Anyway, this is still unbeta'd so deal. Nyah. I'd much rather my beta take her time when she's comfortable than rush to meet any demand I might set for her.
This particular chapter is rated PG-13 (it rather pushes R, methinks) for violence, sex, and angst like none other. Gojyo's childhood isn't hearts-and-flowers just because he's purebred.
Final warning: It jumps around a lot. But to give you some sort of handhold, wherever there are line breaks, we jump. The chapter starts with Gojyo at eight years old, then before his birth and his infancy, then to eight-year-old Gojyo, then to just after what happened in the last chapter, and back to eight-year-old Gojyo. Yes. If you have questions, please ask them. I know I'm not clear yet. XP
"You're gonna have to live with it."
Gojyo hiccups, crying and fighting at the same time. Jien holds him, bearing the load of tiny fists and feet, cradling the mess of eight-year-old limbs and tears and blood. "I just wanted to know!" Gojyo bawls, over the initial shock and seized by pain and betrayal. He takes advantage of Jien's ear. "I just wanted to know about dad!"
Jien sighs and hefts the boy, repeating his comment. "You're gonna have to live with it. No matter how much I clean this out, you're going to have scars. Gojyo, let it be a lesson, okay? There are some things you just don't ask about." He sits Gojyo on the bathroom sink, pulls the dark hair away from his brother's face, and wipes at the hot, raw lines across his younger brother's cheek and nose. The two jagged marks bleed freely, and the skin around them is reddened with the stinging force of the slap that had preceded the cuts. A slap given open-palmed and too hard so claws tear into soft, vulnerable flesh. A smaller line graces the underside of Gojyo's left eye, much more shallow than its counterparts.
The child's tears clean his wounds, saline flowing into the bloody trails that drip from his chin. Gojyo tries to speak again, but is overcome by sobbing hiccups so his words are choked away. Jien knows what he is trying to say. And so he bends his head close to Gojyo's ear and whispers.
"Our father gave us our blue eyes, Gojyo. When I was younger, he was hardly ever home. I don't know much of him either. But know this. He left mom before you were born. Whenever you bring him up she remembers and feels really sad, okay? Any questions you have, you'll make mom sad." Jien grabs a bit of toilet paper and holds it to Gojyo's nose. "Blow."
When Gojyo obliges, Jien shakes his hand to make him laugh. "You got it?" he asks softly, as Gojyo's sniffles subside. "Please don't bring it up, okay?"
Gojyo nods. And then he notices the bottle in Jien's hand. "No! Don't put that on! It stings!" He tries to struggle away, nearly falling off of the rim of the sink.
Jien's hands are heavy but gentle on Gojyo, holding him up. He explains, "Bactine will help you heal. Do you want scars?"
"I don't want it to hurt any more!" Gojyo responds, tears threatening to descend again. "It hurts enough!"
Jien is too young for this. He nearly drops the dark bottle at his brother's words, flooded with sympathy and hot emotions. He is not a father, but only a brother. Only a boy himself, even if he is already shaped in the build of an adult. Jien wraps his arms around Gojyo's waist and pulls the boy into his arms, burying his face in his brother's messy mop of hair, trying desperately to keep a strong face. Gojyo squirms against him, protesting against being held, but Jien refuses to let go.
"Okay. You can keep the scars," Jien whispers, and sits Gojyo down on the sink again. He tapes gauze over the worst of the wounds, then takes Gojyo's hands. "You walk with me to your room, and you stay there until I come to get you, okay?"
Gojyo nods dumbly, following his older brother's tugging hand. When they arrive, Jien seats Gojyo on his bed, bounces him a bit, and says, "If it takes all night, just don't come out. Not until I get you. Promise me."
"I promise," says Gojyo, already reaching up to toy with the bandages.
Jien sees it coming and smiles. "And no scratching. You'll only make it worse." He closes the door on Gojyo's dejected face and goes to find his mother where he left her. He had worked to calm her first, locking Gojyo in the bathroom until she was manageable in her grief and rage, and had then left her to her own devices.
The first thing Jien notices is the bitter cold. The front door hangs open.
Jien and Gojyo have a beautiful mother. It is one of the reasons Jien could never fathom why his father holds so many mistresses. Ego, perhaps, or an urge to spread his seed far and wide. But why, when such a devoted, lovely lady is at his every beck and call? Perhaps, just perhaps they are all like that. Jien does not let himself wonder how many there were, how many there are. Whether he is the first-born son or merely the first-born from this particular female in the harem.
For the formative years of Jien's life, he played the man of the house because his father was never, ever there. Oh, his mother told him stories upon stories of this quality or that deed or how he had his father's lovely blue eyes. Every day was spent in preparation for his return, for his blessed arrival into Jien's life, for the completion of their idyllic family picture. She did not let Jien go to school, preferring to have him home to take care of her and be her company. And always, always, she looked lovingly into his lovely blue eyes.
On the famed and fabled day of his arrival, Jien had been examined perfunctorily before being shoved out of the way, called upon as cabana boy and little else. In moments where they had separated, Jien spent the time helping his mother clean laundry and listening to her happy sighs about how, now, father Sha was back for good. Jien did not sleep for their ecstatic cries.
He stayed for ten days and left before dawn on the eleventh. The staggering finality of his departure was punctuated by the lack of note, the door left carelessly unlocked and open, the subversive method he used to run away. Immediately, Jien's mother fell into deep grief, questioning her own merit and at one point turning on Jien for frightening her beloved away. Jien was too loud, too quiet, too intrusive, too scarce, too tall, too small, too ugly, any number of faults over which Jien had no control and did not know he possessed. Within weeks of the first breakdown, the true cause of his departure was discovered.
Jien had to lay his mother flat on her bed, holding her arms with his hands and pressing down heavily on her legs with his knees to keep her from beating her belly in. No matter how she thrashed, begged, pleaded, bit, fought, or writhed against him, Jien did not let up for the rest of the night and into the next day.
That last maneuver was the most perplexing to a young youkai. His mother, ripe with womanhood and fertility, pressing her body against his in foreign ways, her breasts finding the curve of his chest and her voice whispering red seduction. He did not have time to think about it as he frantically forced her body against the bed in the first time he saved his brother's life, but in the days after and the months after and the years after, her actions plagued him.
But then, in the desperate, frightened, violent darkness of the bedroom, Jien pressed his body into his mother's, clothed hip to clothed hip, knee to thigh, hand to wrist, to keep her from beating her belly in and killing the child she fully believed had driven her beloved away. When she fell asleep, he did not follow suit but instead watched her breathing and trembled with adrenaline until she awoke to fight him anew.
The months of pregnancy made Jien into an exhausted, haggard, full-grown superhero. He only saved two lives, but he saved them nearly every day. He cooked, he cleaned, he conversed, and even held some manual work hours on days he felt he could spare the time. His mother spent most of the time sleeping, and when she was awake she was often ingratiatingly pleasant, cooing to him and flattering him and touching him with all visible affection. Her fits grew fewer and further between as her breasts and belly swelled, but they were never any less violent than the first. And Jien, the unsung Brother Of The Year, would hold her down every time, sometimes talking to try to take her mind away from it but most often desperately silent until the tantrum faded into sleep.
When Gojyo was born, she wanted nothing to do with him. For the first few weeks, the most vulnerable days of the baby's life, he had no name nor care beyond Jien's arms and stolen cows' milk. And then, manic and pink-feathered, maternal instinct set in and Gojyo was treated as another beloved baby boy. Jien was wary all the time, often taking it upon himself to handle the more distasteful chores of caring for an infant lest Gojyo offend his new mother.
The most frightening moment of Gojyo's young life came when the boy was too young to be conscious of it. He opened his lovely blue eyes at his mother, laughed and grabbed her finger, suckling on it. That alone left Gojyo floating facedown in the water-barrel. When Jien found him, he was blue. Frantically, Jien pulled the baby from the water, braced him against his thigh, and tried to pound the water from Gojyo's lungs. Frigid liquid poured from the baby, but it did not breathe, purple tongue distending from behind white lips. Only under the pressure of Jien's own breath and gentle fingers did Gojyo cough and curl into a protective ball, wheezing weakly in his brother's arms. Gojyo slept for the next entire day.
Sometimes, rarely, she repented. After beating Gojyo, abusing him with words or her fists, she took her guilt and grief out on herself. And while Jien could care for Gojyo, his abilities with his mother were far more limited. In Gojyo, in Jien, she saw her lover, her would-be mate, her betrayer, and because of this neither of her sons could console her. In them she saw her own faults, blatant as her beloved's blue eyes. When her fits turned introspective, masochistic, suicidal, she dug her claws into herself and anyone who tried to stop her.
Gojyo got used to being locked in the bathroom and huddling in the tub even as he bled from fresh wounds. But Jien could never quite handle pulling his mother's bloody hands from herself and holding her down with the full length of his body until she quieted. Even as Jien grew into the figure of an adult, even as his maturity was blatant in his muscles and the lines of his face, his body could never quite overpower hers with anything less than his full effort. And as Jien grew into the figure of an adult, even in his early teens, the more his face would remind his mother of her beloved. In him she saw her own faults, and in him she saw her release. She alternated between writhing against him and trying to tear her teeth into his arm to let her up. Neither attempt succeeded, although the toll on Jien showed in the lines already working their way into his youthful features and the darkness in his lovely blue eyes.
Gojyo grew up outdoors, learning to walk with Jien on gravel paths, learning to swim with Jien in the shallows of rivers, learning to imagine and play with Jien in grassy fields. Gojyo grew up outdoors because it was the best for the three of them to leave their mother stationed in the house. Even as a rambunctious toddler, Gojyo understood how to handle himself when Jien brought him to his worksites. Through a process of trial and error, a long string of mistake and punishment, he learned never to leave Jien's side. Whenever he did, something bad happened. Jien was an important guy to have around.
Likewise, Jien grew up as Gojyo's father, letting the boy teethe on river stones with a gentle but firm grip to make sure the kid never swallowed, teaching him how to walk and run and climb trees and swim and keep his hair tied low over his ears. Jien stayed nearby as Gojyo made friends with his easy laugh and his sharp wit and the way he knew how to catch stinkbugs. Jien kept Gojyo from swimming with the other boys, from roughhousing, from learning the extent of his own strength.
If anything, their mother personally preferred Gojyo for his brutishness. When she spoke kindly or purposefully, she always spoke of pride in her species, pride in her parentage, pride in her lovers. It was from her that Gojyo learned all concepts of both soaring self-confidence and debilitating self-doubt. For even mere hours after she finished a speech on the pride and prestige of being youkai, and water sprite no less, something would set her off and she would wail and berate a cockroach Gojyo had never met but shared his face. Gojyo learned to head for the bathroom even before Jien made ready to lock him in for his own protection. Gojyo learned to keep toys in the bathtub, a ball to bounce against the wall to drown out the sobbing that tore at his insides even as a young child. Gojyo learned that he hated the sound of women crying, but he never figured out how to completely stop his ears.
Jien can smell the blood even before he gets outside. It leads him to her, the familiar tang of female and mother and Gojyo so thick and heady he fears the worst. He nearly races past her, propped as she is against the backside of the house, the side without windows from which the laden laundry lines still hang. Her blood spatters against the pristine linens, tobacco starbursts that have dulled and dried long past freshness to deep brown. Jien tears through the sheets, yanking clothespins free of the lines with the force of his movements, his frantic search until he finally finds her pillowed by nothing more than the grass.
The force of repentance is heavy as the executioner's axe. The blade did not go all the way through the glistening tubes in her neck, but far enough and hard enough to crack her spine. The tears are gone from her, but the bloodstained expression of horrified, choking scream remains cemented into her features as rigid hands refuse to release the handle of the axe. Blood paints the house, the grass, her dress, the axe, the freshly washed bed sheets blowing in the evening breeze.
Jien can't bring himself to go to her, and acts upon the only impulse he can grasp. The word repeats over and over, thrumming in his blood like the only concrete thing in the world. Without even tears, Jien runs back into the house, grabs a bag and begins to stuff clothes into it. He plans routes in his head, digging under his bed for the money he'd been saving, the pocket change left over after buying a lifetime's groceries. After so many years, he has spent none of it, but the coinage barely fills a sock from toe to heel. It will have to be enough. He does not think of how he will tell Gojyo. Gojyo knows to follow him, Gojyo knows to obey him, Gojyo knows to trust him. For now, it will have to be enough.
run, run, run, run, Run, Run, Run, Run, RUN, RUN, RUN...
Gojyo grins like a maniac, running home as fast as he can, a slip of paper clutched tightly in his hand. The ground is solid under his feet and, although the limiter hinders his movements to their fullest, he is fast enough to fly. He throws his arms out, crouching low and pounding through the center of town, to the house he and Jien share. When he gets there, he fidgets and fumbles with his key, finally slamming into the house and whooping loudly.
"Jien! Jien, I know you're here! Come here! Come and see!" he cries, bouncing.
A cloud of steam precedes Jien's entrance. He is clothed in nothing more than a towel, dripping from his hair to his toes and wearing an expression of urgent curiosity. He hasn't even had time to slip his limiter on after his shower, and so appears before Gojyo in naked glory. Even though they are related, Gojyo is unused to the sight of his brother, ever the prude, so bare to him. He holds the paper in front of Jien's face to keep water and claws away from it.
It takes Jien a moment to read it, having learned to read not long before Gojyo did and severely out of practice with it. Not to mention said brother's constant vibration. When he finally gets through it, he laughs and gives Gojyo an affectionate, congratulatory noogie.
"Bro, that's awesome. See what you can actually pull off?" he asks, fumbling a bit when the motion causes his towel to slip.
Gojyo grins, haughtily rubbing his nose with his thumb. "Yeahwell, I figured if I had to try I'd do it right. 'S what you get for teachin' me how to read."
Jien grins right back at him. "I ought to guilt-trip you more often." Before Gojyo can retort to that, Jien laughs and adds, "So what do you say I do something special tonight to help celebrate?"
"You gonna put clothes on?" Gojyo jibes, poking at his brother's bare stomach.
Jien shrugs. "What, you jealous? You runt." He gives Gojyo a playful cuff to the shoulder. "Don't go nerdy on me. Let me go get some clothes and then we'll figure out something cool to do for dinner." Jien is about to retreat back to the bathroom for his clothes when he stops and, without turning around, orders, "You do your homework first. I want to see it when you're through."
Gojyo huffs, muttering with the sufficient amount of teen angst, and winces when Jien adds, "And remember to lock the front door!"
Jien wonders if, had Gojyo been any older, if Gojyo had questioned him, if Gojyo had resisted in the slightest, he would have left his brother.
True, the first blind hours of running, stumbling, dragging him by the hand through descending night were punctuated by questions, but never once did Gojyo pull his hand away, always following and trusting and believing in Jien's decision. When the adrenaline ebbed, Gojyo's faith was the force behind Jien's movements. When fatigue set in to his muscles, when he felt the lightness of his makeshift purse, when twilight gave way to starless pitch, Gojyo's young hand still rested in his.
The first night, Jien fed them from bread stolen from the pantry. He marveled at his own level-headedness, how he remembered to bring clothes for any weather, extra socks for them both, and food, food, food. He marveled at his own instincts in keeping them near the river, away from people but always near the river for water and some semblance of direction. He wondered where he'd learned how to make a fire, how to curl his body around Gojyo's so the boy slept soundly and warmly and without ache in the morning, even without blankets. He dreaded the less-frantic time where he would have to explain to Gojyo exactly why they had to run.
Jien did not question why he ran in the first place, only moving on from sheer instinct, always moving and sometimes having to carry a sleeping Gojyo and both their sacks just to keep going. By the end of the third day, he removed his limiter for the added stamina and secreted it in the bottom of his pack. Gojyo talked to him, mainly about the birds and bugs they saw on the way, about animals he could smell and how the sky looked and how sick he was of eating old bread.
After twelve days, they were out of food. Jien did not want to teach Gojyo to steal, feeling the eight-year-old's psyche was skewed enough, and so instead they learned together how to hunt. They hunted like animals, with teeth and claws and stealth and Gojyo most often staying behind with their packs of clothes so Jien could handle it quickly and quietly. Gojyo disliked being left behind, but after enough stern words from Jien he obeyed. On days when Jien felt it better, knew they had leftover supplies and was sure of his own abilities in the coming days, he let Gojyo come with him. The kid was never very good at sitting still enough to lure a rabbit or a bird near enough to him, didn't have the patience for fishing, but when he did manage to grab something it was always big. The first time Jien and Gojyo ever tasted venison, it was from a catch Gojyo had grabbed by the throat.
Gojyo took quickly to hunting larger animals, and within those weeks and slow months, his muscles grew straining and full for big, anaerobic bursts of energy. His ears were trained to every sound of prey animal, and he hunted savagely, ate heavily, tore into things with claws and teeth. He grew impatient and animalistic, yanking half-cooked meat away from the fire with a growl and sucking the bone clean before Jien had finished cooking his own meal. His talkative nature ebbed as the river thinned until, one day, they both disappeared into the undergrowth. Gojyo did not so much walk as prowl, shouldering his pack and stalking with his head down and his shoulders back, breathing deeply and feeling the strength in his own pulse. He only answered Jien's questions when he had to, and the change in him did not go unnoticed.
When Jien and Gojyo came upon a small one-room house, a stately sort of shack, abandoned in the middle of a forest, Jien shoved Gojyo inside and pronounced it their permanent home. Gojyo protested, having grown to love sleeping under the stars and waking in the morning with game-scent in the back of his throat. Jien insisted, and began cleaning the place out to punctuate his point. He dug his limiter out of his pack and put it on, but did not force Gojyo to wear his own.
Jien put up every affectation of domesticity, forcing Gojyo to follow suit as they cleaned the floors, tested the pipes, bathed under frigid water for the first time in months. Jien was again in charge, imposing the rule of 'no hunting' from then on, determined to bring his brother to some semblance of civility again. Jien dipped into their precious savings to buy groceries and had Gojyo chop wood to make a fire for cooking. Jien brought Gojyo with him on his hunt for jobs, finding that the path that ended at their doorway actually came from a modest town in need of an able-bodied, helpful young man to aid in construction of a schoolhouse.
The schoolteachers, for there were two of similar height and build, stood as lovely blonde pillars to welcome Jien to the construction site. While one immediately took to Gojyo, leading him away from the working young men and entertaining him with games and her friendly nature, the other was an able-bodied young man himself, and worked alongside Jien. On their breaks, he taught Jien how to read. The admission had not come easy to the dark-haired liar, the mellow youkai masquerading as a man, but once it slipped into the open, his companion was more than willing to help him, as easy as sharing his name. It was one of the first things Jien learned how to spell, after his own. "Jien" and "Genichi", scrawled together in the dirt, once in an experienced flourish and again in a shaky, copying hand, was the first real triumph Jien felt. Once Jien learned well enough, he taught Gojyo. And Gojyo, like sinking his teeth into the soft, hot flesh of a deer, took to reading with natural talent and fervor. He spent his days reading under the watchful eye of the sister-teacher, while Jien worked with Genichi and shook his hand once the schoolhouse was finished. His pay at the end of every week was meager enough, but it was enough to live on and that was all that mattered.
Near the place's completion, children had begun to flow out of the woodwork, urged by their parents, the curious and forward-thinking parents that wondered at life beyond repairs of the family tavern, or of their own accord. These children gathered around the sister, the blonde pillar of welcoming and wealth, and by right of position they also gathered around Gojyo.
Gojyo learned from Jien how to tie his hair low over his ears. Gojyo learned from Jien how to read and how to speak politely to his elders and not call Terue by her first name but by Ito-sensei, no matter what he wanted. But Gojyo's rapport with the children that came by was entirely his own merit. He gravitated toward the pretty girls that giggled and tried to touch his scars, and to the much younger boys that poked bugs with sticks and cried when they accidentally popped themselves with their slingshots. They gravitated to him, and the ones that knew how to read as well as he did lent him books to take home and bring back the next day to laugh about. And always, always, Terue stood close by with a protective arm always in reach of Gojyo, either to shield him from children's cruelty or to grab his collar before he enacted some of his own.
It was easy for Jien to love them. He learned what he could from Genichi, that the two of them had a dream of creating a school in a place not so rich as all the others, that they wanted to welcome all who wanted to learn, that they would have to rely on kindnesses and donations, that they would pay Jien the world if they could, but they'd always known this would be a financial struggle. It was easy for Jien to love the honesty, the self-sacrifice, the hard work in them. He could see their iron backbones and his own straightened a bit further in camaraderie.
Gojyo was welcome to the school once it had been finished, and Jien urged Gojyo to go, even if he was three years older than the beginning class where he would have to start out. The deal was sweetened when Gojyo learned that all the classes were taught by the two blondes in the same room, and that he could pay attention to the higher levels if he chose. Of course, when school really started, Gojyo learned that he was far ahead of the majority of the populace for his ability in reading, and slid through his lessons with relative ease. He made friends quickly, and enemies soon after that for his strange looks and his cheeky attitude toward other boys. But the fighting didn't start until Gojyo finally got up the nerve to talk to Jien.
It had been over a year since the night he'd left, nearly popping his arm from his socket because he couldn't keep up with Jien's big strides and the insistent pulling on his hand. Over a year since the first frantic, blind stumble through the night where his only anxiety came from how shaken Jien was. Over a year since Jien told him it was best to really not ask questions that might make people sad.
They had been curled up on a brand-new mattress, just one without a bed frame, but a mattress won thanks to Jien's hard labor, and about to go to sleep after a meal of rice and cheap, unseasoned chicken. His eyes had been open and Jien's had been closed, but he knew Jien was awake from the too-even breathing and the too-still sleep posture. Jien always fidgeted when he slept, twitching from his dreams.
Gojyo prodded his brother in the shoulder and whispered, "Where's mom?"
Jien's eyes had snapped open, lighting blearily first on nothing, then settling on Gojyo's face with a mixture of hurt surprise and heavy sorrow. Gojyo had stared right back at him, insistent and feeling a bit hurt himself. He repeated the question, and Jien reached up and put a hand, a deceptively human-looking hand, over his mouth. "I'll tell you," Jien whispered, "if you don't stop me until I'm done."
Gojyo had nodded, and Jien had spoken. Gojyo waited through every agonizing second, straining to hear his brother struggle to tell him secret words that grated across his ears and tied his gut into knots. He did not react until Jien finished, too stunned to move until silence closed in again and Gojyo did not have to fight to hear him and then, for lack of anything else, Gojyo rolled over and cried. He cried until he bled inside, for all he knew, sobbing hard into the mattress and fighting Jien when he tried to touch his back and comfort him. He cried until there were no more tears in him, though the heaving sobs did not stop until he felt like vomiting, stumbled away from Jien and the mattress and locked himself in the bathroom. Gojyo huddled in the tub, turned on the frigid water and screamed himself hoarse.
His voice rang against the dingy tile for long seconds after he stopped, turned off the water, and lay down with his face against the drain. Impossibly, tears came again. Jien had sworn up and down that it was not Gojyo's fault. The boy knew better. Somewhere, he'd always known better.
