*ten*

"You know you aren't allowed to wear clothes at night."

"It wasn't night when I went to bed."

I'm sure that Illumi knows that I went to bed early to avoid this.

"It is now. Take that off."

I pull the black yukatta together, covering my chest. "No."

"I could take it off of you, but I would rather you did it yourself."

"I don't want to."

He runs his hand across the place where my arms hold each other tightly. I can feel my hands relaxing, almost letting go. When the hand moves away, I hold it tighter still, but the grip feels false even to me. Broken.

"You don't want to disappoint me, do you, Killu?"

I hate him, but I hate myself more. "N-no, aniki!" I'm so weak.

When I do anything he doesn't want me to, I get so tired, I just want to lie down and sleep next to him. He doesn't let me most times, though.

Sometimes, I wake up in his bed in the morning.

"Take it off."

Maybe it's not too late. Maybe if I pretend I'm asleep, I can come over to him tonight.

I don't look at him as I comply.

"If you admit to pain... if you tell me to stop... it means you submit." His gentle touches are somehow worse than the claws would be. "Does this hurt?"

"No." It doesn't hurt.

"I can't hurt you anymore, can I?"

"You can't hurt me." It doesn't. Not really.

"What does it feel like?"

"I hate it."

It hurts.

I can't stand it here.

Alluka has to stay in the basement now—and I know Illumi must have been the one to lock her up, because Silva and the other elders wouldn't have even thought of doing that. Alluka's a person, not a thing.

She was the one who kept me sane, and it's only a matter of time before something breaks.

I've got to get away. Before Illumi knows. Before he looks at me and can tell from the way I stand, the way I try to talk normally but get mixed up from suppressing it all, before I tell him to his face that I hate him.

I'm going to run on my next mission. Alluka doesn't know; I can't risk telling her. She can't keep secrets the way I can. She's never had to learn.

I want to go so bad, I'm not even scared.

It's time.

I leave, the normal way, through the main door, and get picked up by my family's plane. The target must be somewhere far away.

I haven't been this anxious to get to a mission for a long time. Always before, it was in anticipation to get to kill someone. I don't look forward to that part of it anymore. Killing people is just something I do. Most of the time, it's really boring.

This time, though, I'm going out, and I'm never coming back.

I go into the target's room.

I don't know why someone wanted this guy dead. He looks pretty normal to me.

Then again, most of them are just businessmen, stuff like that.

He's completely oblivious to my presence. My claws lengthen.

It's time.

Actually, he should be dead by now.

I never take this long.

Still, I hesitate. I have a feeling I've forgotten something, something important.

Oh yeah, I was going to run away.

I leave the building, undetected as I always am. It feels almost wrong to kill him when I'm so close to freedom, but I don't want to raise suspicion.

I run, faster than the cars, but no one sees me, no one remarks as I pass. I know how to hide. Like everything else I know, it relates directly to the art of assassination.

I notice more people passing, and slow down, trying to lose myself in the crowd. I'm pretty distinctive just with the way I walk, so I try, hard as it is for my professional sensibilities, to imitate them and walk the same way they do. I refuse to stick to the shadows now. To pretend I don't exist.

It's getting dark, and I've got money, but it's not safe to book a room. Sleeping in someone's house through a private deal isn't a stable strategy either. Word has a way of getting out when a person takes in a runaway. The scars would certainly make people think I was abused. Not far enough from the truth.

So, I curl up just below a set of steps in front of the town library. It's not that strange for a homeless kid to be all scratched up. There's two other boys sleeping by the janitor's door; they wouldn't be here if it wasn't at least fairly safe, and even if there's danger, it can't be as bad as at home.

I can't sleep.

It isn't that I'm not tired; no matter how I lie down, I can't sleep. Thoughts of home distract me, and something inside me feels hollow. I almost regret having run away.

My bag is tucked inside the curve of my body. I'm confident in my ability to keep myself safe, but if I drift away from it during the night, it might not be there in the morning.

Wait. I still have the bag?

Holding it open with my right hand, reaching in frantically, I pull out the communicator.

It can be tracked. I know it can. Mother told me that, when she said to always keep it on me. I review the rest of the items with my left hand, know the contents by heart. Wallet, knife, needle and thread in case I need to stitch myself up...

Nothing else. Unless there's something in my clothing, or the bag itself.

I get up, and start running, free in the night.

On the other side of town, I lie down again. I'm not in the street, and other than that, I don't care where I am.

When I wake up, the first thing I notice is that I'm not in my bed. The sun is high, and way too bright.

Then, as my eyes adjust, I see that I'm at a cross-street in a residential area, and my bag is in my right hand.

Why didn't I return from the mission last night?

Then I see the communicator in my other hand, blinking red with a message. Illumi had called, at six in the morning, to ask where I was and whether the mission had been successfully completed. I remember that I tried to run away.

I flip over and bounce up to standing, but pain flashes again, paralysis, and I fall.

Ripping up my shirt, I can see the pin buried in my side. I try again to look up, to see the face I know is above me now, but I can't. I curl up possessively around the pain, give in to it, hope Illumi will stop when I surrender.

Sometimes he does, and sometimes it only makes things worse.

The pain recedes along with reality.

I wake again, and I'm home.

That's the end of my second success at getting away from this family. I got off the grounds. And I was found by Illumi, tracked by the communicator I forgot to leave behind.

Now he's going to punish me, so I never try to run away again.

The pin is in my forehead this time. It doesn't feel like anything, really.

"It hurts, doesn't it," Illumi says.

Poisonous agony burns through me. If you admit to pain...

Everything fades, leaving only numbness, and the black eyes so like my own that promise he will never let me go.

"It hurts... more than anything."