A/N: Just a heads-up; the title isn't the order in which the POV switches. I just wanted to put Mako-chan in the middle ;3
"Give it back!"
Gou's voice drags Rin's attention from two water buckets weighing his arms down. His steps quicken towards the direction of his sister's voice. As he nears, he can hear boyish jeering slowly overpowering Gou's increasingly desperate pleas.
"Please give it back!" she cries.
The scene that Rin comes upon makes him see red. Gou is on her knees, sobbing, while a gaggle of boys barely Rin's age surround her, passing between them the bone necklace that Rin had made for Gou for her last birthday. One of the boys has Gou's hair in his bony fist, forcing Gou to tilt her head up as he tugs at it.
The buckets smash upon impact with the ground, water splashing everywhere, but Rin can't bring himself to care. He rushes the nearest boy, headbutts him, doesn't even bother to assess the damage, and goes for the next one.
His blood sings his rage and battlelust, and when it finally subsides, there is no one left standing besides him. A pair of thin, slender arms wrap around his waist.
Gou.
"Are you all right?" he asks hoarsely, his hand coming up to rest on his sister's head. Gou nods, her face still buried in his chest, tears wetting the front of his shirt.
Together, they retrieve the necklace from where it had fallen on the ground, and make their way back home, hands tightly locked together.
That day, upon looking at Gou's tearstained face, Rin comes to a realisation that the things that he treasures can be so easily taken away, by fortune or by other means, and so it is up to him to protect them, to make sure no one steals them from him.
With his own two hands, he vows that he will grab everything he wants and never let go.
"So, Makoto, was it?"
Rin watches Makoto nod minutely. From his position—standing behind Master, just close enough to his right hand that Master can easily reach back and grab him if he wants to—he can see the boy is clearly uncomfortable under Master's scrutiny. His downcast eyes, bright with the now-familiar light of his unusual ability practically scream his submission.
Stop it.
For once, Rin's focus lies not on Master but on the boy currently fidgeting across the table. He picks at the food even though Rin knows that he must be ravenous, and it's as clear a sign of the difference between him and Rin; to him, food is food, and not something to be taken granted or turned down, no matter where or from whom it had come from.
Makoto's teeth catch his lower lip, the oppresive silence dragging on. Just as Master had planned. Rin is familiar with the most of the underhanded tactics Master employs, and this one is designed to make the victim crack under the weight of his own misgivings and thoughts. For someone like Makoto, who comes off as more of a thinker than a doer like Rin, it appears to be especially effective.
His fingers clench unnecessarily tight around the spoon in his hand, and when Rin's gaze flits up to his face, it looks as if he's about to cry.
A burst of anger surprises him with its intensity, so much so that before he knows it, a trickle of blood is dripping down his hand from where his nails had pierced four tiny, shallow wounds into the meat of his palm.
Stop it. Stop making that face.
When he catches a glimpse of Master's satisfied smirk from the corner of his eyes, he realises the source of the hot anger coursing through him.
That expression is mine. Mine alone.
The bright sheen of tears on his strange bright eyes, the trembling of his lower lip that he tries so hard to suppress, the flush of his cheeks, the way his hair falls slightly over his forehead as he leans forward, all that should be his.
Mine.
"Master," Rin voices. "Don't you think this is enough?"
He can't help the caustic tone he adopts, just like he can't stomach just standing there twiddling his thumbs while Master's carefully crafted silence breaks Makoto—strange, mysterious Makoto who seems to bear suprisingly little ill will for the person who had taken him by force—into shards of himself until there are so many pieces he becomes something else, a mere shadow of himself.
Master raises an eyebrow, his jowls quivering as he slurps up a spoonful of rich soup.
"Whatever do you mean?"
The devious gleam in Master's eyes should have put Rin on guard immediately, but Rin doesn't miss the quick snapping up of Makoto's head and the gratitude that shines briefly on his face, and it pushes Rin to a rash decision that he knows he'll regret later.
"Just leave him alone already so the both of you can finish eating and I can go and rest," Rin says through gritted teeth. Master normally tolerates his backtalk, simply because it amuses him to no end that someone who speaks so disrespectfully to him still ends up doing his bidding anyway.
"Hmm," Master says, propping his heavy head on one of his hands, arms braced against the edge of the table. "You don't look particularly tired though," he continues as he examines the trimmed nails of his free hand. In the face of Rin's unexpected behaviour, what remains of the Master's meal lies forgotten. "Is there another reason you want me to finish my meal early?"
"That's," Rin stutters, stumped. He had wholly expected Master to call for one of the older boys to relieve him of his guard duty, thus breaking the stalemate between Makoto and Master by drawing attention to himself, so this turn of events dampens the angry fire blazing in him. He knows how to deal with Master's passive forms of punishment—like smaller rations for a week or increased hours of sparring with the larger boys—but he has no idea how to navigate through Master's deceptive words.
"Ah, could it be you're concerned that I'm making him uncomfortable?"
Master smirks at Rin.
Fuck.
How could he have been seen through so easily? Up until now, Rin had been careful not to make the same mistake he had with Gou, yet here he is again, with yet another person that Master can use to bind him.
"Of course not," he scoffs even if he knows that it's futile. "I just want to go to bed already, damn it!"
Master laughs a loud, snorting laugh at Rin's blatantly obvious denial. "I see, I see!"
He turns to Makoto who is staring at the two of them with wide-eyed disbelief.
"Well, Makoto, it seems we'll have to cut this short," he says with what Rin thinks is his version of a friendly smile. It looks like the face of a grimacing rat though.
"Rin here," he continues, the calculating glint still clear in his eyes, "will take you back to your room."
"Go on then," he addresses Rin.
Rin's eyes narrow warily. With Master, things are never as they seem, and it is always prudent to look for hidden meaning in his words. Unfortunately, Rin is as bad with subtlety as they come; that is, he never manages to unravel the mind games that Master is so fond of playing. If he could, then maybe he and Gou might have escaped by now.
Rin stomps his way over to Makoto who is still staring at them as if they had simultaneously grown multiple heads like a beheaded hydra.
"What?" he grumbles just low enough for only Makoto to hear. "Pick your jaw up off the floor and let's go."
"U-uh," Makoto stutters, then nods. Rin grabs his arm and pulls him up to his feet.
Still keeping an eye on Master, who seems to be enjoying a secret joke with himself, Rin begins dragging Makoto towards the door.
He all but rips the door out of its hinges in his hurry to get away from that smarmy bastard. He contemplates slamming it, but decides not to test his luck in case Master's good mood doesn't last.
They make their way through the well-lit passages, the torches lining the walls casting their shadows as huge monster-like beings.
He looks down. He doesn't mean to look at Makoto—mainly because he can't focus on anything else but his own stewing anger—but when he notices him wincing silently, he finds that in his haste, his long nails had left shallow gouges on the brunet's arm.
"Shit, why didn't you say anything?" Rin barks at him in frustration. There has to be a limit to how much of a scaredy-cat this boy is; how had he survived this long if he can't even tell Rin off for hurting him?
"Well, it didn't really hurt that much. Just a little bit," Makoto says sheepishly.
"Like hell, it didn't," Rin scoffs. "Let me see."
In the flickering torchlight, the blood beading from the five puncture wounds on Makoto's pale skin looks dark as night. Rin casts about for something to stanch the bleeding, then he sees Makoto trembling and recalls his horror at the chimera slaughter that fateful night in the desert.
All things considered, the boy must be scared to death of seeing blood.
"Idiot," he mutters under his breath. "Don't look if it scares you so much."
Even though he knows that covering the brunet's eyes would do nothing to stop him from seeing, he does it anyway. With one hand securely pressed to Makoto's closed eyes, he looks down at his grimy shirt and ponders whether he should tear a bit off of it to use as a makeshift bandage.
He glances at the wounds again, decides that they're shallow enough to not need cloth bandages for long, and is hit with an idea—a ridiculously stupid idea—that flits across his thoughts before he squashes it down violently.
He licks his lips, suddenly nervous for no reason he can fathom, his eyes drawn to the blood trickling down the inside of Makoto's arm. He keeps his palm pressed against Makoto's eyes, backing him into the wall until his back is against it.
When Makoto's trembling dwindles to an almost imperceptible shiver, Rin guesses that he is no longer using his ability.
"Good."
Then, before his mind can protest too much, he grabs Makoto's bleeding arm with his free hand and brings it up to his lips, tongue darting out to swipe the blood off Makoto's skin.
It tastes like iron, just like his own does. Somehow, knowing that makes him feel relieved.
He's human, and so am I.
Makoto yelps in surprise, his hands pushing Rin away. Rin doesn't budge, nor does he release his grip on Makoto's arm.
"W-what was that?" Makoto asks in a fearful whisper.
"Nothing," Rin mumbles. "You need this, okay?" He closes his lips over the surface of Makoto's skin.
You need this, Rin reiterates silently.
An obvious lie. The wounds are minor at best, and they certainly don't need a whole lot of caring for, but these are wounds that Rin hadn't meant to inflict, so no matter how small he wants to make sure to apologise for it. Even if his apology is unconventional. Even if Makoto doesn't even think to demand one from him in the first place.
Rin presses the flat of his tongue against the four pinpricks clustered together, a finger against the lone one made by his thumb earlier. Makoto's skin tastes salty with a hint of something else that he can't quite place.
Makoto's breath hitches, his posture stiff, only fidgeting every once in a while.
Once he's satisfied that the bleeding has mostly stopped, Rin pulls his mouth away. Belatedly, he sees the red lines on Makoto's arm from where his teeth had scraped harder than he had meant them to.
He gulps, and watches Makoto carefully. In hindsight, he may have been wrong to push his need to apologise onto Makoto, especially considering how he had been squirming against Rin's hold. But Rin has never been the sort to think before he acts, and now had been no exception.
"Um, thank you?" Makoto finally says after a few moments of tense silence.
Thank you? How can you say that when I clearly made you uncomfortable?
"Whatever," he replies gruffly. "Let's go."
For the rest of the trek to Makoto's room, Rin stays quiet and refuses to even so much as glance at Makoto.
For some reason, his head is all scrambled up whenever Makoto is involved, which is both frightening and awe-inspiring in its own way. For now, he can only chalk up his unnaturally strong obssession with the boy to the fact that he seems to have some special ability that lets him see without using his eyes.
Yeah, that's probably it.
They're similar; both of them cursed with something that makes people want to take advantage of them—Rin with his Faris strength, Makoto with his Sight. That much Rin has established in his mind, but what he really wants to know is why he and Makoto have so radically different mindsets. He wants to know why Makoto isn't angry at the world the way Rin is, why he can feel empathy for even something like a chimera when Rin can't even muster up the tiniest bit of pity for the people he is forced to kill.
Upon reaching the room, he gently pushes Makoto inside. He peers behind the door to make sure he gets into bed just fine. He slowly inches the door closed.
"Rin?"
"What?" The door stops moving. Rin rests his forehead against it, and waits for Makoto's words.
"Will you be okay?"
"Huh?"
"That man won't punish you, right? For standing up for me?"
Rin thumps a fist against the thick wood. "Of course not."
He sounds more confident than he really is. Master may yet find a way to punish him, but that's Rin's business and no one else's.
"Go to sleep already."
He doesn't wait for an answer.
In this place, you don't have the luxury to worry about anyone else, Makoto.
With a sudden stab of guilt deep in his gut, he realises he hasn't even thought about Gou these past few weeks. He had been so focused on Makoto and his strangeness, he hadn't taken the time to even wonder whether Gou is still safe.
He breaks into a run, heart thumping erratically.
Stupid. I didn't even check on her when I got back!
He berates himself, and pumps his legs faster. He only allows himself one look back at Makoto's closed door.
Stop taking over my mind.
"I think I have an idea where you might be now, Makoto," Haru says dutifully, making sure his lips form the words properly. He still doesn't have any clue whether Makoto can actually See him, but talking to Makoto gives him something to hold on to.
He runs his fingers along the length of Makoto's walking stick. His muscles tingle with the usual fatigue that comes with the training he's used to, only this time he welcomes it because it is on his own volition that he is honing his body into an effective weapon.
"Goro—that's the man I was telling you about, the water merchant who sort of helped me escape—he says he's seen a ring like this somewhere before."
He holds up the silver hoop he had found in Makoto's room just before he had fled from Leader. The swaying lantern hanging from the caravan roof casts its light on it, making it glint prettily.
"I found this in your room after you were taken," he continues reporting. "And it turns out it looks a lot like the rings that these people called the Faris give to their babies when they're born."
Haru tosses it up into the air, and catches it effortlessly on its way down. He slips an arm under his head, cushioning it from the jarring of the caravan on the rough road they are travelling on.
Haru knows that he's been lucky so far; not only are the people he is travelling with good people, but, having traveled all over Hanifa, they are quite knowledgeable about a lot of things. His initial plan of finding the nearest information broker had been flimsy at best, considering he had nothing to offer as payment, so when Goro had noticed him fiddling with the ring and uttered an off-hand comment about it being a Faris ring, he had hardly been able to believe his fortune.
Fortune favors the brave.
Haru smiles a little at the thought. That sounds like something Miho would say. He shakes his head, turning his attention back to the task at hand.
"So, if you think about it, the most obvious place to look would be wherever these Faris are, right?"
The caravan stops. Haru makes to get up, quickly reaching for the paring knife Miho had given him for his apple earlier, but then he hears Goro call out an enthusiastic greeting. They must have met some fellow merchants on the road; no cause for alarm just yet. He relaxes back onto the blanket-cushioned floor.
"Anyway," he resumes. He clears his throat; he's not used at all to talking this much.
"Miho said I can travel with them all the way to the southernmost town, but then that's as far as they can take me. It seems there's a huge canyon near the southern border that no one can get through."
Speaking aloud like this is a bit cathartic, Haru thinks. Also, it makes his goals feel more real and tangible and achievable.
Go to this place. Find Makoto.
If he puts it that way, it all seems so easy. If only reality is as kind as his imagination...
"It will take us a few weeks of travel to get to that town, especially since Goro and Miho have to circle around to deliver the water, so for now, I guess I'll keep busy with training."
Haru's lips quirk up in a self-deprecating smirk.
"Can't slack off, after all."
Not when he has to prepare himself for the biggest mission of his whole life—getting Makoto back.
He turns on his side with the intent to sleep after having made his nightly report. Force of habit has his hands reaching for a body that isn't there. His fingers close on thin air instead—there is no whisper of 'Good night, Haru', no light snoring that is Haru's own personal lullaby. Before he realises it, words come tumbling out of his mouth.
"I really miss you, you know." Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes, so he resolutely closes them. If Makoto can See him, Haru doesn't want to show him how truly shaken up he is by all these days of not knowing when they will meet again. He has to be strong for the both of them.
I can't cry yet. Not now.
Haru is coming for me.
That thought brings a smile to Makoto's face, but a sobering thought quickly transforms it into a frown. If Haru comes, he'll have to risk facing all those Faris that are guarding this place.
If Haru gets hurt because of me, I'll never forgive myself.
Makoto stares unseeingly upwards, sleep eluding him, leaving him to languish in a sandstorm of negative emotions. He isn't fooled by Haru's display either—not even a bit—because he can clearly understand how he must feel, alone in a strange environment after growing up in one place, with the same people for practically his whole life. He's experienced it twice now, after all—first when Leader had abducted him, and now, when Rin has essentially done the same thing.
He knows all too well the fear and the loneliness that Haru's eyes had been filled with, and he cries because there's no way to help Haru, not when he's trapped here and Haru is miles and miles away.
He cries, because he knows Haru won't.
"Haru..."
He listens for sounds around him to occupy his thoughts, to distract him enough for him to get some rest. The tears slow to a trickle, and eventually stop.
There is a faint sound of grunting coming from a room to his right, but other than that, the thick walls keep out most of the noise. It's too quiet, and it is disconcerting because without hearing, he'll have to rely on his Sight more and more. Back home—that outpost is no longer home, he reminds himself—the walls had been mostly thin wooden planks, with the occasional sandstone ones, so he had only to sit quietly and he can hear the guards and the servants trudging up and down the corridor outside his room.
Here, there is only that suffocating silence, just like that fat man's silence during dinner earlier.
There is nothing Makoto fears more than silence. It is to him what darkness is to most people—the loss of one sense that he relies on more than anything. His Sight may be a wondrous thing, but he values his hearing the most because unlike Sight, it never just comes and goes on its own whims. It's always there, a constant thing, and that makes it all the more precious.
Makoto's thoughts circle back to the disastrous meal earlier that night; how had that man so easily exploited his weakness? It reeks of premeditation, but he and Rin had only just arrived hours before.
Why?
On that note, the man hadn't been as physically intimidating as Leader, so why do Rin and all those other Faris with their frightening teeth listen to him so obediently? Surely, if they wanted to, they can just band together and leave?
The beginnings of a headache begins forming in his temples.
There has to be a reason.
One man can't keep a whole group of physically fit young people in captivity, not without the threat of bodily harm, which that fat man can't possibly even attempt to create.
Memories of the man's slimy smile from across the table sends unpleasant shivers up his spine. Two possibilities occur to him—two ways to keep people in line without resorting to physical violence.
Blackmail or gold.
All the lush trappings of this place indicate that that man is well-off, wealthy enough to pay off a whole army if he wants to. It's not out of the realm of possibility that everyone he's seen here is a mercenary of some sort hired because of their Faris blood.
But then he remembers Rin's reactions when his 'employers' are mentioned, and everything up until now points to blackmail on Rin's part.
Both then?
That would be a more effective strategy, Makoto realises. Offer gold to the more greedy ones, use blackmail to control those unswayed by promised wealth. A more insiduous strategy than Leader's, because it's easier to escape from a physical cage than from one crafted with subtle manipulations and money.
Makoto heaves a tired sigh. All this thinking doesn't really help him—knowing the reasons won't change anything—but he wants to know. He refuses to listen to the small voice in his head whispering that maybe he and Rin can help each other escape; there is no reason to assume that he'd even be seeing Rin again after tonight.
He rubs the sore redness on his arm gingerly, prodding at the wounds with a finger. He resists the urge to peel back the thin flaps of skin just barely attached to the rest of his arm. They hurt quite a bit—at least, a lot more than he had let on earlier with Rin—and the scrapings from Rin's teeth hadn't really helped.
He has no idea what Rin had been trying to achieve with that stunt earlier.
'You need this'? What did he mean, exactly?
Sure, he had managed to slow the bleeding, but there must be a hundred different ways to go about dealing with minor wounds other than licking, right?
A light flush creeps up his neck to settle on his cheeks before he resolutely shakes it off. He hadn't liked the wet feel of Rin's tongue on his skin, but he remembers that he hadn't really minded the softness of his lips.
It felt nice, actually.
Makoto rolls over and presses his face into a flowery-scented pillow, embarrassed to no extent at his thoughts. He starts thinking about whether he'd ever felt Haru's lips before, wonders if they had been as soft as Rin's, then mentally kicks himself for even thinking about something like that.
Calm down and go to sleep, he repeats to himself.
Eventually, it works. He drifts off into slumber filled with sharp, flashing teeth and half-lidded blue eyes.
A/N: This chapter gave me a bit of trouble orz. It's been sitting in my hard drive for days, and I've written so many drafts and drafts of drafts and I still think this isn't as good as I wanted it to be...
Writer's block hit me pretty hard, I guess. Hopefully the next chapters come out more easily XD
This is pretty rough, so there might be typos or formatting errors. If anyone spots any, point them out, please?
