A King of the Waste
Prologue

Byakuran thinks of him in a time of yearning.

The boy remains a memory, however distant, whether he exists. Or doesn't.

I need you, Byakuran thinks (knows, pleads). Need. Need. There is no worst word in the world. No worst feeling. When the woman created Byakuran (and all his brothers and sisters), she had needed the world.

But Byakuran thinks nothing of the world. He only amuses the woman to her dreams. He acts like the dog he was raised to be, obeying the command of one master, but waiting for the one who will

take him back.

Nobody ever thinks of Byakuran kindly, anymore. And he doesn't think of any of them at all. At most, a sideways glance. A bored stare. Byakuran looms with his brother in front of the crowd of pleading eyes, muddy faces, trembling lips.

Another people who thought they could defy the new world. Another rebellion reported to the woman, on her new throne, as Byakuran stood beside her. Another challenge. She gave the report to him.

In a lab, nursed and fed, devastated and rebuilt, for her dream. Sent out, Ghost and him, to the dirty world to dirty it only further.

He cracks a smile and laughs. They're all just targets with faces painted on them. Byakuran feels a sense of déjà-vu.

"Kill them," he states.

There is a slither of hesitation on Ghost's face. His lips scramble together, his face contorts. But then it's hidden. Behind too-white hair, which mirror Byakuran's own.

The crowd looks at Ghost with a semblance of hope.

Byakuran plays with the handle of his sword, tucked in the ground. He stares at the soldiers given to them by the woman. Their guns are slung over their shoulders. Their bodies are stiff and tall and still. Their faces are unmoving, pressed lips and eyebrows heavy over darkened eyes.

Byakuran looks at Ghost and the man doesn't spare a look back.

"Ghost~" Byakuran calls, (sings, demands) offering the man a challenge. Bored. Waiting. In a second's time infinity stretches before them. These people's lives are meant for perishing. One day or another.

Byakuran looks at them with a hint of envy. A corruption, breed sometime between his first life and his second.

In the corner of his eye,

Ghost is walking towards the crowd. Some continue smiling their small smiles at him, and some stagger inward, hiding. As if that could save them. Byakuran sees Ghost right in front of his field of vision, in front of the crowd, taller than all of them, different because—

Ghost's head is turned back to him.

And that, Byakuran knows, is what begging looks like. Or a variant of it.

"Who," Byakuran hears him say, "is the leader?"

There is no leader. That's what the reports said. There is no leader, just a weak, fumbling mess of men and women. Desperate, hopeless, wishing. Worthless, hopeless, wanting.

Byakuran walks towards Ghost, towards the crowd, whose numerous faces stare and hold each other's gaze. Full of fear. Pleading.

And somehow,

the strong-weak voices of those who answer Ghost's call. They are unremarkable, as broken and stained as those who are silent. They are not the images of revolutionaries,

and they are not.

Byakuran counts seven.

When he stands next to Ghost, his brother takes the gun off his shoulder, and holds the weapon with an invasive sense of dread.

The woman could never teach him right.

"There's something to be said," Ghost says, to Byakuran, his eyes trained on his targets, "for the human heart. For this… sacrifice."

"In another life." Byakuran laughs. "Perhaps in another world." But the human heart, he agrees (envies, thinks) must be an extraordinary thing, no matter how reckless. Even when it leads them here, their knees to the ground, Ghost's gun pointed to their heads. The first is a boy (they're all boys), just a teenager, having been somewhere between his mother's arm and the world's suffocating grip. Taken forcefully by the latter.

He spins no sham of defiance. Just grates his teeth and looks to the ground.

This is Ghost's last offer,

"It's painless. An easy death."

And then Ghost's hand has pulled half-way on the trigger. Byakuran was leaning on his leg, hands stuffed in his pockets. Byakuran, despite the eyes on him, is only a bystander to this execution. And then—

Hair so caked in dirt it looked brown. The green eyes and the glasses offset against them. Byakuran is swift, and the gun, in the other man's bare hand, turns and fires at random into the crowd.

Ghost turns to look at him, but Byakuran sees his brother in the corner of his eyes.

IfoundyouIfoundyou.

The boy-on-his-knees sees Byakuran. And the boy of Byakuran's dreams is wrapped around the former, trying to pull him up, away, to what?

Safety?

It's all fear, and stupidity, and yet a feeling even someone as ancient as him understands—hope.

IfoundyouIfoundyou.

"Run!"

The boy screams to the other but his eyes are locked on Byakuran and the other as he turns is taken into Byakuran's grip. His head of unwashed red hair, sullied into an earth brown, is on Byakuran's shoulder. And Byakuran trembling hands circle around him, digging in, planting hold.

The need—

IfoundyouIfoundyou.

"Found you," Byakuran whispers, the world falling around him.

"Shou-chan."

.

.

.

A memory is much like a dream.

There were moments of peace, in the centuries of violence. He has lived long enough to experience even small chapters of happiness.

Byakuran remembers a father. A mother. A brother. A shack on the outskirts of a city that no longer exists anymore. A community of people who gave him free food, presents on his birthday, kisses on the cheek. Hellos. Goodbye.

He hasn't a place for them in his heart anymore.

The boy is his only dream. His only hope. His only wish.

The woman laughs at him. His brothers and sister call it an obsession,

quietly, barely above a whisper.

.

.

.

I don't even enjoy Reborn, and yet I adore this couple (and don't think they have enough written for them). So apologies for any inaccuracies that I, cluelessly, try to present as facts. Just small things.

This will probably be a three-part story. Second part... getting there.

Trying to get back into writing. The last thing I've written was when I was, what, fifteen?

So this story is, and will continue being, rather bumpy ground.