Abandoned
--
Shattered glass littered the room, small fragments glittering innocently, yet quite dangerously, in the plush threads of the carpet. Large pieces ornamented the walls viciously, sharp edges protruding ominously from within the drywall they had invaded, leaving deep gouges and wide scars etched into the walls' face.
Pale dawn light filtered through still-drawn curtains. Light peeked through the shredded material, violent slashes responsible for the distinct light show splaying dolefully over the carpeted floor.
Upon the lush, slate blue carpet, vibrant splotches of dark crimson dappled the threads a musty violet. Sunlight illuminated the area sparsely, catching red-stained glass pieces glittering ominously like splinters of the finest ruby.
Red liquid, dripping with the consistency of diluted syrup, traced slowly down the white walls in steady rivulets, leaving behind dull stains of scarlet in its wake.
Dangling cords spilled onto the floor in a mess of crumbled drywall and a tangle of knots. A disconnected phone jack hung limp from the wall, any and all connecting wires slashed and severed, revealing only the dulled points of broken copper wire, sticking out painfully from its protective casing.
Ducking behind an overturned recliner, and clutching desperately to the phone receiver, a young boy, no older than five, sat crouched behind the large frame of the chair in the corner, trembling. Terrified, his small fists clenched tightly around the hard plastic phone piece, his knuckles turning iridescent white.
A large cut, running the length of the right side of his face, from chin to just below his eye, streamed steadily. Beneath a mess of raven black hair, matted painfully to his scalp by a copious amount of dried blood, frightened chocolate-brown eyes watched in horror, the innocence of childhood lost from his gaze. Tired ears trained themselves on the surrounding noise, the yelling of his parents.
"This is it, Atsuko!" the man raged angrily. He sported a bruised eye and was holding his arm. "I'm through! I've had enough! I've given you so many chances to clean up. Your alcoholism is the problem. It was then, it is now, and it always will be!"
"I'm n-not an al-alcoholic!" the said woman shrieked back angrily, smashing a brown bottle at her feet in a fit of rage.
"You are, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let myself live this way!" the man countered sharply, throwing her a disgusted look. Then he strode to the door, forcing it open with his uninjured arm.
"Live what way? Whadda ya mean?" the woman demanded, speech slurring dangerously as she tottered towards the man on unsteady legs.
"You know Atsuko, if you keep this up—" the man cut across her in disgust, casting a fleeting look towards the overturned recliner, "—I won't be the only person in this household to walk out on you."
At his last sentiment the woman stared, mouth hanging slightly open, eyes livid. "Fine," she sputtered determinately and just a little breathless. "Fine. Leave," she hiccupped.
That said, the man stepped from the threshold and went to close the door behind him when a small voice made him stop abruptly.
"T-tou-chan?" asked the small boy, hiding in the safety of the recliner's overturned berth. "Tou-chan, are you leaving?"
The man cast him a lingering glance, his azure eyes dancing over the boy's frail form with sympathy, but he said nothing; merely nodded, turned, and closed the door behind him with a 'slam.'
As the echo of the door's slam subsided the woman fell to her knees. Small fragments of glass imbedded in the carpet cut into her knees as she rocked feebly back and forth. Empty eyes lingered on the carpet.
After a few minutes of painful silence, the small boy scampered from his refuge and approached his mother. "Kaasan? Where is Tou-chan? Is he coming back?"
At her son's innocent question the young woman finally lifted her face from the carpet to look at him, revealing a stream of tears trickling from her eyes and down her cheeks. "I-I don't know, Yuusuke. I don't know…" she sobbed quietly.
He never did see his father again…
--
"Why…?" The word falls slowly from his lips, resonating in the still evening air of late summer.
Ten years have passed, for time really stands still for no one, and the boy had slowly grown into a young man. Years had eased his mother's attitude, and granted him a more favorable fortune. Yet, the years had also snatched away his innocence long before it should have been lost. A child of five should not have had to live with the horrors of the things he had endured, and now, and fifteen, he shouldn't have to see half of the things he had.
And now, it isn't as though he can simply pretend nothing is wrong, either. Once wide and curious eyes, filled with wonder at the world have become cold and emotionless; unheard and yet echoing grief radiated in his blank gaze. The once soft features of childhood have been replaced by a hard, worn look, a permanent scowl gracing his otherwise handsome features daily.
He really didn't know how to smile anymore.
And yet, Fate doesn't care, and the hourglass running life continues to flow onward with no regard to who may be hurt and at what cost. After all, what is one fragile child, one forsaken soul? There are thousands more of the same, millions even. Why should Fate care if a child has to suffer? There are always countless others to take instead.
It's quite sad, really…
Fate doesn't care…
His own father didn't care…
Why should anyone else?
Cool blades of deep emerald grass brush against him softly as he finally lets himself sink to rest on the loamy ground. Beyond the hilltop where he sits the horizon is slowly swallowing up the last rays of daylight, the earth preparing to tuck away the sun in a deep blanket of navy.
Fists, balled aimlessly at his sides, clench angrily, and he sends one slamming dully into the earth. Loosed blades of grass drift up on the breeze in their sudden upheaval and float leisurely back to the ground. He trembles in anger, his eyes clamped tightly shut as angry sobs fight to escape from between his firmly pressed lips.
He had long ago decided that he would not let the sobs escape, however. He refused to let the tears overtake him. He would not give himself in to the fact that he hated himself for letting it have come to this. He would not admit that he felt it was his fault that he had left them both.
He would not admit that he was hurt.
"Dammit… why?" he mutters, his voice constricting with the effort of keeping his raging emotions under control. "Why…?"
An innocent question asked to the still night, and yet there is no innocence; and there is no answer.
People say that silence is the best answer to any question. But at a time when a heart and soul hang is the balance, dangling from a deceitful broken strand, cast out from the web of life, the silence is no answer; merely a tool, the last dead-weight that sends that fragile dangling thread into oblivion, shatters the soul, breaks the heart, and kills.
"Yuusuke?" A smooth male voice calls out from somewhere behind him and he flinches involuntarily at the sound of his name being called by such a familiar voice.
He chooses to remain silent.
"Are you all right?" asks the same concerned voice, undeterred by the raven-haired youth's lack of a friendly greeting. He closes the distance between himself and his seated companion with a few more casual footfalls and lowers himself easily to the ground beside the brooding young man.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Yuusuke snaps back angrily, turning to fix a hard glare at his companion.
"Now, now," is the slow response. "No need to become so defensive. It was only a question. You know, you are not obligated to answer — I just assumed something was bothering you, and considering I could hear you talking to yourself from quite a distance away, I decided to come and see."
"Mmmphhh…" is Yuusuke's darkly muttered response as he turns away from his friend and continues to stare without much intent at the deepening navy sky, shot through with silver pinpricks of starlight.
A soft chuckle escapes the red-head's lips as he watches his companion although he knows that there is nothing even remotely amusing about the current situation. There is no reason that should have prompted him to chuckle; but he had. Perhaps, he reasons, it is because of the childish aura that surrounds Yuusuke when he acts this way.
But that is hardly a tangible reason for laughter.
Keiko had come to him earlier — considering the day — and confided in him about her worries for the young man he sat beside now. He had found out, none-too-happily, about Yuusuke's abusive past, and the abandonment both he and his mother had suffered. Because of this confessional with Keiko a few hours earlier, he had come to find Yuusuke now.
As Youko — and even as the young mortal boy, Shuichi — he had endured desecration, abandonment and death of a loved one. He supposed that, because of his 'divided heritage,' so to speak, the pains of such things never truly bothered him as they might have bothered others. But even though their pain threshold was an entirely different thing, he knew that, on some level, he could relate to the tormented teen. That reasoning had led him here in the first place.
Returning from his musings he glances side-long at the young man beside him with soft eyes. He knows that he can never truly understand the full extent of Yuusuke's pain, and he knows from looking at Yuusuke, that he knows it too.
But sometimes even painkillers fail.
Sometimes camaraderie is all it takes.
And that, if nothing else, Kurama decides, is something he is able and prepared to offer.
Silence falls over the hilltop, and both teens are content to let the night roll onward undisturbed. Yuusuke does not question Kurama's choice to take residence beside him on the hilltop, and congruently, Kurama does not question Yuusuke's silence. They both just sit in contented peace, watching the night move forward in an unending sprawl of darkness that envelops the world ever-gradually.
"It's been ten years now, since that night…" The soft, whispered sentiment is so lightly spoken that the calm night breeze carries the words away as they are spoken and Kurama must strain to hear them.
In an invitation to continue his monologue, Kurama turns to look at his friend and gives a small, reassuring nod which he is not sure Yuusuke notices before he continues on, regardless:
"…She was nineteen… I was five… when he left…" he stops then to take a breath of repose and when he regains his thread his voice is softer, more reflective with each additional word; more wrought with pain. "He was… forced… into marrying mom. A girlfriend pregnant at fifteen? Yeah… he didn't have another choice other than to disgrace his family…"
A flicker of anger and resentment flares through his tone at the last of the statement and the bitterness the words belay carry into the latter of his conversation as he finishes:
"I guess all things considered… marriage was the right thing to do, the noble thing…" as he says this a harsh bark-like laugh jumps from his lips. "…But, he never really wanted it… he didn't give a damn. Otherwise, he wouldn't have left, right?" he tries to rationalize.
He draws a composing breath, his voice starting to waver with the strain of keeping a level head. "I mean… mom was hittin' the booze pretty rough back then… worse than she does now anyways… and maybe that's why he left? I get that… nobody wants to love an alcoholic… that's why he left her…" He stops for a moment to gulp in a harsh breath of air before concluding, "…but why did he leave me?"
"He didn't love me, Goddammit…!" he chokes out slowly after another elongated pause. "He didn't want me…" Slow crystalline tears begin to slip slowly from his tightly clamped eyelids despite his efforts to stave them off indefinitely.
"Why didn't he want me, man?" He stumbles over the last words drunkenly before falling resolutely silent and allowing himself to fall prisoner to his tears.
Yuusuke's latest sentiment washes over the shocked red-head like a rush of icy water. "Why didn't he want me?" Despite his intelligence and vast knowledge of things in general he has no answer for his ailing friend; he simply cannot formulate a logical explanation in his mind for as to why a father would just abandon his child like that.
"Why man…? Why?" The question streams unending from the drawn-in boy's lips, a mantra. But for as often as the boy continues to ask, a tangible answer is nowhere closer to being reached.
"Oh, Yuusuke," Kurama sighs heavily, laying a gentle hand on his friend's shaking shoulder in an act of calm reassurance.
Before he can get out another word, however condoling it might have been, Yuusuke turns to glance at him, red-faced, eyes swollen, and tears glistening on hot flesh, and the words lodge in the back of his throat. All the years of bottled up resentment, anger, pain and abandonment had finally burst the dam within the boy's soul and had finally found an outlet.
Words of condolence linger on Kurama's tongue, unwilling to coalesce into presence. He has never seen Yuusuke like this. Had he been given an option, he would have opted never to have to see his friend like this. Kind-hearted as he knows himself to be, and as much as he hates having to see any being, human or demon alike, suffer to such an extremity, he does the only thing he can think of in this situation, when words so obviously fail him.
He pulls the boy into his arms, holding his shaking form in a reassuring embrace.
The latter of the action gasps slightly in surprise as he feels the pull of warm, protective arms wrap around him but he does not pull away from the gesture despite his shock and allows himself to give in, once more, to the ever-present threat of tears.
Sure, he admits to himself, it is embarrassing to be sitting here on a hilltop, nestled into Kurama's unquestioning, accepting, and above all comforting embrace, bawling like a two-year-old, or like a bawling five-year-old, as his history would have it said. And yes, he concedes somewhere from an intact, rational part of his mind, if Kurama were anybody else, his reputation would be garbage. But he knows that the gentle-hearted fox spirit will not think less of him for the display of weakness and so he just gives in, shuts down the rationalizing part of his brain, and lets it all out.
In slow, sweeping motions, Kurama strokes the boy's back in silence, words of condolence still failing him miserably. Yuusuke's head is buried in his shoulder, his breath moist on the nape of his collar bone as he chokes out: "Why didn't he love me…?"
And here, Kurama takes a mental moment to curse the youth clinging to him so desperately for asking another of those questions with seemingly no tangible answer.
Still, it does not seem adequate to just respond to a question of that magnitude with a mere, "I don't know why." Although it is the truth, even the wily Youko within his soul agrees that such bluntness is not called for at a time like this.
Slowly, Kurama pulls away from Yuusuke, never once loosening his hold on the quaking boy, but enough so to put a head-turn's distance between them. Disengaging an arm from around Yuusuke he uses his hand to coax him into facing him. When he manages to get Yuusuke looking at him a lump rises in his throat. Liquid-chocolate eyes shimmer slightly up at him in the dim light cast upon them both from the moon overhead as they search twin orbs of dark jade for reassurance.
"Yuusuke," Kurama sighs gently, his voice soft and full of understanding, "to be honest with you, I don't know why he didn't love you and I don't know why he abandoned you."
As the words register with him chocolate eyes go dark, almost back, as though this affirmation has just evanesced any hope he might have clung to for validation and sucked the soul right from his eyes. The pain in his gaze is evident as he continues to stare blankly at Kurama.
"Look," Kurama continues slowly, running a hand down Yuusuke's back in assurance, "really, there is no reason he should have put you through this… no being, be it human or demon, deserves to have to endure such trails and tribulations…"
Clouds shift overhead and shadows dance with silken perfection over the landscape to paint the gentle red-head's face in darker tones.
"That's just human reasoning for you," he shrugs stiffly, glancing curiously at his companion.
In the few minutes Yuusuke had spent not talking, merely listening and experiencing, his composure had rebuilt itself gradually and for this Kurama was thankful. A thin smile tugs at the corner of his lips as he adds: "There is no reason that he should not love you… but it really is not important that he does not, Yuusuke."
At this Yuusuke gives him a confused, almost startled look, but in the flicker of the merest moment the expression has vanished from his face and Kurama has to shake his head.
"Do not misunderstand me, Yuusuke," Kurama elaborates, guessing at his friend's sudden feeling of betrayal for saying that, despite what he had just confessed, it was all right for the bastard man not to love him.
Yuusuke's eyes remain as blank as his countenance had remained stiffly rigid earlier that evening at the reprimanding words.
"I say again, Yuusuke," Kurama intones gently, playing his fingers along the boy's rigid spine deftly, "it is insignificant that the man does not love you, because there are countless others that still do." A pregnant pause follows the statement and he feels suddenly awkward at having to be the one to say the next words: "Never ever forget that, Yuusuke…"
A quiet laugh follows the touching speech and Yuusuke shifts testily in the embrace. Kurama considers releasing him, but the boy really makes no move to disengage himself from the act, so he decides that decision is premature.
When Yuusuke finally speaks after the laugh his voice is dead, completely devoid of emotion, and the tone makes Kurama stiffen instinctively.
"How can I 'never forget' that I'm loved when I don't even remember ever feeling loved in the first place?" he asks quietly, speaking more to himself than to his companion.
"Everyone who claims to love me only screws me over in the end…" a hollow laugh follows the proclamation and despite the deadpanned tone Kurama can tell it is a cheap attempt to conceal the resurfacing pain.
"I mean… dad…" the word comes out bitterly, "…mom… even Keiko… It's not exactly apparent that they 'love' me, is it? Dad—" and again there is biting resentment in the tone, "—he walked out. Mom's a freakin' drunk. And Keiko? Well, let's just say that relationship is more hate than love as far as love-hate relationships go," he explains angrily, a scowl starting to edge across his face.
"Despite that, Yuusuke," Kurama smiles gently, "there are people that do love you."
"Yeah right, Kurama," he grouses, his voice taking on that slowly dieing tone again. "And you know what? They're all a bunch of liars."
"Yuusuke." Suddenly the fox's gentle voice is hardened.
Yuusuke looks up instinctively, wary.
Kurama smiles thinly and closes his eyes for a pensive moment in which Yuusuke regards him carefully. When emerald eyes reopen to focus on him their gaze is misted over and when the red-head speaks his voice is soft:
"Yuusuke, really, do I look like a person who would lie to you?"
Author's Ramblings: Starndard Disclaimer applies, as always; YYH and characters are sole property of Togashi, FUNimazion, VIZmedia et al. NOT me.
This is actually an old story that I deleted because I wasn't happy with it. I found it in writing again the other day and just had to re-vamp it. It's still one of my favorites, contextually, so it gets back its place of honer with my other lovely fics.
Apologies for my disappearence from the site, but I'm afraid that it will have to continue for at least a few more months. Check the profile regarding why.
Enjoi. (Review?)
Blackrose