Runaways [MikaYuu]

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

A/N: *gasps for air* This chapter took forever!! I hope I did it justice. Also this Tumblr post does a good job speaking about the goal I have with my fic.

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Mika's Backstory

March 18th, 1851

The first time Mikaela Shindo ran away, he was seven years old.

It was a chilly evening, still late winter, nearly at the breaking point of when spring bloomed in front of his eyes. But the changing weather patterns were the last thing on his mind as Mika scrambled through his house, dodging the furniture left and right to escape the man chasing him.

"Get back here, you little bastard," Mika's father (if he could even call him that) slurred, a whiskey bottle in one hand and a cigar between his lips. He was so wasted he could barely walk properly, let alone chase Mika through the house.

As he stumbled through the house, he crashed the bottle on the side of a table, which made the alcohol splatter across the surface and drip down to the floor into a tiny pool of liquid. "Now look what you did!" He screamed, throwing the broken bottle at Mika. Though his coordination was off, the bottle managed to graze Mika's neck, just below his ear, slicing through skin. Mika cried out, clamping his hand to the cut and fighting back tears.

This slowed him down enough for his father to catch him, grabbing his wrists and twisting them behind Mika's back painfully. He shouted out in in pain, begging for mercy.

"You little shit, running away from your pop," He hissed into Mika's ear, his breath reeking of alcohol and smoke. "I oughta teach you a lesson," He decided, taking the cigar from his lips and pressing the burning end into Mika's arm, eliciting a blood-curdling scream.

Mika was no match physically for his father, so he couldn't pull away. Instead, he did the next best thing he could; twist his body backwards and bite his father's arm, causing him to jump back and roar in anger. Mika took this as his single chance to escape, making a run for it.

Mika dashed into his bedroom, a tiny, closet-sized space in the end of the ranch-style home, just barely managing to crawl under the bed before his father burst inside, yelling for him.

"You can't hide from me!" The father bellowed before he tripped over his own two feet, cursed loudly, and fell to the ground in a loud thud, promptly hitting his head on the floor with a sickening crack.

Mika squinted from the darkness under his bed, trying to see if he had fallen unconscious. He waited there for what felt like an infinitely long five minutes before daring to creep out from under the bed.

Brushing the cobwebs and dust bunnies off him, he knelt by his father, who had smashed in his chin and had a trail of blood and spit pooling out of his mouth. The sight itself was grotesque enough, not to mention his nose was crooked at a disgustingly weird angle. Mika couldn't bring himself to feel for his pulse and instead found himself running; he ran into his closet and dug around for the emergency bag he packed for this occasion. He then ran out of the bedroom, into his father's and taking all the money he kept hidden under his mattress. Shoving it into his coat pocket, he rushed out of the house, feeling the chilly night air on his skin.

With no destination in mind, he kept running, faster than he ever had in his entire seven years of life, not ceasing to stop until he was so far away from his so-called home he wouldn't remember how to get back home.

In the newspapers next week, his father had been proclaimed dead in his home, with the cause of death being head trauma.

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