A/N: First of all, thank you guys for the reviews; reading them really inspires me to keep writing XD And second, this chapter took a bit longer to write than expected but it's a bit longer too so yeah...

Also, new summary, yay! It's a quote from Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth though so not mine at all.

Anyway, enough about me. On to the story!


Haru curls his fingers tighter on the sheaf of papers that had taken him the better part of three days to obtain. It would have been easier if he had had the guts to just kill that guard who, by mere coincidence, had foiled his first attempt, but Haru, despite Leader's mocking grunts of coward, has never used his dagger to take a life. Whenever he comes close, he remembers Makoto's wavering voice as he spoke of his father's demise and he just can't bring himself to snuff out someone's existence like that.

Of course, that doesn't mean he's never used his blade, because he can no longer even count the number of times he's had to wipe someone else's blood off the metal so it won't rust. But he limits himself to attacks meant to disable, intentionally missing the vital organs by less than an inch. Haru supposes he's glad that Leader's training has given him the accuracy to do that.

He clicks his tongue at Iwatobi, who tosses his head and stares balefully at him with beady camel eyes. Haru digs his heels lightly into Iwatobi's side, silently urging him on. Home is only a few hours away, but an inexplicable uneasiness hangs over him like a shroud.

Makoto's face comes unbidden to the front of his mind.

Haru shakes his head, the cloth covering the lower half of his face coming undone. There is no safer place for Makoto than the heart of Leader's operations; Leader would never allow anyone near his precious Seer.

Still, he is unable to shake the worry furrowing his brow. Haru hitches his makeshift cloth mask back into place and gives a half-hearted kick against the camel's sides.

Iwatobi snorts in response, but his pace speeds up a little for a few minutes before dropping back down to the almost leisurely trot he prefers. Haru lets out a resigned sigh.

Looks like it will take me a few more hours to get back.


Haru lets out a rare smile, his thoughts on seeing Makoto again after having been away for so long. His tired muscles scream in protest, but he drags himself past the guards stationed at the outpost gates with nary a glance at the armed men.

In the pack slung across his back, there is a squashed, orange-red fruit that Haru had filched from a vendor in the last town he had passed through. He feels bad for the theft, but he has no gold coins of his own and the desire to bring Makoto a little something for them to share had outweighed his guilt.

He takes it out and holds it loosely in his fist, its fuzzy skin tickling his callused fingers. He hopes Makoto will like it.

"—been gone for half a day already. Leader is pissed." The dregs of a hushed conversation makes Haru turn his head to fix the speakers with an inquisitive look. The quick lowering of their gaze is nothing new, but Haru sees a spark of pity in one of them that starts his mind racing with paranoia.

As he trudges further into the inner parts of the outpost, the persistent buzz of anxiety in his ears slowly builds to a deafening roar that drowns out the whispers among the slaves scuttling around the corridors with their heads bowed low. Normally, hardly anyone takes notice of him past a cursory glance and maybe a poorly-disguised scowl of disgust, but now everyone seems to be watching him with bated breath.

Something's wrong.

His steps quicken to an almost run, the way to Makoto's room as familiar to him as the back of his hand. Haru abandons his usual practice of moving as silently as possible, instead sacrificing stealth for speed.

He throws the door open, the wood splintering as it hit the wall. He only briefly registers the dark, crusty blood splashed across the wood.

No.

He takes a step forward, frantic eyes searching for any sign of Makoto. The bed isn't made, the sheets are half-hanging off the floor. Haru's head whips around, still hoping—expecting—to catch a glimpse of tousled, brown hair under the pile of pillows haphazardly strewn on the far left corner of the room where he and Makoto usually spend most of their free hours together.

But the room is empty, and Haru feels cold despite the stifling desert heat. He spots Makoto's walking stick peeking out from under the bed. He drops his pack to the floor with a dull thud, his limbs shuffling awkwardly forward.

He grabs the wooden stick tightly, his mind incapable of processing anything other than a repeated prayer of no, no, please, Makoto, this isn't happening, no, no

"Makoto," Haru hears a broken sob, then realises it's his.

Haru sits by Makoto's empty bed just long enough for the initial panic and despair to dull into resentment and anger. Anger at Leader because this is his doing somehow, he just knows it, but also anger at himself for not getting home fast enough.

Already, everything has turned dark, even the mural that he had made for Makoto on a whim—a picture of an oasis that Haru had sworn to take Makoto to one day, at which Makoto had smiled and said he likes to using his Sight to look at it whenever Haru is not there with him.

Makoto.

Haru had always been a thistle in the wind; he has found that resisting fate is just an invitation for pain and disappointment, so he is quick to accept whatever losses he experiences. But Makoto is too important, too much a part of him, that Haru can't just shrug his disappearance off as something unavoidable.

I just have to find him again.

It doesn't matter that he has no inkling at all of where Makoto had been taken, or that Leader might not even let Haru go after him. Haru knows, without a shadow of doubt or hesitation, that he will travel to the four ends of the world if it means seeing Makoto again.


"Do you think I'm that stupid?" Leader's deceptively calm voice cuts across the room. Normal Haru would have flinched, but his newfound determination to get Makoto back leaves no room for anything else, much less fear.

He meets Leader's icy blue gaze head-on, silently refusing to back down. The room, empty save for the two of them, is still and quiet.

"I've already sent my best men after that boy. You are not going anywhere." Leader's tone is final, and Haru can tell that he expects the conversation—if it can even be called that—to end with that.

Leader leans back into his chair, his bulging arms draped across its arms carelessly. He yawns a large, gaping yawn, a gold tooth glinting merrily from within rows of yellowed teeth.

He doesn't even care enough to know his name.

"His name is Makoto," Haru's voice trembles with barely-restrained anger. "And I don't care what you say. I'm going after him."

Leader's eyes narrow, and Haru feels the cold familiar tendrils of fear trying to pierce through the fragile calm he had wrought from focusing on finding Makoto. He tamps it down, forcing himself to stand strong. For too long he had let his fear of Leader rule him, had let it keep both him and Makoto shackled to this cruel brute of a man.

That fear had kept him alive, but giving in now would mean losing Makoto forever because even if Leader's men do manage to get him back—which Haru doubts because aside from him, Leader doesn't have any other tracker competent enough to follow a trail more than a few hours old—Makoto would no doubt be locked away from everyone, even Haru.

He'd never see Makoto again. And if he had to choose between the certainty of life without Makoto and the very real possibility of death if he pursued his blind friend, well, there's really no contest at all.

If it's for Makoto's sake, I'll do anything.

Haru manages to avoid the fist Leader throws at him, but not the sweeping kick that brings him toppling down to the hard ground in a breathless heap.

"Disregarding my orders, are you?" Leader hisses, aiming another ruthless kick at the side of Haru's ribcage. But Haru hasn't been training for the last twelve or so years for nothing, and it shows when he grabs Leader's sandaled foot and pushes it away.

Leader stumbles backward more out of surprise than anything, but it gives Haru the opening he needs to struggle to his feet. His fingers close tightly around the hilt of his dagger, every fibre of his being calling for Leader's blood to dye the sandy floor red.

Haru rushes at Leader with a cry, fist clutching his blade in a forward grip. He slashes at Leader's exposed torso, aiming both to cut and to prevent Leader from drawing the scimitar hanging at his side. An unarmed Leader is no easy opponent, true, but it is one he has a sliver of a chance of winning against. Leader with his notorious scimitar, however, is a whole different monster.

So Haru presses his advantage, his attacks a flurry of motion fast enough that Leader has no choice but to focus on evading. His thoughts are clinical, almost unemotional, telling him to slash right, feint left, flip to a reverse grip and thrust the blade hilt-deep into Leader's gut.

But Leader, despite his size, is nimble enough to avoid most of Haru's attacks. A smirk forms on his face as he jumps back from the tip of Haru's dagger, but Haru is too focused on taking him down that he misses the quick flicker of Leader's eyes over his right shoulder.

A sharp blow to the back of his head dazes him, and a pair of muscled arms grip him and force him to his knees before Leader. His dagger clatters onto the ground.

"What took you idiots so long?" Leader barks out, swiping his thumb across a shallow cut on his arm.

"Sorry, boss," the man restraining Haru says. Haru struggles against the grip on his arms to no avail. The other man slouches beside Haru, his hand loosely wrapped around the handle of a wooden club, no doubt ready in case Haru somehow managed to break free of the iron grip on his arms.

Tears of frustration gather at the corners of Haru's eyes.

Why am I so weak?

He had fought without reserve, had put all his strength behind every attack, and it turns out Leader had just been toying with him. What use were all those hours he had spent honing his body if he can't even—

"You know, you're actually not too bad." Leader leans down, roughly grabs Haru's hair and pulls hard, forcing him to look up into his smugly grinning face. His breath reeks of alcohol as it wafts across his face. "It's just a shame that you don't have it."

Leader takes Haru's fallen blade and runs the tip down Haru's smudged cheek to the side of his neck. "You don't have that instinct, that drive to kill or be killed," he continues. The blade presses against his pulsepoint, and Haru feels a drop of blood well up and trickle down his throat.

Haru gulps his fear down, refusing to give Leader the satisfaction of seeing him afraid. He thinks of Makoto, of the way he whispers a soft 'goodnight' into Haru's ear whenever they sleep together, of once-small hands that had now almost grown bigger than Haru's but had remained unchanged in the caring way they soothe Haru's pains away. He thinks of Makoto, and it gives him the strength to stare back at Leader with a steely, unflinching gaze.

Leader's mouth twists into a cruel snarl. "Those eyes," he hisses. Haru's head snaps to the side as Leader backhands him across the cheek. "You're just like your mother, too fucking stubborn for your own good."

Haru spits out the blood pooling in his mouth, its metallic taste thick on his tongue. "Is that why you had her killed?" he bites out, his tone betraying the years of resentment he'd spent cursing Leader from depriving him of the chance to even meet his mother. These words had been festering inside for so long that once Haru releases them, they come gushing out in a venomous torrent.

"Is that why," he repeats, rebellion shining clear and steady in his eyes. "Father?"

Haru glares at the man before him, hating the way Haru can see a little bit of himself reflected back at him. He had inherited those cold blue eyes and the stern set of that mouth. The identity of his father had been the outpost's worst-kept secret; the slaves whispered it among themselves when they dared, whispered about the noblewoman Leader had taken a fancy to and subsequently kidnapped and forced to be his wife. Haru had denied it at first, but Cook let it slip one night that she had helped his mother give birth to him. Cook wouldn't lie, not about that, and looking closely at Leader is enough evidence of his parentage.

Still, he never speaks of it, especially not to Makoto.

Leader drops his hold on Haru's hair, but Haru is not naive enough to believe that his ordeal is over. The jarring punch that snaps his head back, followed by a painful jab of his own dagger's hilt to his abdomen, proves him right.

"Take him to the dungeon," Leader addresses the other two men in the room. "Set a guard on him, and make sure he doesn't go anywhere."

As the men drag him to his feet and out of the room, Leader calls out one last time.

"Haruka," Leader says with no little amount of disgust. "You want to know why I killed your mother?"

Haru's silence speaks volumes. Leader turns away and, with a quick flick of his wrist, buries Haru's dagger half-way into the wall.

"Because she tried to leave."


The cell he is in is small and reeks of human waste and decay. The manacles on his wrists and ankles are a familiar weight—he did spend his childhood with chains on his legs until Leader deemed him too broken to attempt to escape. The metal is thick and sturdy, so breaking it by brute force is out of the question.

But Haru is resourceful, and he had learned that even the best-laid plans can go awry somehow so it's best to always to have a contingency plan. The men had done a cursory check on his person for concealed weapons, but they had only been looking for the obvious.

They hadn't checked his shoes.

Haru stays still, listening for the tell-tale snoring of the guard stationed outside his cell door. He had seen that man around before, and he knows that he has a well-deserved reputation of always sleeping on the job. The only reason Leader hasn't had him killed yet is because he is also a notoriously light sleeper who awakens at the slightest noise.

Haru supposes he's glad that his small body often makes people underestimate him; the men tasked with imprisoning him had likely assumed that chaining him would be enough and so hadn't set a proper guard to watch him.

Once he's sure that the guard is asleep and no one would be coming to check on him, he slowly drags his right foot towards himself. The chains on his arms keep them elevated beside his head, but the ones on his legs are longer, long enough that he could raise his leg enough to reach his foot.

Fighting against the stiffness that had settled in his limbs from hours of sitting in one position, Haru carefully raises his foot and tries to reach for his sandal. On his first attempt, his fingers just barely brush the leather straps fastening it to his foot. A couple more attempts yield no success.

This isn't working.

Haru decides to try another tactic; he takes a deep breath, and pulls himself up slightly using his chained wrists for leverage. The metal bites into his chafed skin, scraping it raw, but the tiny lift the maneuver provides is enough for Haru to slide his sandal off.

He wiggles his toes, the lockpick nestled between his big toe and the one beside it. He has lockpicks hidden all over his body in preparation for a situation just like this, but he isn't sure if he has enough dexterity in his toes to actually pick the locks with them.

Haru wonders if he could try to get the pick to his mouth instead, because he's tried picking a lock that way before and had a little success. Five out of eight attempts, in fact.

He decides to repeat his lifting maneuver, but this time moving higher. His leg hurts from the strain as he forces his foot nearer to his mouth, but he ignores it and focuses solely on the pick between his toes. A few agonizing seconds later, he has the pick caught between his teeth.

Haru's contorted body sags with temporary relief; he almost laughs at the irony that it is Leader's training—days of grueling physical test that he never thought he'd feel grateful for—that is instrumental to his escape.

He works the pick into the lock on his right hand. Once he frees his dominant hand, unlocking the rest of the manacles should be easy. Haru jiggles the thin metal as much as he dares, and the scraping of metal on metal echoes so loudly in the cell room that he fears the guard might wake up.

But he continues anyway, and it seems Lady Luck is smiling upon him tonight because he manages to open the lock fairly easily. He goes to work on his other limbs, but once he had all but his left leg unchained, he hears a noise that makes his heart leap to his throat.

The guard's snoring is interrupted by a quick, hitching gasp, the kind that is usually followed by the sleeper jerking awake. For a long second, Haru listens intently, willing the guard to go back to sleep. The ruffle of fabric and the shuffling of feet indicates otherwise; his luck has run out.

Haru quickly debates whether he should continue his task and risk the guard catching him before he's freed himself or snap the manacles back in place and just try again later. He decides to gamble on the fact that the fastest he's ever picked a lock in his life had been two seconds.

It pays off; when the door creaks open and the guard sleepily calls out his name, Haru is waiting behind it. He has no weapon with which to disable the guard so he opts for slamming the thick wood into the guard's surprised face.

Haru catches the guard's limp body before it falls to the ground; he'd made enough noise with the door and the alarm may have already been raised for all he knew, but he decides to err on the side of caution.

He drags the guard towards the manacles and locks them around the unconscious man's limbs. This should give him more time to put distance between himself and the outpost before Leader's men come after him.


The corridors are mostly empty, with only the occasional slave running some errand like fetching candles or water. Haru evades them easily enough by hiding in the shadows of alcoves and corners until they've gone past.

The trouble comes when he reaches the outer gate; the guards are engaged in a lively game of cards, and although their noise would mask whatever sounds Haru might make, their rowdiness means people are more likely to take notice if they suddenly quiet down, which means a direct approach like knocking them out is impossibly risky and stupid.

Haru crouches behind a low wall, casting about for anything that might serve as a distraction and perhaps draw the guards away from their post so he could slip past them. The minutes tick by, and Haru had almost lost hope when a wagon, pulled by two sleepy-looking camels, trundles up to the gate.

He recalls that the water delivery had been due to arrive the day before; they must be leaving right now. The wagon stops before the gate, the guards calling the driver to alight. This may be his best and only chance.

Haru, keeping close to the ground, moves quickly from shadow to shadow until he's but an arm's length from the back of the caravan. He keeps one eye trained on the guards conversing with the driver, and when he sees one begin to turn, he ducks under the flaps of the caravan, hoping against all hope it's empty.

His hopes are dashed when he finds a woman with warm hazel eyes and wavy brown hair held back by a thin golden marriage band staring at him with her mouth parted in shock. Haru readies himself for a shriek to alert the guards, but the woman surprises him with what she does next.

"Do you need help?" she whispers urgently, moving forward to get a better look at him. He watches her take in his bruised and grimy body and his blood-encrusted face with a frown.

"Yes," Haru answers. If the woman is offering her aid, then Haru would be an idiot to refuse. Something about the woman's honest face makes Haru immediately trust her despite his better judgement.

"All right. Hide here." The woman ushers him into a chest half-filled with colorful fabric. "And be very quiet."

The lid of the chest closes over Haru with a final click, and it dawns on Haru that he has effectively placed himself at the mercy of someone he had only just met. But he'd had no choice, really, so instead of berating himself, he focuses on listening for sounds outside that might help him gauge the severity of the situation a little better.

"What's in here?"

"Oh, just some useless things, really. Nothing special." The flippant tone of the driver belies the tension Haru can hear in his voice. He probably hopes to avoid drawing their attention to his young wife, knowing how common it is for brigands like the ones in Leader's employ to take whatever they want, be it money, possessions, women.

The guards seem to be in good humor, so they don't really linger for long. But Haru still holds his breath, waiting in case the woman betrays his position. Heavy footsteps move around the caravan's interior, circling aimlessly.

"Come on. Nothing here," a male voice calls out. "Oh wait, what do we have here?"

A feminine squeal almost makes Haru jump out of his hiding place. He reminds himself that revealing himself would do more harm than good; in Leader's mind, harboring fugitives—which he certainly would be in a few hours once someone discovers him gone from his cell—is a crime worthy of slow torture. However, that thought doesn't make it easier to sit still while the woman who had helped him is in trouble.

"Pretty little thing, aren't you?" someone leers.

"Stop, get your hands off me!" the woman gasps. The ensuing struggle lasts only a couple of seconds, but the men's jeering and the woman's increasingly agitated protests makes Haru clench his fists against the urge to stop the men from what they are doing.

"Please, let her go!" The driver abandons all pretense of nonchalance. "She's—She's sick with the coughing fever!"

Haru can tell that's a lie; he's seen victims of the coughing fever and the woman had shown no signs of it. The driver must be desperate to keep his wife out of the men's grasp—and rightly so, Haru thinks—that he would tell so blatant a lie.

Fortunately, the men aren't too bright and the mere mention of the dreaded disease coupled with the woman's exaggerated coughing fit, sends them scurrying away from the caravan as fast as they can, arguing between themselves about whether touching someone sick would make one sick as well or not.

"Are you all right, Miho?"

"Y-yes, I think so," the woman—Mihoreplies.

"I'm sorry, I should have stopped them earlier, I—"

"Goro, it's fine. It turned out all right in the end, right? Besides," the woman's voice softens. "Someone once said 'All's well that ends well'. Appropriate, don't you think?"

"Miho..."

"I'm fine. Really."

"Well, if you're sure," the man called Goro sighs. "I'll get the camels going and we can leave this place, all right?"

Miho's soft hum of agreement is lost in the clattering of the wagon wheels on the rocky ground.

"You can come out now. It's safe."

Haru slowly eases the lid of the chest upward, hardly able to believe that he's now on a caravan heading away from the place he had grown up in, the place where he'd known so much grief and pain alleviated only by brief moments with Makoto.

"Why did you help me?" Haru asks cautiously.

"Well, you looked like you needed it," the woman smiles. "Adults are supposed to protect children; that's the way the world should go."

Such optimism from someone who only moments ago had been at the mercy of rough, violent hands is almost unbelievable if not for the fact that Haru has seen people hold firm to their beliefs even in the face of extreme adversity. Haru envies her a bit because he has grown much too cynical about people to see the world with such rose-colored lenses.

"You can stay with us for as long as you need, so in the meantime make yourself comfortable, eh?"

Miho gently steers him to the back of the caravan where a heap of soft-looking blankets lies on the floor. When Haru stares up at her with a question in his eyes, Miho brushes it away with a tinkling laugh and carefully tucks him into the blankets.

"Sleep for a bit. You look like you need it."

"Are you going to tell your husband about me?" Haru asks apprehensively. Although Miho seems nice enough, he's not sure if her husband would take kindly to the fact that having someone like him with them would invite the wrong sort of attention.

"Goro? Don't you worry about him," Miho winks. "I'll take care of it."

Haru watches her retreating back as she climbs to the front of the caravan to presumably stay with her husband. He pulls up the blanket covering him to his chin, gazing at the swaying hangings on the roof.

He doesn't fully trust Miho yet, at least not enough that he would reveal everything to her, but it seems safe enough to rest for a bit. Besides, she had every chance to turn him in to those guards, and she didn't. Of course, she could be planning to sell him into slavery, but she doesn't seem like the kind of person who would do that. Haru's judgement of people is rarely wrong, but one can never be too careful so he grabs the nearest object he can get his hands on—a large wooden mug darkened with age—and holds it close. He rests a little bit easier knowing he had a weapon—albeit a very crude one—within reach.

Now that the adrenaline rush of his escape has wound down, he feels the fatigue of that last mission, that altercation with Leader, and those hours in the dungeon hit him all at once.

Just a little nap then.


A/N: Pace is a bit slow in the MakoHaru department but I needed to set things up properly or I wouldn't forgive myself if I ended up butchering the plot because I'm too impatient , a bit of a warning I guess that I might be including a little one-sided RinMako in the future chapters.