Hello~! This is my first Sasunarusasu fanfic so please excuse the suckishness, my writing will improve as the chapters go on. ^v^ The prologue is a bit explanatory, but it wont be like that for the rest of the fic, I promise! Also, just FYI: I have never, and hopefully will not ever be homeless, so my only references come from TV, movies, and books. My knowledge of homelessness may be a little splotchy. :P Anyway, please enjoy the fic~! =^w^=
Prologue
The hallways were dim, and covered with soot, a small flame or two bit through the darkness, some flickering as the air was stirred by a small form moving forward in the blackened hall. Thick black hair, brittle from heat exposure, clung to a pale reddened neck. Black soot was stirred by a harsh breath emitting from parted chapped lips. Soot clung to the dark eyelashes rimming narrowed midnight eyes, staring ahead into the darkness. Blackened clothing clung to the frail form, scorched and heated skin peeking out through holes in the material as the form crawled forward.
This boy had lived in these one crowded hallways, huddled among the many homeless men and women who resided there, his only shelter being the cement walls of this old run down building. His peace-less life was disturbed however, when an arsonist found the building to be a fun place to start a fire. He had been further inside the building then the others, seeking quiet, so he was stuck inside while the fire raged on. After he was sure he would die in this place, the fire started to die in a few places, and he escaped through a narrow staircase and into a part of the building which had already been quite burned. By then, there was only soot and the remaining embers and small flames, as well as a dark cloud of thick black smoke looming above his head, reminding him that there was still a raging fire only one floor above.
The boy had been wandering the streets with his older brother since he was four, but it didn't start out this way. He and his brother had once lived in a good home, with good parents, but when he was barely three his parents died, and something happened to his brother that made him act... different. He was paranoid, and sometimes he would do things that seemed horrible, but he would act like they were good. When the boy was four, after being passed through many foster homes, one couple decided to put the older brother in an institution for troubled minors. He heard and that night he took his little brother and ran away. He vowed never to let anyone take him away from his little brother.
Since then they had lived here and there, on the street or on a stranger's couch, the older brother always keeping his brother hidden, so no one could take him away. After ten years of this, the younger boy began to hate his brother for taking away his chance at a normal, well off life. One night he ran away, no longer wanting to be hidden away, hardly having a scrap to eat some days. But it seems he chose the wrong place to stay.
As he crawled through the darkness, holding back a fit of coughs, he once again resented his older brother for forcing him into this life.
A shaft of light shone through the smoky glare, the source being a large gap in the wall with burnt up planks of wood that no doubt covered it at one point. Through it, he could hear the sirens of an ambulance and a few fire trucks growing louder. Sighing a breath of relief, he climbed over the rubble, into daylight and onto perhaps even hotter cement ground. He winced at the heat and tried to crawl away somehow despite the pain racking his body, as a group of EMT's rushed towards him. When they reached him they picked him up, despite his protests, and laid him on the gurney as quickly, but gently as possible.
He let out a violent coughing fit as they started to wheel him towards the ambulance. His head spun wildly, making him wonder if smoke and asphyxiation was making him dizzy, or if the EMT's had injected him with something. He hardly had time to think about it though, as a sleepy haze settled in and dragged him off into blackness.