Genma can't ever remember seeing Aoba without his glasses. They met as teenage chuunin during a war, still young and awkward outside of the killing field. Genma asked who he thought he was, some celebrity trying to hide his face with mirrored glasses? and Aoba told him to shut up. After that, they were friends.

Now, creeping through the twisting underground tunnels of some forsaken Iwa lab, the only noises their own breathing and the occasional desperate, gurgling moan of the remains of an experiment, Genma's wondering about the glasses again. It's dark enough that he can hardly see, and he has good eyes. They're supposed to be looking, finding documents and files, finding things they can take back to Konoha, and finding anything living so they can kill it before they torch the place.

As if he read Genma's mind, Aoba pushes the glasses up on his head, wearing them like a headband. His eyes look black, with a thin ring of ghostly, pale grey wreathing like smoke around the outer edge of the blackness. Genma spares a moment to look, because it's a sight he's never seen before and will probably never see again. Then they continue on, Aoba's step much surer and less cautious than Genma's.

They come into a room, lit by half-dead flourescent lights. There's a table in the middle, shiny metallic surface darkened in places with blood. Strapped onto it is something only vaguely human, with great hooked claws and a thin growth of fur over its body. Stronger than the smell of blood and musk is the stench of rot, of death. It's dead, and they have nothing to fear.

"Genma." Aoba touches his shoulder, nodding over towards a set of filing cabinets lurking in the dim shadows at the room's edge.

In the light, Genma can see that Aoba's eyes aren't black. They're that pale grey, ringed with a darker coal color around the edges. His pupils have shrunk to deep black slits right down the middle, and Genma can see them momentarily dilate before shrinking back again as a patch of shadow passes over his friend's face.

He just nods, heading towards the cabinets, hand reaching into his pocket for the little box of lockpicks he has. As he goes, the thought crosses his mind, just for a moment, that Konoha has labs like this too, hidden away from most people's eyes. Then it's gone and he's all business, rifling through the files to pick out the important ones.

Once, a few months ago, more out of boredom than anything else, he studied the established bloodlines in the village. It was fairly interesting, and he ended up taking a volume on one branch of bloodlines in particular: those related to vision. None of them, he knows, have the name Yamashiro attached to them.

He's a little relieved when they go back above ground and Aoba puts his glasses back on.

Aoba glanced at the glowing numbers of the stove clock as he padded into the kitchen. 3:47, it read, green digits shining at him from the dim, unlit room. Way too late--or maybe early?--to be up, but he'd already known that. Now his insomnia just had a number attached.

Cold air swirled across the floor, chilling the faux-wood under his bare feet. It was summer, hot enough that the windows were warm, so the air conditioner was cranked up. Sometimes Aoba liked to throw his window open and breathe in the air, letting the cacophony of insects fill his ears while he inhaled all the sweet, heady smells of heat and growing things. Keeping it open while he was asleep creeped him out, though; he always closed it before he went to bed, and sometimes he didn't even bother opening it. Sometimes he liked the recycled quality of the AC.

It was too dark to see, and the shining clock seemed to suck up its own light, making everything around it darker. Aoba bumped into the counter, swearing softly under his breath as it dug painfully into his hip. Once he got his bearings again, he edged slowly along the length of the counter, one hand trailing over it. His fingers encountered bumps of sugar crusted to the surface of it like Braille, like the story of the house for someone who couldn't see it. Not that it was very thrilling: spilled sugar and snacks at four AM, when the insomnia was hitting hard.

He stretched to reach the cabinet door, tugging it open. It swung out with a soft creak that almost made him jump, and came to a stop softly against the side of his head.

"God," he muttered, groping blindly at cans he could only guess the contents of. "Whole house is trying to kill me."

After a few false tries, he managed to get something he could just pop in the microwave. A toast to Monsiuer Boyardee and his instant ravioli, Aoba thought as he grabbed a spoon and stuck it under the pop tab. Hell, he could just eat it cold, straight out of the can.

He pulled the rest of the top off with his bare hand and went to throw it away. His grasp was clumsy, and the sharp metal edges bit eagerly into the soft skin of his palm, opening up two stinging lines across his hand; one from the pad of his thumb to his pinkie, and one across the middle joints of each finger.

"Ow. Dammit." He dropped the lid in the trash and licked the sauce off his hand, heading towards the sink. When the taste registered, he stopped. That wasn't just cheap instant food sauce; it had too much iron in it. "Oh, damn." How was he going to explain that in the morning? Had he bled on the floor? And, Jesus, since when were those things so sharp? He must've been holding onto it a lot tighter than he thought.

He washed his hand off, hissing a little as the water stung the cuts. When he held his hand up to the weird, dull light of the stove clock, he could see that the cuts weren't deep at all. They just hurt. Would hurt even worse tomorrow, he bet, but it wasn't anything to worry about. He was glad for that; he already had enough to worry about. Aoba didn't stay up until four in the fucking morning on a school night unless he had a good reason.

As he started back to his room, can of ravioli in one hand and sucking on the other idly, a thought struck him. Blood. That was what they wanted, right? Those nameless horrors lurking just outside his window, just outside the door, just off the property? The ones waiting for him to go to sleep so they could come screaming in through the slightest gap under a door or between a windowpane and its frame?

He set the can down on the table and slowly turned, walking back to the counter. His eyes were adjusted to the darkness now, so he didn't bump into it this time. Carefully, hand almost trembling, he reached for the wooden block holding the knives, their dark handles nearly invisible in the gloom.

The one he drew out was the one his dad always told him to be careful with when he was doing the dishes. It was regularly sharpened, edge serrated, and big. He admired the glint of green light off the edge of it for a moment, turning it over and over, and then pressed that cruelly toothed edge to his palm, lining it right up with the shallow cuts from the can lid. It stung, but he ignored that and pressed down, until it felt like the edge was bruising him. Then, slowly, he drew it down across his palm.

It hurt. The serrated edge tore his flesh open, slipping when he started bleeding. Both hands trembled violently, and the fingers of his bleeding hand curled and tensed. It kind of looked like a giant, dead spider. Once the tip of the knife dropped down over the outer edge of his hand, pointing towards the floor, he let out a breath he hadn't even known he was holding.

Cradling his hand close to his chest, he pulled the sliding door open and stepped outside, into the softly humming darkness. Everything was still, breathless and sticky, with not even a breeze to disturb the muggy air. For a moment, he just stood there, hand aching against his chest, and looked forwards, eyes straining to penetrate the darkness.

Then he began walking slowly out, looking side to side. He felt hot in a way that had nothing to do with the weather, shivers of heat chasing themselves through him with each throb of his hand. Slowly, almost reverently, as if he were performing a ritual, he bent and pressed his bleeding hand to the grass.

All he could hear were the insects and his own breathing. Nothing else stirred. Not even cars drove by. He was completely alone out there, in his yard, out in the dark with only the bugs and whatever invisible creatures might be hovering around. It was the thought of those others that made him start walking faster, glancing every so often over his shoulder for something. Maybe a ripple in the darkness, or the impression of a shape before it cloaked itself in the night again, or perhaps even glowing eyes following him. Nothing showed itself, though.

Every so often, he stopped to rub his blood on the grass. When it felt like it was stopping, he flexed his hand, tugging at the skin until the cut pulled open again. This was what they wanted, those demons of darkness that were after him. He'd started noticing them just last year, during the summer, when something had begun whispering to him in the middle of the night. The thought of its voice, its words, still made chills run up and down his spine. That thing had wanted to kill him, and if he'd slept, it would have.

Now they came more and more often, scratching at the window, rattling the doors and talking to him through the walls. Sometimes they came right out into his room, manifesting as smoky shadows twisting through the air. When that happened, all he could do was close his eyes and pray and try not to listen. If he looked at them or let their words sway him, he was dead.

They wanted blood. They waited for him in the dead of night, when everything was still and the air choked with humidity, and they whispered with their silver tongues everything they wanted to do to him. Between the fear and the lack of sleep, sometimes he thought they were going to drive him insane. Of course, they'd like that.

Now, though, he could give them what they wanted. All he had to do was smear his blood on the grass and they would be satiated until next time, and then he could do it all over again. A grin spread across his face, wide and happy and relieved. He could keep them away.

Aoba went back inside, wiping his hand on the ground a few more times, and cleaned off the knife. He felt so light and relieved, like he could just float up into the air at any moment. The sickening fear, the question of what he was going to do next time that always lurked in the back of his head, had weighed him down like a boulder tied to his back, but that was gone now. He knew exactly what to do and it was so incredibly easy.

He washed his hand and wrapped it up in toilet paper, using tape to keep the makeshift bandage on. Then he finished up his ravioli and collapsed into bed, snuggling down into his blankets. For the first time in a long time, he fell asleep with barely a shiver, hardly a worried twitch or shake. Everything was going to be alright.

Neji comes into the world as all infants do: wet and naked and squalling. He's got quite an impressive set of lungs, the doctor who delivers him--another blank-eyed Hyuuga man--comments, as he checks the child over. Everything is exactly as it should be, and though the possibility of it being otherwise isn't high at all, Hizashi breathes a silent sigh of relief when he sees his child's pale, pupil-less eyes. There have been Hyuuga babies born without the Byakugan before, though they never live long enough for anyone but the clan to know.

Born in the family compound, surrounded by white-robed men, with pale mirrors looking out from his red face, Neji is a Hyuuga now.

~~~

Neji's four years old, and he's taken from his father's side. Hiashi-sama takes him into a dark room he's never seen before in all his exploring, with the elders standing like icy-eyed statues. He's frightened, just a little bit, but he doesn't show it because he knows his father would tell him to be brave.

They burn a cage into his forehead, tying him to the clan and making sure he will fly for none but them. The pain eventually resolves itself into green lines, a mark that he will someday come to hate and despise and hide away. Right then, though, all he knows is that now the Main Family can hurt and control him at their discretion.

There's a seal on Neji's forehead now, green bars caging him in, and he's not a Hyuuga anymore.

~~~ 

Neji's thirteen, and he's finally been pushed too far. The Main Family has rebuked and gone against him time and time again, but this defiance, from weak, spineless Hinata, sends rage singing through his veins. So Neji rushes at her, chakra screaming death in his palms, fully intending to hit her over and over until she doesn't get up again.

Before he gets within three feet of her, there's three jounin holding onto him and the examiner is in between him and Hinata. Neji manages to reign in his anger enough to stalk off without painting the arena in Hinata's blood. He knows that the clan will hear about this, but he doesn't care.

Even though he was stopped, Neji's actions are still an act of open rebellion against the clan, and he's not a Hyuuga anymore.

~~~

Neji's nineteen and a jounin in ANBU. He comes back from his last mission with his mask tied to his belt. The pattern's been altered by a new set of red streaks whirling across its white surface. If he could see it, Neji would be displeased; he always keeps his equipment as clean as possible. But Neji can't see anything anymore.

He's laid out in the Hyuuga compound, wrapped in ceremonial robes and his hair carefully brushed glossy. They burn his body so it can never fall into enemy hands, because, even though the seal has already ruined his eyes, there are other secrets buried within his very bones. The ashes are scattered over a garden, and Neji is laid to rest.

With his forehead as blank as his lifeless eyes, Neji's finally a Hyuuga again.

It was a nice day, all sunny and bright and cloudless. Tonbo could tell by the way the heat struck his face, by the way the sunlight turned the air into a warm, golden haze wrapping around him, covering every inch of his body. It wasn't quite uncomfortable, though it would have been if he'd been wearing more clothing. As it was, the shorts and sleeveless t-shirt were almost too much, and he kept having to resist the urge to discretely check--for probably the fifth damn time all day--that he really did have his pants on the right way.

Tonbo could tell that it was a nice day because he felt the sun warming his skin and the air was thick and hot when he breathed in. He could tell by the heat of the almost dead grass that crunched under his feet and from the metal rivets in the bench.

But he couldn't see the sky stretching out to meet the trees reaching up to it way out in the forest, soft blue and cloudless. He couldn't see the grass distorted through shimmering heat waves, couldn't see the treetops the sky was touching, couldn't see the sun hanging bright and blazing in the middle of that clear, blue sky. It was a bright, sunny day, with birds chirping and children playing and just enough of a breeze to keep it from getting too hot, the air moist but not quite muggy, but he couldn't fucking see it.

It was still hard to believe. Hard for him to even grasp it, the enormity of what he'd lost. Of what had been taken from him, taken by that fucking invader in his own goddamn body. It was still trying to sap away his strength, so he took medication that made him feel sick--but not that sick. He'd never be that sick again, or he'd just take a kunai to his own throat--and trained until he was too exhausted to stand up. That gave him his strength back, but nothing in the world would ever give him his sight back.

And sometimes, when he couldn't even get up out of bed because of how much it hurt, because of the pain that wrapped tendrils around his leg and back and stomach and head and squeezed until he could hardly breathe, he didn't even have strength. At times like that, he didn't have a single damn thing except for crushing blackness that would never, ever leave. Sometimes that forced the breath from his lungs even more than the pain did. When he woke up in the middle of the night and fumbled for the light, panting and sweating, fingers trembling so badly as to be almost useless from some nameless dread that froze his blood, and there was the click but nothing happened, it was almost enough to make him want to just break down.

But he wouldn't let himself be that weak. He was already so weak he couldn't see, so weak he could hardly stand. His emotions were all he could control, and by god, he would control them with an iron fucking fist. Everything he felt, disappointment and hurt and fear and sadness and every single thing, was kept bottled up deep inside until finally he had to release it or be crushed under the pressure. So he let it out as anger, explosive and unpredictable and fiery. He let it out in seething, burning vitriol, in words so loaded with venom they stung as they left his lips. He let it out in spontaneous, unbidden violence at the tiniest slight, whether real or imagined.

Tonbo lashed out at everyone around him in the agony of being helpless. Every time someone said something the least bit pitying to him, bitter bile rose up in his throat and he spat out acid at them. Because he was helpless and he knew he was helpless, he did everything he could to keep other people from realizing it. He didn't need their damn pity, because he was dealing with it just fine. He didn't need their damn sympathy and support and kindness, because they didn't understand anyway. They had no fucking idea what it was really like and he didn't need any of it, didn't need any of them. Tonbo was weak, but he didn't need anyone. He wouldn't let himself need anyone.

It was a bright, sunny day, but Tonbo couldn't see it. He didn't give a damn, though. It wasn't a fucking problem and he didn't need help or pity or comfort or anything. Tonbo just sat there and stared straight up into the sky and sucked down bitter, acrid smoke from his cigarettes. That bitterness was a much easier pill to swallow than admitting how weak and helpless and dependent he really was.

It was much easier to just sit back and take another drag off the cigarette and not care. It was a very nice fucking day, after all.

The light is a deep whisky bottle orange amber, darkening hair normally a thick gold color to something more like bloody honey. It's easy to imagine that, honey sitting thick while the blood mixes in it, sending out exploratory little tendrils as it slowly darkens the hue of the whole mixture. Easy to imagine the surface of it rippling just slightly in the gently curved cup of a spoon, poised between full, pink lips, parted just slightly to let the metal in. Under that light the smirking amber eyes are darkened to a deep cognac, and the slim lily-stem neck and gently rounded shoulders are a deep gold. It's natural for eyes to follow down the curve of collarbone, hollow of the throat dotted with a little dewdrop of sweat that looks like it's made to be licked up, down to the perky little breasts, just barely more than a handful each. Dark brown nipples stand hard, practically inviting the brush of a thumb, the moist press of lips around them.

Those lips curve up into a grin, and the greeting is ambiguous, voice smoothly androgynous. It begs another sort of question, far more intimate than allowed at first meeting, so something not quite as telling is asked.

His name is Genma.

Title: Bridges Burn Blue
Author: The Edoro
Characters: Hayate, Keisuke
Rating: PG13
Genre: Angst
Status: Complete
Warnings: Slash, pedophilia, incest, rape, underage alcohol use
Note: This is mainly about an OC of mine, Gekkou Keisuke. He's Hayate's uncle. This rather nicely explains my Hayate, and why he's the neurotic little tokujou we all know and love.

***

It's very easy to make promises, and it's very easy to break them, and oftentimes it's easy to ignore the guilt, too. After all, if you never promise anyone else, who is there to be hurt by it? The hard part of making promises is keeping them, and it is very hard.

Keisuke knows this, knows it in the same way he knows how to torture a man into giving up every bit of information he has and in the same way he knows that he would never be that man who talked and in the same way he knows he's on the good side. But he only knows all of those things in theory, only knows them hypothetically, so really what he knows is nothing at all.

He does know that he's made so many promises, and he knows he's slowly broken all of them, one at a time. Every step forwards he's taken has burned one of the bridges he swore time and again would be fireproof, and he knows this.

When Keisuke is younger, thirteen or fourteen, and entering that awkward stage where people often find out things about themselves and what gets a rise out of them that they'd rather not know, he makes a startling and disturbing discovery. While his teammates whisper and blush and snicker over girls, bare buxom breasts and apple bottoms and wasp waists and flaring hips, or sometimes even boys, broad shoulders and barrel chests and narrow hips and lengths Keisuke is SURE have to be fake, none of it really interests him. He thinks about boys, in a broad sort of sense, but they aren't the sweat-gleaming heroes his friends speak of.

Keisuke thinks of children. Rounded little shoulders and clumsy fingers and short legs, scabby knees and thin chests and bare feet dirty from running over the ground all day. He thinks about kissing those narrow shoulders, fingers trailing down those slim chests, those hesitant child fingers sliding between his legs, curling around his cock...

It frightens him, that he is so perverse. So he buries it away and promises that he won't let himself think like that, that he'll live celibate if he has to and never touch himself and never even think a sexual thought if he can't get little boys out of his head.

Then he's seventeen, and teenage hormones distorted through the bottom of two or three beer bottles lead him to unlock those feelings he's managed to mostly suppress. He's at home by himself, which is the perfect time for horny experimentation. So he makes a clone and transforms it into this adorable little boy he saw earlier, with curly blond hair and big blue eyes and two teeth missing in his wide, happy smile. He slides his tongue into that gap, pressing it against the clone-child's soft gums, and the way it squirms so willingly against him drives every thought except for how hard can you screw a bunshin before it disappears? and oh my fucking god why didn't I think of this sooner? out of his head.

Later that night, he's laying in bed, hazy with alcohol and that nice post-orgasmic afterglow that is, he has discovered, much nicer when there is someone else to do all the things he couldn't do to himself. Suddenly he laughs, drunken and bright and, because a part of him is sickened and terrified that someone will find out about this, just on the edge of hysterical. What he's just realized is that he lost his virginity, at the age of seventeen, to himself.

He remembers the promise he'd made years ago, that he would never do this, and there are long minutes of guilt. They feel like hours, until finally he manages to resolve it by promising that it will never be a real child. Never that. It will always be just him.

Then Keisuke is nineteen, just two years later, and his sister is pregnant. It's that man's child, the one who he has been telling her to stay away from. But their parents are just so controlling, even when their children are adults, and so Ayame rebels by doing everything she can to make their lips tighten in displeasure and their eyes narrow. Keisuke is the good child, and he laughs at that, because if they knew what their good child did in his room when they were sleeping or out, he'd be more of a disgrace than Ayame.

He's nineteen and she's pregnant and she comes to visit him, in the middle of the night, through the window because she's been living with that man. Keisuke freezes when she slides in, fingers tangled in long black hair and fist clenching to stop the pale head bobbing between his legs. It's his last assignment, not that Ayame knows that. Client, not target; fucking his target's doppleganger would be far too morbid. Staying in the child's room at night and listening to his slow breathing, looking at him sprawled out so innocently over the bed, had been torture. Keisuke has just gotten back from that mission, and now Ayame, oh, god, his sister, is there and seeing him trying to work off all that pent up need.

There is a long silence stretching between them, Ayame's eyes wide and Keisuke flushing in shame and both trying to avoid looking into the other's eyes. Ayame speaks, and the silence breaks like a thin, brittle wire stretched too far and too hard.

She wants to know what the hell he's doing. She calls him names, calls him a pervert, calls him sick, calls him a disgusting deviant and oh, god, she wants to know, do their parents know? What would they SAY? Keisuke is silent through all of it, agrees with most of it, and then she calls him a rapist and he has to protest. Sick as it is, wrong as it is, he has still kept that promise of two years ago and never touched an actual child. He dismisses the clone, hurriedly pulling his pants on, to show her. See? Not real.

For a long time after her child is born, she doesn't let Keisuke touch him. When she does, she is always there, watching him with obvious suspicion. It hurts, but he knows that he deserves it. She doesn't know about the promise he made.

He's twenty-one, and he's walking home from a mission when someone grabs his pant leg. There's a child looking up at him, a dark haired little boy with eyes as blue as the flat winter sky stretching out above them. His face is pinched and pale, eyes glazed with hunger, and ragged clothes hang off his thin frame. The fingers clutching Keisuke's pants are cold against his thigh through the fabric, and the hand the boy holds out, palm stretched flat and fingers crooked just slightly, is bony.

Keisuke reaches for his wallet, and then stops. The boy is obviously starving, and it's winter. He'll die if he stays out, and Keisuke doesn't want that on his conscience. He takes the boy home, lets him warm up and gives him clothing and feeds him. It's his own house now, not his parent's, so Keisuke doesn't feel more than just a little nervous about offering to let the boy stay the night.

It's not like he's going to do anything, anyway. Right? Of course. He made that promise and that, he has told himself over and over again, in those times when he was in other countries where the brothels sold little boys and no one would find it odd at all if he slipped into one for a few hours, or when he saw the beggar urchins in the street who would do anything for a little bit of cash, is the one he will never break.

But then the boy is in his bed, beside him, looking down at him with those wide blue eyes. Temptation is blue, Keisuke realizes, as he draws the child down into a gentle kiss. Blue like the sky, and the eyes looking down at him as he pulls the boy on top of him, hands resting on his narrow, bony hips, are the accusing eyes of the empty clouds he'd made his promises to.

Every year after that, Keisuke remembers the feeling of a too thin, warm body rocking against him while he moans and arches up and rakes his nails down a child's back when he looks up at the flat, cold winter sky. At first he thinks his sister is a prophetess, because she called him a rapist then and he just fucked a child, a real little boy, real and heavy and warm with his scabbed knees spread over Keisuke's hips and his ragged nails digging into Keisuke's shoulders. But then he remembers that the child came to him, that he asked if it was alright and the boy silenced his nervousness with a thin finger pressed to his lips. He remembers how experienced and old those hard sky eyes were, and he remembers the surprise on his face when Keisuke had been slow and gentle and careful and asked him every step of the way, voice strained and shaking, if it hurt.

The boy came to him. That is what Keisuke remembers, and it is what he uses to assauge his guilt. The boy came to him, and knew what he was offering. Keisuke didn't hurt him, and he was kind. So Keisuke makes a new promise, and this one is the strongest out of all of them. He promises that even if it's a real child, it will never be rape. He will always make sure the boy knows, and he will make sure the boy consents. Keisuke is perverse and sick and deviant, but he is not a monster.

Ayame's child is named Hayate. He's five years old, now, warm and heavy and sleepy in Keisuke's lap, head resting against his chest and one small hand curled in his shirt. Keisuke has one arm wrapped around his waist, hand low on his back, and another hand gently combing long calloused fingers through the boy's hair. Ayame gives him a sharp look, almost reaches out to slap away the hand on her child's back.

Keisuke gives a sad little smile and shifts it up, fingers splaying out. He can feel the ridge of Hayate's spine under his thumb, the boy's soft skin warm through his shirt against Keisuke's palm. He's a beautiful little boy, pale skin and dark hair and big trusting dark eyes. When he looks up at Keisuke with those eyes and smiles and says he loves him, Keisuke just wants to melt.

Never Hayate, he tells Ayame. Hayate is family. Would Ayame fuck him, or their father? It's just the same.

Ayame is still suspicious, but she relaxes. She lets Hayate stay with Keisuke after that, although Keisuke wonders if she would if she knew the boy liked to crawl into bed with him during the night. Sometimes he wants to tell her and tell her not to let Hayate stay, because he is scared to death that he won't realize it's Hayate soon enough one night and do something terrible to him. But he loves Hayate and loves feeling the boy's warm little body in his arms, against his chest, feeling Hayate's warm breath making his hair flutter and washing over his neck. He loves the way Hayate smells, like dirt and outside and heady summer heat and the same fragrant, flowery soap and shampoo Ayame uses. It's selfish, but he doesn't want to give that up.

Anyway, he promised. Never Hayate. Never family. Hayate isn't old enough to understand what Keisuke would want, anyway, and it's just...wrong. Wrong on a level that surpasses every other sick thing Keisuke gets off on. So never, ever Hayate.

Hayate is ten years old, and Ayame is dead. Keisuke's not really sure how it makes him feel. Mostly he's numb, still shocked. His sister was not supposed to die before him. He's shinobi, and she was just a civilian. But that man left her a year after Hayate was born, and she had to work so hard to support herself and her child and still have enough left over that they weren't wanting of anything. Hayate was not going to grow up living meal to meal, she had promised. She'd worked herself to exhaustion and beyond, into sickness, and sometimes even that wasn't enough, but Keisuke always provided for her. They stayed with him when she couldn't pay for the house she and that man had lived in anymore.

She'd worked herself to death, and now Keisuke is left with her child. Hayate is clinging to him, hands clenching spasmodically in his shirt and head buried against his neck. Keisuke's holding him up, Hayate's thin legs wrapped around his chest, and for once he looks up at the sky and feels a small, warm body against his and doesn't think of sex and broken promises. Instead he thinks of gravestones and broken hearts and a tired, broken smile. He wants to sob like Hayate, but he has to be strong.

A week later, Hayate crawls into his bed. Not thinking, Keisuke slides a hand down to cup his pert little bottom and kisses him, tongue pressing into his mouth. Hayate makes a surprised noise, dark eyes wide, and Keisuke pulls away as if burned. Oh, god. He's managed for so long not to do this, and now...

He tries to pretend nothing happened and tries to pretend he isn't hard and hopes Hayate doesn't remember it in the morning. He made a promise. It's not broken yet, just a little cracked, and denial is a good strong glue. Keisuke paints the cracks with it and tries so hard to pretend Hayate isn't a warm, soft little boy snuggling against him.

But Keisuke is lonely, and he's hurting, and he misses Ayame, and with Hayate there he doesn't dare bring a whore home or spend time with his clones. When the boy is at school, he's usually taking missions. So he doesn't have time alone, and Hayate is clingy when he's around Keisuke.

He takes it slow and he asks Hayate every step of the way. Can he touch Hayate? Can he look at Hayate? Can he kiss Hayate? He stops when Hayate starts to get uncomfortable and if the boy doesn't understand what he wants, he explains.

Never family, he says to Ayame, the conversation playing on a tape reel in the back of his head. He smashes the screen and cuts the tape and stops up his ears so he can't hear it, can't remember. Now he's breaking that promise in little baby steps, like the nephew he'd promised never to touch like that had taken when he was learning to walk.

First never family, and then he kisses Hayate, and he breaks that. Then not ever again, and Hayate presses against him and gives him that look, and he breaks that. Then only touching, and he asks to take Hayate's clothes off and look at his beautiful body laid out in the moonlit darkness, and he breaks that. Then just looking, and he takes Hayate's hand and puts it between his legs and shows the boy what to do, and he breaks that.

The last one is never sex, and it takes him almost two years to break that one. But eventually he does. He strips Hayate and bends him over and spreads his legs and straddles him, panting in his ear that it's alright, to relax, that it won't hurt, as he prepares him with stretching, slick fingers and then presses into him. Hayate cries afterwards, and Keisuke holds him and kisses his cheeks and hates himself.

Never rape, he promises. Surely he won't break that one. He loves Hayate.

But power is a drug and Keisuke has been an addict ever since he got out from under his parent's strict control, and so one day Hayate does something wrong--Keisuke doesn't even really know what. He forgets to do a chore or maybe lies about his homework or something--and before he even thinks about it Keisuke has him bent over the kitchen counter, pants around his ankles and legs splayed. He fucks Hayate, hard and rough and pounding, while the boy squirms and cries and screams himself hoarse underneath him. The orgasm turns the world into a hazy white smear across his brain, and he feels sick when he pulls out and sees the blood on Hayate's thighs.

Making promises is easy, and breaking them is even easier. It's done in the blink of an eye, in a flash of hard blue sky, with a child's soft breathing and warm body and trembling little hands. It's done with pilfered alcohol and a clone, and then with a starving, prepubescent whore, and then in the dark of night to forget about the pain of losing family. When it's done it can't be taken back, and once it's done once it's so very easy to keep on moving with the cascade, sliding farther and farther down on an avalanche of vows unkept.

Keisuke wants control so very badly. He hurts Hayate to get control, and manages to keep himself drunk enough with power that he doesn't hate himself for it. But he doesn't have any real control. It's a fiction, smoke and mirrors, the smoke of tendrils of blood from an abused child's thighs turning water dark and murky and the mirrors of two hard blue eyes, the ones that had broken his second most important promise. It takes self-control and willpower to keep a promise not made to any other person, and Keisuke has broken each and every one of his.

So really all Keisuke knows is nothing, and all he has is a handful of broken promises that cut into him like glass, and he has as little control as he did when his parents dictated everything he did or thought or said. Maybe he's learned a lesson, though, because Keisuke doesn't make promises anymore. He just keeps breaking the old ones.

Tonbo doesn't love Asuma.

Hayate asks, once, watching them share one of those oddly tender moments they sometimes have. Asks, "Do you love him?"

Asuma just gives him a little smile and takes a deep drag on his cigarette, while Tonbo laughs. It's a bitter sound, low and throaty and dark, like warm dark chocolate melting on his tongue.

He says he doesn't love Asuma. Sneers the word 'love', lips twisting as if even tasting it disgusts him. Love, Tonbo says, is a fairytale thing, and fairytales are for little kids to believe in under their covers, at night, when it's dark and silent and they can imagine anything they want into the world. Not for bitter, angry men drugging away the anger in a ramshackle shed, addicted to feeling different and driven by that addiction to such lows.

It seems impossible that any man can look regal while sitting at the back of a shed clouded with smoke, breathing in a potpourri mix of every drug anyone could think of, but Tonbo manages it. With the way he sits, knees lazily splayed apart, arms draped over the back of the stained couch, head tilted back just slightly, he looks like a king. The blind king of the dregs, surveying his kingdom of stoned outcasts from atop his threadbare throne. Reigning over the junkies and whores and beggars who all owe allegiance to the same ruler that governs him: the grinning chemical monster that dances with them until it wears them out, and then throws them away while it seeks a new partner.

If you love someone, he continues, you give them things, right? But Tonbo doesn't have anything to give Asuma. He's got a crown of reeking smoke and a throne with broken springs and a whole fucking empire of dirt. He's got a hot, tight kernel of anger that always burns in his chest, spreading up into his throat, and it coats every word he speaks, making each syllable come out sharp and edged and cutting. He's got bitter, warped opinions on all the world's fragile things, and he tries to break them every time he touches them, because he can't have them.

He already gives Asuma his body. That's enough for him, for both of them. It's not anything like love or even anything like gentle. It's fucking, fucking like animals, biting and scratching at each other, panting and gasping and swearing and screaming. It's hard and rough and fast and dirty, and it leaves them both sweaty and exhausted and bloody. Not love at all, which is why Tonbo likes it so much. Because it's not some stupid, silly dime-store novel, not some idealistic illusion spun from mist and smoke and wishes, but real and harsh and painful.

Even if Tonbo does love Asuma, he's sure as hell not going to say it. He's got no illusions at all about what kind of person he is: bitter and crippled and angry. There's no romance there, nothing kind there, nothing to warrant receiving love. He doesn't deserve love and he doesn't want love. He's not a child anymore, he tells Hayate, not a little kid who still believes in ghosts and fairies and that hiding his head under the covers will make it okay, because if he can't see the bad things they're not there.

Tonbo can't see anything, anymore, good or bad, but he knows it's all there. He knows what's there and he knows what's not there and he knows what's real, and love isn't one of the real things. Love is just a hopeless wish, something for idealists to cling to in a broken world that's trying to break them too. The only way to survive and keep sane is to crumble and break and fall to pieces, and who would want to share a life like that?

Tonbo doesn't have any illusions about himself. He doesn't love Asuma, and he knows he doesn't, and he even knows why, not that he will ever tell anyone that reason. The only person it's important to already knows it, anyway.

Tonbo doesn't love Asuma because he hurts, and he hurts everyone around him, and he will only let Asuma down and make him hurt. He doesn't love Asuma because the world is broken and rotten and love isn't a fairytale, but a nightmare. Love is an addiction even stronger than the one that's given Tonbo his worthless kingdom of broken filth, and it's too cruel by far for even angry, bitter Tonbo to inflict that on anyone else. He doesn't love Asuma because he doesn't want to hurt Asuma.

Tonbo doesn't love Asuma because he does.

"Hey."

Genma is surprised, but he doesn't show it. "Hey." He shifts over a bit, a silent invitation to the other. It's odd that he has to remind himself that he's not looking at just another kid, but his friend. Of course, ever since that night...

"Thought you'd be here." Hayate doesn't look at Genma as he leans his elbows against the guard rail of the bridge. "I've been looking for you." When Hayate coughs into his fist, Genma can't help but wince. The boy's closeness, the slight accusation in his tone, and that cough...it's all reminding Genma of what he's desperately trying to forget.

"Sorry. I've been busy." It's a lie and they both know it, but Genma's excused plenty of Hayate's lies; he's glad the favor is returned. And maybe he doesn't deserve it, but he knows Hayate well enough to know that the boy won't risk alienating him any further.

"About..." Genma flinches and looks away, staring hard into the water. He can hear the quiet click in Hayate's no-doubt dry throat as he swallows hard. "Last week."

"What about it?" Genma has almost completely convinced himself that nothing happened.

"You fucked me. Remember?" It's hard, but Genma avoids flinching again. Hayate must be tired of lying if he's saying it like that, so harsh and blunt and cutting. There's no more sugar-coating, as much as Genma wants to avoid the bare truth.

"Oh. That." Casualness is something Genma is used to faking. "Yeah. Well, I mean, y'know, shit happens. Right?"

Hayate is silent for a long moment, staring into the water as if it can answer his questions. Maybe it can. It's probably doing a better job than Genma, whose every answer is being carefully formulated to drive little knives deep into Hayate. He doesn't want to hurt the boy, but getting too attached will only hurt them both in the end. "Yeah. It does. So that...I guess that didn't really mean anything to you, huh?"

Genma bites his lip and tries hard to remember his part. Cool, casual, unconcerned. But the raw pain in Hayate's soft voice makes his guts squirm, and he almost drops it then and there. "Hm. Not really. Sex is sex, y'know?" Keeping it up is hard, but Genma does it. Years of pretending to be fine when he's breaking inside have made him into a wonderful actor.

"Yeah."

"Did it mean something to you?" Genma is silent for a moment, and then goes on. "'Cause, well...You're a kid. I'm not going to get involved with a kid. I mean, shit, you're not even legal."

"No, it...No. And I...I wouldn't want to get you in trouble." Hayate turns and offers Genma a sickly smile, not meeting his eyes. "But we're still friends, right?"

Genma smiles back, looking up at the sky, and nods. "Of course."

Hayate nods, and they stand there like that, Hayate staring at the ground and Genma staring at the sky and neither acknowledging the other. Finally, Hayate breaks the silence with a soft cough.

"Well, I...I have to get home. Yuugao's getting back from her mission today, and I said I'd take her out to eat, so..." Hayate turns and begins to leave, but pauses for a moment, like he's waiting. Genma would wonder, but he thinks he knows. Waiting for me to grab him and kiss him and tell him it's all right. Like some romance novel. But this is real life, not a dime-store paperback, and Genma's not the dashing hero who's going to sweep Hayate off his feet. Genma's trying to pretend he doesn't know how hurt Hayate is, so he gazes intently up at the clouds.

Hayate leaves and Genma just stands there, hands in his pockets and senbon gripped between his teeth, looking no different than he usually does. As Hayate gets farther away, Genma watches his friend's retreating back and spares a moment to wonder what it would have been like if he hadn't lied.

Shrugging, Genma turns back to the water. Hayate is fragile right now, and Genma doesn't want to break him. Genma thinks that maybe he already broke Hayate, when he didn't say anything after waking up beside him and then avoided him for a week, but he pushes that thought away. He thinks he may have broken Hayate just a few minutes earlier, when he put on a smiling mask and said that the boy wasn't anything special to him, but he pushes that thought away too.

Genma thinks that he is a coward, and he welcomes that thought. It's a truth he can handle.

Twist the handle, open the drawer, pull out the box and flip the lid. A ritual he's repeated countless times.

The first picture was taken almost a year ago. The subject is lying on his stomach, nude, with a sheet pulled up--pushed down, actually--around his calves. Black and blue and swollen, his back is a mass of cuts and bruises. The injuries extend from his shoulders to the back of his knees, and although his face isn't visible, there are--were--tears in his eyes. So intense was the pain that any touch left him whimpering, and moving brought glimmering wetness to his eyes.

Kotetsu swallows and puts that picture down beside him. The next one was taken a few weeks before the first one, and it is much tamer. Only the faintest ghost of a bruise can be seen on Izumo's cheek, and a thin red trail drips down from his nose, over his lips and chin. Compared with the earlier picture, it is nothing at all. But somehow, that minor injury, that fading bruise and slight trickle of blood, seems even more horrific than all the most gruesome beatings. It is more real, more imaginable, and knowing who did it only makes it worse. A bruise and bloody nose are not serious injuries, but they are more personal. There is a slight glimmer, light reflected in the trail of tears sliding down his cheek.

Kotetsu continues going through the pictures. The injuries pictured are of varying degrees of severity, many brutal and others minor, but they are all reminders of such a painful period of Izumo's life.

There are more pictures, of course. More times when Izumo was whipped and beaten and broken. More broken bones and broken skin and deep bruises spreading painfully over Izumo's body, blue-black shadows from where blood pooled under his skin. Kotetsu has a thousand thousand reasons to hate Kamizuki Shinji, and every one of them is recorded in these pictures, sliding in dull red trickles down Izumo's broken and bruised body.

All these pictures have one thing in common, one thing that ties them together. And that is Izumo's expression. In every one, his eyes are dull with pain, hurt and scared. After looking at all of them, it hits Kotetsu like a punch in the gut: Izumo was a hurt, hurt man.

And the final blow, the coup de grace, is this: He hadn't been able to do anything.