MAJOR SPOILER ALERT! This story contains spoilers up to chapter 127 of Tsubasa!

AN: I wrote this because...EVERYONE is doing it! This is my first TRC fic but I've been a fan of the genre for a while now. I hope this chapter pleases, since I won't be updating it anytime soon. It's more of an experimental jump into the feel of TRC. Please enjoy!

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"Eternal Morning"

by flying metal child

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Forever and a day. He had lost all concept of time; he felt as if he had lived forever and died in the span of a second. If being on fire was the worst pain imaginable, then this was it a thousand times over. It, that pain, was in his veins, the finest capillaries, gushing and sloshing around in his heart and eating away the cardiac muscles like acid. A deep hunger swelled up inside him then, in his empty heart, and put in his throat a dryness he had never imagined.

Fai did not know what was happening but he knew that a thirst like this would be impossible to quench.

He had no blood and a ruined heart.

And he badly wanted to quiet the appetite that sprang in his gut when he suddenly woke up in another world.

Confusion set in first and the hunger was pushed aside for only a blissful moment. Fai put his fingers to his face to test the skin. He was alive and he could feel. He felt the patch that covered his left eye. Yes, he remembered that clearly, when the clone of Syaoran tore out his eye and ate it whole. Nerves, retina, cornea, lens and iris. So blue and now fixed in the orbit of the clone. Fai knew it had happened but he tested the truth of it by sticking a single finger under the patch to feel the hollow dip of his socket.

Not that he was particularly vain anyway. The only comforts to Fai's vanity were the intact eyelids and lashes soft as feathers.

He pulled his hand down to his lips when a delicious scent entered him. He salivated madly; the fluid washed down his throat and reawakened the pangs of hunger more strongly. What was that scent on his fingers? Strong, hot, sweet and dense like iron. Blood. He remembered. It was blood drawn from Kurogane's arms as he was caught in waves and waves of painful physical change. His fingers had dug into his friend's flesh unforgivingly, but at the time, the pain had been so great that Kurogane had acted as an anchor to consciousness as his muscles and tissues tore inside from a ripping and eating away of his heart to make him reborn mutated and purified.

He was a vampire doomed to bloody sustenance.

He was so weak now; he could barely move. His vision swam and he couldn't tell if it was night or day. The place where he lay was soft, but he didn't know if it was a bed or the lap of a comforting friend. His throat, so dry, made it impossible to speak. He wasn't sure if he would call out for help anyway. Luck willing, he would melt from the burning hunger and die in silence before anyone noticed.

No, someone was there...watching and waiting. A certain person was always watching him.

Fai knew Kurogane was nearby, either in earshot or looking at him pathetically from a dark corner. He chuckled inside his head. Fai imagined Kurogane keeping Syaoran (and Sakura) away with Souhi so he could be alone with him, the newborn vampire. Fai focused his vision and managed to make out a high stone ceiling. He turned his head a bit and saw that the whole room was stone and that the bed he lay in had white sheets and was placed strategically under an open window.

It looked like morning. The sunlight was pale, the air cool and damp. Why they put him under a window open to the elements was beyond Fai. Maybe vampires didn't get sick. He was only sick now because he was so, so hungry…

Fai roused himself. He had to get up, seek out food. He had to eat. Had to eat now. Eat or die or burn alive in these sheets. Oh, Sakura would find him dead! No…need to feed…find Kuro—

No.

He let his only eye close. It wasn't worth it. The world was too heavy with hunger for his blood. He couldn't do it, would not do it.

But then he smelled him before he heard the deep question, "Are you awake now?" Kurogane's voice drifted through the room along with the heavy scent of his blood. It sent a feverish shiver through Fai's body and ignited his energy enough to open his eye to see the man hovering over him. Fai wanted to speak but all that came from his effort was a light, weary moan. He wanted to say, "Go away Kuro-tan. Leave me before I do something I'll regret," but Kurogane was stuck to the spot.

"You're hungry," he said. "I see it." Kurogane sat on the bed. Fai was salivating. Was Kurogane going to make him feed? It seemed so. He was already pulling back the sleeve to the black, monkish robe he wore.

What little he remembered from the ruined place called Tokyo was forgotten as the smell of Kurogane's blood came closer and closer to his face. The wrist was pressed to his lips. Fai only had to inhale to savor the sweet skin, so hot and soft, easy to break with teeth that instinctively curled around and inside a small but deep vein. Before Fai knew what he was doing, it was too late.

Kurogane's blood was drowning him from the inside. When the first drop hit his tongue, the fire rolled inside him and was intensified before it calmed. It shocked his body, yet Fai drank and drank until it felt like his mouth was gushing over with red hot poison.

Perhaps he had had enough to be satiated...for now.

Kurogane wrenched his arm from Fai. The puncture wounds stung terribly as he flexed the wrist to knock out the pain; the damn little teeth were sharp. The skin around the wound was pale and cold to the touch. Kurogane mumbled his dissatisfaction but figured feeling would come back to the area. He had worse injuries on the battlefield, much deeper pains, and losses of blood that sent him to his knees.

This little inconvenience was the price he paid for being bait.

He turned his attention back to Fai, who had sunk into the sheets gasping like a fish deprived of air. His pink lips parted with one heavy sigh to finish the elated satisfaction that came with eating after starvation. A single blue eye turned up to meet red. His angel, his savior, his bait and his damnation. Fai relished and despised the aftertaste of Kurogane's blood on his tongue. He sat up in the bed with new strength and faced his friend with a fixed stare Kurogane could not avoid. The ice-blue iris bore into him accusingly, yet Fai did not speak. He let his gaze drop wearily as he turned his head away and said in a low, flat voice, "Leave me for a bit, Kuro-sama."

Kurogane started to reach for Fai, to touch him and shake him awake from the dejected stupor the blood-drinking had caused, but a soft knock at the door pulled him away. Kurogane turned back to Fai for a moment and was disturbed that the man was so damn angry for being alive. He shook off the thought and cracked open the door.

Syaoran greeted him. "Is Fai well today?" he asked in a whisper. He tried to peek through the door, but Kurogane blocked him by shutting the door.

"Well enough. He fed today." Syaoran frowned. "He would have given in anyway," Kurogane continued. "It's been almost a week. He was hungry."

"Sakura-hime wishes to see Fai if he is up to it." Kurogane puffed his chest in annoyance. Didn't anyone ever listen? He had said specifically that Fai would be ready when he said he was ready…and he hadn't said so yet. Fai was too unstable to leave unattended with a princess and a boy who might as well be a stranger.

Syaoran took the hint and took his leave. "Please tell Fai that we wish him well." Kurogane watched the boy disappear down the long, poorly lit hall. He remained in front of the door for lack of a better place to go. This world was too calm and it wracked his nerves after being in a place like Tokyo. Jumpy wasn't the right word, more like anxious for movement and sound. Perhaps the rest of the world wouldn't be so dull once Fai was well enough to travel; then they could follow Mokona's magical "nose" to get Sakura's feather. Though faint, Mokona did sense it somewhere. Kurogane almost let Syaoran go with Mokona to retrieve it, but after Sakura's incessant demand to go with them, Kurogane decided it was best not to break up the group as unknown dangers undoubtedly awaited them.

The door behind Kurogane suddenly opened with a soft creak. Fai looked around Kurogane's body towards the hall and looked up at his guard very briefly; he feigned indifference to his presence, almost as if the brooding ninja were invisible.

"Where are you going?" Kurogane asked. Fai took a step. The thin, knee-length linen tunic he wore made him feel naked outside the confine of the room. "I want to take a bath, if possible," Fai answered. Kurogane nodded and led him to an adjacent room where a stone basin served as the bath. A large copper kettle hung over a fire where water was already on the boil. Fai noticed an old woman in a strange black and white garment tending the bath water. She turned with a smile to the visitors and left the room without a word. Kurogane gave her a barely perceptible nod of respect as she fastened the door behind her.

"This is a religious house. The women take vows of silence so they can serve their god." Kurogane began adding more water to the kettle. It wasn't nearly enough for a bath.

"How long have we been here?"

"A week." Fai gasped softly at the time.

"What about Sakura…and Syaoran? Mokona?"

"All fine." Fai nodded and walked to a milky window. So old, yet still serving its purpose, it offered a view of the ocean from a great, great height. The sand and water seemed to go on forever under the dim morning light.

"And I've been asleep the whole time? I haven't…before today?" Fai didn't need to finish the thought. He had not eaten for an entire week. Ha, there was much self-control in one's unconsciousness.

"Ah." Kurogane answered as he pulled the kettle off the fire. "Take off your clothes." Fai whipped his head around and spat a little "No." He hadn't meant it but his emotions were shivering under the surface of his control.

Kurogane growled. "You want a bath don't you?"

"I can bathe myself." Fai crossed his arms self-consciously. The ninja nodded and said only, "I can't leave you alone."

Fai started to say something, Kurogane noted, but those words melted into, "Alright. Then turn around." Kurogane obeyed and listened to the subtle sounds of movement behind him. Soft, naked feet stepping on stone. The gentle rustle of fabric as it slipped against flesh and then, sounding so heavy, a garment fallen to the floor.

Kurogane heard water trickling and splashing. Languid movements of Fai's hands on himself as he cleansed the surface. Was he trying to clean something more? Did he feel dirty for drinking his blood? Was he so bitter that he would hate him forever?

His back turned to Fai felt like being alone.

"Oi, Kuro-rin?" Fai's voice suddenly gained emotion. Was it because no one was looking? Was there a stupid fake smile plastered on his pretty face?

"What?"

"How do you know they take vows of silence for their god if they don't want to speak?"

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It was a simple question, yet it lightened the heavy mood between them. Kurogane wondered if the dumb questions Fai often asked acted like a tension breaker or something to distract him from stress. After the bath, Fai dressed and followed Kurogane to a small office and introduced him to an "abbess" as she called herself. This religious woman was old and she spoke only because she had been silent for most of her adult life. Now in old age, she was the voice of the community. Literally a mother, for that was her name, Mother.

She had said profoundly, "In God's eyes, we are only daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. Nothing more."

Fai found the words to be comforting and he took them to heart. No matter who their god was, it was true that all beings were connected by irreversible hitsuzen. When he came to Sakura and Syaoran for the first time since Tokyo, Fai truly saw them as his children while he and Kurogane were their parents. He felt a sinking feeling in his gut, it tasted like guilt, when Sakura smiled prettily with tiny tears in her eyes as she raced forward and hugged Fai's waist as if he'd been gone for years.

More like died and resurrected from death. Syaoran and Fai passed an understanding look between them which conveyed all the hurt was forgiven. Unfortunately for Fai, the guilt he felt was mostly for Sakura. He didn't mean to be so selfish when he wanted to die in Tokyo. Death was simply a passing from the world and it didn't really mean much to Fai; rather, it would have been a relief from all the burdens he carried. Hitsuzen, as it worked, meant that even Death factored into the workings of the universe. Death was significant to Fai because it wanted to follow him despite all his running.

And the irony was that he would welcome it without hesitation. Did no one understand that the danger the Syaoran-clone possessed warranted his own demise? Fai wanted to confront Kurogane about this fact but he was loathe to do so. Confrontation was not his forté.

Sakura's smile pushed all these thoughts aside. She released her death-grip of a hug.

"Oh, Fai-san! I'm so happy you're well again. I thought maybe...for a while..." Sakura's voice faltered and she searched Syaoran's face for the rest of her sentence, but he remained expressionless which forced the poor girl to voice her concerns and fears. "I thought," she continued, "that you might not live because of wha--I mean--who you are."

Fai smiled and said, "I'm fine now Sakura-hime. What I am," he said softly, "is nothing to be feared." Sakura took his word and wiped away a tear.

She truly cared about her friend, but Fai wondered if that would change in the days ahead.

Because if Fai got his way, he wouldn't have many days left anyway.

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tbc.