Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Demon's Dreaming ❯ The Song Remains the Same ( Chapter 6 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Pairings: Schuldig x Ran, Yohji x Ran, Crawford + Schuldig + Ran

Warnings: Spoilers for entire series, severely AU, m/m relationships (a.k.a. yaoi), harsh language, violence, lemon...the list goes on and on.

Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own Weiss Kreuz or any of its characters. I merely use them for my own amusement.

Demon's Dreaming

Chapter 6: The Song Remains the Same

“I'm getting out.”

The girl shuddered, steeling herself for what she knew she had to do. There was only so much damage this world could take without collapse, and at the moment Ran was too unstable to goad into rebuilding what he had destroyed. If she pushed too hard, there was the chance that her suggestion could backfire, and that Ran would simply bring everything down around their heads, so to speak. If that were to happen… she would be content with her own destruction, rather than enduring the void and madness that would be left in its wake.

“I'm getting out.” Ran repeated. His eyes were fixed on some point deep in the forest, and Aya realised with mounting horror that many of the baseline trees were already smoldering. When the redhead started towards the woods, following the same path that Schuldig had taken, she sprang into action. His strides were long and she was hard-pressed to keep up, stumbling awkwardly even as she flinched away from the energy rolling off of him.

“If you follow that man, I'll die.” It was risky, but Ran already sensed that she was hiding something from him. She could get away with revealing a little bit, and hope that he wasn't awakened to the whole truth, or tell him nothing and risk him destroying everything in hopes of getting away. “You must listen to me, or-”

“Or what?” Ran stopped in his tracks, casting a scornful glance over his shoulder. “I'm tired of hearing your lies.”

“But it's the truth!” she cried desperately, ready to throw herself in Ran's path to keep him from leaving. She had one more card to play, and due to Schuldig's meddling she wasn't entirely sure that it would work. “I won't exist anymore!”

“So you're trying to save yourself then? He was right: you're not Aya, not at all. She at least cared for me.”

“It's not like…please, Ran. I-” she hesitated. How could she convince him of her sincerity? “I'm trying to protect you. To protect us. And that includes Aya.”

“Aya-chan would never try to manipulate me.”

“Brother-”

“Don't,” Ran hissed, “don't you dare call me that.”

The heat increased, and Aya fell back with a small cry. Dammit, she couldn't get through to him, and whether he realised it or not, he was tearing this place apart. The warmth in her chest expanded, and she beat it down, desperate to keep it contained.

“Listen to me!”

“For what?” Ran rounded on her, and she nearly tumbled in her haste to back away. “I've been listening, and you're not saying anything!”

It was becoming unbearable, and there was only so far she could run before his… power caught up with her. Then again, there really wasn't much she could do here either, and—with a low cry of pain she allowed the warmth to overtake her, reacting with a slow, dulled dismay as it spread quickly, wrenching possession of this body—her body—from her.

“Ran-niisan, please. Stop this.”

The young man stopped his advance, eyes widening in horror. “Aya-chan?”

The warmth around her receded abruptly as Ran swung away, keening in shock. By the time she had reached him, he was doubled over, retching dryly at the sand. She laid a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, and he flinched, throwing it off and backpedaling as quickly as she had only moments before.

“Don't touch me.”

“Ran-”

“I don't want to hurt you, Aya-chan.”

She smiled warmly, and he basked in it, wanting to throw himself into her arms and hold on. He wanted to ensure that she would never leave him again. But if he did - no, the very thought made him queasy. He wouldn't allow himself to hurt her, not when she looked on him with such love and affection, without the inherent fear of her doppelganger.

“You won't Ran.” She touched his shoulder again, lightly, and when he didn't move she repeated the touch on his face. “You see? You can control it Ran.” The girl held up both arms for him to see, then turned carefully in place. “You stopped before you hurt me, right?” Aya's face was grave when she finally came to a stop, but she pulled him close, embracing him tightly. “Ran, I-” She shook her head, her tears in earnest. “I want to stay with you, but-”

“Aya?”

“You can control it Ran. I know you can.” The girl pulled back, and though her face was awash with tears, she was smiling. “I remember the first time you saved me.” Without warning he was pushed away, Aya's arms wrapped tightly around her body, as if trying to contain something within herself. “Please, remember me.”

“Aya-chan!”

The change was immediate, and for all of its subtle differences, nearly took everything out of him. The teenaged girl before him was no longer his loving sister, but the relentless spectre that haunted him night and day, spouting warnings and performing insincere niceties to bind him to her.

Most importantly, this ghost... was seemingly terrified by the very thought of his power.

“I'm sorry.” The girl was cowering again, arms thrown up against him in fright. “I'm so, so sorry.”

“No.” He had failed again. Aya-chan had slipped through his fingers once more. “Bring her back!”

“I can't!” Once again he was surprised by the quickness of her temper, and with the unfamiliar fury. Aya-chan had been generally sweet-natured and docile; not a pushover, but not prone to the sudden rages of this creature. If anything it was one of his own attributes. “I can't do anything to her!”

“Then why do you look like her?” He was just as angry, and he meant to have answers. The brief contact with his beloved sister was not enough, and he would be damned if this girl got away with giving him the runaround again.

“I told you already! She's a part of me, an irrevocable part. Whatever Schuldig may say, I'm not just a memory.”

“What are you?”

“That is not important.” Aya doubted that he would be put off by her curt response, and thought to soften the blow with a minor revelation. “Just as Aya-chan is a part of me, so am I a part of you. An intrinsic part.” She added the last with some bitterness, Schuldig's jibes not yet having lost their sting.

“You're speaking in riddles.”

Aya shivered as the boy unknowingly repeated Schuldig's words, his voice just as cold as the man's had been. Perhaps some measure of honesty was the best way to appease him. “I'm trying to help you. And in this case, it means helping myself as well.”

There was a long pause, and her heart lurched. She had begun to accept yet another failure when he spoke again.

“So you're saying that I should trust you?”

“If you trust yourself… then you can trust me.” Aya said firmly. He didn't need to know exactly what she meant by that, but she hoped that he would still accept it, and that they would finally be able to work in tandem. Then hopefully, she could try to rid them both of Schuldig's presence once and for all.

“When the time comes, will you allow me to leave?”

She hesitated briefly, and Ran's gaze sharpened. “Yes. I will.” A lie, and a terrible one at that, but somehow worth the relief she felt when his shoulders relaxed. If he had continued where he had left off before the other part of her had emerged, she was not sure that she would be able to stop him. The girl took a deep breath, hoping against hope that her eyes were as sincere as her voice.

“When the time comes, I'll let you go.”

Shifting in his seat, Yohji pushed away from the table with a sigh of satisfaction. Upon arriving home he'd been ravenous, the events of the night before having finally taken their toll. Omi had whipped up something quick and easy, and the older man had eaten more than half of his portion before the blond had even taken his place at the table.

Now that they were both full and reasonably content, having a job well done under their belts, perhaps it would be prudent to broach the subject of his strange encounter at the hospital with Tsukiyono. He would prefer to do it without Hidaka's presence, just for propriety's sake, and he wasn't sure that he would get such a golden opportunity once the former footballer had recovered.

Watching as Omi gathered their plates and moved to the sink, Yohji threw caution to the wind and spoke.

“Hey, Omi…anything strike you about the name `Fujimiya'?”

“Fujimiya…” the teen repeated thoughtfully, before shaking his head and turning back to the sink. “Not really. Why, should it ring a bell?”

Reaching into his shirt pocket casually, the older man retrieved a cigarette, contemplating lighting up right there in the kitchen. Thinking better of it, he stood, barely glancing back as he made his way to the door. “Nah. Just a kid at the hospital…the name sounded a bit familiar, is all.”

Behind him, Omi's hands tightened on the dish he was holding until it threatened to crack. “At the hospital, Yohji-kun? Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure.” Yohji patted down his pants pockets, fishing his lighter out of the one on the right. “It was right on the chart, and Emi said so as well.”

“Emi?” Omi let the dish fall back into the water, turning to face his teammate. It was obvious that he was confused, and Yohji took pity on him.

“The nurse. His nurse. She said that she saw me on the monitors…heh, must be pretty high profile for something like that, eh?”

“Yohji, I've never heard of anyone at Krittiker by that name. Are you certain?”

The older man rolled his eyes. He was often amazed by how little faith his comrades had in him, and after yesterday's gaff he was sure that Tsukiyono suspected the stress of their profession was getting to him. But to question him on something like this…

“Yes, yes. Said he'd been there around uh, two years or so, right before she booted me out of his room.”

Omi frowned. He didn't know of any Fujimiyas within the organisation, but that certainly didn't mean that they didn't exist. Perhaps this person that Yohji claimed to see was a higher-up, which would explain the security measures Krittiker had taken… but even that was strange. Also, Yohji had mentioned that the individual was a kid, so that pretty much ruled out the prospect of him being *too* high up in the ranks, but still didn't altogether eliminate the chance. All in all, he was intrigued.

“Ah, Yohji-kun, you said that this kid has been there for two years?”

“Yeah.” The brunette, having lit up during Omi's silence, exhaled and peered at him through the cloud of smoke. “Why, what's up?”

“I'm sure it doesn't mean anything…” Omi hesitated, then shook his head, smiling at the older man genially. “I'll look into it. Carefully.” He added, then turned back to the sink to finish his chore.

Yohji nodded, his mind working over what Omi had said and more importantly, what he hadn't. Krittiker had to have some kind of stake in the young man he had seen, judging from the extent of the security measures they had placed around him. The fact that they had cared for a coma victim for so long more than assured that the boy was somehow important to the organisation, yet he was not hidden away in one of the more secure facilities Yohji was sure they must run. That in itself was puzzling, though Nurse Emi's insistence that Fujimiya's family had been wiped out explained the situation a bit. If there was no one left to take care of him, and he was indeed a Krittiker agent, perhaps they had taken it upon themselves to keep him safe. It would make even more sense if the boy's family had been deeply entrenched in the organisation, and had died in service; then Krittiker's heads would have been obligated to care for him, regardless of the expense.

Still, Yohji suspected the truth lay a bit deeper, and he had deliberately goaded Omi into agreeing to investigate as the boy seemed to be a bit more adept at uncovering their employer's secrets than he. Also, he had his own territory to stomp: Emi's mention of monitors and Manx had got him thinking, and he wasn't pleased by the possible implications of it all. If the boy was being monitored… and he obviously was seeing as the nurse had swooped down on him with startling speed… that implied that he was beyond important to Krittiker, bordering on invaluable. No regular agent, even one in a coma, would garner such unusual attention. Secondly, if the boy was being watched round the clock, how was it possible that Emi had only arrived when Yohji entered the room, and not before. Call him crazy, but hadn't a young girl been weeping by the boy's bedside only moments before he had entered? From the looks of her, she had been sitting there for quite a while, and yet Emi insisted that Fujimiya hadn't received any visitors other than Manx and himself. It didn't make any sense, not one iota of it.

As Omi finished up and began to chatter about the goings on at his school, Yohji found himself tuning the boy out, immersed in the mystery he had uncovered. Krittiker be damned; he needed this as proof that he wasn't completely cracking up, and come hell or high water he would get answers.

He never had been the kind of man who could stand seeing a woman cry without finding the cause of her tears. The truth would be outed, or…

Yohji snuffed his cigarette on the doorjamb, not willing to finish that thought.

Notes: Okay, so Ran's still trapped in his own head, Schuldig is nowhere to be found, and Yohji is (half-assedly) using his detective skills. The story is progressing, albeit slowly, and I can assure you that I know exactly where it will end up. Updates may be even slower than usual considering real life has picked up a bit, but I will finish this and When the Levee Breaks. Thanks again for reading!