I'm a fan of rats. No, I don't mean thieves and degenerates; I mean the little animals with tails and paws and rounded ears. Plague-carriers. Bastions and harbingers of filth. Sewer-dogs.
I've always loved rats (the domesticated kind; I wouldn't pick a rat up out of the sewer, because it would hate me and probably try to gnaw my face off, like any feral animal would). I've been acquainted with five of them in my life, four of which were mine. The fifth was meant for my family because my own Mr. Jingles (those who catch this reference, congratulations; I love you; and yes, I know he was a mouse, cut me some slack) was brought home at a moody age. He likes and trusts me, and pretty much nobody else.
Her name was Hope. She was sick when we got her, and didn't survive the month.
The following chapter was not written in response to this event, but that experience did kind of…paint the scene with a certain color.
That said, I hope that this chapter is enjoyable, in spite of the rather unfortunate event it follows; a bit of angst is nothing new in this series, right?
Glen Hersh had a pet mouse.
Glen Hersh's pet mouse was named Snow, and when Snow died, it seemed like the entire Domino Children's Home rallied around him. To say that Glen was upset by his little companion's departure from the world would have been an insult to them both, and even the Usual Suspects were respectfully subdued about it.
Everyone knew that Glen was grieving, and everyone knew that they shouldn't make it worse. Even David Whittaker, who didn't put stock in respecting anyone's feelings, said nothing.
But Mokuba Yagami was young, the youngest of all of them, and he didn't know any better. He didn't know that his idea would make things worse. He said, with a wide smile on his face like it was the bestest idea ever, worthy even of Nii'tama (who knew whole lots of things and always had good ideas):
"You could get new one."
The silence that settled over the rest of the children was stifling, and the boy's smile faltered when he realized that nobody seemed to like this plan.
Glen was the first to speak, in a stunned, betrayed, disgusted voice that cut through the air, "…Shut up, you little snot," quiet and breathless like…like everything had been taken out of him.
"What the hell's wrong with you, brat?" David demanded.
"What're you, stupid?"
"Get out of here!"
"Learn to keep your fat mouth shut!"
And so it went on. Mokuba turned to the owner of each voice, terror and confusion mounting and mounting on his little face; they were all talking at once, shielding Glen as if from enemy fire, yelling at him to leave, to go away, to never talk to Glen Hersh again.
Mokuba stood there, quiet and petrified, until he finally dropped the model plane he'd been meaning to share with Glen, and ran.
The only person who wasn't talking, besides Glen Hersh, was Veronica Belle. She was stone-silent, looking conflicted and angry, and she watched the crowd of other children with an odd mixture of sympathy and disgust.
David eventually said, "I'm gonna go teach that little bastard a l—"
That was as far as he got.
He bumped into Kristine Hathaway, and all fell quiet again. She raised an eyebrow.
A prologue to the woman she would eventually become, she spoke in a voice fit to send the devil running: "Teach that little what?"
David was usually flippant and contrary with Kristine, who always saw the best in everyone and never had a bad word to say, but now he balked. He stared at her with a look that would have been right at home on the face of a boy just caught stealing from his grandmother.
"I…he…Yagami…"
"Oh, I know," Kristine said, scowling. She swept a hawk's gaze over the rest of the group as she picked up the younger Yagami brother's toy. "You should be ashamed of yourselves. Every last one of you."
"Miss Hathaway, he—"
"Mister Hersh," Kristine cut in, and Glen went white. "The boy is four. Years. Old. He was trying to make you feel better." She lifted the little plane to accentuate her point.
"My mouse is dead!"
"And did it ever occur to you, to any of you, that Mokuba Yagami doesn't know what that even means yet? Did it ever occur to you that he would have to be taught?"
Glen Hersh had no answer to that.
None of them did.
She left a trail of shamed silence in her wake.
Days later, when the incident had all but faded into distant memory for most of them, as all memories are wont to do in the minds of children, Glen Hersh was out in the yard, eating lunch beneath a tree and meditating on the swarm of thoughts and feelings that would eventually send him to veterinary school. Little Mokuba Yagami shuffled up to him, holding a sheet of paper in both hands.
Glen didn't think he had anything in particular against the boy; not like David or some of the others obviously did. He thought Mokuba was kind of annoying, but that was basically it. Little kids were annoying. It just happened that way. So he didn't order him away, choosing instead to be diplomatic. He said, "Whatcha want, Yagami?"
Everyone called both Yagami brothers that, by their last name. Except the staff. Glen paused a moment to wonder why that was. Mokuba kind of played with his paper for a while, fidgeting like he didn't know the answer to that question.
Eventually he said, "…I sorry. 'Cuz mousey died. I dint…I dint wanna say sump'in bad. I…I dint know."
Glen blinked. He lowered his sandwich onto his lap.
Mokuba held out the sheet of paper, which turned out to be a crayon drawing of what was clearly supposed to be Snow, Glen, and Mokuba—although Mokuba had never really played with Glen or Snow; he'd been frightened of the tiny animal—with the words, "I SORY GLEN," printed laboriously across the top. A sad little face had been drawn next to the apology, with a tear beneath one eye. Admittedly, the little drawing was atrocious; he considered just throwing it away. Then he looked up.
"You could…put on wall," Mokuba suggested, playing with the hem of his shirt now and looking half-hopeful, half-scared. "Or mebbe…mebbe put where mousey buried. His…his grave." He said this last with a grim sort of severity, like he'd just used a bad word.
Glen stared back at the drawing, not quite knowing how to respond. Mokuba kept turning his eyes to the ground, ashamed or embarrassed or both.
Glen finally looked back up at him. "Hey…" he said. "Thanks, Yagami."
"Welcome," Mokuba mumbled, relieved, daring a little smile.
"I think…I'll keep this in my room," Glen said. He got up and headed across the yard, a thousand emotions mixed and jumbled inside of him. He went into his room, found a folder with a bunch of school assignments in it, and tucked the drawing inside it. He would find this picture again not long after his eighteenth birthday five years later, and he would look up the Yagamis for no apparent reason, who of course were Kaibas now—to realize that they were both more famous than their adoptive father could have ever dreamed of being.
And he wouldn't be the faintest bit surprised.
By the way, an update: my blog has pretty much died by this point, and it's been so long since I updated it that the only way it will resurrect itself is if I start clean and fresh. I may just do that. But in the meantime, I have now extended my online presence to the Umbrella of the Internet, Facebook. I'll be posting updates to my various projects, fanfiction or otherwise, over there. So if you're interested in keeping up with me in a broader capacity, go ahead and take a look. You'll be able to find me by my pen-name, "Iced Blood." Look for the one that lives in Lodi, California, and has a profile pic of Hitsugaya (those who don't follow Bleach, just look at the picture on my FF-Net profile).
See you there.
