Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Halcyon ❯ Chapter 6 ( Chapter 6 )

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

Title: Halcyon (Ch. 6)

Author: Genuinelie(s)

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Weiss Kreuz is not mine.

Pairing: AxY

Summary: The boys are finding that until death, all ends are just masked beginnings.

A/N: Continuation. We're getting there...

xxxxx

After Ran dropped his sister off at her Kritiker home, he took a detour back to the koneko, ending up on the bridge he'd come to a couple nights before.

The sun was waning, red and orange pooling in the scalloped surface of the water. It flowed gently under the walkway beneath Ran's feet.

His family had taken walks here once, in the evening after his father returned from work. They'd stopped as Ran got older, but he remembered running along with Aya-chan when she was a toddler, peering through the railings trying to catches glimpses of fish in the river.

The couple his sister was living with were decent people, Ran assessed. For Kritiker. They'd had dinner waiting for her when they returned, and offered to let Ran stay. He'd declined, though the disappointment on his sister's face pained him. There had obviously been enough food only for three.

He was grateful. It would be too much of a farce.

His parents were dead.

He had promised to eat with them soon.

Aya-chan seemed happy enough there. Manx had shown him her caregivers' Kritiker files, and he was reasonably assured that they would be able to protect her.

Not as well as he could.

It wasn't true.

Some part of him wished that they would give him some reason to take her back.

He knew it was the healthiest situation for her to stay away from him, to stay where she was.

He missed her.

But they would see each other every day.

The sun had disappeared behind the buildings on the horizon, the flaming hues from earlier changed to a soft warm glow.

Ran put his hands in the pockets of his coat and turned from the water.

He supposed he was grateful, when he looked past his own selfishness.

xxxxx

The apartments were silent when Ran returned.

Ken and Omi were at the table, staring at a napkin in the center of it. They looked up when he came in. Ken looked grim.

"Yohji's left Weiss," Omi's voice was barely audible.

Ran stopped in the doorway. He stared at his two teammates, feeling his features harden.

Yohji's lips against his, harsh and warm, forceful and needy.

It had happened just hours ago. He hadn't had time to respond. He hadn't known how to respond. He'd thought that Yohji was looking to him for something less than what he wanted. He hadn't been expecting the pain that had surfaced in those eyes after Yohji released him.

What had Yohji expected of him?

Yohji - no, not just Yohji. All of them assumed that he felt nothing.

What did they see him as? A machine?

Omi thought Ran would kill him.

For his sister, he would, but only at the cost of himself.

Ken - Ken was his own mess of tangled emotion. He must only assume the same as the others. He'd laughed as if it were an in-joke when Yohji called him 'emotionless'.

And Yohji -

"This will kill me," Yohji had said.

Did he really think that Ran could afford to lose anyone else in his life?

No. Because Yohji probably did not think of himself as "in Ran's life."

In Aya's life.

Yohji was just as confused as he was, when it came down to it.

Ran - Aya had seen Yohji's pain manifest, had seen through the layers of pretense to the hard core. The man who had trapped him so easily in his wire, who was able to wrap it around the neck of the girl who'd looked like his Asuka. Even if Aya had had no energy left to show it with, he at least was aware of what the ex-detective suffered.

It was just that they all suffered.

And Aya had had to trust Yohji to be able to sort out his own life, because Aya was barely able to handle his own.

"We think he's been gone about an hour," Omi said. He looked like he'd been crying. "We went out for pizza, and when we got back..." His lower lip quivered.

"You didn't try to find him?" Ran stepped into the room and snatched the napkin from the table.

Ommitchi, stay out of trouble. Make sure Kenken does too.

I'm out.

Ken crossed his arms and muttered, "He sure as hell deserves it. Not like he'd let any of us go."

Omi's eyes flicked to Ken, serious despite the tears. "But it's his choice." He didn't sound convinced.

Ran crumpled the napkin and threw it back on the table. It rolled off the edge to the floor. "Manx?"

Omi shook his head. "I haven't told her...I didn't want..."

The unspoken to get Yohji killed hung between his words.

"Ken's right," Ran said, lips thin. He spun on his heel, heading back out the door.

Ken snorted behind him. "He's long gone, man. He took Seven. You're wasting your time. And since when do you care?"

"But Aya-kun-" Omi started.

He slammed the door on his way out.

xxxxx

The road blurred in front of Yohji. He dragged a hand across his eyes, skewing his sunglasses.

The streetlights were like fireflies in the dark, skimming past his peripheral vision. He'd gone at least ten miles out of the city before he'd turned around.

Not to go back to Weiss. He'd made up his mind.

It was only that there was a sinking feeling in his gut he couldn't place, the farther he went. His current thought was that if his past chased his heels - if it didn't matter how far he ran, because his sins would always hunt him down - maybe he'd throw it off his tracks by ghosting it himself. If he stayed in the city, who would expect that?

It was a shallow excuse. The truth was he was too self-indulgent to leave. His memories were a familiar haunting.

Or was he simply not ready to let them all go?

He should be more than ready. He never liked the killing, and it scared him that he was good at it. He didn't have Omi's belief in the system, Ken's desperation or Aya's...

...why was Aya still there?

His sister is what he would say. But he was more than able to protect her on his own. They could go anywhere, he could have a future. It was more than any of them had, Yohji included.

Shut up, Kudoh! Yohji snapped at himself angrily. It wasn't his business anymore, and not like it ever had been in the first place.

He was going back to the city to lie low, until Kritiker wasn't expecting him to show. Then he'd get a fake passport and leave for Britain.

That was the plan. Right now, the airports would be watched.

So he was going back to the city to lie low. He settled on the excuse with a touch of relief.

The buildings rose up around him, the landscape shifting from green countryside to bleak industrialism. The slick vista of metal, lights and grime felt like coming home. He never trusted anything that looked peaceful on the surface, and the country fell into that category.

Maybe that was why he had never trusted Aya. He suppressed everything into visible numbness, until those occasions when violent truth broke the surface.

Even deeper though, Yohji had thought he'd seen something else. When he'd gotten the man against the wall, it had been in those damnable purple depths. It hadn't been pain, for once - one of the few other constant emotions Yohji had witnessed.

Whatever it had been, it wasn't accessible.

And if it was - he was such an idiot. What had he thought Aya Fujimiya would want with Yohji Kudoh?

Yohji's fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

It was so goddamned easy for him to pick up anybody he wanted. If it was anyone else, he would have stuck it out and chisled away until the ice broke apart. The truth, though, was that it all depended on that 'anyone else' not to actually know him. It was so much easier to believe his own lies when no one involved was any more the wiser.

He could play the playboy with Weiss all he wanted. It wouldn't work. Aya knew who he was, down to his bloody core.

No one ever said that Yohji Kudoh didn't have a death wish, but he wasn't a masochist. There was only so much pain of one sort a guy could take.

Asuka, Asuka.

The kids would be okay without him. No one ever really wanted him there. He was just the resident layabout. They all knew it was just a matter of time before he left, right?

Yohji pulled into a back alley and parked, sandwiched carefully between a dumpster and a truck so that his distinguishable vehicle wouldn't be distinguished.

I was so sick of it all, anyway.

I'm sick of it all, Asuka.

xxxxx

Tbc.