'll tell you what," the nurse says cheerfully. "I've got to go on my rounds, so I don't have time to look for them right now. But you seem pretty awake and together, your pulse and temperature are normal. Why don't you look around for a bit and see if you can find them? You know what they look like, after all," she says, and winks at you.
Since that was pretty much what you planned to do anyway, you wink back and return her smile, and pull yourself up to the edge of the gurney and let your legs swing over. The room around you is rather busy, other cots and other patients with white-garbed nurses walking briskly along the aisles. It's obvious there's a lot going on; you feel bad to have wasted everybody's time.
"Well, good luck, sweetie," the pretty young nurse says, and pats your hand. "I have a feeling you're going to need it." And with that she walks briskly away, her high heels clicking loudly on the tiled floor.
Stumbling and swaying a little and clutching at the IV stand by your cot, it takes a moment before your natural balance reasserts itself. "Oh - miss!" you call out after her, meaning to ask her to take a message for you, if she sees your friends first after all. You take a few steps in the direction you saw her go, peering between the ranks of hospital beds and crossing paths of the other nurses. "Miss?"
There's no sign of her at all. You can't even hear her heels on the floor any more. With an uneasy frown, you step away and stumble towards the hallway. You need to find your friends.
You wander out into the corridor, feeling a little loss and directionless. In such a big building, with so many people, how are you going to find the others? Nobody you talk to has seen them, although they're all very kind and helpful, sending you on to this or that room. Mokona can't be too far, surely, or you wouldn't be able to talk to them at all. There's something about this place that makes you uneasy; there's a form that moves through the bustling pleasant crowds like a cruising shark, dark and sharp and angular and smelling like blood. It's never quite there when you turn to look directly at it, but you can feel it there anyway.
You find a little second-floor lobby and ask the receptionist where to find the visitor's lounge. She directs you down the hallway to the right, and you find it soon enough, a big dark room with glass windows and overstuffed dark upholstery; but it's empty and dark and the door is locked, obviously closed. You come back to the reception desk to ask another question, but the lady is gone.
You stop and look out one of the windows, but it's too foggy outside to see much; you can't even see any people in the streets below, only a few tops of buildings poking through the mist, the clear silhouette of a bell tower standing out above the rest.
This hospital is big and busy, but it's not very well-maintained. It seems like everywhere you look there are signs of decay and disrepair; weather stains coming in around the windowsills, lightbulbs flickering or cracked in their sockets. Perhaps this is a small town or an out-of-the-way hospital, because now that you listen for it, it doesn't seem to be all that busy at all. There are only a few voices drifting down the corridors, and half the rooms are standing empty.
There's a set of big double doors at the end of a hallway and you make for them, passing by one last room where a nurse - not yours - is consulting with a patient in the only occupied bed. Beyond the metal doors you can see a stairwell going up, but looped around the handles of the doors is a big metal chain, set with a rusty padlock. You can't get through here.
Back to the last door in the hall, you mean to ask the nurse there if there's another way up to the top floor. But the room is empty. There's no nurse and the bed is empty, sheets flapping in the breeze from the window and IV-lines swinging free. It looks like nobody's been here in a long time.
You break into a run back down the hallway, passing the stations and rooms and corridors where people were just there, they were just there a moment ago, you saw them, you talked to them, you bumped into them in the crowded hallways; but the tile walls and cracking plaster ceiling echo back only silence now, the façade of the hospital rotting away to reveal the bones underneath. And the thing that's there, waiting for you.
You can only hear a few other voices now, separated by walls and doors and distance, calling out; for help, maybe, or for vengeance. One by one, the voices go silent. Soon it'll be just you, the only one alive in this world. And what are you going to do then? What are you going to do then?
I wake up outside, in some sort of park or woodland heavy with gray mists. Visibility shot to hell. The others aren't around, nowhere within sight, and didn't answer to my call. That just figures; another crappy landing thanks to that useless meatbun.
I'm in a little gazebo, wood worn and faded with years of inattention, practically rotting around me. Fog swirls around me; it's so thick I can't even tell what time of day it is. Could be morning, noon or evening for all I know. Little clearer patches swirl through in whorls of darkness, revealing glimpses of the terrain around me; a bench here, a stone statue there, a line of trees bordering a gravel path not far away. No people, no people at all.
Climb to my feet and stumble out of the crumbling wood structure, ignoring the aches and pains of the bad landing. Head feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, swimming every time I try to move it to the side - everything's blurry except what's straight ahead. Must have taken a hit to the head, although I don't remember it. "Princess?" I call out, and my voice is a croak; what does it take to get a damn drink around here? "Kid? Wizard? You out there?"
No answer. Guess there's nothing for it but to look for them. God knows what sort of trouble they'll get into if I'm not around to protect them; and I smell danger. This world is dangerous.
One hand on my sword, reassured by the solid reality of the hilt. Hard to believe that Souhi started out as a figment of someone's imagination, a dream made into reality; she feels as real as any other sword I ever held. I set off down the gravel path and it crunches under my feet, louder than anything else in this world, almost louder than my own voice as I call out again: "Magician?"
Movement off to the side, from the darkness between two trees. The fog and the blurriness of my own vision works against me, but they don't know I don't need to see my opponent to sense him, and little rocks spatter from under my feet as I turn and bring Souhi around, the full force of momentum behind the blow, a neat slice across the abdomen from hip to armpit.
A red slash opens up across his stomach as the figure stumbles back, clutching at the entrails that want to spill out of the new cavity in his body; but there's no time to finish him now. Other dark figures are appearing, coming at me from under the trees; where are they all coming from?
Souhi feels familiar, comfortable in my hands like she never has before, like even Ginryuu never did. She feels like an extension of my arm as I dart and parry, whirl and slash. For every dark figure I put down, another seems to pop up from nowhere to take its place; but I have my sword and I have open space and level ground, and I am invincible.
As quickly as they came, the men - bandits, mercenaries, who knows? - melt back into the trees, blood steaming on Souhi and whispering away into the fog. A grin stretches my face, no matter how I'm panting with exhaustion. Good to stretch my muscles again, satisfying to dispatch scum like this back to Hell where they belong.
All the bodies are dressed identical, in black - are these the same guys we saw before? Didn't get a chance to get a good look at them before; step up to the nearest corpse, still bleeding from the slash across its throat like a grinning mouth, and reach out one toe to push back the dark covering over his face. And freeze, the breath turning solid stone in my lungs.
The face is Sakura's.
No, this can't be, this can't… Gulp for air against the surge of panic. The body's all wrong. This body is full-grown, not a teenager. This is impossible; this is a trick. This is some coincidence, just some stranger that looks a little bit like the princess… Lurch from one body to another, fighting back against the scream that wants to build in my throat as each dead face is uncovered.
Syaoran's face. Souma's. Fai's. Tomoyo's face, staring up at me with accusing dead filmy eyes from a face cut to the bone. Sakura's face again. An iron taste fills my mouth, and the gravel path blurs and rushes up as my legs go weak under me, stones biting into my hand as I struggle not to vomit.
Unbelievable. This is unbelievable, and all at once I start to laugh. This can't be real, this can't be happening. This is some - this is some trick. This is a dream, isn't it? I'm dreaming.
This can't be real. This isn't.
This isn't real.
All the voices are silent, now. Except yours.
You run, blind to the floor in front of your feet, not even sure where you're going. Whether you're searching for someone, anyone else in this world, or running away.
Either way, it doesn't matter.
Because it's going to catch you.
She wakes up in a little café, the kind they've seen a lot of in their journeys; small family-run eateries whose food isn't very good, but at least cheap and the waitresses are friendly and don't ask too many questions about where they're from or why their clothes are so strange. The front room is empty of customers except for her, although there's the hum of a radiator and the backwards neon Open sign is still visible in the window; just above it she can make out the letters, Café 52.
Mokona is here, and the little critter looks up at her worriedly. "Sakura?" it chirps, and she can hear the concern in its voice. "Are you awake now? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Moko-chan," she tells it with a confidence she doesn't really feel, a confidence that soon wavers. "Wh… where are the others? Where are Syaoran and Kurogane-san and Fai?"
"Mokona isn't sure," it says, ears drooping in unhappy embarrassment. "We should have all come out together, but something interfered. We all went to different places… but they can't have gone too far."
"What about… a feather?" she asks, trying to cover her disappointment. "Is there a feather in this world?"
"Yes. Mokona can definitely sense it," the little creature says in a determined whisper. "But… Mokona can't say exactly where."
She bites her lip in worry. "Is it far away?" she asks. If the feather is in some other place, they have to go try to find it… but if they leave the area where they arrived, then the others might not be able to find them…
Mokona shakes its head. "No, it's close by," it says. "But it's very hard to feel - Mokona can't get a clear reading on it. It's almost like it's…" A hesitation.
"Like it's what?" she prompts after a moment.
"Like it's buried," Mokona whispers.
She steps out the front door of the café into the street, heavy with swirling fog, and tries to get her bearings; over the tops of the sharp black buildings, she can see the tall, pointed silhouette of a bell tower. At least there are people in the street, busily walking to and fro and stopping to chat with each other, or bending over the wares of one of the street stalls.
Shyly, she approaches one of the townspeople, reaching out her hand to pluck at his sleeve. "Um… excuse me, sir," she asks hesitantly. "Do you know where I can find -"
As he turns around to look at her she breaks off in a gasp, a little cry strangling in her throat. His face - his face is covered in blood, trickling down from his eyes as though he's crying, pouring in a spout from his nose and dribbling from the corners of his mouth. Bright red streaks smudge along his throat and hands, and the collar and front of his shirt are stained red.
He smiles kindly, clots of blood dislodging from the corners of his mouth and dribbling down his chin. "Yes, what is it, little girl?" he asks kindly. "Can I help you with something?"
He doesn't even seem to notice. She stumbles backwards a step. "N-no - I mean, I'm -" she stammers. "I thought you were, were, were s-someone else, I…"
"Well, if you say so." The man shrugs, giving her a funny look through the bleeding tears, but then apparently decided not to concern himself with it, and moved off.
She turns in a frantic circle, looking from face to face; all the walking, talking, laughing, quarreling, bargaining, busy looking people - every one of them - has blood dripping from their faces. "The people… Oh, God… Mokona… what's wrong with the people…?"
"Sakura-chan?" Mokona pipes up, sounding worried and distressed. "What's going on? What's wrong?"
"The people… they…" She's shaking all over, now, and has to cram her fist into her mouth so as not to cry. "They're all bleeding, and they don't even realize it…"
"What are you talking about?" Mokona's voice is shrill and uneasy. "The street is empty. Mokona doesn't see anybody else here."
"But they're all around us! They're… all…" A sob catches in her throat, and she backs towards the sidewalk, half wanting to go back into the café and just hide there until the others come to get her. She clutches Mokona tightly, squeezing her eyes shut, and for just a moment she wishes that none of this was happening…
No. She can't hide from things, not when Fai and Kurogane and Syaoran are probably all doing their best, too. She takes a deep breath, and blinks her eyes open, although she still has to avoid looking directly at anybody's face. "Maybe… maybe this is normal for here," she says, fighting to keep her voice calm and steady. "After all, people are different in every world, right…? And they… they seem like nice people other than that… Right, Mokona?"
Mokona doesn't answer. Mokona doesn't move.
"Moko-chan…?" Suddenly afraid, she shifts the furry creature around and looks down. Mokona is as stiff and unmoving as a doll in her arms, eyes and mouth closed lines against an inanimate face. It's not even warm any more. "Mokona!"
"Hey, little girl, are you lost?" A voice, kind and empathetic, calls to her from the side of the road; an old lady manning a shop stall, half-hidden by the stall awning, is beckoning her over. "Or perhaps you've lost something? Maybe I can help you…"
She's drawn over by the friendly voice in spite of herself; she still can't bring herself to look into the lady's face, although she still sees drops of blood falling rhythmically from her jaw as she talks. "N-no… I'm… I'm looking for my friends," she says helplessly. "We were supposed to meet up near here… but I don't know quite where I am, and I don't know where they are… H-have you seen…" The tears escape into her voice despite her efforts to hold them back, and she shifts Mokona into her left arm to wipe her face.
"Hmmm… Are your friends outsiders, like you?" She nods. "Thought so; we don't get too many outsiders around here, but we can always tell." A chuckle, and she thinks the woman winks at her, the glint of a dark eye reflecting from the awning. "Well, if you go about town, I'm sure you'll run into them sooner or later; outsiders have a way of getting themselves noticed. Cheer up, little girl, you'll all be perfectly fine. Here, have a tissue."
"Y-yes, thank you." She takes the offered handkerchief and wipes her eyes, and starts to feel a little better. This place is so strange, and the people are so strange; but at least they're nice.
"And you'll want to take this, too, in order to fit in a little more," the woman adds, picking up something from under her table and holding it out. "I'm sure you'll need it."
She feels a sudden shock, and stands there blinking, mouth dropped open. "…oh." She feels a warm, wet trickle down her legs; and looking down, sees the haft of the knife sticking out from where the woman drove it into her stomach.
This is a dream. This isn't real.
They can send as many of you after me as they want, and it doesn't matter. I'll kill them all. I'll kill anyone.
I can do anything and it doesn't matter, because this isn't really happening. No one can hurt me here. I'm finally the strongest.
I am invincible.
He wakes up in a schoolroom, familiar, unfamiliar surroundings. He remembers a place like this from his childhood, learning facts and figures in a cool and dusty room while the desert sun baked the clay roof overhead; but though the purpose is clearly the same, with a cracked chalkboard and a row of desks, there are no other similarities. This place is long abandoned, surfaces covered with a patina of rust or dirt, with trash littering the aisles between desks.
He wanders out into the hallway; it's hard to see anything out here, with no windows to filter in daylight. The lights out here were the long glass tube kind, but they're long since dead, only throwing out the occasional weak sputter of illumination. There's no sign of his princess, or any of his friends; he calls for her, calls for them, but gets no answer.
At the end of the hallway by the front door he finds a janitor's closet, left hanging ajar with the mist filtering in from outside. Rows of unidentifiable debris clump in wet, rotting masses on the shelves, oozing brown liquid down the walls. On the shelf nearest to the door there's a metal cylinder that he recognizes from some previous worlds as a flashlight; when he picks it up and tests the switch a few times, it emanates a feeble glow. This will probably be useful.
In the door to the schoolyard he pauses, tries to think which way to go next. The legend by the front gates proclaim this to be Midwich Elementary; but it seems to have been deserted. He needs to find people, and more importantly, he needs to find his princess. He tries the gates, but they're locked; sharp wire is strung along the top of the fence. He can climb it if he has to, but it would be better to find another way out.
He walks between the buildings, trying to find his way back to the road. The layout of the school grounds is confusing, it keeps trying to funnel him back towards the main building. The rusted walls and roof overhead echo back the sounds of his footsteps; they echo back other sounds as well, faint scratches and shuffling noises that he can't pinpoint.
What he thought was a service lane instead turns into a large, thin-roofed building like a warehouse, or a gym. It's pitch black inside. Pausing uncertainly in the doorway, he hears the scratching noises again, louder than ever. Rats, he thinks, and shines the light around the edges of the walls and corners of the buildings, expecting to see the movement of flashing tails as the creatures retreat from his flashlight.
There's no movement; no sign of anything living at all. He hears the scratching noises again, and looks up.
The ceiling where his flashlight shines is teeming with movement, not rats, not rats at all, but white long-limbed bodies the size of dogs. Agitated, they try to shuffle away when the light hits them, but tangle with each other and lose their perches, falling to the ground of the gym with sickening crunching noises. For a moment they flail on the ground, like beetles turned on their backs, before they manage to flip back over and creep rapidly towards him.
Pale, filmy eyes shine in his flashlight beam; stick-thin limbs and long draggled hair, corpse-white. Rows of jagged teeth set in jaws that open wide, too wide. A high screeching noise comes from the wide-open mouth of the one nearest to him, neck stretching impossibly long towards him; "Pleeeeeeeease," it screams, and the next one picks up the refrain. "Please, please, pleeeeeeeeaase."
More of them are dropping from the ceiling. He turns around and runs, runs for his life, his heart thundering in his chest and feet pounding noisily on the concrete. But the monsters can scuttle on four limbs as fast as he can run on two, and he can't find the way out, all these hallways lead to dead-ends and double back on themselves.
They catch up with him, and he scrambles to place his back to a wall, swings the heavy flashlight in his hand at the head of the nearest one; its head snaps back with a horrible liquid crunch. Another one sinks its teeth into his leg, sending a shock through his body and filling his vision with a tinge of red, He shouts; a useless shout, as there's no one to come to his aid, and no one to warn to stay away.
He drops the flashlight and fumbles to draw his sword, Hien; even now it doesn't come naturally to him, not an easy extension of his body like another hand or arm. His teacher always said that he shouldn't draw his sword unless he's prepared to use it, and sure that he will cut only what he means to cut; but right now he's got nothing to lose.
The monsters are all around him now, crouching to leap and clawing at his legs. The one that he hit earlier is creeping back, dragging itself along on one arm and one leg and leaving smears of blood on the filthy concrete. "Please," it whimpers, stretching out its claws towards him imploringly; "please…"
He manages to drive it back, but three more swarm him; they cluster around his legs and clutch at his chest, claws scoring into his skin as they scrabble against his ribs. His heart. They want his heart. He grits his teeth and raises his sword, and ignores the sickening noise of the blade as it cuts through flesh; if he's going to save his princess, he must survive, and in this mad world they've dropped into it is kill or be killed.
When he first hears her voice he thinks he's hallucinating; but he spins around to see her, limping across the field towards him, Mokona in one arm and the other pressed across her stomach. He calls out his gladness to see her; but her expression is one of horror, and she's crying out at him to stop, stop, stop. "Why?" he can hear her sob. "Why are you doing this? Oh please, Syaoran, don't, don't…"
"Princess, stay back!" he calls, as he dodges the swipe of claws in his direction and delivers a powerful kick that sends his attacker reeling away, chest caved in with the force of the blow. "Don't come any closer, the monsters will get you!"
"Monsters?" she cries out, and she grabs onto his sword hand, hampering his blow. "Is that what they look like to you?"
"What?"
For a moment, they struggle; he can't understand why she's doing this, why can't she see the danger they're in? She's got a bloody knife in her right hand, and as they struggle, the edge of the blade nicks across his skin, as if by chance.
The mist of the schoolyard shivers and vanishes, as if blown by a sudden fierce wind; and the crowding, clamoring monsters are gone, too, quickly dissolving into the air. The two of them stop, their hands clasped tight, and stare around the suddenly empty courtyard.
"They were children," Sakura says in a tiny voice, the resistance goes out of her arms; instead of struggling against him, she's shivering close against him now. "Just children. I didn't understand why you would do that…"
"I don't understand," Syaoran echoes, staring around the deserted schoolyard. "They weren't - they were monsters, Princess, they tried to eat me. They bit my leg…" He reaches down to rub it, but although the fabric is stained and bloody, the bite wound is gone from above his knee. He stares at it, shaken, trying to comprehend what he sees with what he knows.
"It's this world," Sakura whispers, and shivers again as she buries her face against his shoulder. "There's something wrong with this place I don't understand. Mokona won't answer me at all, and none of the people are - are right. We have to find Kurogane-san and Fai-san as soon as possible and get out of here."
"What about your feather?" Syaoran objects, but Sakura only shakes her head, her face pale and eyes wide.
"We have to find them first!" she insisted. "They - they could be in trouble, too. They might need our help. We have to find them!"
Syaoran wants to reassure her that Kurogane and Fai are both strong, both capable of protecting themselves. But as he looks up over the rooftops of the town to see the sharp outline of a bell tower against the twisting gray sky, he isn't so sure.
He's very close now.
The darkness has closed on you completely; you can't see him, but you can hear him. Scrape, scrape, the sound of the metal blade dragging over the floor.
There's nowhere left to run.
And when he grabs you, you find that you can't even scream.
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, and tears run down her face and drip off her jaw like blood 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 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."
She still has the handkerchief the strange woman gave her earlier, 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 and 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.
~end
Postscript
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