Hah! I almost forgot to put up some inane author comments at the beggining of this chapter! How horrible! Well, there they are! *laughs until she expires* BY expire, I mean die, by the way. *makes funny snorkeling sounds and goes off to eat DOTS by the box full* Mmm, tasty, tasteless gummy stuff!
Youji was acting oddly. Woozy and drugged. Of course he was drugged. Aya had seen to that himself twenty minutes ago. The man he’d bought the drug from had said it would knock the recipient out in a matter of minutes and keep ‘her’ down for a few hours with only minor side effects. He must have been lying. Aya had been lying as well, making the man think he wanted something to knock out some worthless floozy so he could rape her unconscious body. That was the sort of man he’d dealt with, seduced by the most easily comprehended understandings.
As the car rounded a particularly wicked corner, Youji rolled against the window, lolling along with the change in direction. He wasn’t unconscious, just sort of mentally away. He’d tried to ask where they were going as he was dragged/walked to the car, but had given up when his tongue refused to cooperate. He was having difficulty drawing in complete breaths, adding to the lightheadedness.
Angry sounding questions were directed at him, a distracting hand shaking his shoulder, making his head snap back and forth against his boneless neck. More sprawling force as the car did something quick and jerky, and then Aya was leaning towards him, mouth moving, looking far too remorseful and frightened to be his Aya.
It took too much energy and effort to keep his eyes focused, so Youji let them cooperate, eyelids giving in as rapidly as his overall muscle control had.
“Youji, you stupid imbecile, look at me.” Aya really got into the shaking, startled as Youji blearily gazed up at him, eyes positively black and none too lucid. For the first time he realized how quickly Youji’s heart was beating beneath his palm, how difficult every breath was drawn down into the gaunt, lax body as if it made his sides ache to expand his lungs. “You’re not going to die, just go to sleep and wake up in a few hours when this is all over.” Pleading for things to return to his control. The dreamy smile he received in return didn’t indicate any measure of understanding.
Things were already going wrong and he hadn’t even run into Ko-Ishi. Youji looked as if he needed the benefits of a hospital immediately, looked as if he were fairly likely to be well on his way to dying from a drug overdose. If Aya didn’t arrive with Youji in tow, his sister would die and she had precedence over Youji no matter the circumstances. She had to, or his life following the death of their parents was naught but a painful sham; needlessly inflected self-punishment.
Aya pulled out of the deserted parking lot he’d swerved into, forcing himself to ignore Youji’s plight. He just needed Youji quite and complacent in the car long enough for Aya to nab his prize and escape with both the people he held dear. Then he could take them both to a hospital.
It never occurred to him to view his whole plan as simpleminded and suicidal. Nor did it cross his mind that he might not be the pillar of invulnerability he often fancied himself to be. Ko-Ishi would be sure to arrive guarded by all his armed and dangerous undead friends, all wary of deceit and trickery. Aya shed the realities rain drops off of steel.
He didn’t rationalize as he drove, trying to numb himself to the moral let downs involved in t his seeming betrayal. If Ken and Omi knew they would assume he was about to trade Youji in like a lifeless bargaining chip. Aya refused to settle for one of the other, only both would do. If he stopped to think too deeply it would all be too much; he had to run on instinct.
Four sleek, dark cars waited in front of the charred remains of the old flower shop, menacing. Aya parked across the street, leaving Youji inside the car and putting on his best show of bravado to bluff Ko-Ishi to hell and back. Now was the moment that counted.
The closest car opened to allow Ko-Ishi to jar the world with his presence, smaller than Aya remember, now that he was still and examinable, diminished somehow by the somber actuality of his dark business suit, a picture of gentlemanly charm.
“You have what I want?” Ko-Ishi asked in that emotionless monotone Youji had so haltingly spoke of. In person, it really did send shivers down one’s spoine.
“In the car. Locked. Where is my sister.”
Ko-Ishi smiled slowly, visibly stalling and making no attempt to disguise the fact. Time slowed as Aya spun and ran, alerted to the sound of shattering-safety glass. The passenger door was open and all he could see of Youji consisted of poorly lit glances of a tousled head as seen jouncing away, thrown over the large shoulder of one of Ko-Ishi’s goons.
Torn, he couldn’t chase after Youji to save him, couldn’t hurl himself towards Ko-Ishi to visit the angels of vengeance down upon his lying, cheating head. The sight of his hated nemesis turning to walk sedately back towards his vehicle, rejoined by the brawny thugs apprehending Youji spurred him into action. He couldn’t even scream, the rage was so great.
“We threw her lifeless body in the ocean two days after we picked her up. She was a tiresome little whore, not at all like this one.” A dark smile for Aya as one waxy hand brushed across the top of Youji’s head, pushing him into the car glassy eyed and unresisting. The vehicle squealed forward even as the doors closed behind them, burning rubber against pavement.
“No!” He turned to his vehicle, prepared to give chase, but they’d taken even that option for him, the smashed in smoking hood of his car further testament to how thoroughly fucked he was.
Another set of screaming tires barely a foot or two away from his turned back, accompanied by the sound of a hastily opening and closing door. He waited stoically to be shot in the back of his head, entirely unconcerned, helplessly craving death to avoid righting this horrendous horror he’d wrought. When a hand gripped his shoulder and attempted to wrench him 180 degrees to face his death, he wrenched back, falling to his knees execution style.
“Just get in the fucking car or I’ll kill you with my bare hands.” The voice, thick and guttural with rage was barely identifiable as Ken’s.
Truly surprised for the first time throughout this whole fiasco, Aya twisted his head, eyes wide. A fist smashed into his face before he could verify identity with his eyes. His chin scrapped open on the pavement, dirt speckled blood joining with the small rivulet running from his nose.
“Stop it!” Ken’s lurching figure was dragged back a step or two by the blonde boy hurling itself from the car. “We can’t fight, they’ll get away with Youji.” Trying not to wail.
Aya jolted to his feet, walking towards the car, slumping down on the backseat. Fate gave him the first truly unpleasant look he’d seen from her, head craned over the driver’s seat. Ken and Omi slammed the doors behind their reentries to the car, and they were off.
Omi rode shotgun, doing something ingenious with what appeared to be a palm pilot. “We’re closing in, make a right, RIGHT NOW!” Bouncing and pointing like a child with ADD in all his agitation.
“How did-” Aya sat up straight, ignoring the pure murder on his left that was Ken Hidaka.
“Fate.” Omi impatiently answer his question.
“But how did she-”
“Do you want to die?” Beneath the brash, bumbling anger it was obvious Ken was more than willing to make good on the threat. “Shut up. You son of a bitch. You got what was coming to you, huh? No stupid fucking sister and no Youji. Did you even think before you handed him over?”
Aya closed his eyes, fingers flying up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t intend to betray anyone. It was just a huge lack of planning, of the inability to think clearly with emotional entanglements involved in a timed matter. He couldn’t reason it out with only a matter of hours until his sister would have been killed, until he might have lost Youji forever.
“That’s what I thought.” Juvenile and challenging against Aya’s non-response. This was one of those moments where he’d find himself re-affirming the fact that he was still a better person than whichever wrong-doer he was facing. Ken knew he wouldn’t ever trade in one of his teammates for any prized possession.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” The words were hard to find, even harder for Aya to articulate.
“That’s right, you were supposed to have the comatose girl in the passenger seat of your car as you both drove off into the sunset, right? Where is she now, huh? Did she up and-”
“Ken! That’s enough.” Omi twisted around in the front, pounding against the window with a loose fist to get their attention. “This won’t help anything.”
“She’s dead. They killed her.”
For a moment Ken felt he was seeing himself again, stricken with the possibility of Omi’s death. Aya looked up, ruining the illusion. There remained nothing but hatred and rage on Aya’s usually impassive visage.
“No, no!” Omi snapped his head around, spying something out the window. “That’s Youji’s coat. That’s where I put the tracer. Ko-Ishi must have found it. I wondered why the car had stopped moving already.
“47628.” Tonelessly, Aya intoned five numbers.
“What?”
“The tracer I put on him. In his shoe. They won’t think to look there. Serial number 47628. I left my tracker in the car.”
Omi hastily punched the numbers in. “Please let this work.” They were both from the same system even if they hadn‘t been specifically coded beforehand, please let the tracer pick up on a different unit. “Oh, thank gods.” He sagged with relief for a moment. “Go left two streets from now, we need to loop back a block or two to stay within range.”
Youji thought he might be dreaming, but even his dreams weren’t usually t his detached and bizarre.
“It’s so good to have you back.” Ko-Ishi brushed a finger down the curve of Youji’s jaw, frowning when he didn’t receive the reflexive flinch he’d expected. Olive eyes stared forward, blinking owlish and confused at his surroundings.
He wanted Aya to show up and make the dream stop, even if it meant getting yelled at for disturbing someone else’s sleep. He wanted to crurl up against heated, pale skin and just close his eyes and sleep, but he couldn’t seem to leave this world behind. His chest hurt, it hurt to breath, so much effort needed.
Dimly he could hear the image of Ko-Ishi saying things, lips moving, vague, startled rage spreading across unreal, sharp features, a contorted portrait of impressions and half-felt responses. He didn’t see the fist coming towards his face until his head was slamming back into the car window behind him, skull echoing like a hollow canister to his own ears.
Hands on his body, gossamer touches on numb skin. The world spun nauseatingly as he was jerked forward roughly by one arm, his stomach lurching as its contents surged up, the taste of bile in the back of his throat. He couldn’t breathe, hands coming up to claw at the neck of his shirt, weak scrabbling until someone hit him across the face again, a dizzying blur of fleshy solidity looming above him. The pressure he’d never really noticed around his throat eased up, doing nothing about the band crushing his ribcage into his very lungs.
“what…” Words swimming around his skull, some of them his, some of them from elsewhere. “look at his eyes… drugged…. What will?” Youji looked towards the window, wanting to smile as the world outside turned shades of purple and then green, fighting the gray of the tinted windows. Dimly, Youji realized the world not only shouldn’t be changing, but it wasn’t. It didn’t matter, thoughts bubbling in and out of his consciousness.
His eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and when he opened them again, he was crushed amidst a press of warm bodies, a intentionally hurtful hand pressing against his throat, the harsh wheezing that ground so on his nerves coming from his own chest. Ko-Ishi smiled at him, teeth pointed , and despite the layers of apathy padding his reactions, he had enough will left to muster some real fear, struggling weakly at this last moment to get away.
Fingers pinching his skin, distant touches, he couldn’t feel the pain now, but he would, soon enough. This was worse than being drunk and in the wrong place at the wrong time, this was helplessness and confusion and sickness and insanity rolled up into one frightening little ball.
“He’s not here.” Ko-Ishi tried to convey the worlds of pain he was supposed to be feeling with his dark eyes alone, responding to something Youji didn’t even remember saying. “What did he give you, to dull the pain, to befuddle your reactions? To quote many a mindless juvenile, you are well and truly fucked up, no?” Reaching out to trail an oddly cool and unyielding fingertip trailing down the line of Youji’s jaw, returning to view with droplets of deep red. Youji couldn’t figure out when he’d begun bleeding to begin with.
Emotions swinging rapidly from the listless lack of concern of before, he wanted inexplicably to sob, to cling to anything or anyone, forgetting for a moment where he was. He didn’t like this, the floating lack of control, the way his head swelled to the point that he found himself forgetting to breathe all together.
“Watch.” It wasn’t the same, pieces of time missing again, but they were still cramped in the car. His hand hovered before his face, held in a dark gloved grasp, watching distractedly as the small fragile bones were crushed together, the dullest twinge of pain all he had to show for the decimation of his own hand.
The car jolted, his head snapping sideways, following the flight of his body as the vehicle rocked dangerously, caught up in the squealing of tires and the wild spin out of control as it attempted to stop, and then he was alone in the car as they frothed out in a whirl of somber, dark clothes and flashing metallic weapons, the crack of gunfire, making his head throb. He was sideways, he realized belatedly, trying to push himself upright, his arm giving out from beneath him, weakened somehow.
Random sounds, scrabbles and crashes, and he gave up. It was soothing and peaceful in the car, he could rest his pulsing forehead against the window beneath him and just close his eyes, unheeding of the shattered glass embedded in his face.
“Youji! Youji!” The car rocked, breaking Youji’s scattered train of thought even further. When he forced himself to pay attention to his surroundings again, he was pulled tight against someone’s chest, being rocked as sick sounding mewls forced themselves from his mouth, one hand cradled against his chest. It didn’t hurt, and he forced his body to stop. The arms around him were gone, and there were two people in the sideways car with him, fighting with one another until an off balance body crashed into him, forcing a strangled grunt from his already strained lungs, and the arguing stopped, two bodies invading his space.
Youji covered his eyes with his hands, confused when the fingers of his right hand wouldn’t spread like they were supposed to. More shouting, and someone caught him up, the ground swirling beneath him as he was carried away from the twisted wreck of metal, and his body made that pained sound again, even if he couldn’t feel it, outside nerves collaborating to ruin his untouchable image. He closed his eyes , refusing to open them again, blinded by nothingness when someone forced him to let the world back into his head.
The last place Youji expected to open his eyes was a hospital. Even without a painted sign on the wall or a nurse hovering nearby, he knew where he was. No other place could burn the nostrils with the antiseptic scent of soured hopes like a public hospital.
He didn’t attempt sitting up right away, that was usually the first mistake he made. What had happened? His mind wouldn’t seem to work quite right, flopping around uselessly and dredging up the wrong memories.
He hadn’t been in the hospital for such a long time it seemed a distant reality. The visit to Aya’s sister didn’t count, seeing as he hadn’t been the injured party, and he’d gained access by climbing through the seventh story window while drunk out of his mind. Trying to follow the tubes and wires coming from his body made his eyes water and his head spin. He lowered his eyelashes again, drifting off to the point where nothing mattered.
Someone blinked pale blue eyes at him, swimming forward through a sea of darkness, then flipping perspectives to hover over him.
“Youji, are you okay? Do you know where you are?”
Youji’s eyes felt gummy, partially stuck together. His left arm hurt as he attempted to shift it, so he brought his right hand towards his face, surprised by the white flash of plaster, blurry within his useless range of vision.
“-happened to my hand?” Voice as thick and rough as his eyes had proved to be. He felt as if he’d been run over by some sort of motor vehicle or another, perhaps an ambulance for irony’s sake.
“It’s broken.” Omi stared straight ahead, lower lip trembling momentarily. “You almost died. We thought you were going to-” Still deliberately focusing his eyes on nothing, Omi inched his folding chair a little closer, grasping blindly for Youji’s arm. He settled wane, trembling fingers across the only uninjured, unbandaged skin he could find, the inside of Youji’s elbow above the cast.
“Is there-can I drink? I’m so thirsty.” He was whining, but Youji felt he should be allowed a bit of slack, at least. He was sore and tired and confused, a healthfully even mixture of the three sensations.
Omi fumbled a glass off the stand by the bed, holding a straw to Youji’s cracked, papery lips. It was hard not to sigh in relief as blessedly cool liquid soothed the hot tissue of his mouth and throat.
“What happened?” He got right down to the heart of the matter.
“We shouldn’t talk about that right now. You need to rest.” Omi looked as if he needed rest as well, features drawn and terse,, the mauve circles beneath his lids another telling sign.
For a horrible moment he thought he had it figured out. “Oh fuck. Where’s Ken? What happened? Is he okay?” Misreading the stricken look on Omi’s face.
“He’s okay, I sent him home to sleep.” The tiniest hint of a smile at some happy little thought. The smile faded back to solemnity as the silence swelled and grew.
“It’s not Ken; then where’s Aya?” A new note of panic crept into his voice past the many heavy layers of drugs.
For the first time Omi met his gaze head on. “Let’s not go into that yet. I’m going to get kicked out soon. The hospital staff doesn’t like me hanging around here, and they said once you woke up I was out of luck. We’ll come back tomorrow and try to explain everything then.”
Youji’s good hand went for the bed railing, ignoring the highly medicated but still persistent pain in his shoulder. “Fuck this. I’m getting out of here.” He made it halfway upright before said joint called it quits and dropped him flat on his back, letting him know his ribcage had jumped on the bandwagon as well.
“Youji, you have to stay here. You almost died from a drug overdose.”
He got well and truly angry, spluttering about the many umbrages forced upon his person. He never did drugs, it must be a new line of crap Aya had poisoned their minds with. What had happened to Aya? Why wouldn’t Omi explain anything to him. He didn’t shut up until a frighteningly large woman in a nurse’s uniform came and told Omi he had to wait in the hall or go home, their patient had been taxed enough for the day.
“Just tell me, or I’ll leave here and find out on my own.” Youji refused to release Omi’s sleeve, talking quickly and quietly in defiance of the nurse’s orders. “Tell me. I can’t wait until morning to know. Is Aya all right?” Swallowing around the lump in his throat. Don’t produce more bad news, that was all Youji could hope for.
“Aya-is gone.” Omi rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You want the truth, fine, you can mull over this tonight: Aya drugged you and tried to trade you in to Ko-Ishi in return for his sister. He’s not here anymore, Ken tried to kill him and we threw him out of Weiss.” Omi turned on his heel and stalked from the room in the intervening nurse’s wake.
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Can any of you guess where I’m going with all of this? You can! Congratuations! You’re a couple of steps ahead of me! *hands over keyboard* ^_^ Just kidding. I’ll think up something equally evil and yay. Woo hoo! Oi! E-mail me if you’re nice, pleasse??? Or even if you want to verbally abuse me! I wouldn’t mind so much as long as it gave me something to read! [email protected] or [email protected] Ah… such is life. *sage comments*
