Sloth: Hey! Sloth here! Well, here I am with a one-shot between Kiryu and Crow that has a "okay" title... I'm not too proud of it... Let's hope it's okay enough to read.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's. We should all know this by now ;)

Title: Decomposition

Out of boredom, the silver-blue haired teenager shuffled his card deck to pass time while waiting for the others to come back from the assignment he had assigned. Kiryu had been waiting for any of his teammates to return, and the longer he waited, the more anxious he became.

Maybe they were ambushed, Kiryu thought as he slammed his duel disk onto his arm. As he was about to leave the abandoned warehouse, one of his teammates, the raven with the golden highlights against his black spiked hair, entered the warehouse. The leader of the team after feeling assured sighed, "At least you're here, Yusei... Where are Jack and Crow? Aren't they with you?"

Yusei shook his head. He explained, "No. Crow wanted to go explore the junk yard, and he dragged Jack with him since I'm feeling a bit sick."

"Oh. Well, I'm not alone anymore," Kiryu smiled. "Anyway, will you satisfy me with a duel?"

Yusei activated his duel disk. He accepted the challenge "Can't turn you down even if I have a strong headache. Let's hope it doesn't stop us."

Before they could begin, all of a sudden an angry tall, blonde marched his way towards the two. He was muttering under his breath, muttering something about how lousy his teammate was. Yusei and Kiryu shot a glance at each other as they paused on their in-coming duel for a moment.

"You okay, Jack?" Yusei asked.

"Where's Crow?" Kiryu demanded to know. He needed to make sure all of his teammates were okay, and it would be terrible should anything happen to the small redhead. "Jack, where is he?"

Jack crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. "That bird-brain is too busy being useless. He wouldn't stop moping over a dead, stupid bird. He kept standing there and wouldn't move no matter how many times I tried to push him," he growled.

"A dead bird?" Kiryu furrowed his eyebrows.

Yusei snapped, "Jack! You know how Crow loves birds! Of course he's gonna mope around!" The raven winced in pain and held his forehead in his hand. "I'm sorry, Kiryu, but this headache is killing me. I don't think I can duel right now." Kiryu frowned as he deactivated his duel disk.

"Well Crow should just learn to man up and stop moping about it," the blonde grunted, unaware how annoyed even the leader was towards him.

Kiryu gave out his orders, "Yusei, you should rest for once. Jack, don't talk about your friend like that and tell me where he is."

"He's down the road to the left. You take the third right and take a left. It's the road down the old factory, almost near the place Yusei almost fell," Jack gave the directions.

"Got it." Kiryu ran out of the building and followed the directions he was given. He was agitated that Jack insulted his friend and left him alone. They still didn't know the whole region, and should some duelists had attacked Crow, it would mean bad business. Kiryu was starting to regret sending Team Satisfaction out in the first place.

Up ahead of him, Kiryu spotted the red-haired friend standing immensely still near the corner of the factory. How long has he been there? Kiryu thought as he placed a hand onto Crow's shoulder. The shorter male flinched when he felt the leader's hand on his shoulder but remained immobilized. Even his breathing dragged at a long, slow pace to create the illusion of not moving at all and almost like a live corpse.

"Crow? Are you okay?" As soon as he asked the rhetorical question, Kiryu mentally slapped himself. Of course he's not okay if he's barely moving! How bad could it be anyway? He thought, letting his eyes roam the floor of the street to search for the dead bird Jack had explained to them.

Lying close to Crow's feet, Kiryu spotted the bird. The sight of the corpse wasn't too horrid, but it was enough to cause goose bumps to grow onto Kiryu's limbs. The creature had its black feathers scattered everywhere near its corpse, and a dent about what seemed to be two inches deep was visible on the back of its head. About three small holes barely seen were on its black, silky spine, but as he closely inspected the wounds, he noticed dried crumbs of blood still lingering in the holes. Recognizing the silky, soft, and black feathers and mucky, greyish-brown beak, Kiryu came to a conclusion that it was the corpse of a dead crow they were both looking at.

Of all birds, why a crow? Kiryu tried to move Crow's face away from the bird. "You don't have to keep staring at it anymore. It's probably in a better place now." Do birds have an afterlife? He wondered.

Without removing his eyes from the corpse, the shorter male at last responded, but his voice held no emotion whatsoever, "I know. It has to be somewhere wonderful to suffer a tragic end." Crow squatted next to it, examining its corpse. "I can't help but to stare at it... I wonder what killed this poor fella..."

Kiryu, trying to look for clues to the death, searched from the wall to the end of the street with his eyes. He shrugged, "I don't know. Maybe he crashed into the wall or a dog or a cat attacked it. I'm not sure, Crow."

"He's been dead for hours," Crow added as he brought his knees closer to himself, "I wonder if its family knows it's gone."

Crouching next to the ginger, the leader insisted, "Surely they would have to know, wouldn't they?"

"I assume so. Crows don't usually fly alone unless they're trying to find a place with food for their murder." Kiryu shivered yet smiled at the strange name for a flock. "They're very sacrificial..." Crow frowned, continuing, "This little guy must've been trying to help its flock."

"And now he's dead," Kiryu whispered as he tried to sympathized. He wasn't a bird lover himself, so really he couldn't imagine the emotions (if he had any) Crow was going through. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't a huge fan of animals in general, so he couldn't at all imagine the feeling of finding a favorite animal lying dead before him. Kiryu traced his fingers into the dirt on the ground before asking, "What were you and Jack doing after the assignment?"

Crow sighed, "We were going to the junkyard without Yusei since he had a headache and when we were almost there, I saw this... Jack tried to pull me away, but I couldn't just leave it. It looks so lonely and hurt. I know he's been dead for some time, but I don't want to leave him alone."

Kiryu crawled closer to Crow and inspected his face. Was that a tear just now? He thought. The silverette turned his teammate's face to clearly see it, and to his concern, Crow's large, grey eyes pooled tears at their bases. Heavy, thick tears dared streamed down his cheeks, but when Crow's eyes met with Kiryu's, he quickly brushed his own tears off his face.

"Jack can be right sometimes. Maybe I am stupid for crying over this," he sniffled as he tried to hold back his rushing tears.

Wrapping both arms around the smaller male, Kiryu comforted Crow, sincerity in his voice, "No. Jack is the idiot for not having a tender heart and not offering love to a fallen soul. It's okay to cry to cry over this." He reached for Crow's hand and squeezed it. "It's okay. Just... cry it out."

As if he really did needed permission to abrupt into a fit of tears, Crow buried himself into Kiryu's red shirt and cried out his transparent, countless tears onto his leader. Feeling Crow's body shake and tremble in his arms, Kiryu tightened his arms to bring him closer. Although he couldn't quite comprehend the sorrows Crow cried out, it pained him very so to see and hear his sobs.

I wonder if he'd cried if I died, Kiryu thought while glancing at the corpse. He would hope so that Crow would shed tears for him. Watching him cry so beautifully, Kiryu wanted to be a reason for those tears to cascade once more, just to know if he actually had significance on him should he ever disappear. I'm sure he'd cry for me, Kiryu assured himself.

"Let's go back," Kiryu suggested, pulling his teammate onto his feet, "From now on, we won't use this street. We'll use a different path."

Crow wiped away his tears with his hand, and he glanced at the corpse one last time before replying, "That would help so much."

The leader ruffled the red, soft hair on Crow's head. "Let's go."

Although he didn't exactly made a promise to Crow, Kiryu felt the need to instruct the team which paths to take and which to not. Not only did that street have a corpse, but many others had at least one rotting, dead bird as well. Kiryu had investigated which streets had them so he could warn the team that the streets weren't suitable for them to cross (but it mostly applied to Crow). It may had been a pain to be overcautious in which paths to take, but if it meant Crow would keep on smiling, Kiryu was willing to do the extra work. As a leader, ti was necessary.

For weeks not a single problem was issued. Team Satisfaction planned for their next mission without any personal problems, and all was good. Not shortly, however, did another problem approached to Kiryu's attention.

Walking back to their base after invading another part of the satellite, Yusei and Crow decided to walk to the junkyard to find some few materials, and not thinking about the outcome, Kiryu allowed them to do so and walked back with Jack. A few minutes later, Yusei ran back to the base, and he quickly searched for something.

Curious to know what he was looking for, Kiryu called, "What are you looking for, Yusei?"

Yusei, who was searching all over the base, answered, "I'm looking for a shovel. Crow saw a corpse again, and he's not moving."

I missed one? Kiryu thought and was disappointed in his failure of securing the streets. "Again? Where is he?"

"Unfortunately. He's in the same road as last time," Yusei replied, unaware of Kiryu leaving the building with the shovel he was looking for, "so I need to look for a shovel to bury it. You wouldn't happen to see one, have you Kiryu?" There was no response, and he looked behind to check if Kiryu was still there or not. "Kiryu?"

With the shovel in his hands, the silverette raced to the road where the problem had originally started. Almost exactly like the last time, he found Crow standing at the exact with a corpse most likely by his feet. Crow, like before, stood completely still and didn't react to Kiryu's appearance.

Kiryu sighed, "What is it now, Crow?"

Crow didn't answer, so Kiryu studied the corpse... only it wasn't a corpse. Next to Crow's feet was the skeleton of the dead bird. There were no feathers scattered around, and the skeleton would be bare if it had not have dried, dark veins still attached to it. Its flesh was gone most likely from the maggots' hunger. The death, however, was confirmed: whether it crashed or was attacked, the crown of its head was split into two.

The leader glanced into Crow's face to find him once again emotionless and possibly trying to hold back his sorrow. Kiryu whispered into Crow's ear, "I'm sorry," and at once, he placed his foot on the rim of the shovel and pushed it deep into the dry earth.

Crow silently watched the silverette shovel the ground and examined the determined aura Kiryu carried around him. As specks of dirt flew all around them, Crow smiled softly at the thought of Kiryu's stubbornness as he was willing to bury it for him. It was very nice of him to do so.

Kiryu dug a reasonable deep hole large enough for the skeleton to fit and not erode back onto the surface. He kneeled down, dirt staining his pants, and gently (in fear of accidentally breaking it which would cause Crow to be in more pain) placed the skeleton into the hole. Pushing the pile of dirt back into the hole, Kiryu stood up and brushed the dirt off his pants. Unexpectedly, Crow wrapped his arms around his waist.

"Crow?"

Buried in Kiryu's chest (due to his short height), Crow smiled, "Thanks although you really didn't have to do it."

"But I needed you to be yourself. Your happy self, Crow," Kiryu insisted, looking into the redhead's deep, grey orbs. "I want you to be happy and not be brought down by the end of the life cycle. We all want you be a happy. I want you to be our happy Crow that we know, so yeah, that's why I did it for you." In his mind, Kiryu retraced his words and realized how gay he sounded, and as much as he wouldn't mind Crow noticing it, he hoped not.

Crow smiled broadly, "I am happy! Who wouldn't be with his leader caring about him so much?" He loosened up the embrace and stared up into the sky. His eyes brightened when a flock of black birds (which Kiryu guessed were crows) soared above the buildings. Crow looked up to Kiryu and held his breath, "Aren't they beautiful?"

Kiryu tightened his arms around Crow's torso. He smiled, "Yeah. They are."

Sloth: Oddly enough, I knew a lot of information over crows before I got in this series (I had to learn about my totem after all), so I thought I could throw in some fun facts about them. Like for an example, "murder" is an old term to call a "flock" or "hordes", but now it's only used in literacy terms. Crows tend to live together as a family, and often times when eating together, a single crow will fly around the area to be on the look out in case anything dangerous approaches so it can warn the others. They do look out for each other. I'll stop with the facts.

The reason why I wrote this was because I found a dead bird on my front porch. Its death was undetermined, and it was so strange to have not notice it before. Studying it's corpse, the idea for this fan fiction popped into my head, but I didn't actually started on it. Through out the days of summer, I saw more unfortunate corpse around my neighborhood. I would tell myself that the birds are telling me to write it already, and me being superstitious, I finally wrote it.

Oh my, I wonder if anyone caught the small hints of reverseshipping. Oh dear, I honestly didn't mean to add hints of affection since this is more of a friendship story, but if you saw it differently, that's fine too.

I don't know if this deserves reviews so I'll just say: Thanks for reading!

-Sloth