Title: (tentative) Violet Eyes Never Cry
Author: Apollyon Angel
Warnings: UNPOLISHED, UNFINISHED, basically a plot bunny that bit me and ran. Also, minor angst, shounen ai
Pairings: Yuki+Shuichi, so far...
Disclaimers: I own neither series and gain nothing from this other than personal satisfaction.
******************
The dry, cracked road was packed with people, crowded together like crows scavenging an old skeleton. From the decaying cement beneath their feet to the rusting, crumbling buildings looming over like tombstones, death hung over all. As if they could feel the hands of the reaper choking them of time, the people in the streets shouted, stumbled, and pushed, trying to elbow out their neighbors for the last morsels.
{{{Back here again? he wondered, looking about the landscape with a sad, half-smile.}}}
It was Tuesday, the day the merchant transports came, fresh from the satellites, or even Earth itself, with precious cargo of food, clothes, and water. The colony's citizens came out in droves to snatch up their daily bread, meager pickings for most because of the cost. Then again, some didn't let that stop them...
"Thief! Thief!" the food vendor bellowed, pointing one chubby finger after the thin streaks of ragged clothing barreling down the crowded street. The fat man looked torn from leaving his cart to chase the two rapidly dwindling figures and protecting his overpriced goods from other quick hands. In a moment, though, the figures were gone without a trace and the man could only throw curses upon their memory.
{{{Why this day? Why am I thinking of this...ah, yes! It was my first time.}}}
The older child, chestnut hair flying wildly over his back, rounded the corner into a clear alleyway out the outskirts of the bustle and transferred his armload quickly. Small, grubby hands shot out of the crowds to deftly catch his burdens as he pulled one morsel after another from his holy shirt; appearing as if from thin air and disappearing just as agilely.
His eyes searched the crowds ahead for signs of trouble while the second boy also dispersed his prizes to the 'meandering' children who slipped into and out of the mob like shadows. In less than a minute the two were empty-handed and walking innocently through the crowd, calling the attention of the suspicious to distract for the precious minutes the other members needed to escape unscathed and unmolested.
{{{My heart was pounding so hard I thought the police would see it moving under my shirt, but they didn't. Our decoy tactic worked. We survived that day, like so many others...so many, yet so few.}}}
Strength and strategy were the keys to life on the streets; every bum, hooker, and cop knew that on some primal level. Or at least, the ones who survived did. Strength was especially crucial amongst the orphaned children. The strong bullied and muscled their way through, picking their targets carefully. They preyed joyfully upon the youngest and weakest as, though they had less to win from the 'bottom of the food chain', the chance of getting injured was less then risking a fight with another bully. On the L2 streets a simple wound, a scratch or broken bone could be one's death sentence. Even though the plagues that had run rampant the year prior had been stopped, no one took chances.
Strength was important, and this particular group didn't have much of it. Strategy, on the other hand, they did, even if they didn't know what the word meant as explained by Webster. Their moves were carefully planned and explained by their leader. Their lives depended on his abilities and no matter how young or small they followed the chosen leader without falter. It was tradition, some said--and tradition was honored more than law.
The boy with chestnut hair grinned down at his companion in larceny and clapped him lightly on the shoulder as they wound they way through the back alleys, heading for their latest nest. The other smiled back, though his face was kept in shadows by a low, wide-brimmed baseball cap.
{{{I remember. That look in his eyes, I would have laid down and die on command to see that look.}}}
"That was some nice slighta' hand, today, Kid."
"In the beginning, yeah," the ball-capped boy replied, climbing a rusty fire escape ladder. "I messed up after the fifth grab. My hands were too full." The boy raised the mentioned appendage before his own eyes from harsh scrutiny. He scowled, his small, shadowed features pulling together.
"Hey, it's no biggie," the older boy soothed. "Ya are learning quickly, just don't bite more than ya can chew."
Kid scoffed lightly at the saying. More than he could chew? He beat back memories of his first weeks on the harsh streets. Before he had found a place in a crew, before he became his leader's 'Kid'. When he had barely the strength to put on foot in front of another, hunger and fear draining every nerve, deadening every muscle until he couldn't even swallow his meager findings among the trash.
And even with the crew, when did they ever have more than they could eat? Not for as long as he could remember. He hadn't been with them long, but he was rapidly growing frustrated with his lack of success at the simplest tricks to help gather food; tricks done with ease by boys even younger than his own handful of life. "Too slow, too small," he muttered to himself, closing his hand into a tight fist before his eyes as if willing the limb to elongate with the sheer weight of his gaze.
"Don't worry about it," the longhaired boy commanded with lighthearted authority. "You've only raiding with me for a week, and your size will be useful." Seeing doubt flash in the other's posture, he went on to explain. "The smaller the better for pan-handling and getting out of trouble. The older thugs will overlook you, the upper class will pity, the mothers will gush, and the hookers will adore you."
{{{He always had a genuine smile for me, for us, whenever we needed it. Such an odd and precious ability on the streets.}}}
The small boy raised his brim an inch to look the other in the eyes, something very rarely done. The older boy is careful not to flinch or shift his own gaze in anyway. In his estimated six years of life, he had seldom had to focus his discipline so intently, but to flinch in anyway would have destroyed their fragile bond.
A wisp of pure white hair fell down from the lip of the cap, slipping down to arch gently over a similarly colorless eyebrow and one blood red eye. The look in those eyes was mixed distrust and buried want. The child was practically radiating the want for affection, no doubt only multiply a million-fold by the harsh life on the streets that Kid had been dumped on only scant months prior.
{{{Such an odd and precious person to take in a freak like me. How different would it have been if he hadn't chosen me?}}}
Hungry, wet from a rainstorm, and alone, the boy wouldn't have lasted the first week in their neighborhood, if not for the color of his hair and eyes. The slim, delicate features the boy held unknowingly, coupled with the radiating aura of innocence and trust--he would have been meat, pre-packaged with a bow, for the pedophile sycophants, slumlords and pimps. Usually amongst the hookers a child might find a refuge for a few days, or at least some sympathy. But no one would touch him, or help him; all streetwalkers are superstitious and one look at the strange, unfortunate child sent even the kindest of scarred souls back into the shadows. Except for one, now his mentor in their life-or-death struggle to survive.
The role of 'Kid' was tradition, too, or so he was told.
{{{A tradition that, as far as I know, ended with me. Such was my curse, I suppose.}}}
The two boys stood, eyes locked until the younger one looked away. "Now, let's get back to the nest before the sky falls on us." With a grin the other boy's eyes lifted. They had heard the saying on a television program, broadcasting over the city center and while both couldn't imagine why anyone would want to watch a stupid, yellow fluff-ball declare that the 'sky was falling!'
{{{How long was it before my parents explained that stupid fable to me? How apt that I should remember it all my life: I'm always blowing things out of proportion, aren't I? Throwing myself into a frenzy like Chicken Little over the smallest thing, but how can I not? When I really believe the sky will fall someday?}}}
What they could imagine was the colony collapsing and getting sucked into the cold vacuum of space. Sound paranoid? Not really, the colony was in bad shape, any fool could see that. Between the lack of attention from the 'government'--a.k.a. the dictators of the Alliance Military--and the lack of care or pride from the upper-class citizens, the colony's destruction was almost assured. Especially if the Resistance cells kept acting up and making life even more miserable for all.
Kid shook his head. He reminded himself once again that thoughts of that nature had no value in his present life. All he had to care about now was living through the day; a philosophy that constantly clashed with his mentor's. Forget the past's mistakes and hardships; grin at the future like you know something that Kami-sama doesn't. "Ikimashou, Duo-san."
"Un," the older boy's eyes flashed brilliantly violet at the new language. "Hai! Iku!"
They trudged on, silently now until reaching their hidden nest. Five other children, ranging from five to eight years old, their features encompassing a wide variety of races from Earth and their clothes and skin as dirty as the meager bedding they had scrounged from the dumpsters. Still, their faces were splashed with grins and mischievousness that only all together could rival that of their leader.
Duo's trademark grin spread as he evenly distributed their meager winnings, they needed only an added wink of his violet eyes to send the gang into whoops of joy. Other day lived, survived, and laughed at. Kid smiled and jumped in the fun, accepting congratulations on his first foray into the theft.
It was the only way to exist sanely on the streets of L-2, Duo had told him once. Smile and laugh, never let the world know what hurts. It was his first lesson for streetwalking and he learned it well. Too well, perhaps.
{{{Duo-sensei, arigatou gozimasu. I haven't forgotten you, buko no eien ni tomodachi, or the others...}}}
*********************
*Beeeep...* *Beeeep...* *Beeeep...* The alarm clock's persistent buzz teased him, keeping him on the brink of his blissful sleep and yet probing at the muzzled consciousness that floated just beyond his grasp. Groaning slightly the young man fumbled blindly, his head still firmly attached to the warm, hard pillow beneath him. His eyes remained shut until the pillow moved as well.
"Damn it, shut that thing off!" With that demanding growl his lover retracted the long arm that had been draped over the other's hip, turned on to his side, letting the smaller figure be dumped on his face as his human-pillow burrowed into the sheets to go back to sleep. The smaller man pulled himself upright, smiling slightly, and hit the annoying machine with the palm of one hand.
Blinking sleepily, he looked around, the remnants of his dream leaving vague ghostly impressions of childish happiness and a young man's regret. Ignoring the sharp lances of pain from combination of the early morning light creeping through the shutters and the dry, itchiness of his lenses; he took in the simple, miraculous sights around him. The spacious room that was almost devoid of personal touch, the clothes that lie scattered on the floor--leading from the door to the bed in a succession that brought a flush of heated memories from the previous night--the door lead to the hall, the 'open air' living room/kitchen/dinning room, his lover's study was the next door over and the guest bathroom--that had become his after he moved in--was across the way from that.
A mansion by Japanese standards, a spacious condo by American's. Even after months of living here, sleeping beside the man he loved, going to his dream job everyday, the screams of crowds echoing his name in his mind, even after all he had fought with to get where he was, he was still awed by it all. A part of him, the part that held the memories of the small, unwanted child, told him that *this* was the dream. One day he would wake up to reality and be back on the streets of L2, just a street rat, stealing to survive, running from the gangs, and police, and pimps... And he wouldn't give up that part of himself because that was where his hope lived. That was the piece of his heart that told him, without a doubt, that the boy he had loved like a brother was still alive, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
{{{You're still alive, if only in my dreams, Duo.}}}
Author: Apollyon Angel
Warnings: UNPOLISHED, UNFINISHED, basically a plot bunny that bit me and ran. Also, minor angst, shounen ai
Pairings: Yuki+Shuichi, so far...
Disclaimers: I own neither series and gain nothing from this other than personal satisfaction.
******************
The dry, cracked road was packed with people, crowded together like crows scavenging an old skeleton. From the decaying cement beneath their feet to the rusting, crumbling buildings looming over like tombstones, death hung over all. As if they could feel the hands of the reaper choking them of time, the people in the streets shouted, stumbled, and pushed, trying to elbow out their neighbors for the last morsels.
{{{Back here again? he wondered, looking about the landscape with a sad, half-smile.}}}
It was Tuesday, the day the merchant transports came, fresh from the satellites, or even Earth itself, with precious cargo of food, clothes, and water. The colony's citizens came out in droves to snatch up their daily bread, meager pickings for most because of the cost. Then again, some didn't let that stop them...
"Thief! Thief!" the food vendor bellowed, pointing one chubby finger after the thin streaks of ragged clothing barreling down the crowded street. The fat man looked torn from leaving his cart to chase the two rapidly dwindling figures and protecting his overpriced goods from other quick hands. In a moment, though, the figures were gone without a trace and the man could only throw curses upon their memory.
{{{Why this day? Why am I thinking of this...ah, yes! It was my first time.}}}
The older child, chestnut hair flying wildly over his back, rounded the corner into a clear alleyway out the outskirts of the bustle and transferred his armload quickly. Small, grubby hands shot out of the crowds to deftly catch his burdens as he pulled one morsel after another from his holy shirt; appearing as if from thin air and disappearing just as agilely.
His eyes searched the crowds ahead for signs of trouble while the second boy also dispersed his prizes to the 'meandering' children who slipped into and out of the mob like shadows. In less than a minute the two were empty-handed and walking innocently through the crowd, calling the attention of the suspicious to distract for the precious minutes the other members needed to escape unscathed and unmolested.
{{{My heart was pounding so hard I thought the police would see it moving under my shirt, but they didn't. Our decoy tactic worked. We survived that day, like so many others...so many, yet so few.}}}
Strength and strategy were the keys to life on the streets; every bum, hooker, and cop knew that on some primal level. Or at least, the ones who survived did. Strength was especially crucial amongst the orphaned children. The strong bullied and muscled their way through, picking their targets carefully. They preyed joyfully upon the youngest and weakest as, though they had less to win from the 'bottom of the food chain', the chance of getting injured was less then risking a fight with another bully. On the L2 streets a simple wound, a scratch or broken bone could be one's death sentence. Even though the plagues that had run rampant the year prior had been stopped, no one took chances.
Strength was important, and this particular group didn't have much of it. Strategy, on the other hand, they did, even if they didn't know what the word meant as explained by Webster. Their moves were carefully planned and explained by their leader. Their lives depended on his abilities and no matter how young or small they followed the chosen leader without falter. It was tradition, some said--and tradition was honored more than law.
The boy with chestnut hair grinned down at his companion in larceny and clapped him lightly on the shoulder as they wound they way through the back alleys, heading for their latest nest. The other smiled back, though his face was kept in shadows by a low, wide-brimmed baseball cap.
{{{I remember. That look in his eyes, I would have laid down and die on command to see that look.}}}
"That was some nice slighta' hand, today, Kid."
"In the beginning, yeah," the ball-capped boy replied, climbing a rusty fire escape ladder. "I messed up after the fifth grab. My hands were too full." The boy raised the mentioned appendage before his own eyes from harsh scrutiny. He scowled, his small, shadowed features pulling together.
"Hey, it's no biggie," the older boy soothed. "Ya are learning quickly, just don't bite more than ya can chew."
Kid scoffed lightly at the saying. More than he could chew? He beat back memories of his first weeks on the harsh streets. Before he had found a place in a crew, before he became his leader's 'Kid'. When he had barely the strength to put on foot in front of another, hunger and fear draining every nerve, deadening every muscle until he couldn't even swallow his meager findings among the trash.
And even with the crew, when did they ever have more than they could eat? Not for as long as he could remember. He hadn't been with them long, but he was rapidly growing frustrated with his lack of success at the simplest tricks to help gather food; tricks done with ease by boys even younger than his own handful of life. "Too slow, too small," he muttered to himself, closing his hand into a tight fist before his eyes as if willing the limb to elongate with the sheer weight of his gaze.
"Don't worry about it," the longhaired boy commanded with lighthearted authority. "You've only raiding with me for a week, and your size will be useful." Seeing doubt flash in the other's posture, he went on to explain. "The smaller the better for pan-handling and getting out of trouble. The older thugs will overlook you, the upper class will pity, the mothers will gush, and the hookers will adore you."
{{{He always had a genuine smile for me, for us, whenever we needed it. Such an odd and precious ability on the streets.}}}
The small boy raised his brim an inch to look the other in the eyes, something very rarely done. The older boy is careful not to flinch or shift his own gaze in anyway. In his estimated six years of life, he had seldom had to focus his discipline so intently, but to flinch in anyway would have destroyed their fragile bond.
A wisp of pure white hair fell down from the lip of the cap, slipping down to arch gently over a similarly colorless eyebrow and one blood red eye. The look in those eyes was mixed distrust and buried want. The child was practically radiating the want for affection, no doubt only multiply a million-fold by the harsh life on the streets that Kid had been dumped on only scant months prior.
{{{Such an odd and precious person to take in a freak like me. How different would it have been if he hadn't chosen me?}}}
Hungry, wet from a rainstorm, and alone, the boy wouldn't have lasted the first week in their neighborhood, if not for the color of his hair and eyes. The slim, delicate features the boy held unknowingly, coupled with the radiating aura of innocence and trust--he would have been meat, pre-packaged with a bow, for the pedophile sycophants, slumlords and pimps. Usually amongst the hookers a child might find a refuge for a few days, or at least some sympathy. But no one would touch him, or help him; all streetwalkers are superstitious and one look at the strange, unfortunate child sent even the kindest of scarred souls back into the shadows. Except for one, now his mentor in their life-or-death struggle to survive.
The role of 'Kid' was tradition, too, or so he was told.
{{{A tradition that, as far as I know, ended with me. Such was my curse, I suppose.}}}
The two boys stood, eyes locked until the younger one looked away. "Now, let's get back to the nest before the sky falls on us." With a grin the other boy's eyes lifted. They had heard the saying on a television program, broadcasting over the city center and while both couldn't imagine why anyone would want to watch a stupid, yellow fluff-ball declare that the 'sky was falling!'
{{{How long was it before my parents explained that stupid fable to me? How apt that I should remember it all my life: I'm always blowing things out of proportion, aren't I? Throwing myself into a frenzy like Chicken Little over the smallest thing, but how can I not? When I really believe the sky will fall someday?}}}
What they could imagine was the colony collapsing and getting sucked into the cold vacuum of space. Sound paranoid? Not really, the colony was in bad shape, any fool could see that. Between the lack of attention from the 'government'--a.k.a. the dictators of the Alliance Military--and the lack of care or pride from the upper-class citizens, the colony's destruction was almost assured. Especially if the Resistance cells kept acting up and making life even more miserable for all.
Kid shook his head. He reminded himself once again that thoughts of that nature had no value in his present life. All he had to care about now was living through the day; a philosophy that constantly clashed with his mentor's. Forget the past's mistakes and hardships; grin at the future like you know something that Kami-sama doesn't. "Ikimashou, Duo-san."
"Un," the older boy's eyes flashed brilliantly violet at the new language. "Hai! Iku!"
They trudged on, silently now until reaching their hidden nest. Five other children, ranging from five to eight years old, their features encompassing a wide variety of races from Earth and their clothes and skin as dirty as the meager bedding they had scrounged from the dumpsters. Still, their faces were splashed with grins and mischievousness that only all together could rival that of their leader.
Duo's trademark grin spread as he evenly distributed their meager winnings, they needed only an added wink of his violet eyes to send the gang into whoops of joy. Other day lived, survived, and laughed at. Kid smiled and jumped in the fun, accepting congratulations on his first foray into the theft.
It was the only way to exist sanely on the streets of L-2, Duo had told him once. Smile and laugh, never let the world know what hurts. It was his first lesson for streetwalking and he learned it well. Too well, perhaps.
{{{Duo-sensei, arigatou gozimasu. I haven't forgotten you, buko no eien ni tomodachi, or the others...}}}
*********************
*Beeeep...* *Beeeep...* *Beeeep...* The alarm clock's persistent buzz teased him, keeping him on the brink of his blissful sleep and yet probing at the muzzled consciousness that floated just beyond his grasp. Groaning slightly the young man fumbled blindly, his head still firmly attached to the warm, hard pillow beneath him. His eyes remained shut until the pillow moved as well.
"Damn it, shut that thing off!" With that demanding growl his lover retracted the long arm that had been draped over the other's hip, turned on to his side, letting the smaller figure be dumped on his face as his human-pillow burrowed into the sheets to go back to sleep. The smaller man pulled himself upright, smiling slightly, and hit the annoying machine with the palm of one hand.
Blinking sleepily, he looked around, the remnants of his dream leaving vague ghostly impressions of childish happiness and a young man's regret. Ignoring the sharp lances of pain from combination of the early morning light creeping through the shutters and the dry, itchiness of his lenses; he took in the simple, miraculous sights around him. The spacious room that was almost devoid of personal touch, the clothes that lie scattered on the floor--leading from the door to the bed in a succession that brought a flush of heated memories from the previous night--the door lead to the hall, the 'open air' living room/kitchen/dinning room, his lover's study was the next door over and the guest bathroom--that had become his after he moved in--was across the way from that.
A mansion by Japanese standards, a spacious condo by American's. Even after months of living here, sleeping beside the man he loved, going to his dream job everyday, the screams of crowds echoing his name in his mind, even after all he had fought with to get where he was, he was still awed by it all. A part of him, the part that held the memories of the small, unwanted child, told him that *this* was the dream. One day he would wake up to reality and be back on the streets of L2, just a street rat, stealing to survive, running from the gangs, and police, and pimps... And he wouldn't give up that part of himself because that was where his hope lived. That was the piece of his heart that told him, without a doubt, that the boy he had loved like a brother was still alive, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
{{{You're still alive, if only in my dreams, Duo.}}}