The characters in the following story are from Air Gear. I claim no rights to them and do not own them.
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In a place that was never quiet, with a light that never went out, there was no sense of time. Akito was once again sitting against the back wall, leaning against the stone surface and staring up into the darkness. He could just make out what looked like support beams, but he had no idea where the ceiling was. He wasn't even sure if it was a roof over his head, or another room. What if he was underground? He had to be beneath something, because he was pretty sure the low thrumming sound of the music was above him…but then again, the music could have been distorted by the echo of the room. He should have tried to get goggle-guy to tell him. Akito closed his eye and let his thoughts wander. He remembered drifting in and out of consciousness quite often, but there was no telling how long he was actually asleep. At least when he was with his brother, he could look out the windows to get a general sense of time. He was really starting to miss the sky… not to mention this little room they were keeping him in smelled terrible.
The boy sighed and listened to the dull hum of the music.
The guard at the door saw the silent sneakers before he actually heard the person who wore them. He was impressed the boy had managed to come down the steps without a single stray noise. Gio looked up from his crouched huddle against the wall to see a leather free Kirin with a tray in his hands.
"I see you've finally decided to ditch your brother's horrible sense of clothes. Jeans and sneakers….much better then -" Gio was silenced by a disapproving look.
"What if the girl associates the leather and stuff with my brother? She's probably afraid of him." He said as he looked towards the door. He exhaled slowly, deciding to keep things on track instead of debating fashion. Gio could make fun of his clothing choice later. Right now, they had to stay focused, ransom the girl, and finish up this mission.
"So. Am I still trying to get info or did you get everything we needed?" he asked his friend. When he didn't receive an answer, he looked at Gio in curious confusion. The goggle wearing brunette had his hands on his head and was staring at the floor.
"She's a freakin' mental ninja. Want to know the information I got from her? She likes birds and ice cream, her favorite colors are blue, green, and yellow, when she bathes she starts by washing her head, and she thinks coffee is boss, whatever the hell that means." He said in frustration as he finally looked up at Kirin. The blonde looked at Gio with a raised eyebrow.
"And you were talking about those things because….."
"I have no freaking idea! One minute I was questioning her about her last address, next thing I knew, the questions had turned to the topic of pickles and peanut butter!"
"….okay….?" Kirin was at a loss for words for a minute there. "You know what? Start from the beginning" He said as he sat down beside Gio and soon the brown haired man was going over the details of his attempt at interrogation.
Akito's head snapped towards the door as the sound of heavy wooden door being pushed open. He watched with a wary eye as a man came in with a tray in his hands and closed the door behind him. Akito couldn't help himself. The caution he should have been taking when he was in such a pathetic state in front of a potential enemy was nowhere to be seen. Now his golden gaze was locked onto the tray and he was unconsciously leaning forward. His face visibly lit up when the man was close enough that the boy could see what was on the tray. A nice big helping of rice! Akito's stomach seemed to be in agreement with him, as it let out an eager grumble once the smell of the food reached him. It wasn't until the form holding the tray actually sat down in front of Akito that the child finally looked at the person. He blinked and tipped his head to the side. The man looked young, though clearly older then himself. His short messy hair was blonde, but it looked like there was just the slightest hint of red mixed in. His eyes were a hazel color and were staring at him with curiosity. He was wearing a zippered hooded jacket that was some shade of dark bluish green with silver zippers running down the center of the jacket as well as edge of the pockets.
It wasn't the same guy who brought the food last time and even more strange was that he apparently was planning to stay for the meal. The man smiled at him, but not a cruel or mocking smile. It was pleasant and almost warm.
"I heard you gave Gio one hell of a time yesterday" the man said. Akito stared at him. Gio? He must have been goggle guy. So that was yesterday?
"So how about this. I'll give you all this rice if you tell me how you managed to put his brain on overload like that" the man continued. His smile was sincere and he seemed nice… but Akito knew better then to take things for face value. Still, he was hungry.
"Two hath more wit than one." came his reply as he locked his eye onto the hazel ones of the man before him and gave his best innocent smile. The man merely raised an eyebrow. He didn't stop Akito when the kid leaned in to eat the food in the same way he had eaten his last meal. Akito was pleasantly surprised when he discovered the rice was actually warm. He was eating so fast the man before him wondered if he was even breathing between gulps of food. The rice was gone in the blink of an eye and the man watched as the child licked the bowl clean. He waited a while longer before he began to speak again.
"What's your name? I don't want to keep calling you 'kid' every time I see you." He asked lightheartedly as he leaned his cheek against his hand, elbow planted securely on his knee. Akito looked up and straightened himself. He seemed to hesitate a moment before finally speaking.
"… Akito."
"Akito? That's a nice name. You can call me Kirin." Kirin reached out a hand towards Akito, who immediately tracked the appendage with suspicion in his eye. He slowly started to pull away but the hand still landed on his head and gently ruffled his blue hair. Akito furrowed his brow and gave Kirin a confused look. The blonde pulled his hand back and smiled.
"Don't worry. Really, I'm not going to hurt you." Kirin offered. Akito held a faint smile.
"The fox will tell the crow what she wants to hear, in hopes of a bounty dropped."
Kirin blinked in surprise. It was clear now why Gio had difficulty in getting information out of her. The girl sitting before him didn't look like much, especially now after days in this prison, but she wasn't just some stuck up brainless aristocrat. Gio truly was no match for her wit.
"Tell me about yourself." Kirin was honestly curious now. The child was staring at him blankly and did not say a word. "Well fine. Should I tell you about me then?" He asked. Again, not a single thing passed through the child's lips. Kirin sighed and moved himself so he was leaning against the wall beside Akito.
"Let's see… how about I tell you the time I found this cat stuck up in a tree? It was a pitch black little scrap of fur and kept crying, 'meow meow meow'. I felt bad for it, stuck there without any way to get down, so I decided to climb the tree to help. My brother yelled at me once he came out and saw me halfway up the trunk of the tree. I tried to explain to him that the cat needed my help, but Nian was stubborn even when he was 10. He told me I was being stupid and I was going to get hurt, but that didn't stop me. When I finally reached the cat, I held out my hand… and the little bastard scratched me." Kirin laughed just the slightest bit. "Turns out it didn't need my help after all. The cat scampered down the trunk of the tree and dashed off into the alley. Next thing I know is I'm falling through open air. The branch I was on snapped. I woke up the next day in the hospital with a broken leg and my brother leaning over me scared shitless. Leave it to him to start lecturing me and saying 'I told you' when I'm injured" Kirin chuckled again at the memory. When he turned to look at Akito, he was disappointed to see the kid's eye locked on the wall with a face devoid of any emotion.
"No comments? No questions?" He asked, tipping his head to the side and forcing a smile onto his face. Again, Akito stayed quiet, like he hadn't even heard him.
"You can't even give me a single little story about your life? Not even about what your favorite ice cream flavor is or something?" Kirin asked. He didn't care what the kid talked about at this point, just as long as she spoke. When Gio had been telling him about their talk, he gave the impression the girl wasn't this guarded. After a stretch of time, he was starting to lose any hope of getting her to talk again.
"A little knowledge is apt to puff up, and make men giddy…" Akito finally said. Kirin turned towards Akito, though the child hadn't shifted at all. He grinned at her.
"But a greater share of it will set them right, and bring them to low and humble thoughts of themselves." Now it was Akito who wore a look of shock and instantly he was facing Kirin. He smiled, for the first time a genuine smile, at the blonde haired man.
"There we go. A real smile at last. I bet a girl like you can get all the boys at school right?" He asked. Akito blinked in surprise and his cheeks tinged with pink, though for a different reason then Kirin suspected.
"Um…I.." Akito started, suppressing the smile that was trying to come to the surface. He couldn't help it. Another voice inside his head was barking like mad about wanting to carve his road into this guy and send him to the hospital so he can learn the difference between a man and a woman.
Kirin looked at Akito curiously, trying hard but failing completely in his attempts to read that expression. "Yeah?" He pressed.
"I'm not…" He looked up at Kirin, about to tell him the truth when something else came to his attention. This was much more important at the moment. "I have to go to the bathroom." He said before he quickly got up and made his way to the corner. He kept his back to Kirin and faced the corner, leaning over and gripping the skirt in his mouth before gently lifting it up. The last thing he wanted to do was get his clothes messed up even more than they already were. Well, on the bright side, at least he only had to pee right now. It was terribly awkward when he had to do more.
Kirin looked away. That explained the smell.
Gio glanced through the opening in the door. He'd been listening in, but couldn't really make out much of the mumbling he heard through the wall. He could tell Kirin was doing most of the talking though, he got that much. As he looked in he was honestly surprised to see the blonde sitting beside the girl. He managed to make her laugh, and not one of those fake laughs, but a real one. He watched as Kirin stood up and waved goodbye to the little angel, promising that he'd bring her dinner later. Gio raised an eyebrow. Clearly he didn't get the information they needed either if he was going to talk to her again.
As the door opened, Gio folded his arms and looked expectantly at Kirin.
"I told you right? She completely messes with your mind when you talk to her." Kirin merely smiled at Gio and shook his head.
"I didn't think so. You just don't know how to understand a metaphor when you hear one" Kirin said with a snigger. "Honestly, once I got over the first wall, it wasn't too bad at all. Actually, I think I might have impressed her." Kirin said as he looked towards the door that held Akito.
"Whatever, impressing the prisoner doesn't get answers. What did you learn?" Gio pressed. He felt like Kirin had insulted him earlier, but he had no real defense against it. That and he was eager to annoy Nian by holding information the elder Shou sibling lacked over his head.
"Her name is Akito. She wouldn't tell me her last name, and any time I even tried to press her to tell me, she'd close up. She's smart, so she probably knows we can use her name to track down what we really want to know. Still, we can at least run the name Akito through the system. See what comes up." Kirin said calmly. Gio waited for Kirin to continue, but he didn't.
"And? What else did you learn?" He finally asked. Kirin scratched the back of his head, hiding the blush.
"That's it. I did most of the talking. I thought if I told her stories that she'd loosen up, but…" Kirin trailed off. It would take time to build trust between them, no matter how fake the trust would be. Gio sighed.
"Fine fine. You play guard. I'm going to give the name to the techs and see what they dig up" he said before he headed upstairs.
In the dark room, Akito watched Kirin leave. Akito had originally decided he would be silent until he and Agito figured out a way to escape from here, but Kirin was sharper than the goggle guy. Akito had tried to trip him up early on, but Kirin didn't question his choice of words. Akito had tried to derail the initial conversation, giving Kirin something he could think about, but the blonde had apparently understood exactly what Akito had meant and even supplied the second half of the phrase. Again Akito was surprised when he started talking about himself. He had thought for sure that the man was trying to pull him for information, but whenever Akito felt like he was being pressed for information, all he had to do was look away and Kirin picked up the conversation right where he left off.
'Akito, he's trying to gain our trust.'
"I know Agito… but it's nice to have someone to talk to. Don't worry. We won't let anything important slip." Akito replied quietly to his inner thoughts.
'….yeah, well I still don't like the dumbass'
"You're only saying that because he called us a girl" Akito chuckled. That reminded him, he forgot to correct Kirin about that.
'Well, if you HAVE to talk to him, at least try to get something useful out of him.'
Akito nodded, still smiling. Agito helped make this whole ordeal bearable. It was a nice comfort to know he was never truly alone.
Akito looked up to see Kirin coming in with another tray. He smiled. Not only was getting food always good, but it would help him keep tabs on how much time was passing. He knew it had been at LEAST three days since his arrival here. The only thing that worried him was if it had been more than three days, just how many more? He didn't want to worry Ikki but more importantly he couldn't put Ikki and his friends at risk.
Akito looked at Kirin with an unreadable expression. No, he was not going to give him any information that could put his friends in danger.
Kirin once again sat down in front of Akito, placing the tray on the ground and waiting patiently as the child devoured it all. He watched with mild amusement as Akito literally licked the plate clean once the fish was gone and never once lifted her mouth from the broth until the bowl was empty. Akito sighed and leaned back against the wall with the smallest trace of a smile. It hadn't been a huge meal, but it was more than Akito had had the past few days. Kirin moved so he was leaning against the wall beside the eye patched child and just sat there for awhile in silence. He glanced at the kid out of the corner of his eyes and noted that her eye was closed at the moment. It didn't last long for with the slightest twist of the head, the golden eye was trained on him, waiting. The gaze was once again guarded. Kirin sighed and started talking. He told Akito a story about how he and his brother were dared to steal from the corner store when they were in grade school. They had been so nervous about being caught, they had just grabbed the first thing they saw and returned to the one that had issued the dare. Kirin had stolen a bag of lemonheads candy while Nian had stolen a lacy pink thong. The kid who dared them was laughing so hard about Nian's choice in undergarments that he attracted the attention of the shop owner. The kid took the blame for the theft. When Kirin questioned him about it the next day, the kid said they would have made a clean get away with their women's panties if it weren't for him, so of course he took the blame. Gio and Kirin were best friends ever since.
Akito smiled. "Does your brother still have them?" He asked curiously. Kirin raised an eyebrow.
"Does he still have what?"
"The panties."
Kirin chuckled and ruffled the kid's hair again. "Actually…yeah. He does."
Akito smiled and bit back laughter as well. Agito was whispering to him that this Nian guy probably wore the thong too. After another few stories, most of them about Nian and Kirin, Kirin left again. Akito was left to his thoughts.
"Hey Agito… Kirin and his brother seem really close" he stated quietly to the empty room.
'… Yeah,' was all Agito said. He knew Akito was thinking about Kaito. When it came to their brother, Agito didn't know what to think. They both loved Kaito in a family way, but … but what? Agito couldn't finish the thought. Kaito made him angry. The last few times they met, it hadn't exactly been a pleasant reunion. Sure Kaito had let him go after finding him in the trailer, but the time before had left his clothes in ruins thanks to all the bullet holes. Was that how brothers were supposed to be though? Kaito was so confusing.
When Kirin came back with dinner the next night, he was surprised when Akito didn't dig into the food immediately. He was even more surprised when Akito looked away and asked him a question right off the bat.
"Kirin… how is a brother… how do you know if someone is your brother?" he asked carefully. Kirin stared, noticing the look on Akito's face as if the kid was deeply pondering something. He tilted his head and tried to think of a good answer. This was the first time Akito had started the conversation.
"Well … a brother usually shares your flesh and blood. Same parents. Not always, but usually. He tries to protect you and you try to protect him." He wondered if that was what Akito was looking for. Akito looked up at him.
"What if you fight? That isn't being very protective." He asked, tone serious. Kirin merely nodded.
"Well yeah, you're going to fight. No relationship is perfect. Besides, sometimes it's a good thing to get all that aggression out once and awhile." Kirin looked over at Akito, who seemed to be processing his words. Soon enough the kid's face was in the food, so his explanation must have been suitable. He sighed and shook his head.
Once Akito was finished with the fish and broth he leaned against the wall and sat quietly, as usual. Kirin wasn't going to let him get away with pretending the brother questions didn't happen though.
"Alright Akito. What were the questions about huh? Do you have a brother?" He asked with a raised eyebrow. "You must have asked those questions for a reason." He concluded.
Akito rolled his head to the side so he was looking at Kirin.
"Is a brother supposed to be forgiving? No matter what happens?" He asked suddenly. Kirin blinked at the kid. Did Akito even hear his questions? Kirin slowly exhaled and nodded.
"I guess. I'd stand by my brother no matter what he did. I don't always agree with his actions and he doesn't always agree with mine, but after everything is said and done, we're still family."
Again Akito seemed to be thinking the words over.
"Have you ever been afraid of your brother?" Kirin thought for a moment, before he finally nodded.
"I guess I have. He's acted out before. Sometimes I don't even recognize him." He sighed at that bit, shaking his head with a frown as memories flooded him. He glanced at Akito's pensive face. The kid was quiet after that. Honestly it looked like she was debating something in her head. They sat in silence for awhile, each digesting what they had learned. Kirin was positive now that Akito had a brother.
"Tell me about him. Did you do something you think he won't forgive you for or something?" He asked, looking at Akito with an encouraging smile.
Akito blinked and thought a moment.
"Honestly, that question was more for me. I wanted to know if I should be forgiving. I thought I should be, but you've helped me be surer of it. Like you said, brothers are supposed to forgive each other. " He said softly.
Kirin looked Akito over again. "Brothers? You have more than one?"
Akito chuckled. "Silly, I'M the other brother."
Kirin just stared. Then he stared some more. He tried to speak, but words failed him. Akito was a boy. Was she…he…sure? Of course she, no HE was. He shook his head and organized his thoughts. Alright. This was fine. Akito was a boy, now he just had to question her… him… about her his brother and they could go from there.
"Why are you wearing a dress if you're a boy?" Damn it. That wasn't the question he was supposed to ask.
Akito giggled. "I wore it for a play. I'm playing the princess"
Kirin stared at Akito a moment longer. Realization suddenly dawned on his face as he stood up and headed for the door. Akito was nervous. Did he say something dangerous? No. All he revealed was his gender and that he was in a play. That wouldn't lead them to his friends. He returned his attention to Kirin's retreating back and stared at the door as it closed.
As soon as the door was closed, Kirin marched straight over to Gio who had claimed residence in the corner, snoozing away. Kirin kicked the sleeper's leg which caused the brunette to look up at him.
"I was guarding still. Swears." He said, though he didn't seem to keen on making his plea believable.
"Gio, Akito is a boy."
Gio snapped to attention. "What? Then why the hell was she wearing a dress every time we saw her?" He asked as he stood up and yawned.
"Apparently she's... HE'S in a play. He's pretending to be a princess." Kirin replied, waiting for the words to sink in. They didn't.
"Gio. Akito might not come from a wealthy family. This could all be for nothing. The butler we saw, the aristocrats, the elaborate decorations. It was for a play." He spelled it out for his goggle wearing friend and at last Gio realized what the problem was.
"Shit. No, we don't have to give up yet. We still don't know anything about the girl"
"Boy"
"Whatever. She could still have money. Keep talking to her." Gio shook his head and groaned. He hoped that kid came from money. They couldn't go back to their boss completely empty handed. They couldn't and wouldn't.
For Akito's sake, Gio hoped the kid had money.
