AN: I originally published this fic on AO3 and felt compelled to upload it here as a backup in case the AO3 servers crash when I have a chapter ready to go. There are some lovely fanfics I read here I can't find elsewhere, so favoriting them and uploading this is a win-win.

Suffice it to say, I devoured the No.6 anime, manga, and light novels in December 2017, and I felt so emotionally and physically distraught that I felt obligated to write a fanfic to cope with my broken heart. Months of reading hundreds of fanfics, writing a review on my blog, and writing eight chapters for Child of Storms have passed and I am STILL not over No.6. Thank you, Atsuko Asano, for ruining my life. ;_;

Without further adieu, please enjoy. Any and all constructive criticism is welcome.

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky."

― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

Sometime between the insane idea to haze the understudies with a lassi drinking contest and the manager calling out the lead actors to give grandiose speeches to close out the season, the rat slipped between the ruckus and the lights of the theater. He'd collect his gold on Friday after the understaffed accountant counted every coin to the drop and before the arrogant divas, recovering from their cannabis-ridden high, robbed more than their fair share of revenue.

Downpour projected the building's radiance in all directions, blinding citizens and stars alike in the red light district. The superfibre cloth, taking the shape and function of a poncho, shielded Nezumi from the sparks of a party on fire, but the rain tore through the fabric and drenched him to the bone. The old thing would have more life in quieter climates, but the inconstant temperature fluctuations and heavy rainfall of the monsoon season aged it at thrice the rate of the light acidic rains of the former Mediterranean Europe to the north or the geothermal deserts of the former India to the east. With the rainy season at its peak, Nezumi's mice learned to readapt to indoor life for weeks on end. Even the mechanical ones could only resist water for four hours, and Nezumi had not yet found high quality salvage to provide longer-lasting protection from extended total exposure.

But it was not uncommon for the blue mouse to burry itself deep in Nezumi's clothes, only to appear when he changed into costume. It was stubborn like its father Hamlet. Both had the insane affinity for very niche, specific things: tragedies for the father and adventures for the offspring. (After discovering a litter of pups encircling Cravat seven months out on the journey, Nezumi learned to not guess the sex of any live mouse he kept.) The family must have convinced it to stay home, as Nezumi felt a nagging solitude in not hissing curses at the blue pest tangled in the folds of his shirt and dangling for dear life by a twisted paw.

Solitude. An ache crinkled inside his ribcage as the cold storm raged louder than the single tall, vast cloud consuming the sky and dumping rain to drown the streets of and the plateaus surrounding No.1.

Nezumi had loneliness as a friend with benefits these past five years. It was a cold that nipped at winter's heels. When it came and went with the seasons, he could bear the harsh mistress' temper. Nezumi, always cunning and quick, avoided much of her tricks and illusions. But cunning and quick was she as well, beating the rat at his own game. His worst defeat was fourteen months ago, and the scars and memories he swore were light as wind were boulders dragging his feet into the earth.

May 19: if that day didn't make a fool of him, losing Hamlet four days later did.

To escape the pit — sometimes a sea of burning bodies or groping shadows or quicksand — he amputated his feet. He would survive by crawling. Losing feet wouldn't break him; humans lived long and well lives without them.

Neither would a brazen drunkard cursing him in Hausa with a shiv that lunged from the dark corner of the gateway marking the divide between the commercial district from the slums. After years of practice and too much exposure to an airhead idiot, Nezumi finally mastered the art of walking and piecing through the thoughts and feelings in his head without losing sight of his surroundings.

The lack of traction on the flooded road gave Nezumi more freedom to incapacitate the man twice his size. He twirled on his feet, brought his arm up to push away the hand with the blade, knelt low, and kicked his attacker's kneecap, shattering his patella. The attacker collapsed and clutched his mangled limb, wailing barely audible over the grumbling rain. Nezumi looked at the soul long enough to realize he was what local denizens called "brittle boned". Knowing the man was no longer a threat, Nezumi walked away with a conscious numbness to the plight of a malnourished stranger who called him a pale demon.

Once he reached the lone fig tree in the center of a half-crowded plaza from the pre-war days, he counted his tenth sneeze. Word claimed the clouds would pass by tomorrow evening, and Nezumi had just enough to hold out to buy food if he woke up with a cold. His hands pruned and his feet were swimming in two inches of water trapped in his boots.

Just two more blocks. The mice would huddle around the coldest parts of his body his blankets could not protect from the draft seeping through the worn, dilapidated structure of the mid- twentieth century relic of an apartment. Seven little bodies were better than none, but one would have been better if he hadn't—

He shook his head. A dull throbbing replaced the end of the thought. No.6 felt closer than his shitty apartment with paper thin walls and cracked windows at this rate.

A faint sound tickled the drenched hair pressed to his neck.

His instincts tapped into something in the world that made him hear and anticipate things most were oblivious to. Several signs he recognized at a young age, but one emerged frequently not long after he left the toppled city.

"I-I thought you were going to die. My fear of losing you is so unbearable. Nothing scares me more than losing you."

The tickle to the base of his neck happened suddenly, without warning, and in any other circumstance it would sour any mood for the rest of the day and linger in his inevitable nightmares.

But this sound, getting louder as Nezumi approached his block, did not pinch the nerves that only inflamed in response to the echos of singing or asters. He stood at the door to the complex and a clear sense what the sound is and where it's coming from blossomed in his gut.

It was another shackle, but one an old acquaintance allowed themselves to be bound to.

In the alley between the apartment complex and thrift shop, in the rusted dumpster amidst an ocean of trash and bodily fluids was gargled crying and strained coughing.

Many impulses told Nezumi to walk away as he left the brittle man to bleed to death if someone else hadn't shoved his face into a wall, crushing his malnourished skull like a rotten tomato. Others, first turned on suddenly so many moons ago, navigated him through the cesspool to investigate the dumpster, its stench to last three days longer than average due to sanitation refusing to risk their necks in the slums in the downpour.

"A baby!"

An excitable voice knocked the wind out of Nezumi. Pulling gloves from his pocket and his cloth over his nose, he avoided the rivers of trash and unknown fluids leaking from the bin and looked inside.

"Who'd do such a thing?! We have to help her!"

It was clear, completely unmuffled by the rain. More concrete and real than the dumpster before Nezumi. A cloud of white entered his field of vision, and the angel lifted the baby in his arms. His expectant smirk anticipated the rat's mockery, and unbroken determination burned in his red- purple eyes.

"She's so cute, isn't she? Oh, look, Nezumi! She has brown eyes! They look like how mine used to be! Forgot mine are supposed to be brown, didn't you? I'd say we could be related, but brown's still the most common eye color in humanity, so the chances of that being true are slim. Still, aren't they pretty? They're light enough to see her pupils! I think she's going to be very expressive when she grows up!"

He held the baby as if it was second-nature, and, given his innate affection for children and animals was always blatant, this should not have surprised Nezumi. The image inflicted burns to his eyes and aches to his chest regardless; just seeing him and hearing his voice were enough to reopen wounds that never had the chance to develop scars.

Then as suddenly it appeared, the apparition dissolved into the rain. The crying that lured Nezumi stopped.

His stomach turned to lead. Before he could process what happened seconds ago or his own reaction to the change of events, Nezumi reached into the dumpster and, elbow-deep in filth, he rescued the baby. Once he broke into the back entrance of the apartment complex, he dropped to the floor and lay the baby on its side on his superfibre cloth.

The baby, stark white and smaller than a watermelon, lie cold and still with its mouth full of the murky water and filth from its polluted crib. He had never touched a human baby before, but Nezumi knew from stories and books that physically they were just a smaller and more fragile adult. He patted its back gently near its lungs until the baby coughed and brought air back into its tiny, visible ribcage. Awakened again the baby shivered and screamed at the sea of discomfort and shit the world tossed it in.

Many things annoyed Nezumi, especially babies, for they are dumb, selfish parasites that never shut up. They couldn't communicate in a way for anyone to understand, and their temperaments were maddeningly unpredictable. But this baby at this time spoke in a language universal to all life: it wanted to survive. All it had was its incessant, piercing cry to survive this round of the dance of death and have the reaper overlook its fleeting existence today. It was distressingly fluent for a creature unable to form a coherent thought.

Nezumi wrapped the baby in his cloth, exposing the creature to the cold dampness a moment longer until they arrived in its rescuer's apartment. Once he unlocked his door on the sixth floor, a chorus of mice clamored up Nezumi's leg to reach the bundle in his arms.

"It's just a baby! Shit, let me in before you make me drop it!"

As he placed the baby on his sad excuse for a couch to change into dry clothes, the living mice pulled the cloth off the baby and used their fur to dry it until the mechanical mice brought the last unused towel before laundry day. Elbow-length damp hair undone and pressed to his skin,

Nezumi returned with a bowl of warm soapy water and a cloth. The apartment was chaos for several minutes as the baby continued to cry while the mice interrogated the mercurial man for the monumental and shocking surprise guest.

Once Nezumi removed every trace of filth from the baby's body, he used an old shirt as a diaper and fed her a crushed banana. Fatigue and fever ached his body, but he fed the baby until she finally stopped crying.

The adrenaline was wearing off, and Nezumi knew he'd pass out within seconds after this on top of a long day closing out the biggest theater production he had ever participated in. His apartment barely had furniture besides the couch, a bed, a dresser, and a desk, covered in scripts and books. He had originally planned to leave the city in a few weeks after getting his last paycheck for the season. But as he lay in bed with the baby tucked in by his side, his plans may change. Besides, he had a question tug his stomach from a painful angle that he had to find an answer to: Why did I drag a fucking baby into my life?

He blamed the mirage. No matter where he went, no matter his mood, no matter the timing, he would suddenly appear and give some kind of guidance of where to go or hint at what to do next. Maybe he knew Nezumi removed the weight from his ankles and lured him into another trap, only allowing him freedom until he found a way to have the shackles on an indisposable body part. After all, he knew that baby was a girl with brown eyes before Nezumi brought her in and looked closer. He gasped when her eyes looked into his after having her full with the banana.

They were just like his before the wasp drained his eyes and hair of color.

This has to be some cosmic prank.

As he anticipated the veil of a long, painful sleep, Nezumi watched the baby babble to the blue, brown, grey, and black mice encircling her. The blue mouse made itself comfortable on her belly and tolerated her hands grasping for its twitchy tail. The brown mouse, the eldest at thirty months old, sniffled the thin red patch of hair on the crown of her head. It leaned against her scalp to touch the foreign hair that its little curious mind became enamored with. After making new friends, heavy curtains drew over the baby's eyes, and she eased into sleep with the mice as blankets.

Nezumi flattened the tuff of hair the mouse disturbed when it curled into a comfortable position. He had only seen red hair twice before: both in the dwindling number of northern European descendants in No.3. Many recessive phenotypical traits have died out completely, and anyone with eyes or hair that were not some shade of brown or black were viewed as more valuable. Nezumi's grey eyes were no exception, though the four grey-eyed people he has met expressed similar fascination for the shade and color as those in and surrounding the

generally ethnically homogenous No.6. The worth of such things may nearly always be superficial, but for anyone to abandon their own child — designed by nature to elicit unconditional love from her parents, in theory and in practice — disgusted Nezumi. The baby was better off never being born if her mother would throw her away so easily for someone else to take pity on the unwanted burden.

Usually he mocked charity and actions born of pity, but he saved her anyway. Somehow, despite abandoning the only person he ever loved — a conclusion he came to grudgingly while picking up the fragments of the mask he always wore that shattered like glass — his twisted, hypocritical, hardened heart somehow had more humanity than a woman who carried this creature in her womb for nine months and screamed in agony for hours to bring her into the world.

Nezumi's pulse pounded his skull. He felt the first wave of fever wash over him, and knowing the night was far from over, he submitted to his body's commands to heal. The worst may pass in the night, leaving him ready for what the morning brings.

Rest never came to him. He dreamt of Shion, his former home in Chronos, the open window, the medicine kit, his deft suturing, the mugs of cocoa, the purple sweater, the bed.

The memory of Shion's forehead to Nezumi's to check his temperature reminded him of neither bondage nor pain. Every second of that night would replay until they lay beside each other; the intelligence of Shion's sixteen-year-old self shined in those fleeting brown eyes Nezumi did not forget. They were only twelve, but every set of threaded fingers, every embrace, every caress lacked the hesitation and naivety of inexperienced children. Thoughts Nezumi had never admitted in those short, turbulent six months they spent living together were conveyed with the smallest touch or the gentlest sigh. The ease in Shion accepting and initiating affection tied his insides into tight knots that induced an addictive pleasure he had gone without for years.

Every incarnation of the beginning of their mundane ritual they continued to perform four years after Shion's twelfth birthday every night played out differently in all but one way: two halves awake in the morning enveloped in each other's arms, incapable of coming undone until the dreamer awakes alone with his heart mourning its counterpart's absence.

Although the baby's crying woke him up because she needed food and a changed diaper, this morning was no different from any other. After caring for his new deadweight enough for her to stop wailing and go back to sleep, Nezumi sat on his moth-eaten couch and submitted to the aftermath of the dream. He pressed his forehead against his knees as he tasted the quiet tears he held back all morning and were hotter than the peak of his fading fever.

They kissed in this dream. It was full of hunger and desperation he barely restrained when they parted on that windy hill surrounded by barely budding cherry blossoms. No child seasoned by hardship and struggle could ever know how to perform such an act, but he had accepted the lack of realism after the fourth time this particular dream played in the midst of his repressed and suppressed thoughts.

It was pathetic how much he wanted every one of his longings to be real. He should have stolen Shion's first kiss when he had the chance. He should have held Shion until they melted into one being when he slept next to him. They should have claimed each other during their last night together.

Oh, how they were so close to becoming too safe, too involved to ever allow each other to separate. No salve ever soothed the restless rage of the keloid spider on his back like Shion's hands, immune to calluses after years of protection from toil within the walls of the city of No.6. One gentle brush lit untapped nerves in his back; one palm measuring the size of the rough insect rendered him immobile and breathless to sensations that outnumbered and overpowered the signals of pain.

No one touched his scarred back like Shion before or after, and yet he knew with the same certainty one has of their true name that his body was designed for only Shion's touch to cast such magic. He had no control over the sounds Shion lured out of him— did he moan? how loud was he? did he sound like a woman? — and he didn't care so long the dangerous, paralyzing pleasure never stopped. The memory of those caresses and other physical teases spread shivers to every nerve ending, and Nezumi cursed the hard pressure in his lap even more than the tears soaking his sweatpants.

"Throw every one of your memories away", huh? So much for practicing what I preach.

No matter who was by his side now, Nezumi hoped — one of a dozen emotions he let himself feel for the sake of his sanity — that Shion still smiled like he did in his dream, like when he watched him from afar. That would mean he could move on and let Nezumi go because his soul didn't break beyond reparation, if it ever broke at all.

"People change, boy. That man you believe in will change too. Anyone who stands at the top of a state will change. If he doesn't change, he'll be destroyed."

That vile, hateful man lied; Shion neither changed nor was destroyed because of No.6. He witnessed it himself. The brilliance of his unfading smile will bring light to a significant other who won't go blind from indirect sight. Nezumi may have saved his life several times, but he could never give Shion what he really needs to live happily and well without want. It's best to leave the boy he loved in the past so he can live in a new present with someone who'll never bear the potential to destroy him like Nezumi.

"I'm drawn to you."

But that was always the problem. Many were more worthy to see it, but the light, a blinding, rare miracle, felt like it shined for only one person; his smile was made only for Nezumi, and only Nezumi had the innate ability to see it for what it truly is. A smile that has been lost to time and distance and alternate futures in which he never left and admitted the truth that continues to scare him.

Shion saved him ten years ago because he's Shion. Nezumi watched over him in secret for four years because he's Shion. He saved Shion from the thrawls of the security bureau and the scientists in the Correctional Facility because he's Shion. He took a bullet for him because he's Shion. He dreams of Shion to this day in spite of every attempt to forget and ignore him because he's Shion. Shion could still smile like the happiest kid in the world despite living off moldy bread and watery soup with the nameless, homeless rat who mocked his idealism and naivety because he's Shion.

Shion is Shion; it's just that simple.

"Then what would you have me say? 'I love you'?"

Yes. Nezumi choked on a sob at the subconscious thought, cutting through the conscious lies he fed himself. No matter what shitty thing I would've spat in your face after, you should have said it. Even though I'm gone and you have someone else, I still want you to say it.

Why that boy was ever a mystery to him no longer made sense to Nezumi. He never understood Shion because he never tried. He simply was himself, acting only as himself. There never was another reason but Shion acting and thinking based on how he understood the world from how he was raised. He didn't need to know everything about him; only the fundamentals of his character to discern his feelings and moods with enough accuracy to be reliable matter, and he failed to live to that standard.

Questioning his worldview as often as he did meant to invalidate his perspective, to belittle his

existence, to look down on him, to not see him as his equal. Nezumi questioned Shion's existence ever since the moment he heard the boy scream in the middle of a typhoon. There never was room to accept the breadth of the kindness bestowed upon him without hesitation or complaint.

"Please, don't go, Nezumi. This world means nothing to me without you."

He didn't deserve those feelings he supposedly inspired in Shion, and because seeing them displayed before his feet hurt more than when flames boiled the skin on his back, he didn't want those feelings.

It was Nezumi's turn to ruin the baby's sleep, but she was too young to understand or do anything about it.

Day three of living with the new roommate and Nezumi deeply regretted his irrational moment of altruism and would have drop-kicked her out the window so she'd fall back in the dumpster he found her in if he were a true sociopath. Alas, he wasn't to his relief in spite of his seething anger.

Her ribs were starkly visible, she screamed at every hour due to the fever she developed, and she threw up every scrap of whatever soft food Nezumi had left in his kitchen. He couldn't reach a doctor or buy groceries as No.1's week-long downpour developed into a deluge overnight. The streets of the slums were two feet deep in water, and the ceaseless arguing and despairing of residents on the first floor made him grateful he lived two floors below the roof. Even then, the resident above him bitched every few hours about not having enough buckets to catch the rainwater leaking through, some of which began to trickle between the floorboards above and onto Nezumi's appliances. In a fit of brief paranoia he even turned off the heater in case water dared to compromise the device, leaving him months without warmth instead of days.

Between keeping his apartment clean, calming a sickly parasite, and nibbling on the crumbs his mice had not yet found, Nezumi had no time alone to read, to think, to tinker, to relax. His spirit drained with each passing hour as the light at the end of the tunnel never came no matter how much he pressed onward. At least he had no time for Shion to creep into his thoughts.

By midnight, he couldn't sleep no matter how much he tried to ignore the internal and external pains that assaulted him without end. The baby's cries hit a critical point, and Nezumi had to scream in the hall of the apartment complex before trying to and failing to comfort the ungrateful and stubborn near-skeleton.

The hysterical cries of a sick baby, seven real and mechanical mice's incessant squeaks, the cyclone outside shaking the paper-thin glass windows, and the humid and sticky indoors all overwhelmed Nezumi, and, no longer a child, he could not fight through the pandemonium with his blade or tongue. He could not outwit chaos with charms and words that only sway the hearts of man. It was far from the first time he felt unequipped for the realities of life, but the slings and arrows never cut so deep into the layers of skin protecting the raw, mangled, ugly remains of a rotting heart.

Knowing the theories of human behavior and interaction from all the books he read and collected, he had nothing to offer. His hands were too thin, pale, and hardened with calluses to offer a warm touch. His vocabulary was too broad and biting to offer understanding words.

"Nezumi... sing a song... for me?"

Songs can't save anyone. Music can't save anyone. Nezumi can't save anyone. Nothing can save another life but the very life itself that is in danger.

But with nothing left to gain or lose before the last thread of his sanity snapped, Nezumi held his breath, relaxed his hold of the baby, and began to hum. Once he found a pitch the baby responded the most receptively to (beyond her screams weakening into nagging whimpers, he couldn't tell if her moods were fake or genuine anymore), he closed his eyes and let the words flow, seeking crevices in and between immovable stone to fill the empty spaces hidden in plain sight.

O twilit sun, o dawning moon
Spirit away lost dew-kissed wisps
In light
In dark
In shade
From this life to the next

Caught by the spell of Nezumi's voice, the mice and the baby quieted their cries a notch. The rodents gathered in a circle at the foot of his bed and tentatively observed their composing master carry the song to soothe the natural and artificial of the microcosm in the apartment.

The unbroken, the pure mother
Bring solace from the lifeblood to
The friend
The fiend
The rest
For this life and the next

A branch torn from the fig tree could fly through the window, ushering in the madness outside to undo the growing calm inside, but Nezumi continued to sing and rock the frail little red monster in his arms.

Soul-twin long lost, so briefly found
Stay close to me, never let go
In wake
In sleep
In dreams
In this life and the next

Sweat glistened against her skin and memories of pain contorted her face, but her crying ceased. When Nezumi finished, a heaviness released him of his hunched posture and of a sigh too large to escape his throat in one breath. The scars on his back and in his heart continued to ache, yet he would continue to bear them, as the baby could now better bear her illness.

He needed saving as much as she.

"Someone taught me it long ago," he said when her brown eyes, now clear and aware, met his grey. "'One day you will know the true power of song. Use it well as you survive and endure,' she said."

"B-Bah!"

She reached for him with both hands, only managing to grab two fists full of his hair. Her tugs didn't cause pain, but her jovial fixation erased whatever memory of the shroud of illness that terrorized Nezumi out of his light and troubled sleep.

Their moods change so suddenly and without warning... He clicked his tongue. "At least fifteen more years of coddling needy baggage with the unpredictable temperament of a storm—"

Like the typhoon on the night they first met. Like the blizzard that trapped them in the bunker during the New Year. Like the thunderstorm that pushed back his departure from late February to early March. Like the waterspout that drifted him 100 kilometers further south than his mainland destination. Like the deluge that trapped him in a cave for two weeks without food as punishment for breaking that foolish adolescent promise. Like the downpour on the night he took this frail creature in.

The most memorable moments of his life happened during storms. His entire life nothing more apt than a storm, and this child was caught up in it while another brewed outside the ramshackle apartment.

After having fun tangling Nezumi's hair, her arms fell limp, her eyes drooped, and her tiny mouth let out a ferocious yawn as she snuggled against chest. He ignored the blue and brown mice's begging to sleep beside her and waiting for her clenched fist to let go of his ragged shirt. Once she fell asleep, he tucked her and her companions in her makeshift bed, an unused wooden box stuffed with every blanket and towel he salvaged and cleaned, only then realizing how unconsciously domestic he behaved.

Awkward as this all was, he didn't violently cringe in utter disgust at the idea. It's just another set of skills to learn in order to survive the trials that appear before his path forward in the weird journey of life.

Compelled to not needlessly jinx himself after one success in three days, Nezumi stroked the baby's cheek and whispered before returning to bed for good, "Goodnight, Ranko." It naturally slipped from his lips like so few words he ever spoke.