Lost Boys
I actually made this like a month ago and just queued it up for today, heh. For @deathshippingweek day 1: Past! Comments are super appreciated!
Summary: A little AU if Ymalik had gotten the chance to sneak outside once, and it was just the day before Ryou and his father met Shadi and the Ring…
Ao3 link
Wordcount: 690
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Bright, bright, bright. Everything was bright. His eyes hurt, the sun hurt, and the sand was so warm it hurt, but it was a good hurt.
He liked this hurt because it was something new, something he had for himself, a little piece of life to hold inside when he was nothing but smoke and darkness.
He’d snuck out when they were attending to father. He was sick. Good. Father was bad. No one saw that but him, not even Himself. But it was his time now, He’d been so scared something would happen to father that He’d curled up and disappeared and taken up the space that was normally his, and no one had stopped him from crawling up the stairs.
The market was loud and everywhere and people kept touching him and it was strange and too much and not enough and everything all at once. He wanted to use the piece of sharp stone he’d tucked into his robes on the next person to touch him, he’d never- it was just-
“He-llo?” The voice struck him because it didn’t have the easy quick-paced cadence of everyone else. It was accented, differently from the tombkeepers but also from the way the other people he was hearing were. He turned to see a child about his age- 11, 12? 11 and a half- who had skin like milk and hair like bone. They were flushed with burn or fever or something. They looked unhealthy- no one should be that pale outside of their skeleton, like they were inside out.
“Who are you?” He walked up to the child- they were near the same height too.
“My name… Ryou.” It seemed to be a boy. His Arabic was twisted, chunky and foreign in his mouth. “Find my father?” Ryou’s expression was twisted in worry. He felt a sudden urge to pinch at the other boy’s cheeks, still plump with youth. The pink tinge made him think they’d be warm under his fingers.
“Your father?”
“Um…” Ryou tried to think of the words. “Lost. Temple?”
He didn’t know the surface any better than Ryou did, but he’d heard the bells as they called for prayer from the sky-hole and could know at least what direction to go. He grabbed Ryou’s hand (warm skin, soft and squishy and made his heart jump at touching something that wasn’t his own clothes, his own hair, that was another human being that existed) and tugged him through the crowd that was making his skin crawl. Ryou was an anchor, and he gripped the hand like leather he could wring when his energy spilled over and he wanted to claw at his arms to feel alive in the hours of existence he managed to steal.
“Have you seen my son? I swear, I turned my head for just a second-” A voice rose above the marketplace chatter, and Ryou perked up.
“Papa!” A man with the same strange skin as Ryou emerged from the crowd, and Ryou immediately let go, rushing towards him. He was scooped up into a hug, and their language shifted to something he couldn’t place anymore.
He watched, chest like lead as he saw Ryou’s father hold him close and brush through his hair, tone stern but loving even though the exact words were lost.
Ryou pointed at him with a smile, chattering away, and Ryou’s father set Ryou down before kneeling in front of him.
“Thank you for helping my son. Would you like me to buy you something as a token of my gratitude?”
He stared. Someone… thanked him for something?
He just nodded mutely, and a few minutes later, he had a piece of bread held firmly in his fingers. Ryou waved at him, holding his father’s hand as he walked away, and he clutched the bread to his chest like it was made of gold.
A week later, Isis found it in Malik’s box of favorite things, next to the rock that looked like a ring and the dead flower that had fallen down from the surface. No one knew how it had gotten there.