Chapter Text
Prologue
The small form slipped through the jungle, leaves still wet with gleaming diamond-like drops of water from the rain that had fallen over night, with the stealth of a panther, heading for a hut at the side of a clearing with a swiftness that could have rivalled any jungle cat, leaves barely moving almost as if the slightest of breezes had brushed them aside for them, assisting her swift passage (and surprisingly not disturbing the water drops!) while hiding it at the same time.
With surprising agility, they climbed up the wall with the skill of a spider, finding holds that only the most sensitive of fingers could find before slipping into a small window (you know, one of those ones that only a small, slender child can get through) and falling silently to the floor.
[And if you need a visual, think Oliver entering the house to open the door for Bill Sykes in the musical ‘Oliver’ but without being boosted! It was the only example we could think of!]
Inside, a second child, slightly bigger, with unruly dark curls looked up from where they had been waiting impatiently on the only bed in the room and surprisingly unsurprised by her sudden unorthodox entrance, almost as if it was their normal (and through circumstances out of their control, it had become so).
He was dressed in clothes that were clearly of high quality, even torn and dirty but also a clear indication that he had not been there in the camp for as long as the other child had been there.
He took one look at the other figure as they flung their long scruffy pigtail back over their shoulder, and was about to tell her off, the way he normally did when the other child did this, when his eyes opened wide in anticipation at seeing the expression on their face, the tenseness of the small figure now once more before him.
“You’ve seen something!” He said in a low voice that only carried as far as their companion.
“The camp is being surrounded by armed men.” The smaller child scampered over to the other one, a tense grin lighting up their face. “All wearing a black bandana with a silver dragon in the centre.”
The other child froze for a moment (because what they had described meant something to him), and then grabbed his companion’s hand, “Are you sure?” He asked, a note of urgency in his voice, even though he knew deep down, she would not have said something like that, knowing what it meant to him if she really had not seen it!
The two of them had learnt the hard way not to raise each other’s hopes like that.
The smaller child nodded their head furiously but then both children froze as there came a slight noise from outside of their hut. They clung together, pulling back against the wall, hiding in the shadows as much as they could. That sound could only mean one of two things – the least trustworthy person was trying to get in to get one of them…
Or
One of two other people (children that is!) in the camp that they could trust was trying to get their attention!
When the sound next came from outside the window, the smaller child was up on their feet, ready to fight if necessary, eyes dark and uncompromising, (a look that should never be seen on a child of their age), as they slid a home-made weapon out from under the blankets before as silently as they could, moving to stand below the window, fight ready.
The sound came again, but this time it was a rhythmic ‘tap-tap, tap-tap, tap’, clearly a signal and then came the voice. “Mei-mei?”
She (and now it was clear that the smaller child was a girl) froze for a moment (a sudden look of hope entering her eyes) before responding in the same tone. “Ge!”
“Stay out of the way, I’m throwing my weapon in.” The voice hissed in a tone only the children caught.
“Safe under the window!” She called back, pressing herself against the rough surface.
Seconds later, a spear came flying through the window, thudding into the ground with a musical twang, before an older boy, clearly a teenager, skinny and slender pushed themselves through the window, not caring that he was losing top skin because he was now too big across the shoulders to do what the small girl had done so easily.
The moment he landed on the floor, with the same cat-like reflexes of the smaller child, she threw herself into his arms, wrapping her own small arms around his waist (a height she barely reached even then) as he wrapped his own around her small trembling (with fear-boosted adrenaline) frame.
“Ge, where have you been? There are men all around the camp!” She said in a voice with a low whine, before looking up at him, her big brown eyes widening in a way that they were almost a weapon in their own right.
He sighed heavily, because he really should have known that his little cousin’s curiosity would have caught on to the fact that things had suddenly grown tense around the camp where they had been held for the last two years. Well, that and the fact she was just too intelligent not to notice, plus her ability to remember everything.
(What no-one knew then was that she was one of those rare people to have true eidetic memory that would follow her into adulthood, where only 0.1% have the trait!)
With his arm still around her, he reached out to retrieve his spear, then drew her back to where the other child was watching then and drew her down with him so that he was sitting between them, putting his other arm around the boy (having claimed him as another sibling when he had realised that his true cousin had adopted him as a brother!).
“You’ve already been outside.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement, he knew her too well.
She tilted her head to the side, looking up at him through her eyelashes, then nodded.
[Just a note, where we shake our head left to right to say no here in the west, muse and I have noticed that in the east, they do this to say yes, and visa-versa, so because it’s easier, we will stick with the western way. It’s natural to us!]
“She heard sounds in the jungle and went to investigate.” The smaller boy tattled on her, but it was almost a reflex action, a leftover of the spoilt little boy who had arrived six months earlier but now was the action of a small boy who had been scared for the little girl who was still so brave, even after everything that they had been through.
“Mei-mei!” The elder boy sighed but even that sigh contained the resignation of an elder who knew that there was nothing that he could do to change her (and didn’t really want too either.)
“Well, how else can I be able to tell you that it looks like…” She nodded her head towards the other boy, “…His people have finally found us, just like he said they would!”
“It only took them six months!” He grumbled under his breath with a hint of his old petulance.
“We’ve been moved three times in the last six months alone since your arrival, of course it took time!” She shot back, which had the eldest of the three wince slightly as there was just a little too much acceptance for that fact, as if it was normal, in her tone.
Before anyone could say anything else, there was a sudden knock at the door, again the rhythmic ‘tap-tap, tap-tap, tap’. The elder boy was on his feet in a flash, indicating for the other two to move back behind him, although this time, the younger boy also pulled out a weapon from under the blankets as well.
All three were almost certain that it was the last member of their little quad, but considering all the things that were going on, they knew that it was better to be safer than sorry.
The tapping came again but this time with an unspoken urgency.
‘Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap!’
“It’s me, I’ve stole the key!” A familiar voice hissed through the door, “I’m coming in, so don’t kill me!”
There may or may not have been some very adult rolling of eyes occurring in the hut but all three remained ready, not willing to lay down any barriers until they knew for certain that it was him. The sound of the key being turned as quietly as possible in the lock could now be heard and then a slender figure, clearly aged between the two smaller children and the older teenager, slipped through the gap that opened.
He immediately put the key back in the lock and turned it, leaving it at an angle that would make it very difficult for it to be pushed out, then turned to look at the three, eyes only widening slightly in acceptance at seeing that all three of them had weapons in place – which they only lowered when they saw who it was.
The elder boy stepped forward first, looking the new arrival over and then shocked them all by pulling him into a hug. “Are you alright, I noticed that, that one has been pulling you around camp with him, almost as if he is trying to make you like him.”
“I’m fine,” He replied as he returned the hug then pulled back to look at him. “He is seriously screwed up though! When he realised that all the adults he’s been sucking up to have vanished, he disappeared into the room where his brother is held.”
The little girl shook her head, hitting the younger boy unintentionally with her plait. “Stockholm and with his brother out of it still, will likely claim he’s been with him the entire time, looking after him!”
“That was way too intelligent a thing to say for someone your age!” The middle of the three boys (and most recently arrived) shot back. “You scare me sometimes, little cat!”
She stuck her tongue out at him in retaliation, resorting to the behaviour of her actual age, rather than her mental age!
Before it could break out into a full-time argument (something that always happened when these two were in the same room together and had more to do with the time they had spent together before the abduction camp), the sound of gunfire was heard.
Immediately all four children pulled back to the bed in the corner of the room, the two eldest tipping the bed on its side, the mattress and blankets adding an extra buffer before lifting the two smallest over and behind it (which for once, neither of them put up an argument against it), then joined them, all four with weapons in hand.
Outside they could hear frantic movements, sharp commands being given in clipped voices, sounds of some of the other children crying but theirs was the only hut where nothing could be heard, a fact that made it stand out amongst the chaos that was now threatening outside its walls.
Because of the closed and locked door.
Especially because of the locked door!
And when that door opened, everything changed.
FIYS