Title: Penglai

Pairing: KuroFai

Warnings: violence, gore, shounen-ai, some sexual themes

Words: 20 500 – it's split into two parts to make uploading easier, but it's supposed to be read as a whole.

Summary: Kurogane the Twelfth Century Bamboo Cutter finds a Shiny Stranger with Magical Powers!! Or something.

Notes: OK, so this one is for chaotic_cupcake, 'cause she screwed my head around with comparative mythology the other day and it's ALL HER FAULT. It's based loosely (VERY loosely) on the Japanese myths concerning celestial maidens, including the tenth-century narrative known as the Tale of the Old Bamboo Cutter. I changed several things around in my adaptation, obviously.

Also, this is supposed to be set during the early-to-mid Heian Era – think twelfth century or so. The title, "Penglai", is a mystical island mentioned in the Old Bamboo Cutter, and I basically only chose it because it was a cool-sounding name for an Otherworldly kind of place. Also also, while this pretends to be vaguely historically plausible, I did take considerable liberties with naming and etiquette – for instance, 'Syaoran' obviously isn't a Japanese name, but I couldn't think of a way of giving him a different name and still making it clear that he was, in fact, Syaoran. So, just…suspension of disbelief, yes?

One night, there was a rain of stars. The people on earth looked up and marvelled, or ran away and prayed, or slept on in oblivion. The next day, the world carried on as it always had – at least down below. Up above, things were in a very sorry state of affairs indeed. Something rather unpleasant had happened, and all the people in the City of the Moon were feeling nothing short of miserable. It was no one's fault, and once it had begun no one could have stopped it; but whether or not it could have been avoided entirely was a question that even the wisest of the gods will never be able to answer. Love has always made a point of being incomprehensible.

It was autumn, and the flooded streams rushed loud and white beneath the willows. Alone in the early morning, a man trudged along the muddy bank where pinks and lilies of the valley grew, his breath billowing out in front of him in the cold. He was tall and young, and very poor, for he was only a simple bamboo-cutter, and had no other income at all. He lived on the fringes of the forest with only his small brother to look after, and kept the sword that their father had carried stowed safe in the rafters of their hovel. He owned very little apart froma blazing temper and a great, proud heart (neither of which currencies has ever made a man rich, materially or otherwise). His name was Kurogane.

His path soon brought him to the source of the stream, where a cataract sprung from an aperture high above and foamed down over a tumble of mossy boulders before spilling into a wide, shallow pool. On the opposite bank there grew a tall thicket of bamboo. Catching sight of this,he shouldered his kama and waded out into the pond. The water was very cold, and deep enough to soak through his trousers and down inside his boots. He cursed, but bit back his shivers, thinking only of the grain that this harvest would fetch in the small prefecture nearby, and if it would be enough to feed his brother, and whether or not there would be any left over that they might put aside for the long winter.

But when he was halfway across the pool, he stopped dead in his tracks: for the water that foamed about his feet was dark, and the grasses that grew on the bank were stained red with blood.

He hesitated only a moment, and then moved forward carefully. He was fairly certain that whatever it was must already be dead, or else it would certainly have smelt him coming, but he had often seen men gutted by boars that had seemed completely incapacitated, and so he was cautious. Pushing the tall shoots aside with great precision, he raised his kama just in case, and peered in.

The next second, he began to hack away at the bamboo as quickly as he could, swearing. He caught the stalks as they fell, laying them to one side on the bank and making sure that they would not wash away, for whatever else followed, he would need them later, probably to negotiate the hire of a surgeon. He had not seen so much blood since his mother had been killed. With something of a passage cleared, he shoved his way through the thicket, ignoring the slap of leaves against his face, and knelt down next to the wounded man.

He was thin, skeletally so, and his naked skin shone so white in the gloom that Kurogane was almost afraid for a moment that he might be a spirit, some monstrous, beautiful creature made all of mist and water. But the thick mess of gore all down his face and chest was vividly human, as was the sweat slicking down his colourless hair. Kurogane laid one hand on the man's shoulder, and felt him cold and shivering. The man flinched and cried out a little, his single remaining eye flickering, but did not wake. The blood on his face was cracked black at the edges and mixed with hardening mud: he must have been out here for some time already.

Kurogane was close and suspicious by nature, but beneath that he was a good, generous man, brave and direct, and above all disdainful of anyone who did not do his duty. This lying here before him was duty. Tangled in the slime at the base of the bamboo nearby lay an old robe that he assumed was the man's, and although it was filthy, it was reasonably dry, and seemed very warm. Kurogane raised the man up carefully and wrapped the cloak about his shoulders, taking care not to injure him further. Then he lifted him up into his arms and stood.

'Wait,' whispered the man.

Kurogane waited.

But the man said no more. He coughed wet and red onto Kurogane's shoulder, and then slumped. Kurogane shook him, just a little, to make sure that he was not dead, for his breathing was worrying light, and his strange smooth skin, pale as a noble lady's, was colder than winter; but he shifted in Kurogane's arms once more with a small cry of pain. Kurogane, satisfied, bent his face down low over the man's to keep any stray leaves from brushing the wound, and carried him out from the darkness and into the world.

His hair shone golden in the light of the rising sun.

The wound was cleaned and cauterised in exchange for one of their mother's lacquered hairpins, which Kurogane had been hoarding diligently against emergency for over seven years. They must have been more valuable than he had thought, because he was also supplied with a salve that would keep out infection, along with a good deal of advice.

'The boy should do it,' the surgeon had said: 'He's got smaller hands.'

So Syaoran was shown how to clean the wound without doing further damage, and how to grind up the little block of medicine and mix it with clean water, and how to prepare a tea that would help with pain. He frowned anxiously and nodded like a simpleton, but then recited back his instructions perfectly with barely any hesitation. The surgeon, a mean, jealous man, looked rather displeased. Kurogane sat crouched in the corner with one hand on the stranger's pulse and watched Syaoran with a strange mixture of pride and regret.

Then the surgeon had said, 'So, tell me, friend, why are you helping this foreigner? Is he rich?'

Kurogane, not bothering to move from his spot in the corner, had said, 'Thank you for your time. Now get out of my house.'

It was more than three days before the stranger woke up. When he did, he smiled.

'You should say where you are,' Kurogane said, cracking open one eye.

The stranger sat up anyway. His thin arms shook slightly as he pushed himself up, and his breath came in short, painful gasps. He felt his face, the tendons in his neck cording as he touched the thick layer of bandages over his eye; then he stretched, carefully, deliberately, and looked around himself. It was still raining outside, but the worst of the storm had passed, and a little moonlight was beginning to filter through the clouds. It flooded the little room with silver, throwing into sharp relief the bare floor, the old cedar-wood chest, the boy curled up asleep in one corner, the stern man sitting straight-backed in another.

'Oh!' said the stranger, and smiled, and bowed his head. 'Hello, there! You are my esteemed host, I presume?'

'Lie down,' was Kurogane's answer.

The stranger's smile only widened. 'I can't just laze around all the time,' he said. 'I feel like stretching my legs a bit. I wonder, could you tell me where I am?'

'You're at the edge of the forest. There's a village nearby, but you're not going anywhere now.'

The man chuckled delightedly. 'You're a bossy one, aren't you?' he said. 'Ah – could you tell me how I came to be here?'

'I found you. Up in the foothills, by the river. Three, four days ago now.'

'Hmm. I'm afraid I don't remember that.' The stranger stretched again, running a hand through his lank pale hair. He was trying very hard to appear nonchalant, but Kurogane caught the way his hands trembled and his breath hitched. Nearly the whole right side of his face had been torn away, and the long, deep gashes down his chest suggested that he had been mauled by some kind of beast: it would take a long time before he healed fully.

'Look, you want to get yourself killed, that's none of my business,' Kurogane said, getting to his feet. 'But just know that you'll have wasted my time. Lie back down and don't move. I'm going to get you some water.'

The man looked up at him with an expression of mild surprise, and then grinned again. 'Yes, sir!' he said, and did as he was told. 'You know, for someone who saved my life, you're pretty scary.'

'Don't talk, either,' said Kurogane, and strode outside.

He filled a wide bamboo bowl with rainwater from the barrel outside, one arm held over his head to keep off the lessening drizzle. It was late, but not yet close to day, and the moon shone bright above him. Ducking back into the shelter of the little house, he stood a moment and looked down at the stranger in the moonlight. He lay bare to the waist, seeming not to feel the cold, and smiled like an idiot when his single remaining eye met Kurogane's; but Kurogane saw only how thin he was, and how shrunken and brittle he looked.

He knelt down at the man's side and pulled the blankets up to his chin, ignoring him when he tried to protest. He slipped one hand under his head and raised him up a little so that he could sip at the water little by little, saying, 'Look, having a dead body lying around is only going to annoy me.'

'You're a very caring man,' the stranger whispered, licking his lips. 'If – if you don't mind, I'm – hungry.'

'You haven't eaten for a while,' Kurogane cautioned him. 'Don't overdo it. Drink this first.'

The stranger did as he was told. When the water was finished, he gave a small, tired sigh and turned his face away, the bandages scratching Kurogane's palm. 'I would very much like to know your name,' he said, very softly – so softly, in fact, that Kurogane only knew he was speaking by the motion of lips against his wrist, and had to bend down close to catch the words. 'I've never even heard it before.'

'It's Kurogane. Stop talking.'

The stranger pulled a face. 'What an awful name,' he whispered, and gave a small breath of laughter.

Kurogane's skin prickled. 'Nothing wrong with it,' he snapped. 'I thought I told you to stop talking.'

'It's awful,' the stranger insisted. He brought up one hand and laid his fingers on Kurogane's wrist, but they had barely more weight than his words. 'My name is Fai.' He yawned. 'Nice and short, see?'

'You're raving.'

But the man called Fai did not hear him. His fingers relaxed and slid away from Kurogane's hand; his smile disappeared. His face in sleep looked much older, for though it was unlined and smooth as a child's, the cheeks were sunken, and something about the set of the mouth suggested that it had frowned a great deal over the years. Kurogane stayed by his side a long while, just in case he stopped breathing. Eventually, he lowered Fai's head back down onto the floor and padded back to his usual sleeping place in the corner. He drew his blanket around his shoulders and leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes and slept.

He dreamed of moonlight.

He set out early the next morning. Syaoran was just getting up as he left, and so he said to him, 'That one will probably wake up today,' and then, 'Use the sword if he's any trouble.'

'I don't think that will be necessary,' Syaoran said, yawning.

'He's annoying,' Kurogane explained shortly. In a rare moment of something approaching tenderness, he added, 'Hey – look after yourself.'

Syaoran's sleepy face lit up, and he bowed. 'Thank you, onii-san,' he said. 'Please work hard today.'

Kurogane very nearly smiled. He laid his hand on Syaoran's head for a brief instant, and then left.

The bamboo had grown well in the rainy weather, and he was able to harvest a respectable number of good, tall canes. He took them into the prefecture nearby, where one of the servants of the samurai lord who held sway over the area accepted them in exchange for a few small jade trinkets. These he traded in the village for soba and a small portion of rice before setting off for home. The walk was long, and he was tired, so he did not reach the edge of the forest before late afternoon. The sun shone golden on the dripping gingko leaves, and turned the dark wet thatch of the hovel to flame. Kurogane stopped to check that the rain had not damaged the vegetable patch, grabbed one of the goats just before it managed to chew its way out of its pen, and went inside.

The screens had been pushed back so that the warmth from the fire could spread all through the house, and the effect was strangely cheering, even homelike. Kurogane had never thought he would associate this place with home. 'Welcome back, oniisan,' Syaoran said from the fireplace; and, 'Welcome back, my friend!' sang Fai, who was sitting propped up against the wall and sipping at a bowl of what was probably vegetable soup.

'You alright?' Kurogane said to Syaoran, eyeing Fai a little suspiciously.

Syaoran nodded, and got up to take the food from Kurogane. 'Thank you very much, onii-san,' he said. 'I caught some fish in the river today, so we'll have those too. I'll get started on the meal right away.'

'Your brother is very industrious,' Fai said. He was wrapped up in some old clothes of Kurogane's, which, in addition to being far too big, were a little too ostentatiously well-made; they belonged to another time. 'He has looked after me wonderfully.'

Kurogane made a non-committal noise, and watched as Syaoran, who had pretended not to hear the compliment, blushed and busied himself with the pots. A boy so clever and hardworking shouldn't have to live in a hovel doing women's chores all day. But he was dutiful to the last, and never complained or gave any sign that he might be discontented with his life. Kurogane shook the bitterness away: nothing ever came of regret. He sat down on the floor and rubbed his work-weary feet, and clicked his neck.

Fai put down his bowl and waited quietly until Kurogane seemed comfortable, and then said, 'I don't think I have thanked you yet.'

Kurogane fairly bristled. 'Don't bother me,' he said. 'I'm tired.'

Fai looked a little taken aback, but the expression soon gave way to his customary smile. 'I'll just have to keep very quiet, then,' he said. 'Don't worry! I'll be so quiet you won't even know I'm here. You'll be amazed at how quiet I can be.'

'You'll be quiet when you're dead,' Kurogane muttered.

Fai laughed. 'My, but you're grumpy.'

Kurogane glowered at him, and, under the pretext of doing so, gave him a cursory once-over. His face already looked a little rounder, even under the heavy bandages, and he was no longer shivering as badly as he had the night before. His fingers were still painfully thin and shone white as bone where he gripped the soup-bowl, but the colour of hair in the heavy amber light of sunset was like nothing Kurogane had ever seen, nothing that could be real. He thought fox and then ghost and then spider; he looked again at the pale sharp-knuckled hands, and remembered the blood, and thought man. He frowned.

'If I'm grumpy, it's because of you,' he announced, loudly, to cover his confusion. He heard Syaoran cover a snicker, and added, 'And because I'm hungry.'

'Oh - sorry for the wait!' Syaoran called, immediately, and scampered outside to fetch some more water.

There followed a little silence in which only the crackling of the fire could be heard. Kurogane scratched his head and stretched some more, and then lapsed into a stillness from which he watched Fai intently, if furtively. Even wounded, his movements were both graceful and powerful, and he seemed accustomed to pain, yet his fragility was undeniable. He seemed to be fashioned entirely of air and light, so fleeting a construct that he might dissolve away at any moment. He was no more substantial than a shape glimpsed once in a swirling cloud of dust in the sunlight.

But when he reached out suddenly and laid his hand on Kurogane's arm, smiling, his touch was solid and warm and real.

'My friend,' he said, 'I don't want to be a burden. You and your brother have been very kind to me, and if you are going to continue this kindness, I must provide you with some sort of recompense.'

Kurogane shook his head. 'I told you not to bother me.'

'I can pay you. Please let me.'

'Back then – you had nothing with you.'

'I know,' Fai said: 'I left everything behind, and I don't regret it at all. But I can still help you – pay you, I mean. I can pay you.'

'We don't need help,' Kurogane said, very clearly and stiffly, forgetting the strangeness of the first half of the statement in his resentment at the second. 'I'm not interested.'

Fai looked genuinely hurt, and his gaze dropped. The next moment, however, he was smiling as brightly as ever, and saying, teasingly, 'You're grumpy and stubborn and your name is too long. We're really going to have to work on that, you know.'

Kurogane was about to snap, but Syaoran came back before he could. Fai removed his hand instantly, as though he had been caught doing something wrong, and struck up a cheerful conversation with Syaoran about the care of goats. Kurogane lay down on the tatami with his arms hooked underneath his head and closed his eyes. When he did not understand something, he grew irritable; and at the moment, he was very irritable indeed.

In the end, they shared a pleasant meal. Syaoran had been starved of company for a while, and enjoyed talking with Fai, who seemed to have travelled in foreign parts a great deal: he shared stories of the mainland, and told miraculous tales of dragons and oni and foxes. Kurogane turned up his nose at them a little, mostly because they were embarrassingly similar to all the old fairytales he had been cataloguing mentally all evening. The sun left the house and twilight took its place. Syaoran began to yawn, as did Fai. Kurogane picked up their bowls and said, 'Both of you, go to sleep.'

'Ah! What about a drink?' Fai asked. 'Do you have any sake?'

'You are not drinking under my roof,' Kurogane said, very firmly. 'Don't argue.'

'So that means you do have some!'

'If I do, you're not getting any.'

'You're hoarding it all for yourself, aren't you?' Fai accused him. 'You're grumpy and stubborn and your name is too long and you're selfish. That's very disappointing behaviour, you know.'

'I told you to shut up!' Kurogane barked, glancing at Syaoran to make sure he wasn't laughing. The last thing he needed was for his brother to stop respecting him. 'You're injured. Start acting like it.'

It was only after Syaoran had doused the fire and curled up in his corner, and Kurogane had shifted the screens back into position and taken up his customary position as guardian in his corner, that Fai whispered, 'Kuro – Kurogane?'

'I'm asleep,' Kurogane said, without opening his eyes.

'Not even someone as scary as you can sleep sitting up.'

'I can.'

'Well, then I'll just have to talk to you while you're sleeping! You don't mind, do you? You'll hear me in your dreams! Won't that be fun?'

Kurogane groaned and let his head slump back against the wall. 'What do you want?' he asked, and braced himself for lunacy.

'Where you found me, back then – do you remember where it was? Could you get there again, if you needed to?'

'Probably.' He shrugged, keeping his eyes resolutely closed. 'What, did you lose something there?'

'No, just – well, sort of. If you get a chance, go back there tomorrow, would you? Just to have a look around.'

'One hassle after another. You really are annoying, you know that? Go get it yourself.'

Fai laughed. 'You're the big bad oni who kidnapped me and won't let me out of your sight.'

'Keep talking like that and I'll kill you.'

'These clothes are beautiful,' Fai said to Syaoran after Kurogane had said off the next morning. 'Why don't you wear them more often?' Catching sight of the boy's face, he added, hastily, 'Ah, forgive me – I haven't been down here very long, and I still don't really understand your customs – I'm sorry if I offended you –'

'No, no, it's not that,' said Syaoran: 'They're just – from a long time ago, that's all. We keep them in case there's a bad winter, in case we need to sell them for something.'

After a long pause, Fai said, delicately, 'You and that big bad brother of yours – have you lived here long?'

Syaoran said, 'A while,' and then, 'He doesn't like talking about it. I don't mind.'

Fai looked again at the boy's brave, cheerful face, and changed the subject.

Kurogane found the place again easily enough. The bamboo had grown back just as thick as it had been, and there was no trace at all of what had happened there, but he knew it all the same. He scoured the area thoroughly, but could find nothing. It was not until he had all but given it up as a bad job that he happened to look down and see, nestled among the flat shifting stones, something that shone.

That night, just like the night before, he spoke to Fai after dark, when Syaoran was sleeping. This time, however, the conversation was different.

Kurogane said, 'I found what you lost.'

And Fai said, 'Did you, now? How clever of you! I hope you'll accept it as payment for being so kind to me.'

Then there was a long silence. Kurogane could imagine Fai smiling. He scowled at the image. 'You lost all that, huh?' he said, eventually. 'That's strange, considering you had nothing with you at all.'

'I had nothing because I lost everything,' Fai explained, reasonably. 'Silly.'

Kurogane had to resist thumping his fist against the floor. 'That's not what I mean,' he snapped. 'You were naked, you were nearly dead. You couldn't –' He subsided. He knew what he meant, and Fai knew what he meant. 'Forget it, then.'

'If you go back, you'll probably find a lot more,' Fai said.

True anger flared up in Kurogane for the first time then. He breathed in slowly through his nose and pursed his lips, feeling himself start to shake. 'I'm not like that,' he said, getting to his feet. 'Don't think you can buy my favour.'

'That wasn't my –'

'Keep your gold to yourself,' Kurogane said, and left the room.

Alone in the moonlight, Fai bent over double and bit his fist until it bled.

Winter came on fast. It was fairly mild, and did not rain overmuch, though often at night there came a dry cold that was enough to slice the lungs like a sword. The three men who lived in the small house at the edge of the forest had just enough to keep themselves adequately fed, for while they were never quite free of hunger, they never quite starved, either. Fai grew stronger with each passing day, and was soon able to walk. Kurogane judged that the bandages could come off after a few weeks, and Fai, who seemed to know a good deal about medicine, agreed. He seemed slightly self-conscious for the first day or so after that, having inspected his face solemnly and almost dutifully in a bowl of water, as though it were some kind of ritual. The wound stood out dark and red against Fai's fair foreign skin, and what remained of the eyelid was unpleasantly mangled, doing little to hide the deep puckered pit where the eyeball itself had been. He took to tying a thin piece of cloth over it, though it had not upset his companions at all: Syaoran loved Fai far too much to be distracted by so trivial a detail as a scar, and Kurogane simply did not care.

'You're not travelling in this weather,' he said, when Fai first showed signs of wanting to leave. 'And you're still weak.'

'I'm just fine,' Fai protested, though not with very much vigour. 'I've impinged on your hospitality far too much already.'

'If you collapse and die halfway between here and Kyoto, you'll have wasted my time looking after you,' Kurogane pointed out.

'I won't collapse,' Fai said, and then, 'What's a Kyoto?'

Kurogane looked out at the falling rain, and remembered silver-pale skin in the moonlight; he looked back at Fai, holding his gaze, and saw only light. 'Don't pretend,' he said, roughly. 'You can stay here as long as you need to. Just don't pretend that you're going to leave if you aren't, because I know that you don't want to.'

Fai swallowed audibly. 'Maybe I'm just trying to be well-mannered,' he suggested, giving a huge, teasing smile. 'Manners are another thing you haven't learnt, hmm? You're always so blunt.'

'One of us has to be,' Kurogane said.

Soon he was well enough to help with simple chores around the house, like stopping up holes in the walls with clay so that the wind and the wet would not get in, and gathering in the last of the onion crop, and venturing into the forest fringes to find firewood. Several times he went hunting with Kurogane, and proved himself to be, if not a master of the bow, then an extremely gifted amateur.

'Fai-sama can do anything,' Syaoran said, confidently.

'You're not bad yourself when it comes to the bow,' Fai said, patting the boy's shoulder. 'I could teach you, if you like.'

'You know nothing about teaching,' Kurogane snorted. 'You've never studied the bow. It just comes naturally to you, doesn't it?'

Fai seemed to take this as a compliment, and blushed, looking pleased. 'Right, as usual!' he said, beaming. 'But that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing.'

His presence in the house was strange to Kurogane. Syaoran took to him immediately, seeing in him the parent he had sorely missed all these years; but Kurogane was more wary. It was not the fact that he was a foreigner, or even that he was a foreigner who mysteriously knew which streams could provide gold: it was smaller, stranger things that Kurogane was fairly certain only he noticed. Fai's command of the local dialect was flawless and entirely unaccented, and yet he knew almost nothing of local custom. When he walked, his footsteps made no sound. When he stood in the light, his hair shone like a flame. Birds came to his hand when he went into the forest, and sang to him from the hollow of his palms; and when he sang back to them, it was with the voice of the wind.

Kurogane woke early one morning as though called by name, and looked around himself, startled, hand reaching for the small knife at his side. He glanced down at where Fai usually lay, but the room was empty, and the door to the garden pushed back. Feeling suddenly certain that something terrible had happened, he sprang up and strode outside, his breath curling cold in the light of the stars. A thick mist lay over the clearing, so that the trees of the forest had all blurred into dark spindly folds, and frost lay on the grass, glittering. He looked around himself irritably, pushing sleep from his eyes, and was about to turn back inside, when he saw through the gloom a thin white figure standing motionless beneath the trees.

He did not hesitate, but strode towards it. He would have no spirits bringing bad luck to his land. He drew breath to start shouting prayers at it, and then swallowed it again, and stopped. It was Fai. He stood alone in the darkness and naked, one hand laid to his breast, the other lifted up palm-flat to the sky as though making an offering, or perhaps as though expecting a boon; his left eye was open, his right closed by the scar.

His feet were not touching the ground.

'What the hell are you doing?' Kurogane demanded.

Fai jerked violently and spun around, striking out blindly with one hand and catching Kurogane by the throat. His fingers were hard as iron, and as cold. Kurogane swore and grabbed at Fai's arm, trying to thrust him away. Fai blinked, and relaxed his grip, and stepped back.

'You really are far too blunt,' he said, with a laugh. 'You need to learn some tact.'

Kurogane just stared at him, breathing heavily. 'You,' he began, and stopped. He chewed the inside of his lips, and looked away. 'Come back inside,' he said, and, 'It's cold.'

'You know, I've tried so hard, but I cannot seem to feel cold at all,' Fai said. 'Isn't that funny?'

Kurogane touched his elbow. It was solid. It was real. 'You're shivering.'

Fai reached up and gently moved Kurogane's hand away, pressing it between his own and patting it reassuringly. He shook his head, smiled. 'It doesn't bother me.'

Kurogane turned away. The frost burned underfoot. 'Come back inside,' he repeated.

And there were other things.

'Thunder tomorrow,' Fai said, and thunder there was. The two of them stood outside to watch it. The lightning veined the sky and bled out bright; but no rain fell.

'Do you know why it happens?' Fai asked: 'Lightning, I mean?'

And of course Kurogane said no, because he was collecting evidence, and so of course Fai told him any number of ridiculous stories involving dragons and bridges and dropped swords and warring gods. Kurogane listened to him and looked at him and did not know what to think. He saw Fai suddenly as falling light, and himself as the following dark, the mountain-shaker, the sky-breaker; and as though catching the thought, Fai lifted his head and fairly smirked at Kurogane, challenging him, and said, 'Now we're getting rain.'

And they did, the first drops falling barely a second after he had finished speaking. Fai clapped his hands like a child and sprang up, skipping out into the downpour and raising his face to the sky. Lightning struck over the forest, and thunder boomed out like a god's footstep. Fai spun around in the mud, eyes closed, arms outstretched. Kurogane made a sound of disapproval. Fai looked back at him slyly, teasingly, exhilarated as Kurogane had never before seen him. He made a rude face at Kurogane and cackled when Kurogane scowled.

'Stubborn and boring,' he declared. 'This is what happened first. When the world was made how we know it now, it rained first. Sky loved Earth, but the people who lived in between them, mortals and immortals both, pushed them apart so that life could start properly. That's called balance. Sky and Earth aren't supposed to be together. Things wouldn't work if they were. But Sky sends down Rain sometimes to visit Earth, so that she doesn't get lonely. Rain is very kind. She doesn't mind carrying their messages back and forth.'

'You've got a fever, haven't you?' Kurogane said.

Fai reached out and grabbed his hands and pulled him out under the open sky. They stood there in the muddy grass, close enough to share both breath and warmth, but wholly separate from each other nevertheless: Kurogane with his head bowed and his shoulders lifted, Fai with his face flung back to catch the rain. There was a great longing joy in his expression, and suddenly Kurogane was almost jealous of the rain, of the sky, of everything that Fai loved. He felt an urgent impulse to take hold of him and keep him here, to ground him somehow, anchor him lest he slip away.

Their faces were very close together. Fai's skin glistened. Kurogane looked down at him, at the ragged edge of the scar that showed underneath the eyepatch, at his bloodless lips. His heart beat hard, once, and then began to race. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he wasn't sure of himself.

He lifted up one hand, brought it within a bladesbreadth of Fai's face, stopped. Fai's lips parted with a small sound, and a tremor passed through him. His breath hitched: Kurogane felt it. He swallowed. He turned his face away.

Fai had still not opened his eye.

'Are you testing me?' Kurogane asked.

'I'm testing myself,' Fai whispered. 'When I'm afraid I keep pushing myself – I keep making myself more and more afraid, doing worse and worse things. That way, eventually, there will be nothing that can frighten me anymore.'

Kurogane stared at him for a moment, feeling mistrustful all over again. He stepped back then, trying not to make the action seemed rushed, and folded his arms. He looked at the ground while he spoke, not because he was afraid to meet Fai's gaze, but because he was angry, and because he did not understand his own body anymore.

He said: 'Whatever happened to you, back then –' and by that he meant whatever you are '– has nothing to do with me. Why you're here – that isn't important.'

'I know, I know, silly,' Fai said. He was very good. Kurogane only just caught the hoarseness in his voice. 'It'd be annoying if I died, hmm?'

'You don't understand,' Kurogane said. 'Stop being afraid. That's all.'

And it was more than that. It was his hair in the light. It was his dead-eyed smile. It was the hollow beauty of his face and the needless nameless fear that lay beneath it. His touch pierced Kurogane like lightning.

With Fai to leave behind at the house, Syaoran could accompany Kurogane on his expeditions into the foothills. It was tough work for a young boy, and meant a great deal of walking on little food, but it was better by far than sitting alone in the dark all day, and to Syaoran, it was proof that he could help. As soon as the dangers of the spring floods had passed, and the weather had begun to warm up properly, Kurogane dug out another kama from somewhere, and bought Syaoran a new pair of sandals.

Syaoran came home with bleeding hands and feet for the first few days, and collapsed almost immediately after swallowing the meals that Fai prepared. But in the mornings he would be up at first light, ready to work again. Kurogane looked at him and saw a wasted life. He blamed himself for it. He could so easily have been apprenticed in any trade he chose, even after they lost their name, even after they were exiled – in another city far away, where no one knew them, where the boy could start over. But they had had not had the money, and now it was almost too late.

He had not yet told Syaoran about the gold.

'If you could – do something else, something other than this,' Kurogane said one afternoon, abruptly. He let his kama fall to his side and frowned down at the ankle-deep water in which they were working. 'Would you want that?'

'You always told me not to think like that,' Syaoran said, peaceably. 'You told me not to daydream.'

'I didn't tell you to give up,' Kurogane almost snapped. 'We could prentice you. Somewhere. Not Kyoto, somewhere else. Or you could buy a farm, get married, start a proper trade. You're not like me. You're not an exile.'

Syaoran looked nothing short of confused. 'We couldn't,' he said: 'we couldn't ever afford that, not even if we sold everything.' He hacked away at the base of a particularly thick cane for a minute, and caught it as it fell, heaving it onto the growing pile on the bank. He added, 'Onii-san, I'm not unhappy here. I don't mind.'

'You should,' Kurogane said.

The blade flashed in the sunlight as it swung. 'Thank you,' said Syaoran. 'For being concerned.'

'I should be concerned, if you're just going to sit around and waste your life,' Kurogane said.

Syaoran looked up at that, his face distraught, but before he could say anything, he stumbled. Kurogane never managed to work out why what happened next happened at all. Perhaps the movement threw him off balance, or perhaps he trod on a sharp stone and stepped back too quickly, or perhaps today was simply ill-starred; whatever the reason, he slipped and swung the blade at the same time, and teetered, and fell over.

Kurogane clicked his tongue in annoyance and went over to help. Syaoran had sat up and was pulling at something urgently. He didn't look up as Kurogane approached, but tried to edge away, throwing himself to the side. Kurogane said, 'What the hell?' because something was wrong but he didn't know what, and the water was turning red, and the kama seemed to be standing upright as though lodged in the riverbed, but Syaoran was gasping now, yanking at the handle with all his might, and the blade was in his foot, and there was blood everywhere –

Kurogane said, 'Hold still,' and then, 'Move your hands,' and then, 'Hold still!' He gripped the handle with one hand and the back of the blade with the other as close to the tip as he could, and wrenched it backwards with one short, sharp movement. Syaoran shuddered, but did not cry out. Kurogane threw the kama aside and caught the boy by the shoulders, keeping his other hand clenched fast about the wounded foot. It had been hacked nearly in half.

He made a rough bandage from the sling he used to carry the bamboo and set off down the mountain with Syaoran in his arms. In took nearly an hour to get him home, by which time he was white and half-fainting from blood loss, though he kept very quiet, and never cried out. Fai was in the vegetable patch picking caterpillars off the daikon leaves when they arrived; he straightened up and brushed off his muddy hands, smiling to see them. Then his face fell.

'Give him to me,' he said, hurrying to Kurogane's side. 'I'll take him.'

Kurogane ignored him and strode into the house, where he laid Syaoran down and checked the bandage before straightening up. Fai brushed past him and knelt down at Syaoran's side, first feeling his throat for a heartbeat, then reaching down to examine the wound.

'I'm going for a surgeon,' Kurogane said, opening the chest where they kept their valuables and rummaging around for the lump of gold that he had kept all winter long. 'You stay here.'

'There's no need for that,' Fai said. 'He's alright now.'

Kurogane didn't even listen. 'Try and stop him from bleeding. Don't move him.'

'There's no need,' Fai said again. 'Would you – just come here. Come here and see.'

'See what?' Kurogane roared, turning on Fai in his fear and pointing a shaking finger down at Syaoran. 'There's no time for this! He's hurt! If I don't get him help now he'll never –'

'He's alright,' Fai repeated, his face strained, his voice nearly breaking. 'Just look!'

Breathing hard in horror and confusion, Kurogane looked. He looked at the bandage where it lay gleaming wet and dark as seaweed on the floor: he looked at the blood that covered the foot, at the pale unbroken skin underneath it. He got down on his knees and took up the limb, pressing it all over with gentle fingers. He checked the other foot, just in case he had made a mistake. He picked up the sodden bandage and stared at it. He did not understand what he was seeing.

Fai was saying something, something like, 'He'll be fine, he's fine, he's better now.' Kurogane barely heard him, and went on staring blankly down at his brother. There was a horrible knot inside his chest that would not untie itself. He realised that his hands, besides being bloody, were shaking. He wiped them on his breeches, then set one very firmly on his knee and the other on Syaoran's forehead in order to steady them. The boy's skin was cold and clammy, but his breathing had slowed and evened out. His eyelids were flickering.

Kurogane looked up then, now that he could dare to. Fai met his gaze for an instant, then got up and left the room without a word.

Syaoran stirred.

'Careful,' Kurogane said, getting one hand behind his head and the other on his chest so that he could lower him back down.

'I'm alright,' Syaoran said. His eyes avoided Kurogane's. 'How late is it?'

'Afternoon. There's time for you to rest still.'

Syaoran frowned unhappily, but stayed where he was, obedient to the last. A silence stretched out between them that Kurogane did not like; but the prospect of talking was even more daunting. He scorned the idea of having to force conversation, and would rather have said nothing at all than insult Syaoran with fumbled apologies and senseless platitudes, and yet he knew that he was obliged to speak, to be the one to set a good example and make things right. This past season had seen something happen that had not happened for a very long time: Kurogane had begun to grow unsure of himself. He knew the cause, though he wished he didn't. Ever since his father's death, he had accepted his life for what it was, and had raised his brother to do the same; but now, with his promises of gold and wealth and a good, respectable future, Fai had given him hope, and that had caught him entirely off balance.

'Onii-san,' Syaoran began, breaking into Kurogane's thoughts, 'I didn't mean to disrespect you in any way –'

'Stop that,' Kurogane said, roughly, because that was unfair, and cruel. 'I'm the one who disrespected you. Don't apologise for what isn't your fault.'

Syaoran still hadn't met his eyes. 'Then you mustn't, either,' he said, quietly.

There was silence again in the small room, but this time it was not as pressing. Rather than break it, Kurogane stood up and went over to the edge of the room. He kept a few particularly precious items tucked safely away in the rafters there, including his father's sword; but the bundle that he pulled out now was small and somewhat dusty. Syaoran had been the one to put it there, having washed it and folded it up neatly in kimono-wrapping paper; and the days after Fai's awakening had been so full of confused, anxious energy that Kurogane had barely thought of the bundle at all. Now he understood for the first time what it was. He wondered how long Syaoran had known.

He unwrapped the paper and laid it aside for future use, and then, carrying its contents tucked under one arm, went back to where Syaoran lay. He knelt down at his side, put down the bundle, and took Syaoran's hand. Into it, he placed the small lump of gold from the river. 'I found this,' he said. 'A while ago, in the river. He told me where to look for it, and he said that – there was a lot more, if we wanted it. I didn't trust him. That's why.'

Syaoran looked up into his brother's face, and then down at the bundle. 'Do you trust him now?' he asked, in a rather lonely little voice.

Kurogane said, gruffly, 'I trust you.' He closed Syaoran's fingers around the gold and kept his grip there for a moment. He did not smile, but he felt his face soften somewhat as Syaoran's eyes creased up with pride. He added, 'Just rest for a bit, understand?' Then he got up and went outside, taking the bundle with him.

Fai was very busy in the vegetable patch when Kurogane found him, and had a small green and black caterpillar pinched between finger and thumb. 'Is he alright?' he asked.

Kurogane nodded.

'I'm glad,' Fai said, looking over to the house with a smile. 'What happened? An accident?'

'He slipped,' Kurogane said, shortly.

Fai searched his face a moment, and then returned his attentions to his caterpillar. 'They're a terribly greedy bunch,' he said, depositing it on the back of one hand and letting it trundle its way up his wrist. 'I keep telling them that we need to eat as well, and that there's plenty of food in the forest. But caterpillars aren't the brightest of beings.'

'You have that in common, then.'

Fai gave a quiet, almost painful laugh. 'I like them,' he said. 'We're very similar creatures, in a mixed-up kind of way. I'm the exact opposite of them, I suppose you could say.' He watched the caterpillar some more, and then turned abruptly, and walked away from the vegetable patch and went and set the little thing down in the long grass nearby.

'They'll only come back if you don't kill them,' Kurogane said, following him slowly. He kept the bundle tucked out of sight in the folds of his tunic. 'It's a waste of everyone's time.'

'They're so small, though. No one mourns small things. That's why I don't like killing them.'

Kurogane stared at his back, his thin shoulders, the nape of his neck, his hair in the sunlight. It was always that hair, always that goddamn hair, always. He said, 'You took away his blisters. After he started going up with me. That's why he never complained. And I didn't notice.'

'Now that I didn't do,' Fai corrected him. 'He wouldn't let me. He said that they'd stay soft if I kept healing them. He wanted them to callous properly.'

Kurogane said, 'Oh.'

'I always thought you knew what I could do, though,' Fai added, conversationally. They were speaking very quietly, even though they stood a full five feet apart, but also with a great, frantic air of calm, as though their lives depended on focussing every their whit of determination into speaking naturally and courteously. 'You knew what I was.'

'I didn't,' said Kurogane, because he hadn't. He had, and he hadn't. He had seen everything, and he had understood it all perfectly well, and yet he had never consciously confronted himself and said you are living with something that is not human. He hadn't needed to think about it. It hadn't changed anything, not until his brother's life had suddenly been saved by it. Then it was something he had to understand, for Syaoran's sake. 'It didn't matter.'

'I was only trying to help you,' Fai said, in a sort of rush. He still hadn't turned around, but Kurogane could imagine him hoisting the smile onto his face even when no one else could see it. 'I wanted to make things easier for you. I wanted your brother to have a good life. I wanted you to be content.'

'Who told you I wasn't?' Kurogane asked, in a grim, dangerous voice.

'I don't pity you,' Fai said, in deadly earnest. 'I never have. I pitied myself for not having what you have, for not being strong like you, and generous like you –'

'I don't need flattery.'

'I'm not –'

'I don't need to be placated. I don't need your charity and I don't need your gold, and I don't need you trying to fix my life. It's mine, and I live it, and you have no place in changing it.'

'You are a good man!' Fai said. His fists had clenched at his sides. 'When I – when I – I looked down, and I saw you –' His fists started to shake. 'I could see everything and everyone from where I was, from the place where I used to live. I saw none as – as brave as you, as proud-hearted, as good –'

'So you came down here to reward me with money,' Kurogane said.

'That's not how it was!' Fai cried, and spun around.

Kurogane hit him.

'It doesn't hurt you, does it?' he gritted out, breathing hard. 'You can't feel anything, can you? Nothing means anything to you. It's a farce. You came here to play with us, to do good, to be selfish –'

'That's not how it was,' Fai said again. He spoke slowly, and with a good deal of effort. He wiped his lip with his hand, leaving a smear of brown all along the back of his palm; then, in an almost indecently human gesture, one Kurogane had never expected from him, he spat blood out into the grass. For the barest sliver of a second, the exquisite mark he wore at all times had cracked a little, and underneath it had been a human face.

Slowly, his expression shifted from pleading to impassive to patient. He straightened up again, righting himself, settling himself back within his body. Kurogane watched him reassemble himself: it was a full-body process, a complete shift. The mask he wore covered not only his face, but his entire being and nature, his past, everything that he was – and it was not only a covering, but a shield, a shield designed to keep others safe, to keep the evil inside where it belonged. Kurogane saw that suddenly and undeniably, understanding it as clearly as he understood sunlight. He realised: this is a hunted man.

'That stings a bit,' Fai added, patting his lip. 'You do have a strong arm!' When Kurogane said nothing, Fai sighed. 'You do know that I am exactly the same as you, don't you?' he asked. 'The same as any other man. Some things have stayed with me, but they are weakening. They will leave me entirely in a few years, and then I will be mortal, just like you are. I will be free to stay here in the Middle Kingdom, and to go wherever I want. I live out the time allotted to me by the Hand that guides mortal lives, and then, when that time is over, I will die.'

'You don't have to tell me this,' Kurogane broke in. He knotted his fingers into the soft fabric he carried inside his tunic. He didn't want to know anymore. He didn't want to care about trivialities. He wanted things to be simple. 'Don't complicate things.'

Fai drew in a breath, opened his mouth to speak, hesitated; his eyes flickered back and forth across Kurogane's face. 'So you don't want to know why I'm here, then?' he said, in a hurry, and then pressed his lips together. His every motion was edgy, and his shoulders were tensed as though for another blow.

'You don't want to say it,' Kurogane replied. 'That much is obvious. So don't.' He clenched his fingers and swallowed, and then did what he knew was right. He said, 'You don't have to die.'

Fai waved the words aside daintily. 'Oh, I've resigned myself to it,' he said. He tried a smile, and pulled it off well. 'In fact, I'm almost looking forward to it. I get the feeling it would make a nice change.'

Kurogane had no words for that. He pressed down the rage that was rising up yet again, and instead pulled out the robe.

Fai broke.

'Oh,' he said, wretchedly: just that small sound into the late afternoon light, while the sound of the bees and the wind in the forest murmured loud all about them. The goats bleated from their pen behind the house; a broom that Syaoran had leaned against the wall slid over and clattered to the ground.

The robe, which felt light and airy as water in Kurogane's grasp, spilled out from his fist and was caught up by the breeze, fluttering out like a long web of cloud stretched colourless against the sky by a cold wind. He did not know how he could ever have made the mistake of thinking it ordinary. It was white as dawn, and it changed, tearing apart and flowing back into itself as though it had been woven all out of mist. There were lights in that mist, lights that moved and flared and flickered and died; and there was some pattern worked into it, a complex twining shape like a snake, or a river, or a bird –

'I thought you said you found me with nothing,' Fai said. He did his very best to keep his voice bland, but even he could not conceal the betrayal in his eyes.

'I forgot about it,' Kurogane said, which sounded like a lie, and a weak one, but which was the truth. 'I'm not keeping you here against your will. Go.' Fai wasn't saying anything, so he snapped, roughly, 'You don't have to die!'

'Why did you have to keep it?' Fai cried out, at almost exactly the same time. 'I can't -!' But he caught himself in the nick of time, and subsided, and turned away again. Kurogane only just caught the horror in his expression, the panic, the self-disgust. He took a full ten seconds to master himself, but when he did, his face was once again perfect, his voice clear and his speech refined, his smile beautiful beyond expression. Kurogane felt his heart stutter. 'I know I've been pushing the bounds of hospitality to the very limits,' Fai said, and made a slight bow. 'I will be eternally grateful for your kindness. I fear the only way I can repay it now is by fulfilling a good guest's most important duty – that is, leaving when he should.' His eye creased up a little at the corner, as though with great fondness. 'I will never forget you, my friend.'

Kurogane had had enough. He stepped forward and grabbed Fai's thin arm, pulling him in close enough to whisper; hated the way Fai flinched, the way his whole body jerked instinctively; but did not gentle his grip. 'Stop doing that,' he hissed. 'Stop doing that!'

'You're hurting me,' Fai said, trying to make a joke out of it. 'You win, you win. You're the strongest.'

Kurogane ignored this. 'If you want to leave, then leave,' he said.

He could smell the sweet grey scent of the herbs Fai used on his hair, the smoke of the little fire he cooked over, the wet earth of the garden. His skin was warmer that it had been at the beginning, and his breath on Kurogane's collarbone was heavier, rougher. His arm twisted, strained, then suddenly went limp. As though his back had snapped, he slumped. Kurogane stared very firmly over Fai's shoulder as thin trembling fingers fluttered against his cheek, his jawbone, the corded tendons in his neck, and finally came to rest over his heartbeat. Kurogane held him nowhere but at the wrist: it was not the man he feared to break, but his trust.

'I want,' Fai whispered, and could not go on.

Kurogane turned his face to Fai's hair, breathed in. 'If you want to stay, then stay,' he said.

He half expected that Fai would throw the words from before back at him, would say I don't want your charity. But Fai was not spiteful. He only shivered a little as the wind blew again, and breathed out against Kurogane's skin, and pressed himself close for a moment, as though craving warmth. Kurogane's heart, which had been pounding away furiously for at least the past hour, finally, finally slowed. He breathed in deeply once more, his lips on Fai's hair, his fingers on Fai's pulse. He kept his eyes closed dance.

They stayed like that for a little while longer. Then they went inside without a word. Kurogane folded up the robe (badly) and wrapped it up and put it back in the rafters. Fai gave Syaoran a big smile and sat down to discuss the vegetables with him. In a little while, they all had supper.

Syaoran was alone in the village for only the second or third time in his young life. He had a tiny, tiny lump of gold wrapped up in paper and tucked away safely inside his tunic; his hand kept straying to it nervously, just in case. He had kneaded it out carefully, pounded it flat as best he could with a pestle, and then folded it up again, so that if anyone asked, he could say that it had been stripped from an old gilt comb of their mother's. Fai had said, 'Oh, just have some fun!' and, 'Get some nice cloth this time, won't you?' and 'This sewing business is really quite enjoyable!' Kurogane had said, 'Mind how you go,' and gone back to wrestling with the letter that would, when they had enough gold, help to find Syaoran work as an apprentice. It had been a while since he had had to write anything.

And so Syaoran was feeling so content with the world at large that he walked straight into a servant who was hurrying along in front of his master.

'Hey, brat, mind where you're going!' the man shouted, raising an arm to strike.

His master stopped him. 'Now, now, I'm sure it was just a mistake,' he said, and smiled down at Syaoran, who was flat on his face in the dry dirt, muttering hurried apologies. 'Get up, boy, and let me see your face. That's right. You're the bamboo-cutter's brother, aren't you? You're looking well. Are those new clothes I see on you?'

'Yes, sir,' Syaoran stuttered.

'Don't tell me that brother of yours finally took a wife!' the surgeon said, and laughed loudly. 'I'd like to see the girl desperate enough to take him on.'

'No, sir,' Syaoran said.

'Come into some luck, then, have you? An unexpected windfall, hmm?'

'I – no, I – we – I'm going to be prenticed, soon. In the city, sir.'

But the surgeon wasn't listening. 'I knew he took that foreigner in for a reason,' he said. 'He was rich, after all! Whatever happened to him?'

'Fai-sama is with us still,' Syaoran said. 'He is very well-disposed to us.'

'But what's someone like him doing out here?' the surgeon pressed. 'Is he living with you in that hovel? A man like him? Don't lie to me, boy.'

'It's – it's the truth, sir, he lives with us, and he takes care of us well –' Syaoran faltered. 'If you will excuse me, sir, I must be on my way!' he tried, desperately, and, bowing deeply, ducked out of sight.

The surgeon frowned after him, displeased at such rudeness from a boy he distinctly recalled had been unnervingly bright, and almost insultingly modest about it to boot. He continued on his way, but could not put the matter out of his mind. The foreigner he had treated last autumn had been so strikingly odd-looking that had he not bled like any mortal man, he would almost have believed him to be some kind of fox or ghost. He had been found naked, but the surgeon had assumed that after reuniting with his retinue, he would have paid the bamboo-cutter well for his troubles and been on his way. What the boy had said was clearly a lie, and yet one so outrageous and purposeless that he would have had no call to tell it.

The surgeon decided that he should mention the matter to someone a little higher up the official ladder.