[12]
Makoto isn't sure what rouses him from his fitful slumber, but he jerks awake with a gasp in the deathly silence of night that is broken only by the occasional rumblings of a passing guard. The lingering tendrils of a dream cling to him, hinting at the warmth of days long past. He thinks he smells his mother's little flower garden, but that's impossible. That, along with everything from his childhood, is gone, leaving behind only trace memories in the form of the echo of a lullaby as he hovers between sleep and wakefulness or the imagined brush of a nurturing hand on his forehead.
It's been almost three years since that day when he lost so much in the ashes of his mother's death. Three years since he found that hope comes in the unlikeliest of places, in the voice of the boy who took care of Makoto without asking for anything in return, in the kindness in his hands as he washed away the grime of Makoto's past so he can look back on it and let the happy moments shine bright enough to eclipse the pain.
Haru.
His hand creeps along the sheets, looking for that tell-tale warmth of another body, then remembers that Haru had left for another mission two days ago. Makoto isn't really a very good judge of the passing of time, considering he can't easily tell between night and day, but the meals that are delivered to his room are a good enough approximation, he thinks.
Six meals since Haru left.
He and Haru never really talk about how long he would be gone whenever Leader sends him out, and Makoto doesn't want to pry too much into what exactly those 'errands' entail; Haru's subdued manner coupled with his subtle need for comfort when he quietly sneaks into bed with Makoto when he returns is enough to show Makoto the toll it takes on Haru. He could always use his Sight, he supposes, but loyalty to his best and only friend holds him back.
Makoto doesn't ask whose blood is smeared on Haru's skin, and he's learned to tell the sharp metallic tang of freshly-spilled blood from the dull scent of days-old injuries. He doesn't question the little things Haru brings him—a knotted wood staff that's just a little bit taller than him, the warm cloak that he hardly ever takes off. These he accepts with a grateful smile. He doesn't dwell on how the rough fabric of the hooded cloak smells faintly of fire or how the length of the staff is marked with deep, clean gouges; they're Haru's gifts for him, and he supposes it shouldn't matter where they came from.
He trusts Haru to talk to him when he's ready, just as Haru had remained quiet and steadfast until Makoto could muster up the courage to revisit the nightmare of that year on the run with Mama. Until then, Makoto will wait and welcome Haru home with a smile.
The creak of the door hinges snap him out of his reverie. His first thought is that Haru has returned, but then he remembers that Haru never lets the door creak like that; the few times that Makoto is awake to hear Haru come back, he only hears the faint scratching of the door on the dusty ground as it is eased open and soft muffled footsteps carefully picking their way across the room.
Haru would never be that careless.
He reaches for his walking stick, rising panic thick in his throat. His fingers close on the knotted top of the stick, but his fumbling awkwardness makes him drop it with a clatter. Makoto still isn't used to his rapidly growing body, and his frantic trembling isn't helping at all. He wishes he hadn't taken his cloak off even if the desert summer is particularly stifling at night.
Makoto tries to clear his mind enough to attempt to See, but he is too distracted by the blood pounding in his ears. Still, he grits his teeth and keeps trying.
Eventually, either through brute mental force or sheer dumb luck, the darkness slowly melts away. He senses the shape of his fists clenched around crumpled sheets. His field of vision widens, but it happens too slowly, too sluggishly for him to avoid the hand that quickly clamps around his mouth.
Makoto belatedly realises that he should have called for help earlier when he still had the chance. His captor pins him to the bed with his weight. His Sight slowly spreads until he could make out a jawline still soft with youth and a row of sharp, sharp teeth set between chapped lips.
"Sorry about this." A rough whisper in between harsh gasps ruffles the fringe of his hair.
The last thing Makoto Sees before a blow to his temple recalls the darkness is a pair of blood-red eyes.
The next time Makoto awakes, his mouth is dry and gritty with sand and his limbs are cramped from having been bound for who knows how long. This time, his Sight is more cooperative, and it takes him only a couple of minutes to See the situation he has somehow gotten into.
He is propped against a rock wall in what seems to be an underground cave of some sort. From his position, he can't See any exits or entrances, but he can hear the wind whistling outside so he can't be far from the surface. Still, the cave is small enough to make him feel like he's suffocating, so he takes deep breaths to try and calm himself.
"You hungry?"
Makoto jumps at the sound of another voice. He turns his Sight towards its source and squeaks when he makes out a boy around his age crouching beside an almost extinguished fire. The red-haired boy is gnawing at an unidentifiable animal bone with pointed teeth, and it reminds Makoto of the tales he had heard of people in the far south born with sharp fangs and flaming red hair and the strength of a hundred men. Makoto tells himself that there is no way that this boy sitting a few feet away from him is something straight out of those legends.
The boy snaps the bone in half as if it was a twig and looks questioningly at Makoto. Makoto had always been a stark believer in what his Sight reveals; so far, it has only shown him truth, and that in itself is both a blessing and a curse. So when the edge of a long canine tooth catches the light of the sputtering firelight, it doesn't take too much faith to accept that yes, the tales had been true all along.
They say they can tear a man apart with their bare hands and they can smell fear from a mile away.
Makoto knows that it isn't helping, but he can't stop the flurry of thoughts reliving those moments in his childhood huddled with Rei and the other children their age as one of the older boys tried to frighten them with stories of monsters and blood. They had scared him then, but Mama had held him and told him they weren't real.
Now Mama is gone, and the stories are terrifyingly real.
They're man-eaters, you know, and they especially like eating people while they're still alive. Keeps the meat from going tough, it seems.
Makoto's fingers instinctively seek the comfort of his walking stick, but his hands are tied behind his back and he can't See it anywhere in his vicinity. It is the loss of that one little piece of Haru that he carries with him that breaks his resolve to stay calm and brings frightened tears to his eyes.
The boy—monster, Makoto's mind whispers even as he desperately tries to hold on to the hope of being proven wrong about his apprehension—stalks towards him, the broken shard of bone held loosely in his hand. Makoto isn't sure how to read the expression on his captor's face, but he imagines appealing to whatever little mercy he can is his only chance of surviving for just a little longer.
"Please don't kill me." His voice cracks. He doesn't want to die here, not without having said a proper farewell to Haru. He had gotten complacent, had assumed that Haru would always be with him, and now he will regret that he didn't even see Haru off when he left.
I have to live. For Haru.
He should have learned his lesson, really, from his parents' death, but he supposes learning to live and have no regrets is a nigh impossible task. His lower lip trembles with fear, tears falling freely down his face. He doesn't try to hold back his emotions because it would be a lost cause anyway if he did, and maybe crying might make the boy pity him enough to at least not make him suffer for long.
"Relax, if I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead by now."
The redhead crouches down until he is at eye-level with Makoto. His red eyes are surprisingly clear of malice, a hint of curiosity the only thing Makoto can detect in his gaze.
"I was told you were blind, but that's obviously a lie, right?" The boy passes a dirt-encrusted hand in front of his Sight-filled eyes. Makoto flinches instinctively, then curses himself for revealing his Sight so easily. Three years with only Haru to keep him company has made him forget how to keep secrets.
But he hasn't forgotten how to keep his mouth shut, so he does just that. He readies himself for the boy's retaliation at his silence, but all that comes is a careless shrug and another repeated question of whether or not he was hungry.
Makoto debates the risk of accepting food from someone who had kidnapped him a few hours ago against the rumbling of his stomach. In the end, he decides he needs food to keep his energy up in case an opportunity for escape presents itself. He's not all that hungry yet—dinner hadn't been too long ago, it seems—but his captor might not be as punctual with meals as Makoto is used to.
He knows that he is being unreasonably optimistic about his prospects, but it is good to be able to focus on something other than the bleakness of his current situation. Maybe if he tells himself enough times that he can get out of this situation, he'll eventually believe it.
He nods silently. He expects the boy to cut his bonds so he can eat, but he just gets up and walks back over to the dying fire and pulls the last of the skewered meat from it.
When the thick slab of meat is unceremoniously shoved into his mouth, he gags and chokes until his captor realises his predicament and withdraws the food until it becomes more manageable to chew. It's awkward, eating without the use of hands, but Makoto doesn't want to push his luck by asking to have the knots around his wrists undone.
It takes a long time to finish his scant meal, and the way the redhead eyes him—calculating and predatory—as he sits back on his haunches and holds the meat to Makoto's lips is disconcerting to say the least.
"Thank you," he mumbles after he swallows the last bite of tough, overcooked meat. The boy grunts in response and moves away from Makoto to stoke the fire.
The insistent throbbing in his temple reminds him that he can't keep his Sight active for too long. Already, he's been using it for close to an hour which is the longest he's ever had to maintain it. But Makoto, despite his captor's disinterest in ending his life, is reluctant to leave himself even more vulnerable than he already is.
In the end though, he is physically unable to keep his Sight from slipping away, and when the redhead next addresses him, it is obvious that he is blind once again. Most people would have been more inquisitive, would have pried more into his unusualness because humans are a naturally curious species. But the redhead seems to take Makoto's shifting from being able to see to being blind in stride; perhaps he—if he did come from the fabled south with its enormous animals and wide swaths of untouched greenery—has seen things a lot more otherworldly than a boy whose sight comes and goes erratically.
"You're a weird one, huh?" his captor's gruff voice calls out as he pokes the smouldering embers with a stick. "But that's probably why those men want you," he mutters to himself.
"Those men?" Makoto can't help but ask.
"The ones who sent me to get you." The red-haired boy seems more talkative now; perhaps Makoto's blindness has made him lower his guard.
If there is ever a perfect time to try and get information, it's now.
"Do you work for them? How did they know about me? Where are you taking me?"
A tense silence follows the barrage of questions that escape his mouth. Makoto wishes for his Sight back so he can See his captor's face and gauge his mood, but his mind is too exhausted to summon it. Still, he has come too far to stop now even when logic told him to be more cautious, to not to push too hard, too fast.
"Please—"
"Shut up!"
Makoto winces at the vehemence in his voice. He is aware that he must have crossed a line somewhere in his probing for answers. He isn't really adept at subtlety—that is more Haru's area of expertise—so it doesn't come as a surprise that his poorly-executed attempts at gleaning information are unfruitful.
What does surprise him is when a callused hand grabs his chin and jerks it forward. Makoto hadn't even heard him move; it is as if he had leaped directly from his perch by the fire to where Makoto is sitting; such a feat is surely impossible for humans. It hammers home the fact that his captor is no ordinary human.
As if the teeth hadn't been enough of a giveaway. The sarcastic voice in his head sounds oddly like Haru, and it's a tiny comfort that slows Makoto's pulse to a much more manageable albeit still much faster than normal pace.
"Listen," the boy rasps, his breath fanning hotly across Makoto's upturned face. He feels him grab his tunic and haul him up high enough that the tips of his toes are just barely brushing the hard ground. "I don't work for them and don't you ever say anything like that again!"
Makoto squeaks a tiny 'yes'. Quivering, with his heart in his throat, he drops back down onto the ground as the boy's laboured breathing echoes in the tiny cave. Makoto hears shuffling moving away from him and the whisper of a thump as the red-haired boy sits back down by the fire.
He bites his lip to keep himself quiet; so far, opening his mouth has only served to anger the boy so it would be prudent to lie low until his captor is feeling a bit more gracious.
"Get some sleep. We're leaving at dawn."
The next day, as the boy prepares for their departure, Makoto realises that he had neither Seen nor heard any horse or even a camel near the cave that they had been staying in. He wonders if he'll be forced to walk to wherever they're going.
A heavy weight settles on his head, thick cloth brushing his forehead as what feels like a makeshift keffiyeh slips over his eyes. He doesn't bother adjusting it; he's still too tired to attempt using his Sight, and he doesn't need his physical eyes to See anyway.
His misgivings about going on foot are silenced when he feels thin but muscular arms lift him as easily as if he is as light as a feather—which Makoto knows is nowhere near the truth, judging from the way Haru wheezes when Makoto ends up accidentally crushing him when they sleep beside each other.
Although it's embarrassing to be treated like a child—he's almost twelve years of age!—and Makoto knows this arrangement is just so they can move faster, he's grateful for having been spared from stumbling around without his Sight or his walking stick. It's a small kindness, but a kindness nonetheless, and Makoto has a niggling feeling that he should take whatever he can because moments like these—almost peaceful if not for the undercurrent of tension simmering just below the surface—would be few and far between.
At least I won't have to worry about tripping and injuring myself.
They travel for what seems like hours over the rolling sands. When a passing caravan comes within hearing range, the boy warns Makoto not to make a sound. It trundles past them without incident, and regret pokes at Makoto for being too cowardly to take his chances. The next time, it is a lone travelling merchant who tips his head at them in greeting.
The thought that his captor's stating his lack of intention to kill Makoto meant nothing to anyone else who gets caught up in the mess of Makoto's kidnapping, coupled with the tight, bruising grip on his body, freezes the plea for help on the tip of Makoto's tongue. He swallows the bitter lump of frustration and feels it settle heavily into his bones.
The harsh desert sun beats down on Makoto's cloth-covered head as the gentle rocking pace of the redhead's strides lulls him to sleep. He doesn't feel as safe as he does when he's with Haru, and that's to be expected considering he is in the company of someone who had taken him against his will, but his fingertips don't tingle with danger the way they do when instinct warns him something bad is about to happen.
Now that he's thought about it, the tingles didn't come that night when he was stolen away either. He's always believed that it is somehow related to his Sight, that inexplicable feeling when there is danger brewing near him, but perhaps those incidents may have been coincidences that he somehow associated with being able to tell the future. Because there is absolutely no possibility that he is in no danger right now, considering he is being all but led to people who may be even more cruel than Leader.
Makoto inwardly scoffs at the idea of premonition; his Sight may show him a lot, but it's limited to things that have happened or had happened, and even then he can only see a few years into the past if he really tries, and the attempts always leave him so drained that he all but passes out from the effort.
Though it would be nice if I could see the future.
Then maybe he could see if he'd live long enough to meet Haru again.
A/N: 2nd chapter is here, even if it's a bit shorter than chapter 1 because I didn't want to shift POV's from Makoto to Haru too often . Also, writing from the POV of a blind person is difficult, but then I kinda should have expected that anyway..
To all those who reviewed the first chapter, thank you so much and I hope you enjoy the 2nd installment of Sight~
