This was written for bottan in response to my Timestamp/Where Are They Now meme, where people could choose a story and request to see what happens five years later. I figured I might as well post it up as an epilogue here too.

Youou watched anxiously as the ritual completed, as the last hints of blue drained from Fai's eyes. He'd been warned this would happen, but it was still startling to see the familiar sky-clear color be replaced with the brilliant strange of gold. The expression on his face seemed to drain away with it, the normal happy glow that lit his face when he looked at Youou being replaced with a blank wary mask.

"There," he said abruptly, standing and pulling the small toad statue the Witch had given him out of Fai's hands. The stone was stained dark with Fai's blood - necessary, to transfer the spell from his blood to the talisman - but Youou felt a sudden urge to throw it away, smash it against a nearby tree. Only the Witch's warning about what would happen if the magic were released stayed his hand. "It's done. You're free."

He thought he'd been prepared for this moment, but how could he be, really? He had no idea how Fai would react, to being released of the magic that had held him in thrall for three fucking years. He knew he'd been pissed, when it had been him. But he was different from that bastard Fei Wong Reed. Wasn't he?

Fai didn't say anything, at least not at first. He drew in on himself, rubbing his hands along his arms as though he were cold. "Feels... strange," he said. His teeth chattered.

"I'll get you a blanket," Youou offered immediately. He came back with the blanket, draping it over the vampire's shoulders; Fai blinked up at him in dazed surprise. Those gold eyes, they still looked so wrong in his face... no, Youou berated himself; the blue had been wrong. This was Fai's true self now, the first time that the two of them had ever truly come face to face.

"I'm sorry," he blurted out, unable to bear the straining tension any more. "Can you - Do you hate me?"

"Wha?" Fai shook his head in incomprehension.

"For - never mind," Youou said. It was obviously too soon to press his contrition on Fai, who was in no state to absolve him. "Never mind. Get some sleep, Fai."

With that proclamation, Youou turned and walked away, seating himself on the other side of the campfire.

"Youou."

He heard a noise behind him, and did a double-take. Fai had stood and come around the campfire - of course, he didn't have to obey Youou's thoughtless order to sleep.

"Why would I hate you?" Fai said again, his voice clearer and gentler than before.

"Because..." Youou looked down at the ground, his hands gripping the stone between them so tightly as to be painful. "I enslaved you," he said, his voice as harsh and bleak as the rock he held.

Fai sighed, and came to sit beside Youou, stumbling slightly as he lowered himself; so unlike the vampire's usual pale grace.

"Youou," Fai began after a few minutes; to order his thoughts, perhaps. "I know I... answered many of your questions about my people; who we are, how we live. But there are many questions you never would have thought to ask, and so I never told you.

"Thralldom is nothing new to my people, Youou. It's in our nature - the nature of the bond between us and our prey, between masters and mates. It... we have spent hundreds of years refining our culture, our customs, to regulate the bonds of control and consent among us."

Youou couldn't help but flush at the 'mates' comment, remembering some nights on the trail - cold, lonely nights when he hadn't been able to resist Fai's seductive entreaties any more.

"What you think of as 'slavery' isn't inherently offensive or bad among my people," Fai continued. "There's nothing evil about being a master, and nothing humiliating about being a slave. You, a human.. You're not one of my people, you don't know our customs and ways, but you were... a good master, respectful and kind. And I entered into thralldom to you willingly, knowing what the consequences would be.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Youou," he said, meeting Youou's eyes levelly with his own hard, golden gaze. "I am not sorry that I spent three years as yours."

He stopped and waited in silence. Youou took a deep breath, mustering his own determination - this was something he'd thought of long before, but never said aloud. "Let me - repay you," he said.

"What?" Fai blinked, bemused and startled.

"You have your ways. I have mine," Youou said, forcing himself to look Fai in the eye. "And debts and obligations must be repaid. You spent three years as my slave, among humans - now it's my turn to spend three years as yours, among your people."

He sat there, waiting for an answer, until his nerve almost broke - and then Fai laughed.

It was at once a sound that was strange and unfamiliar; he looked up in shock to see Fai's gold eyes dancing in the firelight. "Oh, Youou," Fai said. "You have no idea what you're offering. To live among my people, as my thrall -"

"I'm not afraid," Youou insisted, clenching his fist. "Besides," he said more quietly. "My home is destroyed, my enemy is dead - I have nowhere else to go."

Fai had begun to speak, but then he stopped, closing his mouth and giving Youou a piercing look. "Well then, Youou," he said, "let us travel together a little bit longer, at least long enough to reach my home. When you know more about what you are asking, then we'll see."

Finally he stood up, and reached down to take Youou's hands, pull him uncompromisingly to his feet. Youou followed, eyeing Fai warily; this was a new man, no longer subservient or docile, with his own will and his own agenda.

Youou thought he could get used to this.

~end.

Author's notes: In Fai's vampire culture, exchanging mutual periods of thralldom is akin to a vow of marriage. *grin* Which is why he's saying that Kurogane doesn't know what he's asking.