Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership over Wolf's Rain, any cannon characters who may make an appearance or the Wolf's Rain universe. Any characters who are created in this story are strictly figments created for this story.

Notes: This story takes place after the conclusion of the anime Wolf's Rain and in the modern suburban time period.

I took out the songs for this chapter to get it up faster, however, if you would like me to continue putting songs in then I will.

Chapter Two

Up Is Down

Time likes to play cruel practical jokes on us.

Like the fact that if you sleep for too long it seems to have just as adverse of an effect on you as if you had slept too little.

There once was a jokester who liked to say that time could heal all wounds.

"What's that?" Cailean twisted around, clenching the paintbrush in his fingers as Neil leaned in through the open crack of the doorway.

"What's what?" Cailean asked. Neil gestured to the canvas draped board perched on the makeshift easel set before him. He probably meant the cardboard plate with its large daubs of acrylic paint that was supposed to work as his palette as well, but Cailean decided he would play dumb for as long as he could get away with it. "Gesture all you want, but it doesn't mean anything until you start being more specific." He sniffed, catching the mixed scent of cigarette smoke, gunpowder and musk that was Neil's scent as he slid the brush down across the canvas, laying a thick line of almost-but-not-quite-black-brown.

"Shut up, would you?" Neil groaned, kicking the door shut unceremoniously behind him. "And you know what I mean. I thought Jay said no more painting?"

"When did he say that?" Cailean frowned, pursing his lips into a disgruntled line. Neil snatched up one of the rickety old chairs that made up the basis of comfort in the Kadzait lair. He flipped it backwards, settling onto it and folding his arms over the top where he rested his chin.

"Come on, we both heard what he said." Neil scrunched up his face into a sour expression, pitching his voice into Jay's rough growl. "You stand for everything we fight for! Now tell me how a painter is supposed to symbolize us?" Cailean made an offensive sound in the back of his throat, setting down the cardboard palette and brush. Wiping his hands on a raggedy, oil-stained cloth, he tilted his head at Neil.

"It's not like I'm painting flowers, Neil."

"No, you're painting the city. Which doesn't make any sense," Neil snapped.

"Why not?" Cailean growled. He turned on his stool-which rocked uncomfortably on its uneven legs-and focused intently on Neil, who held his hands up helplessly.

"Don't look at me like that, man. You know it's not my fault what Jay decides. But why can't you just tag like the rest of them? Can't you be normal and paint an underpass or something?" Neil's brow furrowed and he leaned forward.

"I have painted an underpass, though," Cailean answer, gesticulating to the stack of canvases in the corner. In that pile, somewhere, was a picture of a freeway underpass, minus the gaudy graffiti image of a Fifteen being stabbed in the ribs during a knife fight.

"You know what I mean," Neil said. Cailean hesitated before answering.

"I want to see the city without graffiti, Neil. Jay used to tell me stories about how clean it used to be. About how you could walk in the streets without getting attacked. How folks didn't used to be so scared. I wish I could have seen it before the Fifteens moved in…" Cailean trailed off and reached out to brush his fingers over the dried surface of the picture. Jay had told him that at one time, walls were clean and neat, plumbing didn't spit brown rust and people weren't afraid to make eye contact and smile. He had never seen that world, but he could imagine it enough to put the works on canvas. Maybe that was why Jay hated him painting so much—because it reminded him of what used to be.

"Look, the only way you and I will ever see the city like that is in your paintings," Neil spat. Cailean jerked, as though his voice had been a physical blow. Neil looked sorry for it, but all he could manage was an apologetic shrug. "Maybe you should keep painting. Maybe one day we'll see the city like that… Until then…" His voice drifted off and he glanced up at the painting, for once sharing a curiosity that Cailean had harbored for the unknown for a lifetime.

"Do you think that after the Fifteens are gone we'll be able to rebuild the city? Jay says…" Cailean's voice was barely a whisper. He watched as a small spider crept along its silky web, repairing a spot that had been torn by too strong of a breeze that had pushed through the window and ripped it.

"Jay says a lot of things," Neil sighed, swinging off of his chair. He paused and reached out, perhaps hoping to pat Cailean on the shoulder and comfort him. He hesitated, retreated and disappeared towards the door. "Cailean?" The door creaked as he opened it and his fingers lingered on the knob, twitching uncomfortably.

"Yah?" Cailean didn't turn from the gobs and splotches of dyed canvas.

"Keep painting." The door snapped shut behind Neil and Cailean sighed. Only after he was gone did he turn to stare at the wood grain that closed off his room from the rest of the gang's hide out.

Jay says a lot of things.

Cailean twisted in the first few glimpses of his fitful sleep, bringing a fresh wave of aggravation springing from the path the bullet had first parted the skin like a demure silk curtain and found a spot to make itself comfortable in the nerves in his shoulder. The pain crept along the backs of his eyelids in white hot circles that burnt through the thin membrane of his dream. It roused him from the drunken state of a pain filled slumber, ejecting him into a reality of a similar state of conscious.

Dust clogged his lungs and it smelled different from his memories of the city's diesel exhaust and the putrid stench of acrid waste. Most humans thought of clean as the tucked corners of a hospital bed and the gleaming silver trays of the offices. Yet clean felt like a good word to tag the homely room he found himself in, though it was certainly nothing akin to the stagnant sterility of the sharply angled hospital walls.

Cailean twisted around from where he lay on his side, determined that he would stand in spite of the brittle skin that stretched against the stitches in his shoulder. He grunted and pushed himself off of his knees, spreading his feet wide to keep from toppling. Cailean tipped his palm upright and studied the delicate lines marching along the folds on his hand, defining the creases of a palm so used to being spent closed in a fist. But when he told it to mimic the gesture it had known so well from life in the city, the fingers trembled ineffectually before snapping shut, like an iron bear trap. His lips twisted at the corners, dragged down by the weight of bewilderment. He couldn't control his hand?

It was at that moment that the dusty yellow sunlight slipped through the clouds and peeked in through the latticework windowpane, as though it were as curious of the latest occupant within as he was of his own circumstances.

Cailean hobbled to the window and paused at the sill. Carefully, he ran his fingers across the grain. It released a strange scent, which smelled almost spicy and clung to his fingertips. Somehow, in the back of his mind, it seemed familiar to him—something he couldn't quite begin to remember.

"Is this…wood?" he murmured. Wood wasn't a common ingredient to building houses in the city—not anymore at least. Was this the first time he had seen it? Regardless of the oddities of the dwelling he had found himself in, it was time to beat a hasty retreat.

Cailean ambled to the doorway, fumbled with the knob with his failing fingers and switched to his left hand. He jiggled the knob, managed to slip it down and shoved open the door.

To come face to face with a young girl. Her brown eyes widened in shock, her mouth working incredulously as she tried to form a coherent response to a stranger popping out of her home. Here, in her little town, a robber was not an occurrence to even think about. People left their doors unlocked, trusted one another and even knew names.

Memories of her face tickled at the edges of his mind. Had he met her before? She was clutching a brown bag in her arms, and squeezed it so tightly the apples she had bought from the store tumbled out and thudded hollowly onto the deck of the wooden porch. She managed a squeak in the back of her throat, as though she was hoping to say something to him.

"Please don't scream," he pleaded, lifting his palms to her to show that he held no weapons. But the gesture stretched at his shoulder and stung and he sucked in his breath, his hand flying to the stiff skin. Clutching at the sore wound stitched in his shoulder, he knew that he wouldn't win a fight if it came down to her gang versus him. Unfortunately, it was his voice that snapped her out of her stupor.

And she screamed.

He had once asked Jay what he had done for a living before the Fifteens had moved into the city. Jay had paused for some time, perhaps mulling over whether or not he wanted to offer that sort of knowledge freely. At the time, young as he was, Cailean had thought he might understand why the scruffy gang leader might not want to divulge himself as being anything other than the brazen man whose very presence prompted men to stutter. He had not fully understood, though, until Jay had explained it.

"I had always dreamed of having a flower shop," he had admitted with a shrug.

Of course, Cailean hadn't ever lived in a city where flower shops were still open. Jay had explained it—of how he had enjoyed putting together the arrangements and perfecting new bouquets of flowers. Putting together new arrangements, he had said, wasn't about coming up with a new design, but rediscovering it. Mother nature, he explained, was the best designer of all, and only she could make new designs.

Jay had always loved flowers. For him it was the opportunity to be surrounded by something that, no matter what happened around him, could never be polluted by the world around them.

That was until they had evicted his shop.

As the Fifteens terrorized the city, money became more and more scarce. Eventually they had closed his shop and he lost the business. Work was even harder to come by, and eventually he took to drug dealing and drinking just to get by.

But it wasn't the drugs that had landed him in jail.

Note: I hope that you enjoyed this chapter! Thank you for reading!