A/N: yes, I said I was taking a break. That still stands. These are my last few outputs before my hiatus so yeah, I hope you enjoy. Thank you so much for your reviews and support on my other endeavours, it really means a lot. Anyway, here goes

Little Boy Black.

All his life, he had pushed people away. He was particularly proud of that skill. It had begun when he was a child, when little old ladies came over with their faux sympathy telling him how hard it must be in his situation. Blind. Better blind than fat and old he used to say, a cruel smirk on his face as he pushed them, pushed them away. If they hadn't been so busy being offended, it might have occurred to them to wonder how a blind kid knew they were of larger stature. As it stood, they left him alone in future and that was exactly how the man who grew to be known as Stick liked it. Nobody looking down on him, nobody pitying him. Other people were a bunch of little bitches, so far as he was concerned, and could stay as far away as possible.

Except for Matt. Matt had been the exception. Maybe the old man had seen something of himself in that kid, maybe he had been looking for something so he could pretend he wasn't alone. Either way, Stick knew he had screwed up when it came to the orphaned child he'd trained. He'd shown too much affection, given him too much friendship. In the end, he pushed Matt away too, knowing damn well that with sufficient training he should have been able to school the boy out of his weakness, but he knew he couldn't do that adequately after being compromised himself. A twenty year absence worked wonders. Gave a chicken-shit kid the strength to beat his mentor - yes, Matty had beaten him fair and square and Stick was proud of him. When the war came...when the war came, who knew what would happen? God? The Devil? Both; or neither?

There were a lot of things Matty didn't know, and the impending war, the role he would have to play, was among them. That and the fact that Stick, confessed dick, asshole and manipulative liar, wanted his ex-pupil to attack him. Anger is a spark. Rage, rage is uncontrollable. So yeah, maybe he told a few things that weren't true. Point was, Matt thought they were. Everyone thought so, actually, except the few people in the know, those who knew what the mission really was. Stick could count those people on one hand. The people he trusted, why, those people didn't even exist. There was only one absolute; that being, trust is for idiots. People who want to get killed. Funnily enough, that wasn't something Stick was itching to get out of the way, leave it until later. Until after he'd dealt with the mission.

He made his way on a roundabout route, limping slightly where Matt had kicked him, and laughing darkly. The roads he took made no sense, he looped back erratically, listening for the tell-tale sign of a tail following behind. Nothing. Finally he relented, making his way to a run-down empty apartment, shitter even than Matt's place, which was actually fairly nice until you considered it belonged to Matt and ergo was a pile of shit. Stick didn't make the rules. They were basic, instinctive rules, the rules of childhood games. Someone has something better than what you do, you deride it. It's a pile of shit. Because you say it is. Home, in general, is a pile of shit, on a conceptual level. But out of all the homes that were aforementioned piles of shit, Matty's had to be the shittest because it belonged to him.

Didn't even go to Law School, and I could figure that one out Stick smirked. He entered the apartment through an upstairs window, into the main bedroom, stepping over the unlocked chains scattered over the hallway floor, making his way towards the bathroom where, by his recollection there should be…

Yes. There was.

A little Asian brat - sorry, child, he meant child, Freudian slip, wasn't it? - curled up in the bathtub, told to stay where he had been left. Concealed by a shower curtain, not that things like that mattered when you had Stick's hearing. A little boy.

The Black Sky.

He'd told Matt the Black Sky was dead. He'd lied. When he'd raised his bow to aim, seemingly at the child, he'd been aiming for the guards. True, his shot had gone awry, scratched the precious cargo; blame that damn Murdock kid, not him. All along, the aim of the mission was to capture the Black Sky, to fake his death and bring him to their cause. A creepy demon horror movie kid, yes, but a weapon. And there was a war coming, wasn't there? They needed all the weapons they could get.

The kid lifted his head, terrified, pulling himself away into the corner of the bath. Stick raised his hands, indicating he was unarmed and meant no harm to the little boy. A silence passed, Stick thinking back to the last asshole brat he'd had to train. Matt fucking Murdock, oh-so-special because he was such a good Catholic. This kid was different; that and he could kill Stick without so much as lifting a finger, because he was, you know, the Black Sky, but the technique with children was the same. Basically.

Stick sucked at talking to children.

"Hey, kid," he said, in passable Japanese. "My name's Stick. I ain't going to hurt you," he slipped back into English without thought. Paused. Back to Japanese, then. "Do you, do you have a name?"

The boy looked at his feet, saying nothing. He was dirty, thin, poorly clad; you'd never think he was one of the most powerful weapons the world had seen. And Stick had to win him over. Or kill him. Killing him was always an option.

Wasn't it?

"I am the Black Sky," the kid blurted suddenly in broken English, probably the only words of the language he knew. "Black Sky. Black Sky. Black Sky."

"Yeah yeah, I got that already. Who are you though, besides that?"

The child narrowed his eyebrows, confused, and in shaky Japanese, responded. "I do not understand the question."

"Come on, let's cut the crap," the child again repeated his mantra of ignorance. "Fine. You're the Black Sky, so what? Big deal. I know the story. You're at home with your parents when some assholes with guns come in. Shoot your folks dead. They kill you-"

"I'm not dead."

"You're not? It's a miracle!" the little boy stared at Stick solemnly, still puzzled by the old man's words. "And you find out you have this gift, to do things which nobody else can do. These people, the people who killed your parents, they make you use it for them."

"They make me hurt people," the Black Sky interrupted defiantly. An act of strength at last. Stick had thought he'd sit there in the bath and cry all day. Kids.

"You don't want to hurt people?" The kid nodded. "Tough luck. You're going to have to. But they'll only be bad people, I promise," Stick lied.

"The people who killed my parents?" the boy's eyes were wide, eager. You could almost forget he was a soulless killing machine, a living weapon. For once, he seemed like a child. True, he was clamouring for blood, but that was kids for you.

"Yeah, them. There's a safehouse, way up in Canada-"

"Can-a-da?" Stick nodded, and the boy nodded too, serious and sincere as ever. Creepy kid. "Canada. Canada. Canada!" clapping his hands gleefully, he seemed delighted, not that he even knew were Canada was but hey, nice to get his hopes up. "Thank you Mr Stick." The Black Sky's solemn look returned, as he stood up in the bathtub and bowed respectfully. The blind old man waved him off irritably, and the boy sat down again as quickly as he had stood up. "Sorry Mr Stick."

"Whatever." Perhaps not the best word choice when attempting to win over a deadly potential maniac, but what else could Stick do? A thought came to mind, possibly a bad idea, likely to turn out like the last one. "You wouldn't happen to like ice-cream, would you?"

"I do not understand the question. I do not understand-"

"Of course you don't. I've never met a single kid who didn't like ice-cream. Put these on-" he produced a t-shirt and some clean trousers from the bag he was carrying, followed shortly by a pair of socks and sneakers. "We're going out."

Don't you go making me a damn bracelet too. Stick fished in his pockets for the souvenir he'd kept all those long years, reminding him of one of the reasons he had to win the war. It was sentimental bullshit, he knew that, but he remembered Matty handing it to him, wondering how long it took him to make without his mentor noticing.

It was gone.

"Oh shit," he muttered, in English of course, and the Black Sky looked confused.

"Shit?"

"I'll...I'll tell you when you're older," the old man replied, unknowingly promising that he would be there for this kid. He'd do it right this time. Had to, didn't he? There was a war coming, and the Black Sky was essential to their plan. Far more important than Matt Murdock, so really there was no point in getting all butthurt about the fancy pants lawyer stealing the bracelet back, if that was indeed what had happened. There was no reason whatsoever. Except for the simple one that somewhere underneath the anger and the abrasive hate, Stick cared about him. And that was no reason at all. Just some lame excuse, the kind of excuse Stick despised. He wasn't some pussy, was he now? He was a warrior and there was a fucking war coming. Sentiment was irrelevant.

Later, he had a meeting with his boss, if that was indeed the right word to use referring to that man, in which he would mention the outcome of the mission as vaguely as he could. But right now, he was taking a little kid out for ice-cream.

And that's all there was to it.