A/N Ok, so it's not a oneshot anymore. I couldn't help myself - I love writing Kai POV. Next will be Bryan, maybe, or Spencer...but maybe I won't do Spencer. He seems rather hard to personify.

Move On

By: Ceriadara

I learned as a very very young child that life was not a fairytale. There was no guaranteed happy ending and there was no magical being to help you when all hope was lost. There was no one to save you from a wicked stepmother – or in my case, grandfather.

I once had what I suppose could be called a happy life. My parents never had much money (my father was disowned, as I would later find out), but our small house was always smiling.

I had only gone to school a year before my grandfather came to visit. I came home from kindergarten one day, expecting a cookie and some milk before homework. What I got was my mother anxiously carrying me into their bedroom and locking the door tightly.

I asked her what was going on, who was here, why was she crying. She only shook her head, pressing her face into my hair, wiping her salty tears in my locks. She held me close, rocking back and forth. Her fear and anxiousness permeated the air around her, becoming contagious. Tears dripped down my face.

We stayed in the room for what felt like an eternity, but was only three days. We had some carrots from my bag and a half-empty water bottle, but those were soon gone. She gave me her share and ate none, no matter how much I begged her.

Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, someone knocked gently on the door. We both started – the house had been silent for days on end.

She called out to find who it was, and an unfamiliar voice answered. She shrunk back, trembling, grabbing onto me very tightly just as she had that first day. She told the voice to go away.

He told her he had killed my father.

I had never seen anyone as pale and defeated as my mother on that day. Her eyes died, and her breathing slowed. She stood, like a puppet, and opened the door.

I saw the bullet break through her spine, heard it snap with a sickening crack.

And so I met my grandfather and learned that my life was far from perfect.

Maybe that was why I somehow sympathized with his want to make me perfection. In a way, I wanted perfection. Maybe then I wouldn't hurt so much. Maybe then everything would be alright.

Flawed reasoning, I'll admit.

But when you've seen your parent die, when you've heard children scream in mortal pain, when you've felt your bones being intentionally broken...even the most flawed reasoning can be seen as an escape. Anything to make it all stop.

I cried, yes, I'll admit it – I cried almost every night, hiding it when I was placed in a room with three other boys. We never knew each others names. One by one they mysteriously vanished, as did my following three roommates. And so it happened, every time...every time.

My grandfather raised me to be blading perfection. I was woken at all hours of the night, training in fire and ice and bullets and wind. During the day I met with countless tutors, teaching me languages, maths, literature. If I got any lower than an excellent, I was beaten until I sweated blood...and even then the whip thrashed down.

I was a puppet, a marionette for them to do with as they wished. I was compliant, submissive, willing to do their every whim. I kept going and going until I moved on nothing but adrenaline...and finally I collapsed.

I was in darkness. I floated there for a while, surrounded by the sensation of warmth. I never wanted to leave. Maybe I would be safe here. Maybe I could finally be free...

But the dream of eternity in the quiet dark was not to be realized.

I awoke from a four-year coma. I had gone from ten to fourteen seemingly overnight to me. The world which had been foreign enough to me before was now completely alien. I withdrew into myself, swearing to never come out again.

I suppose we all did that in a way.

I am still withdrawn. People say I'm cold and that I hate everyone and everything around me. They say that that's why I'm so distant.

People are wrong.

I'm not indomitable. I'm not perfection. I'm not immortal.

I am afraid.

I am terrified that one day I will have to go back to what I was...and what I still am inside. Inside, I am still that little boy that came home from school that fateful day. Inside, frozen into stone for all eternity, that little boy remains, locked up forever. I am that little boy. My heart is that little boy – it can never be free again.

I see my teammates laughing around me. I see a little girl fall and scrape her knee, and I watch her mother kiss it to "make it all better". I see people holding hands, families. And it slowly shatters my stone heart.

I have fallen many, many times. But always I have been lifted up again by the only four that stuck by me throughout the time we knew each other.

And now that four is three.

Ian is gone, now. He never knew the freedom that the rest of us may one day know. He now knows a different kind. He is free in his own way now. Maybe he looks after us. Maybe.

And so we all fell and we all rise up again, silently and secretly supported by those that we knew would always do so. An unspoken agreement, an unbreakable pact, a bond set in stone and guarded by silence and memories. We will always be there for each other.

And I think this as I see him cry now, and I wonder if he fully knows the extent of this pact, and the forgiveness that is extended now and forever because of it. I wonder is he will not end up like Ian somehow, someday. I see Tala go to him now, and I rise to go as well.

We will always be there for each other...

I think we'll manage for now.