Tradition and Repetition

The holidays were something that happened every single year. Regardless of whether the year had been a good or a bad one, the holidays are always present. For the first few years they seem eventful, while later on they become a bit more like tradition, and then, they merely become habit. Just like the past three or four years, a week before the holidays began, the team all sat around Kai's living room.

To Kai, this had all happened one too many times before. He sat back on the sofa, huddled in a corner and watching his teammates converse about their plans for the holidays. Again, they were all the same as they had been for the past few years. Ray was going back to his village to see family, Max was going to America with his dad to see his mom and spend a few weeks there with her and Tyson's dad was flying in for about two weeks. Even now, Kai's own plans for the holidays had become habit, something he swore against constantly; habits. Still, he decided this habit was decent enough to ignore, choosing to stay home by the fire and watching movies, as he had little else to do with no family to see, and friend's all over the planet, rather than any place reachable.

"Kai…Kai!" Tyson clicked his fingers in front of Kai's face, gaining his attention once again. "Phone." That one word alerted Kai to the ringing sound coming from his kitchen. Anyone who ever calls was right in the room, so this got him running to the phone in seconds.

The company in the living room had grown quiet without their captain. "What do you think happened?" Max murmured, all three having clearly heard some tough impact of something.

The three looked into the dark kitchen, their eyes looking around for their captain, finding him standing at a wall, phone still to his ear and fist still planted firmly into the wall. They watched their Russian slam the phone back into its place on the wall, pausing for a breath before turning round. By the time he got to the living room, the others had gone back to their earlier positions. "Who was it, Kai?" Ray asked curiously.

"No one." Kai replied casually, going back to his place on the couch. The kind of silence he'd forced upon himself was a different kind of silence than the one he had now. Earlier, it wasn't about indifference, it was more about an interested silence. He sat there watching his friends converse, and while not being entirely interested, he still listened intently to all their strange anecdotes. This time though, it was more about thought, complete silence brought on by the fact that his mind was screaming with a search for answers. Maybe these holidays weren't going to be as typical for him as he'd thought.

Even his friends could tell the change in silence. They were suddenly sure that something in that brief phone call had been said to set off and silence their friend. As curious as they were, they weren't about to compromise anything by asking the oldest what had happened so instead they continued to converse with each other as they had done before the whole phone call had interrupted them. Though their conversation seemed forced, not being able to shake off the feeling of Kai's penetrative glare that had been melting its way through the floor.

Once again conversation was interrupted, this time by the front door. Though thanks to the phone call, Kai had been well aware of who was at the door and so departed from his teammates quick enough so as not to leave them to wait. Pulling open the front door, he let Mr. Dickinson and Tala step inside from the blizzard, both dusting the snow off themselves by the door. Tala walked right past Kai, walking to the furthest part of the hall and sitting down in an armchair by the stairs. Kai turned back to Mr. Dickinson, glaring more than just furiously, "You should've told me what happened sooner!" he bit out, desperate to shout, though not doing so to avoid his teammates and Russian friend from hearing.

"At the time the priority was getting Tala away from Russia, Kai, I'm sorry."

Kai had little to no choice but to accept the apology, assuming that if he got mad at his superior that it'd be a lot more difficult to get information about the events out of him. Nonetheless, his tone still came out a little strangled, "How has he been?"

"Better," Mr. Dickinson started, "I assume, at least. You understand more about your friend than I do, Kai; that's why I brought him here."

"I want to call you later for details on what happened." Kai said determinedly.

The old man shook his head, "You already know all that I know. If you want more details you'll have to get them from him." So as to avoid more confrontation, he turned to the young boy sitting and staring aimlessly at the back of the room, "I'm going now, Tala, Kai will take care of you from here." He watched the young boy nod in thanks, getting up from the seat and picking up his bags and waiting for the man to leave.

Kai strongly walked up to his friend, his eyes falling on the suddenly frail creature that seemed collapsible in front of him. Tala seemed like he wanted to avoid the same confrontation that Mr. Dickinson intended on avoiding, "Same room as last time?" Tala asked quietly, dragging his backpack onto his shoulder.

"Sure." With that one word the redhead was marching up the stairs with both his bags, "Hey, you can leave a bag down here and I'll bring it up for you later."

"I'm fine."

"Kai…"

The Russian's attention turned to his three teammates standing by the living room door, "Hmm?"

"Was that…Tala?" Tyson asked, hesitant as he got closer to Kai and looked up the stairs where the redhead had disappeared to.

"Yeah," Kai walked back into the living room, his friend's following, "He was having some trouble in Russia, Mr. Dickinson thought it was best if he came here."

"Why didn't you mention it?"

Kai fell back on the sofa at the stupid question, "Because I didn't know! I found out like twenty minutes ago."

Everyone sat down, surrounding Kai as though waiting for some answers, "Did something happen to Tala or something? It's not like Mr. Dickinson to just drop something like this unless he had a really good reason." Ray reasoned out loud, though silently prompting Kai to tell them what had happened to his ex-teammate.

Kai bit back on the urge to kick them out of his house, currently the last thing he needed was his worrying friends asking him to divulge information about his other friend. For a few moments he just sat there, waiting for some sort of thought to come to mind where he could tell his friend's what happened without betraying Tala. He had no real intention of telling them anything, but he knew that at the same time they weren't going to quite leave it alone. Something being wrong with Tala was the most obvious thing in the house. "He's just having a tough time, that's it."

"Kai?" Max got Kai's attention again, considering his gaze had gone to the arm of the sofa where he stared as he had done to the floor earlier, "We should go, we should leave you alone with Tala so you could talk to him or something."

The captain sighed, shaking his head and rubbing his temples; being so unprepared for what he heard on the phone, he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding his concerns from his friends. "It's fine, you can stay a while longer; Tala needs some time alone anyway."

"Should we go tell him hello or something?" Max asked quietly, looking to Tyson and Ray for an answer.

"Guys, just leave him alone."

Ray sighed, sitting up on the sofa beside Kai, "We get worried, Kai. If Tala is anything like you, and we know he is like you, then this could be something serious."

Kai glared at the neko-jin for that sentence, "Thanks for giving me some credit." He looked around at the slightly worried gazes, "Really guys, I can look after him just fine."

So the team stayed for a half an hour longer, just sitting around and talking about little random subjects. Kai tried his best to listen intently but his mind continued to wander to his friend upstairs, wondering what he was doing or how he was feeling so in the end he was very fast paced in getting up the stairs after his friend's had left. He knocked lightly on the bedroom door, receiving no answer and so just opening the door and stepping inside.

Tala sat on the windowsill amidst the dark bedroom, a bit of light touching his skin from the moon outside. Kai walked up to him slowly as he chose to give his entrance no real recognition. He sat down on the windowsill in front of him, tilting his head to be able to look at him properly, "Tal?" he heard him groan silently, "Haven't really heard from you in a while…though wouldn't make much sense if I asked how you've been, would it?"

"It really wouldn't."

"Tala…"

"Kai," Tala silenced him with his name, not making any eye contact, "I don't want that lecture right now…that 'it'll be okay in the end' lecture. I don't want to hear it, I can't hear it right now, okay? It's why I left Russia, I can't hear those people go on about how 'it'll be okay' I don't want to hear it."

The older boy moved closer, pulling an arm gently around Tala's back and pulling him a little closer to him, "Tala, I'll do anything to make you feel safe again."

"I know, Kai." The redhead murmured into his shoulder.

"You should've called me the second this happened…I shouldn't have had to find out from Mr. Dickinson."

Tala pressed his face into Kai's shoulder, "I didn't even want him to know! Let alone tell you."

Kai pulled away and leaning back against the wall, staring at Tala's red eyes, "You know he only did it because he was concerned. He seems to think that I could help you, in the end I hope I can but you have to let me."

The redhead averted his gaze once again, looking intently outside where the darkness held nothing, "I don't want to talk about it right now, Kai."

"Well what are you going to do about it?" Kai asked, some hesitance in his voice; Tala really was the only person on earth that could spark something like that in his strong voice.

"I don't know yet…"

"Maybe you…"

Tala glowered irritably in Kai's direction suddenly, speaking through heavily gritted teeth, "If you say I should see a shrink it'll be the end of you, Kai."

"Did you even consider it?"

"Of course I did!" Tala lashed out finally, one stray tear pouring out of the corner of his eye, "Four hours in that hospital room, Kai. Rape tests, X-Rays, stitching, every minute through every little thing they're giving me the option to see a shrink, of course I considered it. I thought about it for a long time but I just can't."

Kai bit on his lip, drawing in a deep breath while trying to reason with his life long friend. What do you tell the person who has been through so much? The same person that doesn't want to hear 'it'll be okay' too? "I just wanted to make sure you were aware of your options."

"I have." He ran his hands through his hair, somewhat wishing he could relieve the stress from his aching mind, "I just want to get some sleep. It's been a long day; a two hour train ride to Moscow, then a three hour flight, one hour taxi ride. Now I…"

"I get it," Kai silenced him; "you're tired. Just try to get some sleep tonight, sleep in as long as you want to in the morning. My room is in the same place as last time you were here so you know where I am if you need anything."

"Thanks, Kai."

"Good night."

A/N: So I started writing this out about two days ago and I've already got another 4,000 or so words done. I couldn't really write more without some feedback on what I have so far so I thought I'd post this as the first chapter. Since I wrote everything quite fluidly it was difficult to decide where to cut the chapter. I had wanted to give a little bit more than this but then I would've given a first chapter of about 4,500 words because there was no other suitable place to cut the chapter. So this is my new story, it will take up the rest of my writing time so I'm doubting any more oneshots for a while. I hope you enjoy this fic so far, rest assured though there will be more angst in the future.

Please leave a review, let me know what you think and I will have the second chapter out as soon as possible. Thank you everyone!

P.S: I may be in for a screen name change in the near future, so please, if you see updates and new fics from this account but from a different username, please don't abandon the stories because you don't know which they are. Most likely I'll be changing my screen name sometime soon, it's due for a change and its TOO long at the moment.