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bonnefoisTitle: Love & Mathematics
Series: FE 9 AU
Rating: PG-13. Rating may change in latter parts.
Character/Pairing: in this part Ike/Soren preslash and Boyd/Mist, Sephiran/Zelgius in the prologue.
Word count: 7569
A/N: this all began some time ago (January 08, according to the file itself) when certain forum-goers calling Soren an “emo-kid”. I wanted fanart of quarterback!Ike x emokid!Soren for lulz factor, but lack actual art skills, so this occurred.
As for characterization, this is au. Quite au. I tried to keep it intact, but it slightly veers off from POR, as Greil doesn’t die here, Ike more resembles what he was in the earlier chapters. Soren was taken in at an earlier age.
Happy birthday + Christmas, Ammy!
Prologue:
I. Photographs
Pictures could tell so much about a family. Over the walls of their apartment was a story told in stages.
The first was a wedding picture, white flowers in her bluish hair. Her face was lifted up, smiling so serene, as if she had never felt a happiness as deep or as encompassing as this moment. The next was the same woman as a young mother, a contented smile as she rocked her child. The third picture was a far less comforting one, two children sit with only their father. His face looked aged, weary. The children looked confused. There is a gaping hole where the mother had once been in the picture.
In pictures after this, more people appeared. A red haired woman, a priest, a college student dramatist and his brothers. A red haired man with a ponytail and a dusty blond man, neither of which often came into pictures, they were usually seen to the side. A boy with black hair. In every picture after that both the boys clung together, the blue eyed one pulling the scrawny boy with the drawn, grimacing face into the circle of their family.
One photo had been snapped on a snowy day. Two children were bundled up so tight in snow pants and coats that almost the only way to tell them apart was color coding.
Their mother was behind them, looking on with a contented smile upon her face.
--
“Stay close to me, Ike,” his mother said. “No running off now.”
And Ike had intended to. If a movement hadn’t caught his eye – something small and black, a dog? A puppy? – he would’ve stayed there just like his mother had ordered. Not holding hands, like Mist insisted because he was bigger than her and too old to hold hands at the supermarket.
He disappeared from the front of the shop and went out the door (the bell made the same dinging sound that delighted Mist.
Ike peeked into the nearby alley where the black shadow had gone down.
“Puppy? Here puppy puppy...” He called.
There was no whimpering or barks, but he was still sure that he’d seen something there. Was the puppy hurt? Maybe it was starving and maybe his father wound even let him keep it. The thought of a puppy cast aside the last of his fear and his mother’s commands and warnings as he ran down to where the black shape had gone.
Midway through was a pile of rags that looked like trash, but moved. He poked the pile, and heard an exhale and a gasp. Not a bark or whimper. A boy his age looked back at him. The eyes were red, not blue or brown or green. There was a mark on his forehead in a strange symbol, it looked like a wound, like it had been cut or branded into him.
The boy was just his age. This lessened the initial disappointment at when he realized there was no puppy. Having someone to play with was probably just as good as a puppy. Probably.
The boy shivered and clung to the rags about him.
“Are you cold?” Ike said. “Don’t you have a coat?”
The boy shivered, but whether from cold or fear it was hard to tell.
Ike tried to unzip the coat, but found the zipper stuck. He tried pulling several times until finally he gaze up.
He pulled out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich his mother had packed him, and the boy stared at him, and then at the sandwich in quick jerky movements.
Ike didn’t ask, but just broke his sandwich in half, though the parts were unequal, he even offered the boy the larger half.
The boy stared at the food, much like a wild cat he’d once seen his mother trying to tame. Eventually, hunger won over and the boy grabbed at the sandwich and stuffed it in his mouth. When he had finished with that piece, the boy stared at the second with such longing that even Ike couldn’t keep it, and he was hungry.
“Oh man, mother’s going to be mad–” Ike said.
The boy looked down and began to shiver again.
“You could come with us, mom might have more food,” Ike said.
The boy shook his head, the first hint at any form of response.
Ike sat down by the boy. At first he drew back, but after a few tense moments, he relaxed slightly into the warmth of another body, even one mummified in a large coat.
When his mother came outside, harried and anxious to find him, Ike was nestled beside the trembling boy.
--
Little boys weren’t like puppies. They couldn’t just be taken home and kept when it was obvious they belonged to no one. The boy had cigarette burns on his arms and legs. The soles of his feet were flecked with gravel and glass. His ribs showed through like some metal framework, and Greil suspected that he was deeply dehydrated and who could tell when the boy had last ate? He had been on the verge of death when Ike found him. Any longer and he would’ve just been a nameless body in the gutter.
After a bath (which he’d only been persuaded to when Ike had jumped in too) and some food, they took him to the doctor.
Through the trip Ike kept asking Can we keep him? He can stay in my room and I promise I’ll take good care of him—
No matter how many times Greil tried to explain it didn’t quite work that way, Ike was too young to understand. Ike kept waiting outside for the boy. The doctor called a social worker, and the boy disappeared in another room. Ike went home, but kept asking, kept waiting.
Aren’t we going to come back for him? Like when Scruffy had to go to the vet, right, father?
--
Sephiran intercepted the paper before it reached the office. He was good at such things. The caseworker surely had plenty to work on her own, it was easy to lose children in the system. Too easy.
No matter how much time passed, Sephiran was never dulled to the cases he found. Children rescued from lives that no one would believe, for they were that nightmarish. They were beyond the scope of horror most humans could conceive.
And this child was a reminder of how tragic things could get.
He was around five, his hair was coal-black and matted with tangles. His eyes were blank, lifeless shade of red that stared out at the world as if it didn’t exist around him. Was he autistic, Sephiran wondered. Or was it whatever trauma he’d endured had left him buried within himself.
“Soren,” he said in a soft, gentle voice as not to scare him. “Do you remember me?”
The boy did not respond to him, or even acknowledge his presence. The boy seemed empty and disembodied; frozen in the same blank stare.
“Are you hungry?” he said in the same soothing voice.
Soren simply didn’t hear. Whatever world he lived in, it was far from here. Sephiran wondered if it was truly autism or perhaps the more likely case scenario that he had been abused and cast aside. To think, a child cast away like yesterday’s refuse simply because he did not live up to some crazed expectation.
To think, such a thing was such a commonplace.
Sephiran patted him on the top of the head, but he drew back and for the first time, acknowledged his presence. The boy drew back from him.
“I see,” Sephiran said. “Tell me, the boy who found you, was his name Ike?”
Soren said nothing, but there was a hair’s breadth of a reaction.
“I see, Gawain’s son...” Sephiran said.
“Let’s fix this, shall we?” He took up Soren’s hand and led him to the outside. A black car was already waiting.
“You’re always so prompt, Zelgius,” Sephiran said.
“Anything for you, master,” Zelgius said.
Sephiran smiled. Zelgius was always so obedient, and oh, it did have its uses.
–
As days and weeks passed, Greil thought it would fade into a young boy’s memory. He thought that Ike would find some other thing to catch his attention, but still it remained. Ike kept asking about the little red-eyed boy he’d found. The one he’d begged to take home with him. Ike did not forget the boy he’d found. He’d laid claim to that boy, and no matter how many times Greil explained that he could not simply take Soren home like they had brought home Scruffy the mutt from the pound. It just did not work that way.
And Greil just couldn’t explain that there was paperwork involved, that people sometimes had years of waiting before they could adopt a child. You couldn’t simply pick up a boy and take him into your home these days. Even if he was starving and with marks that couldn’t be anything other than cigarette burns.
Even through the greater tragedy of losing their mother, a tragedy that both were too young to entirely understand, Ike did not forget. Now the questions of where was mother were simply added to the questions of where the boy was. Greil was too weary for these constant questions. Each one was a life lesson, one that Ike was far too young to be exposed to the cruelty of.
Ike persisted up until one day when Greil heard a knock at his door. It was growing late, Mist was still pushing about her vegetables and Ike had already had seconds.
Most would’ve not seen the significance of the robes, but Greil had seen such robes before in the court of a crazed dictator A monk of the Sienna order, one dedicated to world peace, and the establishment thereof. His hair fell down his back, unswept and untied. His face was effeminate and looked as if carved of marble. Many could have been fooled by the serene innocence he exuded, but Greil had seen too much of the world to be fooled by such a play.
Beside him was the same boy Ike had found three weeks ago.
“You were the ones who found him, were you not?” The man said.
“My son, actually,” Greil replied.
“Ah, then that’s the ‘Ike’ who was mentioned.”
Sephiran touched Soren on the arm, and Soren drew away. “Soren doesn’t trust anyone it. The only thing to bring him out of his shell has been mentions of the boy who found him. Your boy.”
Greil looked down at the stray who had come in with the man. The boy was still just as boney and scraggly as the day Ike had found him.
“I think he’d be happier here with you,” Sephiran said. His voice was smooth and low, hypnotic in its symmetry.
“Excuse me but is this even legal? Isn’t there paperwork and proceedings and–”
“We all keep secrets, don’t we...General Gawain?” Sephiran said.
Greil’s mouth went dry at the sound of a name he’d left behind with his past life. The smile never left the monk’s face. It was calm, and yet held a tinge of knowing; an unidentified smugness.
“I suppose I could respect the law and let this little one go back. Who knows what foster care he will be put into, But since you’re such a law abiding citizen—”
“I’ll take him,” Greil interrupted. His voice was gruff, rougher than he’d meant to be. Soren looked up with a bit of worry.
“Good,” Sephiran said. “I’ve already drawn up the papers. All you need to do is sign.”
Greil took the papers. Always have a lawyer nearby when you sign a contract. Greil was a warrior, no law student but he signed regardless, perhaps it was an error, even a grave one but a boy’s life was at stake. With that, the consequences didn’t matter.
“Remember General Gawain,” Sephiran said softly. “I was never here.”
Sephiran patted Soren’s shoulder once before he left. The door shut quiet behind him, like a flutter of silk in the wind.
“You brought him back!” Ike said.
“Bunny eyes!” Mist cried.
Soren shrunk back behind Ike.
“It’s ok, it’s just Mist. She’s only scary sometimes”
Mist huffed and frowned. She crossed her tiny arms “Brother, you’re awful!”
“See what I mean?”
Soren made a sound at the back of his throat, a whimper. Syllables, words fell from his lips. They were incomprehensible, and yet there. His eyes were focused completely on Ike, and he clung to the other boy’s hand, so tight, so very tight. Ike threw his arms around the other boy and for the first time since he’d been there, Soren relaxed.
–
Sephiran could disappear into the night, almost as if it was the essence of him, his innate being. He felt the cool air about him, like a cloak, a shroud. He raised the cell phone and selected the second saved number. Learning technology was never easy for him. Sephiran preferred the feel of nature. If necessity did not demand such things, he would probably live the life of a pure ascetic.
“It’s done, Zelgius,” he said.
He closed the cell phone as the call ended. Zelgius was always brief in phone conversations. He never bothered with any superfluous words even when they were alone together.
Bodies said so much more than words could. Words were more a thing of lying, besides. Sephiran had spent enough time
A boy, a mystery, the mark of a king. How interesting things were as they progressed. All heaven’s ways were fair and just and meant, but that didn’t mean one couldn’t help heaven along a little.
Sephiran walked out into the night as if he belonged to it.
---
With those papers, Soren became a member of the family. He moved into Ike’s room and Greil doubted that Soren would be able to sleep in any other place. Soren was still restrained and he warned his children that he might never be as open as the others had been, that he might never recover.
It would be months until Soren stopped freezing in terror, during the night, until he would start opening up and speaking. Even then he would be bitter and cynical, the traces of scars still deep on him.
But he was home, and he was theirs.
Part One:
I. Good Morning, Crimea
Within the dusty, cluttered attic many pictures were hidden away. Deep in photo albums or set aside in boxes, whatever places they called home. Elena had been fond of them and Greil had carried on that fondness. As the family grew, so did the size of those albums. Through the years they showed a progression, a timeline of the newest addition. From two children, there was now three. And the boys were never apart. They were almost symbiotic, neither seeming to survive without the influence of the other – especially Soren. Here, Ike had his arm thrown over Soren’s shoulder, there Ike pulled Soren back into the range of the viewfinder.
And so it went. Through elementary school and baseball practices, for spelling bee championships and scholarship awards. All up until Senior year.
Now Ike was quite a bit taller than Soren. In this picture, he was in a football jersey. Black was under his eyes and a helmet in his hands. Looking back, shiny dark hair glinting was Soren. Ike squinted, Soren frowned and neither even attempted to smile.
They never had gotten the hang of smiling down.
--
Dawn came in light shades of grey. Light came to the sleepy streets of Crimea gently, then the colors started. Muted pinks and white strands of clouds and lightness. Along with it came the first sounds of morning: birds sang, motors rumbled and dogs barked. Papers hit the front steps and bike wheels spun away.
To someone like Ike, these noises were meaningless, but to a light sleeper like Sonen, they were as loud as if the alarm had gone off early. Soren did not fight the early waking. It meant he got first shower. He slipped down more softly than he needed, considering that Ike could easily sleep through the harshest of storms, and his footsteps weren’t going to even make him stir in the least.
Soren looked back for a moment at the sleeping lump under the covers. He tiptoed out with the same unnecessary quietness and closed the door silently behind him.
The Greil Apartments was a small establishment located just outside the city limits of Crimea. It was quaint, almost ideal. The house had at one time been a decrepit Victorian style house. Greil and Elena had rescued it and slowly brought it back to life. Rotted timber was replaced. The roof and several walls were replaced, yellowed, molding wallpaper was stripped down and new paint and wallpaper was applied.
Each room was decorated differently. Titiana’s was austere white with pink curtains, Oscar’s was moss green. By some cruel act of fate (or possibly a sign of Greil’s subtle sense of humor) Shinion and Gatrie got the room with the floral print wallpaper. There was always room for others, but Greil was strict with his tenets. He ran the place like a commander ran his army, and demanded just such standards on whoever would live within his doors.
At the last door at the end of the hall, two rooms away from the bathroom and four rooms away from Greil’s own room, lived the boys. There were pictures of football stars, a homemade poster of the periodic tables after science proved to really not be Ike’s strongest class. The top bunk was already made, neat enough to pass military inspection, the room was mostly well kept, as Soren would stand for nothing else.
The alarm clock flashed brilliant teal in the grey morning. 6:57, 6:58, 6:59—
Gooooooood morning everyone! This is 9.69 THNX FM, Crimea’s best rock hits, and this is the early show with Ranulf and Janaff!
The radio droned on as background noise. Soren clutched at the bunched up corner of his towel, his hair hung loose and still a little wet, dripping cold down his back. Usually he’d be clad in a large, thick black and gold robe that covered every inch of skin and made him look like some long-lost Franciscan monk. However, there had been tragic mixup with color loads had happened when Mist took on the laundry that week and now it was a lovely faded out grey color with pink splotches.
“Ike. It’s morning.”
The bump under the covers didn’t even stir.
“I saved you some hot water. If you don’t hurry, Boyd will use it all up.”
The bump groaned slightly and turned over to face the wall.
“Ike,” Soren pushed against the lump under the bedcovers. “You’ll be late for school if you keep it up.”
Ike groaned and shifted back under the covers.
“If you don’t get up soon, you’ll miss breakfast,” Soren said, ever prepared and always with a plan at hand.
This got the covers thrown off in a second. Hot water was negotiable, but food certainly wasn’t. Ike sat up and blinked blearily into the new daylight.
Soren’s hair dripped wet down his back and to the floor.
“Ike, I can’t change with you here.”
“Why not? You seem to be ok with watching me change,” Ike said.
Soren flushed, which in itself was faint. In that way even his embarrassment was restrained.
“.....Ike. Shower. Now.”
Ike groaned and pulled himself from the warm covers and out into the far cooler day.
–
Morning went all too fast, breakfast was taken on the run. If he dared even think of missing breakfast, Soren would glare at him and then go on in detail how the body reacted without food, in the most scientific way possible. There was just no arguing with Soren when it came to these things. Not that Ike was one to ever go without food willingly. If after being bludgeoned with science, they’d missed the cafeteria and the shops on the way were too crowded, Soren would secure a hall-pass and convince the lunch ladies to give up some of the breakfast scraps. Soren could be highly persuasive when he wanted to, especially if it involved Ike.
Considering that he was the reigning, obvious valedictorian and single-handedly kept the school’s overall grade point average, there was very little Soren couldn’t get away with. Had he joined a cult and started recruiting other students or gone in full drag he still would’ve been the principal’s darling.
There was just one blemish on his perfect record. Soren had a flawless report card, the very lowest being an A- in history where the teacher took offence to being corrected, and showed that spite by giving the indomitable grade of an A- he was top mark in everything... all except for gym, which was teetering closer and closer to a F every day.
Soren had tried every humanly possible method of skipping gym. And he’d yet to find a way to escape it. Short of becoming paralyzed, seriously maimed or coming down with some rare disease, there wasn’t a chance of him getting out of it.
He’d tried offering to help teachers during that period, pointing out that he was fine with his lack of muscle tone, even promising to take on a variety of yoga or light martial arts to make up the difference when out of school. He offered to do volunteer work, tutor children in the inner cities, hell, he’d even rather clean the men’s bathroom. But it was all to no avail, as gym was mandatory.
So it was that each class was a countdown to the inevitability of gym, that Soren was about as fond of as death and taxes – and even that was inaccurate, for he’d been filing the taxes for the family since he was fifteen and on one very desperate Spring Break where Ike had gone off to a Football Thing. Soren had taken a red pen to store signs and manically corrected grammar issues. In the end he’d even managed to teach himself how to file taxes and now Greil even paid him for the chore. It would be more fitting to say that gym class was right up there with getting bamboo shoots shoved up his fingernails.
Soren sighed as he stripped down to the blue shorts and white shirt that made up the gym uniform. It wasn’t merely gym class that he hated: the male bonding (and teasing) in the changing rooms certainly didn’t help. Especially as he was prone to being whipped with towels or otherwise tormented when Ike wasn’t there.
Boyd, now partly dressed, leaned on a corner gym locker. Mist had once attempted to bribe for cellphone pictures of the men’s locker room. Soren had adamantly refused, even when she tried to bargain it to ‘top half of Boyd only.’
“What is it you want, Boyd? You don’t hang around here unless you want something,” Soren said pointedly. Or if he was waiting for Ike. But Ike was just across the room, so that certainly wasn’t the issue.
“Soren. Ilyana is getting better grades in gym than you. Ilyana.. She faints and has to be taken in to the nurse’s office half the time,” Boyd said.
“It hardly counts. They tied a sandwich up on the top of the rope. Of course she’s going to climb it,” Soren muttered.
“Yeah, but what would they tie up there for Soren? A textbook?”
Soren took a pointed look at Ike, who had just pulled off his shirt.
Their Gym teacher was Largo. He’d been a great football player back in the day before he lost his arm in a tragic tiger lifting accident.
Person by person went up the rope. Soren hated them all. Well, to be fair he hated them all already, but their gym prowess certainly didn’t add any points to their favor. He watched with discontent and a bit of dread as they piled down. It wasn’t just his imagination that Coach Largo left him for dead last.
Largo blew the whistle. “Alright, now it’s Soren’s turn.”
It might as well have been a mountain. Soren took a deep breath, looked back at Ike, who gave him a reassuring nod.
He pulled himself up the first and kicked wildly, feeling the same sickening loss of the solid ground beneath him. The rope burned his fingers, he used every fiber of strength to pull himself. He did it again, and again....
Soren wasn’t even halfway. He wasn’t even close to halfway. He was at the second knot. Already his hands were burning. His muscles were screaming. He wondered if he could legitimately claim fear of heights to keep him from this horrid torture device ever again.
“I’d like to leave gym sometime before my fiftieth birthday,” drawled one of the boys, eliciting laughter from the rest of the group.
Largo sighed. Soren knew that sound, it was the sound of a teacher giving up on a hopeless student.
“Alright, that’s close enough. Everyone, hit the showers!”
Gym itself wasn’t bad enough. After gym, there were showers. Public showers that involved a room full of naked men. Showers where he would have to undress and actually shower in a room full of naked men, including Ike. Who would also be naked. Naked Ike.
Soren studied the floor tiles as if they were the most fascinating design he’d ever seen and took the closest shower to the exit.
“If it bothers you that much, Soren, maybe you should go shower with the girls.”
Several boys laughed. They exchanged high-fives and knuckle-bumps.
“Of course, just put his hair in some cute pigtails, they’d never notice the difference!”
Soren ignored them as they continued on, he was used to the day by day teasing. It was easy to get through with the simple mental vision of them all as feces flinging monkeys. Considering their test scores, that might not be that far off – or even an insult to the primates.
And then Ike came in the room. Soren didn’t even have to look up to know that it was his footsteps over the tiles. The laughter quieted to quiet, nervous chuckles as the rest of the warily eyed Ike.
Ike cleared his throat. “If you have anything to say, say it to me.”
Soren stared at the tiles in front of him, Ike moved to the shower closest to him.
“You ok? They didn’t do anything to you, did they?”
Soren closed his eyes tight. “I’m fine, Ike.”
He reached up for the soap and rubbed it into a lather, and focused hard on the wall tiles in front of him.
I won’t look, won’t look, won’t–
Even without his glasses, Ike’s body was close enough to make out the details, the shape of muscles, bare skin...
Soren turned the knob to pure cold and stifled a gasp as the water hit him.
–
Several years back, the bullying had been far worse. Soren resolved to keep quiet, after all what were a few bruises in the long run? He withstood their teasing with a silent martyrdom even as anger flowed under the surface of his skin, looking for any outlet to escape and burn free.
The bruises spread out like inkblots over his body. His skin remembered all too well what it felt like, and with it came a rush of the same inferiority; their taunting words brought back other words, phrases and lingered within him.
Perhaps it was a sick notion: believing that he deserved this punishment, hiding his bruises and pain away from Ike, lest he realize what a pathetic person he really was and turn away. Soren hid it well, having done so for many years as a child. He hid everything then, his voice, his feelings, his very life until Ike had found him. And it went well, for Soren was good at hiding things – until the day he came home with a black eye.
To Ike’s credit, he didn’t break bones. They looked far worse than he when the fight was finished, and some of them were several grades higher. From that moment on Ike had carved out his place in the hierarchy of the school. And he had made it clear that no one was to lay a hand on Soren, ever. Not unless they wanted a new assortment of bruises for their skin; like unwelcome tattoos that faded, but weren’t forgotten.
While Greil– and the school – had demanded an explanation, Ike had looked up blank, stolid. His face resembled Soren’s expressions more than his own. He made no excuses, and merely explained what Soren had been hiding.
Greil accepted and understood, but that didn’t make the punishment any less severe.
He was grounded for weeks, which Soren felt horribly about. However, Ike took it without a trace of resentment. Soren had been in danger, and he had protected him. That was all. If it resulted in weeks of him being imprisoned, far away from ball games and the sun outside, then so be it.
Soren kept him company through those days. He did not think that they could get closer, that their bond could go deeper, but somehow it did. Ike had protected him, kept him safe. Near Ike was a sort of warmth and protection that he feared to touch lest he be burnt, yet he felt too compelled to ever abandon.
After that, in school the bullies kept their distance and stuck to making only teasing remarks. As long as he was by Ike’s side, nothing would hurt him.
—
Calil’s hair was pulled back in a chignon side-bun. She was Stylish, with a capital S. her lips were a ruby red and every hair was perfectly arranged, beat back into place with clouds of hairspray to should any strand ever even dream of getting out of place. She may have been just a science teacher, but she had panache , a taste for haute couture, it was rumored that even her labcoats were made by Gucci.
She was also married to the gym teacher, and had an adopted child named Amy just going into preschool. (“Ruin this figure with childbirth? You’ve got to be kidding me”) But those were usually postscripts to her glamor.
She was a strict teacher, though an effective one.
An explosion from the side of the room caught her attention.
“Tormod, that’s the third vial you’ve ruined this month.”
He smiled sheepishly.
“Soooorry, teach,”
Calil sighed. “Clean it up already.”
“The rest of you, wash up. The Bard’s class is up next. I hope you have your Ye Olde Moderne Tongue dictionaries to make sense of what he’s saying.”
––
Soren hung around after school had finished. He figured that he could attend to his homework in the duller parts – aka the parts that did not in any way contain Ike. Overall, Soren was not a sports fan. He had no interest in the game, physical sports of any kind confused, bored and irritated him him. And playing them was out of the question. However, Ike was there, and thus it made all the difference in whether he spent his time in the libraries or the mystical game wherein men wore tights and reveled in their manliness. (Soren had once seriously analyzed the game, taking apart the infrastructure to try and calculate why it held such fascination for so many people. He still couldn’t find the enjoyment, thinking only that it must be an evolution of coliseums and a certain love of violence and conquest.)
The bleachers were cold and uncomfortable. Soren huddled inside a hoodie that he’d borrowed from Ike. It was emblazoned with University colors of Ike’s favorite team, and at least two sizes too big, it still smelled like him. The cold never seemed quite so bitter when he was curled up inside Ike’s borrowed clothing.
Even in practice, Ike managed to dominate the field. He excelled without trying, much to the dismay of Boyd and many other players. But Ike never got arrogant about it, he lead the team well as the star quarterback, and even if grumbles passed around the showers, no one could really hate him.
Ike wasn’t called the “Hero of Crimea” for nothing.
–
It’d taken Boyd weeks to get up the courage. Of course Mist had been badgering him for ages to do it, but it was difficult. Maybe if he lived anywhere else he’d simply drive up and sneak off with Mist to some other place, a place where they could be alone – But even then, Boyd probably would probably value his life too much to pull off such a daring feat.
But, Boyd reasoned with himself, he’d grown up with Mist. He was hardly some young stranger here to steal Greil’s daughter. Greil had known him even since Boyd was barely more than a child himself. That would definitely negate any negative feelings, right?
That’s what he kept telling himself when it came time to approach the commander.
Greil was checking through a newspaper, while still woefully inadequate at technical things, Greil simply preferred papers even if they had been rendered practically useless. He was stubborn in some ways, he still clung to certain outdated traditional values, shotgun in hand.
“So um, hey commander...sir.”
Greil looked up from the paper. “Yes, Boyd?”
“There’s this movie, at the old drive-in, and I was wondering if I could take Mist, out for a date and stuff.”
In his mind’s eye, this was not how it was supposed to go. In planning, Boyd was strong and brave and Mist swooned that he had even managed to withstand her father, finding out that it was all just a big joke and they were now buddies! In his mind he was not supposed to be trailing off or on the verge of stuttering and apologizing for ever having dared look at the commander’s precious little girl.
However, things rarely went as planned, and as the silence loomed, forbidding and unpleasant. He could practically feel the weight of Greil’s disapproving gaze over him, and he flinched under it.
“I’d have her back before twelve, and I promise it’d not be anything too violent, a PG-13 movie at most–”
“Let me get this straight,” Greil said, cutting his explanation short. “You’re asking if you can take my daughter out to a dark, secluded area often used by teenagers as a ‘make out’ spot, alone, without any parental supervision? Is this what you’re asking?”
Boyd gulped and shifted uneasily under his brutal gaze.. “Um, sorta. ...I wouldn’t put it that way, though.”
Greil set his paper aside and snorted in a way that was most mocking and derisive. And all that heroic bravery was for naught.
“Ike,” Greil called.
A few seconds later, Ike appeared in a loose t-shirt at the edge of the living room.
“Yeah, father?”
“You’re going with your sister, on her ‘outing’ with him.”
Boyd winced at the obvious disapproving inflection at the word him. He’d always thought that Greil liked him, but make one move on the commander’s daughter and already he was the enemy.
–
When Ike came in Soren was in the kitchen, leaned up against the counter top. He was a quarter of the way through a glass of water. He tipped the orange-tinted glass higher and fought dehydration one sip at a time when Ike came through the kitchen door.
“Hey, Soren. Wanna go on a date with me?” Ike said.
Soren froze mid-gulp. He choked., coughed and managed to spill most of the glass over his shirt and onto his face.
“Hold your arms up, like this – yeah, that – Are you ok?”
“...What. What did you say?” Soren gasped.
“Father’s making me chaperone Mist, it’d be boring alone. Are you coming?” Ike said.
“Oh.. That. ...Yes. Just give me a moment. I need to change my shirt.”
–
Mist was still a bit sulky that she had to bring her brother along for her first date with Boyd – and any subsequent dates if Greil had anything to do with it. Still, Mist rarely stayed angry and it didn’t take long before she was all smiles and brightness again.
Boyd was still watching to make sure Greil wasn’t following behind, possibly with a shotgun. He craned his neck to check the shadows for hints of overprotective father’s who’d once been in the army and killed people.
“He’s not following after us, is he? I could’ve sworn I saw him going for the gun cabinet,” Boyd said.
“Relax, that’s what I’m here for,” Ike said.
“...somehow that isn’t very reassuring,” Boyd said. Already a certain sense of dread was falling over what should be a far happier moment.
But Mist squeezed his hand and grinned at him and Boyd temporarily forgot his impending death.
–
Ike and Soren took the backseat, as per Greil’s command. They had gotten turned around, a sure sign of letting Boyd drive and barely made it in time to the drive in. The Silver Screen (more often known as the ‘old time drive in’) was a treasured part of Crimea’s history, and other than classics at least three days a week, they also adapted modern movies for the large screen.
Admittedly, there was a certain ambiance to the drive in, the lack of the dark theater substituted for the night sky and coolness around them. It was also highly popular with teens for other reasons, the exact reason Soren and Ike had been commanded to stay in the back seat.
Death Comes Softly was the title, of a femme fatale that barely made the PG-13 rating. Soren had missed the opening scenes after being forced to get their drinks and popcorn, and thus only marginally knew what was happening.
Not that it particularly bothered him. He wasn’t there to take in the sights of cinema. Soren couldn’t care less about movies.
A woman clothed in only a maroon lace nightie stood in the darkened bedroom. Her hands were stretched out towards a man, the hero, Soren supposed. She locked her dark eyes on him and pursed her ruby lips.
“I want you, I’ve always wanted you,” she said in a husky, seductive rasp.
The woman was what most considered attractive, Soren supposed. Though she evoked all the feeling in him of a fine work of art; that is to say faint appreciation for something beautiful that he was in no way stimulated by or connected to.
The woman leaned back and he kissed the length of her neck, he began pulling down her negligee cupping her breast and massaging it, she moaned and pressed into his touch.
This was what passed for PG-13 these days? Soren shifted uncomfortably in the backseat, painfully aware of Ike’s presence, his arms stretched out over the back of the seat, brushing against the back of Soren’s head.
He wondered if the woman was the kind of girl Ike appreciated. If he was attracted to her, if he was picturing himself in the place of the actor, kissing her, taking off her clothes, his fingers cupping her breast... Soren shook the thought from his mind before it crystallized into full blown jealousy.
Ike had been ambivalent towards girls, having only gone with one girl who had all but forced him into it, then dumped him three weeks later for his inattention.
It had been one of the worst three weeks of Soren’s life.
Soren inched away from Ike, putting his arm against the metal of the car door which was cool, blissfully cool to his overheated skin.
“Soren, relax,” Ike whispered. Soren could feel Ike leaning in, the warmth of his breath, the closeness, his heart pounded in his chest, out of control–
“Aww, we’re out of popcorn,” Boyd said, and shook the box, as if it would cause more to magically appear.
“I’ll get it—” Soren said, much too quickly. He wrenched the door open and stepped out into the cold night air.
“Don’t forget to get pop too, I want diet Pepsi! Remember, diet!” Mist yelled out
Soren slammed the door behind him and walked fast towards the stands. He heard another door open and slam and paid no attention to it until he heard Ike’s voice.
“Wait up, Soren!”
Soren stopped and turned to face Ike.
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching them?”
“We’ll be gone barely more than a minute, what could they possibly due in that amount of time?” Ike replied.
“Obviously you underestimate the determination of the average teenager,” Soren said, and pushed up his glasses.
“What was it you needed?” Soren said.
“You didn’t want me to come?” Ike said.
“No– not that at all,” Soren said. “Just....Did you think I’d get the order wrong?”
“Nah, you always get my food just like I want it. It was just...awkward in there. With Mist twisting her hair and Boyd chuckling nervously.
“Ah, teenagers,” Soren said sagely, as if he was talking about another specie, one he did not belong too – perhaps a bacterium.
Ike hung close behind him as Soren made the correct orders: buttery popcorn, diet Pepsi, Root Beer and Dr. Pepper, along with milk duds, thin mints and a sampling of almost every treat to be had of the selection and an iceless water for himself.
“Do you know what would go great with this? Cheeseburgers,” Ike said.
“Hold off until the movie is over, unless you want to explain to the commander that you left his daughter alone with a boy for thirty minutes.”
Ike chuckled. “The movie’s almost over anyways. Who picked it anyways? Mist? Good riddance when it is.”
“You don’t care for it?” Soren said.
“It’s boring,” Ike said.
Ike was not impressed by T&A. This improved Soren’s mood greatly.
“Do you like it?” Ike said.
Soren snorted in derision. “Need you even ask?”
When they returned, Boyd and Mist were as far away as humanly possible from each other, her hair slightly askew, she pulled on her dress, smoothing it over again and again.
“You..you won’t tell commander Greil about this, right?” Boyd said.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Ike said.
“Right, right.”
Throughout the rest of the movie, Boyd kept an eye out to the trees, looking for the glint of a metal.
–
Boyd and Mist went their separate ways afterwards. At least, to their own separate rooms. Soren was pretty sure they spent a great deal of the night texting and instant messaging to each other. Greil’s attention wasn’t quite so iron-clad that they couldn’t still find ways to slip out even in some small way.
(Then again it wasn’t the flirting he was against, per se, more than the culmination of said flirting in physical means. Ever since Elena’s death he did tend to go overboard with his protection.)
Soren’s attempt to finish the last of his homework was impeded by Ike’s proclivity to not wearing clothes. Soren had read the same paragraph five times now, and still the only thing his mind was processing was Ikehasnoshirton. His peripheral gave him tantalizing glimpses, his vision not quite so bad as to leave him blind enough to not see that all that training was doing wonders for Ike’s physique.
Soren closed his book in disgust.
“Ike, please put some clothes on.”
“What? I do have some on,” Ike said.
He wore nothing but dog-tags and a pair of loose-fitting jeans that showed about half of his blue flannel boxers.
Soren glared at his lack of clothes, and set the book down over his lap.
“It’s hot,” Ike said.
Soren didn’t bother to grace that with a reply. He had on two layers, a black sweater over a turtleneck, the covers pulled up to about his chin and he was still chilly.
“Do you want my blanket too?” Ike said. Soren’s intolerance always had been something of a joke to him. When he wasn’t offering the clothes he couldn’t be bothered to wear.
Soren clasped his hands over his knees, the book still in place.
“If you’re tired you should sleep, you know. Even if it’s early.”
Soren took one last fleeting glace at Ike.
“I’m fine, just put some clothes on.”
Ike finally complied, seemingly amused by the whole thing.
Soren closed his eyes and thought of cold showers, very cold, very long showers. It didn’t help.
It was hard being a teenager.
Series: FE 9 AU
Rating: PG-13. Rating may change in latter parts.
Character/Pairing: in this part Ike/Soren preslash and Boyd/Mist, Sephiran/Zelgius in the prologue.
Word count: 7569
A/N: this all began some time ago (January 08, according to the file itself) when certain forum-goers calling Soren an “emo-kid”. I wanted fanart of quarterback!Ike x emokid!Soren for lulz factor, but lack actual art skills, so this occurred.
As for characterization, this is au. Quite au. I tried to keep it intact, but it slightly veers off from POR, as Greil doesn’t die here, Ike more resembles what he was in the earlier chapters. Soren was taken in at an earlier age.
Happy birthday + Christmas, Ammy!
I. Photographs
Pictures could tell so much about a family. Over the walls of their apartment was a story told in stages.
The first was a wedding picture, white flowers in her bluish hair. Her face was lifted up, smiling so serene, as if she had never felt a happiness as deep or as encompassing as this moment. The next was the same woman as a young mother, a contented smile as she rocked her child. The third picture was a far less comforting one, two children sit with only their father. His face looked aged, weary. The children looked confused. There is a gaping hole where the mother had once been in the picture.
In pictures after this, more people appeared. A red haired woman, a priest, a college student dramatist and his brothers. A red haired man with a ponytail and a dusty blond man, neither of which often came into pictures, they were usually seen to the side. A boy with black hair. In every picture after that both the boys clung together, the blue eyed one pulling the scrawny boy with the drawn, grimacing face into the circle of their family.
One photo had been snapped on a snowy day. Two children were bundled up so tight in snow pants and coats that almost the only way to tell them apart was color coding.
Their mother was behind them, looking on with a contented smile upon her face.
--
“Stay close to me, Ike,” his mother said. “No running off now.”
And Ike had intended to. If a movement hadn’t caught his eye – something small and black, a dog? A puppy? – he would’ve stayed there just like his mother had ordered. Not holding hands, like Mist insisted because he was bigger than her and too old to hold hands at the supermarket.
He disappeared from the front of the shop and went out the door (the bell made the same dinging sound that delighted Mist.
Ike peeked into the nearby alley where the black shadow had gone down.
“Puppy? Here puppy puppy...” He called.
There was no whimpering or barks, but he was still sure that he’d seen something there. Was the puppy hurt? Maybe it was starving and maybe his father wound even let him keep it. The thought of a puppy cast aside the last of his fear and his mother’s commands and warnings as he ran down to where the black shape had gone.
Midway through was a pile of rags that looked like trash, but moved. He poked the pile, and heard an exhale and a gasp. Not a bark or whimper. A boy his age looked back at him. The eyes were red, not blue or brown or green. There was a mark on his forehead in a strange symbol, it looked like a wound, like it had been cut or branded into him.
The boy was just his age. This lessened the initial disappointment at when he realized there was no puppy. Having someone to play with was probably just as good as a puppy. Probably.
The boy shivered and clung to the rags about him.
“Are you cold?” Ike said. “Don’t you have a coat?”
The boy shivered, but whether from cold or fear it was hard to tell.
Ike tried to unzip the coat, but found the zipper stuck. He tried pulling several times until finally he gaze up.
He pulled out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich his mother had packed him, and the boy stared at him, and then at the sandwich in quick jerky movements.
Ike didn’t ask, but just broke his sandwich in half, though the parts were unequal, he even offered the boy the larger half.
The boy stared at the food, much like a wild cat he’d once seen his mother trying to tame. Eventually, hunger won over and the boy grabbed at the sandwich and stuffed it in his mouth. When he had finished with that piece, the boy stared at the second with such longing that even Ike couldn’t keep it, and he was hungry.
“Oh man, mother’s going to be mad–” Ike said.
The boy looked down and began to shiver again.
“You could come with us, mom might have more food,” Ike said.
The boy shook his head, the first hint at any form of response.
Ike sat down by the boy. At first he drew back, but after a few tense moments, he relaxed slightly into the warmth of another body, even one mummified in a large coat.
When his mother came outside, harried and anxious to find him, Ike was nestled beside the trembling boy.
--
Little boys weren’t like puppies. They couldn’t just be taken home and kept when it was obvious they belonged to no one. The boy had cigarette burns on his arms and legs. The soles of his feet were flecked with gravel and glass. His ribs showed through like some metal framework, and Greil suspected that he was deeply dehydrated and who could tell when the boy had last ate? He had been on the verge of death when Ike found him. Any longer and he would’ve just been a nameless body in the gutter.
After a bath (which he’d only been persuaded to when Ike had jumped in too) and some food, they took him to the doctor.
Through the trip Ike kept asking Can we keep him? He can stay in my room and I promise I’ll take good care of him—
No matter how many times Greil tried to explain it didn’t quite work that way, Ike was too young to understand. Ike kept waiting outside for the boy. The doctor called a social worker, and the boy disappeared in another room. Ike went home, but kept asking, kept waiting.
Aren’t we going to come back for him? Like when Scruffy had to go to the vet, right, father?
--
Sephiran intercepted the paper before it reached the office. He was good at such things. The caseworker surely had plenty to work on her own, it was easy to lose children in the system. Too easy.
No matter how much time passed, Sephiran was never dulled to the cases he found. Children rescued from lives that no one would believe, for they were that nightmarish. They were beyond the scope of horror most humans could conceive.
And this child was a reminder of how tragic things could get.
He was around five, his hair was coal-black and matted with tangles. His eyes were blank, lifeless shade of red that stared out at the world as if it didn’t exist around him. Was he autistic, Sephiran wondered. Or was it whatever trauma he’d endured had left him buried within himself.
“Soren,” he said in a soft, gentle voice as not to scare him. “Do you remember me?”
The boy did not respond to him, or even acknowledge his presence. The boy seemed empty and disembodied; frozen in the same blank stare.
“Are you hungry?” he said in the same soothing voice.
Soren simply didn’t hear. Whatever world he lived in, it was far from here. Sephiran wondered if it was truly autism or perhaps the more likely case scenario that he had been abused and cast aside. To think, a child cast away like yesterday’s refuse simply because he did not live up to some crazed expectation.
To think, such a thing was such a commonplace.
Sephiran patted him on the top of the head, but he drew back and for the first time, acknowledged his presence. The boy drew back from him.
“I see,” Sephiran said. “Tell me, the boy who found you, was his name Ike?”
Soren said nothing, but there was a hair’s breadth of a reaction.
“I see, Gawain’s son...” Sephiran said.
“Let’s fix this, shall we?” He took up Soren’s hand and led him to the outside. A black car was already waiting.
“You’re always so prompt, Zelgius,” Sephiran said.
“Anything for you, master,” Zelgius said.
Sephiran smiled. Zelgius was always so obedient, and oh, it did have its uses.
–
As days and weeks passed, Greil thought it would fade into a young boy’s memory. He thought that Ike would find some other thing to catch his attention, but still it remained. Ike kept asking about the little red-eyed boy he’d found. The one he’d begged to take home with him. Ike did not forget the boy he’d found. He’d laid claim to that boy, and no matter how many times Greil explained that he could not simply take Soren home like they had brought home Scruffy the mutt from the pound. It just did not work that way.
And Greil just couldn’t explain that there was paperwork involved, that people sometimes had years of waiting before they could adopt a child. You couldn’t simply pick up a boy and take him into your home these days. Even if he was starving and with marks that couldn’t be anything other than cigarette burns.
Even through the greater tragedy of losing their mother, a tragedy that both were too young to entirely understand, Ike did not forget. Now the questions of where was mother were simply added to the questions of where the boy was. Greil was too weary for these constant questions. Each one was a life lesson, one that Ike was far too young to be exposed to the cruelty of.
Ike persisted up until one day when Greil heard a knock at his door. It was growing late, Mist was still pushing about her vegetables and Ike had already had seconds.
Most would’ve not seen the significance of the robes, but Greil had seen such robes before in the court of a crazed dictator A monk of the Sienna order, one dedicated to world peace, and the establishment thereof. His hair fell down his back, unswept and untied. His face was effeminate and looked as if carved of marble. Many could have been fooled by the serene innocence he exuded, but Greil had seen too much of the world to be fooled by such a play.
Beside him was the same boy Ike had found three weeks ago.
“You were the ones who found him, were you not?” The man said.
“My son, actually,” Greil replied.
“Ah, then that’s the ‘Ike’ who was mentioned.”
Sephiran touched Soren on the arm, and Soren drew away. “Soren doesn’t trust anyone it. The only thing to bring him out of his shell has been mentions of the boy who found him. Your boy.”
Greil looked down at the stray who had come in with the man. The boy was still just as boney and scraggly as the day Ike had found him.
“I think he’d be happier here with you,” Sephiran said. His voice was smooth and low, hypnotic in its symmetry.
“Excuse me but is this even legal? Isn’t there paperwork and proceedings and–”
“We all keep secrets, don’t we...General Gawain?” Sephiran said.
Greil’s mouth went dry at the sound of a name he’d left behind with his past life. The smile never left the monk’s face. It was calm, and yet held a tinge of knowing; an unidentified smugness.
“I suppose I could respect the law and let this little one go back. Who knows what foster care he will be put into, But since you’re such a law abiding citizen—”
“I’ll take him,” Greil interrupted. His voice was gruff, rougher than he’d meant to be. Soren looked up with a bit of worry.
“Good,” Sephiran said. “I’ve already drawn up the papers. All you need to do is sign.”
Greil took the papers. Always have a lawyer nearby when you sign a contract. Greil was a warrior, no law student but he signed regardless, perhaps it was an error, even a grave one but a boy’s life was at stake. With that, the consequences didn’t matter.
“Remember General Gawain,” Sephiran said softly. “I was never here.”
Sephiran patted Soren’s shoulder once before he left. The door shut quiet behind him, like a flutter of silk in the wind.
“You brought him back!” Ike said.
“Bunny eyes!” Mist cried.
Soren shrunk back behind Ike.
“It’s ok, it’s just Mist. She’s only scary sometimes”
Mist huffed and frowned. She crossed her tiny arms “Brother, you’re awful!”
“See what I mean?”
Soren made a sound at the back of his throat, a whimper. Syllables, words fell from his lips. They were incomprehensible, and yet there. His eyes were focused completely on Ike, and he clung to the other boy’s hand, so tight, so very tight. Ike threw his arms around the other boy and for the first time since he’d been there, Soren relaxed.
–
Sephiran could disappear into the night, almost as if it was the essence of him, his innate being. He felt the cool air about him, like a cloak, a shroud. He raised the cell phone and selected the second saved number. Learning technology was never easy for him. Sephiran preferred the feel of nature. If necessity did not demand such things, he would probably live the life of a pure ascetic.
“It’s done, Zelgius,” he said.
He closed the cell phone as the call ended. Zelgius was always brief in phone conversations. He never bothered with any superfluous words even when they were alone together.
Bodies said so much more than words could. Words were more a thing of lying, besides. Sephiran had spent enough time
A boy, a mystery, the mark of a king. How interesting things were as they progressed. All heaven’s ways were fair and just and meant, but that didn’t mean one couldn’t help heaven along a little.
Sephiran walked out into the night as if he belonged to it.
---
With those papers, Soren became a member of the family. He moved into Ike’s room and Greil doubted that Soren would be able to sleep in any other place. Soren was still restrained and he warned his children that he might never be as open as the others had been, that he might never recover.
It would be months until Soren stopped freezing in terror, during the night, until he would start opening up and speaking. Even then he would be bitter and cynical, the traces of scars still deep on him.
But he was home, and he was theirs.
I. Good Morning, Crimea
Within the dusty, cluttered attic many pictures were hidden away. Deep in photo albums or set aside in boxes, whatever places they called home. Elena had been fond of them and Greil had carried on that fondness. As the family grew, so did the size of those albums. Through the years they showed a progression, a timeline of the newest addition. From two children, there was now three. And the boys were never apart. They were almost symbiotic, neither seeming to survive without the influence of the other – especially Soren. Here, Ike had his arm thrown over Soren’s shoulder, there Ike pulled Soren back into the range of the viewfinder.
And so it went. Through elementary school and baseball practices, for spelling bee championships and scholarship awards. All up until Senior year.
Now Ike was quite a bit taller than Soren. In this picture, he was in a football jersey. Black was under his eyes and a helmet in his hands. Looking back, shiny dark hair glinting was Soren. Ike squinted, Soren frowned and neither even attempted to smile.
They never had gotten the hang of smiling down.
--
Dawn came in light shades of grey. Light came to the sleepy streets of Crimea gently, then the colors started. Muted pinks and white strands of clouds and lightness. Along with it came the first sounds of morning: birds sang, motors rumbled and dogs barked. Papers hit the front steps and bike wheels spun away.
To someone like Ike, these noises were meaningless, but to a light sleeper like Sonen, they were as loud as if the alarm had gone off early. Soren did not fight the early waking. It meant he got first shower. He slipped down more softly than he needed, considering that Ike could easily sleep through the harshest of storms, and his footsteps weren’t going to even make him stir in the least.
Soren looked back for a moment at the sleeping lump under the covers. He tiptoed out with the same unnecessary quietness and closed the door silently behind him.
The Greil Apartments was a small establishment located just outside the city limits of Crimea. It was quaint, almost ideal. The house had at one time been a decrepit Victorian style house. Greil and Elena had rescued it and slowly brought it back to life. Rotted timber was replaced. The roof and several walls were replaced, yellowed, molding wallpaper was stripped down and new paint and wallpaper was applied.
Each room was decorated differently. Titiana’s was austere white with pink curtains, Oscar’s was moss green. By some cruel act of fate (or possibly a sign of Greil’s subtle sense of humor) Shinion and Gatrie got the room with the floral print wallpaper. There was always room for others, but Greil was strict with his tenets. He ran the place like a commander ran his army, and demanded just such standards on whoever would live within his doors.
At the last door at the end of the hall, two rooms away from the bathroom and four rooms away from Greil’s own room, lived the boys. There were pictures of football stars, a homemade poster of the periodic tables after science proved to really not be Ike’s strongest class. The top bunk was already made, neat enough to pass military inspection, the room was mostly well kept, as Soren would stand for nothing else.
The alarm clock flashed brilliant teal in the grey morning. 6:57, 6:58, 6:59—
Gooooooood morning everyone! This is 9.69 THNX FM, Crimea’s best rock hits, and this is the early show with Ranulf and Janaff!
The radio droned on as background noise. Soren clutched at the bunched up corner of his towel, his hair hung loose and still a little wet, dripping cold down his back. Usually he’d be clad in a large, thick black and gold robe that covered every inch of skin and made him look like some long-lost Franciscan monk. However, there had been tragic mixup with color loads had happened when Mist took on the laundry that week and now it was a lovely faded out grey color with pink splotches.
“Ike. It’s morning.”
The bump under the covers didn’t even stir.
“I saved you some hot water. If you don’t hurry, Boyd will use it all up.”
The bump groaned slightly and turned over to face the wall.
“Ike,” Soren pushed against the lump under the bedcovers. “You’ll be late for school if you keep it up.”
Ike groaned and shifted back under the covers.
“If you don’t get up soon, you’ll miss breakfast,” Soren said, ever prepared and always with a plan at hand.
This got the covers thrown off in a second. Hot water was negotiable, but food certainly wasn’t. Ike sat up and blinked blearily into the new daylight.
Soren’s hair dripped wet down his back and to the floor.
“Ike, I can’t change with you here.”
“Why not? You seem to be ok with watching me change,” Ike said.
Soren flushed, which in itself was faint. In that way even his embarrassment was restrained.
“.....Ike. Shower. Now.”
Ike groaned and pulled himself from the warm covers and out into the far cooler day.
–
Morning went all too fast, breakfast was taken on the run. If he dared even think of missing breakfast, Soren would glare at him and then go on in detail how the body reacted without food, in the most scientific way possible. There was just no arguing with Soren when it came to these things. Not that Ike was one to ever go without food willingly. If after being bludgeoned with science, they’d missed the cafeteria and the shops on the way were too crowded, Soren would secure a hall-pass and convince the lunch ladies to give up some of the breakfast scraps. Soren could be highly persuasive when he wanted to, especially if it involved Ike.
Considering that he was the reigning, obvious valedictorian and single-handedly kept the school’s overall grade point average, there was very little Soren couldn’t get away with. Had he joined a cult and started recruiting other students or gone in full drag he still would’ve been the principal’s darling.
There was just one blemish on his perfect record. Soren had a flawless report card, the very lowest being an A- in history where the teacher took offence to being corrected, and showed that spite by giving the indomitable grade of an A- he was top mark in everything... all except for gym, which was teetering closer and closer to a F every day.
Soren had tried every humanly possible method of skipping gym. And he’d yet to find a way to escape it. Short of becoming paralyzed, seriously maimed or coming down with some rare disease, there wasn’t a chance of him getting out of it.
He’d tried offering to help teachers during that period, pointing out that he was fine with his lack of muscle tone, even promising to take on a variety of yoga or light martial arts to make up the difference when out of school. He offered to do volunteer work, tutor children in the inner cities, hell, he’d even rather clean the men’s bathroom. But it was all to no avail, as gym was mandatory.
So it was that each class was a countdown to the inevitability of gym, that Soren was about as fond of as death and taxes – and even that was inaccurate, for he’d been filing the taxes for the family since he was fifteen and on one very desperate Spring Break where Ike had gone off to a Football Thing. Soren had taken a red pen to store signs and manically corrected grammar issues. In the end he’d even managed to teach himself how to file taxes and now Greil even paid him for the chore. It would be more fitting to say that gym class was right up there with getting bamboo shoots shoved up his fingernails.
Soren sighed as he stripped down to the blue shorts and white shirt that made up the gym uniform. It wasn’t merely gym class that he hated: the male bonding (and teasing) in the changing rooms certainly didn’t help. Especially as he was prone to being whipped with towels or otherwise tormented when Ike wasn’t there.
Boyd, now partly dressed, leaned on a corner gym locker. Mist had once attempted to bribe for cellphone pictures of the men’s locker room. Soren had adamantly refused, even when she tried to bargain it to ‘top half of Boyd only.’
“What is it you want, Boyd? You don’t hang around here unless you want something,” Soren said pointedly. Or if he was waiting for Ike. But Ike was just across the room, so that certainly wasn’t the issue.
“Soren. Ilyana is getting better grades in gym than you. Ilyana.. She faints and has to be taken in to the nurse’s office half the time,” Boyd said.
“It hardly counts. They tied a sandwich up on the top of the rope. Of course she’s going to climb it,” Soren muttered.
“Yeah, but what would they tie up there for Soren? A textbook?”
Soren took a pointed look at Ike, who had just pulled off his shirt.
Their Gym teacher was Largo. He’d been a great football player back in the day before he lost his arm in a tragic tiger lifting accident.
Person by person went up the rope. Soren hated them all. Well, to be fair he hated them all already, but their gym prowess certainly didn’t add any points to their favor. He watched with discontent and a bit of dread as they piled down. It wasn’t just his imagination that Coach Largo left him for dead last.
Largo blew the whistle. “Alright, now it’s Soren’s turn.”
It might as well have been a mountain. Soren took a deep breath, looked back at Ike, who gave him a reassuring nod.
He pulled himself up the first and kicked wildly, feeling the same sickening loss of the solid ground beneath him. The rope burned his fingers, he used every fiber of strength to pull himself. He did it again, and again....
Soren wasn’t even halfway. He wasn’t even close to halfway. He was at the second knot. Already his hands were burning. His muscles were screaming. He wondered if he could legitimately claim fear of heights to keep him from this horrid torture device ever again.
“I’d like to leave gym sometime before my fiftieth birthday,” drawled one of the boys, eliciting laughter from the rest of the group.
Largo sighed. Soren knew that sound, it was the sound of a teacher giving up on a hopeless student.
“Alright, that’s close enough. Everyone, hit the showers!”
Gym itself wasn’t bad enough. After gym, there were showers. Public showers that involved a room full of naked men. Showers where he would have to undress and actually shower in a room full of naked men, including Ike. Who would also be naked. Naked Ike.
Soren studied the floor tiles as if they were the most fascinating design he’d ever seen and took the closest shower to the exit.
“If it bothers you that much, Soren, maybe you should go shower with the girls.”
Several boys laughed. They exchanged high-fives and knuckle-bumps.
“Of course, just put his hair in some cute pigtails, they’d never notice the difference!”
Soren ignored them as they continued on, he was used to the day by day teasing. It was easy to get through with the simple mental vision of them all as feces flinging monkeys. Considering their test scores, that might not be that far off – or even an insult to the primates.
And then Ike came in the room. Soren didn’t even have to look up to know that it was his footsteps over the tiles. The laughter quieted to quiet, nervous chuckles as the rest of the warily eyed Ike.
Ike cleared his throat. “If you have anything to say, say it to me.”
Soren stared at the tiles in front of him, Ike moved to the shower closest to him.
“You ok? They didn’t do anything to you, did they?”
Soren closed his eyes tight. “I’m fine, Ike.”
He reached up for the soap and rubbed it into a lather, and focused hard on the wall tiles in front of him.
I won’t look, won’t look, won’t–
Even without his glasses, Ike’s body was close enough to make out the details, the shape of muscles, bare skin...
Soren turned the knob to pure cold and stifled a gasp as the water hit him.
–
Several years back, the bullying had been far worse. Soren resolved to keep quiet, after all what were a few bruises in the long run? He withstood their teasing with a silent martyrdom even as anger flowed under the surface of his skin, looking for any outlet to escape and burn free.
The bruises spread out like inkblots over his body. His skin remembered all too well what it felt like, and with it came a rush of the same inferiority; their taunting words brought back other words, phrases and lingered within him.
Perhaps it was a sick notion: believing that he deserved this punishment, hiding his bruises and pain away from Ike, lest he realize what a pathetic person he really was and turn away. Soren hid it well, having done so for many years as a child. He hid everything then, his voice, his feelings, his very life until Ike had found him. And it went well, for Soren was good at hiding things – until the day he came home with a black eye.
To Ike’s credit, he didn’t break bones. They looked far worse than he when the fight was finished, and some of them were several grades higher. From that moment on Ike had carved out his place in the hierarchy of the school. And he had made it clear that no one was to lay a hand on Soren, ever. Not unless they wanted a new assortment of bruises for their skin; like unwelcome tattoos that faded, but weren’t forgotten.
While Greil– and the school – had demanded an explanation, Ike had looked up blank, stolid. His face resembled Soren’s expressions more than his own. He made no excuses, and merely explained what Soren had been hiding.
Greil accepted and understood, but that didn’t make the punishment any less severe.
He was grounded for weeks, which Soren felt horribly about. However, Ike took it without a trace of resentment. Soren had been in danger, and he had protected him. That was all. If it resulted in weeks of him being imprisoned, far away from ball games and the sun outside, then so be it.
Soren kept him company through those days. He did not think that they could get closer, that their bond could go deeper, but somehow it did. Ike had protected him, kept him safe. Near Ike was a sort of warmth and protection that he feared to touch lest he be burnt, yet he felt too compelled to ever abandon.
After that, in school the bullies kept their distance and stuck to making only teasing remarks. As long as he was by Ike’s side, nothing would hurt him.
—
Calil’s hair was pulled back in a chignon side-bun. She was Stylish, with a capital S. her lips were a ruby red and every hair was perfectly arranged, beat back into place with clouds of hairspray to should any strand ever even dream of getting out of place. She may have been just a science teacher, but she had panache , a taste for haute couture, it was rumored that even her labcoats were made by Gucci.
She was also married to the gym teacher, and had an adopted child named Amy just going into preschool. (“Ruin this figure with childbirth? You’ve got to be kidding me”) But those were usually postscripts to her glamor.
She was a strict teacher, though an effective one.
An explosion from the side of the room caught her attention.
“Tormod, that’s the third vial you’ve ruined this month.”
He smiled sheepishly.
“Soooorry, teach,”
Calil sighed. “Clean it up already.”
“The rest of you, wash up. The Bard’s class is up next. I hope you have your Ye Olde Moderne Tongue dictionaries to make sense of what he’s saying.”
––
Soren hung around after school had finished. He figured that he could attend to his homework in the duller parts – aka the parts that did not in any way contain Ike. Overall, Soren was not a sports fan. He had no interest in the game, physical sports of any kind confused, bored and irritated him him. And playing them was out of the question. However, Ike was there, and thus it made all the difference in whether he spent his time in the libraries or the mystical game wherein men wore tights and reveled in their manliness. (Soren had once seriously analyzed the game, taking apart the infrastructure to try and calculate why it held such fascination for so many people. He still couldn’t find the enjoyment, thinking only that it must be an evolution of coliseums and a certain love of violence and conquest.)
The bleachers were cold and uncomfortable. Soren huddled inside a hoodie that he’d borrowed from Ike. It was emblazoned with University colors of Ike’s favorite team, and at least two sizes too big, it still smelled like him. The cold never seemed quite so bitter when he was curled up inside Ike’s borrowed clothing.
Even in practice, Ike managed to dominate the field. He excelled without trying, much to the dismay of Boyd and many other players. But Ike never got arrogant about it, he lead the team well as the star quarterback, and even if grumbles passed around the showers, no one could really hate him.
Ike wasn’t called the “Hero of Crimea” for nothing.
–
It’d taken Boyd weeks to get up the courage. Of course Mist had been badgering him for ages to do it, but it was difficult. Maybe if he lived anywhere else he’d simply drive up and sneak off with Mist to some other place, a place where they could be alone – But even then, Boyd probably would probably value his life too much to pull off such a daring feat.
But, Boyd reasoned with himself, he’d grown up with Mist. He was hardly some young stranger here to steal Greil’s daughter. Greil had known him even since Boyd was barely more than a child himself. That would definitely negate any negative feelings, right?
That’s what he kept telling himself when it came time to approach the commander.
Greil was checking through a newspaper, while still woefully inadequate at technical things, Greil simply preferred papers even if they had been rendered practically useless. He was stubborn in some ways, he still clung to certain outdated traditional values, shotgun in hand.
“So um, hey commander...sir.”
Greil looked up from the paper. “Yes, Boyd?”
“There’s this movie, at the old drive-in, and I was wondering if I could take Mist, out for a date and stuff.”
In his mind’s eye, this was not how it was supposed to go. In planning, Boyd was strong and brave and Mist swooned that he had even managed to withstand her father, finding out that it was all just a big joke and they were now buddies! In his mind he was not supposed to be trailing off or on the verge of stuttering and apologizing for ever having dared look at the commander’s precious little girl.
However, things rarely went as planned, and as the silence loomed, forbidding and unpleasant. He could practically feel the weight of Greil’s disapproving gaze over him, and he flinched under it.
“I’d have her back before twelve, and I promise it’d not be anything too violent, a PG-13 movie at most–”
“Let me get this straight,” Greil said, cutting his explanation short. “You’re asking if you can take my daughter out to a dark, secluded area often used by teenagers as a ‘make out’ spot, alone, without any parental supervision? Is this what you’re asking?”
Boyd gulped and shifted uneasily under his brutal gaze.. “Um, sorta. ...I wouldn’t put it that way, though.”
Greil set his paper aside and snorted in a way that was most mocking and derisive. And all that heroic bravery was for naught.
“Ike,” Greil called.
A few seconds later, Ike appeared in a loose t-shirt at the edge of the living room.
“Yeah, father?”
“You’re going with your sister, on her ‘outing’ with him.”
Boyd winced at the obvious disapproving inflection at the word him. He’d always thought that Greil liked him, but make one move on the commander’s daughter and already he was the enemy.
–
When Ike came in Soren was in the kitchen, leaned up against the counter top. He was a quarter of the way through a glass of water. He tipped the orange-tinted glass higher and fought dehydration one sip at a time when Ike came through the kitchen door.
“Hey, Soren. Wanna go on a date with me?” Ike said.
Soren froze mid-gulp. He choked., coughed and managed to spill most of the glass over his shirt and onto his face.
“Hold your arms up, like this – yeah, that – Are you ok?”
“...What. What did you say?” Soren gasped.
“Father’s making me chaperone Mist, it’d be boring alone. Are you coming?” Ike said.
“Oh.. That. ...Yes. Just give me a moment. I need to change my shirt.”
–
Mist was still a bit sulky that she had to bring her brother along for her first date with Boyd – and any subsequent dates if Greil had anything to do with it. Still, Mist rarely stayed angry and it didn’t take long before she was all smiles and brightness again.
Boyd was still watching to make sure Greil wasn’t following behind, possibly with a shotgun. He craned his neck to check the shadows for hints of overprotective father’s who’d once been in the army and killed people.
“He’s not following after us, is he? I could’ve sworn I saw him going for the gun cabinet,” Boyd said.
“Relax, that’s what I’m here for,” Ike said.
“...somehow that isn’t very reassuring,” Boyd said. Already a certain sense of dread was falling over what should be a far happier moment.
But Mist squeezed his hand and grinned at him and Boyd temporarily forgot his impending death.
–
Ike and Soren took the backseat, as per Greil’s command. They had gotten turned around, a sure sign of letting Boyd drive and barely made it in time to the drive in. The Silver Screen (more often known as the ‘old time drive in’) was a treasured part of Crimea’s history, and other than classics at least three days a week, they also adapted modern movies for the large screen.
Admittedly, there was a certain ambiance to the drive in, the lack of the dark theater substituted for the night sky and coolness around them. It was also highly popular with teens for other reasons, the exact reason Soren and Ike had been commanded to stay in the back seat.
Death Comes Softly was the title, of a femme fatale that barely made the PG-13 rating. Soren had missed the opening scenes after being forced to get their drinks and popcorn, and thus only marginally knew what was happening.
Not that it particularly bothered him. He wasn’t there to take in the sights of cinema. Soren couldn’t care less about movies.
A woman clothed in only a maroon lace nightie stood in the darkened bedroom. Her hands were stretched out towards a man, the hero, Soren supposed. She locked her dark eyes on him and pursed her ruby lips.
“I want you, I’ve always wanted you,” she said in a husky, seductive rasp.
The woman was what most considered attractive, Soren supposed. Though she evoked all the feeling in him of a fine work of art; that is to say faint appreciation for something beautiful that he was in no way stimulated by or connected to.
The woman leaned back and he kissed the length of her neck, he began pulling down her negligee cupping her breast and massaging it, she moaned and pressed into his touch.
This was what passed for PG-13 these days? Soren shifted uncomfortably in the backseat, painfully aware of Ike’s presence, his arms stretched out over the back of the seat, brushing against the back of Soren’s head.
He wondered if the woman was the kind of girl Ike appreciated. If he was attracted to her, if he was picturing himself in the place of the actor, kissing her, taking off her clothes, his fingers cupping her breast... Soren shook the thought from his mind before it crystallized into full blown jealousy.
Ike had been ambivalent towards girls, having only gone with one girl who had all but forced him into it, then dumped him three weeks later for his inattention.
It had been one of the worst three weeks of Soren’s life.
Soren inched away from Ike, putting his arm against the metal of the car door which was cool, blissfully cool to his overheated skin.
“Soren, relax,” Ike whispered. Soren could feel Ike leaning in, the warmth of his breath, the closeness, his heart pounded in his chest, out of control–
“Aww, we’re out of popcorn,” Boyd said, and shook the box, as if it would cause more to magically appear.
“I’ll get it—” Soren said, much too quickly. He wrenched the door open and stepped out into the cold night air.
“Don’t forget to get pop too, I want diet Pepsi! Remember, diet!” Mist yelled out
Soren slammed the door behind him and walked fast towards the stands. He heard another door open and slam and paid no attention to it until he heard Ike’s voice.
“Wait up, Soren!”
Soren stopped and turned to face Ike.
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching them?”
“We’ll be gone barely more than a minute, what could they possibly due in that amount of time?” Ike replied.
“Obviously you underestimate the determination of the average teenager,” Soren said, and pushed up his glasses.
“What was it you needed?” Soren said.
“You didn’t want me to come?” Ike said.
“No– not that at all,” Soren said. “Just....Did you think I’d get the order wrong?”
“Nah, you always get my food just like I want it. It was just...awkward in there. With Mist twisting her hair and Boyd chuckling nervously.
“Ah, teenagers,” Soren said sagely, as if he was talking about another specie, one he did not belong too – perhaps a bacterium.
Ike hung close behind him as Soren made the correct orders: buttery popcorn, diet Pepsi, Root Beer and Dr. Pepper, along with milk duds, thin mints and a sampling of almost every treat to be had of the selection and an iceless water for himself.
“Do you know what would go great with this? Cheeseburgers,” Ike said.
“Hold off until the movie is over, unless you want to explain to the commander that you left his daughter alone with a boy for thirty minutes.”
Ike chuckled. “The movie’s almost over anyways. Who picked it anyways? Mist? Good riddance when it is.”
“You don’t care for it?” Soren said.
“It’s boring,” Ike said.
Ike was not impressed by T&A. This improved Soren’s mood greatly.
“Do you like it?” Ike said.
Soren snorted in derision. “Need you even ask?”
When they returned, Boyd and Mist were as far away as humanly possible from each other, her hair slightly askew, she pulled on her dress, smoothing it over again and again.
“You..you won’t tell commander Greil about this, right?” Boyd said.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Ike said.
“Right, right.”
Throughout the rest of the movie, Boyd kept an eye out to the trees, looking for the glint of a metal.
–
Boyd and Mist went their separate ways afterwards. At least, to their own separate rooms. Soren was pretty sure they spent a great deal of the night texting and instant messaging to each other. Greil’s attention wasn’t quite so iron-clad that they couldn’t still find ways to slip out even in some small way.
(Then again it wasn’t the flirting he was against, per se, more than the culmination of said flirting in physical means. Ever since Elena’s death he did tend to go overboard with his protection.)
Soren’s attempt to finish the last of his homework was impeded by Ike’s proclivity to not wearing clothes. Soren had read the same paragraph five times now, and still the only thing his mind was processing was Ikehasnoshirton. His peripheral gave him tantalizing glimpses, his vision not quite so bad as to leave him blind enough to not see that all that training was doing wonders for Ike’s physique.
Soren closed his book in disgust.
“Ike, please put some clothes on.”
“What? I do have some on,” Ike said.
He wore nothing but dog-tags and a pair of loose-fitting jeans that showed about half of his blue flannel boxers.
Soren glared at his lack of clothes, and set the book down over his lap.
“It’s hot,” Ike said.
Soren didn’t bother to grace that with a reply. He had on two layers, a black sweater over a turtleneck, the covers pulled up to about his chin and he was still chilly.
“Do you want my blanket too?” Ike said. Soren’s intolerance always had been something of a joke to him. When he wasn’t offering the clothes he couldn’t be bothered to wear.
Soren clasped his hands over his knees, the book still in place.
“If you’re tired you should sleep, you know. Even if it’s early.”
Soren took one last fleeting glace at Ike.
“I’m fine, just put some clothes on.”
Ike finally complied, seemingly amused by the whole thing.
Soren closed his eyes and thought of cold showers, very cold, very long showers. It didn’t help.
It was hard being a teenager.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 07:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 07:56 am (UTC)Other than that there's lots of other pairings to play with. This IS Fire Emblem, after all. FE makes shipping into a game play dynamic.
Most people I'd go "Ah but the fandom...D:" But you're used to small fandoms, so!
Also I'm going at Sword of Mana again. I'm thinking of restarting to ensure that I get those annoying quests and changing classes a bit. I really do not like the Magician class. It was making me rage so. I'm thinking of taking the thief pathline. I loved the thief line when I was doing it with Hawk in SD3, after all. I wasn't too against the Warrior, just that it really sucked when I had to use magic to take out enemies as it would inevitably run out of MP so easily :C I'm thinking of redoing Yggdra union since I missed so many of the items so whenever I check the fact it's like "make sure to use x" and I'm like "uh, I DID NOT GET X."
Yggdra union is such a GuideDangIt game.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 07:59 am (UTC)If you're playing as Matt, go Warrior class; if you're playing as Rose, Thief class or so should be fine (I think that's the one I've always used, but I'd have to check). If you build her properly, Rose is a gamebreaker.
And Yggdra Union is not a Guide Dang It game. It's a learn to strategize or your ass will be handed to you repeatedly game. And Retry is always there if you fail. ...I swear, my flist is filled with weenies. How do you all cringe away from this game? Retry is there to save you until you learn from your mistakes.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 08:27 am (UTC)Huh, I'll try that.
It applies with the items, though. That's what I was referring to. There's a lot of items which are really easy to miss if you haven't played before or don't have a guide handy. And then there's ones that are the sort of 'turn x into y' type item. I really don't think I'd ever get the Butterfly Of Happiness or whatsitcalled on my own. Seriously.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 08:33 am (UTC)Also, I just have to say--Soren's background is pretty ugly, but no one is beating Nessiah's levels of messed-up.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 08:37 am (UTC)That's because Nessiah has had many lifetimes to accrue messed-up-ness It's hard to contest him with anyone outside of say, Elfin Lied as he's got 804859054890509 lives on them.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 07:43 am (UTC)First the "Ah, teenagers," in the detached tone and then the "It was hard being a teenager."
Did I ever mention how your Ike/Soren material makes my life about thirty times better? Because it does.
Also, I really want to draw that photograph of quarterback!Ike and emokid!Soren. xDD No promises because I'm kind of flaky in that regard, though. D:
no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 07:57 am (UTC)I would love that if you did it XD
no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 08:48 am (UTC)I wanted fanart of quarterback!Ike x emokid!Soren for lulz factor, but lack actual art skills, so this occurred.
I drew a few things kind-of-sort-of like that a few years ago... I'll see if I can dig them up for you
that is, if they're not too embarrassingly bad for me to show because they're probably close to four years old and I failed at anatomy back then among many other things wheee run-on sentence. They were more general-modern-AU-ish so I usually just drew Ike in regular clothes, but I always made Soren look like an emo kid (because come on, how could you not?!?).My art muse has been one ginormous epic fail lately (probably not good for someone who's supposed to be an artist... ;_;) but if I feel inspired any time in the near future I'll keep it in mind...
no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 10:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 06:42 pm (UTC)“Soren. Ilyana is getting better grades in gym than you. Ilyana.. She faints and has to be taken in to the nurse’s office half the time,” Boyd said.
“It hardly counts. They tied a sandwich up on the top of the rope. Of course she’s going to climb it,” Soren muttered.
With that said, I shall now run off to do my food shopping.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 02:23 pm (UTC)Ah Soren. Face it, you're a Ike-sexual hormone filled teenager. Loved how Ike found Soren, and contined to protect him so well. It was just so cute. Little kids really are the cutest - when they're asleep. and if you just so happened to shove them on the same bed... well, double the cuteness.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-06 07:10 am (UTC)So happy to have discovered this one. The characterization here is all kinds of gorgeous.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-06 07:35 am (UTC)There's a number of stuff I never posted to FF.net, so you're bound to find a lot of stuff tag searching. This one was never put there because I haven't rewritten the second part yet, and I don't want to have a lot of people D: at me for not updating when I need to fix the second part's mistakes and whatnot.