The Innocent (A 'Finder' Fanfiction)

Shadow of Pluto - 6 - Maxim

"Think we can talk now?", his brother roared at the locked door. Fury had been a problem for Ryuichi already when he had been a child. Nonetheless, for many years his tantrums and stubbornness were ignored by their father and any of the many tutors they had been left with in their young lives. After a while of small Ryuichi raving – it had been general knowledge – he would calm down, and until then, he would be told to stay in his room. Whatever he decided to smash there, was understood to be his belonging anyway, and therefore nobody had bothered. Then he had hit puberty and his physical abilities had drawn level with his obstinacy. At that point, their father had decided that enough was enough. He had sent the younger of his two sons off with several of his men. Where they had gone, Maxim had never learned, for Ryuichi had not known himself. All his brother had been able to tell was that they had spent nearly three weeks in some derelict building somewhere in a cold forest. He had been hungry and thirsty and beaten bloody for days.

When he had been brought home, there had been bruises and cuts and scratches all over his body. They had healed, yes, but gone with them was also the hotheadedness. Maybe it had not been extinguished, but Ryuichi had learned to control it. That was all his father had required of him. The old man did not care how his sons felt inside. He had not bothered whether his rage would have made the younger of his two children sick on the inside, or if he would be intimidated by his father for the rest of his life. All that had counted to him was the outcome. That way it had always been.

But Maxim knew that that fury was still in there, kept carefully hidden away, locked and sealed, yet occasionally, it would break free. Presently, with the boy stomping his feet against the door of the walk-in-closet, it was burning in his brother's very eyes and made his breath ragged and his voice forced.

"Die!", the boy screamed from behind the solid oak wood, which was all that kept prisoner from goaler.

"I am sick of this!", Ryuichi proved Maxim's thoughts correct the next moment. "I need you to tell me what happened. I don't even care if you want to believe you are somebody else. Just tell me the fuck what happened to you!" His voice echoed back from the door and across the walls.

"Ryuichi", Maxim tried quietly but was not heard ... or simply ignored.

When his brother had been taken away all those years ago, it had been in the middle of the night. For two days he had not dared to inquire where he had been brought – and then he had only allowed himself to phrase that question to his father as if Ryuichi had gone on his own volition.

"It's none of your business", had been the short answer.

"When will he be back?", Maxim had asked, though he felt how his heart had just dropped to his feet. He had been 15 back then, and his future as the heir to the family's organization had already been taken away from him – because of some accident.

"Who said he'll be back?" his father had replied without raising his voice. He had sounded as if he talked about the weather.

That back then had been the first time their father had thrown Ryuichi onto the battlefield – one he had created himself. Later he tossed him onto another one by forcing him to join "Tilphousia", a private military firm he had his hands in – well, a mercenary army was the more fitting description. They had fought drug-runners in Peru, fundamentalists in Iraq and so-called liberation-fronts in Sudan and Mali. Ryuichi had been hardly 19, when he had left, 24 when he had come back. At that point, their father had thought that he had won. Instead, his son had run off and for years they had had to search for him – and when they had finally found him, he had been a made man. Someone not easily tangled with, not even for Richard Seiko Asami.

Now, ... that seemed to be in the past. At this moment, his brother looked as if at the verge of breaking apart. His hair was unkempt, his clothes crumpled, the bandage on his arm had bled through and very like had the one around his chest. The boy had managed to cut him quite well with that little glass blade. For the rest of the last evening, for the night and this morning the walk-in-closet had been used as a cell for the young man allegedly called Akihito ... or Arata.