(KAI) Short chapters out of control.

Who I Am
1

When his eyes opened again, he was grasped roughly by the shoulders, and shook. "What did you see? Where do we go from here?"

The hands pinched his skin and he gasped in surprise, then tried to jerk away from the young man with the wild violet eyes and sun-stained skin. He knew somehow how foreign from him the boy was, and yet very familiar.

"Let go! Let go of me!" he cried out, pulling again, and this time with one hand gripped into the sheets which rode around him on the bed he'd woken on. He tugged and tumbled as the violet-eyed boy lost his hold; falling to the floor haphazardly, his gaze now traveling quickly from one face to the next in the crowded room. They stared at him openly, with strange and confused expressions. He demanded then, "What's going on?"

A fierce looking man strode to him, his eyes sharp and dark red. It seemed wrong, and as this happened the boy shoved himself backward, until the man with sharp red eyes had to follow him to the wall. "Ryou," he said, with a voice that seemed full of things familiar, or perhaps not. Safety, maybe. The fierce man frightened him somehow, and as the man crouched down beside him, Ryou huddled against the wall further, and whimpered- feelings fluttered through his stomach and mixed with the fear. This name, this name the man said; what did it mean? He felt sick.

"Ryou?" and the man's hand was on his bare shoulder, fingers spread under the edges of straps- straps on a white robe, bunched around his middle; the gesture disarmed him with familiarity, and he trembled unhappily.

The young man with stained skin charged suddenly around the edge of the bed, his eyes wide and dilated to pupils which were only dark points, boring at him desperately. "Ryou-mah, what did you see? Please, please, Ryou-mah!" And he gripped his hands into the pale white arms.

He cried out, pain running from the places the young man's fingers held. "Stop! Stop it!" he shouted, shaking his head and kicking his legs uselessly. The fierce man hovered into his vision abruptly, white hair flashing, and shoved the strange boy away. "Get back, Malik!" the man growled, holding both arms around him protectively. His chest constricted painfully, looking up into the mad, red eyes. Who was this terrifying image? "Oh, oh," he moaned, holding his hands to his ears to block out the mad little voice in his head which wildly proclaimed the fierce man a mirror.

"Yadonushi, Hikari," soothed the man in a hiss, even as he balked and tried to wriggle away from the warm hands and sweet, raspy voice.

"Baku-dah?" Malik whimpered, as the boy he'd grasped stared at him in terror, and at the others in fear, and held himself as though a captive; this was not right. Not good. "Ryou-mah is sick? Ryou-mah, Ryou-mah doesn't want my touching?" His voice was breaking, and a fine tremble began to work into his shoulders; the boy on the floor watched, horrified, as he struggled to understand what transpired around him. An older woman with long, dark hair swept up to the boy called Malik and rested her thin hand on his head. Ryou, filing away his name as though it might possibly become another, connected their complexions and assumed a family relationship; a chord struck him, between the tips of the woman's fingers and the crown of sand-blonde hair. It thrummed insanity. "Malik, dearest, become calm. We have somehow upset this maneuver... Ryou-"

"Ryou-mah is angry!" Malik cried, darting away from the woman furiously, "Ryou-mah... Isis-tah-sheri doesn't understand!"

"Isis," the fierce man hovering over him growled suddenly, "Take him somewhere until he calms!" He indicated the quaking boy on the floor, "Ryou is upset."

There were death threats in his eyes and his words, and Ryou let out a low moan of fear, lost and confused, and wishing he could remember the names and the faces that hovered around him, and most of all the beast of a man who was so soft with his touch. The boy Malik seemed taken aback, and stood wavering with his fists clenched before turning and running from the room, shoving past the other people crowded inside. The woman Isis hurried after without a backward look and Ryou was relieved.

Another dark man appeared abruptly in Ryou's peripheral vision, and he gave a start further into the embrace that held him, his forehead brushed by long, thick white hair. The man bowed, a long tail of hair knotted at the back of his head swishing forward, "I will also attend to the young master." His voice was world-weary but affectionate and he held a book which Ryou instantly feared and caused him to hold at his own heart, pounding so wildly he didn't know if it would ever calm.

"Don't go far, Keeper, you will account for this," the man holding him snarled, and Ryou whimpered, a sense of the familiar hitting him again.

"Of course," he intoned, leaving the room to the remaining five standing.

"What's going on?" the boy wailed after a moment of dark silence, "Who was that crazy boy? And who are you people?" He huddled against the stranger's chest, trapped between a sensation of utter terror of the figure and the incredible attraction to the figure's presence. The figure held tight to him, and Ryou did not know if he felt safe or trapped, and almost cried with frustration, "Who are you?"

The figure looked down upon him with those strange red eyes, and they seemed sad, "You don't know who I am."

Tears broke away and Ryou whispered, "I don't know who I am..."