At First There was Death to Gather them Together

The man hadn't cleaned his hands. Roman didn't really want to focus on that detail, but with how nondescript and drab his appearance was, the boy's eyes constantly drifted back to the blood stains on his hands. That blood belonged to his father, who the man had bludgeoned to death before shooting his mom in the head. And here Roman was, sitting in a car with him as the man tried to light a cigarette with the same type of match he'd used to burn the seven year old's home. He pondered the thought of looking back towards the bright orange blaze but decided that suffering the view of this man's bloody hands was better than watching everything he knew fall apart.

"Yer bein' oddly complacent fer a boy that jus' watched me do in 'is mum and da'."

"We weren't close," Roman replied evenly, his eyes drifting away from the man's hands to his scowling face.

"I'll say! Yer parents died not more than five minutes ago and yer still bloody quiet." The man's grey eyes flitted over the boy inquisitively before starting his car and beginning to drive away from the burning wreckage that was once his home. "I'd at least expect yer ter be scared."

"I'm not scared because you've already had plenty of opportunities to kill me and you still haven't," Roman paused to buckle his seatbelt, "Out of curiosity, why haven't you?"

The man let out a low sigh and his gaze flicked briefly to the boy before focusing on the road again. "I don't kill children. I were told that there were a man and 'is lady, right, ain't no one told me anyfink about a yung-un."

"So you won't kill me…because of your morality?"

"Yeah. I'm not gonna put a gun ter a kid's head for shit pay. Yer too yung ter deserve that." The man blew out a puff of smoke before turning a corner into an abandoned alleyway. "O' course, ye won't be much better off where I'm takin' ye."

"Where are you taking me?"

"Uvver side o' the chuffin' slums, boy. Can't 'ave ye near the job sight, it'll taint me reputation. Ye probably won't survive on yer own…but ye ain't me problem after I drop ye off."

"So you won't kill me, but you'll leave me to die?"

"Ain't a weight on me conscience if it ain't me pullin' the bleedin' trigger."

"Stunning logic on your part," Roman muttered bitterly as he looked out the window of the vehicle. To think a murderer as careless as this would actually have morals was near ludicrous, but if it would allow him another day of life, he wouldn't complain much. The rest of the car ride went by in near silence, with nothing but the man's occasionally muttered swears at other "bloody moronic" drivers. After about a half hour of riding through the streets of Vale's grimy underbelly, the car halted in another empty back alley, and the car engine quieted as the doors unlocked.

"Arright kid, get out. Yer on yer own from 'ere."

Roman hesitated for a moment before opening the door and stepping into the pouring rain. He slammed the door as hard as he could, scowling viciously at the man that had just destroyed everything he had ever called his own. Roman wasn't very attached to his parents, but his clothes, his books…the firearm he'd been designing…those were his. And they'd burned with the corpses of his so-called guardians because they chose to ignore their debt. And now he was left to fend for himself on the cold streets of Vale after being told outright that he had little chance of survival. He would prove that bastard wrong. He'd looked out for himself all his life; the only difference now was that he had less resources.

That man had underestimated Roman.

He would definitely survive.

oooOOOooo

It had been a few weeks. Roman had honestly stopped counting after the first few days. It was easier to forget how hungry he was when the days blurred together. If it got too bad he'd reluctantly dig through the dumpsters in search of something remotely edible. These quests often proved futile, as many of the once edible things had rotted past recognition amongst the other rubble and anything still edible was little more than a bite's worth of feigned nutrition. Roman had probably traveled nearly a mile across the slums in search of decent shelter and food, enough to not even know the way back to where he had been left. He needed to survive, but with winter on its way and not even a piece of cardboard to hold over his head, things were looking grim.

He hit his lowest point when he ran into the other children, as he'd grown hungry enough to think he was starving. There was an entire pack of them in the park too; all with their own little morsel of food to themselves as they chatted together. Roman ducked down in the bushes, scanning the group for the weakest link. He had lost a lot of muscle mass in the passing days, so chances were that he'd even have trouble with a few of the toddlers in the group. There was only one child who looked scrawny enough to take on—a tiny green haired faunus boy, sitting near the edge of the group. He didn't have an especially large meal (it was but a single moderately sized loaf of bread), but it was enough, and for once it wasn't rotten.

Roman ducked down in the bushes nearest to the boy, sampling the tiny meal with his eyes hungrily as he inched closer. The tiny boy took no notice to him; despite his faunus heritage, he seemed too enraptured by the consumption of his meal to properly identify the threat to it. Well, that and the boy couldn't be older than four. Eventually, Roman had assessed the situation enough to consider it safe to approach, and he strode towards the boy with as much aggression as he could muster on an empty stomach (which was more than he'd initially expected.)

"Oy," he growled, catching the young boy's attention. The small, mouse-like tail that protruded from his back flicked up in alarm—and if Roman had been any more aware at that point in time he would have known that the boy had been alerted to the possible danger of this interaction. Nonetheless, he still would have been too hungry to care. "Give me your bread," he demanded, each syllable pronounced slowly and with a decent amount of force.

"B-But…I'm hungry…" he squeaked, his tiny hands tightening around the loaf.

"Give it to me."

"N-No!"

"Give it. Now." Roman stared down the boy as he shrunk away, and after a prolonged moment he ripped the bread from the tiny tyke's hands and gave him a good forceful kick when he tried to take it back. As the now sobbing child fled the scene, Roman walked a little ways away and slumped to the ground to rip into his first taste of food in days. Unfortunately it seemed that this group of kids had a leader far sturdier than Roman, and the boy he'd acquired his lunch from was none too shy about informing him of his plight. This was probably why, shortly into his meal, Roman found himself sitting in the shadow of an immensely tall, behemoth of a child, whose rage riddled features spoke volumes regarding his opinion of Roman's actions.

"Hey," the boy growled menacingly in an attempt to grab Roman's attention, but he simply dug further into his bread and ignored the giant as if he were thin air. That is, he ignored him until the boy grabbed him aggressively by the shoulder. "Hey," he repeated irately, "That's Perry's bread. Give it back."

Roman glanced up at the furious boy apathetically, noting the humanoid features and head of thick black hair above his narrowed, jet black eyes, and then trailing his vision down to the teary eyed green haired faunus brat clinging to his adversary's leg. So that child's name was Perry. Roman took note of it even though it didn't matter much. His eyes came back to look at the giant, seething child before him as the boy's grip tightened on his bony shoulder.

"Now," the child spoke with a note of extreme severity, but sadly Roman had never been one to do as he was told and instead took yet another bite from the bread, refusing to even grace the boy with a word. He had been ill prepared for what came next, for soon he found his bony frame crushed beneath the weight of the enormous child, hugging the bread for dear life as he slowly had the air squeezed out of him by the one strong arm wrapped around his neck.

This was bad, he thought as his vision began to blur. Very bad. Within seconds, Roman had discarded the loaf as his hands flew instead to the arm wrapped around his neck and frantically pulled as hard as they could to remove the pressure on his windpipe.

"Let me go!" he managed to rasp at first, but the boy's grip only tightened, and Roman's eye's glazed over as he began to lose sense of the world around him. It couldn't end like this. He needed to survive, he was going to survive, he had to prove that bastard wrong. He kicked his legs weakly in retaliation, the progression of time seeming slow and painful until a shriek loud enough to break the blurred noise reached his ears.

"LET HIM GO!"

Roman felt the arm move away from his neck and he gasped for air, coughing and sputtering as the giant boy voiced his confusion.

"What's gotten into you, Perry?!"

Roman's vision began to focus slightly and he squinted to see the little faunus child hugging his friend's arm.

"You're killing him!"

It seemed that the boy previously strangling him had not been aware of this, for his head whipped back around to look at Roman's crumpled, still sputtering form, his eyes widened in terror as he recognized the gravity of his own actions. The boy slumped to the ground, and while his dumbstruck stare bored into Roman, the redhead merely let out another cough reached a shaky hand to grab the morsel of food. Perry reached it before he could, and he growled slightly at the small faunus boy.

The tiny child sniffled a bit; his fingers clutched the loaf of bread defensively while his dark green eyes wandered Roman's disheveled form. After exerting a decent amount of force from his tiny muscles, Perry split the remainder of the bread in half, and laid one piece down in front of Roman.

"I would have shared, you know," he mumbled weakly, "If you had asked."

"I don't take favors from animals," Roman managed to hiss venomously, making the boy shrink back slightly.

"He just saved your life," The larger boy growled back in anger.

Roman glanced back to him briefly before snatching the bread and pulling his battered frame of the ground; his balance wobbled slightly before he righted himself. "I didn't ask for help," Roman stated flatly as he began to limp away.

The boy didn't take kindly to his response. "Why you little…hey! I'm talking to you, you scrawny prick! Get back here!"

"Let it go, Junior!" Perry wailed as Roman stopped at a tree only a dozen strides away and started on the small meal that the faunus boy had offered him. Under different circumstances, he might have refused the kindness, but he was in no condition to pass up a meal.

"…Let's go, Perry."

Roman's gaze shifted back to "Junior" and the little faunus brat for a moment as the older boy broke his glare away from the redhead and ushered Perry back towards the other children. Roman watched them all interact for a while longer, pondering what use it was to travel in such a large group when it suddenly dawned on him. They had found a way to get food. They had found a way to survive. Roman finished off his bread and leaned back on the tree, quietly observing the group of children just as grubby as him from a safe distance. He still had every intention of surviving, of getting out of this hell hole no matter what the cost.

And these children could be of use to him.

oooOOOooo

And finally I actually get to finishing the first drabble…so…yeah…don't expect anything particularly cheery from this story and…lemme know what you think if you like.