(no subject)
Characters: Mana, Allen, others
Rating: T
Warnings: language, unbeta'ed
About: The story of how Mana lost a brother and found a son. [side story to Untamable]
Gif!fic for a friend~
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, blobbyeyes
"What're you still doing here, fancy pants man?" a tiny little thing with white hair (not a wig!) and steely, indifferent eyes said in a bored drawl, with the heavy accent characteristic of the area.
The place was the kind where showing up with fairly clean clothes, and without holes, and keeping them that way (for the most part, at least) during your stay, meant some sort of degrading nickname for the length of said stay. And "degrading", of course, according to the residents' standards (to whom having 3 dollars was being rich and having no fleas living on you was being lonely and being clean was a sacrilege and an offense to decency and good society).
A glint of interest appeared in those strange metallic eyes, or maybe of amusement, but his voice remained motonone as he added, "You cocked everything up so bad you have got no money left?"
His hands were in the front pockets of his ratty trousers, his posture a relaxed slump. He was thin (starved, since the day he'd been born, probably) and covered in filth, not to mention that he stank like he hadn't bathed in a week (which he probably hadn't), yet there was a certain gracefulness to him, to how at ease he was despite the state he was in, like living (dying slowly) in the streets without one soul to care for him was his element.
The man with the smudged clown make up looked at his new companion who so mocked him, tilted his head to the side and finally gave a blinding smile, red, red painted lips stretching for what seemed like a mile.
"I thought I needed a little time off, actually, and so I came here. Or ended up here. I do not believe there is a difference, though." the smile, if possible, turned brighter. "Do you?"
The child looked a little confused and taken aback at that, but the clown was still speaking. "Besides, now I'm here to entertain everyone, isn't that just wonderful?" another too-happy three-thousand-watt smile.
That got the kid right back on track. "We don't need no funny shit," he declared haughtily, folding his small arms over his thin chest. "You wanna help, you get us food. Or money."
The man said nothing, and resumed what he'd been doing before the child's interruption.
If the lack of response annoyed the boy, he hid it well - at least until he suddenly dropped both his arms and the petulant expression and asked softly, "...is he dead?"
The clown was gazing down at the dead dog at his feet. "Yes," he replied serenely. There were no traces of a smile on his expression now.
"Car?" the boy grunted questioningly, throwing his fisted hands into his pockets again, expression closing off into something ugly.
"I believe so."
"Bloody car drivers know shit 'bout driving." the boy said with a scowl, sounding appalled.
A solemn nod and a thoughtful head tilt were the man's only reactions to that. "I should go bury him." he said some time later.
Well, it wouldn't walk to its own grave.
The little boy frowned up at the extremely calm man then, slightly suspicious, then something like accusation badly hidden by forced indifference suddenly appeared in his strangely coloured eyes. "Aren't you sad?" the boy asked.
Wasn't he sad? When was he not sad these days, the clown wondered. His lips curved in another bright (empty) smile. "So sad I could-" he wrapped a hand around his own neck and tilted it awkwardly to the side, faking death by strangulation, or hanging. "-die." he crowed, poking his tongue out.
"Stop that!" the boy yelled, indignation and fury breaking through his fake nonachallance unexpectedly. He froze up for a second and then schooled his expression, hiding it all again. But it looked like there was quite the temper under that tough looking shell.
The boy glared filthily at the clown and continued, in a more moderate tone, "He's always been with you since you got here! I bet he was with you before that too!" And now you're insulting him like that, went unsaid, but loudly implied. "Why aren't you sad?!"
There was silence for a few moments, and the strange little boy calmed down a little, until the clown said at last, "I think all my tears have dried already." He showed his palms and raised his shoulders in a universal gesture of helplessness, eyes fixed on the body of the dead dog and avoiding the child's own eyes. There was a small sad smile on the old man's face now.
With his dirty white clothes and white face, that hopelessly sad expression and the black tear painted under his right eye, in that moment the man truly was the incarnation of the sad pierrot he was portraying.
At those words, the child deflated like a pierced balloon, shoulders sagging down and hands no longer balled into fists. He looked down, and his oily white hair shifted forward and hid his expression.
Together, the boy and the man stared down unhappily for a long time at the old dog's body. A quiet, almost silent sniffle broke it some time later. And then the little strange boy spoke again.
"I only saw him once or twice, with you. And then yesterday-" he paused, and a louder, wetter sniffle came from under the white bangs. "Yesterday he licked my hand, like it wasn't- and no one, I mean, no dog had ever- well, he licked my hand... so fucking sticky afterwards... and it was just that once, I didn't know him or anything and... So why am I-" he let out a few weak, wobbly laughs. "Why am I...?" and broke down sobbing, loudly and messily and ugly, crouching down and hugging his knees with one arm while furiously rubbing at his face with the other, as if to fisically put a stop to the onslaught of tears and agonized sobs.
The sad clown looked from the crying boy to his old dog and back again, and his eyes softened.
With one last respectful nod to his old companion, the clown turned to the boy and whipped out a polka dotted black and white kerchief out of the ragged puffy sleeve of his outfit. "Let us smile because we met him, not cry because he's gone!" the clown cried, startling the still-sobbing child into falling on his arse and looking up, surprised.
And then the man threw the polka-dotted cloth into the boy's face and started rubbing, getting it in an even worse state than before rather than cleaning it.
"Oh, dear boy, wipe your tears! Wipe your tears, my child!" he declared loudly and with barely hidden glee as he enthusiastically got snot and tears all over the boy's cheeks. "If you cry too much, you'll drown! Drown in your own tears, I say! And we can't have that, can we?"
"Fucking stop that- AAAGH-"
--
Mana Walker's life had never quite been a normal boring one. No one could have such a life while having the 14th as a brother. And for a life like that, one needed to be either a saint or a mad man (either of which guaranteed a not-quite-normal life). Mana liked to think he had a healthy dose of the latter and as much as anyone else of the former, which made for quite a good combination and he managed like that.
The 14th had, after all, oozed charisma since he'd been a teething babe, rendering most people helpless before his beseeching pouty lip (Mana not excluded) and since then he'd only gained practice. His approach changed as he got older, of course, but its effectiveness remained the same. The full force of the 14th's pout could make a strong man weep and hand over the password of all his bank accounts, and that meant more trouble than one could think possible. The 14th was one very easy to get to love.
The problem was, of course, to maintain that love. As Mana knew from experience, from living on the next room over, from endless fights at the dinner table and problems at school and several petty squabbles throughout their lives.
The 14th had too much imagination, too big an ego, too little self-control and too generous a soul. An explosive combination, that meant he was constantly in some mess or other, either because of some crazy idea he'd thought up on his own or because he'd wanted to help someone. He constantly got himself (and Mana, of course) into trouble due to one (or more) of his schemes.
The 14th fancied himself a "free thinker", "one not bound by the society's stifling rules" (the description changed constantly over time, this is the latest one) and had several strange tastes and opinions, resulting in him being what some called "extravagant", "weird" or, put more bluntly, "bloody fucking creepy and insane, that's what".
Take the whole nickname business, for instance. 14th was, of course, not his real name. But sometime in his early teens he'd gotten into History, or at least certain interesting aspects of it. He chose some misterious alchemist as one of his heroes and decided he wanted to get a nickname in his honour. And so he used his charm to get everyone to agree to using the ridiculous "14th" nickname. And as usual, Mana's little brother got his way.
Their parents hadn't even posed much of a problem, long resigned to their younger son's excentricities. Their mother had always called him "my dear little boy" anyway, and there wasn't much of a change there.
Their father frowned at him, looked him up and down, glanced at Mana as if for confirmation that this new foolishness was for real, and went back to reading his newspaper with a low grumble about idiot boys and their idiotic antics. He did start calling him 'boy' rather than use his name, though, so it was a pratically a win for the 14th on that side too, and in a rough, manly, I'm-not-really-going-to-say-anything-outright-or-even-hint-that-I-actually-care-but-you'll-get-my-meaning-or-else talk (the kind that began with "You're almost a grown man, Mana" and ended with "Do that and you'll become a fine good man one day, son.") he later told Mana to look after his brother and make sure he didn't do anything too loony and didn't get himself offed in some terrible and/or stupid way. With a long suffering sigh that spoke of the infinite patience he'd needed himself to face his many trials and just how much he could simpathise with his oldest son, he also told Mana to be strong in the face of hardship, and then retreated back behind the wall of his beer-and-newspaper (which seemed to last hours, even entire days on weekends).
Mana had, long before that manly, manly talk with his father, always been by his little brother's side (and so he remained ever since then, even during their greatest fight, in seventh grade) ever since their mother had sat Mana in her lap and put the newborn in his arms for the first time and he'd threwn up all over Mana's shirt. It was a matter of principle; as the oldest brother, he got to play with and protect his baby brother, and also to bully him if he got too annoying. Through the good and the bad, Mana would be there.
And Mana was there all along, all through the prank phase in grade 1 that got his little brother in detention nearly every day, to what he couldn't help but refer to as the Name War in grade 6 or 7 - the name students in their school had given to the battle initiated by Mana's wayward brother for the right to sign his official school paperwork with his nickname, 14th, and to be called by that name by teachers and school employees alike. In this, as in everything else (or, well, a lot of things), Mana supported his brother and did his best to help him get what he wanted, through endless discussions with teachers and parents and classmates and even the school's Head, and putting up posters and almost going on strike and making signs and being ready to march in circles at the school gates with those same signs if it ever came down to that.
(eventually, a compromise was reached - the teachers would call him 14th, and he'd be allowed to sign papers and reports and exams with it, but not other stuff, and could he please stop giving speeches and bringing in firefighter brigades in the middle of classes now, please? It was really disrupting the school's working hours).
Nowadays, few people but Mana know his brother as anything else other than "14th". His victory has been so complete Mana himself refers to him by that nickname even in his thoughts. It's somehow infuriating, really. Or mildly annoying, at least.
And perhaps it was this (quite bureaucratic at times) battle so early on in his life that got into Mana the seeds of his desire to become a lawyer that he felt a few years later.
With great marks and an even better memory, coupled with a knack for cracking puzzles and a strange ability to unsettle people if he so chose (a by-product of being the 14th's brother and one that got a lot of practice in living with such a sibling - startling and confusing the 14th was usually the only way to win an argument), Mana did have the job cut out for him. Their parents were more than happy to help when he announced his plans at the end of high school.
However, in his long career as the 14th's brother, Mana never realized until some time later just how much influence he had over his brother. Certainly, he was aware that his little brother deferred to and admired him somewhat, and that he loved Mana (even if sometimes that was hard to believe, and even if the 14th was quite insensitive and selfish and oblivious sometimes) as much as Mana loved him (which was quite a lot, or he wouldn't have put up with all the... hmm, bad stuff he did put up with because of his little brother), and yes, Mana was even aware of his reputation (or rather, status?) as the only one who could calm / reason with / argue AND win / convince / cheer up / understand / support / NOT support / properly scold / overall HANDLE the 14th. There might even have been something like a "14th's keeper" nickname involved at one point.
Yet, despite knowing all this, it still came as a surprise when, after graduating from high school, the 14th followed in Mana's footsteps and enrolled university with the goal to become a lawyer as well.
Part 2
Second part will be posted tomorrow. Or the day after that. Still got some things to check in it.
Rating: T
Warnings: language, unbeta'ed
About: The story of how Mana lost a brother and found a son. [side story to Untamable]
Gif!fic for a friend~
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, blobbyeyes
"What're you still doing here, fancy pants man?" a tiny little thing with white hair (not a wig!) and steely, indifferent eyes said in a bored drawl, with the heavy accent characteristic of the area.
The place was the kind where showing up with fairly clean clothes, and without holes, and keeping them that way (for the most part, at least) during your stay, meant some sort of degrading nickname for the length of said stay. And "degrading", of course, according to the residents' standards (to whom having 3 dollars was being rich and having no fleas living on you was being lonely and being clean was a sacrilege and an offense to decency and good society).
A glint of interest appeared in those strange metallic eyes, or maybe of amusement, but his voice remained motonone as he added, "You cocked everything up so bad you have got no money left?"
His hands were in the front pockets of his ratty trousers, his posture a relaxed slump. He was thin (starved, since the day he'd been born, probably) and covered in filth, not to mention that he stank like he hadn't bathed in a week (which he probably hadn't), yet there was a certain gracefulness to him, to how at ease he was despite the state he was in, like living (dying slowly) in the streets without one soul to care for him was his element.
The man with the smudged clown make up looked at his new companion who so mocked him, tilted his head to the side and finally gave a blinding smile, red, red painted lips stretching for what seemed like a mile.
"I thought I needed a little time off, actually, and so I came here. Or ended up here. I do not believe there is a difference, though." the smile, if possible, turned brighter. "Do you?"
The child looked a little confused and taken aback at that, but the clown was still speaking. "Besides, now I'm here to entertain everyone, isn't that just wonderful?" another too-happy three-thousand-watt smile.
That got the kid right back on track. "We don't need no funny shit," he declared haughtily, folding his small arms over his thin chest. "You wanna help, you get us food. Or money."
The man said nothing, and resumed what he'd been doing before the child's interruption.
If the lack of response annoyed the boy, he hid it well - at least until he suddenly dropped both his arms and the petulant expression and asked softly, "...is he dead?"
The clown was gazing down at the dead dog at his feet. "Yes," he replied serenely. There were no traces of a smile on his expression now.
"Car?" the boy grunted questioningly, throwing his fisted hands into his pockets again, expression closing off into something ugly.
"I believe so."
"Bloody car drivers know shit 'bout driving." the boy said with a scowl, sounding appalled.
A solemn nod and a thoughtful head tilt were the man's only reactions to that. "I should go bury him." he said some time later.
Well, it wouldn't walk to its own grave.
The little boy frowned up at the extremely calm man then, slightly suspicious, then something like accusation badly hidden by forced indifference suddenly appeared in his strangely coloured eyes. "Aren't you sad?" the boy asked.
Wasn't he sad? When was he not sad these days, the clown wondered. His lips curved in another bright (empty) smile. "So sad I could-" he wrapped a hand around his own neck and tilted it awkwardly to the side, faking death by strangulation, or hanging. "-die." he crowed, poking his tongue out.
"Stop that!" the boy yelled, indignation and fury breaking through his fake nonachallance unexpectedly. He froze up for a second and then schooled his expression, hiding it all again. But it looked like there was quite the temper under that tough looking shell.
The boy glared filthily at the clown and continued, in a more moderate tone, "He's always been with you since you got here! I bet he was with you before that too!" And now you're insulting him like that, went unsaid, but loudly implied. "Why aren't you sad?!"
There was silence for a few moments, and the strange little boy calmed down a little, until the clown said at last, "I think all my tears have dried already." He showed his palms and raised his shoulders in a universal gesture of helplessness, eyes fixed on the body of the dead dog and avoiding the child's own eyes. There was a small sad smile on the old man's face now.
With his dirty white clothes and white face, that hopelessly sad expression and the black tear painted under his right eye, in that moment the man truly was the incarnation of the sad pierrot he was portraying.
At those words, the child deflated like a pierced balloon, shoulders sagging down and hands no longer balled into fists. He looked down, and his oily white hair shifted forward and hid his expression.
Together, the boy and the man stared down unhappily for a long time at the old dog's body. A quiet, almost silent sniffle broke it some time later. And then the little strange boy spoke again.
"I only saw him once or twice, with you. And then yesterday-" he paused, and a louder, wetter sniffle came from under the white bangs. "Yesterday he licked my hand, like it wasn't- and no one, I mean, no dog had ever- well, he licked my hand... so fucking sticky afterwards... and it was just that once, I didn't know him or anything and... So why am I-" he let out a few weak, wobbly laughs. "Why am I...?" and broke down sobbing, loudly and messily and ugly, crouching down and hugging his knees with one arm while furiously rubbing at his face with the other, as if to fisically put a stop to the onslaught of tears and agonized sobs.
The sad clown looked from the crying boy to his old dog and back again, and his eyes softened.
With one last respectful nod to his old companion, the clown turned to the boy and whipped out a polka dotted black and white kerchief out of the ragged puffy sleeve of his outfit. "Let us smile because we met him, not cry because he's gone!" the clown cried, startling the still-sobbing child into falling on his arse and looking up, surprised.
And then the man threw the polka-dotted cloth into the boy's face and started rubbing, getting it in an even worse state than before rather than cleaning it.
"Oh, dear boy, wipe your tears! Wipe your tears, my child!" he declared loudly and with barely hidden glee as he enthusiastically got snot and tears all over the boy's cheeks. "If you cry too much, you'll drown! Drown in your own tears, I say! And we can't have that, can we?"
"Fucking stop that- AAAGH-"
--
Mana Walker's life had never quite been a normal boring one. No one could have such a life while having the 14th as a brother. And for a life like that, one needed to be either a saint or a mad man (either of which guaranteed a not-quite-normal life). Mana liked to think he had a healthy dose of the latter and as much as anyone else of the former, which made for quite a good combination and he managed like that.
The 14th had, after all, oozed charisma since he'd been a teething babe, rendering most people helpless before his beseeching pouty lip (Mana not excluded) and since then he'd only gained practice. His approach changed as he got older, of course, but its effectiveness remained the same. The full force of the 14th's pout could make a strong man weep and hand over the password of all his bank accounts, and that meant more trouble than one could think possible. The 14th was one very easy to get to love.
The problem was, of course, to maintain that love. As Mana knew from experience, from living on the next room over, from endless fights at the dinner table and problems at school and several petty squabbles throughout their lives.
The 14th had too much imagination, too big an ego, too little self-control and too generous a soul. An explosive combination, that meant he was constantly in some mess or other, either because of some crazy idea he'd thought up on his own or because he'd wanted to help someone. He constantly got himself (and Mana, of course) into trouble due to one (or more) of his schemes.
The 14th fancied himself a "free thinker", "one not bound by the society's stifling rules" (the description changed constantly over time, this is the latest one) and had several strange tastes and opinions, resulting in him being what some called "extravagant", "weird" or, put more bluntly, "bloody fucking creepy and insane, that's what".
Take the whole nickname business, for instance. 14th was, of course, not his real name. But sometime in his early teens he'd gotten into History, or at least certain interesting aspects of it. He chose some misterious alchemist as one of his heroes and decided he wanted to get a nickname in his honour. And so he used his charm to get everyone to agree to using the ridiculous "14th" nickname. And as usual, Mana's little brother got his way.
Their parents hadn't even posed much of a problem, long resigned to their younger son's excentricities. Their mother had always called him "my dear little boy" anyway, and there wasn't much of a change there.
Their father frowned at him, looked him up and down, glanced at Mana as if for confirmation that this new foolishness was for real, and went back to reading his newspaper with a low grumble about idiot boys and their idiotic antics. He did start calling him 'boy' rather than use his name, though, so it was a pratically a win for the 14th on that side too, and in a rough, manly, I'm-not-really-going-to-say-anything-outright-or-even-hint-that-I-actually-care-but-you'll-get-my-meaning-or-else talk (the kind that began with "You're almost a grown man, Mana" and ended with "Do that and you'll become a fine good man one day, son.") he later told Mana to look after his brother and make sure he didn't do anything too loony and didn't get himself offed in some terrible and/or stupid way. With a long suffering sigh that spoke of the infinite patience he'd needed himself to face his many trials and just how much he could simpathise with his oldest son, he also told Mana to be strong in the face of hardship, and then retreated back behind the wall of his beer-and-newspaper (which seemed to last hours, even entire days on weekends).
Mana had, long before that manly, manly talk with his father, always been by his little brother's side (and so he remained ever since then, even during their greatest fight, in seventh grade) ever since their mother had sat Mana in her lap and put the newborn in his arms for the first time and he'd threwn up all over Mana's shirt. It was a matter of principle; as the oldest brother, he got to play with and protect his baby brother, and also to bully him if he got too annoying. Through the good and the bad, Mana would be there.
And Mana was there all along, all through the prank phase in grade 1 that got his little brother in detention nearly every day, to what he couldn't help but refer to as the Name War in grade 6 or 7 - the name students in their school had given to the battle initiated by Mana's wayward brother for the right to sign his official school paperwork with his nickname, 14th, and to be called by that name by teachers and school employees alike. In this, as in everything else (or, well, a lot of things), Mana supported his brother and did his best to help him get what he wanted, through endless discussions with teachers and parents and classmates and even the school's Head, and putting up posters and almost going on strike and making signs and being ready to march in circles at the school gates with those same signs if it ever came down to that.
(eventually, a compromise was reached - the teachers would call him 14th, and he'd be allowed to sign papers and reports and exams with it, but not other stuff, and could he please stop giving speeches and bringing in firefighter brigades in the middle of classes now, please? It was really disrupting the school's working hours).
Nowadays, few people but Mana know his brother as anything else other than "14th". His victory has been so complete Mana himself refers to him by that nickname even in his thoughts. It's somehow infuriating, really. Or mildly annoying, at least.
And perhaps it was this (quite bureaucratic at times) battle so early on in his life that got into Mana the seeds of his desire to become a lawyer that he felt a few years later.
With great marks and an even better memory, coupled with a knack for cracking puzzles and a strange ability to unsettle people if he so chose (a by-product of being the 14th's brother and one that got a lot of practice in living with such a sibling - startling and confusing the 14th was usually the only way to win an argument), Mana did have the job cut out for him. Their parents were more than happy to help when he announced his plans at the end of high school.
However, in his long career as the 14th's brother, Mana never realized until some time later just how much influence he had over his brother. Certainly, he was aware that his little brother deferred to and admired him somewhat, and that he loved Mana (even if sometimes that was hard to believe, and even if the 14th was quite insensitive and selfish and oblivious sometimes) as much as Mana loved him (which was quite a lot, or he wouldn't have put up with all the... hmm, bad stuff he did put up with because of his little brother), and yes, Mana was even aware of his reputation (or rather, status?) as the only one who could calm / reason with / argue AND win / convince / cheer up / understand / support / NOT support / properly scold / overall HANDLE the 14th. There might even have been something like a "14th's keeper" nickname involved at one point.
Yet, despite knowing all this, it still came as a surprise when, after graduating from high school, the 14th followed in Mana's footsteps and enrolled university with the goal to become a lawyer as well.
Part 2
Second part will be posted tomorrow. Or the day after that. Still got some things to check in it.