FicWad

The first life Nagi Naoe took (snatched, stole) was his mother's. It was his fault he knew, had been told as much, and he was sorry, so very sorry. He had a family, he must have, but they were gone. They'd cast him out, forgotten him, or died. He'd thought about it enough that it didn't much matter anymore. What mattered was spending the next few years finding food and a place to sleep, getting clean enough that the stench of his own body filth didn't repulse him. What mattered more was staying out of reach of the people that muttered 'witch boy' when they saw him huddling on street corners, or keeping away from the few children that weren't afraid to beat the crap out of him. He could defend himself. He could make the walls shake. He could use that invisible whatever to keep them away, but that always caused more talk. It made it harder to find someone that had enough heart to give him scraps to eat.

Things happened during that time. Unpleasant things. While he wasn't at all deluded enough to think he was still an innocent, he still didn't like to think of killing people. He did it and he did it well. It wasn't fun. The killing happened by accident at first. Well-fed bullies clad in private school uniforms decided to have a go at him, one day. It started out normal enough, if you could call it that, and almost nothing he couldn't handle by curling up in a ball . . . Until one of them pulled out a knife. He was mesmerized by the gleam of it, by the malicious grin of the girl that brandished it.

She was going to kill him.

He knew it. He could feel it. The sun would set and rise again and he wouldn't be there to see it, because he'd be dead like he should've been long before he would've ever had the chance to meet her.

Nagi didn't want to die.

So out of that panic that came with self-preservation, he'd done it. She (Mari) and her friends had been smashed into the nearest wall. Mari seemed to hit the hardest. He heard a loud crack and the knife fell from her hand and skittered, gleaming in the remaining sunlight. Mari's eyes were still open. Mari had blood dripping from her head. Much too much of it. Mari's friends were screaming and tugging at her and Nagi was reaching for the knife and running. It was funny to think on it now. He'd grab the knife and was nowhere near needing it. He supposed, later, that it made him feel safe . . . /normal/. It was easier, and much less unsettling, to threaten people with a weapon they could see.

That was when Nagi left the only home he'd ever had.

He was eleven.