Lots of apologies for the delay in updating. I have started college and have found it difficult to find time to write or do anything else really other than coursework and studying. And of course with the Christmas rush. It's almost impossible to get any writing done. So please enjoy this chapter. Thanks for waiting.

Fai's POV

Kurogane's hands pressed again my skin, warm and gentle, fingers pressing and stroking, tenderly smoothing down my neck, twirling odd strands of hair around them as they went. His lips pressed lightly against the base of my throat, soft and slightly wet, leaving a trail down to my collar bone.

Pain...Panic...Flooding...System...Limbs...Numb...Limp...Staring...Trembling...Kurogane...Kurogane...

Bodies entwined as we kissed, his hands stroking down to my hips, causing them to buck forwards. Gasping as I stared up into his eyes, not thinking, and only feeling. My limbs were working on their own, my lips being moved subconsciously against his own as he cradled my head, his eyes half closed as if he too was falling deeper into sensation.

Fai...Wake...Up...Fai...Syaoran...Sakura...Mokona...Masquerade...Masquerade...Masquerade...

Everything started to hurt. Throbbing. Splitting sharp stinging ache against my cheek, like burning needles prickling beneath my skin. A pain erupted in my skull, like it was cracking and falling apart, crumbling. Kurogane's face above me suddenly became frightening; eyes that I often dwelled in peacefully turned into a gaping hole that I was trying desperately not to fall into. My screams echoed in those black pit like eyes, bouncing around that caused them to shimmer with some strange, twisted joy. A smile spread around now pale violet lips. My head hit ground. I seemed to come round for a moment as I saw the room, turned on its side so the floor was my main view. Kurogane's voice in my ears...

"Don't hit him anymore!!! He's...he's preg..."

Sticky warmth trailed down the side of my head. Ah...so it wasn't Kurogane's loving, doting hand after all...it was my own blood that trickled down my face, dripping slowly from my chin. Those hands that I thought so lovingly brushed and caressed my throat were really pressing fingertips that attempted at closing my pipes, cutting off my oxygen. That's why I dreamed I was in a much happier place...that was why...that was why...

"Pregnant!"

The words rung in my ears shrilly like a phone ring, begging me to pick it up and come back to reality. My eyes widened my hands shakily finding their place to my nearly flat stomach where a tiny bump had began to show. Our baby...Kurogane's and mine. It was inside me...and Masquerade was batting me around...I was losing a lot of blood...I had hit the floor really hard. Our child...I winced as I attempted to rise to have her foot slammed into the side of my head, forcing it down with a thud. My left eye seared with agony that tore up the left side of my head, spreading like roots under soil.

"FAI!!!" Kurogane's voice sounded so anguished...so desperate...like he was restraining frustrated tears. "SYAORAN! HELP HIM!!! WAKE UP PLEASE!!! SYAORAN!!!"

"Ku-uro..." I groaned, my throat constricting with a fog of tears that was rising rapidly, reaching the brink of my eyes, getting ready to walk the plank. Her heel pressed dangerously close to my temple, digging in with the corner so it pricked my skin. I hissed.

He was struggling, shouting words that no longer made any sense. Abuse that seemed to never touch or affect Masquerade. She stared down at me and I stared back, our eyes never meeting although they were on one another's faces. No expression contorted her features. She remained unusually straight faced. Her foot slowly rose and hovered over my abdomen. Blood running icy cold, freezing in my veins and shattering, piercing the muscles and cracking the bones. I went to move but her hand twitched, and those invisible arms of hers held me down, pressing my wrists flat down to the ground, another around my throat, nail pressed neatly directly above my pulse.

"FOR FUCK SAKE STOP IT!!!" Kurogane screeched his voice cracking and dimming.

Her foot didn't move a millimetre. My stomach rose and fell rapidly, as my breathing rate increased, becoming more hysterical. The tears leapt from the plank and free fell down my cheeks in streams.

"Fai, my darling, you look so pathetic right now."

Boiling pain. I curled up as much as her restricting hands would allow, my knees rising as I tried to push the pain to a further, less conscious place. I closed my eyes tightly, screaming out loud so it echoed around the temple, the holy faces staring down unsympathetically down upon me, women cradling babies whose uneven eyes just simply stared, men with beards pointing down on me.

Her foot finally moved although the agony ripping and shredding me up inside didn't shift. She was attacking my organs although she was leaving my abdomen alone...for now. I felt a scratching sensation on my heart and it made my cries get higher and longer. She rose me up so I was on my feet, flicking a finger upwards so I was in suspension, feet inches from the ground. My limbs were frozen in the same spot; my muscles felt like threat coming undone, unwinding and becoming loose, useless string. Scratches started to appear upon my flesh, weeping profusely. One moment Masquerade was there, her eyes glittering with this sense of justice it seemed although her lips remained untouched and then the next, she was gone and I found myself on the floor once more, landing with a crack on my back. An inhuman yelp burst from my lips.

Everything went bright white. Static fuzzed in my ears. It slowly got lower and quieter. Faded...

Kurogane's POV

I couldn't stand being there...witnessing this torture being inflicted upon him...it caused my guts to lurch, my head to spin, my eyes to brim with fiercely burning tears, just to re-imagine it. I writhed, I struggled, I cried out but it seemed nothing I did could help him. The scorching touch of the Kreatūra didn't falter or waver once, the stench of my own burning flesh lingering in my nostrils as I was pressed down against the ground, my chest millimetres from touching the concrete beneath me. I struggled to hold myself up with my one free arm that hadn't been twisted down and trapped underneath my own torso. My arm quaked under my weight, feeling the muscles in my arms strain and pull as they tried to keep me up.

His beautiful baby blue eyes before mine, laughing at some hidden joke or thought that he wouldn't allow me to hear. His lips pressed soundlessly against mine, affectionate and warm, moulding with my own like we were two pieces of a broken object and had just been put back together again. His supple face, chest, hands, arms, stomach, legs, neck...my hands and lips smoothed over them, like my kisses were the glue holding him together for as long as possible. And he'd whisper something stupid in my ear, something like: "I love you..."

My hand dropped and I lay face down on the ground. I dropped my head down, my forehead cooling against the concrete, beads of sweat trickling down the sides of my face. My heart was like a stone, dropping down below the surface and I couldn't rise again. I was staring up at the shimmering light above me, the surface that I yearned to burst through. But I was stranded at the very bottom, only wishing.

"You're safe now…I got you…you hear? No one's gonna touch you now…only I'm allowed to put a finger on you…understand?"

My own words spiralled around my head like leaves in a breeze, dragging along the bottom of my mind, rising slowly.

"Not as if you're going anywhere…and you know why? 'Cos I won't let you go, you hear? You're not leaving this world without my say so. If you die, Mage…I will come after you in the afterlife…and I will kick your ass so hard you won't be able to think of any other nicknames…"

My arm moved painfully down, itching for my sword.

"Your cheeks are extremely red. I got what I wanted…and I don't want to lose it…not now or ever…"

My fingers brushed lightly against the hilt. I gritted my teeth.

"I can't live without you, you idiot!"

It was all true...I couldn't live without him...how I'd lived all those years...without knowing that name, that face, that laugh, that smile, that man...I'll never know. It doesn't seem like a life at all anymore. A life without Fai D. Fluorite. I gave up my home to be by his side, to be with him for always because that was what I'd promised. I'd promised...forever. Before, if someone had said forever, I wouldn't assumed it meant the amount of time someone could stand to be by your side...but now I know that forever means until you give your last breath, be it by your lover's side or dying protecting them.

When Ashura...when Ashura was going to kill Fai...when Fai was bleeding in my arms and begging me to leave him...I vowed silently to never put him in that kind of situation again. But yet, here we were. And once again, I was useless. Syaoran...Sakura...Mokona...none of them could help this time. It was all up to me and I was failing miserably right now. If I was watching someone else go through this, I'd be shouting "COWARD, COWARD!!!" because that is what I was doing. I was being a coward. I was being weak. I needed Fai. And no petty revenge scheme could steal that from me.

My fingers slowly curled around my blade. I didn't think, hesitate or pause about this. I just acted blindly. I swung my sword. I cut through what felt like ghostly flames. I felt splatters of slick hotness against my cheeks. Three of the Kreatūra fell, the other two loosened their hold and I was able to finally burst through the surface. I sprinted. I raced. I let out a shout as the adrenaline pumped around my body faster and faster, like fire itself.

Masquerade was there before me. Fai was hovering before her. I raised my sword and was about to strike when I felt a sinking sensation in my gut like I was free falling. I blinked and in that space of my eyelids closing and re-opening, I had been transported to a different space. Everything was pure black, like an abyss. I couldn't tell floor from wall from hole. I didn't know whether I was standing or floating. I reluctantly and tensely lowered my blade, my head frantically turning from side to side, looking, and searching for any sign of Masquerade or Fai. Neither could be seen. My heart beat faster and faster, that adrenaline a dull tingle in my skin, leaving my blood lukewarm and unsettled.

I began to shiver although there was no breeze, no chill. The exhilaration and the fear mixed like a venomous antidote that had been spilled into my bloodstream. All I could hear was my frantic, deep breaths and the drum like pounding of my heart, blood roaring my ears like a blood curdling scream. Blotches of white distorted my vision, like paint dripping from a paintbrush, the ink slowly spreading, gradually aiming to shroud my vision entirely. My organs tightened and my muscles jerked uneasily, swinging me round as I heard echoing footsteps. Nothing stood before or behind me, not to either of my sides. The sound travelled above and around me, like numerous pattering feet were sprinting around me, laughs of a small child floating in and out of my ears. My hands were turning clammier and clammier by the moment, my grip slipping slightly on the hilt of my blade. I realised my hands were quaking, my sword making a chiming sound as it shook. I turned, tried to see where the voices were coming from or even find a single source, something that would bring me to understand what was happening.

The voices were closing in on me, like beasts lurking in the high grass, eyes able to see me, able to move in closer although I could not. I stood frozen in one place, fearful to move forward or back in case I walked right into their clutches, into the path of danger. I was set on waiting for them to come for me, although them revealing themselves from hiding seemed highly unlikely. Each intake of oxygen was too hot, drained from air it seemed so it caused me to breathe faster, my heart rate rapidly increasing. It was like a million fireworks being sent off into the sky, and I was waiting for the final to explode, to end the anticipation and show its true colours.

One laugh. One heartbeat. One touch. One movement. One swing. One blink.

The laughter died, dimming into cold silence. I opened my eyes; that last blink seeming to be the longest in my life. When I opened them, I saw blood and felt its warm fingertips lightly graze my cheek. My breath seemed to halt. It staggered. My hands trembled and sweat trickled down my forehead, dripping off of my chin and landing on the ground with a tender PLINK.

Blue eyes I'd often gazed lovingly into. Skin my hands had caressed and sprinkled light kisses upon. Lips that had breathed my name and had smiled at me. His hand was touching my forearm, fingers keeping a meek grip. They pressed slightly harder as they watched me, pupils moving from side to side, scanning my eyes helplessly for answers that he longed to seek. He didn't see. He received no reply. No answer. Nothing but utter terror that blazed in my own eyes. A thin line of red trickled down from the left corner of his lips. A similar line slid down the blade and climbed over the hilt of my sword, crashing against my hands like a wave against a rock, staining my skin.

My sword was plunged deep into Fai's stomach...piercing his organs, draining his blood...piercing our child.

He fell backwards, releasing one single last breath, taking my sword with him from my quivering hands. I stared wordlessly, my lips cracked and dry like splintered, worn wood. I wobbled and collapsed to my knees, my stomach threatening to spill its contents but couldn't find the strength. I stared at Fai's body, his face hidden from me. But I knew it was him. Those eyes...they were his...I knew them too well...I squeezed my eyes closed. My memories took control...

Our bodies were intertwined, hands locked and fingers knotted like string, our breaths pouring over one another and mingling to create our own, new oxygen that only us two could inhale. He mewled my name and I his, my hands tracing over his features and the shape of his body, etching every part of him into memory so that whenever I missed him I could remember this exact moment. Pleasure was our walls, love was our doors. We only let one another in. His back would arch against me and I would hold it upwards, my fingertips stroking down the centre to his lower back. His legs wrapping around my waist, keeping me bound, and both of us would climax. After a moment of catching our breaths, we would kiss lovingly as if to seal the envelope, closing that letter until the next would be written, I being the pen and he the paper. His foggy blue eyes would look up into mine and he would move his head upwards to press our foreheads together, the tip of his nose to the side of mine, his lips and mine parallel. He would whisper that he loved me. I would whisper it in return...

I opened my eyes, tears falling upon the ground like rain. A storm was brewing and on its way. I curled my numb fingers into my palm. I crawled towards him, unable to tear my gaze away. He looked similar to how he looked when he slept, although his chest remained still like undisturbed water, the beating of his precious heart not breaking the surface. I touched his cheek, brushing his bangs from his face, from his eyes. His skin was like a stone buried in the midst of snow. Stiff and icy. I touched the hilt of the sword, my fingers brushing against the sticky liquid that had clung to it like a coat. I pulled so the sword left Fai's body. His blood tainted the blade and dripped from the end. I raised it to the air and held the point to my throat, breaking my skin slightly like a pinch, poking through my flesh. I winced slightly, but only slightly. I tilted my head backwards, facing the broken ceiling up into the clay grey sky, watching the clouds pass momentarily before pulling the sword slowly backwards, ready to thrust it back into my throat...

"KUROGANE!!!"

A pair of arms flung around mine, stopping the blade short. I felt the tears burst from my eyes as I snapped my eyes open and shut, my breath catching in the back of my throat. I turned to see those eyes staring at me...filled with similar tears. I glanced back round to where Fai's body had once lain to see Masquerade bleeding black ink profusely...

I'M REALLY SORRY IF THIS CHAPTER SUCKS! OR IF ANY OF YOU STOPPED READING DUE TO THE 'DEATH SCENE'.

I thought it would be interesting; see some of your reactions. If this chapter is terrible, let me know and I'll delete it and rewrite it. I'm sorry that this chapter has taken so long and I thank you all for reading so far and continuing your support.

The next and final chapter will be uploaded tomorrow or over the weekend.