The Innocent (A 'Finder' Fanfiction)

Shadow of Pluto - 23 - Richard

The world was paint on his fingertip. He decided on its outlines, on its shapes, on wherever there was black or red or white or no color at all.

Humans were attached to strings, and only he saw them. He moved them about, he steered them, he left them hanging, and occasionally, he cut them.

His sons sat in the dining hall, each staring down onto the table, which was polished so well they could see their reflections in it. In fact, they actually looked like a reflection of each other.

Maxim was blonde, like his mother had been. Blue eyes, short-sighted, good-natured but without any remorse or pity whenever the benefits of the family were concerned; forty years old and not interested in any kind of human relationship. He revered from afar, had retired to the seclusion of the mansion in Dubrovnik, and gazed at art and beauty, allowing only his heart to be warmed but never his crotch.

Ryuichi, on the other hand, was so much more like his father: fierce and unforgiving, cold eyes even if they were golden and not gray. Dark haired, dark plans.

The family's fortune and businesses should have fallen into Maxim's hand, and never had Richard preferred one child above the other, even if the younger was more to his liking by his nature. Fate had decided his firstborn to be the kinder one, and thus it should therefore have been. Whatever Maxim had wished to do with his heirloom, Richard wasn't concerned about. The son only had to function until the day his father died, and thereafter, the son could do whatever he pleased.

But then Maxim had broken his back. And the heritage had been placed upon the younger's shoulders.

Ryuichi, however, had not wanted it. Possibly because he disliked any restriction of his freedom, or because he hated to play by anyone else's rules – in that he had been like his father as well. Probably, he even hadn't wanted to pass over his brother.

Richard did not care. He had his plans and he got what he wanted.

In the dining hall he stood, considering his two boys. They thought they had a right to lives and plans of their own, but for as long as he lived, they hadn't. They had to function! He had thought that they knew this by now.

Also: hadn't he been generous to both of them? He had left the businesses of the family in Maxim's hands for years, so he could play master of it all. And he had done so with excellent results. But never had Richard promised that he could keep his toys. Ryuichi, on the other hand, he had allowed to indulge in his freedom for ten years. A decade for him to become his own man, to prove to himself whatever he had found worthy of testing; to find what he esteemed as love. Time for that was over now!

"You will return to your bedrooms. Those which have been yours when you were children. You will stay there and not leave unless I call upon you", he told them, his voice filling not only the dining hall but the whole mansion, even though he did not speak loudly. The walls reverberated his words, the windows shook from their might, the young men – no matter how powerful they were outside the walls of the garden – hardly dared to breathe.

They were afraid of him. They had always been.

But that was one of the lessons of the world. The only thing that would ever best you, was the one you were afraid of. With a phone call, Maxim could kill a hundred people, just for the good of the family. With his finger on the trigger, Ryuichi would head into war and not be frightened of the prospect of his own death.

Yet with all the perils and dangers and dreads of the world they had conquered, they had never overcome their fear of him.

He knew that right presently and every second to follow they would imagine of how to rise against him, of how to rebel. But there lay the difference between conscience and conditioning: to know that a spider could not harm you did not help any bit if you had an arachnophobia.