A/N: I don't own Wolf's Rain, or there would be a lot more explorations of secondary characters in this section.
If his neighbors had paid him any attention, they probably would have said that he was a sweet kid. The youngest of four siblings, he'd run after the older boys since he was old enough to escape his parents' scrutiny (not a hard thing - they worked as hard as his elder brothers fought and were too tired from harried detectives' less than friendly interrogations as to the whereabouts of their elder boys to give much thought to a fourth potential troublemaker) but was too small and soft to keep up. He had no real head for tactics, and zero stomach for blood, so he followed them mostly at a distance, admiring the violence from the blurred afar. He wasn't particularly good at patching them up or leading away the authorities, but he tried with such enthusiasm that his brothers discouraged him with no more than the occasional cuff, hardly enough to turn such a devoted acolyte away for longer than the blood flowed. The youngest was still innocent, still kind, but he was turning all his energy to lurking on the edge of an underworld that had killed more driven men than he.
He still hadn't hardened when he was scooped up in the raid. Certainly, he did his best to play the fourth of the kind, but where elder brothers turned sullen gazes on police and angry snarls on fellow inmates, the closest the youngest managed was a big-blue-eyed whimper. This left little impact on cop or criminal alike, but at least convinced the lawyers that this particular small fry wasn't worth holding. The police released him, but his criminal roots did not. Gangs his brothers had run with from time to time had little interest in saving the elder boys from their cruel prison. Other groups of thieves that they'd tangled with failed to even give a boy enough time to plead his case - he found himself knocked to mud and concrete before he could even push his last name through swollen lips and crooked teeth, but looked for the next opportunity before he'd even had time to heal.
The boy himself was never quite sure of how he ended up by the overgrown tree, navigating broken concrete as he haltingly presented his case to the silver-haired man in black. He'd tried every underworld contact he could think of, and at best it had led him to a few more, a level deeper, a distance further from any safe haven he knew, someone more prideful and dangerous - a combination the boy hoped would lead to someone powerful and bold enough to take on the police. This man certainly looked the part. He ignored the youngster as the boy desperately attempted to explain his brothers' plight, but raised a dark lip in warning whenever any of the other members of this gang closed in upon the awkward young petitioner tagging along behind him. The boy might have been treated as an annoyance, but he was treated as the gang leader's annoyance, to be disregarded or dealt with as only the man in black chose.
"What gave you the impression that I'd even try to save my own brothers?" The gang leader didn't turn as he cut off the boy's stumbling explanation, hands crossed in front of his scarred chest. "They landed themselves in there, and they can rot in there, for all I care."
"I know they don't mean much to you," the little redhead faltered as the man he'd been following abruptly halted. "But they're all I have, and I'm willing to do whatever I can to get them free. How are they supposed to depend on me if I don't go back and rescue them?"
"They can't," the man in black told him shortly. "Because you can't." The boy wanted to protest, but that seemed less and less of a good idea, the longer he watched those hard yellow eyes from the corners of black sunglasses. "Or you wouldn't be sniveling to me, now, would you?"
It was a bad idea, but the boy hadn't come this far only to continue to gasp like a fish as the gang leader gathered his people to head out and leave the boy behind. "At least I'm brave enough to try!"
The man stiffened. The boy could all but see those dark ears pricking, waiting for the implied insult to be vocalized and give him the excuse to tear the kid to chunks as red as his hair. "I haven't given up on them yet, and I'm not going to give up if you can't help me. I'll keep at it until I can."
"Let 'em rot, kid," the silver-haired gang leader recommended, a careful piece of advice tossed with deliberate carelessness over that whip-lean shoulder. "If you're half as tough as you think you are, you're better off without them dragging you down."
"Would you abandon your gang if they were the ones left in jail?" The leader wasn't the only one to snicker at his optimism, but there was a bitter edge in more than one bark of laughter. The kid stepped forward, puffing out his soft, baby-round chest. "Try me. Try my brothers. See how well loyalty can serve you if you let it happen."
It didn't, of course. His brothers left the gang, like they'd left all the other gangs that had served their interests and now held them back. But for at least a little longer, the youngest stayed with it, following the man dressed in mourning black leather with the scar over his heart. He had a point to prove.