A/N: Another double update today! Thanks so much to Toph Hitsugaya for leaving some kind reviews - it makes the writing worthwhile :) (Also thank you for pointing out the error in chapter 7! That should be sorted now.)
CHAPTER 11
Since discovering Ren, Horo's life had been turned on its head completely. The biggest change he had faced was that he had been unable to visit his usual bars. Though these sojourns had all but vanished in the last few weeks, his urge to drink had not. He had managed to abstain for a few nights, sweating and shaking on his bathroom floor – but today, he could not. Without work to fill his time, Horo had plenty of opportunity to visit the late-opening stores in his neighbourhood. Ren went with him of course, even obediently carrying bags for him on the trip home. Along with a few bits and pieces needed for Ren's care, the bags were mostly stock-piled with litre bottles of cheap whiskey. The white-label stuff, full of unnecessary ingredients but high alcohol content. He stashed them away at the back of his kitchen cupboard – for emergencies, he told himself.
The first 'emergency' happened to be the very same night he bought the bottles. He had helped Ren to bed, after a long struggle with washing, clothing, eating and denying him his usual night-time rituals. When he walked back into the living room, Ren safely tucked away in the darkness, the emptiness hit him like a solid wall.
He had nothing more to do today. No structure, no hobbies, no ability to leave the house. He felt stuck. The cupboard with his secret stash was soon opened, and within half an hour, most of the first bottle had been drained. There was an old black and white movie playing on the TV and Horo lacked the motivation to change it. He sat alone in the dim flickering light, drinking his poison straight from the bottle.
At some point, he had picked up an old bit of whittling he had started months ago. When they were younger, Horo and his sister had spent many happy hours carving with their father. He had taught them the craft, being a carpenter by trade, and it was one of the first things they had all bonded over. For hours they would sit, forming crude animals and dolls out of the wood, their father watching on proudly. Since he had died, Horo had barely touched the tools he had been given. Pirika had given up the practice altogether.
Digging out his old carving knife from the back of a drawer, he sat with the wooden figure in his hands, and chipped away. The static reception of the TV seemed only to encourage his blank state, the state in which, without rhyme or reason, he continued to carve at his rough-hewn creation. The bottle lay ignored for a while.
He was disturbed by a creak on the old floorboards. He turned his head slowly, to keep time with his lagging vision. Ren stood nervously behind the sofa.
"Weren't you asleep?" he asked, sluggishly.
Ren shrugged daintily. "I woke up."
Horo gestured for Ren to sit down beside him. "I forgot you didn't used to sleep much, did you?"
Ren shook his head, eyes wandering to the TV. "No, only a few hours a night."
Silence settled, and Horo continued his carving.
"What's that?" Ren quietly ventured.
"This? It's just a piece I started a while ago. Before we met. I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be." Horo tilted the figure side to side in his hands, squinting at the detail. It was a person, most likely a woman. She wore a long, flowing dress, her arms outstretched, a solemn look upon her face. Now he thought about it, it almost looked like a figure of Mary, like those he had seen upon the walls of churches.
"No, I meant that," Ren said, pointing at the bottle on the table.
"Oh… oh, that," Horo sighed. "It's alcohol. You've seen it before, right?"
Ren shook his head. Horo noticed he was twiddling his fingers excitably, something he'd never seen him do before. He turned back to his carving.
"It's bad, anyway. You should stay away from it."
"You've been drinking it," Ren said, matter-of-factly.
"Yeah, but I'm an idiot," Horo said, feeling the truth of his words.
"My daddy used to drink that."
Slowly, recognition started to bloom in Horo's mind. He looked at Ren carefully. "You… have a dad?"
Ren nodded. Horo saw a flash of something in his wide eyes, a childishness that wasn't usually there. His voice was livelier, a little higher pitched than it had been earlier in the day.
"You're not… you, are you?"
"I don't know what that means."
Horo set his carving down, and turned his body to face Ren squarely. "What's your name?"
Ren frowned. "It's Thomas." He tilted his head knowingly, almost cheekily, and continued to play with his fingers.
Horo's mind was too cloudy, he took a careful mental step through the thick molasses that were his thoughts. "That's not your name," was all he managed to say.
"Is so!" Ren exclaimed, eyes wide with indignation.
"Okay, so… who's your father?"
"Daddy is daddy."
"You don't know his name?"
"His name is daddy."
Horo pressed his spinning head into his hands. This didn't make sense. Ren had gone to sleep and woken up, thinking he was someone else? Was he even awake at all?
Ren got bored of waiting for Horo to respond, and picked up the carved figure casually. He slowly began to walk it across the sofa cushions. It made wide jumps and somersaults to ascend the armrest mountains.
"Oh, I know! Can we play hide-and-seek?" Ren exclaimed, clutching the figure tight with both hands. "I'm the best at hide-and-seek."
"Wait, Ren-" Horo began.
"You're it, okay?" Ren sprang up from the sofa, rocking on the balls of his feet. "You count to twenty, then come find me. And no peeking! Ready, go!"
Ren scrambled away and Horo's head rang with the noise he made, screeching excitably as he dashed across the room. "Ren!" Horo groaned in protest.
"You've got to count!" Ren called back, diving into the kitchen.
Horo was struggling to process his current situation, mind muffled by the cheap whiskey. Annoyingly, he could feel the effects of the alcohol already fading and the cold ache of a hangover beginning to take its place. He suddenly felt tired, not to mention overwhelmed. To buy himself some time, he buried his head in his hands and began to count.
"One… two… three…"
It seemed Ren truly believed he was a child again. It seemed the most logical thing to do was to get him back to bed. Perhaps he was sleep walking? Perhaps if he went back to sleep he would wake up as Ren again?
"Four… five… six…"
He was too tired. Faust must have known something about this. What made him think Horo was cut out to handle these outbursts? He would have had half a mind to call him, if it wasn't so late. And he wasn't terrified of getting scolded for drinking.
"Seven… eight…"
Perhaps the simplest thing to do was to play along for now. He needed to get Ren to stop the game and go to bed. The only way to achieve that was to see this through.
"Nine… ten… eleven…"
A crash echoed around the apartment. Despite himself, Horo leapt to his feet. Had Ren fallen? Was he hurt?
No, the front door. It was swinging open, holding on by just one hinge. A man stood in the opening. The same man who had just kicked in the door. More people crowded around behind him. Horo squinted against the light outside, trying to make sense of the face he saw before him. He knew him. "Ryu?"
"The brother," Ryu announced to the people following him inside. The rest of his gang. In just a few short strides, Ryu had pushed his way into the living room and was towering above Horo, a monster of a man. His lackeys followed.
Ryu surveyed the room down the length of his pointed nose. "Where's Pirika? She here?"
Watching the men file into his home, Horo shook his head feebly. "N-no… I haven't seen her for days."
Ryu locked eyes with him, stared him down, as though testing his truthfulness.
"Search the place," Ryu barked, letting his men push forward into every room. They bust into cupboards, kicked open doors, ransacked beds and sofas.
All Horo could think as he watched these men tear apart his pathetic furniture was, Ren, please stay hidden.
Ryu remained, fixed in place, blocking Horo from making any sudden movements. Not that he'd have stood a chance against any of them anyway. He tried to subtly glance around the room to see if he could catch sight of Ren, or even get a clue as to where he was hiding, but Ryu held his gaze fast. If they found Ren hiding, especially in his current state, they would destroy him for sure.
One by one, the men emerged from each room. They shook their heads to Ryu. Pirika was not there.
Ryu snarled with disappointment and grabbed Horo by the collar. His feet left the ground. Ryu's breath was hot and tobacco-infused as he snorted into Horo's face.
"Where is she?"
"I-I really don't know," Horo slurred out, mind still preoccupied with Ren's whereabouts. He thought he saw a movement in the corner of his eye. "I thought she was with you!"
Ryu's face contorted and his grip tightened. "Your little slut of a sister is creepin' around behind my back. This ain't the way things are done, you hear me? If I find out she's been fuckin' someone else, she's fuckin' dead, got it?"
"I'm- I'm-" Horo wanted to apologise, reason, argue, anything to draw attention from the movement he could definitely see on the other side of the room. The eyes of Ryu's men were turned on every corner of that room and yet they hadn't seen the stirring in the shadows. If they did, Ren would…
A fist flew into his jaw, and the image he held of Ren's face exploded into stars.
"When you see that little bitch, you tell her Ryu's looking for her, yeah?" Ryu spat. He threw Horo sprawling on the ground. The next thing he felt was Ryu's beaten trainers coming up right between his legs. The impact made his spine shake and he supressed the urge to vomit.
"Anything worth taking, boys?" Ryu asked his gang. The response was negative mumblings and Ryu clicked his teeth in disappointment. Curled up in a foetal position on the floor, writhing in pain, Horo felt Ryu's face come close to his own again. "You tell her to watch her back."
Horo managed to get an image of the room between the fireworks erupting in his eyes and head. They were leaving. Ren was still hidden. Thank God. Watching them walk away through one swelling eye, his gratitude washed over him in waves.
Then the movement in the darkness sprang out into the light of the room.
Ren.
But no, it wasn't Ren. It wasn't even Thomas. The person that launched himself at Ryu, fists flying, a primal scream echoing from his lungs, was someone else entirely. Ryu went flying back into his men, sending them all sprawling.
Ren stood over them all, his small stature somehow enhanced immeasurably. Horo could make out the definition of muscles in his silhouette. He was there for no more than a split second before he descended on the blind-sided Ryu.
The next few minutes were a sea of sprawling limbs and cries of pain. Horo would not make out whose blood was whose as punches and kicks were thrown. Here an elbow, there a kneecap. From somewhere, a glass bottle was thrown and it smashed against the floor. One bleeding lip, one dripping bite-mark. Horo tried to drag himself up from the ground. He needed to help Ren. Ryu's men were killing him. But his spine ached and his head pounded and his arms felt like stone. He was drowning in a whiskey haze and he could not save himself. Even less so Ren.
Through his tears of pain and frustration, Horo could see the bodies of grown men falling to the floor like felled trees. Others scampered over their fallen comrades to run out of the door. Finally, only two remained: Ryu and, somehow, Ren. Ryu was bleeding from a deep gash above his right eye, and was cradling his arm defensively. Ren seemed relatively unscathed.
Ryu threw a punch that Ren neatly dodged, jamming a sharp elbow underneath Ryu's ribcage as he did. The blow winded Ryu, and he gnashed his teeth and sprang forward again, attempting to grab Ren by the hair.
Ren moved effortlessly, silently, and like a dancer he moved out of Ryu's reach and forced another square punch into Ryu's kidneys. The impact was devastating and precise. Ryu howled in pain and dropped to his knees. One of his escaping men tried to help him up but Ryu pushed him away and the lackey carried on running.
Ryu turned with fire in his eyes back to Ren, who was standing motionless, fists raised, just waiting. Horo had only seen this level of serenity mid-fight in kung-fu movies.
Ryu dashed at him ferociously, swinging wildly for Ren's face. Ren blocked the punch effortlessly, and without so much as a change in his expression, swung his leg around in a wide arc and his foot connected with the bloody mess that had been Ryu's nose.
Ryu howled with pain and, clutching his face, he bellowed back into the apartment, "You'll fuckin' pay for this!"
Trailing blood into the hallway, he and his remaining cohorts turned and fled, leaving the broken door swinging sadly on its single hinge.
Horo, still lying on the ground in his state of stupor, mouth now agape with awe, watched Ren hold his stance. Suddenly his eyes glazed over and he collapsed to the floor in a crumpled heap. Like a building collapsing – one moment he was there, solid and unyielding – the next, he was dust.
This finally roused Horo enough for him to make a move. He clambered as quickly as his aching body would allow to sit at Ren's side.
"Ren, are you okay?"
Ren's entire body was shaking, violent jerks almost like convulsions. His knuckles were bleeding, his chest heaving with each frantic breath, and his eyes filled with tears of agony. His skin, which had moments ago seemed completely unmarked, was now littered with innumerable wounds and bruises. It was as though all the injuries he sustained during the fight had converged upon him all at once.
"Ren, please! Talk to me!" Horo pleaded, feeling tears sting at his eyes as all of the adrenaline rushed from his body.
Ren wasn't capable of speech. His limbs moved like jelly as he pawed helplessly at his injuries, with a look so bewildered it almost seemed as though he was having trouble understanding the pain.
"This is my fault…" Horo choked, watching Ren writhing helplessly. "If I hadn't been… if I wasn't…" He cast his teary eyes begrudgingly at the bottle of whiskey, now spilling its contents all over the living room carpet. He was useless. He couldn't do this alone. He swallowed what little pride he had left.
"I'm going to call Faust," he announced, finally.
