Black Wolf's legend: chapter 6
Title: Black Wolf's legend (6/?)
Pairing: Ohmiya
Summary: Nino embarks on a journey to Port Royal, the jewel of the English crown in the Caribbean Sea, to begin a new life with his uncle. But his merchant vessel is attacked by a crew of ferocious pirates. What fate awaits him?
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine! Co-written with aidill
Genre: romance, adventure
Words count: 1.711
AN: Betaed by beastlover (thanks a lot!). It's been so long since my last update ^^; Hope you still remember this story! ♥
Previous
+++++
Jun ran down the corridor as fast as he could, dragging his unresponsive friend along. Their hurried steps echoed in the dark, damp passage as they got farther and farther away from the village, leaving the angry shouts of their pursuers behind them.
The young boy could hardly believe what was happening. He felt like he was trapped in a horrible nightmare. But he was awake. And this was real. Terrifyingly real.
A few hours ago, his friend and he had been happily playing with the rest of the village children, not a single worry in the world. But now… now they were running for their lives, fleeing from their home through a narrow, almost forgotten passage. Why had those strangers attacked their village? What were they looking for? And why had his father…?
“Stop! Don’t think about it now,” he quickly commanded himself, his heart shrinking painfully inside his chest with the memory of what had happened.
The air in the corridor was stuffy and rank with dampness. Their only source of light was the torch he carried in his left hand, which barely allowed him to see a few meters in front of him. He was panting heavily; his lungs were about to explode, his small legs were shaking with the effort, but the young boy just strengthened his hold on Ohno’s hand and kept running and running, not daring to rest even for a minute for fear that their pursuers could catch them.
Finally, after what felt like hours, he discerned a faint light in the distance. The end of the passage at last! He almost cried, relieved. Would his mother be waiting for him at the beach? Would she have been able to find a boat? And what would he do if the attackers had captured her? No, he couldn’t think about that, he had to keep going, hoping that everything had gone as they had planned.
Hidden in the shadows of the corridor’s exit, he dared to stop for a few minutes, trying to recover his breath. Ohno leaned on the wall in front of him. The older boy allowed his body to slowly slide down the wall until he sat on the cold floor, breathing with difficulty.
Jun looked at his best friend, worry slowly creeping in. Since the moment he had found the other boy trembling behind some crates in the kitchen, the later hadn’t uttered a single word. At first Jun had thought that he was too frightened to speak. Now he wasn’t so sure. Ohno’s eyes, which usually had a kind although rather absentminded expression, were now void, deprived of any expression. It was as if the short boy was in a faraway place and not really beside him.
Following a sudden impulse, Jun stretched out his arm and took his friend’s hand in his, squeezing it reassuringly.
“Everything is going to be o.k.” he whispered.
Ohno’s eyes focused on Jun’s hand. He slowly raised his head to look at the younger boy and nodded weakly.
With a relieved smile, Jun helped Ohno to stand up again.
“Come on. We have to reach the beach.”
After checking that there were no attackers hiding near the passage’s exit, they abandoned their refuge and ran towards the beach as fast as they could.
The small beach was shroud in a dense fog. It was almost impossible to make out anything but the rough silhouettes of rocks, fishing boats…
Suddenly, a figure appeared from behind some rocks startling the two runaway boys. They were about to start running again when the newcomer spoke.
“Jun?”
“Mom?” Jun whispered back, hesitantly.
Jun’s mother rushed to her son's side and wrapped her arms around him. “Thanks God you’re o.k.” Tears of relief started running down her cheeks. Her son bear hugged her in response. They stayed like that for a few minutes, until she finally got composed enough to release him.
“Where is your father?” she asked, keeping her arms on her son’s shoulders, still reluctant to move apart from him.
Jun’s face contorted with pain. He lowered his head and focused intensely on his feet, biting his lower lip.
“He is dead,” the boy whispered, so quietly that her mother had to strain her ears in order not to miss his words. His bangs hid his eyes from his mother’s preoccupied gaze.
“Wha-”
“He betrayed us, Mom!” Jun suddenly cried, looking at his mother with agonized eyes, his voice tight with anger. “He helped those men enter the village unnoticed. I heard him talking with their boss, asking for his money,” he spat. His eyes watered as rage coursed through his entire body. “The man laughed and said that he would be rewarded as a traitor deserves. Then he stabbed him with a dagger. He was dead before his body hit the floor.” Jun lowered his head again. “He sold us for a few doubloons…” he whispered with a broken voice.
Jun’s mother hugged the trembling boy tightly. “He is dead now. It’s better this way,” she whispered, caressing her son’s head. Both of them knew that Jun’s father had never loved his family. He had been a brutal, selfish man; a drunkard whose only worries had always been his alcohol and his women.
It was in that moment when Jun’s mother noticed the boy besides her son. She gasped surprised.
The short boy stood a few meters away, looking at them with a blank, detached expression.
“Who--?”
“He is my best friend, Satoshi” supplied Jun. “I found him hiding in the kitchen when I was running towards the passage. I couldn’t leave him there.”
Recognition lit her eyes. It was her lords’ only son, a quiet, kind boy, almost a year and half older than her own son. They were always playing together.
She was about to go towards the short boy when Jun stopped her, tugging at her sleeve.
“I think there’s something wrong with him,” the dark haired boy whispered urgently, the uneasiness he had tried to suppress in the passage coming back at full force. “He hasn’t said a single word since I found him. And the expression in his eyes is strange. It’s not fear… It’s something else.”
The woman frowned at her son’s words. She went towards Ohno and knelt in front of the quiet boy. Jun stood a few steps behind and peeked at his friend over his mother’s shoulder.
“Satoshi, right? Where are your parents?” she softly inquired, trying not to startle the boy.
Ohno simply stared back at her, almost as if he hadn’t understood her words.
“Did you get separated from them?” she tried again, smiling encouragingly at the small child.
“They’re dead.”
“Dead!” Jun exclaimed surprised “Are you sure?”
The boy simply nodded.
“That man shot them. They fell on the floor and didn’t move again. He laughed. Then he asked the other men to find me and kill me too. I was hiding by the room’s door. I ran and hid in the kitchen.”
Ohno’s tone of voice was flat; his face expression was blank. It was as if he was talking about something totally unrelated to him.
Jun recalled a man of their own village behaving in a similar way when his spouse and son died in a sudden fire, a few years ago. His mother referred to him as a broken man. Her words had puzzled Jun. How could that man be broken if he hadn’t suffered any injury? When he asked his mother what she meant, she had explained to him that the man was perfectly fine physically. His mind was another thing, though. She told him that the man had withdrawn into his own world as a way to protect himself from the grief he felt.
He hadn’t understood what she meant at that time, but he remembered something. The man had never overcome his loss.
Would the same happen to Ohno? Had he lost his kind, shy friend forever? The young boy felt a huge lump in his throat, threatening to suffocate him. He looked at his mother at a loss of what to do.
His mother’s eyes watered as she hugged Ohno tightly
“You’re not alone,” she whispered, caressing the child’s head, trying to soothe his pain. “From now on, we’ll be your family. We’ll take care of you.”
Ohno’s eyes lost part of that eerie quality but still, the boy didn’t utter a word.
“We’re not safe here. As soon as the fog rises, we’ll be perfectly visible from the cliff. We have to leave now.”
Jun’s mother grabbed both boys's hands and led them to the most inaccessible part of the beach. She had hidden an old fishing boat there, small enough for two persons to manage. They boarded it and left the beach unnoticed.
Ohno stared at the sea, impassive, as the their village got smaller and smaller on the horizon. Jun hugged the older boy tightly and cried, shedding the tears his friend seemed unable to shed.
They knew their lives would never be the same.
~~
With a disapproving click of his tongue, Jun picked Ohno’s discarded shirt up off the floor.
Keeping his promise, he had returned to Ohno’s cabin determined to make the stubborn man rest in a bed for a few hours - sleeping on a chair as he feared his childhood friend intended to do, was out of the question.
What he didn’t expect was to find the said man sound asleep in his bed already. And even more surprising, he was sharing the bed with the boy he seemed to despise so much. “Maybe the exhaustion has been too much for him to even care?” Jun silently wondered, “Should I wake him up before he realizes what he is doing?”
Watching his friend’s contented face and seeing how relaxed he seemed to be, he didn’t have the heart to do it. Moreover, they looked kind of cute cuddling together - and oh, how he was going to mock Ohno about it later.
With one last fond smile at his best friend, Jun left the room as silently as he could.
But not before leaving the discarded shirt neatly folded on a chair.
++++
AN2: Did you enjoy the Juntoshi? I hope so. Ohmiya only appeared a bit at the end, what a pity... but next chaper would be full of Ohmiya again! \^o^/
Next
Pairing: Ohmiya
Summary: Nino embarks on a journey to Port Royal, the jewel of the English crown in the Caribbean Sea, to begin a new life with his uncle. But his merchant vessel is attacked by a crew of ferocious pirates. What fate awaits him?
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine! Co-written with aidill
Genre: romance, adventure
Words count: 1.711
AN: Betaed by beastlover (thanks a lot!). It's been so long since my last update ^^; Hope you still remember this story! ♥
Previous
+++++
Jun ran down the corridor as fast as he could, dragging his unresponsive friend along. Their hurried steps echoed in the dark, damp passage as they got farther and farther away from the village, leaving the angry shouts of their pursuers behind them.
The young boy could hardly believe what was happening. He felt like he was trapped in a horrible nightmare. But he was awake. And this was real. Terrifyingly real.
A few hours ago, his friend and he had been happily playing with the rest of the village children, not a single worry in the world. But now… now they were running for their lives, fleeing from their home through a narrow, almost forgotten passage. Why had those strangers attacked their village? What were they looking for? And why had his father…?
“Stop! Don’t think about it now,” he quickly commanded himself, his heart shrinking painfully inside his chest with the memory of what had happened.
The air in the corridor was stuffy and rank with dampness. Their only source of light was the torch he carried in his left hand, which barely allowed him to see a few meters in front of him. He was panting heavily; his lungs were about to explode, his small legs were shaking with the effort, but the young boy just strengthened his hold on Ohno’s hand and kept running and running, not daring to rest even for a minute for fear that their pursuers could catch them.
Finally, after what felt like hours, he discerned a faint light in the distance. The end of the passage at last! He almost cried, relieved. Would his mother be waiting for him at the beach? Would she have been able to find a boat? And what would he do if the attackers had captured her? No, he couldn’t think about that, he had to keep going, hoping that everything had gone as they had planned.
Hidden in the shadows of the corridor’s exit, he dared to stop for a few minutes, trying to recover his breath. Ohno leaned on the wall in front of him. The older boy allowed his body to slowly slide down the wall until he sat on the cold floor, breathing with difficulty.
Jun looked at his best friend, worry slowly creeping in. Since the moment he had found the other boy trembling behind some crates in the kitchen, the later hadn’t uttered a single word. At first Jun had thought that he was too frightened to speak. Now he wasn’t so sure. Ohno’s eyes, which usually had a kind although rather absentminded expression, were now void, deprived of any expression. It was as if the short boy was in a faraway place and not really beside him.
Following a sudden impulse, Jun stretched out his arm and took his friend’s hand in his, squeezing it reassuringly.
“Everything is going to be o.k.” he whispered.
Ohno’s eyes focused on Jun’s hand. He slowly raised his head to look at the younger boy and nodded weakly.
With a relieved smile, Jun helped Ohno to stand up again.
“Come on. We have to reach the beach.”
After checking that there were no attackers hiding near the passage’s exit, they abandoned their refuge and ran towards the beach as fast as they could.
The small beach was shroud in a dense fog. It was almost impossible to make out anything but the rough silhouettes of rocks, fishing boats…
Suddenly, a figure appeared from behind some rocks startling the two runaway boys. They were about to start running again when the newcomer spoke.
“Jun?”
“Mom?” Jun whispered back, hesitantly.
Jun’s mother rushed to her son's side and wrapped her arms around him. “Thanks God you’re o.k.” Tears of relief started running down her cheeks. Her son bear hugged her in response. They stayed like that for a few minutes, until she finally got composed enough to release him.
“Where is your father?” she asked, keeping her arms on her son’s shoulders, still reluctant to move apart from him.
Jun’s face contorted with pain. He lowered his head and focused intensely on his feet, biting his lower lip.
“He is dead,” the boy whispered, so quietly that her mother had to strain her ears in order not to miss his words. His bangs hid his eyes from his mother’s preoccupied gaze.
“Wha-”
“He betrayed us, Mom!” Jun suddenly cried, looking at his mother with agonized eyes, his voice tight with anger. “He helped those men enter the village unnoticed. I heard him talking with their boss, asking for his money,” he spat. His eyes watered as rage coursed through his entire body. “The man laughed and said that he would be rewarded as a traitor deserves. Then he stabbed him with a dagger. He was dead before his body hit the floor.” Jun lowered his head again. “He sold us for a few doubloons…” he whispered with a broken voice.
Jun’s mother hugged the trembling boy tightly. “He is dead now. It’s better this way,” she whispered, caressing her son’s head. Both of them knew that Jun’s father had never loved his family. He had been a brutal, selfish man; a drunkard whose only worries had always been his alcohol and his women.
It was in that moment when Jun’s mother noticed the boy besides her son. She gasped surprised.
The short boy stood a few meters away, looking at them with a blank, detached expression.
“Who--?”
“He is my best friend, Satoshi” supplied Jun. “I found him hiding in the kitchen when I was running towards the passage. I couldn’t leave him there.”
Recognition lit her eyes. It was her lords’ only son, a quiet, kind boy, almost a year and half older than her own son. They were always playing together.
She was about to go towards the short boy when Jun stopped her, tugging at her sleeve.
“I think there’s something wrong with him,” the dark haired boy whispered urgently, the uneasiness he had tried to suppress in the passage coming back at full force. “He hasn’t said a single word since I found him. And the expression in his eyes is strange. It’s not fear… It’s something else.”
The woman frowned at her son’s words. She went towards Ohno and knelt in front of the quiet boy. Jun stood a few steps behind and peeked at his friend over his mother’s shoulder.
“Satoshi, right? Where are your parents?” she softly inquired, trying not to startle the boy.
Ohno simply stared back at her, almost as if he hadn’t understood her words.
“Did you get separated from them?” she tried again, smiling encouragingly at the small child.
“They’re dead.”
“Dead!” Jun exclaimed surprised “Are you sure?”
The boy simply nodded.
“That man shot them. They fell on the floor and didn’t move again. He laughed. Then he asked the other men to find me and kill me too. I was hiding by the room’s door. I ran and hid in the kitchen.”
Ohno’s tone of voice was flat; his face expression was blank. It was as if he was talking about something totally unrelated to him.
Jun recalled a man of their own village behaving in a similar way when his spouse and son died in a sudden fire, a few years ago. His mother referred to him as a broken man. Her words had puzzled Jun. How could that man be broken if he hadn’t suffered any injury? When he asked his mother what she meant, she had explained to him that the man was perfectly fine physically. His mind was another thing, though. She told him that the man had withdrawn into his own world as a way to protect himself from the grief he felt.
He hadn’t understood what she meant at that time, but he remembered something. The man had never overcome his loss.
Would the same happen to Ohno? Had he lost his kind, shy friend forever? The young boy felt a huge lump in his throat, threatening to suffocate him. He looked at his mother at a loss of what to do.
His mother’s eyes watered as she hugged Ohno tightly
“You’re not alone,” she whispered, caressing the child’s head, trying to soothe his pain. “From now on, we’ll be your family. We’ll take care of you.”
Ohno’s eyes lost part of that eerie quality but still, the boy didn’t utter a word.
“We’re not safe here. As soon as the fog rises, we’ll be perfectly visible from the cliff. We have to leave now.”
Jun’s mother grabbed both boys's hands and led them to the most inaccessible part of the beach. She had hidden an old fishing boat there, small enough for two persons to manage. They boarded it and left the beach unnoticed.
Ohno stared at the sea, impassive, as the their village got smaller and smaller on the horizon. Jun hugged the older boy tightly and cried, shedding the tears his friend seemed unable to shed.
They knew their lives would never be the same.
~~
With a disapproving click of his tongue, Jun picked Ohno’s discarded shirt up off the floor.
Keeping his promise, he had returned to Ohno’s cabin determined to make the stubborn man rest in a bed for a few hours - sleeping on a chair as he feared his childhood friend intended to do, was out of the question.
What he didn’t expect was to find the said man sound asleep in his bed already. And even more surprising, he was sharing the bed with the boy he seemed to despise so much. “Maybe the exhaustion has been too much for him to even care?” Jun silently wondered, “Should I wake him up before he realizes what he is doing?”
Watching his friend’s contented face and seeing how relaxed he seemed to be, he didn’t have the heart to do it. Moreover, they looked kind of cute cuddling together - and oh, how he was going to mock Ohno about it later.
With one last fond smile at his best friend, Jun left the room as silently as he could.
But not before leaving the discarded shirt neatly folded on a chair.
++++
AN2: Did you enjoy the Juntoshi? I hope so. Ohmiya only appeared a bit at the end, what a pity... but next chaper would be full of Ohmiya again! \^o^/
Next