Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Roses ❯ Part 2 ( Chapter 2 )

Hey, thanks Charis and Princess Yuy for your reviews. They're very much appreciated, I assure you. Even if you two are my only fans, I'm enjoying myself and am happy to continue. This installment is pretty short, but at least I'm updating fairly quickly. That should be worth something.

^^^

He hated the dark. Darkness meant one of two things, neither of which was preferable over the other. More often than not, it meant hours of lying in bed, wide awake, and being plagued by waking nightmares. About twice a week, the other instance applied; the nightmares would be real and he'd have to live each one to its entirety instead of flipping a mental switch to go to a slightly-less-horrible dream.

Tonight it was the former. His eyes had adjusted to the blackness of his bedroom and the familiar shadows of his furniture and paraphernalia had long since lost their ability to distract him. He was tired, but every time he closed his eyes it took effort and concentration to keep them shut. So he would open them and try to blank his mind so that maybe they would close on their own, but that hadn't worked in years. He'd taken a couple sleeping pills earlier, but some nights they just didn't work . . . like tonight.

Through his bedroom door and down the hall he heard the front door open and shut with the barest rattling noise from the knocker. He didn't have to look at his clock to know it was eleven o'clock. The door would open and close again in exactly forty-five minutes when Lena got back from her workout. The girl was like a pre-programmed robot. There was nothing she did that wasn't thoroughly and meticulously planned out beforehand. She set a schedule for a certain amount of days and stuck with it. When she had assignments, she left nothing to chance and made sure that there would be no surprises from the target, the location, or even the weather. She was perfect.

Unless someone else added an unwanted variable, like he had by not taking his shift.

He'd thrown her whole schedule out of whack. It had been unintentional, but it had still been done. And during her midterms, too. Their lives were bad enough, but Lena had it worst of all in his opinion. He remembered high school, or rather, the rare occasions he chose to go. Stress came from every direction in the form of tests, homework, friends, dates, and infinite other guises. Plus, she had the cover-up job at the bookstore, and then, worst of all, her real job. The fact that she was also the youngest by two years and the only female couldn't have helped things.

For just a second, he let the sympathy he felt for the girl flood his thoughts. She should have been out seeing movies and going to the mall instead of plotting the assassination of some politician that had gotten too much power. She should have been worrying about getting into a good college, not worrying about making it back to the safe-house alive and successful with the theft of some document or other.

The second passed and the emotion was reined under control again. She had been chosen because she was one of the best at what she did. She saved hundreds of lives by taking only a few. She had stood under the weight of such a life for the past year and she would continue to do so for as long as she was needed.

In other words, she could take care of herself.

The tiniest bit of guilt broke through his emotional barriers, and only expanded when it caught his attention. He wasn't sure why he'd ordered Lena to stop at the store on her way home after all that she'd done for him already. He was always doing things like that with her. She'd cooked him some soup one time when he'd been bed-ridden with a fever, and he'd told her it tasted like dog piss and didn't want it. Another time, she'd given up her evening jog to come pick him up from a job that hadn't gone quite as well as he'd planned, and the whole drive he'd said only one thing, and it was a very colorful complaint about how long it'd taken her to get there.

Sure, he was cold toward the other guys, too, but not like he was with Lena. She did more for him than any of them -- whether because of convenience or some other reason, he didn't know -- but none of them were ever insulted after doing him a favor. There were a few psychological reasons he could come up with, but he didn't like any of the answers they provided. He refused to believe that he had the kindergarten-syndrome that resulted in guys picking on girls because they had a crush on them. He hadn't gone through that phase when he'd been five, and he sure as hell wasn't going through it now. Especially not with Lena.

Not that she wasn't attractive or intelligent, which she was, but she was a team-member. He doubted she had any interest in relationships anyway. A guy would probably add complications to her perfect syllabus, which would be unacceptable for her.

Too bad.

Not for him, but for her. She deserved a little happiness in her shitty life. She deserved a companion that could give her that happiness.

The door opened and closed again, far off on the other side of the house. He listened for the refrigerator to open and close as she retrieved the bottle of water she'd put in that morning. In a minute she'd go upstairs to her room and read until midnight, when she'd go to sleep. It didn't matter that it was a Friday and there was no school the next day; she would be up at six-thirty like always.

A little corner of his mind twitched with a vague memory as he thought about the weekend. It was October first tomorrow. Lena's eighteenth birthday. No one else knew, unless they'd gone through the trouble he had to research his house-mates. He knew more about all of them than they'd ever learn about him. Omi was supposed to be the computer-whiz, but that didn't mean he couldn't have any talents, either.

So the girl would be eighteen tomorrow. That was a major birthday in her American culture. No one knew about it, so there would be no celebration. But that didn't mean he couldn't make her day a little more pleasant. She'd never have to know who did it; she'd just get to enjoy the results.

His mind made up, he rolled over and-miraculously-fell asleep.

^^^

TBC

So, am I still keeping you're interest? Do you want to know what Aya plans for our lovely heroine? Not that she's doing much heroics in this bit of fluff . . . . Review if you like it. Or hate it. Or just have something to say that is vaguely related to it.