A/N: I apologize for sucky title and sucky ending. Really. But this has been sitting unfinished for so long that it was bothering me, so I decided I didn't care if the ending and title sucked so long as I finally got this uploaded. Grr.
THERE IS NO YAOI HERE. First person to suggest so will be shot. This IS a Hanatarou/Hinamori, even if she's not actually present, and I meant to show the cute, brotherly relationship that Ganju and Hana have going on - just in an AU-ish sort of way. So. Yeah. Just wanted to clarify. xD
He looked much like any other new arrival. Hanatarou stood in front of the assembly of the other boys at the orphanage, pale and skinny with a look of tense worry in his large dark eyes, as Matron introduced him. It was early, and the rest of the boys yawned their way through Matron's standard, painfully tactful introduction.
"Hanatarou Yamada has just lost his parents," she said, speaking delicately as if she were tiptoeing around the words. "So I want all of you to give him a kind welcome. Can we manage that?"
Sitting in the back of the room, an older boy actually laughed under his breath when he heard this. "It's all the same," he mumbled to himself, and those around him glanced quickly across to him upon hearing his voice but looked away almost immediately, afraid of meeting his eyes. "Always the same… doesn't matter. New kid'll find out soon enough how it is around here."
His words would soon prove true. Hanatarou's first misfortune came not from the usual orphanage bullies, but from the fact that he was assigned as a bunkmate to the same boy who had predicted his downfall. Ganju, despite his tough, muscular appearance, was not one of the usual gang of bullies, but rather preferred to keep to himself – and everyone else had learned to leave him alone. Hanatarou, however, did not yet know this.
He approached Ganju that evening, introducing himself with a politeness that masked the trembling anxiety underneath. "Are… you Ganju Shiba? I-I'm Hanatarou Yamada. I think… I'm your new bunkmate." As he slowly began to detect Ganju's hostility, his anxiety increased. "I… I'll try not to bother you… I'm a quiet sleeper, I think." He laughed nervously. "A-and I'm not going to stay here long… they're coming for me soon."
It was this phrase that set Ganju off. With surprising speed for someone so large, he shoved Hanatarou against the wall and leaned over the smaller boy threateningly. "First rule about this place," he growled. "No one's coming. Get it into your head."
Ganju stalked away, leaving Hanatarou trembling against the wall and staring after him with wide eyes. The older boy didn't care, not looking back.
Shy, quiet, and small, Hanatarou became a ready target to many of the orphanage's crueler boys who made a habit of attacking anyone they viewed as a weaker link. Their ringleader came to take great delight in tormenting Hanatarou, and before long almost all of them were going out of their way to harass him. A day didn't go by that Hanatarou wasn't kicked or shoved, or came back to the dormitory to find one of his belongings missing.
Somehow, he managed to keep his chin up, and none of the other boys seemed able to understand it. No matter what he went through during the morning and early afternoon at lessons, he always seemed refreshed by the time he arrived at dinner in the evening, managing to smile at the same boys who had been his tormentors earlier in the day. During the time between in the afternoon, when very few requirements were put on the boys, Hanatarou seemed to disappear.
The orphanage stood on one end of a long, cold lake, between the twin mountains which reared up on either side. It painted a depressing picture, reflecting the masses of gray stone around it. Although the orphanage owned an ancient, decrepit pier that jutted out into the dark water, it had almost never been used in living memory. The lake itself lay untouched, too cold for swimming, until Hanatarou arrived.
When the other boys first discovered where he'd been spending his afternoons, they could hardly believe it. Ganju was the first to see him; he'd been taking a walk in solitude along the orphanage grounds when he heard a splash. When he cast a startled look to the lake, there was Hanatarou, stripped down to his shorts but hardly seeming to mind the temperature, swimming swiftly and easily along the water's surface. Then he ducked underwater and was so long in coming up that Ganju was sure he'd drowned, until suddenly his dark head burst up out of the water with a splash. For a few seconds, he looked exhilarated, his face shining with intense, radiant joy. Then he flipped around and continued swimming, smoothly blending one stroke into another with careless ease.
By this time several of the other boys had gathered, watching Hanatarou with open astonishment and uncertainty. If he noticed their mutters and stares, however, he didn't show it. It was the only time he was ever truly happy at the orphanage, and everything but the water seemed to disappear. He was still in the water when the other boys lost interest and wandered inside, and continued swimming for another hour until he at last pulled himself up onto the pier, dried himself off with a towel, and dressed again. Hanatarou's expression, usually tense and nervous by now, was relaxed and content. It was always this way; sometimes he felt as if the lake was the only thing keeping him sane under the constant, unrelenting pressure of attacks from the other boys. If it hadn't been for the daily escape to the cool, refreshing water, he was sure he would have broken by now, but when he slipped into the lake… Hanatarou looked up at the sky. When he closed his eyes and swam blindly underwater, he felt just for a moment as if she was there again, swimming alongside him as they always had.
Hanatarou cast one last look at the lake and then turned to go inside. The worst thing about his afternoons was that they had to end. He couldn't stay in the dream forever.
The truth was that Hanatarou was lonely, desperately so. The other boys had made it plain they would not accept him, weak and undersized as he was. Hanatarou was used to that, had even been expecting it. But it still hurt, somehow, that he had no one he could even speak to. Those who weren't part of the gang that bullied him so cruelly were invariably loners who preferred solitude, and drove away any attempts at contact he made. His bunkmate Ganju was always sullen and silent, never even acknowledging his presence. After a while Hanatarou withdrew into himself and stopped even trying to make friends, sometimes remaining silent for days at a time. He grew thinner, his hair becoming lank and his eyes dull. The loners who did not actively torment him watched, and understood. It was the way things were here; there were only three choices. Join the enemy, adapt to solitude, or perish.
As Hanatarou's loneliness increased and his health deteriorated, his tormentors grew nearer like circling vultures, their attacks becoming worse than before and their once-casual blows growing harder. The day they finally went too far was an unusually beautiful one; the gray clouds that usually covered the sun had cleared for once, and the sky was bright and blue, reflecting on the lake and transforming it into something lovely.
Hanatarou had no time to appreciate the sunlight. The other boys had caught him on the way down to the pier, and he was now in the center of a ring of them as one boy held his arms tightly behind his back. He had tried to fight back at first, but knew that he had no chance of beating them. The stamina that served him so well in the water was useless here, in a fight. Now he stood helpless, battered and bruised in the aftermath of the swift, one-sided fight.
"Going for a swim again, fish?" one of them called out scornfully. Someone hit him. Hanatarou flinched.
"When will you realize that you don't belong here?" Another boy laughed. "You're a fish out of water!"
More laughter. Another punch to the stomach. Hanatarou doubled up, coughing.
"Think you're better than us, do you? Showing off in the water like that?" The boy holding him jerked him upright, and Hanatarou felt something that might have been a belt tightening around his arms. He struggled, feebly, but it didn't do much good. His captor released him as soon as his arms were secure, and he felt himself being pulled to the end of the pier by the mob that surrounded him, his ears filled with their taunts and body aching from their blows. At last he stood at the end of the pier, staring down at the glassy, shining surface of the lake. For just a moment he was transfixed by the light.
"Show us how to swim, fishy!" someone yelled from the back of the mob. Hanatarou looked up into the cruel grin of the gang's ringleader, standing just behind him.
"Why don't you stay in the water where you belong?" he said, and before Hanatarou realized what was going on, the taller boy had pushed him into the water.
Hanatarou made a half-hearted attempt to keep his head up even without the use of his arms, but as the water closed over his body, his exhaustion seemed to suddenly overwhelm him. So he stopped his struggles and relaxed, sinking down into the darkness of the lake with a detached, numb feeling. His chest was starting to hurt and his head was throbbing; he knew he'd have to take a breath soon, and knew with a strangely calm sensation that his lungs would fill with water when he did. He was going to die there in the lake. He, Hanatarou, was going to drown…
Suddenly, he felt something grab him, roughly halting his slow descent. Hanatarou was startled into inhaling, and felt the water enter his lungs, choking him. All at once, the calm detachment was gone. Hanatarou began to panic, struggling helplessly in the vice-like grip of whoever held him. He needed to breathe. Each choking gasp only made the situation worse. Hanatarou was so terrified that he didn't realize that the dark waters were growing steadily lighter as his unknown rescuer pulled him doggedly upwards.
When they broke the surface of the lake, Hanatarou was nearly unconscious. He hardly noticed as he was dragged to the shoreline and thrown onto dry land, and began coughing uncontrollably, expelling water from his lungs. At the first delicious breath of fresh air, Hanatarou's head began to clear; he lay on his back for several minutes, taking deep breaths, before he opened his eyes.
To his surprise, the first thing he saw was Ganju, leaning over him. "You okay?" he demanded furiously. "What on earth do you think you were doing?"
"They… pushed me in," Hanatarou whispered feebly. His throat hurt from the quantities of water he'd breathed in. He coughed again.
"I saw," Ganju said grimly. "For Pete's sake, why didn't you fight back? Or at least try to stay above water? You would have died if I hadn't been there! The idiots didn't even care!" He glared. "They won't be trying something like that again any time soon," the older boy growled.
"I tried, but…" Hanatarou trailed off. However helpless he'd been on land, he knew he could have at least done something in the water. Something had held him back… He glanced up at Ganju, wanting to change the subject. "I thought you hated me," he said quietly.
"Hate you? No. I… well…" Ganju seemed to be getting more frustrated by the minute, but he didn't leave, constantly shifting positions and finally sitting next to Hanatarou with his legs crossed, staring off over the lake. "You reminded me of me, kid," he muttered finally. "I couldn't stand it. It was exactly how I was when I came… day after day of waking up and believing she was gonna come and take me home… and then year after year of her not coming back."
"Who?" Hanatarou said tentatively, and to his surprise Ganju didn't take offense at the question.
"My sister," he said finally. "Our big brother raised us. When he died… she couldn't support us both by herself, so she took me here and promised she'd come back when she got a better job. I wasn't much older than you." He gave a bitter laugh. "I'm still here."
"I'm sorry," Hanatarou said quietly.
"So who is she?" Ganju said abruptly. Hanatarou blinked. "This Momo person."
Hanatarou sat upright at that, his eyes wide in surprise. "How did you know…"
"I heard you," Ganju said. "You talked in your sleep the first few nights. Said her name, over and over."
"Momo was my best friend," Hanatarou said, staring at the sunlight reflecting on the small waves that lapped at the shoreline near his feet. "Our parents were close friends, so she stayed with us a lot. Her parents took business trips a lot, and she'd live with us. We had a house by the sea, and we'd go swimming there every summer." Ganju's face softened slightly, given a new insight into Hanatarou's obsession with the water. "Our house was her home, really. When she left, went back with her parents, it was strange for both of us. Unnatural. But in the water, it felt… right," Hanatarou whispered, closing his eyes. Once again, he could almost imagine her sitting beside him. He opened his eyes again.
"When my parents died, we both had to leave. She promised that she and her parents would come and get me, but they still haven't come. Ganju, I miss her," Hanatarou murmured, staring with intensity at the bright waters. Swimming was the only time he still felt close to her. Maybe… that was why he'd given up. He hadn't really wanted to die… but if he stayed underwater forever, he never would have to face the pain at the surface.
Hanatarou shivered, and drew his wet arms around himself. Ganju looked at him.
"It'll be okay," he said, his voice unusually gentle. "Who knows… you may still see her again one day."
"No… Ganju, listen!" At the sudden spirit in Hanatarou's voice, Ganju almost started in surprise. The look in Hanatarou's eyes was one of fierce determination. "You're getting it all wrong. I won't give up on her. If she doesn't find me… I'll go find her. We will see each other again." His eyes searched Ganju's face. "You shouldn't give up on your sister either, Ganju," he said softly. "You'll find her someday."
Ganju turned to Hanatarou in surprise, his eyes widening. Then he smiled, ruffling the younger boy's damp hair. "We'll find them together," he promised.
"Yeah," Hanatarou whispered, staring out at the lake. He'd find her. But he'd survive until he did. Because even without her…
Hanatarou lay back on the ground, staring at the sky contentedly. I'm not alone.