Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Smile in Regret ❯ Four Leaf Clover ( Chapter 2 )

Smile in Regret

Chapter 2: “Four Leaf Clover”

Fan fic by: Omni-sama

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Ratings, disclaimers, etc, found in prologue.

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It was a bit difficult to breathe. The air was heavy and hot and humid. The sheets clung to him as he shifted, his damp skin rubbing against another's damp skin. A moan made its way through the thick air. It spoke of satisfaction and satiation. A brilliant white smile formed as he drew his lips back.

 

“That good, huh?”

 

The bed creaked and the fabric made soft hissing sounds as the other man shifted, sitting up and leaning over to retrieve a glass of water from the nightstand. No reply was given to the inquiry save for the soft sounds of water being sipped and the gentle tapping of the glass being replaced in its spot.

 

“You know… We've been doing this for a while…”

 

“Save it.”

 

Once again the bed creaked as he sat up now, too.

 

“Why do you have to be that way? Look, I'm not asking anything from you. I just thought that maybe you might want to-”

 

“I said save it, Kudou.”

 

Silence permeated the room, making the thick atmosphere thicker with tension. The place reeked of smoke and sweat and semen, despite the plug-in air freshener in the corner.

 

“Ran…”

 

“Aya.”

 

There was a hesitation, and then he started again, “Aya… I know you don't want to hear this, but I really do think it's something we should talk about. For fuck's sake, we've been doing this for nearly a year.”

 

“So what?”

 

“So… What, do you feel nothing? Am I really just helping you relieve some sort of tension or frustration or something? Is that really it?”

 

“You sound like a woman.”

 

The glass was picked up again, the sipping sounds returning to fill the silence that the barb had caused. There was not time to replace the glass before the silence was broken again.

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“So soon? You up for it?”

 

“Damn…did you just make a joke?”

 

The sheets hissed again and the springs let out a few squeaks as the one who had been drinking moved to get up. Just as one foot was about to touch carpet, he was pulled back down onto the mattress, his landing creating louder chirps from the springs. The air had started to cool, but just as quickly heated up again. Wet sounds of kisses covered the silence after the bed was finished speaking.

 

“Look, asshole… Maybe you don't give a shit, but I do. I care, ok? I'll fully admit it. I care. Though why, I have no fucking clue. You're a bastard.”

 

The wet sounds grew louder and took on a distinct sound of urgency. The sheets slithered against and clung to their bodies as the bed started talking again. Panting breaths sounded out a rhythm that the bedsprings soon followed.

 

*****

 

He awoke to the sound of the heavy door opening. Since there were no windows, he had no idea how long he had been there. It also seemed that he had fallen asleep as he sat leaning against the wall. His neck complained about that and he blinked his sleepy eyes a little as he watched Schuldig and Farfarello enter. The German was carrying a bucket in one hand and dragging a hose along with the other. The hose trailed behind him, snaking out the still open door and disappearing into the dimly lit hall beyond.

 

“What are those for?”

 

“This,” Schuldig held up the hose, “is your shower. As for the bucket…” Placing said pail in the corner, the redhead turned and smirked a little. “Well, everyone has to shit and piss, Kudou.” At that, Yohji wrinkled his nose. So, his toilet was a bucket in the corner? Lovely.

 

“Alright, Farfarello,” Schuldig commanded, “Time to get our kitty here ready for his bath.”

 

Yohji didn't really protest as Farfarello squatted down beside him and started cutting off his already ruined clothes, but he didn't really help him out, either. Not that it really mattered, for Farfarello is incredibly skilled with his knives, and was able to efficiently remove every scrap of clothing in good time. Even his carefully dressed bandages were removed. As Farfarello moved to pull the man up into a standing position, he paused, focused on the tattoo on Yohji's left shoulder.

 

“Sin…when you gonna learn…” he read the English words aloud, rubbing the pads of his fingers over the upside-down cross and angel wings. “Blasphemous…” A slow smile spread over the scarred lips of the Irishman as his one golden eye rose from the tattoo to Yohji's face. “A kindred spirit. A brother.”

 

Schuldig snorted in mild amusement, and Yohji blinked in confusion. Oh, he understood the English Farfarello was speaking, but he was confused as to exactly why he was suddenly being considered the man's brother.

 

“Seems Farf has found something in common with you, Kudou,” Schuldig chuckled in German as he remained in his place near the corner, hose still in hand. “I'm sure you may recall that time when he went around killing priests… See, Farfarello has a thing against God. And, well…to find someone else against God seems to bring about the warm fuzzies deep inside him. You've just made an instant friend.”

 

Hope dared to rear its head in Yohji's mind and he looked at Farfarello with a hesitant smile. “Brother, eh?” he asked in English.

 

Farfarello's eye gleamed as he nodded. “Yes, brother. You and I, we are brothers now. Brothers against God.”

 

“Oh yes, I can see the resemblance,” joked Schuldig, shaking his head.

 

Instantly Farfarello's smile faded and he studied Yohji's face carefully. “True true,” he murmured almost inaudibly to himself, “Need to fix that…”

 

The hope inside Yohji slowly twisted itself into fear and he tried to swallow the lump in his dry throat. That look in the other man's eye did not bode well for him, he could tell. The fear spiked when his face was suddenly within the firm grip of his “brother's” hand, his head being tilted back as that single gold eye continued to bore into him.

 

“Farfarello, what are you doing?” Yohji heard Schuldig ask, the man still speaking in German. When no response was given, he asked again in English.

 

“Making him resemble me,” responded the Irishman.

 

Yohji's eyes widened with realization, but as soon as he saw the gleaming blade being raised towards his face, he squeezed his eyes shut. The hand holding his face shifted so fingers could pry his left eye open again. “Hold still, Brother,” his captor admonished.

 

“Wait… Wait, Farfarello… You wouldn't want to hurt your brother, would you?..” The green eye that was forced open was looking at the man in undisguised terror.

 

In the corner Schuldig laughed. “Kudou, this man murdered his entire family when he was just a child. He killed his long-lost nun of a mother in cold blood. If you're going to try to use your newfound family ties to save yourself, you're wasting your breath. If anything, I think it's worse to be considered family to him…”

 

He tried to look anywhere but the gleaming silver that was approaching his eye. The pressure of the blade made him grit his teeth and again try to close his eye in a vain attempt at saving it. The fingers holding it open were firm, however, and his flinching did nothing. It didn't hurt as much as he thought it would at first. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized it was likely because the blade was kept extremely sharp. It was only once he saw with his other eye as Farfarello pulled a bloodied white ball from the left side of his face that the pain hit him full force. He screamed. He screamed louder than he had ever screamed in his entire life. And then his world turned black.

 

*****

 

When he came to, the lights were off and he was shivering despite being covered with what felt like a rough-textured blanket. His throat felt dry and hoarse, which he chocked up to a combination of breathing in cold air and screaming. He tried to blink his eyes, then cried out profanities in various languages as it brought about piercing pain. It caused him to sit up, the fabric that was draped over him slipping down to pool on the damp floor. After taking some steadying breaths through grit teeth, Yohji was able to handle the throbbing pain enough to assess his current situation. Unsteady fingers, shivering from both the cold and the pain, roamed over his body to check for any new injuries. He found everything rebandaged neatly. Hesitantly, he lifted his fingers to his face, carefully running them over the new bandages there. Besides the large one over his eye, he had several adhesive bandages over the rest of his face. His chin, his cheek, his nose, even his lip… It took a moment for him to realize that the bandages matched up with the scars on Farfarello's face.

 

“Fuck,” he swore softly, trying to wrap his brain around his sudden makeover. Then his fingers touched his hair and he stopped cold. It was wet, but more importantly it was short. Why this saddened him more than the cuts on his face, he did not know. But he silently mourned his hair for a moment, before flopping painfully back onto the floor and pulling the blanket over his still naked body. He lay there motionless, even as he heard the locks click and the heavy door creak open.

 

“Crawford-san said you would be awake by now,” came the young Japanese voice. The door was left open to provide a soft light for the room instead of turning on the bright overhead lights. Yohji was silently thankful for that, but kept his eye closed just the same.

 

“Yes, I'm awake.” He really enjoyed speaking Japanese again. It was something he had missed.

 

“I brought food. Are you up for eating?”

 

Yohji sat up again, but became rather dizzy and quickly laid back down. “Hurts.”

 

“You lost a great deal of blood. It was difficult to make your bleeding go down… Eventually we were forced to cauterize the wound.”

 

“…Fuck.”

 

“Indeed. You should be ok now, though. And you really should eat…”

 

A strange force lifted Yohji up into a sitting position and carefully slid him over so that he could be propped up against the wall. He cracked his remaining eye open to watch a bowl of broth levitate towards him until it was directly in front of him, hovering at mouth level.

 

“Eat,” Nagi commanded, willing the bowl to press against Yohji's lips and tip towards him a little. The blond quickly parted his lips to drink in the broth before it would be allowed to pour all over him. Every so often the bowl would ease back, giving him a moment to catch his breath and fully swallow, then it would tip forward again so he could continue drinking from it until it was empty.

 

As Yohji ran his tongue over the bandage on his lip, the wound beneath stinging a little from the broth, he watched the bowl drift back to the boy in the doorway. “Thank you,” he said with sincerity. It was then that he noticed that the broth had helped sooth his pained throat, alleviating at least one of his injuries for the time being. “May I ask you a favor?” It wasn't common for captives to ask favors from their kidnappers, he knew, but he took a gamble with this kid.

 

“You may ask it, but I may not grant it,” was the reply.

 

His cut lips tugged up in the corners just slightly. “Fair enough, Nagi-san. I was wondering if you could perhaps stay a while. As you can see, I'm in no condition to be a threat, so you don't have to worry about me trying to escape or attack you or anything. But…it would just be nice to have some company for a bit, you know? So I don't go insane here…”

 

There was a long silence that stretched out between them in the dim room, and Yohji wished that the combination of his blurred vision and the light behind Nagi casting the boy's face in shadow did not prevent him from reading his expression. Finally, the young man stepped further into the room and took a seat on the floor against the wall beside the open door. “Alright. For a little bit.”

 

“Thank you. Really.” Yohji wondered if the kid knew just how thankful he was. “So,” he said after a short and rather awkward pause, “Tell me about yourself, Nagi-san.”

 

He was met with silence again, before a very soft “There's nothing really to tell” reached his ears. Frowning a little at that, Yohji squinted his eye to attempt to see the youth's form in the shadows.

 

“Nothing to tell? What about how you got involved with all of this…with Eszet and Schwarz… I mean, you seem like a good kid, so why…”

 

“It's…complicated. I'd rather not go into it, if you don't mind. Besides, I do not think I should be sharing such information with an enemy.”

 

“I'm not your enemy anymore. I'm not Weiß. I'm not part of Kritiker. If only you guys would believe me…” Yohji sighed, knowing that that particular vein of conversation would go nowhere. He paused for a moment as his groggy mind attempted to think of a new subject. “Hey… How's your girl doing? Tot, right?”

 

Nagi seemed momentarily stunned by the question, then he nodded, not that Yohji would be able to see his expression or the movement. “Yes, Tot. She's well. I was able to find a safe place for her before Eszet found us. She's far from here, though…I miss her.”

 

“..I understand…trust me.”

 

“How…” The boy trailed off briefly before finding exactly what he wanted to say and trying again. “How did you know about her and I?”

 

“I saw you two together on a mission not long after the incident with Neu… You were cute together.”

 

Cheeks feeling warm, Nagi was thankful for the shadows. “Thank you. I care about her very much. Crawford-san doesn't understand, though… He wanted me to forget her. I can't. I could never…”

 

“Again…I understand. Probably more than you know…”

 

One of their frequent stretches of silence commenced, neither one quite sure what to say next. Awkwardly, Nagi attempted to strike up another conversation, albeit on a rather touchy subject… “Did you love Neu?”

 

Yohji sighed softly and chose his words carefully before answering. “I thought she was someone else. Maybe she was…maybe she wasn't… Or more accurately, maybe she used to be… But, when she died she was Neu, not Asuka..”

 

“Who is Asuka?”

 

“Was. Who was Asuka,” Yohji corrected the tense, then sighed and gathered the strength to answer the question. “She was my best friend at one time. My partner, back before Weiß…before killing… I used to be a private detective…”

 

“Was she your lover?”

 

One corner of Yohji's mouth twitched in a half smirk. “I wanted her to be. But, no, she never was. We had sex once, though. We were both drunk off our asses…she regretted it in the morning. We both agreed to pretend it never happened. I acted as if it didn't bother me… But it did.”

 

“So…you were in love with her.” It wasn't posed in the form of a question, but stated in observation.

 

“Yes. I was. Sickeningly so.”

 

“But you've had lovers since then, surely. I have heard Crawford-san and Schuldig-san speak of you and your..conquests..before.”

 

Yohji didn't answer for a while. He tried to figure out how he could answer that without giving anything away. His tired mind clicked through different options as quickly as it could. “Hey, can I tell you a secret?”

 

Taken aback slightly at the offer of being confided in by his supposed enemy, Nagi gave an unsure “yes.”

 

“No one has ever told me that they loved me. Ever.”

 

Opening his mouth to say that he understood because it had been the same for him, Nagi paused then closed his mouth again. It wouldn't be true. He had faint memories of early childhood and being loved. And there was always Tot… “What about your parents?” he asked instead.

 

“Ah…my parents… My mother was Japanese, my father was American…did you know that?” He did not wait for a response before pressing on. “When I was four or five, my mother disappeared. I never really found out exactly what happened to her, but I highly suspect my father killed her.” It was stunned silence that followed that statement. Yohji wasn't sure how he could tell the difference between that silence and all the others that came before it, but he could. Taking a breath, he continued, “You see… The bastard beat her. Every day. I remember cracking my bedroom door open and watching as he hit her. Sometimes he made her bleed; sometimes there would just be dark angry bruises. Then one day, when I returned from daycare, she was gone. My father would bring home random women not long after that. I overheard so many different reasons explaining my mother's disappearance. Different lines he fed the women to get them to bed. She left him, she ran off with someone else, she died in a car accident, she committed suicide…”

 

For a moment he sat there, lost in memories, a bit surprised with himself for telling this kid everything. Things he had never told anyone before, not even Asuka. And, despite his throat hurting again from all the talking, he felt the strange need to continue. As if it had all built up over the years to finally overflow now. He couldn't hold any of it back any longer. He had to let it out, to tell someone. It didn't matter that the person he was confiding in was supposed to be his enemy. “Anyway… To answer your question, my mother never told me that she loved me. Oh, she took care of me and was protective of me, but she never told me that she loved me. I think it was because I looked too much like him…and because she blamed me, in a way, for why she was stuck with him…”

 

Nagi didn't know what to say in response to any of that, and so yet another of their common silences lingered for a while. Yohji swallowed in an attempt to provide his throat some much needed moisture, but it did little good. The boy watched the older man with carefully veiled curiosity. Despite the darkness of the room, he could clearly see Yohji as the light from the door shone softly upon his crippled form. The blanket had come with him when Nagi telekinetically drug him earlier, and it was wrapped loosely around him. The bandages were more red and pink than white, he noted. He'd have to change them soon and rewash some of the wounds. With an inward grimace, he tried not to think about how the man's eye socket had looked as he had cleaned and patched it earlier.

 

“We aren't evil,” Nagi found himself saying, though he wasn't entirely certain just why.

 

One green eye once again strained to see him in the shadows. “I never said you were.”

 

“You probably thought it, though. After what Schuldig and Farfarello have done… They aren't evil.”

 

“I try not to lump people with `good' or `evil' anymore… I did that too much in the past to justify my actions… Killing the `evil' ones…helping the `good' people… Schwarz, Weiß, black, white… It's all gray, really…” Once more the man appeared to be lost in his own thoughts. Still, Nagi felt his comrades' actions needed further clarification.

 

“We follow orders. That's all. We don't want to work for Eszet. None of us asked to… We each have our stories as to how we got here… Schuldig..he's really a nice guy, once you get to know him. Farfarello is nice, too…when he's lucid. And Crawford-san… He may seem stern, but he's always looking out for what's best for us. Like a protector…”

 

“Stern…protector…” Yes, Yohji was certainly lost in his own world. His eye stared sadly ahead and he showed no sign of really listening to what Nagi was trying to say.

 

“Kudou-san, are you alright?…”

 

“I never liked her anyway…”

 

Blinking, Nagi stared at the injured man in confusion. “Never liked who?” When he received no response, he carefully stood up and moved closer, only to find that Yohji had fallen asleep. With a sigh, he carefully maneuvered the man using his mind, lifting him up and laying him out on a part of the floor that wasn't wet from his “shower,” then draping his blanket over him. “Goodnight, Kudou-san…” Quietly as he could, Nagi left the room, closing and locking the heavy door behind him. Soon he'd have to return again to change the bandages. But for now, he'd allow the man his rest.

 

 

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Tsuzuku…