"I've got a great idea. Read the textbook!"
"People just can't help but like ya."
Protector of Silence
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Brothers Afar
"I'm serious guys, what is the natural habitat for a Spearow?!"
"Work it out yourself Keith!"
"Kate's right Keith. Maybe if you stayed awake in class you wouldn't have this problem."
"Grrr! Kel! Answer!"
I've sworn not to hand out any school answers to you under the rules and legislations of the Keith Dazuru law
"The what law?"
Keith blinked in confusion. He was lying on his stomach, doing his homework outside on the bank. It was the day after the prank war, and most of the school was determinedly staying away from the 'Traitorous Trio', but Keith had found a reason to bug them: homework.
"The Keith Dazuru Law of 2012, where in students are forbidden to give any school answers to anyone by the name of Keith Leo René Dazuru" Kate explained, grinning.
"What?" Keith blinked "And where did you get my middle names?"
"The register in the teacher's lounge" Starlight answered "Where did you think, René?"
Keith snorted and threw his discarded jumper at the silver-haired idiot's head. Kate laughed. Kellyn, who was also lying on his front, bashed his head off the ground.
"Great, now you've teased me, onto the important matters" Keith waved his hand "Spearow. Any ideas?"
"I've got a great idea" Kate smiled sweetly at him. Just as he was looking hopeful, Kate threw the textbook at his head "Read the textbook!"
Keith rolled his eyes. "Words of wisdom" he muttered, peeling the book off his face "Words of wisdom."
"Of course, what else?!" Kate shot him a pearly-white smile "Ten pence a useful thought, twenty pence a brilliant idea!"
Keith threw the textbook back at her, but that just made her laugh harder. If Kellyn could laugh, he no doubt would've.
"Alright, that's enough" Starlight shook his head with a chuckle "Kate, give Keith his textbook back. René, make use of it and read it in order to avoid your 24th detention this year."
"Stop calling me that" Keith muttered, grudgingly accepting the textbook back "And it's not been 24 detentions this year."
"Oh really?" Kate folded her arms "How many has it been then?"
"24" Keith repeated, making his companions rather confused "This month."
"Oh." Starlight and Kate shared a glance.
Kellyn smashed his head off the ground again - it was rather therapeutic when it came down to Keith.
Kate tapped him on the back of the head and he looked up at her. Using sign language she told him:
24! 24!
Kellyn clambered to his knees and signed back:
I expect it was to be more than that
Kate raised an eyebrow:-
He that bad?
Kellyn gave a sign language nod:-
He sleep in Maths last week again. Miss April not bother now.
Kate rolled her eyes:-
Well, he is a spontaneous (she had to spell that out using the alaphabet) idiot.
Kellyn chuckled:-
Agree.
An angry half-hiss half-growl was backed up with an exercise book hitting Kellyn's head hard enough to knock him over. Dazed, it took Kellyn a few seconds to get his sight back and locate the one who had whacked him one. He was surprised to see Kate and Starlight staring in shock at Keith, who was storming off down the bank.
"Did he, did he just...?" Kate was stuttering.
"Er..." Which was apparently more than Starlight could get out.
'Keith? What?' Kellyn clambered to his feet 'Did he...did he understand what we were signing?'
Ignoring Kate's stuttering and stammering and Starlight's 'er...'-ing, Kellyn made his way down the bank, only to find Keith had vanished.
'Where'd he...' Kellyn stopped, his eyes widening 'Is he seriously stupid enough to jump into a hole that he knows he can't get out of by himself?...oh who am I kidding, of course he is.'
He walked over to the hole they had dug yesterday as part of the prank war and peered in. The sun was in such a position he could see the whole hole from where he was standing.
'...Okay, maybe he has more common sense than we give him credit for...'
Kellyn decided to try another technique, for fear of embarrassing himself further by being outsmarted by Keith again. He closed his eyes and tried to create a mental connection.
'You don't have to let me in. Just let me find you.'
After a few seconds he found the link, only to be cut off by whoever it was who didn't like him being in Keith's mind...now he thought about it, it might be a good thing he didn't spent too much time in Keith's mind - who knew what damaging waves of Keith-ness were in there!
Shaking his head to get these strange thoughts out of his head, he made his way to where he had caught the connection. He went down the steps as if to leave the school and then turned left, where he knew there was a little cave. Near the back of this cave was a small fire, which Keith was sitting near, warming his hands.
'How did he start a fire so quickly?' was Kellyn's first thought, but he pushed the thought away when he saw Keith's face was damp 'Whoa whoa whoa! When since did Keith cry?!'
Trying not to scare the ginger boy, Kellyn sat on the opposite side of the fire, the crunching of dirt making Keith look up. Taking a short breath, Kellyn decided it was now or never. He signed:
Do you know?
Keith looked puzzled for a second, but then he gave a sign language nod. Kellyn gave a small sigh of relief.
'He does understand!' he almost grinned to himself in triumph 'But, why would Keith know sign language? He barely knows English!'
Why do you know?
Keith didn't answer, his gaze transferring to the fire. Finally he responded:
"Lind needed to know. So so did I."
'Who's Lind again? Oh, his little brother! Wait, what does that have to do with it?'
Kellyn asked that through sign language, but after a minute or two it became apparent Keith wasn't paying any attention and/or didn't want Kellyn to know. So the brunet went down a different route.
Are you okay?
Simple sentences were the way forward for now.
"Uh-huh." And Keith couldn't even manage that apparently.
Why are you crying?
Keith gave a sigh.
"You're not going to leave me alone, are you?" he sighed.
Kellyn shook his head.
Keith turned his eyes towards the ceiling "You don't want to know. Just a silly sob-story."
I do want to know!
Keith stared at him queerly. Didn't Keith understand?! He did want to know! He wanted to know every silly detail - that was what friends were for, right?!
"You're good at getting what you want" Keith commented. Kellyn blinked, not understanding "You just look at them with those innocent little eyes of yours and they all melt at your feet." He smirked ever so slightly "Alright. I'll tell ya. Better you than Blabber-Mouth Rhythmi." He sat up a bit straighter "Well, I suppose this is as good a place to start as any."
He removed a slip of paper from his back pocket and held it out to Kellyn, dangerous close to the flames. When Kellyn took it and examined it, he realised it was a photo. It depicted Keith, probably about nine, sitting under a large tree with his arm around the shoulders of a frail dark-haired boy of about six-years-old.
'That must be Lind' Kellyn realised 'He looks just like Keith.'
A smile worked its way onto Kellyn's face at that thought.
"Yeah, that's my little brother" Keith actually looked very calm for once in his life, as if this was a subject he liked thinking about "Linwood Evan Max Dazuru. The kid no one could hate. Dad used to say when he was happy his smile lit up the room."
'Yup, definitely related to Keith' Kellyn just stopped himself from chuckling.
Keith's face fell ever so slightly, and Kellyn couldn't help but wonder what was wrong.
"Ever since Lind was a kid, he wasn't the most healthy child. He was...sickly, ya know. Mum didn't like him leaving the house, and when he did he was never able to connect with other kids..."
A little strawberry-blonde-haired girl with pigtails was picking flowers in the Vienforest. She wore a pretty pink and white dress with some orange hints to it and had a daisy in her hair. She was the picture of a perfect little princess.
"Hello."
The girl spun around and saw a boy behind her. She vaguely knew this boy - Lind Dazuru - the boy who didn't leave his house very often and hardly ever left Pueltown. So it was very much a surprise to see him here. But this didn't matter to the girl - to her this was a new friend to play with.
"Hello!" she giggled "I'm Camille!"
"Hello!" the boy repeated in the exact same tone as Camille, as if that factor was very important "I'm Cami..." he stopped, frowned and shook a smile back onto his face "I'm Lind!"
"I'm five!" Camille told him with a giggle, holding up five fingers to reinforce her age.
"I'm five!" Lind copied her exactly.
It didn't occur to Camille that Lind was copying her because he didn't know how it was normal for kids his age to act. To her, he was just another funny kid to play with.
"You're funny!" she giggled.
"You're funny!" was the immediate reply. Camille folded her arms and turned away from him.
"I'm not funny, you are!" she pouted.
"I'm not funny, you are!" Sure enough, Lind had copied her.
This set Camille off laughing again. Lind laughed too, looking over his shoulder to make sure he was copying her exactly.
"I'm picking flowers!" she told him, spinning around and holding the flowers she had picked out towards him with both hands "See!"
Lind moved his hand as if to take them from her, but then stopped and withdrew it nervously. He squatted down and began picking flowers like he had seen Camille do.
"No! No!" She grabbed his wrist and shook her head frantically "Not here! There are better flowers to pick over there!"
She waved her arm in the vague direction of the river. Seeing as she wasn't telling him off, Lind relaxed into a smile again.
"Come on!" Camille grabbed both his hands and dragged him to his feet and over to the better patch of flowers.
They spent what could only be clarified as 'a long time' picking flowers, before the activity degenerated into tag. As they ran around the Vienforest like lunatics, Camille noticed Lind was slowly down a lot and his skin had gone very white. Finally, she turned around and noticed Lind was wobbling as he walked. Just as she was about to ask what was wrong, he stopped completely, his eyes closing as he fell backwards. Before he could hit the ground though, someone was there in an instant and caught him by his shoulders.
Camille remembered Keith, Lind's older brother, because he was always stopping his little brother from joining the other kids in fun stuff - he said it was too much for Lind.
Keith shot her a smile before scooping Lind up in his arms and carrying him back towards the town. Camille watched him leave, but once she got over the shock she waved her arm above her head in goodbye.
"...I suppose, I never really let him meet other kids though" Keith shifted uncomfortably.
Kellyn frowned.
He not play with kids?
"No" Keith shook his head "He was always so sick, I thought it was too dangerous. I know I was harsh on him, but with Mum and Dad at work all day, someone needed to watch out for him. He would collapse if he even got the slightest bit tired. We all thought it was just a minor issue, it would go away when he got older. But, it never did..."
"Keith! Keith! Look at me! Look at me!"
Keith, who had been chasing an flock of Wingulls away from his sandwich only to loose it to a Pelipepper, looked up at the top of the harbour wall. Several metres off the ground, seven-year-old Lind was walking dangerous close to the edge, his arms held out like aeroplane wings and a huge grin on his face. Alarmed, Keith dashed to the base of the wall, worry laced in his eyes.
"Lind! Get down from there!" he hissed "You could fall!"
But Lind didn't listen to him, like little brothers seldom do. He just kept wobbling innocently along the edge of the harbour wall whilst Keith was sweating cartoon bullets down below. The bullets turned into waterfalls as Lind began to grow faint and sway. Eventually, with one big gasp of air, he plummeted. Keith yelped and stuck out his arms to catch his brother. The force of Lind landing in his arms dragged him to the ground, scrapping his knees against the concrete, but his brother didn't touch the ground.
"Lind!" Keith gently set his brother on the ground, lightly slapping his cheek to rouse him "Lind wake up!"
Lind groaned, coughed, and fell against his brother's chest. Keith sighed and wrapped his arms around him, running a hand through his tuffy black hair.
"You shouldn't have been up there!" Keith hissed "You could've got really hurt!"
"But you do it all the time" Lind pointed out. But there was no bitterness in his voice. Lind was too pure to be bitter.
"It's not the same" Keith sighed. He helped Lind get to his feet, kneeling in front of him and holding his shoulders in case he was in danger of collapsing again. "Just don't do it again, okay?"
"Hmm?" Lind wiped his eyes with his sleeve before nodding "Okay."
Keith relaxed and smiled, prompting Lind to smile too. "Good."
Was he always sick?
"Almost constantly" Keith sighed, prodding the fire with a stick. Apparently it didn't find Keith's story as interesting. With a flash of blue-white eyes, the fire grew again.
"Thanks" Keith grunted "Anyway, as I said before, things got worse as Lind got older. He spent most of last summer in Pueltown Children's Hospital. And I spent it with him..."
It was a simple child's room in a hospital. The walls were decorated with stickers of Winnie the Pooh driving red racing cars, an oddity that made Keith frown for a second, and there were several boxes of toys in the corners. The whole place stank of bleach and Keith actually had to retreat into the hallway in shock before he could safely enter the room.
Lind was sitting in the bed, wired up to one of those drip things. He was propped up against a mountain of tissue-thin pillows with his knees draw up near his chest. Resting against his knees was a sketch pad that he was drawing in, the bed littered with his previous creations. As he drew, his tongue was sticking out. Keith had told the eight-year-old many times before this looked ridiculous, but the fact of the matter was Lind couldn't concentrate with a pen or pencil in his hand without his tongue sticking out, so the tongue just had to come out.
"What's up, Champ?" Keith grinned, coming to sit on a rather uncomfortable plastic seat next to the bed "I would've brought you flowers, but I'm not a sappy girl like Camille and Marley are."
Lind frowned. "Marley's not a girl. He's a guy."
"Really" Keith mock-frowned "Could've fooled me."
Lind laughed at the outrageous idea. Or at least, outrageous in his mind. In Keith's mind, boys just don't act that girly.
"Keith look!" Keith was snapped out of his strange thoughts when he found a piece of paper shoved in his face "It's a Leafeon!"
Keith leant back and tried to focus on the green and brown...splodge. It was one of those drawings Mummy magnets to the fridge and two days later is covered by the latest shopping list.
"Er, nice job, Jr" Keith tried his best to grin, trying to distract himself by looking at the other drawings on the bed. One made him frown. It looked like Lind crossed with a Mankey was doing a dance beside a burning totem pole.
"Lind, what's this?" he asked, holding the drawing up.
Lind's face brightened up. "That's me and you Keith!" he grinned.
Keith frowned at the drawing. Had Lind exploded his head or something, or was there just no orange in the pack of crayons? He fondled the tip of one of his spikes with his finger.
But he was happy anyway. The drawing still meant a lot to him. Lind looked very happy in it (he couldn't see if the drawing him was happy because his face and his hair were both red due to the apparent absence of any pink crayon by this point so it looked like a bloodbath had gone on in the picture). Lind could always cheer anyone up, no matter how down they were.
"And what's this in the corner?"
"Oh! That's Captain Jack Sparrow on his ship bringing us a HUGE! chocolate pie and a jar of dirt!"
On the other hand, little kids would always be little kids.
"That was the last time I saw him awake" Keith sighed "The next week I went back to school. And then, Lind took a turn for the worst." He hung his head "Christmas, I found out he'd slipped into a coma. He needed to be transferred to Saffron City hospital. That was where I spent winter break, and where I'll be going this half term."
Kellyn frowned - he'd forgotten it was half term starting tomorrow. He was going down to Chicole Village to see his foster family.
"So, there you have it" Keith sighed "Keith's 'big secret'. So, go on. Go ahead and tell Liam and Becs and whoever the heck you want."
Kellyn frowned. Having had enough of sign language, he scrabbled for his notebook.
Why would I do that?
Keith blinked in confusion, staring at him.
"You're not gonna tell anyone?" he asked.
Well, just Kate and Starlight, if that's OK. They won't tell anyone.
"Yeah, sure, why not" Keith shrugged "Not like it really mat...ah!"
Keith broke off as Kellyn somehow bypassed the fire and wrapped him in a big hug. Keith was frozen to the spot, unsure of what to do. Sure Lind liked to glomp him at random moments, but this was different.
"Okay, dude, that's seriously not cool!" he carefully pushed Kellyn away.
Kellyn just sat back on his heels, folding his arms, and pouted. It wasn't an ordinary pout. It wasn't a 'I've been utterly defeated and now bow to your superiority' pout. It wasn't even a 'If I just sit here and look cute you'll forget about being angry and be nice to me' kinda pout. No, it was a 'Watch your back because as long as I sit like this and look cute I can force a knife into your gut without even touching you and no one will ever suspect it was me' kinda pout. It was the pout that scared the living daylights out of Keith. But he didn't wanna show that.
Keith slapped him on the back with a smile "People just can't help but like ya. Kate never stood a chance."
Kellyn gave him a rather confused look that made Keith roar with laughter.
"How oblivious can you get?!" he laughed "Go on, you go ahead. I'll be right after ya."
Shrugging, Kellyn got to his feet and left the little cave. Keith lay parallel to the fire, letting the heat wash over his body, his arms folded behind his head as a pillow. He sighed.
"Silly mute" he muttered "Silly, strange, crazy-eyed, clingy, mute." He smiled "Don't know what I'd do without ya though."
Kellyn lay back against the hill, blades of grass snatching at his jumper of a darker shade of green. He nestled the back of his head in his linked fingers, his elbow close to his discarded yellow tie.
Further down the bank, Starlight was lying on his front doing his homework now. His green jumper was tied around his waist and he had rather amusingly tied his tie around his head like a headband to keep his slight silver fringe out of his eyes. Kate was at the base of the hill, annoying Luna by tying ribbons into her fur.
Giving a small sigh, Kellyn closed his eyes and let his body go limp. As he dozed ever so slightly, a picture began to form behind his eyelids. It was blurry and grainy like and old photo, but still clear enough to make out. A teenage boy with midnight-blue hair and aqua eyes, pale skin littered with wiry scars. He was smiling, and that almost made Kellyn cry.
'You're lucky Keith, you just don't know it. At least you have your brother still.'
Keith twirled the bouquet of flowers in his hand, the plastic crinkling, as he whistled his way down the hospital corridor. Some people smiled at him, others shook their head and began grumbling about him disrupting the peace. He ignored them though as he knocked on the door of Room 209.
"Lo?!" he called.
"'Lo'? What kind of greeting is that?!"
Keith chuckled at the reply he got. He twisted the handle and entered the small room. It was predominately taken up by a child's hospital bed which was somewhat bordered by bleeping and buzzing machines. There were several seats around the room and an airy window as well as a table that was, at this moment, covered in wrapped presents. Dotted around the room were some colourful 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY!' balloons.
At this moment, tucking in the sheets of bed, was a brunette woman in a nurse's outfit.
"It's a new greeting from Almia" Keith answered the previous question "It means: 'Hello Sandra, now do you have any food 'cos I'm starvin!'"
The brunette woman laughed.
"There's a canteen down the hall" Sandra reminded him, moving to the other side of the bed, somehow squeezing between the machines "Of course, you know that. You're currently the best customer they've ever had. And you've visited three times in total I believe."
Keith threw back his head and guaffed at that.
"Well, I'll have to check it out - Kanto food rocks!" Keith grinned, looking at the bed "How is he?"
"Worn out I think" Sandra answered, now plumping the thin pillows "Mr Žitnik from Ward 2 came to see him, wanted to talk to someone his age. And it appears once he starts talking he doesn't like to stop, even if he gets no reply."
"Is that so" Keith smiled down at the boy on the bed "Well you can tell Ahi Žitnik to stop trying to influence my brother. I know what he babbles and it's never good."
Keith was well aware of the Orre-born leukaemia patient Ahi from Ward 2, the boy who seemed very attached to Keith's comatose brother.
"I will." Keith knew she was only joking when she promised that.
"Has he changed at all?" he asked.
Sandra shook her head and he gave a disappointed sigh.
"He'll come around soon" she promised, taking her leave "Talk to him."
"That's all I can ever do" Keith muttered somewhat bitterly. But as soon as the door clicked shut behind him, he brightened up and started acting more like himself.
"Hey Lind" he grinned "Happy B-day, man." He walked over to the table and put an over-excessively wrapped box on it. "Birthday present from Camille. She even got you pink wrapping paper." He prodded said wrapping paper and wrinkled his nose in distaste. "I'd get you something too, but you seem to be pretty well off. I suppose my charming personality will have to do."
He flashed Lind a dazzling smile. As ever, Lind was unresponsive. Keith sighed once again.
"Sorry I'm late, I got lost" he admitted "I had to spend an hour wandering around town before I worked out where this place was. It's a stupid city. All the streets are named alphabetically except for J Street. Why is there no J Street?"
He knocked a present and caught it before it hit the ground, putting it back on the table again.
"I bought you flowers this time" he sighed, stuffing the flowers he had brought in a vase full of other flowers bouquets. One of them had wilted so he removed it and chucked it in the bin "I guess I'm as sappy as you say."
He came to sit down on a plastic chair by the bed, wedged in amongst the machines.
"Miss April made a quiz for us last Friday. You had to write down answers to random questions 'legibly' as fast as possible. Though that quiz wasn't really fair because if Kellyn knew the answer to a question we may as well have not attempted it. The guy's had like ten years of practice!"
Keith laughed to his own story and looked at Lind who, as ever, was unresponsive. The only sign he was alive was a the bleeping of the heart-monitor.
Keith sighed for the billionth time and, avoiding the wires all over the place, gently took his brother's hand, running the pale skin between his rough fingers.
"Wake up Lind."