Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ To destroy the one you love ❯ Remembering Yohji ( Chapter 8 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

To Destroy the One You Love

Chapter 8: Remembering Yohji

Pairing: Yohji/Aya/Yohji; Schuldig/Yohji (one sided)

Rated: Pg13-ish (Thus far for swearing R rated for later chapters)

Warnings: Strongly implied yaoi and a swear word or two >_>;

Legal stuff: Well... I think it's obvious but I'll state it anyway. Nix and I don’t own them! I know I’m broke and Nixy doesn’t have much to spare either so unless you want the couple of pennies we have floating around our computers… don’t sue? Please?

Author notes: I DID NOT WRITE THIS CHAPTER. After a bit of bribing, Nix agreed to write this chapter for me. YAY! I’m so pleased because she’s a wonderful author who (if you’re an AxY fan) you should defiantly check out! Her FF.net SN is PinkWhirlWind or you can find her original works at www(dot)darkfedora(dot)com.

Anyway, it took us a bit to conceive how the chapter should be done and in the end we decided that it should be written from Aya-chan’s point of view. Now, I don’t think either of us were terribly fond of using her p.o.v. at first but as soon as the chapter started, we were in love with her. So that’s that.

Feedback: If you love this chapter, give most of the credit to Nix. I just helped plot the chapter and bugged her every step of the way until it was done. The rest of the magic is entirely hers.

Thanks to: (see bellow)

~*~

Remembering Yohji by Nix Winter

Nix Notes: This was written as a chapter to go with ‘To Destroy the One You Love’, by Raven-sama

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Fujimiya Aya could be very stubborn. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.

"It is not necessary," Manx said firmly, arms crossed. The two of them faced each other down in the briefing room, only it was Aya on the stairs holding the high ground.

Aya’s chin lifted, eyes narrowed. Yohji had meant the world. Yohji had opened the door to the world again and his laughter still lingered, his slow, languid stories, the way emerald eyes could just express the whole world by simply looking over sunglasses slid down a slightly curved nose, eyebrows drawing down.

The world seemed to array itself against Aya, and the only person who had seen Aya for Aya lay dead, unrecovered, rotting somewhere, and it was necessary. Ken stood in shadow on the far side of the room, shoulders hunched just slightly, refusing to look in Aya’s direction. Omi was crying again, grieving, and there was Manx, arms across her chest, eyes red, determined to have her own way.

And Ran. Aya could not believe Ran. Yohji had once called her brother a ‘frozen cherry’ and she could understand it now, with many layers of meaning to that phrase, and she didn’t care that her demand would step on their boundaries. Maybe they needed those boundaries stepped on. It was as if they’d been steeling themselves against this for so long, as if the florist industry was somehow so dangerous that any of them could go at anytime, with plans already made and bouquets already picked out. She wouldn’t have it.

"There will be a wake," she said firmly, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. They acted like they could just go on, like they should pretend that nothing had happened, as if those flowers they’d picked out had been sent and paid for years past and there was no need to do anything now. Yohji had only been some kind of ghost lingering on until he knew he was dead, for all the public display any of them were making. For all she knew they’d told the customers that he’d been transferred to an office in Kyoto. "You will all come. It will be at my apartment. I know I don’t understand everything there is to know about your lives, obviously, but Yohji-kun was family to me. My friends grew up without me, but I had not aged. Mother and Father were gone years before I woke up. Ran, did you have a wake for them? Or did you just pretend they were transferred to America? Yohji-kun made me feel that I was still a living person and I belonged in this world and he became my family, a brother to me. We will have a wake. You will all come."

Omi sat up, hands over his mouth and nose, like someone trying to stop hyperventilating.

Ran’s eyes watched his sister, violet disbelief.

"I’ll come," Ken said, fingers bent like claws. "I’ll come too. The Yohji I knew was my friend too. He dragged me to the park because he knew there were kids playing soccer. I’ll come to a wake for Yohji."

Manx’s eyes widened, then narrowed, and Aya knew she’d won. "A small, private wake."

What Aya wanted to know was why this woman had anything to say about Yohji’s wake. Yohji had taught her to play American Poker though, and she knew when to leave the table. She smiled, every bit the young girl they thought she should be. "Thank you very much, Manx-san! You’ll see, it will make us all feel better to do right by Yohji-kun!"

Her brother, at least, should have known how quickly loss can mature a person.

And that was how Aya-chan came to be waiting for them on the afternoon of Yohji’s wake.

The apartment was small, just one room with a very small kitchen, very small bedroom, and an even smaller bathroom. It was the apartment of a young student. She stood in the center of the open space before the alter she’d set up, wearing a black suit dress, the earrings her brother had bought for her, even though he’d worn one for so long. Behind her, long tendrils of gray incense drifted lazily like Yohji’s cigarette smoke. She’d actually lit one of those that he’d left behind, but it had burned down, leaving her home smelling faintly of Yohji’s French cigarettes and laughter not ready to fade away.

Yohji had spent the night once, but she’d never tell anyone. It had been such a wonderful and such a sad night. They’d been shopping that day, to buy fashionable clothes for her, unlike the very modest and respectable clothes her brother had picked for her. To Yohji she had been a real person and in his smile she’d remembered that. She was a person. She wasn’t the person her brother saw or the helpless person Manx seemed to see. She wasn’t some prize to be stolen. She was Fujimiya Aya. The real Fujimiya Aya.

He’d laughed at her jokes and run his fingers through his caramel hair, cigarette between his fingers, lips still grinning like laughter could take him again at any moment. Her love for him had hit her as any young girl is overcome by love, but it was his trust in her that had made her a woman that night. He was in love with her brother.

The confession had happened so unexpectedly, as he’d leaned forward, still wearing vague hints of the lipstick they’d tried on as he was showing her how to apply it earlier, both of them cramped into her bathroom. She’d never seen a grown man look so vulnerable, so utterly truthful. They’d been talking about love, about how one would know, really know. "You know you love someone, when it’s almost enough just to be near them, even if they don’t know, they’ll never know, but just as long as you know they’re breathing, that you can see them, that it’s enough to live for."

"Have you ever been in love," She had asked him, wishing secretly that this great love of his was gone, far away, married to the Russian consulate in Africa somewhere. Whoever she was, she was no match for a Fujimiya!

"I’m in love with someone I can never have," Yohji had confessed.

Aya remembered wanting to promise that yes, he could have this one he loved. He’d looked so full of longing, so hopelessly lonely, and a young girl’s heart could spin round so fast. She wanted him to have his love, this one he desired, wanted to know he was happy. "Who is it? I’ll help you! We can find a way to win her heart!" She stood then, raised her fist into the air, as if she would be the super hero of love! Remembering that moment at his wake felt like she’d failed him so terribly. It was her fault he’d waited. She should have picked up the ring the day before. It was her fault he’d gotten the inscription. One hand slipped into her suit pocket, around a small velvet box. It was her fault, though she didn’t understand why. Maybe she just wanted it to be her fault so that his death wouldn’t be some random event that could come back and take someone else she loved. She wanted it to be her fault so she’d never do whatever it was again.

Yohji had leaned back then, taken a long drag from his cigarette, and she’d known it would be a big confession coming then, as his eyes avoided hers. "I’m in love with," he said, pausing...

"Yes? Do I know her? Come on! Tell me please, Yohji-kun! Please!"

"I’m in love with Ran," he’d said the last part almost a whisper, as if he’d just clipped a wire he hoped would disarm the bomb, but wasn’t quite sure.

She’d sunk back to her knees. That very moment was when she’d become a woman, a person capable of loving someone for their own best interest not only for hers. "I love you, Yohji-kun. You’re my brother now," she said solemnly. "I will help you win him. I think he likes you. I’ve seen him look at you just a little too long."

"Probably just wanting to make sure I’m not looking at you," Yohji snorted.

Aya had never wanted to be her brother, except in such a very small flare right then. "He does love you. You’ll see!" She smiled. And then someone knocked on her door.

She straightened, holding Yohji’s ring. She’d make up for it today, so Yohji’s spirit could rest. ‘I love you, Yohji-kun,’ she prayed to his spirit, wherever it was.

 

Omi wore a suit, western and black, though he was pale as a starched hotel sheet. Ken wasn’t much better, though she thought he looked a little too much like a gangster for her tastes, always a little edge of violence to him. It was the sports, she guessed.

Her brother was so beautiful though. The black suit and gray shirt were such a contrast to the vivid red hair. Yohji had described Ran’s eyes as amethysts, though she’d never seen them that way herself, she could see it now. She owed this to her brother too, though she didn’t know how she could do what she planned now that they were all there.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes, hadn’t talked to her, really, since she’d demanded this. He deserved to know.

"Thank you for coming," she said, wishing deeply that her mother were there. Her mother had been so wise, so kind, and she’d known everything. Aya couldn’t say she knew how to give a wake.

She’d gotten a guest book, food, gifts for each of Yohji’s friends, and she’d forgotten to get chairs. They milled. She fidgeted.

"Is Manx-san coming?"

"I think so," Omi said. "Was Yohji-kun here often, Aya-chan?"

She didn’t know how to define ‘often’. When he hadn’t been there, she missed him, so it made it seem like not enough. Now that he’d never be there, it seemed like cruelty itself. "He came to see me sometimes," she said.

That got her brother’s attention, made his eyes narrow questioningly. Maybe a very slight flare of jealousy, she wondered. Her brother, he so needed some way to move on, past their parents, past this. She loved him double now, once for herself, once for Yohji-kun.

Ran moved by her, towards the alter. "When was this taken," he asked of the photograph.

"His birthday, this year," Aya said, letting the picture move in her mind. It was after they’d started plotting ways to get Ran’s attention, ways for her to pass her calculus final. Yohji wore blue jeans and black boots, a green tee-shirt, and a thick blue down coat, left open, the fur of the hood laying around his shoulders. He sat on the back of a park bench, elbows on his knees, no sunglasses for once, a bright smile on his face, sakura blossoms behind him like the world was renewed and full of hope. There was nothing special about the clothes or the park, just the energy in Yohji.

Aya reached out to touch the glass over the picture. "It was a good day."

"Were you in love with him, Aya-chan?" Ran asked, voice so low as to be a whisper.

"Yes, but no, Ran-kun. He was in love with someone else," she said, a hand reaching into her pocket to hold Yohji-kun’s ring in her fist. "He treated me like his sister."

"Hn," Ran looked at the photo for another minute, than turned his back to both. "He was a playboy."

"He wasn’t," Aya snapped, frustrated by her brother and his stubborn thwarting of her plans. "He was a perfect gentleman."

As if she now had something to prove, she turned on the others, ring in her fist still. "Yohji-kun was so honorable to me. I wish my mother could have known him. He would have been so gentle towards her and listened to her stories about parakeets, just like he always listened to my stories. My mother would understand why he’s part of our family."

Omi scratched the back of his head, the toe of one shoe polishing Aya-chan’s hard wood floor.

Manx had come in just in time to hear that. Perhaps it was a bit of her own jealousy that sparked her response, just coming in to hear this little girl call Yohji family. Birman followed quietly in behind her lover, and that little added security was all Manx really needed to go off. "Family is not made in a few months," Manx snapped, an elegant ice blade.

"You’re right! It’s made over years. Falling in love takes years, but if someone loves than that makes them family."

"This isn’t San Francisco," Ken sneered.

"No, it’s Tokyo! And this is a Japanese wake and I have gifts for you," she said, feeling like she was losing control of what she’d meant to do. How could it be so hard to just tell Yohji’s secret so his spirit could be free? How hard could it be to tell her brother he was loved? Her throat closed off so she could barely breath.

Maybe some level of it was how much Yohji had made her feel loved, feel apart of a family, which her brother didn’t seem able to do anymore. She wanted to prove to them that she was family too, so that she wouldn’t be alone now that Yohji was gone. "I know you all, because I know you through Yohji." She grabbed up the first wrapped gift and thrust it out towards Ken. "He felt badly about this. It was supposed to be for your birthday."

Ken’s hands didn’t raise to take the glossy brown paper wrapped gift. He stared at it and she watched a shiver roll across his shoulders.

"It’s not going to burn you, Ken-kun," she said, imitating Yohji’s lazy drawl, so slight, so personal to Yohji.

Ran went pale.

The next gift was for Omi, a black leather pen and pencil box. She didn’t wait this time, but moved to him and took his hand. "You don’t know how proud he was of you. And your studies. Every time I’d get discouraged, he’d say, ‘Be like Omi-kun. He never lets anything stop him!’"

Ken moved away from Ran.

Aya had not had time to get to know her brother as he was now. To her, he was Ran, had always been Ran.

"I know each of you," she said, hoping they’d understand that she wanted their acceptance, that she didn’t want this emptiness where Yohji had been to be empty for ever. "Here! This is for both of you." She held the pink wrapped box to both Manx and Birman.

Omi moved away from Ran.

Manx let Birman take the package, and paper opened easily under long, sharper than they should be nails. One black eyebrow rose slowly. "Thank you," she said.

"You gave them karma oil," Ran asked, eyes blinking, "For Yohji’s funeral gift?"

Ran wasn’t pale anymore.

Aya smiled brightly. For all her lipstick lessons with Yohji, she was truly more innocent than she thought.

"Do you know what that’s for?" Ran’s eye twitched.

Aya frowned. "I know he said they’d like it," she said.

"And he’d probably knew first hand! That fucking slut has probably slept with every twat in Tokyo!"

"You don’t know what you’re talking about!"

The two Fujimiya’s faced each other, fists clenched, the tragedies of the past collapsing back into the core of the universe to be born anew in the energy between them. "Oh? I don’t? I know he comes home with his eyes black and his clothes tore up. Maybe he likes it rough, uh? Maybe that’s why he came home that night looking like he’d been done backwards in an ally!"

Manx stepped forward. "Shut up, Ran! It was my fault he looked like that the last night."

"Why? You were the one that did him? You don’t have to stand up for him. He’s dead. We can tell it like it is. He’s not coming back!" Ran backed away, towards the door, only to have Yohji smiling at him from a park bench, from freedom that the blond didn’t have anymore. "It’s not my fault he’s a whore!"

"It’s my fault," Manx growled. "Ran, he was running an errand for me that night. A white errand, by himself. He must have been hurt. That’s why he went over the cliff. It’s my fault."

Birman reached a hand out to touch Manx’s shoulder. "It was an accident, just an accident. If there were anyone to be responsible, we’d," she paused, "send them flowers, but there is no one. It was just bad luck."

"I miss him," Omi said suddenly, holding the leather pencil box with both hands. "He taught me how to shave."

"It’s my game," Ken said, brown shiny paper wafting to the ground. "I lost this game years ago. He hated this game. I can’t play without him. It’s just not right. I was so scared on my first errand, but he was the one that teased me through it. It’s my fault. I knew he was so nervous about something the last time I saw him. I should have listened to him. Maybe he’d be here."

"I know what he wanted to talk about," Aya whispered.

"You would," Ran snarled. He wasn’t sure when she’d moved back by the alter, by Yohji’s photo. He wasn’t sure when his sister had started brushing her hair back like Yohji. He wasn’t sure when he’d gotten into her face, his nose only inches from hers, the scent of Yohji on her, of Yohji’s cigarette. "You’re wearing his shirt, aren’t you? Did you want him so badly? What would Mother think if she knew? What would you have done? You know everything don’t you? What would you have done? You think you could do it differently? Do you think you could bring him back?"

"Mother would have loved him because his heart was pure! He loved so much!" She pulled the box from her pocket. "Do you want to know where I was when I wasn’t in study group?"

"You were with him? You were," he snarled, the rage boiling darkly around him, jealousy more intense than any hate he’d ever felt.

Neither of them really heard Omi calling for calm. The universe was being reborn.

"Yes, I was with him! He picked me up and we went to buy the ring," she growled, grinding glass into her brother’s heart.

"You were going to marry him? He’s not worth shit! I thought you were smarter than that!"

"No, he was going to ask you to marry him," she said, voice suddenly as calm as a snake before a strike, her hands catching his and shoving the box into his fists. In truth, it was just a friendship/love ring, not marriage, but she’d had enough of her brother’s idiocy. "Look at the inscription, you asshole."

He shook. Aya-chan was lying. His mouth went dry. "You’re lying."

"Am I? Look at the ring. He was going to talk to you that day. He did try to talk to you, didn’t he?"

"Oh my god," Ran said, swaying. "It’s all my fault. I did it."

Ken caught him, Omi on the other side, the ring box unopened, clutched in one fist.

Aya-chan didn’t lie. They both knew that.

 

The wake had not gone well.

Manx, Birman, and Aya watched the three florists leave as evidence of that.

"With everything he taught you," Manx said, "Did he teach you to drink?"

~*~ TBC

~*~

Remember: I did not write this, merely helped with the plotting.

 

NIX! YOU’RE MY HERO!

weisslover27 - Hmmm not sure lol! Spanked for the tease chapter? O.o hmm.... that sounds... lmfao never mind. It's better to not comment.

Tygrrlyli - Wooo! You live! I'm glad you haven't lost interest... and don't worry about it, I understand what it's like to be distracted by shinny objects. It happens a lot. As for the child, naaaa don't put it up for adoption. Mei-chan doesn't care THAT much, she just doesn't wanna raise it lmfao. I guess that means it's all mine or something O_o joygasms!

zelda-13 - *laughs and hugs back* No problem, I'll write more.

MikaSamu - Hai, the dream WAS induced by SchuSchu but I'm not sure if I ever explain that in the story. I'm pretty sure I just leave things up to the imagination of the reader. But, seeing as how the story isn't finished... we'll see how things go.

AolaniDathomir - Yeah, poor Ran.. it only gets worse for him. Though he kinda deserves it, ah well. But no worries, I'll try to keep updating regularly ^^;

Harmony - *laughs* hai, Schu induced guilt (or so I think, I left it up to the reader unless I decided to talk about it more in later chapters. Not sure yet...). And it's good to know you think along the same lines as me ^__^!

Forsaken - Regret and realization realllly takes seed after THIS chapter. Ran gets a big fat "In your face" slap thanks to his little sister... whom I'm beginning to show attachment to. Which is funny cause I usually don't like her that much, she's just turning out to be so cool in this story *_*! Umm as for getting to Yohji before Schu does... hehehe X)!

dimonyo-anghel - Yes. O__O yes wakes really ARE emotional.

Morkael - Lol Sank you!