Fake Fan Fiction ❯ Learning to Love ❯ Thorns ( Chapter 4 )

Legal Disclaimer - I do not own FAKE and it's a good thing too because the characters would probably be in therapy with all the stuff I put them through.

Author's Note - Updating again after a long time. My muse has finally returned and I've been writing like crazy . . . just wish I could be UPDATING like crazy too . . .

Chapter 4 - Thorns

When Ryo awoke the next morning, he realized that his body felt very warm and his mind, very safe. Almond eyes gazed upwards and landed upon the peacefully sleeping face of Dee. Ryo remarked that Dee was a lot more handsome when he wasn't wearing that usual scowl on his face. It made his eyebrows knit tightly together causing his face to be contorted into a look of sheer disgust.

Ryo sighed to himself and slipped out of Dee's grasp, causing Dee to snuggle with a pillow instead of the blonde; he smiled over the thought of Dee acting like an overly large teddy bear. Getting up out of bed silently, Ryo crept towards the bathroom to take care of some business. When he was through, he looked into the large mirror on the wall to find that the gashes on his face were smaller and less irritated looking than before. Ryo made a mental note to thank Dee again later that day.

But, at that moment, Ryo had a plan. He dressed quickly and quietly, not wanting to wake the other sleeping occupant of the room before exiting with only the sound of the door clicking back into place behind him. Ryo stepped gracefully down the grand flight of stairs and into the foyer; he did not want to sound like a heard of elephants for that would surely rouse the house.

He opened one of the large double doors and stepped outside into the cool morning air. The sun was just rising, putting the time at almost six thirty. Ryo took a deep breath, loving the fresh feeling that invaded his lungs and took a couple more, savoring that blissful moment. There was the smell of snow just fallen, and the crisp bite of winter that would soon over take fall. He sighed again and closed his eyes, feeling so much at peace with himself and the world.

Something moved; he sensed it. Almond eyes snapped open quickly. Too quickly. The brightness of the rising sun blinded him for a moment and he was in a daze; he almost fell over, but stopped himself. Ryo swayed back and forth dizzily until his sight cleared.

There was a figure bathed in white. Ice blue eyes locked with Ryo's chocolate brown; the link between the gaze was coated with hatred. It was one sided and Ryo was confused by this stranger's anger. He had no idea who this man was and why there was so much loathing being directed at him. All he knew was that it wasn't good.

The man turned towards him, his expression angry. He pointed a finger at Ryo and moved his lips, forming words that Ryo could not hear from such a distance. And then, out of no where, a pain erupted from within Ryo's chest; the beat of his heart sending out pulsing waves of pure agony.

Ryo sunk to his knees, clutching his chest, his mouth open in a silent scream of anguish. He dared not to cry out; something within him was telling him not to. The man neared him and Ryo tried to move but, the pain was so intense he could not. He couldn't even breathe.

Cold sapphire eyes gazed down at him with bored fascination; Ryo let out a small whimper of pain. The man's hatred bore into him, deep within his soul. It burned every inch of him, inside and out; his flesh seemed to be on fire. It felt as if Ryo was having something taken away from him that was inside of himself.

"Who . . . who are . . . you?" Ryo managed to spit out in-between his short breaths.

Blue eyes smiled evilly at him, somewhat mockingly as well. His lips curled into a sneer.

"I am you," he replied coolly.

Ryo looked confused through his pain and the man laughed. It was cold and hollow; dead sounding. Something red caught Ryo's eye. It was a beautiful red rose that was being held between two elegant fingers; something flashed in those cerulean pools.

"I want you to know," the man began, taking Ryo's hand into his own; it was like ice.

He took Ryo's hand and wrapped it around the stem of the rose gently; Ryo was in to much pain to fight back.

"That Dee's life," he continued, applying pressure to Ryo's hand.

Thorns began to dig their way into the soft flesh of Ryo's palm. They were long and hard and they burned like white hot coals; he muffled a scream of pain.

"Belongs to me," he said, squeezing Ryo's right hand tightly around the rose.

Blood seeped through Ryo's fingers; a drop of blood stained the white snow beneath him. Ryo could see the tips of the thorns through the back of his hand and he bit down on his lip to try and ignore the searing pain the coursed through his body.

"And now you do also," the man let go of Ryo's hand.

The thread was broken and he was pulled out of his painful daze; Ryo collapsed on his side, breathing heavily and raggedly. Through his now blurring vision, he watched as the man turned and walked away through the snow, not leaving a single footprint behind him.

His blood stained the snow. In Ryo's fading mind he could not understand why there was so much of it. And before he slipped into the dark abyss, Ryo saw that the rose had shriveled up and died, somehow warning him of his wretched fate.

~

They took horses up to the top of the hill and then down the icy two lane road to a small cottage at the end of the lane. It was a small, two bedroom place with a comfy living room and kitchen and there was a small barn off of the side of the house that was the living place of a couple chickens and horses; the animals went into fits as they walked by.

"Poor things. They're probably hungry," Diana said, looking for the feed room so she could give the animals something to eat.

"How long do you think e's been gone?" Martin, the town banker, asked.

"I dunno. All's I knows is that e's been a-way for the last couple o' days," Clyde replied, putting his hands into his pockets.

"It's obvious what happened here," someone commented from behind them.

Both men turned to see Berkley looking out past the wired gates that separated the backyard from the forest.

"An' juss whut happin'd here?" Clyde asked, somewhat mockingly.

"Look," Berkley said.

Both men looked. They saw nothing but forest and earth and sky. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

"The fence you idiots," Berkley elaborated for the unwise.

The men noticed that the fence had been cut so that someone could walk through it. They said nothing to this however. Berkley took their silence as the silence of complete imbeciles and so, he headed towards the house. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Diana feed the starving animals.

"Keep an eye on them," Berkley said to her, nodding his head in the idiot's direction.

"Will do, Berks," Diana replied with a wink; the men made faces at Berkley once he had turned away.

Berkley opened the door and stepped inside. There was a small table with a couple of chairs on his right and a decent sized kitchen to his left. He walked forward into the living room past a couple of couches and the fireplace. Berkley headed towards the bedroom, and he walked inside quietly.

The bed wasn't made and the sheets and pillows were in random places on the hardwood floor. Ryo had obviously gotten up out of bed in a hurry. Berkley then traced the steps as if he were in Ryo's place, and walked out of the bedroom and back through the living room. He stopped at the door; Berkley noticed that Ryo's shoes were missing and that the gun rack by the front window was empty.

"That means he knew that he was going out. But why did he? What on earth possessed him?" Berkley asked himself.

He walked back outside. Diana came trotting up to him.

"Berkley, didn't Ryo have a goat or something?" Diana asked.

"I believe so, why?" Berkley answered, looking intently at her.

"Well, I mean I saw the feed so . . . he has a goat right? But where's the goat?" she held up her hands for emphasis.

Berkley looked in the barn and saw two horses and a couple of chickens. There was no goat.

"Oi, get a look at this," Clyde called them over to the far side of the barn.

Both Diana and Berkley came rushing over. Clyde and Martin were leaning over a stall that would pen a goat. Once again, there was no goat but, they were holding something in their hands.

"Oi, ol' Berks. Methinks you might be right," Clyde said.

Martin showed Berkley the padlock that had been on the gate. The metal had been sliced into two.

"Where'd you find that?" Berkley asked, reaching out for it.

"O'er there, in the snow," Martin said, indicating an area on the other side of the pen.

Berkley took the padlock in his hands and looked the lock over. There was no way that the task had been performed by human hands. It was a clean cut all the way through.

"An' we also found these," Clyde added, opening up his hand.

Four shells from the bullets that were for a shot gun rested in his palm.

"So he had a gun . . ." Diana trailed off.

Berkley headed into the woods; the others followed, not knowing what they would find.

~

Dee had never seen so much blood in his life nor had he ever seen someone with skin so pale that it made the snow around him look grey. He had never wanted to see that but, he did. He had awoken alone and he quickly went on a search to find Ryo. Dee found that he had gone downstairs; his wonderful scent still lingered.

He was thinking about what to say to Ryo. After all, Ryo had woken up first and seen them in that compromising position in his bed. Would he great him warmly, or coldly, or would he ignore Dee all together? Dee had never thought about things of that nature before. Why was he so nervous just to talk to someone? That someone just happened to be . . .

His thoughts had ended there. The train of his thought had crashed into a brick wall going about 90 miles an hour. There was blood. There was a lot of it. So much, the scent made Dee feel nauseas and lightheaded. He ran towards the source, turning a corner where he found a figure lying sprawled out on the ground bathed in scarlet.

Dee ran to him, kneeling down next to Ryo's form. And Dee would never forget the paleness of his face, the livid color of his lips, and the one little speck of blood on his cheek. He would never forget the faint whisper of Ryo's breath nor the limp feeling of his lifeless body.

Rushing inside, Dee had been in a frenzy. He had never been so scared in his lifetime. He had never felt death so close before. Mother had instructed him to bring Ryo upstairs to his room; she followed with some other servants of the castle. She made him wait outside of the room and so he did. Every once in a while a maid would leave and return with something Mother had asked her to fetch; her eyes would never meet his.

He had no idea why he was so worried about Ryo. Just days before Dee had contemplated on killing him, and now he was deathly afraid that he would never see Ryo full of life. No one had ever smiled so kindly to him before. There was something in that one gesture that made Dee feel as if there was some type of meaning in his pathetic existence. And he liked that feeling.

Deciding that the best place for him to think was his chambers, Dee swiftly left the corridor and headed to his room. He passed the great sculptures of horrifying beasts and gargoyles as he headed up a dark stairwell. Dee opened a large mahogany door at the end of a gloomy hallway lined with spider webs and stepped inside his dormitory.

One thing stood out in his depressingly dark room; a red rose rested on his pillow. He walked over and picked it up, wincing when a particularly nasty thorn cut the top of his ring ringer. Dee brought his injured finger to his lips and used his own saliva to cease his bleeding. He scowled at the rose; memories floated back to him. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and then decided to go back downstairs to escape the phantoms of his past.

Just as he was leaving, Dee noticed something else out of the ordinary and headed in the direction of this oddity. On the mirror of his dresser was a note that read: I'm back. And the scary thing was that it was written in blood.

~

After Talk with The Random Queen:

Okay, was that a little too creepy for ya? I got like . . . this weird-ass vibe from it. I had to write it with the lights on because I kept seeing this really dead (yet hot) looking guy standing behind me when I looked into the mirror above my computer. And then (for a second) I thought my dream had come true and that Anthony Michael Hall was in my house! You know, the guy who plays Johnny in The Dead Zone? So hot . . . . -drools- Anyways . . . .

About the Characters . . . . . . . .

Now then. About the characters. Well, as I said before, the guy in white who's all creepy and shit (I just looked behind me to make sure he ain't there ^^;;) is evil, but not naturally. He was forced to be evil . . . kinda.

And I know everyone's all like, "Poor Ryo!" and I'm saying that too. Do you notice Ryo's being abused here?! Get used to it `cuz it's gonna happen a lot. Back on track, I really wanted what happed between him and the creepy guy to happen through a mirror. I thought it would be very symbolic. You'll understand why later. But I didn't go that route because I'm weird and I went with my gut instead of my head. The whole thing about the rose will be explained later. And what happened between them happened for a good reason. Well . . . actually, a bad reason. But . . . it'll get good after that. Or that's what methinks anyways . . .

Okay, and Berkley's all like, I'm gonna go get my honey and bring him home. Well, there's a whole thing about that too. It all plays out in the end (hopefully) and you'll see why everyone's all screwed up and stuff.

Parting Words and the Bribe:

There's your next chapter. I hope someone liked it ^_^ Please leave a kind review and you'll get yourself somethin' yummy!!! All flames will be used to burn pictures of all my ex-boyfriends.

~The Random Queen

Thanks and see you soon!