So there's a KuroFai Canon vs AU fanfiction olympics going on on the kurofai community on dreamwidth. I was on Team AU, and my fic prompt was 'Under a Blackened Sky.'

Title: Ash on the windowsill
Rating: PG-13.
Pairing: Kurogane x Fai
Summary: AU. It's the end of the world, and Fai is still keeping secrets.
Warnings: This fic contains mentions of child abuse, some (minor) character death and some quite probably inaccurate medical jargon. Also, potty language.
Other notes: This fic is complete - I will be posting a new chapter every day as I go through and edit it, so there shouldn't be more than 2-3 days between chapters.

Black horsefly, lemonade
Jar on the red anthill
Garden worm, cigarette
Ash on the windowsill

Every day, Syaoran awoke with the dawn.

Sometimes he didn't know it was dawn, of course, not with the weather the way it could be. But still, he tried. His wristwatch was set to go off at five in the morning, and that was when he got up regardless of what it looked like outside. He had a lot of things to do before school started, after all.

This was shaking up to be a typical day. He got up, had a quick wash using the water from the cistern, made breakfast for two on the wood stove. His housemate worked until late - or early, depending on how you looked at it - but Syaoran was fairly sure that if he didn't make him eat, even if he had to wake Subaru up to do it, the older man simply wouldn't. Actually, he had the feeling Subaru would be happiest attempting to survive off nothing but cigarettes and his own self-pity, and while Syaoran didn't know what had happened to cause him to be so gloomy - it was terrible etiquette here to ask someone how their life had been before - he refused to let Subaru wither away.

Breakfast this morning was porridge, with some black tea. They'd run out of sugar, and nobody had seen so much as a glimpse of cow's milk for some time now; there was still the goat milk, but - Syaoran mused as he fit the mug of tea on a tray with the porridge bowl - there probably always would be goat's milk. He hated the stuff, although he drank it diligently every day as per doctor's orders.

Subaru was passed out belly-down in his small cramped bed, in his room upstairs at the far end of the hall. As he did every morning, Syaoran slid the tray onto the night table, shook him awake, and then stood and stared at him with mute, reproachful eyes until Subaru's guilt complex made him pick up the spoon and start eating. He stayed long enough to be sure that Subaru wasn't going to quit, and then he bid the older man goodbye for the day and left to begin his own job.

His bicycle was in the garage where he'd left it, propped up against the far wall. It was the only vehicle in there, the rest of the space fenced off with chicken mesh. This, unsurprisingly, was because there actually were chickens in the garage; five of them, brown speckled hens who ensured that both Subaru and Syaoran got eggs on a weekly basis. He measured out their feed and checked their water dish before he left, although Subaru was actually pretty good about making sure the chickens were okay; from what little Syaoran knew of his life before, working with animals had been a pretty big part of it.

The hens fed, he turned back to the bike, checking his watch as he did. Twenty-past five, he thought. That was good. His courier's gun belt was slung over one of the handlebars, the holster weighed down with his pistol, small as it was. Syaoran fastened the belt around his hips before sliding the gun out and checking it for ammo; satisfied that it was loaded, he slid it back into place. It had been at least six months since the last ash beast had gotten inside the walls, but it paid to be careful. That done, he carefully opened the garage door, wheeled his bike outside, and closed and locked the door behind him, with as much care as he had opened it.

He and Subaru lived on the outskirts of the village, which was to say, there were a whole seven houses between his and the watchtower that rose out of the village centre. It had been a bigger town before, maybe, but the survivors had torn down most of the buildings they didn't need or couldn't use for supplies. He'd been eleven then, and he'd wanted to help. The adults hadn't let him, not then, not with that particular task. Now with the wisdom of his fifteen-year-old self, he could see he would have been in the way. Not anymore, he thought, as he pedalled lazily toward the watchtower; Arashi was already waiting for him at its foot. Now he was useful, and his job was very important indeed.

"Good morning, Arashi-san," he called, as he braked the bike next to her. She was one of the town's meteorologists; her husband, Sorata, was the other. "Is there going to be school today?"

"Yes," Arashi said. Her arms were folded over her chest; now she unfolded them, revealing a slip of scrap paper in one hand. It was covered in rough charcoal scribbles. "Eleven to one, three to four-thirty, and most likely eight until shortly after midnight. Did you get that?"

His lips moved as he repeated it to himself, silently working it into his memory, and then he nodded. Arashi gave him one of her long, thoughtful looks, and then turned her head to look at the street snaking away from them. There were only four roads - not that they could really be called roads, the cars had long since been dismantled or dragged away - to the village, laid out at compass-points. Beyond the last house of the north-facing street, the debris wall sat hulking and ungraceful. "Fuuma borrowed our wind gauge," she said, expressionless. "When you see him, ask him to return it today, please."

Some days - bad days, when the storms had started before he'd even gotten up - Arashi would be waiting for him inside the tower with a cup of sweet tea for him to drink once he'd peeled off the filter mask and the protective cloak. Sugar was rare and valuable, and yet she used some of her supply on him. Syaoran knew better than most than to take her deliberately blank exterior at face value. He smiled at her quickly, and when she nodded at him, pushed the bike around and set off toward West street.

The first house you came to on West street was his classmate Tomoyo's - well, technically it belonged to Kendappa and Souma, but to Syaoran, all houses were his friends' first. Tomoyo's house was the only one he used the front door to enter; Tomoyo was kind of strange about some things, and she said using the back door was ill luck. He didn't argue with her. Instead he pushed the door open - she hadn't locked it - and stamped his boots off on the doormat.

"Syaoran?" Tomoyo was sitting at the table in the living room, wearing a fluffy pink dressing gown and a matching pair of slippers. How she could look so immaculate despite the growing shortage of detergent was a mystery that never ceased to puzzle Syaoran. Her house was one of the nicest in the town; not in size, but in terms of decoration. The living room in which she was sat was painted in cheerful, autumnal colours, and behind her stood a great gilded harp. That wasn't hers, of course - Tomoyo sang rather than played - but it added a certain something to her home. She had a woman's shirt across her lap and a needle and thread in her hand, and she gave him a bright, pleased smile. "Is it to be school today after all?"

"Yes," Syaoran said. "Arashi says the storms today will be -"

"Oh! Wait, please," Tomoyo interrupted, carefully putting the shirt onto the table. She climbed to her feet and came toward the entrance hall, bushing past Syaoran to set her hand on the bottom bannister by the stairs. "Sister! Syaoran is here!"

There was a thud upstairs, followed by the creaking of the floorboards as Kendappa obviously stumbled out of bed. Tomoyo turned and smiled at him, and Syaoran returned it nervously. Kendappa could be... alarming first thing in the morning.

"What time did she get back?" he mouthed.

"Four," Tomoyo replied.

The top stair thumped, and a second later Kendappa herself stumbled into view. She looked like it had been a rough night; her hair was wild and there were dark circles under her eyes. She also looked like she was two steps from killing someone. "When," she growled, in a hoarse, morning voice.

Syaoran gaped.

"Sister," Tomoyo said, amused. "You should probably put something on your top half before you greet guests."

Kendappa glanced down at her naked chest as if surprised to see her own breasts, then shrugged. She covered them with one arm, which allowed Syaoran to break his gaze; not knowing where else to look, he stared very intently at his own shoes. "Teenagers," Kendappa said, dryly, and then, more forcefully: "When, boy?"

"Eleven to one!" Syaoran managed. His voice sounded unflatteringly squeaky to his own ears. Next to him, Tomoyo giggled. "Eleven to one, um. And um, three to four-thirty and um, um. Arashi-san thinks the last storm won't be until eight -"

"Eleven," Kendappa said. She checked her watch. "Okay. Fine. Thanks. Little sister?"

"Yes?" Tomoyo sang.

"'m going back to bed until I have to get up for the storm. Let me sleep?"

"Of course," Tomoyo said, and smiled softly. "Sleep well."

"Have fun at school," Kendappa said, and then she was gone.

"Souma and she killed one of the big monsters last night," Tomoyo told him. "I promised dear Sakura I'd share some of the extra meat with her. Would you take it to her? You haven't yet stopped in at the Kinomoto's, correct?"

There was a knowing light to her eyes, and under it, Syaoran blushed. Tomoyo didn't tease him - she never teased him, which made her such a valuable friend - but she did smile at him fondly. Sakura's was the last house he visited bar two, usually because by the time he got around to hers it was only a half hour until school started and she would walk with him to his final two stops. Seeing her was a treat, and it made his morning that much brighter, and Tomoyo knew it. When she followed him to the door and pressed a carefully-wrapped package of greasepaper into his arms, her eyes were warm and knowing. "Goodbye for now," she said. "I shall see you later on at school."

"Yes," he said. He blushed suddenly, harder. "Um, when you see Kendappa, please tell her I'm sorry."

Tomoyo covered her mouth with one delicate hand, giggling. "I think she knows," she said. "But of course I will, Syaoran."

"Thanks," he said, still blushing, and then bobbed his head by way of parting as he righted his bike and carefully wedged the slab of wrapped meat over the back wheel, lashing it on the the cords he kept there for just that reason. Tomoyo waved at him once more, and then closed her door gently but firmly. He heard the lock click in place behind him and nodded.

Tomoyo had known Sakura longer than he had. They'd arrived together, in a small band of refugees; maybe nine people. It had been the last big group. Syaoran had already been here in the village, although he hadn't been living with Subaru back then, he'd been staying with the schoolteacher, Yukito. He'd moved in with Subaru when he realised Yukito would quite like to move in with Sakura's brother. Family - blood-related family, at any rate - was a rare thing, nowadays; so few people had survived the First Storm that the likelihood of two people from any one family making it were next to nothing. Kendappa was no more Tomoyo's blood-sibling than Subaru was Syaoran's, but that was what you did; you moved in with people, you made them your family.

There were perhaps three hundred survivors in the village, and as far as Syaoran knew, they were all there was left.

The First Storm had done that. Nobody knew quite how it started. Nobody really liked to talk about it, but you could see the tension, the fear that its merest mention could bring out in people. It wasn't just the initial explosion of power that was so bad - although Syaoran still had nightmares of that, the tsunami of wild magic that broke across the land, the moment it had hit his house, sometimes disintegrating things (some non-organic, some... organic) and at other points warping them into wild shapes - but the way it had broken the little things they had come to rely on. The little magics that had made then so much better, the weather, the wildlife; the cities had become unsafe, and so they had come here, here where the aftereffects of the Storms were lesser, safer...

Not that that meant much. The sheer heft of the meat tied to the back of his bicycle indicated that. He'd seen a few of the ash beasts in his time, creatures created, somehow, in the First Storm; monsters that appeared out of nowhere during the frequent lesser storms that ravaged the land. They were as aggressive as they were dangerous and it was only thanks to hunters like Kendappa that they hadn't killed everyone yet.

Not that that meant much. The sheer heft of the meat tied to the back of his bicycle indicated that. He'd seen a few of the ash beasts in his time, creatures created, somehow, in the First Storm; monsters that appeared out of nowhere during the frequent lesser storms that ravaged the land. They were as aggressive as they were dangerous and it was only thanks to hunters like Kendappa that they hadn't killed everyone yet.

Someday Syaoran thought he might be a hunter. He was a good shot - which was why he was allowed out without an escort, only the .22 calibre in its holster - and he knew he could kill a whole bunch of ash beasts when he was done growing up. He needed to find a teacher. Ryuuo, his classmate who shared his ambition, was of the idea that the two of them ought to be able to convince Kendappa and Souma to take them on; Syaoran wasn't sure he shared it. Still, he mulled it over as he pushed or rode his bike through the town, delivering the message he had been given by Arashi to each household.

Fuuma's was the last house before Sakura's, off East street. He wasn't up when Syaoran pushed the back door open; Kamui was, dressed in hunter black, his weapons spread out across the kitchen table. It was almost time for his shift at the wall, and he listened to the times of today's storms with his sharp, expressive eyebrows drawn together. Sometimes Syaoran wondered if Kamui would teach him; then he remembered exactly how aloof and violent the man could be and quickly forgot it. Still, Kamui was kind enough to fetch Arashi's wind gauge instrument from where Fuuma had left it, wedging open an ash-streaked paperback book titled 'Batter Up!' with a little sticker on its cover warning that it wasn't safe for children.

Kamui followed him out, pulling his bright blue ash mask over his mouth and nose as he did so; he wore a belt of equally brilliant blue around his waist, the better to flag his identity to other hunters in the midst of the storms. Syaoran remembered watching Tomoyo carefully sew orange to Kendappa's black uniform for the same reason, that time after Kurogane had shot Kazuhiko in the shoulder by mistake. Ryuuo said that was to be expected, but Ryuuo was kind of more bravado than brains sometimes. With Subaru working at the clinic as he did, Syaoran had a little more experience with the realities of the hunter's life; he remembered how worried Subaru had been about the bullet extraction and the risk of permanent damage, how for a while they had been terrified of infection. It wasn't glamorous. That didn't mean it didn't have to be done.

Still. He could admire Ryuuo's bravery. Like Sakura said, everyone here had tiny flaws, but it was better by far to focus on the good, the things that made them the survivors. The thought of her as he leaned his bike against the side of her house and began to unleash Tomoyo's gift from its back wheel made him smile. The meat was tricky to wrangle, more for the slipperiness of its packaging than for its size or weight, but he only had to knock on the back door twice before someone opened it for him. He smile faded a little at the realisation that it wasn't Sakura.

"It's six thirty," said Touya, squinting at the sky past his head. "What, you got held up drinking tea or something, brat?"

"To-ya! Leave poor Syaoran alone," Yukito scolded from behind him. He was dressed, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of something between his hands; of Sakura, there was no sign. Touya gave a small huff of annoyance and stepped aside, and when Syaoran came into the kitchen, took the meat off him.

"Tomoyo said that was for Sakura," Syaoran said anxiously. He craned his neck, trying to peer from the kitchen into Touya's workroom through the open door. "Um..."

"She's getting dressed," Touya said, scowling. "What, are you hoping for a sneak peek?"

Syaoran could feel his cheeks burning.

A new voice came out of the workshop, and a moment later someone pulled the door back from the other side. "Is that Syaoran?" Kazuhiko called. "Are you bullying that poor kid again?"

"Yeah, it's him," Touya said, glaring. Yukito just shook his head, looking more amused than anything, and made a shoo-ing at Syaoran with his hand, silently granting him permission to go inside the workshop. Syaoran nervously glanced up at its owner, who sighed heavily and jerked his head toward it with ill grace. "Don't touch anything."

Touya's workshop was always cluttered, usually with bits of bicycles. Touya was the primary metalworker for the community, and his workshop - actually a quick extension to the house made out of torn-down, scavenged parts of other houses - was overladen with scrap metal, tools, and various sundries whose purposes Syaoran couldn't even begin to guess. Oil lamps hanging from the ceiling in careful homemade safety containers provided the light, since the building itself had no windows. Kazuhiko was bent over the table, a pencil tucked behind his ear and his eyebrows furrowed at the sand table.

"Hey, kid," he said.

"Good morning," Syaoran said politely, and then, even though he already knew, "How is Ora?"

Kazuhiko's mouth turned down. "Same as she was yesterday," he said, too quickly. He turned back to the sand table. "She kicked me out, said this was more important than babying her. We think we're reaching a turning point with the design for the windmills."

"We can't do anything until I get some better tools, I've said this," Touya added irritably from behind them. He came to the sandtable, picking up one of the styluses. "With what I've got at the moment, we'll be lucky if the blades don't fall off of their own accord. I'd need a bigger forge to make blades as big as we need, and I can't..."

Syaoran left them to it. At first the endless debate over the building of the windmills had fascinated him, but at this point they were treading old ground, going over the topic endlessly. He knew why - they were trying to find some new angle - but he was no metalworker like Touya, nor an engineer like Kazuhiko. Quietly he slipped back out to the kitchen, where Yukito was still sitting at the table, his chin in the palm of his hands. Yukito's paleness always looked odd to him, but for a moment, while Yukito wasn't concentrating, Syaoran could have sworn he saw... he could have sworn he saw something strange, something about his hands...

"Syaoran?" Yukito blinked at him in surprise. He smiled, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. "So, I assume it is to be school today for you and I?"

"Yeah," Syaoran said. He told Yukito the times he'd been given. "What are we studying today?"

"Well," said Yukito, "Last night I picked Touya's brains for what he knows about chemistry - that is what metalworking is, of course, applied chemistry. Today I thought we might do some work on the periodic table of elements."

"Oh, all of it?" Syaoran glanced sharply to one side as Sakura entered the kitchen from the hallway, wearing a plain black dress and stockings. She smiled at him shyly and then slipped into the seat opposite Yukito. Suddenly, Syaoran's palms felt very sweaty indeed. "Do we really need to know, like, Uranium?"

"'Like'?"

She pulled a face. "Fai says language is fluid and words can change meaning. 'Like' is a filler word now."

Yukito smiled the way he did, the corners of his mouth rising and his eyes crinkling, like you'd just told him the best joke in the world. It was a smile you couldn't help but return. "Fai is a doctor," he reminded them. "I'm your teacher."

Sakura grinned at that, a hesitant flash of white teeth, awkward and shy and pretty. Syaoran had to remember to breathe. He didn't know how he felt - Sakura was his friend, his best friend - but he thought maybe it was... it was... it might be more than friendship. Maybe. He glanced away from her and saw Yukito watching him, fingers still wrapped around his cup. Through the open workshop door, Kazuhiko and Touya were still discussing the forging of windmill blades out of bicycle frames and abandoned garden tools.

"Um, are you all done with your rounds, Syaoran?" Sakura was watching him hopefully. "Or do you have to leave to finish up?"

"I still need to visit the clinic and Kurogane," Syaoran said. He swallowed - his throat felt suddenly sharp and parched - and said, "Do you... do you want to come with me?"

Sakura smiled. "Yes! I'm all dressed already, if -"

"We should -"

"Yes, let's -"

Yukito drained his cup. "I'll see the pair of you in class," he said, putting it back on the table, and for some reason Syaoran's eye was drawn to the way he gripped it so tightly, the shiny white ceramic and those long pale fingers wrapped around its surface somehow seeming more... different... Yes, there it was; Yukito's hands were shaking, a slight tremor that made his movements clumsy and slow. Syaoran frowned at them and bit his lower lip, and Sakura touched his elbow gently.

"Let's get going," she said. "Touya, we're leaving!"

Touya stuck his head out of the workshop door. "Fine," he said. "Have a good time at school."

"Aren't you going to wish us a safe journey?" Sakura asked, a slight edge to her voice as she pulled her filter mask down from the hook by the door.

"No ash beast out there is going to be worse than you, Monster," Touya smirked, and Sakura let out a low warning growl, glaring at him. Touya didn't look worried. "See? Just pull that face and the beasties will go running."

"You suck," Sakura said, haughtily.

Sunrise was well and truly across the town when they emerged. From Sakura's doorstep they could see Ryuuo, balanced on the clinic roof as he grumpily scrubbed at the solar panels bristling from its walls. Sakura adjusted the elasticated strap of her filter mask, grimacing as she worked it down over her hair to hang loosely around her throat like everyone else's. Syaoran checked his watch, frowning down at the display.

"We'd best hurry," he said, looking down the street at the clinic with its tall dull grey walls, and the house opposite it with its bricked-up windows. "We don't want to be late for class."

Sakura pulled a face. "I already know my periodic table," she protested. "And I know about atoms and electrons and positive and negative charges. I think we should learn something useful."

"We have to keep the knowledge," Syaoran reasoned. "The ash storms won't blight the landscape forever." He grabbed his bike; Sakura walked on his other side, passing him her yellow school satchel to be slung across its handlebars along with his. Up on the clinic roof, Ryuuo sat back and dusted his hands off, squinting at the shiny solar panel surface. Syaoran cupped his hands around his mouth. "Bottom-left of the last panel is still ashy!"

Ryuuo swore, quite colourfully. Sakura giggled, only for it to tail off. "Look, Syaoran!" She pointed down past the clinic toward the wall, the small man-sized gate there opening and the man ducking inside it who was, evidently, larger than 'man-sized'. "It's Kurogane!"

"He must have just finished his shift," Syaoran said. He was still wearing his weapons, the full-sized sword across his back and the guns in their red holsters across his hips; two of them, different calibres. Fai always had plenty to say about that, although Syaoran was pretty sure most of it was double-entendre. Every hunter wore black, to confuse the ash beasts - something about the way their eyesight worked, Syaoran didn't know. After the Kazuhiko incident, they wore another colour, a brighter one, paired with it. Each hunter had a colour, although some were shared; both Souma and Kazuhiko wore green with their black, for instance. Kurogane was the only one who wore black and red.

"Kurogane!" Sakura waved at him excitedly and he straightened up, waiting as they approached. "Have you just gotten back from the hunt?"

The older man nodded. He had a battered-looking picnic cooler by the handle in one hand; he set it on the ground and peeled off his gloves. As always, craning his neck back to look up at Kurogane's face, Syaoran felt a flash of awe at just how tall he was. Before Kurogane had arrived - a member of the same band of refugees as Sakura and Tomoyo - Kazuhiko and Fai had been the tallest men Syaoran had met, but Kurogane topped them both by half a head. He was strong, too, not willowy like the village doctor.

"Did you catch anything?" Sakura asked, excitedly. Kurogane tched under his breath.

"Couple things," he said, succinctly. "Some of the medium ones."

The ash beasts came in three different sizes. The biggest ones Syaoran were the size of a horse - a plough horse, if horses had mandibles that dripped acid and heads that could rotate a hundred and eighty degrees. Not to mention the talons and the scorpion-barbed tail. Kurogane had a slash across his cheek that hadn't been there yesterday. It had already scabbed closed.

Syaoran touched his own perfectly smooth cheek with his fingertips, casting a sideward glance at Sakura. She was standing on the balls of her feet, her arms folded over her chest and her head tipped back as far as she could to look up into Kurogane's fierce red eyes. He wondered if she would mind a mark like that on him, and the thought made him uncomfortable.

"You should see the doctor about that," he said. Kurogane squinted at him, then sighed.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm on my way there. Got some stuff for him."

"Oh! Is that what's inside the cooler? Are you bringing him lunch?" Sakura asked, brightly. "That's ever-so-nice of you. He works really hard..."

"No," said Kurogane flatly. "Not unless he's a vampire, and they're fictional. Nothing in here but body bits." Sakura blanched and he quirked an eyebrow at her. "He asked for kidneys, hearts and pancreases, for whatever reason."

"How do you know what bit is what?" Syaoran asked, paling, and Kurogane grinned, the edge of his mouth quirking up in a cruel, sharp smile.

"You take enough of those things apart, you work it out," he said. Syaoran swallowed, then stiffened his spine. Hadn't he just been thinking about the hard work necessary to be a hunter? He knew what they did was gory. Squeamishness, he decided, was pointless.

"I suppose, if Fai asked for them," Sakura said beside him, sound faintly disconcerted. "I'm sure he has his reasons."

"Probably not," said Kurogane, rebelliously. "Or if he does, they only make sense in his lunatic head. Still, I'd better get these to the moron before they spoil or rot or whatever. And you two need to go to school."

"Yes," Syaoran said, still staring at the cooler. Sakura coughed and nudged him. "Oh! Today's storms!"

After Kurogane had listened to the list of times and headed into the clinic itself, they went and waited by the ladder leading up to its roof for Ryuuo. It didn't take Syaoran long to realise Sakura was watching him from underneath her eyelashes, a small, cunning smile on her face.

"What?" he asked, awkwardly.

"You want to be a hunter," she said. "And you want Kurogane to train you."

Syaoran started, knocking his bike over and spilling their satchels over the ground. "I didn't say anything!"

"You didn't have to!" Sakura retorted, covering her mouth with her hand as if Syaoran wouldn't know she was laughing at him beyond it. "You're really obvious!"

"I'm not," Syaoran said. "I don't know what I want to do yet. Maybe I want to be the meteorologist like Arashi and Sorata. Or - or help out in the clinic. Or build things, like Kazuhiko does."

"Kazuhiko is only an engineer now because of Ora," Sakura said, her smile morphing into something sad. "You can be a hunter and do other things. Remember how Kendappa used to be a concert harpist? I think if you want it, you should try for it. Like how Fai said if I wanted to, I could train to be a nurse."

"You'd be a fantastic nurse," Syaoran said automatically. "You're kind and compassionate, and -"

He stopped, his brain catching up with his mouth. Sakura was blushing, and he could feel himself beginning to do so too. He swallowed nervously; Sakura broke eye contact, her green eyes cutting away. "Syaoran," she said, slowly, "I-"

"Finally finished!" Ryuuo crowed, hopping off the ladder. "Just in time, too. Let's go to school!"

Sakura and Syaoran stared at him, and Syaoran didn't know what his face must have looked like but it must have been honest to his feelings because Ryuuo actually flinched. Without a word, the moment destroyed, they exchanged a brief, awkward glance, and set to picking up their school bags and the bike.

"What did I do?" Ryuuo asked plaintively behind them. Sakura was talking, assuring him that he hadn't done anything; Syaoran balanced their bags across the handlebars again and glared into midair. It wasn't fair, he thought; but then he supposed that was life for you.

Still. Hunting. He'd have to think about it. There were worse teachers than Kurogane, maybe, and if Sakura had suggested it then maybe she didn't mind...?

"Syaoran, let's go!" Sakura said, startling him. "It's almost seven!"

Yeah, he'd consider it. But maybe when he wasn't running the risk of being late to school.

-tbc