This fanfiction was inspired by a piece of fanart by an artist I watch on deviantART--"Near is Alone" by Anime-2000. h ttp/ww w. m/deviation/50579052/ (Kill the spaces, you know the drill.) You should check it out and leave her a nice comment if you have a dA account.
Character(s): Near, Wammy, random Wammy kids.
Setting: Um. Sometime pre-series. My random based-on-little guess is usually around February of 2003.
Spoilers: Ummm... If you know who Near is, you should be fine.
"Whoa."
A small, impressed crowd had gathered around the towers. But the boy in the center, the boy who had carefully crafted each tower out of countless dice, seemed not to notice it. He merely sat among his creations, staring at nothing and unconsciously twisting his hair around his finger.
"Hey, did you make these? New kid?"
Ah, yes—the white-haired creator was new to Wammy's House. Well, this would certainly earn him a certain flavor of respect.
"Hey, new kid?"
That is, as long as his silence wasn't interpreted as arrogance or aloofness.
"Are these seriously dice?" mused one child, reaching out as if to touch the closest tower.
"Don't touch that." The voice was so sudden and unfamiliar that it seemed to come out of thin air, but logic dictated that it came from the boy in front of them. "Can't you tell it's quite fragile?"
The child sullenly pulled his hand back.
"Hey, new kid… Near, right? How are you gonna get out of there? Class starts soon…"
In the back of the crowd, there was a girl who could read lips. If she'd been any closer, she would have read the words, "Near is not my name," on the boy's. As she wasn't, the crowd remained oblivious to the sentiment.
They glanced at their watches, shifted uncomfortably. One by one they left for class, until the boy was left alone, secure inside his fragile fortress.
-
"Near."
His name—no, certainly not. What they were calling him, what he would be called from now on—but that was unwieldy.
His "nickname" was the next thing he heard.
His eyes, weary from staring into nothing for so long, slowly slid into focus, and he found that Mr. Wammy was kneeling just outside the ring of towers, looking at him. A faint flush crept into the boy's pale face, and he found himself counting the rows of dice rather than looking the old man in the face.
The carefully homogenous faces of the towers glinted gray; dusk had come while the boy had wandered in thought. But those noncommittal tower surfaces hid carefully designed patterns inside, and it was those patterns that he had mentally expanded until they passed over him and crossed each other and grew more complicated, more beautiful.
"…I'm sorry I missed class, Mr. Wammy," he apologized softly. Because really, what kind of gratitude was that? He'd been taken in by this prestigious, this special orphanage, and in return he'd skipped his first class to think inside a dice complex. Surely he'd be reprimanded, maybe reassigned to a normal orphanage since he showed no potential.
But—
"Don't be silly, Near," said the old man softly. "It's your first day. It's quite all right."
"Near is not my name," the boy said again, audibly this time, though just barely.
Gently, Mr. Wammy replied, "It is now."
Simple and inevitable.
The boy, Near, breathed a soft sigh and looked silently around at his towers, thinking about the meticulous patterns concealed within. But he could no longer remember how much of the pattern was actually inside each tower and how much he'd merely continued mentally.
"These are beautiful towers," said Mr. Wammy.
Near looked at the old man's face, lit with gray shadows. "Thank you," the white-haired boy said simply. Then, without ceremony, he brought his hand through two of the dice towers and watched as they clattered to the floor. He cleared away the scattered dice to make a pathway, and then crawled out. He looked again to Mr. Wammy.
"I'll go to class tomorrow."