Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Halcyon ❯ Chapter 10 ( Chapter 10 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Title: Halcyon (Ch. 10)

Author: Genuinelie(s)

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Weiss Kreuz is not mine.

Pairing: AxY

Summary: The boys are finding that until death, all ends are just masked beginnings.

A/N: Continuation.

xxxxx

It was snowing outside.

Large, fluffy flakes. It would have been a torrential downpour, but for the difference of a few degrees.

Ran pressed the back of his forefinger against the glass, drawing one leg up onto the cushion of the window seat. He kept it there until the cold soaked through the skin and sharpened into pain.

His eyes focused on his reflection, then passed by his own pale face to the backdrop of his empty apartment. There were a couple cards from his sister on the table, a flower arrangement she'd brought from the shop. The glow of his reading lamp almost made the room seem warm, but without Aya's touch it would have been the same sparse layout he'd kept since joining Weiss.

Half a year. An eternity.

He should be looking forward. He should be focusing on Aya, and the possibility of a new life.

He'd never seen this coming.

It was laughable, but this existance was the one he'd never imagined for himself. The one where he had a job that hurt no one, in which his sister was awake and thriving.

He set his book aside, and stared down at the street. The snow was laying on the ground, pristine in the quiet night.

How could he set his past aside now?

He hadn't seen it at the time. Weiss had given him purpose.

It never had been his choice. To stay, to live, to kill, to die.

He'd gone where he felt he should, all those years. His one goal had been to see his sister's eyes open, to have her take back her name. Somehow it had gotten tangled in the threads of his teammate's goals, and when he'd unraveled the knots he'd found only one thread.

Perhaps the others had seen more clearly. Yohji had, somehow. He'd tried to tell Ran that he wasn't alone in his suffering. And when Ran didn't listen, or perhaps simply couldn't hear, Yohji showed him what he'd meant with his physical absence. Right at the cusp of Ran's awakening, Yohji had left Weiss.

Omi, Ken. It had been like the three remaining Weiss were missing a limb.

They'd left soon after. And instead of freedom, he'd only found new teammates, new pain in their deaths.

Kyo, Sena.

Ken had lost himself in the absence of their purpose. Omi had given in to the siren-song of his fate.

Yohji had been rewarded. A new life, no memory of his past, a blank slate. He saw him sometimes, on the streets of Tokyo. He always looked happy. Ran refused to be the one to bring back his pain, though memories of green eyes and the fleeting opportunity of skin beneath his fingers skirted through his nights.

As sometimes did the feel of cold wire wrapped around his throat, and spoken, cutting truths.

They had been too similar, in their suffering.

He supposed he'd gotten what he'd wanted as well, in the end.

Ran pushed off of the seat, and went to get ready for bed.

xxxxx

Ryo trailed a finger along the rough surface of the red brick, and pressed his back against the solid building.

For a moment, all he could think was how familiar the position felt.

Like a thousand other little, worthless movements and mannerisms he couldn't quite place the source of. Where he'd picked up his nervous habit of keeping his back toward a wall in restaurants, how sometimes he preferred to close his eyes when Asuka topped him in bed, like they weren't face to face. The way he sometimes played with his chopsticks between his fingers, like they should have been a lit cigarette. Asuka chided him that if he had ever smoked, it was better that he couldn't remember the habit.

Ryo laughed a little at himself. He didn't know what he was playing at, trying to give significance to a life that was unreachable to him. He couldn't remember it; no one was looking for him. It apparently hadn't been worth much.

He was grateful for his wife, his house, his boring, peaceful job. Somehow, he knew it was better than he ever deserved.

Asuka was kind to him. She was a good partner.

He stopped himself from following down that line of thought, as he always did. There was more to it than that, more meaning to why those were the only thoughts that surfaced when he thought of his wife. He pushed them back behind easy gratitude.

Yet, he was here.

He always stopped here.

He had walked by the construction site across the road from where he hid every day last summer.

He shouldn't be surprised that it had returned.

The sounds of drilling and picks and metal being moved and scraped was nearly deafening. He hated how the noise broke into his peaceful walking commute.

He peered around the corner.

His breath caught.

Asuka sometimes teased him about being gay. His response was always that it didn't matter if he had been, did it, and used her argument about the cigarettes as a comparison. Bad habits better left behind, and he was still her husband, he said firmly. Who she saw was who she had.

But that wasn't it, was it? He wasn't so transfixed by the worker, as he was unable to drop the feeling that he knew him.

And he'd come back this year. He didn't recognize more than a handful of others on the team, and yet, he was there again.

And someone was going to call the cops on him if he stayed lurking in the alley like this much longer. Ryo laughed at himself. He swung his briefcase around the corner to warn coming passerby and strolled onto the street, back into the sun. Into the crowd.

He didn't look toward the familiar worker. He never did.

Asuka said she was making soup for supper. He'd go home, they'd have a pleasant meal - he'd take out the trash and do the dishes. Just like he always did. He was blessed to have such a happy existance.

He was curious, though, as to what his former self would have thought of it all. Whoever that had been.

Perhaps he was imagining it - but he felt eyes on him as he passed.

He always did.

xxxxx

Yohji was there again. The man had taken to hiding in the shadows of the building across the street from the site of his summer employment.

It had been many months since they'd last crossed paths. Ran had seen carefully to that.

Did he remember?

Or, was he still just a pervert. The wry thought almost made Ran smile, despite the pain brought by the ghost watching him work.

You said you wanted to live, Yohji. Stop haunting the dead.

He threw the pick forward, and the handle felt like a sword in his palms. It connected solidly with concrete, shattering the surface of the old foundation with a thunk.

There was no thinking involved with this work.

Persia had been right. It was a reprieve.

xxxxx

"Ran?"

He mustered a smile, took off his work helmet and placed it carefully on the bench, shaking out his matted, short cut hair. The earttails had returned at his sister's insistence - he'd never attracted anyone but perverts if he kept that braid, according to Aya-chan.

He did it, as he did everything, to make her happy.

"Niisan? Hard day?"

He ruffled her hair after he returned from washing his hands and face. "It was fine, Aya. As always."

His sister frowned. "Sometimes I think-" she bit her lip, and turned back to where she stirred their dinner on the stove.

Every Thursday, he came for dinner. She lived in an apartment building, in a room next to the Kritiker family that had taken her in. The complex was Kritiker-controlled, but she was no prisoner. She was still safer, as Ran saw it, with him in the peripheral of her life.

Sometimes it seemed like he'd arrive, and find that he'd imagined all of it. That she would still be in a coma. Or that she had only just woken up, and the round-faced foster mother would greet him at the door instead.

He had balked at the regular contact. It was what he most wanted - but he wasn't so far gone from Weiss that he was deluded enough to think his presence was safe for her.

Until she had begun walking to his apartment at night, by herself. Ran had reluctantly agreed to visiting her.

It had been over a year, since he'd given his sister a glimpse into what it had been like for him when she'd been in a coma. A year since she'd had to wait by his side in a hospital for him to get better, since the kid had stabbed him and then lost his nerve to take his wallet, leaving him bleeding on the street. After which came orders from Persia to take a break, a mandate from above to try out a simpler life. Ken had finally released himself from prison, but had never returned. The last he'd heard the soccer player was traveling.

And his sister had decided to take up selling flowers at the koneko.

He wasn't sure if her presence there was rewriting the building's history, or keeping it alive.

The echoes, though, were only audible to him.

"Are people - are the other workers bothering you, brother?" Aya-chan said abruptly, turning to place fried rice in front of him, and then in front of herself. She sat down, hands folded, eyes serious.

"No. Thank you for the meal." He began to eat. He softened his tone. "Tell me about your day, Aya."

She didn't look happy with him, but she did so.

xxxxx

Ryo wasn't alone in his observation of the worker.

The girl was on the other side of the road, hovering on the sidewalk just beyond the plastic fence. She was so unobtrusive that Ryo was positive she could have been there longer than he had been. Her hands were clasped in front of her as she watched the red-haired man work.

Ryo might have been disappointed, he admitted to himself. Or perhaps he was just bummed that his detective skills were off.

That earned himself a snort. What detective skills, you idiot? You crunch numbers for a living.

It was boring as hell. And there certainly wasn't any investigation involved, unless it concerned that misplaced three or the phone number women (and the occasional man, he had to admit) sometimes dropped on the edge of their forms.

At any rate, he'd never seen anyone greet the worker before this. Some part of him -

Another idiotic thought. You need to stop going out for drinks with the boss.

-had been expecting that when one finally did, it would have been another man.

The worker hadn't noticed either of them, so far. He always devoted such determined concentration to such menial work. Ryo sometimes wondered what his face looked like up close, underneath the helmet and beneath the fall of hair.

The girl across the street seemed to reach her own conclusion. Her shoulders sagged, just perceptibly, and she turned to leave.

"Hey! Stop!" Ryo jolted out of his hiding place. The girl had spun into the street without looking.

He'd been wrong. The worker had seen her.

He'd seen them both. Even across the distance, the startling color of unusual amethyst eyes flashed as they met his own.

He felt discarded. There was no mutual recognition in the look.

The worker reached her first, throwing down his tool and leaping over the plastic fence to jerk her out of the way before any traffic reached her. They both stumbled backwards onto the sidewalk, the man's arms shaking as they tightened around her shoulders.

From what Ryo heard of the tone of his voice, he was yelling at her. It sparked an anger in him.

So, that shattered all delusions he'd held of the man being a simple, kind, hard-worker. He apparently was an asshole.

Ryo jogged across the street. "Hey!" He demanded, when neither of them noticed him. "Hey! That's no way to talk to a woman!"

Both of them looked up, startled. The similarity of their faces blew Ryo's perceptions apart, again.

"I'm okay, niisan!" The girl said, insistently. She pushed off what apparently was her brother. Ryo noted the reluctance as the other man let her go.

Up close, the nagging familiarity became a burning recognition.

If he could only placeit.

The worker's features were delicate, but looked worn despite the obvious beauty. The man had a hard set to his mouth that reached his eyes. When they flicked to his sister, though, concern bled through. He doubted the man realized it.

His frame was small, but well-built. He was shorter than Ryo had expected. The skin was pale and flawless despite the constant sun exposure of his job.

"This isn't your business," the man finally growled. He reached out, and tugged on the girl's hand.

The girl gave him a smile over her shoulder, as they turned to go. "Thank you, though! He was just being -"

Suddenly, she stopped. So immediately that her brother jerked on her arm, then turned, surprise breaking through the emotionless expression.

"Y-Yohji?" The girl asked. Her eyes were wide. Her head whipped back to look at the man who was so familiar, then back again to Ryo.

That name.

That name was so familiar...

Another emotion leaked through the expression on the worker's face. It made the man seem much younger than he would have guessed, perhaps younger than him, even. Ryo couldn't identify it, but it was close enough to pain that Ryo felt he'd been right in his suspicions.

The man took hold of his sister's hand again. "We don't know him." He said shortly. He pulled her after him.

She glanced back at Ryo as they left, eyes concerned.

"I think you're lying!" Ryo called after him.

The man didn't look back.

He watched as they disappeared around the corner.

xxxxx

"Hey! Hey!"

Ryo turned, surprised, as the sound of running footsteps caught up and stopped at his back. He was irritated with the interruption - he was only a block from the construction site. He hadn't seen the red-haired man for a week, and he had made up his mind to ask one of the other workers about him today.

The red-haired man (not the right red, Ryo considered) who'd run up to him was possibly as tall as he was. He had a pleasant enough face, but the hard-edged grin turned him off. Ryo raised his arms from his sides, showing his briefcase, then dropped them again. He gave an easy smile. "I didn't drop anything."

"Oh, yes, you did." The man's grin turned sharp. "Your memories. Know where you put them?"

"Who are you?" Ryo took a step backward.

The man continued, as if he hadn't replied at all. "I do. Time to wake up, Yohji."

Yohji.

That was what -

"And just for the record, although you won't remember it, kitten - I'd rather kill you than give you that shit of a life back. But - Kritiker is rather lucrative these days." The man snorted. "Lucky you."

Ryo collapsed.

xxxxx

Tbc.