Another day, another world, but this one is as empty as it is unnerving.

Rating: Still R.
Pairing: KuroxFai, Sakura x Syaoran
Notes: Continues directly from the last installment. This segment contains brief mentions of infant mortality.

Lady of War part six
(poison me against the moon)

Kurogane had never liked the yanking, twisting sensation of Mokona's world-travel, and that dislike had admittedly intensified with her recent condition. She knew it wasn't the white fluffball's fault, but she felt queasy enough at the best of times nowadays, and as soon as they arrived she tottered away from the group for a few seconds and bent over with her hands on her knees, sucking in huge lungfuls of fresh air through her nose to try and settle some of her nausea.

Mokona landed lightly on her shoulder. "Mokona is sorry," it chirped, and she didn't need to look at it to know its ears were drooping. "Mokona tried to keep it gentle..."

"You did fine, pork bun," Kurogane said through gritted teeth. Fai approached her quietly from her other side and rested one cold hand across the back of her neck, and it was strange how he had no healing magic and yet his touch helped. The queasiness ebbed away and she allowed herself to stand slowly, although he didn't let her go. 'Morning' sickness, yeah right. Midwives in half a dozen worlds had told her the morning sickness usually faded after the first ninety days, but she was one hundred and sixteen days along by her count and it showed no signs of abating.

"I don't think we've been here before," said Syaoran behind her, and she glanced up, taking in their surroundings. Tall trees all around them, concrete path under her boots - skyscrapers standing out through the tree branches, tall but not as tall as the ones in Piffle. Concrete and glass, too; one of the more advanced societies but not excessively so. Wearily she groaned. She hated the smog and traffic that went with these kinds of worlds.

Fai whistled under his breath (causing a thick heap of leaves on the side of the path to temporarily form the shape of a bird taking flight before collapsing back into a pile). Mokona jumped from Kurogane's shoulder to his, and he raised a hand to pet her absently. "How nice," Fai said. "We were running low on supplies, weren't we?"

"We're fine for rations," Kurogane said, glaring at him, but he just smiled that sly smile of his.

This was a subject of much contention between them; Sakura had said they would return to Nihon before their daughter was due, but she hadn't said when, and though the two of them hadn't yet decided if they'd stay - much less mentioned it to Syaoran and Mokona - Fai had gone rather manic finding and collecting various toys and baby equipment from the more civilized worlds before they arrived. There had to be enough parenting-related items sloshing around Mokona's innards to fill a whole room back at Shirasagi, and though Kurogane tried to put her foot down sometimes she just wasn't fast enough to stop the idiot from picking up something new and, inevitably, mortifying.

She pushed down another lazy roiling wave of nausea and shuddered abruptly as the wind picked up, blowing leaves down the path; felt like fingers walking up her spine. Cautiously she glanced up the distant buildings. There seemed something almost off...

"We should take a look around," Syaoran insisted. He glanced back and forth along the path. "Do you think these clothes will make us stand out?"

They were wearing their white travelerﾒs garments. They'd been in Watanuki's Japan last.

"Perhaps the cloaks should go," Fai said after a pause, and Mokona obligingly opened her mouth as they unfastened said cloaks, bundled them up, and tossed them down her gullet. Kurogane sighed heavily as she watched hers disappear; she liked having that layer around her to disguise the fact that her belly was beginning to show. It made her feel self-conscious and defensive. Fai must have noticed, because he touched the back of her hand gently with the tips of his fingers, and when she glanced over at him in surprise he gave a small smile so steeped in affection she could feel herself grinning back without any deliberate choice on her behalf.

Goddamn, it had to be the hormones. There was no fucking way she would be this... this ridiculous otherwise.

"Let's go exploring," said Fai. He shielded his eyes and peered up at the sky. "It's about midafternoon, and we need to find something to eat and somewhere to stay."

Kurogane lifted her head, eyeing the faraway skyscrapers. There was something... aloof about them, something that made her uneasy, and she had always obeyed her instincts. "Wait," she said, and Fai shot her a startled glance before his eyes widened slightly; she watched that same wariness settle across his face as he picked up on her mood, and he stepped subtly to the side, putting himself on the other side of the kid.

"What is it, Kurogane-sensei?" Syaoran asked, his eyebrows drawing together. He shifted, glancing around them, and she hesitated as she tried to explain what it was that had triggered her defensive instincts.

"Can you hear anything? Anything at all?" she queried, and he tilted his head.

"Birds," he said. "I can hear..."

"Nothing else," Fai said quietly. "Kuro-sama has it right. I can't hear any people."

His one gold eye was bright and alert, the pupil slitting vertically as he reached for his vampiric instincts, and his blue eye had turned a sort of greenish shade, on the way to joining it. He was tense all over, and he held Kurogane's gaze for a long second; she nodded slowly, reluctantly.

"Cities like this always have noise, we've learned that by now. So why is it quiet?" She ran the fingers of her artificial hand over her flesh palm, but didn't call Ginryuu out as much as she itched for the comfort of her sword in her hand.

Fai frowned briefly. "We won't know just by standing here. We should go take a look around."

"Fine," Kurogane said, and glanced around at her fellow travelers; Syaoran looked grim, Mokona concerned and Fai... Fai looked serious. "We'll stick together," she decided. "Let's go."

They headed East, away from the sun. Kurogane had Mokona vomit up a compass to be sure. The pork bun was riding on Fai's shoulder, huddled close to him and silent for once. They all felt the strangeness of the atmosphere now that Kurogane had pointed it out, and they'd fallen into their natural scouting formation; wedge-shaped, Kurogane on the left due to it being her right hand she pulled Ginryuu from, Syaoran at point, Fai loping silently at right.

The paths in this urban... garden, if it could be called that - she'd've gone with 'jungle' - were wide and meandering, and it didn't take much debate before they stepped off them. Syaoran had seen a couple of signs around whose writing he could read, but their content was maddeningly unhelpful - 'bike path' and 'turtle pond'.

"This place was landscaped and cultivated," he said, standing on the edge of the body of water labeled 'turtle pond'. "But look... see how overgrown it's gotten? I don't think anybody's been by in a while. Years, probably."

"Maybe this place belonged to the King or Queen of the city and they stopped caring about it?" Mokona offered hopefully.

"Or died," Kurogane said, and Fai shot her a look as the pork bun made a small distressed noise. She cleared her throat and said, somewhat defensively, "It's a strong possibility. Why else would the city be so quiet?"

"I don't know, but we should check outside this garden," Syaoran said, standing up and dusting dirt off his knees. "I saw a signpost along this path directing people to a museum, they're always good sources of information."

"I'm sure," Fai said, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth, and Syaoran grinned sheepishly. His love of museums had led to one or another of his 'parents' having to all but drag him out across numerous worlds.

The museum in question was a tall, graceful building of grey stone, seated at the east end of the odd mid-city jungle. Its entrance was all graceful arched windows and fluted columns, and banners in a variety of colours fluttered from above its raised entrance. Syaoran dutifully read them aloud for the benefit of Kurogane and Fai: "Byzantium, and then at the bottom it says 1261-1557. And that other one says... I think it's a name? 'Ruhlman, art deco?' That one just says 'Picasso'. I don't know what that is."

"What is the museum called, Syaoran-kun?" Fai asked with fond exasperation as they passed a flagpole. A white-and-red-striped flag with a blue box in the corner was fluttering at its tip. Mokona made a small ooh noise as they began to climb the staircase in front of the museum, tipping her small round body back as she tried to stare up at the bulk of the building until she lost her balance and tumbled off Fai's shoulder into his hood; Kurogane reached into it and pulled her out.

"The Metropolitan Museum of Art," Syaoran read off a plaque next to the doors. He reached out and pressed his fingers against the glass of the doors. There was a poster stuck there from the other side, featuring one word in large bold type. Someone had hand-written something underneath it in spidery, wobbly lines. "Um. It says 'closed', but someone's written..."

He leaned forward, scrunching his nose up. "Don't squint," Kurogane ordered. "It's bad for your eyes."

"Kuro-daddy is being protective~!" Mokona sing-songed in her hand, and she sighed deeply and tossed the pork bun lightly at Fai, who caught her in his cupped hands.

"It says 'Captain Trips was here,'" Syaoran finished, sounding baffled. "I wonder if that's a person or a slang term? It seems to imply familiarity... What I wouldn't give for a library, or an encyclopedia..."

"If you had one of those we wouldn't see you until it was time to leave," Fai said. He leaned against the glass, absently putting Mokona back on his shoulder as he cupped his palm around his eye and peered in through the door past the sign. "Odd... A big museum like this, I wonder why it closed...?"

"Does it matter?" Kurogane asked gruffly. "Let's keep moving. No answers here."

"Wait," said Fai, in an entirely different tone of voice. "I think... I think I see someone."

"You do?" Syaoran ducked his head, trying to peer around the poster too. "Where?"

"Behind the desk. A foot..." Fai took a step back, crooking his neck to glance along the doors, and then huffed out a breath. "Kuro-sama?" She narrowed her eyes at him. He gestured at the glass doors. "Could you...?"

She studied his face for a long time. His eyes were both gold and his expression was solemn; he shared her suspicions. With a terse nod she brought her hand to her flesh palm and called upon the magic he'd implanted in her veins; Ginryuu slid neatly forth with no apparent difficulty, and Fai grabbed the kid by the shoulder and tugged him out of the way as she roared hama ryuu-ou jin!

The blast shattered every pane of glass in the doors and knocked out some of the windows too, and she lowered her sword and allowed herself a moment of smugness. She hadn't used her family ability for a while, and it felt good to know she had just as much control and power behind it as she always had. Normally Fai would have clapped for her and wolf-whistled her in his teasing way, but instead he ducked his head and carefully stepped into the museum through the gaping door, Syaoran on his heels.

"Keep an eye out for any information you can, Syaoran-kun," he said, the glass shards crunching under his boots. Syaoran bent down, sifting the debris out of the way, and picked up one of the posters, his eyebrows drawing together as he examined it.

"This is very well-preserved," he said, as Fai rounded the desks and stopped. Kurogane pushed past him and stalked across the museum foyer to join her lover to check the state of the person he'd seen.

"So is she," Fai said, and the dead woman was. Her skin was dry and papery; Kurogane knelt down and crooked her head, staring at the way her flesh was drawn over withered limbs. She was lying on her side, one arm curled under her head presumably as a pillow, and she was wearing a salmon-coloured suit jacket and skirt. Leather flatheeled shoes hung off her drawn feet.

"The air in this place," Kurogane said, glancing up at the walls. "It's filtered, like in Piffle. Probably to protect whatever was inside it."

"Of course! President Daidouji told me they run special air filters in Piffle libraries to preserve the books, they must have been doing the same thing here!" The glass rustled as Syaoran made his way over to the desks.

"The way she's lying," Mokona said anxiously. "She looks like she went to sleep..."

There was a bottle loosely clutched in the corpse's skeletal fingers. Kurogane leaned forward and pried it free, then passed it to Fai, who frowned at it briefly before calling out to Syaoran and tossing it over to him. "NyQuil," Syaoran read. "I think it's the name of the contents? It looks like a drug. Let's see, the ingredients list..." He turned it over in his hand and proceeded to rattle off a list of strange words that made Kurogane wonder temporarily if Mokona's translation ability had faded. "It's a decongestant. Like, for a cold."

"Daidouji-san said they had medicines to treat cold symptoms in her world," Fai said. "But if colds were frequent enough amongst the citizens here for them to make and distribute drugs to ease the symptoms, a cold wouldn't have been what killed her."

Kurogane frowned. "She was wearing a badge. See?" She unclipped it from the lapel of the woman's coat and Syaoran came over to take it himself. "That means she was an employee, right?"

"Lisa Brennan, Senior Curator," Syaoran read. "She ran this whole museum. Someone should have seen her before."

"Unless there was nobody left to look," Kurogane said grimly and Mokona whimpered. Syaoran looked concerned, but Fai wore a look that could well have been a mirror of her own. She glanced back to the corpse and paused. Something there was...

She leaned forward to look at the dead woman's mummified face in order to confirm her suspicions. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken, the bones beneath jutting up sharply against her worn skin; her hands were long and similarly withered, but her throat... "Wizard," she said sharply, and Fai crouched beside her. She picked up a shard of glass. "See this?" She pushed the corpse's stringy hair out of the way, exposing the swollen ring of the woman's throat, and glanced at Fai; both of his eyes widened in surprise, the pupils visibly slitting, and he physically flinched away from the woman. Kurogane raised an eyebrow.

"Plague," he said.

The word was like magic; Syaoran cried out and recoiled and Kurogane stood upright instantly. They all came from feudal words; she didn't know about the kid but Kurogane had seen plague once before and she remembered it vividly. Fai's fingernails slid out silently, but she saw how they were shaking minutely against the woman's clothes as he reached out to press his fingers against her throat, pushing against the swelling. "Don't -"

"I'm a vampire, Kuro-sama," he said without looking up. "I'm immune. You should be too, thanks to Mokona."

"Mokona is a panacea," the fuzzball whispered. Her ears were drooping. "One of her hundred and eight techniques is keeping her friends free of disease."

"That makes sense," Syaoran said thoughtfully. "Otherwise everywhere we went we'd be getting sick from new world's illnesses, or we'd be introducing new sicknesses that we are immune to but other worlds would never have experienced before."

"Yes." Fai stood up slowly, his gaze staying on the corpse. His fingernails did not retract. "She was probably sick for a while, but she came into work to put up those closing signs. Then she stopped to rest, and she didn't..."

He glanced over at the gaping doorframes.

"We should go back to the forest," he said. "And keep away from the city."

"We're going to need food," Kurogane reminded him sharply.

"I'll get it," he said. "It's fine for me. I'll see what I can find in the city. "You three go set up camp. And no matter what you do, Syaoran-kun, Kuro-sama -"

Syaoran swallowed. "Yes?"

"Don't leave Mokona," Fai said in a voice that brooked no argument. He made his way over to the desk and rummaged on its surface; sheets of yellowing paper, glossy pamphlets, pencils. He retrieved a couple of pens and made his way back to them, then raised a hand. His claws glistened like razors in the light, but Kurogane didn't say anything as she watched him draw spiraling runes of blue fire in the air, streams of words that settled around the pens. His serious expression worried her.

"You gonna be okay?" she asked as he held out one of the pens, grabbing his wrist, and he glanced at her in surprise. His pupils were still feline. He normally had more control of himself than this, she thought, and stroked her thumb along his pulse point, watching as his features softened.

"I think so," he said, and pressed the pen into her palm. "There. It's a compass. Simply hold it like so..." He demonstrated. "And it will automatically point toward mine and vice versa. I'll use it to find you when I have food."

"Mokona has rations," Mokona said anxiously. "You don't have to go."

Fai smiled for her and petted her, then transferred her to Kurogane's shoulder. "We don't know how long we'll be here, Mokona-chan," he said. "We don't know if we have enough food to last. I'll be back as soon as I can, okay?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You better be, idiot," she said, but she didn't think she sounded convincing and he smiled at her crookedly before balancing himself on the balls of his feet and leaning up to kiss her. It was something he rarely did in front of Syaoran, and she tightened her grip on his wrist and kissed him back, mindful of the way her stomach pressed gently against him.

"Whee, Kuro-daddy and Fai-mommy, sitting in a tree -"

Kurogane broke the kiss and let him go, swatting absently at Mokona on her shoulder; Syaoran had his hands in his pockets and was absently staring at one of the windows they'd broken. "Tch. C'mon, kid. Let's go."

She didn't look back as they descended the stairs, Ginryuu clutched firmly in her flesh hand and Syaoran trotting at her side, but even though she couldn't feel it, she was very aware of the magical compass-pen clenched in her prosthetic's fist. It gave her a measure of comfort.

The urban forest - 'Central Park,' Syaoran said, based off a signpost he found - seemed much more welcoming when they stepped inside it. Maybe it was because there was something terrifying about people dead in what should be their homes, but a natural environment like this - even if it was modified and sculpted - seemed less eerie. There were still animals around; Kurogane caught sight of a creature not wholly dissimilar to the hawks of her own country sitting on a low-hanging tree branch watching them. Syaoran, of course, was in full anthropologist mode despite the lack of humans.

"... industrialized worlds like this one do have a prohibitive effect on natural predators, who are often displaced or exterminated to preserve humanity's place at the top of the food chain," he was saying earnestly. "Most of the worlds we've encountered have been running conservation programs. I wonder if these hawks were a part of that?"

"Who knows?" Kurogane grunted. Her thoughts were on Fai, an entirely different predator. He seemed so sure his vampire blood rendered him immune independently of Mokona, and she hoped so. She remembered how the pair of them had spent a good two weeks in Yama sick as dogs, sweating and feverish with some local illness. Now she thought about it, that was the only time she'd caught sick since Tomoyo had sent her forth from Nihon.

"It's just interesting," Syaoran continued in his best now-I've-gotten-started voice. "That those worlds without people best reveal the effect humanity has on its environments, I mean. Look at how much bluer the sky is than the other early-to-medium industrial worlds we've visited!"

Kurogane crooked her head back and squinted. "Nihon was bluer," she said, and he laughed.

"Well, yes. But still."

For a while he didn't say anything as she made her way along the path, keeping an eye out for a good camping site. Occasionally she dipped into her other sight, doing a sweep for nearby auras, but all she could sense was wildlife. When Syaoran spoke again a good fifteen minutes had elapsed. "Do you miss it?"

"Say what, kid?"

"Nihon. Your home world."

She snorted. "Of course I do," she said. "But it's not going anywhere."

He was watching her gravely. "You must be looking forward to raising your daughter in your home world."

At that she slowed to a stop and turned toward him, and he met her gaze unblinkingly. "I never said that," she said slowly. "The mage and I discussed it, and your wife said we would return, but we don't know yet if we're going to stay. Don't assume things, kid."

"Tsubasa... that is, Sakura thinks you will," he said quietly, and she narrowed her eyes. "Kurogane-sensei, I..." He gestured at their surroundings helplessly. "Is this what you want to be doing always?"

"I said I'd accompany you," she said. "So did the wizard. That hasn't changed, kid."

"I know. I know! And... thank you. I appreciate it. But this life isn't really one for a family, is it?"

She felt something touch her belly and glanced down sharply to see she had rested her artificial hand across it, the enchanted pen-compass resting lightly across the swell there. She didn't remember moving that limb. "Kid..."

"Mokona thinks Kuro-daddy should settle down at home," Mokona said. "With Fai-mommy and the baby and all the other babies!"

"All the - what?"

"Mokona thinks this won't be the only one!" The pork bun leaped off her shoulder, bouncing off Syaoran's chest and clinging to Kurogane's hand. "Mokona thinks Fai-mommy will be the best mommy. And that Kuro-daddy will be okay."

"'Okay'?" Kurogane repeated, amused, and Syaoran smiled at her crookedly. "Good dose of confidence there, pork bun."

"It's better than travelling," Syaoran said. "Through dead worlds and danger. I'm sure Mokona and I will be passing through Nihon in the future... we're no closer to finding what we're after, after all." There was sadness in the edges of his mouth and eyes, and Kurogane grunted and dropped a heavy hand on top of his head, mussing up his hair. He winced in protest.

"Listen," she said, dumping Mokona on his shoulder, "The mage and I will talk about it, okay? But let's be honest, between the three of us, we can keep her safe from anything, kid."

His eyebrows drew together and she leaned away from him, letting her hand fall to her side and shifting Ginryuu's weight as she headed down the path. He trotted to catch up with her. "But Kurogane-sensei -"

"I said we'll talk about it later."

"But what about the baby's health? If she grows up never being exposed to any illnesses then she might die the instant she leaves Mokona's company in any world!"

She shot him a glare out of the edges of her eyes. "Don't do this," she warned him, but he ignored her.

"Or - or development. Babies need a large social unit, humans are social creatures. Constantly moving around may affect her personality and make it harder for her to form genuine emotional attachments!"

"Kid."

"Syaoran, the languages," Mokona said loudly. "Tell Kuro-daddy about the languages!"

"You too, pork bun?" Kurogane glowered at it, but it did not look suitably cowed.

Syaoran was nodding enthusiastically. "Yes, of course - the languages. Kurogane-sensei, what with everything being translated automatically, maybe she won't ever learn a language at all, because you think you'll be teaching her Nihongo and I'll think I'm teaching her the language of Clow and Fai-san will be teaching her... whatever it is Fai speaks, and all she hears is, I don't know, baby -"

"Shut up," Kurogane moaned, drawing to a stop. "What is with you two?"

"We want mini-Kuro to be healthy," Mokona insisted, and Kurogane's eyebrows drew together. "Mini-Kuro is what we've decided to call her, me and Larg and Watanuki -"

"Oi -"

"I just think you should put her first," Syaoran said loudly and firmly. She glared at him, but he didn't look away. "I'm worried that you're... that you're too loyal, Kurogane-sensei."

She glared at him, her fists clenching around Ginryuu's hilt and Fai's compass. Part of her wanted to deck him for that, but with her hands full it was hard. She didn't want to listen to it anymore, either way. "Changed my mind," she said, through gritted teeth, and turned her hand over, unclenching her fingers so the pen rested on her palm; it jittered and then swung north-east, its nib moving slowly toward north. "I'm going to find the wizard."

She didn't call him the idiot because right now she felt Syaoran truly deserved that nickname more; he was gaping at her. "What? But he said you had to stay with us!"

"Better come with me then," she said, pivoting on her heel and marching as quick as she could in the direction of the vampire, and grinned to herself when she heard him scramble to catch up with her.

Let him try being annoying on the topic of her kid with the speed she'd be holding.

The street running along the east side of this 'Central Park' was, according to Syaoran and a signpost, named 'Fifth Avenue'. It was wide and shady, lined with both trees and the shiny brightly-coloured metal boxes that were called cars. Kurogane walked north right through the centre of the road, her eyes on the compass pen on her palm and her senses alerted for any sound, but the only sound there was that of the trees blowing in the wind and their own footsteps.

"They would have tried to clean up the bodies," Syaoran said behind her. "That's why we haven't seen any. In the beginning they would have tried to clean up their dead, and then by the time there was nobody left alive who was healthy enough to do that most people would have..."

"Gone home to die," Kurogane finished for him, glancing up at the tall buildings. She'd always thought the people in these 'cities' lived unhealthily.

It was a long road, and Kurogane's feet ached - seemed she got tired easier nowadays, and she was starting grumpily to come to terms with that. She really wanted to know where her idiot wizard was. Didn't seem to be a whole bunch of places here to buy food. The compass on her palm swung gently as she walked, until she stopped by a building near the end to find it pointing dead-on at that building. She craned her head back, peering at it.

"Fai-mommy's in there?" Mokona was riding on her shoulder; it seemed reluctant to leave her.

"Apparently," she said. "Come on."

The bottom door had been locked, but Fai had obviously sliced it open with his claws, and it opened at her touch. It was heavy, though, heavier than a door ought to be, and though she really hated the idea of being wedged into a building with the dead she couldn't find anything in the lobby beyond to hold it open.

"He's somewhere in this building," she said, walking past the shiny metal doors that led no doubt to one of those evil little boxes and instead tugging open another door on the other side of the room that led to a staircase. "Want to alternate floors?"

Syaoran nodded. "I'll take the first floor up."

"Pork bun, go with him," she said, in no mood to put up with either of them, and though they both protested she was insistent. Syaoran left her at the first doorway, and she kept climbing.

She found Fai on the fourth floor. He was kind of hard to miss, sitting in the corridor as soon as she opened the doorway, his back to the wall and his hands on his bent knees. He had his face turned away from her. Opposite him was the body of a little boy, less well-preserved than the corpse in the museum. He was mostly skeletal.

"Wizard," she said quietly, and he lifted his head although he wouldn't look at her. His eyes were glowing faintly gold. Carefully she let the staircase door close behind her and made her way down the corridor. "Wizard, what the hell...?"

"I found him," Fai said; his voice sounded distant and soft. "In that apartment, there." He pointed. "He was... laying on the kitchen floor. His parents were dead in their bedroom, next to each other on the bed."

"Wizard," she said, and then, "Fai."

"They died of the plague, I think," he said, ignoring her. "But this boy didn't. He was surrounded by tins of food, some quite badly damaged. I think he was immune, but..." He shrugged. "He was too small to get out of the apartment. And he didn't know how to get to the tins. There was a chair by the cupboards, you understand? I think he dragged it there and climbed up to get to the tins, and then he started dropping them to break them open. Over and over... but he couldn't get inside."

Kurogane crouched carefully next to him. His eyes were unfocused, his hands gripping his knees tightly. His fingernails at least were normal. "Hey," she said, touching his wrist lightly; he didn't shake her off but he didn't respond either. He was stiff and unyielding under her hand. "Oi, listen -"

"I think he fell," he said, giving no sign he'd heard her. "That was probably what killed him. He fell and fell and fell, and he hit his head... see how the skull there is dented? And so, even though he survived the plague that killed his parents, he died anyway." He scraped his nails across the fabric of his trousers with a noise that set Kurogane's teeth faintly on edge. "He must not have been very scared. At least, not until he fell.

"Perhaps he was when his parents first died. That's always shocking, you understand, the first time you have to be around a body, but with sufficient distraction... like hunger... you move on. It's ruthless, but it's true. No matter how important the bodies are they become just bodies, and you ignore them as best you can in favour of your goal... or use them, sometimes..."

Kurogane stared at him, feeling an icy creep of recognition in her stomach. "Like you in that pit," she said, and his gaze snapped toward her, his eyes wide and gold and lost.

"Yes," he said in a cold distant voice, and then transferred his stare back to the little corpse. "Yes. Hunger changes your priorities. Mine was always Fai, though. Hungry and cold, but Fai was counting on me and I... I said we'd get out, I meant it... I always meant to get him out... The only other living thing amongst the dead..."

She cast a glance around for something to distract him and stopped. Ginryuu's hilt in her hand gleamed silver; a sign. Quietly she changed her sword to her left hand leaned forward and took his chin in her flesh fingers. "You're not there anymore, idiot," she said. "See? I'm here."

He didn't look at her and she gritted her teeth. She wasn't out of options yet, although she didn't think he'd like this one. Slowly, deliberately, she wedged Ginryuu between her thighs and brought the back of her wrist to its carefully honed blade; one quick scratch later - she hissed between her teeth - and a line of brilliant red blood sprung up, the colour seemingly brighter than ever in this dingy charnel house.

Fai's gaze snapped to her injury immediately, and relief tugged a grin out of the edges of her mouth. She hadn't been entirely sure that would work, although she had hoped so.

When they had discovered Fai's vampire blood hadn't ever really gone away, it had been a source of mild annoyance following the demise of Fei Wang Reed, and both of them had given his new condition very little thought. The return of his eye hadn't been sufficient to cure it, but Yuuko had never exactly promised that it would, especially since he'd already traded away the magic of his other eye. Syaoran's clone had strengthened the magic of that one blue eye to the point where he didn't need to feed as often as he had - fortnightly, possibly less depending on how much magic he was willing to expend.

That had changed when he discovered she was pregnant. He'd sworn off her blood entirely, worried about damaging her or the baby, and by now he was starving. He was careful still, but his hands shook as they circled her arm, and his tongue was greedy as he swiped up as much of her blood as he could, his eyes losing their glow as he drank and began to calm down. The cut didn't bleed much - it was shallow compared to her usual wounds - but her blood was doing its job, and she watched him with narrow, thoughtful eyes as he licked the last traces of it up with a red, red tongue and then carefully folded her sleeve over it.

"Enough?" she said.

"No," he said. "But I don't want any more."

"Good," she said, and balled her hand into a fist and thwacked him solidly upside the head. "Idiot. I should never have let you go wandering."

His gaze was as guilty as it was sad. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think..."

"Yeah," she said, and sighed. "I know. Listen, idiot. Feel this?"

She took his hand and moved it over her pulse, and watched the way blue began to swirl back into his left eye with satisfaction. "Yes," he said.

"You're not the only living thing in a graveyard anymore," she said, and that did the trick; his pupils were round and normal, his eyes their usual shade of mix and match.

"Kuro-sama," he said quietly.

"I'm here," she said. "Syaoran and Mokona are searching the other floors on this building for you, so we should probably go find them. But right now, I'm here. So's the b-" Kurogane swallowed. Even now she felt she couldn't say the word 'baby,' aloud, like it carried some curse, some hint of bad luck. It was a stupid superstition. "The brat," she managed instead, and added, "and you choose whether I mean the older one or the new one."

"You really need to start calling people by name, Kuro-sama," he said softly. His eyes were on her belly, and he reached out a hand to touch; she let him, because, well, the baby was as much his as hers. His palm was warm and light. "So small..."

She pulled a face. "Big enough," she said grumpily, staring down at the way his hand curved. He grinned at her, but it was a flicker-flash of a grin, darting across his face and vanishing soon after. "Listen..."

"In Ceres," he said. "It was fairly common for a lot of mothers to lose children. Before they were born, or while they were small. To plague, or sickness, or accidents. Or sometimes even worse, babies would just... die in their cradles, and nobody ever knew why." She tensed and he drew in a breath. "I kept... I looked at him, at that kid, and I kept seeing our child, Kuro-sama. Is sickness common in Nihon?"

"Not common, but yes," she replied quietly.

"I hope she has my blood," he said, with sudden fierceness. "Mage blood would grant some protection from illness. I -" He let go. "This matters to me."

"To me too, mage," she said.

He swallowed and nodded. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I can't... sometimes I just don't. Just don't know what to do. But I want to try, for her and for you."

His gaze was painfully unsure, but it was focused. She sighed and reached out, tucking a strand of his hair behind his ear. "Idiot," she said with as much gentleness as she had in her, which didn't feel like very much at all. "You're already doing fine. Are you going to keep this up for much longer?"

Fai blinked at her. "Maybe."

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Look, mage, you know I..."

She cut her gaze away, squirming. She hated talking. Fai smiled abruptly and raised her arm, pressing his lips gently to the back of her hand in a gesture that wouldn't have been out of place between him and Sakura, and she stared at him in surprise. "Don't worry, Kuro-sama," he said, and set his other hand briefly back against her abdomen; she covered it with her own, pinning it in place. "I know. Thank you."

"Okay," she said, fumbling for something else to say. "Well. Okay then. Just so we're clear."

"We're clear," he assured her, and smiled. "I love you."

"... You too, dumbass," she groaned, and he tipped his head back and laughed. Flushed she tugged her hand free. "C'mon," she said, rubbing at her face - was it hot in here or was she blushing? She really hoped the former. "Let's go find the kid and the pork bun."

He didn't look at the body of the child as they climbed to their feet, and she paused at the door to grab his sleeve. "We'll talk later," she said, and watched as he nodded.

There were things that needed to be said.

Syaoran didn't seem to realise anything had gone wrong when they retrieved him - on the eleventh floor of the apartment block and looking rather concerned - and was merely grateful to get away. All of them agreed it would be wiser to rely on Mokona's rations until they left the world rather than root around in the homes of the dead, and they returned to Central Park and build a campfire there on the banks of one of the lakes. There was a manmade gazebo there, but all of them kept away from it. The world felt unwelcoming, with its collection of unseen bodies.

Syaoran had found some newspapers stashed in secret places, and he brought them with him to the lakeside, narrating the end of this world to Kurogane, who couldn't care less, and Fai, who was ignoring him as politely as possible. Privately Kurogane thought whoever had run the newspapers was an idiot. They reported that a mysterious illness was coming, but constantly downplayed it.

"To avoid making people afraid, I think," Fai said absently. He had a pot of water going over a campfire and was boiling some vegetables from two worlds ago that were no doubt alien to this world. "If people knew there was no hope they might have panicked."

"Would it have mattered?" Kurogane demanded. "Whatever this bug was -"

"'Captain Trips,' this paper says they called it," Syaoran offered. Kurogane hmphed and waved it away.

"It killed everyone anyway. Would a panic really have changed anything?"

"No," Fai said, peeling one of the strange vegetables with his talons. "But perhaps they were hoping for more survivors. People seldom act until it's too late, and when they do, they are too weak to do anything."

He tossed the peelings away and threw the vegetable into the pot before sighing deeply. His ponytail was loose and several long hanks had fallen out of it; a breeze across the lake sent his hair flying around his face. Kurogane wondered if he was thinking of the people of Valeria, cut down by his uncle, or of Ceres, destroyed by his adoptive father. "It doesn't matter now," she said. "We're leaving soon anyway."

His gaze cut up to hers and he smiled briefly. "We can only hope."

The soup turned out to be pretty damn good, and she and Syaoran ate their fill, although she suspected the kid was deliberately holding back to let her have the lion's share. Fai had poured out a portion for Mokona too, although like him food seemed to be optional for her. After the meal Fai firmly but gently sent both of them to bed, and went to the edges of the camp to sit on a log and gaze out over the water, the ripples sent scudding toward him by the breeze. She joined him after a moment's hesitation.

"How do you feel?" he asked as she sat.

"Fine."

"Kuro-sama."

"Nauseous and tired," she admitted. "And my ankles hurt. This is your fault."

He smiled ruefully at that. "Partially. There were two of us there, as I recall." He let out a long breath. "I'm not sorry, though. Well, I'm sorry for not being sorry, if that helps."

"No." She paused and then leaned against him; not into him, but enough that he could feel her presence. He glanced at her sharply and then smiled. "Listen, I wanted to talk to you..."

Fai raised an eyebrow. "About?"

"Kids," she said, and then, "In Nihon." At his quizzical look she cleared her throat. "Look, I... I promised my Princess I'd go home someday, and I..."

"Syaoran spoke to you, huh," he said, his face softening, and she grinned despite herself. "He cornered me two days ago. I didn't want to say anything until you did."

She tilted her head to one side and touched the back of his hand with her prosthetic fingers. "Would you be okay with that, wizard? Going back to my world and... and leaving the kid?"

Fai slanted her a brief smile. "He's not really a kid anymore, Kuro-sama," he said softly. "He's married now, and adult enough to decide if he needs company. That's a 'yes,' by the way. I'll go home with you. And our daughter."

Kurogane nodded. "Okay," she said. She didn't know how to express how she felt at that - that simple reassurance, that they would be together, that she would have him and that their baby would be born on the same world she had been born on, that she would have that... "Good."

"I'm looking forward to it," Fai said quietly, and she huffed and glared at the water of the lake. "I liked your Princess."

She pulled a face. "I know you did," she said in a hoarse voice tinged with grumpiness despite herself, and he threw his head back and chuckled low and deep in his chest. She elbowed him sharply.

"It's okay, Kuro-sama," he said, and turned his hand over to clasp her prosthetic, his fingers twining with hers; she watched the contrast of skin colour there and smiled. "I liked you more."

"Idiot," she said, pleased despite herself. She reached across with her free hand on impulse and slid her two fingers along his jaw, tugging him up toward her, and he came willingly; his lips were dry and scratchy against hers and she could sense his surprise - she didn't always initiate this - but she didn't care. He tasted like salt and blood, and it was kind of gross. She didn't mind the blood drinking, but the after taste was strange, and when they parted she pulled a face and rubbed at her mouth with her sleeve; his eyes softened.

"Sorry," he said quietly. He glanced out across the lake. "I didn't want to have to do that."

She frowned at him. "I'm fine," she said. "And so's the... the thing."

"This time," he said firmly, and she sighed deeply. "I don't want to hurt either of you, Kuro-sama. I can go without as long as I can keep using magic." He touched the skin under his blue eye gently and she folded her arms across her chest. He tilted his head and smiled at her, a bright, sincere smile that matched his bright blue eye. "It won't kill me, Kuro-sama. Didn't I tell you that I wouldn't do a thing like that anymore?"

And well, how was she supposed to reply to that, if not by fisting her hand in his collar and hauling him in for another kiss?

The air was soft and still, and though this world was gone and forgotten, in this small campfire in the middle of the dead city there was heat and there was life, and Kurogane wound her arms around her mate and smiled into the soft silk of his hair, and though she felt his hand gentle on her stomach it wasn't the baby she meant when she thought:

We made this.

-fin

Notes: Yes, this world was the New York of Stephen King's The Stand. :)

Every notice how each installment is longer than the last? I should do something about that.