*still listening to Dido’s “White Flag”* I might have to go and buy that CD. *sighs* http://www.rollingstone.com , how I love thee. Music videos of songs I’ll probably never went to hear more than a few extra times. *hastily corrects self* Except for Dido’s song! Swoosh! Okay, more stuff will happen. It has too. This continuation is drawing to an end, I don’t want to let it exceed the prequel as far as chapters go, though I’ll still string them all together at some point to make it easier to read. *talks to self and mumbles like a homeless old drunk*

When they rammed the door it flew inwards too easily, an open invitation to enter. It was an ambush, apparent from the immediate crack of gunfire, avoided only because they’d hurled themselves to the floor. Fate cursed and rolled to the left, spring into action while Youji was still trying to right himself with his injured arms.

“Stay down!” She was bellowing, simultaneously dodging and spraying the room with bullets. She looked like something out of a corny action film, and it made his head ache, though that could be the deafening ringing in his ears. The room was different from the time he‘d been imprisoned, furnished. More a hindrance for himself than for the armed men awaiting them as he attempted to scrabble out of the way. They were more interested in getting a hold of him than killing him, though the most likely candidate for a successful capture looked as if he wouldn’t mind a little knife slashing to make up for the expended effort.

Reacting automatically, Youji’s hand latched onto the first movable thing within his grasp, the leg of a metal folding chair. It actually dented inwards as he swung it one armed into the leering face of his closest pursuer, hoping he could make a stand until Fate either managed to gun down anyone not attacking him, or until he found a way to get himself killed. It would be so much easier if he were dead, no endless struggle, no useless betrayals, just a bit of rest.

His right hand kept stretching out for the other leg of the chair, pulled back at the last moment as he bumped plaster against metal with a jolting clang. He’d remember one of these times. His left arm burned, the joint of his shoulder would surely pop free at any moment. While he tried to pound down one man, another ducked under his guard and managed to catch him a glancing blow, sending him sprawling, his chair of salvation clattering across the stained cement floor. This all smacked of too many flashbacks, but this time he had the slightest bit of a fighting chance, he had to keep on.

“Youji!”

His heart stopped in his chest as a flash of black and scarlet slashed between his eyes and the room, solidifying in the form of a swirling coat and a head full of blood colored hair, the view shifting faster than his eyes could track, silver blade a mere breeze of possibility. Just like before, things gave way beneath Aya’s inspired onslaught, his sword bringing down those trailing blood from numerous non-lethal bullet wounds, a few of the ones Youji was certain he’d brought down with his impromptu weapon. It didn’t matter.

Protected by the breaker of Aya’s wrath, Youji managed to stand once again, glancing frantically about for a new weapon of sorts. It was a godssend, but it wouldn’t last for long. Just like the last time they’d swamp Aya again and that would be that. They’d all go down and die.

“Youji, I’ve got to move and leave you here for a few minutes.” The room wasn’t large, but Youji knew what he meant. It would take a concentrated effort to get from one side of the room to another, almost more required than running a marathon from one side of a nation to the other.

Youji found the chair, applied a little strength and one foot, tearing away the metal tubing from one side. It would make a decent enough club for the time being. “Go, I’ve got it.” The edge of the hollow chair leg had jagged edges. He found out the fun way that it tore through skin just was well as any other serrated edge. The focus had shifted to Aya, to the strip of destruction he left in his wake.

Fate joggled his good shoulder, gunning down the inner ring of attackers. “I stay by you, they too smart to shoot here.”

“But they’ll shoot at Aya?” Youji let Fate take over the mad smiting for a few moments, sagging back against the wall. He felt so damned old sometimes. It would have helped if Fate had warned him ahead of time where they were going, he could have brought a real weapon along.

“Only for a bit.” She grunted as another faceless killer managed to all but dodge a bullet, plowing into her abdomen shoulder first. Youji bashed the back of his head in with the chair leg, taking a turn defending while Fate sorted herself out and reloaded. “Your red head, he picks up fast. He going to kill control agent.” She was out of breath as she stood, the wind knocked from her lungs.

“This probably isn’t the time to ask,” he began, lashing out his only useful arm with a precision born of desperation, back to back with Fate, “but what the hell are you talking about?”

“We fight animals, humans with the mental state of ants. There is always control agent, one who tells others what to do. If control agent dies, everyone else all easier to make die.”

They stopped talking then, swarmed again and again by waves of dangerous, angry killers. Whatever Aya was going to do, he’d better hurry the fuck up. Youji didn’t know how much longer he could push his shoulder like this, and damned if he knew how Fate kept reloading, where she kept all the extra ammunition. So much for a simple walk-in, walk-out operation while Ko-Ishi’s agents ‘all asleep’ during the day.

Ken’s fingers kept trying to curl up into his palms, urging him to hit the nearest object, even if the only option was a morose, wordless Omi. His teeth made horrible grinding sounds inside his head, and he was sure years from now he’d find out he’d managed to irreparably damage his back molars from stopped-up rage.

“I thought you said you wanted to talk” he huffed, stomping across the room to fiddle with the blinds, twisting them downwards to let more cold winter light into the room.

“Not if you’re going to come into this being a jerk.:” Omi let his elbows rest on the tops of his thighs, head in his hands. He’d slept a few hours, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

Ken ignored the dejected little sighs coming from the other party in the room, still caught up in thoughts of violence and anger. Why couldn’t he shake this sudden rage? Aya wasn’t even here, but he kept dwelling. Perhaps it was because nothing like that had happened before. There hadn’t ever been a real case of perfidy, of possible death and suffering because of someone they trusted before this past week. Maybe it made him think all to strongly on his own past betrayals, of Kaze and the horror that whole fiasco had turned into. Twice.

Gods, if only Aya were here right now, the fists would fly and everything would be all right. He wouldn’t look at Omi and experience the desire to pummel, wouldn’t look at Youji and want to murder someone. This was a bad idea, but he’d told Omi he’d go upstairs and ‘talk’ if that was the only way to set things to rights. They kept promising to do that, but little ever came of it.

“I’m sorry if you’re angry with me still, but you were upsetting Youji. You were over reacting.” Watching the tense lines of Ken’s back, Omi knew this would all turn sour. Some things were just better left unsaid, but never let it be thought that Omi Tsukiyono could keep his jabbing fingers away from an open wound. “What are you thinking about?” His eyes flickered downwards, watching his hands twist together as he tried not to lead the conversation.

Ken tapped on the window pane, dragging one blunt fingernail through the thin layer of frozen condensation adhering to the glass. He attempted to formulate a response that didn’t involve undue profanity or any amount of graphically violent verbal visuals. “Mostly I was thinking about when we sent Aya away.”

When he closed his eyes, the past few days played over and over inside his mind, no rhyme or reason. Even as Ken had shouted until his throat burned from the effort, Aya carefully avoided answering any real questions, gaze far away and lifeless. To biased to properly and fairly intervene, Omi and Fate watched from the sidelines, shell shocked and used up. They’d had to take the one-sided screaming match out into the hospital parking lot.

“Worthless, spiteful asshole!” Not even making a point anymore, just inveighing against the injustice of it all, trying to properly formulate the absolute sense of betrayal they all felt. “So, the stupid sleeping bitch is dead now. Is that worth Youji’s life?” In those early frantic moments it wasn’t a certainty that Youji would figure out how to breathe on his own before the day broke again.

Aya barely registered the mention of his sister. His eyes continually made for the doors leading back towards the emergency room and possible news of Youji’s health.

“If you’re so fucking worried now, why didn’t you think about any of this before you tried to fuck him over?”

“Shut up, why don’t you?” Eventually enough became enough. “I’m perfectly proficient when it comes to berating myself. Your dubious assistance lost any new angles approximately four minutes into your tirade.”

So Ken, not always one for thinking things through, hauled off and punched Aya in the face. It was probably one of the more satisfying things he could ever recall doing, a glorious ache in his knuckles to remind him it wasn’t a momentary lapse in his grasp on reality. Though the thought had certainly crossed his mind, he never managed to land a second blow. Omi and Fate caught both upraised fists before he could bodily launch himself at Aya.

The Paragon of Indifference shook the effects of the surprise punch off and turned on his heel to go back inside. He’d surely deserved that, and more still, but he’d thought the chastisements would be coming from Youji when the time came.

“Who will you sell out next, Fujimiya? We can’t even trust you. You’re out. You’re not a welcome part of this team anymore. There are no second chances for what you did!”

Neither of his arm holders had backed him up, as unwarranted as an opinion from Fate would have been had she deigned to contribute, but neither one contradicted his statements, so it fell heavy through the air with the weight of authenticity.

Aya’s shoulders sagged for a moment. Just a cold, tired, lonely man without a friend in the world. Then the steel slid back into place. “Allow me to stay until I hear the outcome. I have to know he won’t die, and then I’ll leave.” Without waiting for an answer to something that wasn’t ever actually posed as a question, Aya had trudged wearily back towards the doors, the three people he left behind aghast at the enormity of what Ken had done.

“I have my own doubts.” Omi’s spoken words snapped Ken’s attention span back into the here and now, to the sun striped bedspread in the one house that hadn’t managed to fall victim to arson yet. It was jarring the mental leap from past to present. “Before he stopped speaking all together, Aya said some things that didn’t fit with the image of a heartless sellout.”

“He said a lot of things.” Ken crossed his arms, wishing he could cow this doubting, talkative Omi into silence. It almost worked for a moment, the doubts and insecurities swimming through the depths of cerulean blue eyes.

“And the little that made sense almost made me think that Youji’s apprehension was more of a lack of planning than a deliberate act of selfish malice. Aya wasn’t exactly lucid, you know. How are we to know that he even knew what he was doing?”

“So, what? We should forgive him and welcome him back with hugs and presents? For supposedly making a mistake that still almost killed one of us? Forgive me if I’m not falling over myself to hunt him down and apologize. I didn’t exactly see you protesting when I told him to get lost.”

“Because I thought Youji was going to die.” Omi watched a cricket scuttle across the floor, mind officially distanced from the conversation. No matter how cold it got outside, there were always a few insects ghosting about the house. Though the topic of the argument was a new one, the real underlying problems were always the same. Sometimes it took too much effort to turn the endless arguments into something more tangible than white noise distracting him from the rest of the world.

“We all thought he was going to die! Am I really the only one with balls enough to do something about it? It’s easy for you to take it back. You never stated a definitive position or committed to anything in your life. You never do!”

“I think I’ve been more than committed to you.”

The weary words twisted in the pit of Ken’s stomach, sour as bile.

“Despite what I have to put up with from you. You can call me all the rude names you’d like and make every one of those stupid, hateful faces you like to make when you think I’m not looking. I’ll still be here the next day, and day after that. You can accuse me of a hell of a lot of things, but don’t ever accuse me of refusing to commit to anything.”

“How touching.” Ken mimed a single tear rolling down his cheek with a finger trembling with pent up frustration, true anger rising up to combat the defiant slant of Omi’s eyes. “Do you have any fucking idea how I repaid this obsessive little devotion of yours?” A runaway train, an endless string of words best left unsaid pouring from his open mouth as they always did when the black anger came upon him. “Did you know that for the past few weeks I’ve been fucking around with some girl behind your back? Someone more original, beautiful, intelligent and worthy than you’ll every be.”

He managed to shut himself up by the power of the absolute horror her felt. For a moment the silence was too great, a void sapping the very life from his body, replacing it with a flat, overbearing dread. Omi stood stock still, eyes veiled by a lowered fringe of ash blonde.

“Omi…” Ken’s hand rose, hovering and powerless. The truth, once spoken, wasn’t something he could apologize or explain away.

“Well, now that we have that little admission out of the way, perhaps we can get to the heart of the matter.” Omi met his agonized stare with a blank slate, nothing to exhibit but absolute calm.

“You knew?” Judging by the reaction, it was a question already answered.

“Do you really think I’ve ever been that naïve or is it just stupidity you perceive in my take on the world? I grew up being forced day in and day out to learn the fine art of reading other people. Everyone around me lies about every conceivable subject. Did you really think I was such an idiot that I wouldn’t notice?” For a moment the corners of Omi’s mouth tightened and attempted to turn downwards.

“I never thought you were stupid.” It was a pointless denial, but Ken had to say something. Why did he always wind up out of his depths with Omi?

“But I’m still less intelligent than that girl of yours, right? And less attractive, and less original, and far less worthy.” A sour, humorless little laugh followed. “Was that somehow supposed to justify anything? You’re still stuck with me. If you weren’t, this conversation wouldn’t even be taking place and I’d be here by myself. If you can be selfish, then so can I. There aren’t any people outside of all of this that we can trust, and we’re all trapped.”

Ken finally got it. Omi had understood the whole time. He’d understood from the very beginning and yet had still attempted to make things easier. All those moments of decision where he’d felt bogged down by Omi and wound up staying because of the guilt, Omi had known the whole time how he‘d felt. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t be off with some giggling little bimbo of your own if you had your druthers?” Skepticism, too off base from the reality of his own reactions.

“We’re not talking about me.” And still no real facial expression, and somehow it made Ken feel all the worse for it.

“You can’t be serious. Really. There is no way in hell you could actually prefer me to some imagined alternative.” The urge to hurt or destroy something continued to escalate and aggrandize. He shouldn’t be feeling this at fault. It was already an established fact that he could be a heartless, inhuman wreck of a person, and people like that never felt bad for the things they did. They weren’t supposed to, at least.

“Some of us are content with the little we can have.” Looking achingly young, Omi dropped to the edge of the bed. “Can you just leave for a little while? I think we’ve both said enough for one day.”

Stricken by the implications of everything revealed, Ken complied, shutting the door behind him, fists clenched at an empty hallway. This was something he couldn’t even attempt to rationalize, too personal and painful. Gods, he was such an asshole. He’d thought he was being so sly and craft, sparing Omi’s feelings and having himself an official fling. A slap in the face, being told his infidelity was tolerated because Omi didn’t believe himself should be worth any truer form of affection or attachment.

“Omi?” He turned, pushing the door open again, loathe to leave it at that. This was another one of those cruxes he kept coming to, where it came down to his reactions and little else. If he left now, off to vent his rage somehow, when he came back it wouldn’t be the same anymore. Everything would be a pale shade of the warmth they’d shared before. He would, in effect, be murdering one of the few things that, no matter how much of an annoyance it could be at times, made his life bearable.

Omi didn’t even look up, minutes gone by and still frozen in place. His hair tumbled over his ears, obstructing his face, but Ken could see the slight tremor of his bottom lip. His hands rose to cover his face as Ken sat next to him, the mattress dipping a little to tip Omi towards the person he least wanted to talk to at the moment.

“I’m sorry.” It always came down to this, and rightly it should. There were so many things Ken had done that needed to be apologize for, and some of them he’d never even get to. “Omi, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. That’s not my strong point, thinking things through. You know that. And you put up with it anyway, isn’t that what you said? It was a horrible thing to do at a horrible time, and I’m sorry.”

No reply. Omi’s shoulders slanted subtly away, the only real visible motion. When Ken reached out and pulled Omi against his chest there weren’t even sign of token resistance, just the tightening of Omi’s shoulders beneath Ken’s palms and a hitching little breath of shock behind Omi’s concealing hands. “I’m sorry. You’re ten times the person I’ll ever be, and I’m sorry you have to put up with all of this, especially from me.” Murmured so low it was barely understandable, lost in the gold strands of Omi’s soft hair.

After a moment Omi relaxed, hands turned to rest against Ken’s pectorals, limp and unresisting. It was a temporary respite, but Omi could use even that. There were so many things he had to get done, so little time, so little personal gain involved in all those necessaries. Ken was as good as it would ever get for him, and that was okay. At least Ken came back after his brief affair with someone else, someone better. He didn’t know if he would be sane at this very moment if it hadn’t happened that way. He couldn’t count on Youji to be a pillar of stability, and certainly not Aya with his newly cast shadow of doubt.

“So, what’s the pay back going to be?” Ken wondered aloud.

“Hmm?” Omi forced his eyes to open once more. The world was so much nicer in shades of black, nothing but warmth and quiet.

“Can you really forgive and forget so easily?” Ken threaded his fingers through the shorter hairs at the back of Omi’s neck. “Eventually you’ll find some way to retaliate, right?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Mumbled against the dark fabric of Ken’s shirt. “I’m too tired to think up some sort of suitable punishment. Wait until we’ve resolved the Ko-Ishi issue, and then I’ll have to delve deep and bring up some truly frightening anger.”

“I look forward to it.” A little bit of mildly teasing banter went a long way to reassure Ken that even if his actions hadn’t been completely forgiven or forgotten, the crisis of the moment was passed. Downstairs, the shrill cry of the phone made them jump, ringing a second later in the room on the second phone in the house, that initial delay their only warning. “Gods, I hate that thing.”

Ken pressed his face against Omi’s hair for a moment, wanting to continue playing pretend for a little while longer. When he disentangled himself from the awkward embrace, Omi turned away to rub his eyes, embarrassed by yet another inconvenient show of emotion.

“Hello?” Ken hoped the day wouldn’t hold any worse surprises than it already had, grip on the phone as lose and relaxed as he himself felt. Drained by too much emotion.

“Youji’s in trouble.” Aya’s voice floated out of the ear piece, thoroughly ruining any remaining good feelings.

“What did you do this time?” Harsh. He motioned for Omi to get up and ready.

“He’s going back to the underground division of Meleeke, the place where he was being held all those weeks. There were bits of information planted that lead him to believe I was being held captive there, and he’s headed for a massive ambush with only Fate to back him up.” There urgency of Aya’s tone immediately dispelled any notions of a new, insidious form of betrayal and trickery. He only sounded this off balance when it came to Youji’s safety.

“Why didn’t you tell him then? If you’ve got time to call me now, surely you knew before he headed for this ambush.”

“I thought he was too smart to fall for any of the obviously misleading ‘clues’. The moment I stopped watching, they both ran off. I’ll be there in a matter of minutes. Show up as soon as you can, I don’t what I’ll be facing.” A click and then a dial tone in his ear.

Throwing the bedroom door open, Ken raced down the stairs, doing a quick check of the house to make sure Aya wasn’t yanking his chair. Nothing. No one. Gods, what could possibly go wrong next?

“Ken, what is it?” Omi joined him, just stepping into a still-tied pair of shoes and throwing a jacket over his shoulder.

“Youji and Fate went off on their own.” Fumbling a pair of keys from the hallway table, Ken turned to go. “Aya called to say they were headed for a trap. We can’t disregard what he says just on the off case that he really knows what he’s talking about.”

Worrying his lower lip, Omi nodded. “What are we going to be up against?”

“Fuck if I know.” Ken shrugged. “Just assume it’s the worst case scenario. That’s all we’re getting these days.”

The door swung shut behind them, the house silent and empty.

*******************************

Boy is my life full of busy and unpleasant things. Gorry, I should just rob a bank so I can sit at home and write fan fiction all day. I’m sorry if my style of writing seems a little erratic as of late, any writing I manage to get done is usually fitted in while I’m on the verge of simply falling asleep sitting up in a chair. [email protected] or [email protected] Drop me a line, I only bite if my teeth itch! *random thought* Oi, my birthday is in thirty-some days. If you loved me, you’d make some pretty fanart for me or something. *Laughs* I’m joking. I don’t require or expect presents. That’s what I’M for! For giving myself presents and then hording like there’s no tomorrow. *finishes the chapter off listening to The Cranberries “To the Faithfully Departed” CD* Gods, I love music!!!! ^__^