In the front seat, Aya watched, seeing bits and pieces in the sun visor’s mirror. Distanced. He couldn’t bring himself to breach that gap. There were too many things to sort out mentally. In that moment, when they’d seen Youji’s jacket, the pain had been so great he’d thought his ribs should creak inwards and pierce his heart. For a moment the thought of Youji in danger made even his concerns over his sister pale into shadowed wisps. It had clouded his usually impeccable memory, making him forget that Omi was the one really in danger. He’d known Omi had gone in a different direction than the one they’d went searching for Youji. If he’d remembered, if he’d said something, they could have reached Omi before the tunnels collapsed. Just one more guilt heaped upon his conscious.

After a few moments, Ken pulled away, requisite comforting accepted. Dimly, he was attempting to spare Youji’s feelings, to keep him from feeling rebuffed by Ken’s need for personal solitude.

Youji met Aya’s eyes in the mirror, startled. How long had Aya been watching, judging?

“Okay, is your stop.” Fate turned smoothly into drive-way, twisting in her seat to scan the despondent two behind her.

“Are you safe going back to your apartment by yourself?” Youji transferred his concern, bent on making someone’s welfare his responsibility.

“I am always safe! The Striking Cobra has no fears, and no enemies outweigh her grace and strength.” Not to mention the size of her ego.

For a moment Youji wanted to banter with her. It wasn’t real; Omi couldn’t be dead. It was like before, with the terror and the pain, partitioned off from his usual train of thought. He didn’t want to remember Omi’s death with the same dull ache in the pit of his stomach that he remembered torture at Ko-Ishi’s clemency.

“You could stay, if you want.” Robotic, lifeless. Ken reached one slow hand towards the door handle, head tilted to one side as if he couldn’t bring himself to utilize all the muscles in his neck. “You can take a shower first.” His feet hit the pavement of the driveway awkwardly, and one of Youji’s hands flew up before he could stop it, ready to steady him if he stumbled.

Fate smiled, almost gratefully at Youji, and he realized she’d been hoping all along someone would extend the invitation so she didn’t have to worry and wait alone. It wasn’t a happy expression. Omi really had been the only one of them she was nice to. He was a good kid. Youji looked away, wanting to cry all of a sudden. He slid across the flocked material of the car seat, following Ken’s wavering path towards the house.

It was too hushed within. He’d thought, just for a moment, that Omi would come bouncing out of the living room, a welcome surprise for them all. They’d had too many happy accidents so far. Their luck had to give out eventually. Why Omi?

“GODDAMN IT!” Youji slammed his fists down on the hall table, rattling the phone so badly it fell to the floor, dial tone sounding a perfect counterpart to the inability to connect that he felt. He left it there, disturbing the deadly peace of the hallway. Ken didn’t acknowledge him as Youji started pulling layers of clothing off and dropping them to the tile of the kitchen floor, turning the water to scalding to sanitize his hands. His mouth tasted of cold and blood, lips so chapped they split when he tried to form words.

Ken was starting to worry him. Volatile fits of temper were not exactly healthy, but anything was better than the human void Ken had become.

“Do you want something to drink, Ken?”

“Do you even care that he’s dead?” No anger behind the question. Not even a hint of curiosity.

“Gods, Ken, how could you say that? And he’s NOT dead yet! Not until we prove something. We’ve gotten out of odder scrapes before, and Omi’s the only one of us worth saving. He’s not dead until someone shows me a body.” He poured juice into a glass, unable to deny the needs of his own body anymore. It was hard to swallow around the lump of sorrow blocking his throat, but he couldn’t keep talking if he didn’t. If he shut off everything like Ken had, then Omi wouldn’t have a chance if he still lived somewhere. If. Fuck.

Youji drained the glass, poured another and gulped down half the contents before his stomach felt swollen, nauseas. He knelt next to Ken.

“Don’t tell me you’re not thirsty.” He tried to push the tinted glass into Ken’s hand, desperate for any sort of contact to prove Ken wasn’t going to fly apart into a billion heartsick pieces.

“Omi is dead.”

“I’m not even going to fucking argue with you.” Because if he listened to Ken for too long a period of time, reason would take over and he really would weep. He was doing his damndest to avoid shows of weakness recently, to make up for his excess in the month past, to prove to Aya that he was worth something. Wasn’t Omi worth something. Wasn’t he worth tears from someone? Ken’s eyes were the Sahara, and Aya couldn’t even shed a tear for his comatose sister.

He left the cup on the floor next to Ken’s shoe. “Fuck you then.” Lashing out at the only target available.

“Where are you going?” Aya frowned at Youji as he crossed the living room clad only in boxers, skin bristling with goose bumps.

“I don’t fucking know, Aya. Back off.” He found his own piece of floor, in a corner behind one of the armchairs next to the television, knees drawn up to his chest, tired, bedraggled. He closed his eyes, shivering. He could sleep like this, he was so worn out, but then Aya would find some way to tie that in to his being a lesser human being. Better to keep pushing on. He could take it. Soft upholstery beneath his cheek, practically inviting him to give into oblivion. He could go to sleep, and wake up to the real word, one where Omi was okay, and Ko-Ishi had never happened to them.

“I out. Go clean now.” Fate pointed imperiously at Aya, hair still damp around her shoulders, wearing more of Youji’s clothing. He didn’t care anymore. She could take it all and burn it. “He is okay out there, in kitchen? You want to be in here, not there?” Fate raked fingers through the dark tangles of her hair, forehead creasing as she hit painful knots.

“It doesn’t matter. He wants me to leave him alone.”

“I am tired. Someone has to stay awake, not sleep and get us killed. Ko-Ishi was not there, he is alive and dangerous somewhere. Who you recommend?”

“I’ll stay up.” Youji volunteered bleakly. The world warped around him, spinning as he stood. Disassociated. Discombobulated. He viewed the world through the cellophane of exhaustion. He must not have looked as lost as he felt, because Fate nodded, trusting him to protect the household while the others slept, drained of energy and hope.

He paced, even though the muscles of his thighs screamed at him to stop taxing them so. If he didn’t move, he’d fall asleep before he even came to a stand-still. When Aya finally deigned to return, Fate was fast asleep, and Youji was firmly of a mind that he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life. Even when he hadn’t been eating-not so different from now-he’d never felt this lightheaded, this incapable of coherent thought.

“The hot water won’t be back for a while.” Announced in the tone of a victor. He’d won the shower contest through lack of opposition. Not a massive accomplishment in Youji’s book. “Why is she sleeping?” He leaned over the back of the couch.

“She was tired.” Deadpan with a wry humor he didn’t feel in the slightest. Aya didn’t care. He really was a heartless son of a bitch. Heartless. Bereft of heart. Youji was repeating himself. When his head swung towards the kitchen doorway the world swam around him, sounds tinny and far away. He wanted to sit on the freezing floor with Ken and make him drink the godsbedamned juice. He wanted to wrap bare arms around Ken’s empty shell until the anguish became bearable. He wanted someone to wrap their arms around his sick, aching body, and hold him until it was all better again.

-----------------------

“Get out!” So close to attacking Youji, he found his fingers clenched into cramped fists.

“Aya.” A helpless plaint for justice in the form of a name.

“I am tired. I am going to sleep if it kills me. Literally. They can come in the night now, and end it all. I don’t care. Get out. If you can’t shut up and let me sleep, then go do your whining somewhere else.” Aya pushed Youji out of the bed, not even noticing the hiss of pain as Youji crashed to the floor.

He was doing it again. Dreaming, disturbing Aya’s sleep, trying to verbally delve into these internal horrors best kept to himself. It was too much at the end of the worse catastrophe possible. Youji was lucky he wasn’t being throttled as it was.

Abandoned again, Youji fled. Even now, he couldn’t sleep, so tired his body ran on auxiliary power surges. The television was off limits, what with Fate taking up the couch in front of his old late night friend. Everything else just had too many memories, waiting to be thrown up as soon as Youji’s guard went down. It was impossible without an audience, to reaffirm his belief that everything would resolve itself, that Omi wasn’t a crushed corpse beneath tons and tons of rock rubble, battered and bloodless before the trap was even sprung.

There shouldn’t have been anyone up and about. Youji desperately needed the faded glow coming from the kitchen to be lacking any human connection. So many nights of running scared and crazed inside the confines of his brain, waking is cold sweat next to slumbering indifference.

Leaning on the doorframe, Youji watched Ken stare blankly into space from his seat at the table. “What are you doing up?” Possessive accusation. This was his midnight kitchen, his sleepless territory.

“I can’t sleep.” Ken either missed or ignored the angry undertones. Probably a combination of the two. His mind didn’t seem to be functioning so well. “I’m making hot chocolate. Do you want any.” Eerie monotone. His carefully expressionless face belied the empty actions.

“Sure. Why the fuck not.” Bitterly relenting his ownership of tortured solitude. He watched again as Ken silently rose to stir the milk heating on the stovetop.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Solicitous, inflectionless. The frosty fluorescents threw the exhausted planes of his face into relief, making an everyday familiarity an exquisite object of beauty. Youji had the good grace to abandon his own self-righteous brooding in the face of such empty gravity.

“I should be asking you that same question.”

“But you’re not.” Ken shrugged, offhand and unbothered, safely tucked away in his own cocoon of unreality. “The nightmares again?” It didn’t feel like unreality. It felt like a dream, where nothing had happened and everything was happening around them.

“What would give you that idea?” Youji found himself rolling a spoon between his long fingers.

Ken lowered the heat beneath the pan. “You woke us all up some nights, shouting things we couldn’t begin to understand. It’s been so long since you’ve slept a night through, more than two hours through for that matter, that you should be falling down where you stand.”

“Yeah. So, what are you up with? A guilty conscious.” A bit angry at the prodding of his lack of physical maintenance.

“Not yet.” Dark lashes flickering downwards, hiding what might have been the first real flash of humanity Youji had seen all evening. “Something like that needs time to bloom and mature. Give it a week, and I might just work myself into a guilt fit large enough to warrant suicide. He’s dead now, and I was fucking around with some stupid girl the day before his last. I’m a horrible, loathsome being.” He didn’t sound as if he particularly cared, as if he were even capable of making himself care.

Silence as the steaming milk was poured into mugs, chocolate and vanilla extracts added and mixed. “Not tea. I can’t drink tea right now.” Internal thoughts surfacing on his tongue, thinking of Omi’s honest eyes and open smile.

“What do you dream about?” Aching hands curving around the soothing warmth of ceramic. It was all a sham, a television show where the conversations carried on despite the illogical atmosphere.

“Aya has never once asked me that.” Solemn bottle green gaze sharp in the unnatural light. “Nightmares are the weakness of the soul being regurgitated up into the depths of the sleeping subconscious.” Sing-song quoting. His face dropped down onto his arms, trembling.

“Is that what Aya said?”

Youji shrugged. “He’s right. I’m being cowardly, refusing to let go of fears.” Sleep tangled hair fell across the tight slash of his closed eyes. “If I were a better person…” Trailing off, because he wasn’t. “Aya hates me.” Helpless hands twisting in the ice-tea colored curls now. “I woke him up once, because I couldn’t stop shaking. It was like a caffeine overdose. Like bad speed, and I couldn’t stop. He punched me and told me never to wake him up for such trivial stupidity. Stupid. That’s me. Sometimes I lie there, and I know he’s awake, that he’s only pretending to sleep so I won‘t talk to him or bother him with my insecurities. He despises me that much.” Unable to stop once he’d started, the compounding of all his sorrows.

He wouldn’t talk about Omi. Ken would sour the way Aya had, baleful resentment. There were just so many things, and he couldn’t get his lips around the eloquence to word more than a handful of issues, not even the important ones. Across from him, Ken slumped, listening with only half an ear. Youji wished he’d say something. He had to say something, about anything. It wasn’t right, Ken being this quiet. It was if someone had come down and sucked away all his vitality.

“I have to go back to bed. Aya will get mad if I don’t come back.” Aya would get mad no matter what he did. “Thank you for the cocoa, Ken.” He hadn’t let a single drop touch his tongue. A stomach too long empty of solids couldn’t take the sickly sweetness.

Ken sighed, rubbing his face as Youji rose to leave. Conqueror of the Kitchen, he stirred loudly, trying to cover the footsteps of departing redemption with the clink of metal on painted ceramic. He waited a while, hoping again all reason that Youji would come back, instinctively knowing Ken couldn’t stand to be alone with himself anymore, but the irrational desire died out as time passed.

“Wake up.” He shook Fate’s flannel bundled form until she hissed irritably. “It’s my turn to sleep now. You‘ll have to take your turn keeping watch.” Take her turn awaiting the bleak morning. He couldn’t do it anymore. Nothing worthwhile would rise with the sun. He was almost afraid to open the door. Of what, he wasn’t sure. Of realization, perhaps. The affirmation that his world had officially crashed and burned its way to utter misery.

There was a body on the bed he once shared with Omi. For one horrid moment he was struck by the possibility that Omi had arrived home before them and had come upstairs and bled to death while they bemoaned his death downstairs, not knowing he could have been saved. The frame was too long through, the hair a little too dark and long. Was Youji so disturbed by what waited one bedroom over?

“Youji?” He brushed the pads of numb fingertips across the lines of sharp cheekbones, flicking up to remove obstructing strands from a sleep-relaxed profile. A flicker of lashes, the crease of arched, deliberate eyebrows.

“What? Oh, gods. I’m sorry.” Bolting upright, shedding blankets like feathers, lost and confused to wake in such unfamiliar surroundings.

“It’s okay.” Ken placed one surprisingly steady hand on Youji’s shoulder, keeping him from escaping. It wasn’t until he’d sat down on the mattress, pulling quilted warmth up over his legs that he started to lose control.

“Ken?” Capturing jittery hands in his own, Youji moved closer. “Ken? What can I do? What do you want me to do?”

Ken folded himself against the dubious protection of Youji’s solid chest, giving over to the helpless shaking that wracked his body. Even now he couldn’t cry, couldn’t give voice to the jagged hole torn from his own chest, couldn’t dignify the overwhelming sensation of wretchedness that coiled where his soul should have been.

Eventually his muscles unlocked enough for Youji to recline with him, arms locked tight against the small of Ken’s back, a reminder of the one thing he’d never have again, the one person he’d never see again.

“Can’t I take it back and try again?” He asked Youji’s sleeping face, jealous of the oblivion he’d given away without a thought.

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I’m sorry if this is more depressing and illogical than preferred, but right now it’s almost six in the morning and I’ve yet to be to bed myself (GO, NO-SLEEP ZORD, GO!). I won’t make any flippant comments right now, because that would ruin the atmosphere of the piece. There are more chapters to come, just stick with it, bear with me. Want to kill me right now? You know how to e-mail me and tell me so, I’ve told you as many times as there are chapters. OI! I am learning html! I did this whole page (simple stuff -_-, but I'm learning) entirely in plain HTML, no help from the page builder!!!