Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ No Mercy ❯ Prologue: Ghost ( Prologue )

Title: No Mercy

 

Author: Blythe

 

Archived: AdultFanFiction.net, MediaMiner.org, YxA ML, for now.

Disclaimer: I only own my mind. Not Weiss. This is a work of fanfiction and is not for profit.

 

Rating: NC-17, for future chapters

 

Pairing: Aya/Yohji, silly

 

A/N: This is the beginning of the sequel to “Not Now, Not Ever.” The prologue fills the gap between the end of NNNE and the present. “Not Now, Not Ever” is not required reading, you will still be able to follow if you've not read it, but this will make more sense if you have. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated. Thank you to Marasmine for continuing the chore of beta for me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prologue: Ghost

 

 

There's a letter on the desktop

That I dug out of a drawer

The last truce we ever came to

In our adolescent war

 

From his position on the bed, Aya can see the letter on his desk. It is taunting him, calling him to read it one more time. Just one more time and he'll find the hidden clue, the answers he's been seeking. He's lost count of how many times he's read it over the last seven months, but he knows he doesn't need to read it again. He doesn't need to read it because he knows what it says. Every word is burned into his mind, his retinas. They dance before him when he closes his eyes, teasing, hinting that the answers are there if only he would read them the right way.

 

And I start to feel the fever

From the warm air through the screen

You come regular like seasons

Shadowing my dreams

 

He turns away from the sight before him, toward the window. It was just starting to turn cold when everything changed. Now, it's just beginning to get warm. It's unseasonably warm today and the breeze sets a flush to his skin. Or maybe it's just the cycle beginning again, like seasons. For a few weeks he's fine, accepting of their loss. Weiss is now a three man team. Manx didn't even try to find a new member. She knows there's no replacement.

 

For a few weeks he's fine, accepting of his loss. They only shared a bed for a few nights, but it, nevertheless, feels empty without him. Then, the dreams start; a shadow moving through his mind, alternating between dead and alive.

 

He reads the letter again.

 

The answer has to be there.

 

It has to. He needs to know. He needs to know if he's searching for a man who needed to escape Life or one who just needed to escape his life.

 

Rereading the events of his lover's life he thinks, `I never would have made it as far as he did.' He really couldn't blame the man if he'd wanted to die, though the thought sends a lead weight to the pit of his stomach and he gasps for breath. He can't bear the thought of the world without him. Without hope.

 

The Mississippi's mighty,

But it starts in Minnesota

In a place that you could walk across

With five steps down

 

And I guess that's how you started,

Like a pinprick to my heart

But at this point you rush right through me

And I start to drown

 

He's surprised at the depth of his feelings. When they'd first met, he'd been simultaneously attracted and repulsed. Then, he'd recognized the mask and found himself intrigued. Little by little, a warmth had crept into his emotions. By the time his sister had woken up, he was in love. Just before he left, he'd been overwhelmed by it and frightened of it. It felt like drowning. The soft caress and peaceful white noise of submersion in warm water, juxtaposed with the burning panic of oxygen deprived organs.

 

He'd already been alone for a month when he tried the word on out loud. He'd been talking to his sister. He'd said, “He was my love. I loved him.” And then, she'd smacked him.

 

With a hand on his cheek he'd turned to face her, dumbfounded. Her eyes had been sparkling with anger and tears. “Don't you ever talk about him in the past tense again. He is not gone!”

 

She'd been so sure. Why couldn't he share her faith? He'd had faith once. He'd never stopped believing that Aya-chan would wake up. Why couldn't he believe for his heart now?

 

He reread the letter. Maybe he'd find the answers this time.

 

And there's not enough room in this world for my pain

Signals cross and love gets lost and time passed makes it plain

Of all my demon sprits I need you the most

I'm in love with your ghost

 

For as much as love feels like drowning, despair and guilt feel that way too, only more solid. Instead of the promise of buoyancy that water offers, despair is more solid. Pain is a crushing weight, so large it seems the entire world isn't big enough to house it.

 

Looking over time passed, things that should have been clearer, sooner, become plain. He didn't just love him. He didn't want to just own him. He wanted, wants still, to be loved by him. There are days when his memory feels like a demon, shredding his sanity. But he needs it, needs to have some part of him near, always. His lover is a wraith, born of words unspoken and love unrequited.

 

Dark and dangerous like a secret

That gets whispered in a hush

When I wake the things I dreamt

About you last night make me blush

 

The dreams are so vivid! Some nights, he dreams of those last few days in the cabin. It had felt like they were in constant contact. A casual touch here, a kiss there, just leaning against each other on the couch to read. Or stretched over clean sheets, endless limbs entwined, bodies locked together in the most intimate embrace. The dreams come back to him sometimes while he is working in the Koneko and he feels his cheeks fire with shame. And longing. Shame because he should be thinking about his love's safety and welfare. Longing because, for as long he's known him, he's been distracted by that body.

 

And you kiss me like a lover

Then you sting me like a viper

I go follow to the river

Play your memory like a piper

 

Sometimes, when the memories are playing through his mind like an old reel-to-reel, he cuts and splices, making a movie memory of something new. Something that never was, but should have been.

 

And I feel it like a sickness, how this love is killing me

But I'd walk into the fingers of your fire willingly

And dance the edge of sanity; I've never been this close

In love with your ghost

I'm in love with your ghost

 

There are mornings, after the dreams have plagued him all night long, that he feels like he is dying. His love, scorching his blood like poison, raising a fever in him that has no cure but a man no one can find. He can see the precipice before him and he dances along the edge, balanced precariously, kept on this side only by the ethereal weight of a ghost.

 

Unknowing captor

You'll never know how much you

Pierce my spirit

But I can't touch you

Can you hear it, a cry to be free

But I'm forever under lock and key

As you pass through me

 

He tries to believe. He tries to have his sister's guileless faith, his teammates' unwavering devotion. He tries to hope. He reaches out, trying to cling, but his fingers pass through the vision and it dissipates. He cries out, wishing to be free of this pain, but unwilling to relinquish his hold on this man.

 

“Mine,” he'd told him. And meant it.

 

Now I see your face before me

I would launch a thousand ships

To bring your heart back to my island

As the sand beneath me slips

 

A photograph, the only one he has. It's not even a reasonable facsimile. It's flat, no depth, no dimensions. His love is barely in it at all, just a tiny corner, candid. It's really a picture of himself, something one of the fangirls snuck, no doubt. He'd discovered it on one of his many expeditions into his love's room. Right there, in the bedside table drawer, under a journal that he'd hoped might hold some answers. But it wasn't a journal. It was a sketchbook. It offered no answers. Insight, perhaps, but no answers. Nearly every page was full of Aya. Charcoal, pastel, ink, pencil, every angle, every pose, in varying degrees of light and dark, captured in any available medium. He thought he'd quit drawing. Turns out, he was just hiding it.

 

Aya searched, continues searching. Omi prowls the web, looking for clues, activity on his credit card, John Does at the morgues. Ken pounds the pavement, keeps his eyes open. Aya contacts everyone he can think of, goes to clubs, stakes out old haunts.

 

As I burn up in your presence

And I know now how it feels

To be weakened like Achilles

With you always at my heels

 

Once, he felt the heat creep into his skin that always accompanied his lover's presence. He'd looked around wildly, knowing he was there. Knowing that it couldn't be anyone else, but him. But the club was crowded and lights were flashing in his eyes and he could see nothing. He'd dashed to the parking lot, saw a cab pulling away from the curb, but could not follow. That was four months ago.

 

On missions, he still feels him at his back, dogging his footsteps. Some nights, he feels calm, reassured by his company. Others, he feels weak, certain that he is losing the tenuous grip on his sanity if he cannot even get through a mission without his personal apparition. He laughs out loud when he begins to think of him as an imaginary friend instead of a specter. He has to though. The other implies that he is no longer of this world and he's not ready to accept that. Huh, guess he has faith after all.

 

And my bitter pill to swallow is the silence that I keep

It poisons me, I can't swim free, the river is too deep

Though I'm baptized by your touch, I am no worse than most

In love with your ghost

 

He speaks about it only to his sister. His teammates do not understand his silence and resent it.

 

Omi once said, “You must know something! You were the last on to see him al—“

 

Aya cut him off with a look. A glare strong enough to wilt even Weiss' golden child. Aya-chan would have been proud. Maybe that slap had helped, had shaken is fidelity out of complacency. Because, that's what faith is.

 

Fidelity to Yohji.

 

Belief that he is alive.

 

Conviction that Aya will find him.

 

Hope that he will come home.

 

 

 

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