Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ No Mercy ❯ Piecing Together ( Chapter 5 )

Title: No Mercy

 

Author: Blythe

 

Archived: MediaMiner.org, Adultfanfiction.net (once it's working again!), and YxA ML

 

Disclaimer: They're only mine in my dreams…ah, but what dreams! Weiss Kreuz is the sole property of Takehito Koyasu and Project Weiss. This is a work of fanfiction and is not for profit.

 

Rating: NC-17, language and lemon (eventually)

 

Pairing: Aya/Yohji (naturally)

 

A/N: Thank you to everyone who is still reading. Now that I'm moved, though not entirely settled, I shall attempt to update more often, though I make no promises! Thanks for sticking with me. Marasmine, thank you for betaing!

 

 

 

Chapter 5: Piecing Together

 

She wanted to be angry. She wanted to be fucking furious. But, the sight before her sucked the wind from her sails and the breath from her body.

 

She was at his side almost before she knew she was moving.

 

He wasn't. Moving, that is. And that scared her more than anything had in a very, very long time.

 

Manx stilled herself before reaching out, watching intently.

 

Yes. There it was. The slightest twitch of the hair that fell across his face as his shallow breath caught it.

 

She sighed in relief. Then, the frustration began to build again. Damned stupid moron was trying to get himself killed! Well, if he wanted it so damn bad, she'd gleefully arrange it at this point. Hell, she'd do it herself just rid herself of the pain in her ass!

 

She reached out a hand to inspect the darkening patch of silk on the robe loosely draped over the unconscious form…and quickly found her wrist wrenched behind her back as she was pinned to the countertop.

 

Damn, but for a dead man he was fast and strong!

 

She gasped for breath.

 

“Balinese, stand down!” Manx commanded.

 

The words, the tone, and her voice combined to cut through the thick haze of his pain-filled, sleep-deprived brain and Yohji let her go.

 

He staggered back, a hand coming to his lips as he tried to reason out what had just happened. Manx slowly turned around to face her subordinate, another tongue-lashing at the ready, and again checked herself at the horribly lost expression on his face. There had only been one other time that she'd seen him so vulnerable and that had been in another life.

 

She remembered, all too clearly, the boy she'd approached some seven years ago. It had been difficult to get to him as Hanajima didn't often let the boy out. Even rarer was for the boy to be out unescorted. She'd been lucky to get her break that day. Luckier still that, while still afraid of his `lover,' he was willing to help. He'd been with the man less than a year, but candidly confided that he didn't expect to be kept for much longer.

 

They both knew that there was only one way a person left Hanajima's employ and Yohji, scarred and very nearly broken, had not yet been ready to die.

 

Manx hadn't thought him ready to take a life then either, but she also hadn't known the extent to which he'd been damaged. In the end, he'd chosen his own path, though she couldn't help but wish sometimes that he'd chosen differently.

 

He'd told her of his insomnia. How he was always up before the rest of the house. How Hanajima had trusted him too much, thinking him too young, devoted, and cowed to even consider betrayal. How he knew the security codes. How, with a much too jaded look in his eyes, he'd be willing to do whatever it took to be free.

 

So, in the wee small hours of the morning, he'd disarmed the system and allowed her team to enter. They were supposed to extract the boy, take out the few “associates” who stayed in the penthouse, and eliminate Hanajima. But, someone had forgotten his part and the boy had stayed. Had moved into the bedroom behind her team with none the wiser. Had put his street skills to work in perfect silence. Armed himself prior to their arrival. And, before they could make their final move, had stepped between her assassins and their target. Had woken Hanajima with a blood-chilling shriek of rage, fear, and hate. And had shot the man with his own gun.

 

She remembered arriving on the scene to find him, still standing, staring at the faceless mass that had once been his keeper, gun still clutched in his hand. It was her voice, then too, that had been the one to reach him, to bring him out of his shock, to coax him away from the carnage.

 

She'd ordered a lockdown. No one goes out, no one comes in. Then, she'd told her agents exactly what had happened. The mission had gone perfectly according to plan. Yohji had let the team in and had immediately left the premises. She brooked no refusals. None had been offered.

 

He had that exact same little-boy-lost look on his face right now. Unsure of what he'd done or even why, he looked to her for answers, reassurance, and safety, once again. This time, though, she didn't have them. She didn't know why.

 

He'd never told her. She knew that he'd come directly to her office after leaving the cabin all those months ago. He'd sat in the chair in front of her desk and asked her to hide him. Naturally, he didn't use those exact words, but she knew him well enough to know that it was what he'd meant.

 

He'd told her that he no longer felt himself able to perform with his team. With any team. He'd asked to work recon, surveillance, and solo hits. He'd asked to be transferred. Where? Anywhere that wasn't Tokyo, he'd answered.

 

“Why?” She'd asked because she truly wanted to know.

 

“I'm a detriment to my team. They'd be better off without me.” She's pressed, but that was all she ever got.

 

Now, she'd been silent for too long and he took to mean the worst. She wondered, idly, if anyone realized what a pessimist he really was. Not that she could blame him. It seemed like that only thing life had ever taught him was that, no matter how much it hurts now, it can always get worse.

 

Was that why he was such a glutton for punishment? Why he did little to defend himself from wounds and rarely had them properly treated? Did he think that if he could get it to hurt enough, if he could be in enough pain all the time, that maybe life would stop piling on more anguish?

 

“D-did I…are you…” His hesitant voice finally broke into her meanderings.

 

“I'm fine, Balinese.” He flinched at the name. She opened her mouth, but he got there first.

 

“I'm sorry, Manx” he whispered.

 

“I said I'm fine, Yohji, and I am.” She took a breath, mentally preparing herself for a conversation they should have had when he'd been sitting in her office.

 

***************************************************************** *******

 

Aya walked through the back door of the Koneko just as Omi was emerging into the kitchen.

 

“You have information?” He asked tersely.

 

“Well, I think so,” Omi answered. His voice no longer carried the confidence it had on the phone. Aya was instantly wary…and annoyed.

 

“You called me home from,” he hesitated to call it following up on a lead, since all it could really be called was a feeling, but he was too pissed to care, “tracing a lead of my own to tell me that you're not sure if you've found something or not?”

 

“A lead? You had a lead and you didn't say anything to the rest of us?” Omi's uncertainty forgotten in the face of his own anger.

 

Not willing to be distracted, Aya continued. “That's not the point, Omi. Do you have something or don't you?”

 

“It's exactly the point, Aya. I called you as soon as I thought I had something so that we could look into it together. So that the three of us could take the necessary steps to put my - our - family back together! I didn't go charging off on my own! I didn't put myself out there and run the risk of fucking up what little we have left!”

 

The tears, the swearing, and that one little slip were enough to tell Aya that he hadn't been close enough to the teammates he had left. He had counted on Ken to look after Omi and had failed to realize just how hard the boy was taking the loss of another “older brother.”

 

Omi, being the best of all of them at interpersonal relationships, composed himself fairly quickly in the face of Aya's stunned silence.

 

“Look, I'm sorry that I yelled. And I'm sorry that I got in the way of whatever personal mission you were carrying out. I just wish that, every once in awhile, you would remember that you weren't the only one who lost him.”

 

Guilt was something with which Aya had developed far too close a relationship and he felt the familiar burden of it, once again, settling on his shoulders. But, he was still angry, too.

 

“I haven't forgotten, but up to yesterday, I was the only one who didn't think he was dead,” he stated coldly. “So, forgive me if I've grown accustomed to conducting searches and following up leads on my own.”

 

Omi flinched a bit at that, but couldn't deny it. He'd given Yohji up for dead within four months of his disappearance. It had been cowardly, but somehow, easier. It hurt a lot less to think that the man had died than to believe that he'd deliberately walked away. Safer, for his own ego, to think that he'd been taken from them. He didn't want to consider that Yohji had abandoned them. Left them to worry about him, to fear for him.

 

Now though, it seemed that was, in fact, the case. And, oh gods, but it did hurt. To know that he held so little regard for them that he could do that. The thought made his anger flare again, but it dissipated just as quickly. He knew Yohji too well to really believe that. Whatever the specifics, Omi knew that Yohji, idiot though he was, thought himself to be doing the right thing for the team. The only time Omi had known Yohji not to put the team first was when he'd realized Neu's true identity. And Omi knew that he regretted it everyday since.

 

Omi sighed. Aya may have been in love with him, but Ken knew the details of Yohji's life best. So, taking the knowledge of his best friend and combing it with the insight of the one he'd felt most needed his comfort and protection produced a damned accurate picture of one Kudoh Yohji's psyche.

 

Finally, Omi spoke again. “You're right. There are things both of us could have done better. I think we've all been dealing with it in our own ways and not really talking about it. Do you want to tell me about your lead?”

 

“I'm sorry, too,” Aya answered. Omi was right. Yohji was gone, but in many ways, Aya was too. Once he'd realized that they no longer held out hope for his love's return, he'd shut them out again. He was still unsure about telling Omi of the building he'd found, of the traces of blood, of the feeling he got whenever he was near it. “What do you think you've found?”

 

Ken had entered the room in time to hear Aya apologize. He was smart enough to say nothing, but smiled approvingly at his teammate. He settled himself at the table and awaited his lover's response. Omi had told him to put up the back in fifteen minutes sign in the shop as soon as it was clear and to come in, that he had found something, so he was unsurprised by the question.

 

Omi let himself be redirected for the moment. “Well, it's something in the Kritiker databases. I got an email this morning. Very sketchy. I couldn't trace the sender, though I think it came from a cell phone. Anyway, it said something about `knowing what I'm looking for,' and pointed me in a certain direction with Kritiker's mazes of information. I called you as soon as I got the email thinking that, even if it yielded nothing, you should know that someone knows we're looking now.” He paused to let that sink in and Aya and Ken nodded, acknowledging that they'd discuss it more later.

 

Omi continued. “So, I followed the directions, thinking it couldn't hurt, and got nothing. Since I was already in there, I decided to do some other snooping. Started looking in places I wouldn't expect to find anything and found…something. I can't get all the way into the file, which in itself is suspicious. It's encrypted in a way I've never seen in their system before. Anyway, I've gotten enough to know that it's a personnel file. A dossier on a kind of jack-of-all-trades right here, in Tokyo. He seems to be an assassin, but he also does a fair amount of reconnaissance. Occasionally, it seems, he even plans missions.”

 

Aya's eyes had grown with each sentence and he found himself moving to sit down at the kitchen table. It had already been established that he was alive, in the area, and most likely still connected to Kritiker by his walk-on role in their last mission, but to have it backed up by actual data made it even more real.

 

Ken's eyes were actually misted with tears. He'd wanted to believe, but couldn't. Now, he felt the faintest glimmer of hope that his friend would be coming home. That he'd have the chance to renew their friendship, to be the friend he should have been before things went this far. Right after he got done beating the shit out of him for making Omi worry and making Aya an even more miserable bastard.

 

“What's more,” Omi went on, “is that the file creation date is two days after Yohji left Villa Weiss. Aya -“

 

“He's been here all along,” they said simultaneously.

 

“And Manx knew,” Aya finished.

 

Aya sat there, putting the pieces together, starting with Yohji's unexpected arrival last night and ending with Omi's call. A call that came as soon as he received an email. An email that arrived just as Aya was about to, maybe, enter a building that, maybe, housed his lost love. It was too perfect to be coincidence.

 

“Omi, I have to go. I promise that I'll explain when I get back and I really don't believe that I'm in any danger or I'd wait for backup, but I have to go. Now.” It was as close as Omi'd ever seen him to babbling.

 

Still, he trusted him.

 

“Go, but stay in touch.”

 

Aya nodded once to each of them and took off again.