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rallamajoopNote to self: There was a reason you used to limit these to 2000 words per chapter rather than three times that much, and it had a lot to do with that being a nice, comfortable sort of total to deal with on a weekly basis while maintaining your sanity, general wellbeing, keeping up with other commitments etc. Also, endings are hard, but you already knew that.
On the other hand, being six thousand words closer to the ending which is right on top of you all in one post is just about worth it. *_*
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Side Story 1
Doumeki hesitated just beyond the doorway and had to make himself remember Kurogane’s directions. They’d been simple enough, but buildings like this weren’t familiar territory to him and something about all these enclosed corridors was disorienting. However, Syaoran surged on past him to the first corner, confident as if he’d lived here all his life – or a lifetime ago. Doumeki wondered whether that helped.
It was a bit late to wonder whether either of them knew what they were getting into, but on short acquaintance with Tomoyo it wasn’t too much to guess that the only way to beat her at her own game was to raise the stakes.
The reality was that he didn’t know whether this was going to work. It was a long shot based entirely on an incident when Watanuki, while trying to account for why his scavenging missions turned bad so fast when Doumeki left the camp, had once said something about Doumeki repelling evil spirits, or to be more exact, that the kind that only wanted to make trouble wouldn’t go anywhere near him. He could remember that conversation word for word, for all the good it did him when there hadn’t been nearly enough information for Doumeki to understand what it meant. He hadn’t been born on any special day, didn’t have any unusual powers that he’d ever been aware of. Even Watanuki probably couldn’t have told him whether this was would work the way he needed it to now (though he almost definitely would have called Doumeki a suicidal moron for considering risking this, which wouldn’t have been all that unfair). But he’d sounded awed when he’d spoken about it, reluctant to attribute such a power to Doumeki; reluctant to admit it existed at all. Doumeki had no way to be certain quite what sort of trump card he was carrying, but this had to be worth a shot.
The door took some finding, if only because it didn’t look much like a door in any sense Doumeki was familiar with – no handles or hinges, just a wide, sunken panel set in a recess in the wall, but it did have the promised access panel – similar in design to the one they’d seen on the trapdoor outside. An indentation in the bottom looked like the jack they’d been directed to find. Syaoran looked up at Doumeki expectantly.
Doumeki stuck a hand in his pocket, finding the angular edges of Fye’s device with his fingers. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. For all their show of bravado in Tomoyo’s presence, Syaoran didn’t have the slightest idea why he had thought either of them could make it through this. Doumeki was taking enough of a gamble on his own part; there was no reason to assume that protection might extend to Syaoran too.
“I could ask you the same,” Syaoran returned.
“I’m not sure,” Doumeki admitted. “She wasn’t exaggerating the danger. At the last two places I saw where the ghosts were made this angry, no-one survived.”
“I’ve done it before,” said Syaoran. He sounded perfectly matter of fact.
That wasn’t anything Doumeki could have expected, but it was, he reflected, turning into a day for that sort of surprise. “Something you just remembered?”
Syaoran nodded. “Something like this happened to Sakura, a long time ago.”
“It’s not just Sakura in there this time,” Doumeki pointed out.
“I know. It might not work the same way this time, but I have to try.” He looked up at Doumeki, suddenly very open. “You’re counting on something too, aren’t you?”
In lieu of an answer, Doumeki pulled Fye’s device out, slotted it home, and waited.
***
Chi had never been inside a Complex before. Fye had salvaged the form she wore from and old persocom model he’d found on a junk heap in the first days he’d spent alone in the deadlands; her first real memories came after that, once she’d been rebuilt. However, the core components were the ones he and his brother had smuggled away in secret long before, and those had recorded more than just key codes and protocols; there were records of the Complex that to Chi were as good a sense memory. More than enough to make this place feel too familiar to be very disorienting. Here there were more computers than she’d ever been aware existed before – like old friends. Like family.
Welcome home, they whispered to her.
No, she whispered back. This isn’t home. The deadlands are home. Fye is home. Kurogane and the others are home.
The chatter grew less coherent, some voices repeating the welcome home, some buzzing with questions, who is Fye? or what is Kurogane? and can you hear? but Chi let it all wash over herself, computer dreams and static. She did what she had been built to do; she sat and listened, and she waited until a message came through that she needed to hear. And that was what she went on doing until a message came through that was just for her. Fye had come. And he had a task for her: a doorway and a place to meet.
In a darkened lab room that should have been locked tight, Chi opened her eyes and got to her feet, delicately pulling two useless data jamming devices from her ears. Home she whispered quietly, and there was a buzzing from some of the others that may have been just a little like jealousy.
***
When the shapes of the two boys had vanished down the corridor, Tomoyo made one last attempt at her variety of reason. “Are you sure it is alright to let them go?” she asked sadly. “There is still time to stop them. It is a needless risk they take and if they do not return, you will have cursed yourselves ever after with the knowledge you could have prevented it.”
“Oh, stop that,” Fye complained. “For someone who’s so good at inspiring blind faith you’re not very good at seeing it placed in other people. Shizuka is hardly younger than I was when my family was sentenced to exile, and children grow up a lot faster on the outside than they ever could in here. A lot more than many of the adults here are ever allowed to grow up, I dare say. As for Syaoran, you’ve underestimated him once already.”
“Your words only mask how very scared for them you truly are,” said Tomoyo, and Fye faltered slightly under the force of her attention. “You want to believe in your friends, but you know as well as I that your desire to contradict me has played a part in inspiring your judgement, likely far greater a part than it deserves to. None of us want to see blood spilled this day. If I did not count on seeing my guards so easily disabled by your Syaoran it is only because I had hoped I would not have any need to use force; I know so well that none of you are violent by nature. The only respect in which I can agree that I have underestimated your party is the determination shown by your young friends.”
“You’re asking us to believe you have a way people can survive whatever’s happening in there,” said Kurogane, picking up from Fye with barely a lost beat. “Why shouldn’t we have one too?”
Tomoyo tapped a finger on the armrest of her chair impatiently. “Because that is a fundamentally flawed comparison. There is no likeness between the resources at your camp and those at my disposal, and you know better than to suggest otherwise.”
“Not as flawed as you think. We’re the ones who’ve had the April Fool living with us for months,” said Kurogane. “Doumeki knows Watanuki better than anyone. He’s seen the worst the April Fools can do. If he thinks he can make it, he’s got a reason.”
“And that is enough for you to let you let them go, without following, into such needless danger?”
Kurogane was undaunted. “What they’re doing is proving a point. They didn’t need me or Fye to do that. I stayed here because when they get back, we’re leaving, and I want to get this conversation over with.”
***
Lights on Fye’s device flickered on and off in repetitive patterns. Doumeki and Syaoran were just starting to wonder whether anything else was going to happen when there was a beep followed by a whirring noise, and then door began to slide open. A faint whistle-hum that they’d both disregarded as background noise ever since entering the corridor suddenly took on a whole new significance; the noise growing louder with every new inch the door slid back. By the time it was halfway open the hum had become a howl so loud they could hear nothing else, the room within utterly obscured behind a seething whirlwind of unidentifiable shapes, racing and changing far too fast for any human eye to identify; a dizzying kaleidoscope of corpse-colours. It was like staring into the centre of a hurricane at midnight; the doorway to a whole other world.
Inasmuch as Doumeki had expected anything, he’d expected something like this. Locked doors didn’t keep ghosts out, and Tomoyo hadn’t expressed any concern for the safety of herself or anyone else who hadn’t declared their intention to walk head first into this nightmare, so it made sense that whatever incomprehensible method she’d come up with to keep all this contained still applied whether the door was open or not. It also stood to reason that if ghosts in this state could cause the level of damage he’d seen the day they’d found Kohane, they could be visible in some form to even the likes of him, but Doumeki felt – knew, on a level that came right from his marrow, that he shouldn’t be seeing this. This was a sight that should only have ever been for Watanuki and his like, or for people who were about to die.
Over the howl of the wind came Syaoran’s voice, like it was far further off than it should have been asking one last time. “Somewhere in there, right?”
Doumeki nodded, not trusting his voice to carry. He didn’t realise he was hesitating until Syaoran stepped forward ahead of him; with not even an outstretched to test the way in front. Syaoran flinched involuntarily on contact with the threshold, the full body shiver of someone encountering terrible cold, then there was a fizz of indescribable light marking out an eerie halo around his body. For a strange moment just before the darkness swallowed him completely Doumeki almost thought he saw the afterimage of a dozen Syaorans rather than one, then the angry winds closed again and he was gone.
This was it then, the absolute last chance to turn back. Any more waiting now was shear procrastination.
Pushing that last strange sense of inevitability aside, Doumeki breathed in and stepped forward into the maelstrom.
***
“However you may choose to express it, there is some truth to that sentiment,” Tomoyo allowed. “There is still much we need to discuss.”
"We can start with how long you’ve had my camp under surveillance." Kurogane’s demand came out sounding like the accusation it was, but Tomoyo, canny as ever, refused to react to it.
"Is that really what you wish to ask? Or is it how long you should have known I had been watching? You must already know why,” she said, gazing at him with a disarming expression of fondness. "It would be so much easier for you if I hated you as much as you must have convinced yourself you hated me, but please believe me Kurogane, you are no less dear to me today than the first day I took you into my service. I was saddened so greatly by your departure, but the intervening years have never reduced the depth of my affection for you. I have long kept watch over your camp from afar, it is true. After all you had put yourself through, how could I possibly have abandoned you so completely to the fate you had chosen? Still punishing yourself for the accident of Souma's death after all these years, still believing there was no going back, that I could never forgive you..."
"That isn't why I left," Kurogane cut in, voice devoid of emotion. "You know that."
"Dear Kurogane,” said Tomoyo firmly, “you have been so conflicted, so confused for so long; can you say even you completely understand your reasons for leaving? But I do not blame you for that. Sometimes, it is necessary even for the best of us to take a step away from that which we dedicate ourselves to simply so that we can rediscover the reason it meant so much to us to begin with. We can return refreshed and more certain for our trials than ever before."
Kurogane glared at her with unreserved distaste; his next was spoken through his teeth. "Are you really convinced that’s why I left?"
"It may be hard to hear, but you cannot deny the truth to what I have said." Her face was so open, so understanding, that it was easy to believe that only great restraint was keeping her from crossing the room so that she could look directly up into his eyes and take his hands in hers, just as her every nuance of her voice expressed she wished to.
"It's not true!” Kurogane snapped. “You can't make it true just by wanting it to be that way!"
“What else would you ask me to conclude? I know you too well, I cannot believe you truly have it in yourself to hate me. You are far too clever not to understand everything I have done for the Complexes – even that which you sometimes questioned – for the necessity it is. Yet, something has upset you, so grievously that you would leave without so much as saying goodbye, without so much as a word to tell me why you would suddenly feel so much need to get away from everything you had ever known.”
Kurogane looked away. “There was nothing to discuss.”
“Nothing at all? Can you stand before me now and tell me that was fair to me after all the trust I placed in you? Can you tell me that you would have denied me any chance to persuade you otherwise if you had truly felt no doubt about what you would do?” There was a pleading note to Tomoyo’s voice that was painful to hear
“I didn’t talk to you about it because I knew what you would say.” He sounded suddenly too tired for whatever emotion this topic was evoking. “Every argument we ever had was me telling you why. You didn’t want to hear it.”
“We argued about many things,” said Tomoyo, perhaps just a little confused. “If you must call it arguing, but whatever the source of your unease was, I was always ready to listen and discuss it with you for however long you needed. We left nothing unresolved.”
“It was always the same thing,” said Kurogane. “Even if you wouldn’t see it. I left because it was an argument I didn’t want to keep having. You were never going to understand that. You’d based everything you’d built on the opposite.”
Tomoyo looked at him sadly. “After all this time, that is still all the explanation you feel I have any right to?”
For the first time in several minutes, Kurogane stopped looking away. “That’s what you’ve brought me back to pay for, isn’t it?”
***
The doorway was lost an unknown time and distance behind him, the swirling mists long since closed on every side and all there was to see, when Syaoran felt something catch and tear, then slowly begin to come away. It didn’t hurt; he couldn’t have identified what was coming off – not skin or hair or anything so integrally part of himself that he should have noticed its loss, but there was still something – something he’d never even paid attention to before – being steadily torn away. The sensation continued as he moved a couple of paces further on, until finally whatever it was came loose altogether and flapped away out of sight and mind. It was a bit like having an item of clothing tugged until it tore and then pulled harder until it unravelled and fell, but only one of a number of sensations he was paying no mind to. He called out Sakura’s name with every breath he could spare; in the hurricane the noise barely carried past his own lips. Winds buffeted him every way at once, and somehow by their combined efforts kept him standing. Mysterious tearing sensations were far from being foremost on his mind.
A few paces further something else began tearing free. Syaoran staggered on.
***
Sakura kept imagining she heard Syaoran calling her name. She curled in on herself tighter, wrapped her arms around her head and pressed her face to her knees; not looking, not listening - telling herself she couldn’t hear anything at all. She’d never been able to hear the ghosts when they tried to speak to her; now being trapped in this room with this nightmare was like judgement was being dealt for all her years of deafness, every silent cry she’d ever seen uttered from unreadable ghost-lips screamed out all at once. The howling might have been a thousand different voices, so fast and loud and horrible that even now she couldn’t understand one single word, and in there she could have believed she heard the voice of every person she’d ever known and loved screaming and dying. That couldn’t be Syaoran’s voice because that was what she wanted to hear and dreaded most of all.
Something brushed Sakura’s head – someone’s hand, so unexpected that not even the need to shrink and hide could stop her from jerking up to see what it was. Before she could focus her hands were being taken in someone else’s and the motion of looking up had turned into her being pulled to her feet with a stumble. It was Syaoran standing in front of her – the thought registered barely a moment before she saw that he was nearly transparent, the hands on hers cold and barely substantial: a ghost – of course it was a ghost. It didn’t mean anything; there’d always been so many of them waiting in the corners of every room she’d ever set foot in last time she was in this place. The pale Syaoran staring solemnly into her eyes while she regained her balance was only one of so many, it didn’t even need to be one of the ones that had haunted…
Sakura let out a strangled gasp and stumbled forward, right through the ghost who’d come to pull her to her feet; by then already fading and losing his hard-won equilibrium to the storm around them. Knowing only that she had to go now she was forging on though she could hardly see anything, didn’t know where she was or whether she’d already been turned around in the confusion. There was no time to wonder, but by the time she was really moving there were more familiar hands reaching out to her, more faces half-glimpsed in the darkness, pulling and pushing her along, one after another, the next always appearing as the last faded, always firm but gentle, offering all the strength they could muster to guide her.
When Sakura found Syaoran his last very ghost was almost torn away and he was on his knees, still trying to move forward. He didn’t even seem to see her until she had all but fallen on to him, arms stretched out to clutch him to her. For the second time in her life she was begging the ghosts to leave him alone, not to take him from her; one voice too small to be heard in the midst of a thousand too loud to hear.
“Sakura,” she heard him say, lips an inch from her ear. He didn’t sound scared, not when she was right there, and she begged all the harder as she held on.
***
"You've given us so many reasons why you raided our camp, but were any of them real?” said Kurogane, looking Tomoyo straight in the eye with growing distaste. “Did you really do all this just to force me to come back?"
If Tomoyo’s mask had slipped even a little during their last topic, it was restored within the space of a thought. "Let me answer that with another question: for yourself, even with the justifications you gave your campmates, did you come here for them, or was it – even in some part – for the chance to see me; because you knew the time had come for you to finally resolve this matter you have so long avoided?"
There was, apparently, really no end to how furious she could make him. "You didn't give me any choice."
"Nor did you give any choice to me. You would not have returned for any less."
“So now this is all my fault?”
“Kurogane, there is no need to speak of fault or blame for any of this; are we not both far beyond such concerns? There is nothing you could have done that I could not forgive you for. If indeed all this has ever been about is your need to test just how much you mean to me when you must share my love with so many others I have taken under my care – if this is your need to test how much I could forgive you, then it is a test you can see I will not fail. There is no-one who knows you so well as I, or who could ever care for you so much. I could forgive you anything.”
“Then this is the one thing you shouldn’t have forgiven me,” said Kurogane, reaching the very end of his patience. “I betrayed you. It didn’t matter to me whether it hurt you. Can’t you see that?”
There was a disarmingly long pause, Tomoyo looking soulfully across the room to where Kurogane stood. “That is your final word? I cannot convince you to consider otherwise?”
“It is. It has been all along.”
Tomoyo gave a soft sigh. “Perhaps you truly can reach no other conclusion here today, but I must at least make you see that you cannot have been as certain as you pretend. Coming here was a test for yourself at least as much as it could have been for me.”
“What…!” Kurogane started, only to be cut off again.
“Please, this one last time, hear me out. As surely as I knew you would come, you must have known that I would be expecting you. You could not have hoped you would leave without encountering me, yet still you said not one word of warning to any of this to your friends regarding what they would see here or what they would learn about you, and why not? Because you were ashamed? Because you could not make them understand? Perhaps you did not even rationalise why, yet I would hazard that the thought of telling them did not even cross your mind, did it?
“You did not tell them because even now this was still your business alone; something you knew you would have to face alone. They could not help you, they could not be allowed to make any attempt to influence you, and if you could be convinced to remain here, it might be better that they did not know why. No matter how certain you have presented yourself to be, you were never quite sure enough about whether you had been right to leave that you felt comfortable repeating your reasons to the others.
“The manner of your departure gave neither of us any closure. You must have seen from the very day you left that a confrontation like this would come. That some day you would be asked to return and answer for yourself. You would need to decide whether you truly had it in your heart to walk away a second time, and that is what you face today. Am I wrong?”
“I don’t know,” said Kurogane darkly. “That’s most of the problem.”
Tomoyo opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could get any further Fye was throwing up his arms in frustration and waving them both into silence.
“What I think Kurogane is trying to say here, even if he might be messing it up a bit the way he does,” he said, “is that no matter how you turn things, what he’s figured out is that he doesn’t need you. None of us need you, or your Complexes or any other part of this. And Kurogane’s come all this way back here now and all he’s seen is just how much he never needed you to begin with. Perhaps the world needs you, that’s not for me to judge, but personally we’re not the big picture, we’re just people. We’re just trying out a bit of a different survival strategy to yours because we happen to like it, just like you were just telling us someone ought to, so all bases were covered in case something goes wrong with what you’re doing. And I would say that Kurogane, what with all his worldly experience with how you do things, is the very best person you could have found to experiment with doing the opposite. If we really must overthink it that far.”
Kurogane was looking at Fye in surprise, but nothing like disagreement, and for once, Tomoyo did not immediately have an answer. She regarded Fye, seriously but with no disrespect, for long enough to be sure he was finished, and only then turned to Kurogane.
“Maybe you’re right in part,” Kurogane allowed grudgingly, speaking to Tomoyo. “It never did quite feel like it was over. Maybe I have just been ignoring that all this time. But I’m here now, and nothing’s changed since I left. The only thing I ever regretted was not leaving sooner.”
Kurogane took a breath, eyes drifting closed, and opened them again with new resolve.
“Everything Fye said was right,” he said. “I’ve never once changed your mind on anything. It doesn’t matter whether I’m here or not. You don’t need me.”
“And with all due respect, Madam Tomoyo,” said Fye, tired despite his determination, “I think our friends are about to prove for us that they don’t need you either.”
***
Doumeki found Kohane first. She was sitting on the floor, practically catatonic. She stared right through him when he stepped in front of her, her mouth moving soundlessly. When Doumeki knelt down to try to get her attention, he thought he caught ‘mother’ and ‘…again, not again…’; words from fever-dreams he had no right to be hearing. He had to shake her twice before he could even get her to look at him, and when she did she flinched under his hand and made the transition from staring into space to staring up into his face with barely any other change to her expression.
“No,” Doumeki told her, guessing. “I’m not a ghost.”
The words took a beat to sink in, then Kohane was mouthing his name in relief and reaching for the hand Doumeki had resting on her shoulder and, finding it solid, grasped on to it with more force than Doumeki would have credited to her small frame, like it was a lifeline.
It may have been cruel to press on without offering her more in the way of comfort, but Doumeki was ill-equipped for it. He could give her something to focus on instead.
“I need you to help me find him. Can you do that?”
***
Watanuki had lost all track of time. Appropriate, what with the world ending around him. Ending again. And it wasn’t even his birthday.
He couldn’t quite tell whether he’d laughed at that. Times like this you found out how interchangeable laughing and crying were – it was all one outlet or another. It would have been relieving to stretch out and laugh the rest of his strength away. It would have been comforting to give into madness, but there was still too much of Watanuki that knew exactly what was going on here, that somewhere out there beyond what he could see, however many hundred (thousand?) strange people who’d lived in this citadel were dead or dying, and when it ended he and the girls would wake up in a graveyard of their own making, and the best they could hope for might be that it would be theirs too. Or maybe they never would wake up from this. Maybe the storm would go on forever with these crazy overprotective ghosts holding on to them and thrusting the whole rest of the world away. It was far too easy to imagine this might never end.
Watanuki didn’t know whether he believed he’d be that lucky, or unlucky or whatever it should have been. He’d imagined himself at the centre of so many nightmare scenarios, and this should still have been too much, too impossible, worse than he’d ever dreamed. He had spent his whole life practicing pessimism on disaster after disaster and this was still more than he could hope to process.
A voice somewhere above him said, “Oi.”
When Watanuki wasted a moment processing that, the voice said it again, louder.
Watanuki looked up.
Doumeki, allowing for the light and the miasma that would have made recognising your own hand ten centimetres from your face difficult, looked much like he always looked after a long day being lead in circles across the countryside following Watanuki and his ghosts and wondering whether it was going to pay off: tired, fed up down to the last few reserves of his patience and ready to go home. He was so solid and real it was borderline offensive, it could almost make you believe he could deflect bullets or even the angry dead and other such obviously mundane threats merely by glaring at them. It was the most wonderful thing Watanuki had ever seen.
Doumeki rubbed one of his ears. “Can’t you turn this down a bit?”
Watanuki blinked at him, not even sure what he’d heard, almost got as far as gathering the breath to express just what an insane thing that was to expect Watanuki to be able to do, and then with barely a whisper found they were standing in a brightly lit white-walled room, maybe three metres square, not a ghost in sight. Doumeki looked around it and frowned, apparently having some difficulty making sense of the two or three short paces that separated where they were standing and the door.
His attention was back again before Watanuki could begin to feel neglected. “You alright?” he asked. “Get up. We’re going home.”
Watanuki found the strength to get to his feet from somewhere, threw his arms around Doumeki and hugged him for all he was worth. He felt Doumeki’s arms wrap around him in turn, but decided he wasn’t feeling mollified.
“You,” he yelled into Doumeki’s shoulder, “youyouyou are the craziest insufferable moron on this side of the planet how… don’t you realise it’s impossible for you to be here! You could’ve been killed! Should’ve been killed, don’t you get it!”
“Wasn’t,” Doumeki replied mildly. “Do you want me to apologise for that?”
“What are you doing here?” Watanuki demanded, trying very hard to crush the remaining air out of Doumeki’s lungs.
“Rescuing you,” said Doumeki. “Thought that was obvious.”
Watanuki let go long enough to hit him. Later on he was going to be embarrassed about that outburst, or just mad he couldn’t tear off all Doumeki’s clothes right away to make sure it was really him, but at the time it was all he could do to back to sobbing on Doumeki’s shoulder. He might have had to be prised off too, but then there was someone hugging his leg who turned out to be Kohane, so he had to let go of Doumeki long enough to hug her too, and then decide whether he still needed to hug Doumeki again, and by then he still wasn’t clear yet on whether any of this was really happening, but had shakily had to face the fact that they weren’t going to stay here forever (Doumeki had said something about going somewhere) and sooner or later some of this, somewhere else, was bound to start making some kind of sense. And then he’d need to have a very involved talk with Doumeki about doing the impossible.
From what passed as a far corner in the small room Syaoran was coming towards them, carrying Sakura in his arms. He looked shaken and paler than Watanuki had ever seen him before (“like a ghost” or “like he’d seen a ghost” would have been typical adjectives if Watanuki hadn’t been too personally familiar with what both of those really looked like to make the comparison), and Sakura showed no signs of waking, but Syaoran was holding her steady and (of course) looked as though he could have carried her across the country like that if he’d needed to.
“She was like this when it all stopped,” he said, “but she’s breathing and her skin’s warm. I..” he had to take a breath there, “I think she’s alright.” He obviously wasn’t going to hear anything else.
Doumeki nodded. “That’s everyone. Time to go.”
Chi was waiting patiently by the door when they left the room, calm and innocent as if this sort of thing happened every day, the unlocked door had nothing to do with her or anything she’d been instructed to do to an advanced security system. Fye had never programmed her to be smug.
“Fye?” she asked, polite and inquisitive, when she saw he wasn’t with them.”
“This way,” Doumeki told her, indicating with a shrug of a shoulder. Chi fell into step behind them without another word.
***
The return of the assorted rescuers and rescuees would have been more dramatic if the door to Tomoyo’s chamber hadn’t been left wide open, or if it hadn’t been so quiet that everyone’s footsteps hadn’t been audible before they’d even rounded the corner. The sight, though, could not have benefitted from any better scripting. Sakura was still unconscious, but even slumped awkwardly in Syaoran’s arms she looked peaceful. She must have weighed nearly as much as he did, but he would have let no-one else take her weight, supporting her through sheer stubbornness the rest of the way. Doumeki had Kohane supported in his arms and hanging on around his neck, though she was far more awake than Sakura and almost too big to be carried that way. Watanuki followed on his own feet, dazed but unhurt, all but attached to Doumeki at the hip and genuinely latched on to the fabric of his shirt with one hand like it was the only thing keeping him anchored. Fye waited until Chi had stopped right in front of him before pulling her into a hug that swept her off her feet, spinning her around and finally returning her to the ground with an easy smile that she returned with only the faintest look of uncertainty over why he was quite so happy to see her. They were all very much alive.
“No trouble?” Kurogane asked, as if Doumeki had returned from nothing more unusual than any routine hunting day.
“Nothing to report,” Doumeki replied. Watanuki peered blankly into the room from behind him, spotting Tomoyo and the extra Sakuras for the first time, but there’d be better times for that conversation later.
“Well,” said Fye, speaking to Tomoyo. “That is that. Quite nicely timed on their parts too, don’t you agree? It has been lovely to have this little chat with you,” (the word ‘chat’ came out with perhaps slightly more emphasis than was pleasant) “but I think it’s high time we took our leave.”
“I cannot stop you leaving,” said Tomoyo, with no small regret, “But it is a nothing but a relief to see you all alive and well, that your faith was not misplaced. I must admit, I had not truly appreciated what remarkable people Kurogane had found to call friends. My offer to find each of you a place to stay here is still very much open to you, there must be so much every one of you could do contribute to us here, so much you could do to help. Much that no-one can predict will yet pass that may change the way we see the world. If you should ever find it in yourselves to change your minds, you will always be welcome here.”
“We’re not going to be able to talk you out of that, are we?” Fye said vaguely, rubbing his neck.
“We wouldn’t be allowed to walk out if she couldn’t give us that much to take home,” said Kurogane, little more than a mutter to his companions, then speaking louder, said, “Goodbye, Tomoyo. You won’t accept it, but you won’t be able to accuse me of leaving without saying it this time.”
For all the emotion it had conjured previously, Tomoyo’s face was left for once unreadable, and she stared at her departing advisor just a little too long before replying. “Farewell Kurogane. I wish you all the best.”
“What was that all about?” Watanuki hissed in Doumeki’s ear as they filed back out the door. “Who was that person in there?”
Doumeki considered how to answer, then shrugged dismissively. “No-one with anything important to say.”
ZOMG. I'm actually up to writing the epilogues ZOMFG!!!
On the other hand, being six thousand words closer to the ending which is right on top of you all in one post is just about worth it. *_*
Other parts: The original ficlets, Plot notes, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31, Side Story 1
Doumeki hesitated just beyond the doorway and had to make himself remember Kurogane’s directions. They’d been simple enough, but buildings like this weren’t familiar territory to him and something about all these enclosed corridors was disorienting. However, Syaoran surged on past him to the first corner, confident as if he’d lived here all his life – or a lifetime ago. Doumeki wondered whether that helped.
It was a bit late to wonder whether either of them knew what they were getting into, but on short acquaintance with Tomoyo it wasn’t too much to guess that the only way to beat her at her own game was to raise the stakes.
The reality was that he didn’t know whether this was going to work. It was a long shot based entirely on an incident when Watanuki, while trying to account for why his scavenging missions turned bad so fast when Doumeki left the camp, had once said something about Doumeki repelling evil spirits, or to be more exact, that the kind that only wanted to make trouble wouldn’t go anywhere near him. He could remember that conversation word for word, for all the good it did him when there hadn’t been nearly enough information for Doumeki to understand what it meant. He hadn’t been born on any special day, didn’t have any unusual powers that he’d ever been aware of. Even Watanuki probably couldn’t have told him whether this was would work the way he needed it to now (though he almost definitely would have called Doumeki a suicidal moron for considering risking this, which wouldn’t have been all that unfair). But he’d sounded awed when he’d spoken about it, reluctant to attribute such a power to Doumeki; reluctant to admit it existed at all. Doumeki had no way to be certain quite what sort of trump card he was carrying, but this had to be worth a shot.
The door took some finding, if only because it didn’t look much like a door in any sense Doumeki was familiar with – no handles or hinges, just a wide, sunken panel set in a recess in the wall, but it did have the promised access panel – similar in design to the one they’d seen on the trapdoor outside. An indentation in the bottom looked like the jack they’d been directed to find. Syaoran looked up at Doumeki expectantly.
Doumeki stuck a hand in his pocket, finding the angular edges of Fye’s device with his fingers. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. For all their show of bravado in Tomoyo’s presence, Syaoran didn’t have the slightest idea why he had thought either of them could make it through this. Doumeki was taking enough of a gamble on his own part; there was no reason to assume that protection might extend to Syaoran too.
“I could ask you the same,” Syaoran returned.
“I’m not sure,” Doumeki admitted. “She wasn’t exaggerating the danger. At the last two places I saw where the ghosts were made this angry, no-one survived.”
“I’ve done it before,” said Syaoran. He sounded perfectly matter of fact.
That wasn’t anything Doumeki could have expected, but it was, he reflected, turning into a day for that sort of surprise. “Something you just remembered?”
Syaoran nodded. “Something like this happened to Sakura, a long time ago.”
“It’s not just Sakura in there this time,” Doumeki pointed out.
“I know. It might not work the same way this time, but I have to try.” He looked up at Doumeki, suddenly very open. “You’re counting on something too, aren’t you?”
In lieu of an answer, Doumeki pulled Fye’s device out, slotted it home, and waited.
***
Chi had never been inside a Complex before. Fye had salvaged the form she wore from and old persocom model he’d found on a junk heap in the first days he’d spent alone in the deadlands; her first real memories came after that, once she’d been rebuilt. However, the core components were the ones he and his brother had smuggled away in secret long before, and those had recorded more than just key codes and protocols; there were records of the Complex that to Chi were as good a sense memory. More than enough to make this place feel too familiar to be very disorienting. Here there were more computers than she’d ever been aware existed before – like old friends. Like family.
Welcome home, they whispered to her.
No, she whispered back. This isn’t home. The deadlands are home. Fye is home. Kurogane and the others are home.
The chatter grew less coherent, some voices repeating the welcome home, some buzzing with questions, who is Fye? or what is Kurogane? and can you hear? but Chi let it all wash over herself, computer dreams and static. She did what she had been built to do; she sat and listened, and she waited until a message came through that she needed to hear. And that was what she went on doing until a message came through that was just for her. Fye had come. And he had a task for her: a doorway and a place to meet.
In a darkened lab room that should have been locked tight, Chi opened her eyes and got to her feet, delicately pulling two useless data jamming devices from her ears. Home she whispered quietly, and there was a buzzing from some of the others that may have been just a little like jealousy.
***
When the shapes of the two boys had vanished down the corridor, Tomoyo made one last attempt at her variety of reason. “Are you sure it is alright to let them go?” she asked sadly. “There is still time to stop them. It is a needless risk they take and if they do not return, you will have cursed yourselves ever after with the knowledge you could have prevented it.”
“Oh, stop that,” Fye complained. “For someone who’s so good at inspiring blind faith you’re not very good at seeing it placed in other people. Shizuka is hardly younger than I was when my family was sentenced to exile, and children grow up a lot faster on the outside than they ever could in here. A lot more than many of the adults here are ever allowed to grow up, I dare say. As for Syaoran, you’ve underestimated him once already.”
“Your words only mask how very scared for them you truly are,” said Tomoyo, and Fye faltered slightly under the force of her attention. “You want to believe in your friends, but you know as well as I that your desire to contradict me has played a part in inspiring your judgement, likely far greater a part than it deserves to. None of us want to see blood spilled this day. If I did not count on seeing my guards so easily disabled by your Syaoran it is only because I had hoped I would not have any need to use force; I know so well that none of you are violent by nature. The only respect in which I can agree that I have underestimated your party is the determination shown by your young friends.”
“You’re asking us to believe you have a way people can survive whatever’s happening in there,” said Kurogane, picking up from Fye with barely a lost beat. “Why shouldn’t we have one too?”
Tomoyo tapped a finger on the armrest of her chair impatiently. “Because that is a fundamentally flawed comparison. There is no likeness between the resources at your camp and those at my disposal, and you know better than to suggest otherwise.”
“Not as flawed as you think. We’re the ones who’ve had the April Fool living with us for months,” said Kurogane. “Doumeki knows Watanuki better than anyone. He’s seen the worst the April Fools can do. If he thinks he can make it, he’s got a reason.”
“And that is enough for you to let you let them go, without following, into such needless danger?”
Kurogane was undaunted. “What they’re doing is proving a point. They didn’t need me or Fye to do that. I stayed here because when they get back, we’re leaving, and I want to get this conversation over with.”
***
Lights on Fye’s device flickered on and off in repetitive patterns. Doumeki and Syaoran were just starting to wonder whether anything else was going to happen when there was a beep followed by a whirring noise, and then door began to slide open. A faint whistle-hum that they’d both disregarded as background noise ever since entering the corridor suddenly took on a whole new significance; the noise growing louder with every new inch the door slid back. By the time it was halfway open the hum had become a howl so loud they could hear nothing else, the room within utterly obscured behind a seething whirlwind of unidentifiable shapes, racing and changing far too fast for any human eye to identify; a dizzying kaleidoscope of corpse-colours. It was like staring into the centre of a hurricane at midnight; the doorway to a whole other world.
Inasmuch as Doumeki had expected anything, he’d expected something like this. Locked doors didn’t keep ghosts out, and Tomoyo hadn’t expressed any concern for the safety of herself or anyone else who hadn’t declared their intention to walk head first into this nightmare, so it made sense that whatever incomprehensible method she’d come up with to keep all this contained still applied whether the door was open or not. It also stood to reason that if ghosts in this state could cause the level of damage he’d seen the day they’d found Kohane, they could be visible in some form to even the likes of him, but Doumeki felt – knew, on a level that came right from his marrow, that he shouldn’t be seeing this. This was a sight that should only have ever been for Watanuki and his like, or for people who were about to die.
Over the howl of the wind came Syaoran’s voice, like it was far further off than it should have been asking one last time. “Somewhere in there, right?”
Doumeki nodded, not trusting his voice to carry. He didn’t realise he was hesitating until Syaoran stepped forward ahead of him; with not even an outstretched to test the way in front. Syaoran flinched involuntarily on contact with the threshold, the full body shiver of someone encountering terrible cold, then there was a fizz of indescribable light marking out an eerie halo around his body. For a strange moment just before the darkness swallowed him completely Doumeki almost thought he saw the afterimage of a dozen Syaorans rather than one, then the angry winds closed again and he was gone.
This was it then, the absolute last chance to turn back. Any more waiting now was shear procrastination.
Pushing that last strange sense of inevitability aside, Doumeki breathed in and stepped forward into the maelstrom.
***
“However you may choose to express it, there is some truth to that sentiment,” Tomoyo allowed. “There is still much we need to discuss.”
"We can start with how long you’ve had my camp under surveillance." Kurogane’s demand came out sounding like the accusation it was, but Tomoyo, canny as ever, refused to react to it.
"Is that really what you wish to ask? Or is it how long you should have known I had been watching? You must already know why,” she said, gazing at him with a disarming expression of fondness. "It would be so much easier for you if I hated you as much as you must have convinced yourself you hated me, but please believe me Kurogane, you are no less dear to me today than the first day I took you into my service. I was saddened so greatly by your departure, but the intervening years have never reduced the depth of my affection for you. I have long kept watch over your camp from afar, it is true. After all you had put yourself through, how could I possibly have abandoned you so completely to the fate you had chosen? Still punishing yourself for the accident of Souma's death after all these years, still believing there was no going back, that I could never forgive you..."
"That isn't why I left," Kurogane cut in, voice devoid of emotion. "You know that."
"Dear Kurogane,” said Tomoyo firmly, “you have been so conflicted, so confused for so long; can you say even you completely understand your reasons for leaving? But I do not blame you for that. Sometimes, it is necessary even for the best of us to take a step away from that which we dedicate ourselves to simply so that we can rediscover the reason it meant so much to us to begin with. We can return refreshed and more certain for our trials than ever before."
Kurogane glared at her with unreserved distaste; his next was spoken through his teeth. "Are you really convinced that’s why I left?"
"It may be hard to hear, but you cannot deny the truth to what I have said." Her face was so open, so understanding, that it was easy to believe that only great restraint was keeping her from crossing the room so that she could look directly up into his eyes and take his hands in hers, just as her every nuance of her voice expressed she wished to.
"It's not true!” Kurogane snapped. “You can't make it true just by wanting it to be that way!"
“What else would you ask me to conclude? I know you too well, I cannot believe you truly have it in yourself to hate me. You are far too clever not to understand everything I have done for the Complexes – even that which you sometimes questioned – for the necessity it is. Yet, something has upset you, so grievously that you would leave without so much as saying goodbye, without so much as a word to tell me why you would suddenly feel so much need to get away from everything you had ever known.”
Kurogane looked away. “There was nothing to discuss.”
“Nothing at all? Can you stand before me now and tell me that was fair to me after all the trust I placed in you? Can you tell me that you would have denied me any chance to persuade you otherwise if you had truly felt no doubt about what you would do?” There was a pleading note to Tomoyo’s voice that was painful to hear
“I didn’t talk to you about it because I knew what you would say.” He sounded suddenly too tired for whatever emotion this topic was evoking. “Every argument we ever had was me telling you why. You didn’t want to hear it.”
“We argued about many things,” said Tomoyo, perhaps just a little confused. “If you must call it arguing, but whatever the source of your unease was, I was always ready to listen and discuss it with you for however long you needed. We left nothing unresolved.”
“It was always the same thing,” said Kurogane. “Even if you wouldn’t see it. I left because it was an argument I didn’t want to keep having. You were never going to understand that. You’d based everything you’d built on the opposite.”
Tomoyo looked at him sadly. “After all this time, that is still all the explanation you feel I have any right to?”
For the first time in several minutes, Kurogane stopped looking away. “That’s what you’ve brought me back to pay for, isn’t it?”
***
The doorway was lost an unknown time and distance behind him, the swirling mists long since closed on every side and all there was to see, when Syaoran felt something catch and tear, then slowly begin to come away. It didn’t hurt; he couldn’t have identified what was coming off – not skin or hair or anything so integrally part of himself that he should have noticed its loss, but there was still something – something he’d never even paid attention to before – being steadily torn away. The sensation continued as he moved a couple of paces further on, until finally whatever it was came loose altogether and flapped away out of sight and mind. It was a bit like having an item of clothing tugged until it tore and then pulled harder until it unravelled and fell, but only one of a number of sensations he was paying no mind to. He called out Sakura’s name with every breath he could spare; in the hurricane the noise barely carried past his own lips. Winds buffeted him every way at once, and somehow by their combined efforts kept him standing. Mysterious tearing sensations were far from being foremost on his mind.
A few paces further something else began tearing free. Syaoran staggered on.
***
Sakura kept imagining she heard Syaoran calling her name. She curled in on herself tighter, wrapped her arms around her head and pressed her face to her knees; not looking, not listening - telling herself she couldn’t hear anything at all. She’d never been able to hear the ghosts when they tried to speak to her; now being trapped in this room with this nightmare was like judgement was being dealt for all her years of deafness, every silent cry she’d ever seen uttered from unreadable ghost-lips screamed out all at once. The howling might have been a thousand different voices, so fast and loud and horrible that even now she couldn’t understand one single word, and in there she could have believed she heard the voice of every person she’d ever known and loved screaming and dying. That couldn’t be Syaoran’s voice because that was what she wanted to hear and dreaded most of all.
Something brushed Sakura’s head – someone’s hand, so unexpected that not even the need to shrink and hide could stop her from jerking up to see what it was. Before she could focus her hands were being taken in someone else’s and the motion of looking up had turned into her being pulled to her feet with a stumble. It was Syaoran standing in front of her – the thought registered barely a moment before she saw that he was nearly transparent, the hands on hers cold and barely substantial: a ghost – of course it was a ghost. It didn’t mean anything; there’d always been so many of them waiting in the corners of every room she’d ever set foot in last time she was in this place. The pale Syaoran staring solemnly into her eyes while she regained her balance was only one of so many, it didn’t even need to be one of the ones that had haunted…
Sakura let out a strangled gasp and stumbled forward, right through the ghost who’d come to pull her to her feet; by then already fading and losing his hard-won equilibrium to the storm around them. Knowing only that she had to go now she was forging on though she could hardly see anything, didn’t know where she was or whether she’d already been turned around in the confusion. There was no time to wonder, but by the time she was really moving there were more familiar hands reaching out to her, more faces half-glimpsed in the darkness, pulling and pushing her along, one after another, the next always appearing as the last faded, always firm but gentle, offering all the strength they could muster to guide her.
When Sakura found Syaoran his last very ghost was almost torn away and he was on his knees, still trying to move forward. He didn’t even seem to see her until she had all but fallen on to him, arms stretched out to clutch him to her. For the second time in her life she was begging the ghosts to leave him alone, not to take him from her; one voice too small to be heard in the midst of a thousand too loud to hear.
“Sakura,” she heard him say, lips an inch from her ear. He didn’t sound scared, not when she was right there, and she begged all the harder as she held on.
***
"You've given us so many reasons why you raided our camp, but were any of them real?” said Kurogane, looking Tomoyo straight in the eye with growing distaste. “Did you really do all this just to force me to come back?"
If Tomoyo’s mask had slipped even a little during their last topic, it was restored within the space of a thought. "Let me answer that with another question: for yourself, even with the justifications you gave your campmates, did you come here for them, or was it – even in some part – for the chance to see me; because you knew the time had come for you to finally resolve this matter you have so long avoided?"
There was, apparently, really no end to how furious she could make him. "You didn't give me any choice."
"Nor did you give any choice to me. You would not have returned for any less."
“So now this is all my fault?”
“Kurogane, there is no need to speak of fault or blame for any of this; are we not both far beyond such concerns? There is nothing you could have done that I could not forgive you for. If indeed all this has ever been about is your need to test just how much you mean to me when you must share my love with so many others I have taken under my care – if this is your need to test how much I could forgive you, then it is a test you can see I will not fail. There is no-one who knows you so well as I, or who could ever care for you so much. I could forgive you anything.”
“Then this is the one thing you shouldn’t have forgiven me,” said Kurogane, reaching the very end of his patience. “I betrayed you. It didn’t matter to me whether it hurt you. Can’t you see that?”
There was a disarmingly long pause, Tomoyo looking soulfully across the room to where Kurogane stood. “That is your final word? I cannot convince you to consider otherwise?”
“It is. It has been all along.”
Tomoyo gave a soft sigh. “Perhaps you truly can reach no other conclusion here today, but I must at least make you see that you cannot have been as certain as you pretend. Coming here was a test for yourself at least as much as it could have been for me.”
“What…!” Kurogane started, only to be cut off again.
“Please, this one last time, hear me out. As surely as I knew you would come, you must have known that I would be expecting you. You could not have hoped you would leave without encountering me, yet still you said not one word of warning to any of this to your friends regarding what they would see here or what they would learn about you, and why not? Because you were ashamed? Because you could not make them understand? Perhaps you did not even rationalise why, yet I would hazard that the thought of telling them did not even cross your mind, did it?
“You did not tell them because even now this was still your business alone; something you knew you would have to face alone. They could not help you, they could not be allowed to make any attempt to influence you, and if you could be convinced to remain here, it might be better that they did not know why. No matter how certain you have presented yourself to be, you were never quite sure enough about whether you had been right to leave that you felt comfortable repeating your reasons to the others.
“The manner of your departure gave neither of us any closure. You must have seen from the very day you left that a confrontation like this would come. That some day you would be asked to return and answer for yourself. You would need to decide whether you truly had it in your heart to walk away a second time, and that is what you face today. Am I wrong?”
“I don’t know,” said Kurogane darkly. “That’s most of the problem.”
Tomoyo opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could get any further Fye was throwing up his arms in frustration and waving them both into silence.
“What I think Kurogane is trying to say here, even if he might be messing it up a bit the way he does,” he said, “is that no matter how you turn things, what he’s figured out is that he doesn’t need you. None of us need you, or your Complexes or any other part of this. And Kurogane’s come all this way back here now and all he’s seen is just how much he never needed you to begin with. Perhaps the world needs you, that’s not for me to judge, but personally we’re not the big picture, we’re just people. We’re just trying out a bit of a different survival strategy to yours because we happen to like it, just like you were just telling us someone ought to, so all bases were covered in case something goes wrong with what you’re doing. And I would say that Kurogane, what with all his worldly experience with how you do things, is the very best person you could have found to experiment with doing the opposite. If we really must overthink it that far.”
Kurogane was looking at Fye in surprise, but nothing like disagreement, and for once, Tomoyo did not immediately have an answer. She regarded Fye, seriously but with no disrespect, for long enough to be sure he was finished, and only then turned to Kurogane.
“Maybe you’re right in part,” Kurogane allowed grudgingly, speaking to Tomoyo. “It never did quite feel like it was over. Maybe I have just been ignoring that all this time. But I’m here now, and nothing’s changed since I left. The only thing I ever regretted was not leaving sooner.”
Kurogane took a breath, eyes drifting closed, and opened them again with new resolve.
“Everything Fye said was right,” he said. “I’ve never once changed your mind on anything. It doesn’t matter whether I’m here or not. You don’t need me.”
“And with all due respect, Madam Tomoyo,” said Fye, tired despite his determination, “I think our friends are about to prove for us that they don’t need you either.”
***
Doumeki found Kohane first. She was sitting on the floor, practically catatonic. She stared right through him when he stepped in front of her, her mouth moving soundlessly. When Doumeki knelt down to try to get her attention, he thought he caught ‘mother’ and ‘…again, not again…’; words from fever-dreams he had no right to be hearing. He had to shake her twice before he could even get her to look at him, and when she did she flinched under his hand and made the transition from staring into space to staring up into his face with barely any other change to her expression.
“No,” Doumeki told her, guessing. “I’m not a ghost.”
The words took a beat to sink in, then Kohane was mouthing his name in relief and reaching for the hand Doumeki had resting on her shoulder and, finding it solid, grasped on to it with more force than Doumeki would have credited to her small frame, like it was a lifeline.
It may have been cruel to press on without offering her more in the way of comfort, but Doumeki was ill-equipped for it. He could give her something to focus on instead.
“I need you to help me find him. Can you do that?”
***
Watanuki had lost all track of time. Appropriate, what with the world ending around him. Ending again. And it wasn’t even his birthday.
He couldn’t quite tell whether he’d laughed at that. Times like this you found out how interchangeable laughing and crying were – it was all one outlet or another. It would have been relieving to stretch out and laugh the rest of his strength away. It would have been comforting to give into madness, but there was still too much of Watanuki that knew exactly what was going on here, that somewhere out there beyond what he could see, however many hundred (thousand?) strange people who’d lived in this citadel were dead or dying, and when it ended he and the girls would wake up in a graveyard of their own making, and the best they could hope for might be that it would be theirs too. Or maybe they never would wake up from this. Maybe the storm would go on forever with these crazy overprotective ghosts holding on to them and thrusting the whole rest of the world away. It was far too easy to imagine this might never end.
Watanuki didn’t know whether he believed he’d be that lucky, or unlucky or whatever it should have been. He’d imagined himself at the centre of so many nightmare scenarios, and this should still have been too much, too impossible, worse than he’d ever dreamed. He had spent his whole life practicing pessimism on disaster after disaster and this was still more than he could hope to process.
A voice somewhere above him said, “Oi.”
When Watanuki wasted a moment processing that, the voice said it again, louder.
Watanuki looked up.
Doumeki, allowing for the light and the miasma that would have made recognising your own hand ten centimetres from your face difficult, looked much like he always looked after a long day being lead in circles across the countryside following Watanuki and his ghosts and wondering whether it was going to pay off: tired, fed up down to the last few reserves of his patience and ready to go home. He was so solid and real it was borderline offensive, it could almost make you believe he could deflect bullets or even the angry dead and other such obviously mundane threats merely by glaring at them. It was the most wonderful thing Watanuki had ever seen.
Doumeki rubbed one of his ears. “Can’t you turn this down a bit?”
Watanuki blinked at him, not even sure what he’d heard, almost got as far as gathering the breath to express just what an insane thing that was to expect Watanuki to be able to do, and then with barely a whisper found they were standing in a brightly lit white-walled room, maybe three metres square, not a ghost in sight. Doumeki looked around it and frowned, apparently having some difficulty making sense of the two or three short paces that separated where they were standing and the door.
His attention was back again before Watanuki could begin to feel neglected. “You alright?” he asked. “Get up. We’re going home.”
Watanuki found the strength to get to his feet from somewhere, threw his arms around Doumeki and hugged him for all he was worth. He felt Doumeki’s arms wrap around him in turn, but decided he wasn’t feeling mollified.
“You,” he yelled into Doumeki’s shoulder, “youyouyou are the craziest insufferable moron on this side of the planet how… don’t you realise it’s impossible for you to be here! You could’ve been killed! Should’ve been killed, don’t you get it!”
“Wasn’t,” Doumeki replied mildly. “Do you want me to apologise for that?”
“What are you doing here?” Watanuki demanded, trying very hard to crush the remaining air out of Doumeki’s lungs.
“Rescuing you,” said Doumeki. “Thought that was obvious.”
Watanuki let go long enough to hit him. Later on he was going to be embarrassed about that outburst, or just mad he couldn’t tear off all Doumeki’s clothes right away to make sure it was really him, but at the time it was all he could do to back to sobbing on Doumeki’s shoulder. He might have had to be prised off too, but then there was someone hugging his leg who turned out to be Kohane, so he had to let go of Doumeki long enough to hug her too, and then decide whether he still needed to hug Doumeki again, and by then he still wasn’t clear yet on whether any of this was really happening, but had shakily had to face the fact that they weren’t going to stay here forever (Doumeki had said something about going somewhere) and sooner or later some of this, somewhere else, was bound to start making some kind of sense. And then he’d need to have a very involved talk with Doumeki about doing the impossible.
From what passed as a far corner in the small room Syaoran was coming towards them, carrying Sakura in his arms. He looked shaken and paler than Watanuki had ever seen him before (“like a ghost” or “like he’d seen a ghost” would have been typical adjectives if Watanuki hadn’t been too personally familiar with what both of those really looked like to make the comparison), and Sakura showed no signs of waking, but Syaoran was holding her steady and (of course) looked as though he could have carried her across the country like that if he’d needed to.
“She was like this when it all stopped,” he said, “but she’s breathing and her skin’s warm. I..” he had to take a breath there, “I think she’s alright.” He obviously wasn’t going to hear anything else.
Doumeki nodded. “That’s everyone. Time to go.”
Chi was waiting patiently by the door when they left the room, calm and innocent as if this sort of thing happened every day, the unlocked door had nothing to do with her or anything she’d been instructed to do to an advanced security system. Fye had never programmed her to be smug.
“Fye?” she asked, polite and inquisitive, when she saw he wasn’t with them.”
“This way,” Doumeki told her, indicating with a shrug of a shoulder. Chi fell into step behind them without another word.
***
The return of the assorted rescuers and rescuees would have been more dramatic if the door to Tomoyo’s chamber hadn’t been left wide open, or if it hadn’t been so quiet that everyone’s footsteps hadn’t been audible before they’d even rounded the corner. The sight, though, could not have benefitted from any better scripting. Sakura was still unconscious, but even slumped awkwardly in Syaoran’s arms she looked peaceful. She must have weighed nearly as much as he did, but he would have let no-one else take her weight, supporting her through sheer stubbornness the rest of the way. Doumeki had Kohane supported in his arms and hanging on around his neck, though she was far more awake than Sakura and almost too big to be carried that way. Watanuki followed on his own feet, dazed but unhurt, all but attached to Doumeki at the hip and genuinely latched on to the fabric of his shirt with one hand like it was the only thing keeping him anchored. Fye waited until Chi had stopped right in front of him before pulling her into a hug that swept her off her feet, spinning her around and finally returning her to the ground with an easy smile that she returned with only the faintest look of uncertainty over why he was quite so happy to see her. They were all very much alive.
“No trouble?” Kurogane asked, as if Doumeki had returned from nothing more unusual than any routine hunting day.
“Nothing to report,” Doumeki replied. Watanuki peered blankly into the room from behind him, spotting Tomoyo and the extra Sakuras for the first time, but there’d be better times for that conversation later.
“Well,” said Fye, speaking to Tomoyo. “That is that. Quite nicely timed on their parts too, don’t you agree? It has been lovely to have this little chat with you,” (the word ‘chat’ came out with perhaps slightly more emphasis than was pleasant) “but I think it’s high time we took our leave.”
“I cannot stop you leaving,” said Tomoyo, with no small regret, “But it is a nothing but a relief to see you all alive and well, that your faith was not misplaced. I must admit, I had not truly appreciated what remarkable people Kurogane had found to call friends. My offer to find each of you a place to stay here is still very much open to you, there must be so much every one of you could do contribute to us here, so much you could do to help. Much that no-one can predict will yet pass that may change the way we see the world. If you should ever find it in yourselves to change your minds, you will always be welcome here.”
“We’re not going to be able to talk you out of that, are we?” Fye said vaguely, rubbing his neck.
“We wouldn’t be allowed to walk out if she couldn’t give us that much to take home,” said Kurogane, little more than a mutter to his companions, then speaking louder, said, “Goodbye, Tomoyo. You won’t accept it, but you won’t be able to accuse me of leaving without saying it this time.”
For all the emotion it had conjured previously, Tomoyo’s face was left for once unreadable, and she stared at her departing advisor just a little too long before replying. “Farewell Kurogane. I wish you all the best.”
“What was that all about?” Watanuki hissed in Doumeki’s ear as they filed back out the door. “Who was that person in there?”
Doumeki considered how to answer, then shrugged dismissively. “No-one with anything important to say.”
ZOMG. I'm actually up to writing the epilogues ZOMFG!!!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2008-07-13 03:42 pm (UTC)ZOMG. I'm actually up to writing the epilogues ZOMFG!!!
Go girl GO!
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Date: 2008-07-14 12:57 am (UTC)I was expecting I'd probably underestimated how long this story would wind up, and it still wound up dragging out so much longer than I'd ever counted on. Almost can't believe it's finally so very close to ending.
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Date: 2008-07-13 11:48 pm (UTC)ULTIMATE DOUMEKI SUMMARY. ♥
Also, I love you.
And I want to draw you the reunion scene for this except I realised that I don't know what style of thing they're wearing, so that might have to wait for a reread.
But, gah. I love you.
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Date: 2008-07-14 12:52 am (UTC)And I want to draw you the reunion scene for this except I realised that I don't know what style of thing they're wearing, so that might have to wait for a reread.
I don't think I've ever said very much about what they wear in this world (other than long Tsubasa-style cloaks for possible acid rain days), so it could be pretty much whatever you like. Presumably something faded and tatty that looks like it's been repaired a lot of times.
...although I'm sure Sakura's wardrobe still manages to be terribly cute on her, no matter what state it's in.
Thank you, responses like this make me terribly happy <3 (and make me write faster. HOLY CRAP I'M FOUR AND A HALF SCENES FROM THE END I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER GET THERE.).
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Date: 2008-07-14 08:48 pm (UTC)I felt so happy for Watanuki, his relief at being rescued just when he thought the world was ending, was palpable.
Tomoyo scares the beejeebus out of me. It's like talking to a Brick Wall, one that's liable to collapse on you at any moment.
Chii is adorable, I want one, and I'm not even a Chobits fan.
DOUMEKI IS A ROCK <3
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Date: 2008-07-15 07:59 am (UTC)Tomoyo scares the beejeebus out of me. It's like talking to a Brick Wall, one that's liable to collapse on you at any moment.
And you have no idea how relieved I am to be done with her scenes
excluding the part when I will inevitably rewrite half her dialogue when I get to the final version >.>. She scares the crap out of me too, and here I am trying to write for her. o_oPoor Chi wound up getting so utterly shafted for scenes in this fic up to now, so I'm glad you liked her little moment in the spotlight~
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Date: 2008-07-23 03:55 am (UTC)Doumeki rubbed one of his ears. “Can’t you turn this down a bit?”
Anyway, I'm off to read the epilogue. :D
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Date: 2008-07-24 02:57 pm (UTC)Writing these few chapters really took it out of me like nothing in this fic before them (and I'm still coming up with all these other things I should have included or ways I should rearrange the confrontation with Tomoyo in the final edits to make it work better), but I do really appreciate the vote of confidence on them. It's good to hear that all that work was worthwhile. ^^; And I'm sure more than once I've started reading a WIP, lost interest in the fandom along the way and never wound up coming back to read the end, so it really is fantastic for me to hear this fic still stood out enough to be worth coming back for. =D
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Date: 2008-07-24 05:41 pm (UTC)I can imagine. The culmination of such a large project must be difficult to engineer (a task which I so far have escaped in everything I've written) but we're always our own worst critics and that probably doesn't make it any easier. I've definitely lost track of more than a few pretty good fic that way, but I could hardly bail on Ghost Stories. I've invested too much in it to pull out before finishing (moot point now anyway, since I finished reading the draft).
You'll be posting the revised version as well? I'm excited to see what changes and what stays the same.
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Date: 2008-07-25 04:27 am (UTC)I don't know what I'd do with the revised version if I wasn't going to post it. =P The main question is when I'll find the time for it, but anyhow, I'll probably be putting up a post about my full editing plans in a week or two. If I'm lucky, I might get away without having to make too many major edits, but I've got a decent mental list of stuff to neaten up already.