FicWad

Author's note: again thank all of you for reading this. and i'm sorry, but this ran a lot longer than i planned it to, but things really move forward. hopefully i'll have the next chapter up by sunday morning. reviews, as always, will be appreciated.

“This place really has great coffee.”
Actually this may well be the worst swill I’ve ever paid six bucks for.
The way Michelle is looking at me, you can tell she expected something more captivating then empty small talk.
I swear to god, I hate Kritiker.
She leans over the table, swirling one of those mini-tongue depressors around in her coffee, doing her best to expose as much cleavage as her shirt will allow.
Admittedly, it’s quite a bit.
“So, Yohji, tell me. Are you here for business or pleasure?”
This conversation could not possibly get more banal.
I plaster another smile across my face.
“Pleasure. Most certainly pleasure. I’m actually interested in seeing some gardens I heard about nearby. Perhaps you know them?”
May as well exploit Kritiker’s information as much as possible.
Her face lights up with a sort of delicate glow. For a moment, she actually seems like something more than your average female.
“I love the gardens. Sometimes I just go there to be alone and sort things out. It’s very isolated, very quiet.”
She laughs softly behind her palm, an annoying tinkling affected sound
“Of course, it is a bit big. I’ve even gotten lost there a few times.”
Holy hell, I was wrong. The way she’s smiling just a little too brightly, the hand twisting about in a loose strand of hair just makes it all too obvious.
“Then, perhaps you could show me around?”
Fighting back yet another glance at the door, I almost want her to reject the offer. I’d really rather not spend more time with this woman, much less prostitute myself to her. Then, thinking of the mission, it suddenly seems far more appealing to have her after me, rather than having to jump through hoops for this bitch.
Her voice cuts through my thoughts
“How’s tomorrow?”
Slowly, I realize I have no idea what day of the week it is. Probably a weekend.
At least that would explain why I haven’t run into her before.
“Sounds great.” I pause, may as well get it over with faster, you know like a band-aid. Just rip it off. “We could meet here in the morning before, to get breakfast.”
She actually smiles wider, revealing a mouth full of white gleaming teeth. It looks like the smile of an animal pausing before they devour their prey.
“That sounds perfect.”
“Great.” I crush the Styrofoam cup in my hands as I stand up, looking her up and down to maximize the effect of the meeting. “I can’t wait.”
Without waiting for her to respond I move steadily towards the door, keeping my eyes focused on the town beyond, and the hotel, with luckily is only a few blocks away.
Staring down at my feet I make it back to the room as quickly as possible. Somehow, Ken is still asleep.
At least I’m probably free for the rest of the day.
Deciding not to wake Ken up, I move out to the balcony; leaning over the railing as I take out my pack of cigarettes.
Shaking off the coiling disgust at the thought of my date tomorrow, I pull the book Aya gave me from my pocket and flip it open to a random page. Yet again, I try to decipher the scrawl of notes, of thoughts and reactions to things I’ve never read, and as such, whose context I wouldn’t understand.
Like earlier, this proves to be futile. Maybe I can have him read them to me after I get home.
A small smile spreads over my face as I think of Aya, the soft whisper of his voice over the phone.
“Yohji…I love you.”
He always sounds faintly amazed when he says it.
Going to bed was so easy last night, sinking with a light wonderful feeling into the sheets, an undeniable smile plastered stupidly on my face. It didn’t matter.
It would all be better. We could change things. Be slightly less defensive and actually accept the other’s honesty as something real, vital, not just posturing or a defense mechanism.
A faint shiver of revulsion shoots through me at that last one. I suppose I just never wanted to believe Aya really felt that way, that he had so little faith in his own redemption.
As much as I’d like to deny it, as much as I’d still like to say that deep down there’s this shivering, trusting, innocent spirit of the child he once was, a Ran trapped in his subconscious and just waiting and watching this other man who has taken the control of his body; a Ran that is released in small parts at the most wonderful moments, with all his innocence and vulnerability, it’s not so.
It’s all just Aya, every last piece of him from the glares, to the anger, to the guilt, to the curious and childlike sympathy he can express, to his occasional laughter and his quiet sadness. It’s him. There is no other person in Aya, to think that would be to declaim Aya as a mask, to call him fake and worthless because of his unreality.
What Aya is must be allowed its integrity, no matter how warped the source.
And it’s source is all the guilt and all the suffering that has been forced upon him. There is nothing to rescue but Aya himself.
I wouldn’t have it any other way, no matter the recklessness, and the damned intimidating coldness, and the selfish unseeing arrogance, because with all of that comes his surprising warmth, his intense caring, and his astounding passion. One cannot exist without the other, they stem from and justify each other, these apparent paradoxical hemispheres of what Aya is.
And unlike hedonist me, he is the only person I have ever seen that lives the maxim: “Do what you will.”
I only fulfill whatever desire wells up in me, he follows the path of his will, without distraction, without fruitless actions, to its end. No matter how brutal and disappointing that end may prove to be, or how little he wants it, he suits his own purpose.
I almost wonder what he thinks of pursuing happiness before I realize, remember his response to countless questions.
“I don’t deserve it.”
It would throw him into a different relief, perhaps unmake and reshape him yet again.
Maybe its even better, happiness always melts into complacency. At least this way we haven’t quite stagnated.
We can change.
That thought strikes me with a flash of hope, interrupted as Ken steps out and joins me on the balcony yawning and rubbing his eyes.
“Yohji, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to stake out some more places.”
Oh yes. That. One good thing about this progression of the mission is that I won’t have to sit around cafes all day tolerating shit coffee anymore.
“I ran into her this morning.”
I can see his jaw drop, literally. He is immediately awake.
“Really? That’s great Yohji! Did you learn anything?”
I roll my eyes. Ken sounds like an excited child, just spilling out whatever stupid thought comes into his head without thinking it through. What doe he expect, for me to grin at her and have her spilling all her secrets on cue?
“I flattered you think so much of my skills. Too bad you never got the chance to try them out for yourself.”
“No, seriously, what happened? What did you get out of her?”
“Nothing yet. You know, it‘s not like going ‘Wham, bam, thank you ma‘am‘ and walking off with the secret and nefarious plans of Esset in my hands as she regains feeling in her legs.”
Not that I actually bothered to try and get her into bed. Although, from the way she was acting, I doubt that would have required too much.
“Lovely image Yohji. So how do you plan on proceeding?”
I have to repress a shudder thinking of it.
“I’m going with her to those botanical gardens tomorrow. I’ll start there, in a few days maybe we’ll be able to put in a preliminary report.”
Ken snorts
“A few days? My you’re slipping Yohji.”
I shrug, not in the mood for this shit
“So far, I really don’t like her.”
“Why not? I saw the pictures, she seems more than up to your usual caliber.”
She seems fake, a superficial collection of contrived reactions and mannerisms. Then again, I have only spent fifteen minutes with the woman.
“It’s not that, it’s just……”
I don’t really want to explain it.
I almost resent that I’ve just made up with Aya, and we’ve finally started to resolve all these tensions and I can’t even be there with him to do that.
No, instead I get to dick around for information with a celluloid bitch.
I’m probably biased.
Tomorrow, maybe, I can get her to take me to her apartment, then, I can just wait afterwards, until she falls asleep and then go through her files.
Once we have those, I feel certain, we’ll be able to resolve this.
Ken doesn’t respond, but I’m sure he understands what I mean.
Suddenly I have the biggest urge to speak to Aya, remind myself why I’m doing this.
For a long time, when it hasn’t been about drowning or distracting myself in missions, it’s been for him.
“Ken, do you think we should put in a report on this or something? Check in with others on this? They should probably know.”
He rolls his eyes this time
“Go on Yohji.” He retreats back to the room, still talking, “Pretend you need an excuse.”
I send a dirty look at the back of his head, willing it to explode somehow.
Once he seems reasonably out of earshot, I dial in Aya’s number, trying vainly to remember what time it is back home. It’s about eleven here, so it can’t be that late.
For once, he picks up before the third ring.
“Hello?”
I’ve noticed Aya never bothers to check his caller id.
“It’s me.”
He doesn’t respond immediately so I keep talking, getting the mission update out of the way so I can just talk to him.
“I’m calling to give an update on the mission. I finally managed to run into her today, and planned something for tomorrow so I can start pulling information out of her.”
His voice comes back low, a bit thick in the static of our bad connection
“Hn.”
Not that he really says much.
Somehow, it never occurred to me before now that he might be jealous.
It’s sort of sweet.
“Anyways, I just wanted to let you know.”
“What do you think of her?”
He snaps into mission persona, cold and demanding.
“Honestly, so far I don’t like her at all.”
“But do you think she’s involved with Esset?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really get the chance to. I’m going to start trying to get information tomorrow when I see her.”
I think he wants this part of the mission done with just as much as I do.
I take a stab at changing the subject.
“It’s really good to hear your voice.”
I can hear his breath again.
“Yours too.”
There’s a new, shy quality to his voice, something that’s never been there before, as if he’s not quite sure where last night- or this morning for him- left us.
“I can’t wait to get back there.” I pause, smiling despite myself and tomorrow and Kritiker and everything that’s outside this. “I really feel like something’s changed between us, that its going to be different now.”
The feeling of discomfort left over from the café is gone.
I really hope I’m right on that. I think I am.
“I do too, Yohji.”
He’s waiting for me to say something more than this.
“Aya, I just really want to say that I love what you are, all of it, even the glaring, and why you are and I never understood before that the two are inseparable. That I can’t just have the good things, the easy things, because they’re brought about by the pain and the anger and everything you’ve had to see and go through. I almost thank that pain is in both of us because it’s what makes me capable of loving you and it makes you who you are.”
I pause again, swallowing involuntarily, suddenly nervous.
“And as much as I hate it and wish it had never been this way for either of us, I don’t want to get out of this, or change this, because that would mean losing this right now.”
I sound like a babbling idiot. I have no idea how he could respond to that.
“I’m glad to hear that Yohji. It means……it means a lot.”
I close my eyes to hold onto to this.
“I should probably go. I have some more things to look over and prepare for Monday.”
That’s right, he starts on his end of this soon too.
“Alright. Good luck with that, love.”
I should probably say goodnight, but standing out here in the blinding sunlight, I just can’t bring myself to.
“Goodnight, Yohji.”
With a click he’s gone and I’m left alone again, standing in the sun with a ridiculous smile on my face.
_____________________

“So tell me about yourself Michelle.”
After a couple mindless hours of wandering around between rows of flowers in the hot sun, she finally agreed to sit down, pulling me with her onto a stone bench in the shade of an enormous elm tree.
“Well, what do you want to know?”
Her voice is light and easy. She carries herself well, with grace and confidence, a loose smile almost always on her lips.
Maybe I was a bit little harsh yesterday, but I’m still not prepared to like this woman.
It’ll be so much easier if I can’t.
“What do you do?”
She shrugs, that charming smile still centered on her face.
“Nothing impressive.”
“Come on, what is it? Can’t be too bad.”
She turns her face up to me, her eyes faintly glowing with amusement. I still don’t want to like her.
“Alright, I’m the headmaster at Weinrow, you know that big school in town.”
“A headmaster? Aren’t you a little you know, young?”
I know full well she is. May as well find out why.
“You have no idea how many people say that.”
“Well?”
“Well, I was really close to the previous headmaster, I had been one of his students and-”
“Wait, you went to Weinrow too? Didn’t you ever want to go out and see the rest of the world, do something else?”
A strange look flashes over her face, quick before I could really make it out.
“The school……..it means a lot to me.” She goes silent for a moment, then picks up quickly, finishing the explanation, “Anyways, I was really close to the previous headmaster and he was the one who offered me the job after I graduated. I’d hoped anyways to be kept on. We always keep on a few of the best graduates as teachers or administrators because they understand how the school works. And when he died last year-”
I find myself putting my hand on hers
“I’m sorry”
“Don’t be. It feels like so much has happened since then.” An almost wistful look takes over her features, “ When he died I had already been moved up to his assistant. There was a lot of talk about how I moved up through the ranks so quickly. It surprised me too, I mean, I’m nowhere near as good as some of the others I graduated with, so many of them were so exceptional. But the day after he died, I was told that he’d named me as his successor. It was his last act as the headmaster.”
She sniffles a little, drawing in a long shuddering breath. Odd, suddenly those damned affected mannerisms are gone.
“It’s good work, and I like it. It means so much to know that I’m doing something that means something, that could change the world.”
She stops a little too abruptly.
“What do you do Yohji?”
May as well go with our normal cover. At least it will be easy to remember, not to mention explain the interest in the botanical gardens as something other than ‘I’ve had people who stalk you and know you like this place.’
“Well, you have to promise not to laugh, but I’m a florist.”
She looks me up and down.
“I must say, I don’t see it. So you grow flowers and throw them together or what?”
Apparently Weinrow doesn’t teach courses in tact.
“No, ikebana is an art, the discipline of minimalism brought to the natural world. It’s about creating an effect, making a mood. Not just ‘throwing’ flowers together.”
Huh, I have the strange feeling Aya is standing in the Koneko with an itching desire for a cigarette. Because clearly, I’ve just channeled that aspect of his obsessive-compulsion. She nods.
“I once read something about that. Well, not flower arranging but sand gardens. How they express the profound through absolute simplicity.”
I grace her with an authentic smile. Maybe her giggling shit was just an act. I hope so, that would make this a hell of a lot more tolerable.
“It’s the same concept really. Besides, we get equally dirty.”
Not that I’ve ever done anything but avoid all the dirt in the shop, but she wouldn’t know that. Personally, I think its quite a feat. Aya thinks its just lazy.
Eh, some of the most brilliant men in the world were also the most lazy. Think of Shakespeare for example. He got drunk, listened to bar talk, fucked, avoided getting any sort of real job or maintaining any responsibility (Aya’s book said he abandoned his family), and he goes down in history as a genius. Of course, it could be argued, there was also the play-writing.
“It’s getting a bit late, do you want to get dinner?”
She breaks into my thoughts. I nod, extending my hand out to her as I stand.
“Sure, just point me where you’d like to go, milady.”
The play-writing had some drawbacks. Or reading anyways. Having finished Macbeth, I moved on to the next familiar title: Romeo and Juliet. So far, its much better than t.v. movies would lead you to believe. Granted of course that I’m barely through the first act.
Macbeth is something I’d rather not think about.
Instead, I guide her back to the car and pull back onto the road, passing the drive back with inane conversation and hoping to whatever gods that may exist, be they of the Christian or the H.P. Lovecraft Elder variety, that she’s starting to trust me so I can get our information, and we can leave.
____________________

After dinner, we stumble back to her place, honestly drunk and laughing at some joke I’ve already forgotten. As we burst through the door, she throws a rakish grin over her shoulder, a challenging look in her eye.
Sort of reminds me of Asuka.
As I close the door behind me, I realize I almost care about who this woman is. That somehow she’s a person and why she’s a person and its not right to just label her as “potential target” and ignore everything else.
I think I now, thanks to dinner, know the whole outline of her childhood.
Glancing at her, you’d never guess that she was once an awkward skinny thing with an affinity for boy’s clothes and playing sports. She moves about so delicately, her thin legs swaying her hips back and forth as she walks.
When she laughs honestly, it’s a deep rolling sound, almost masculine.
I wonder how much of this I’m projecting.
At least, if I can like her, it will make the next part of this so much easier.
I am almost successful blocking the subsequent thought: and the end of this mission that much harder.
Shaking myself back into the immediate reality, I register the quizzical look she’s giving me, a sort of subtle “what the hell?” expression on her face, raising one eyebrow.
Suddenly, I don’t feel so good.
Dropping to my knees I cradle my stomach as I register the heavy throbbing in my head. Michelle’s face clouds in my mind, I barely hear her pounding footsteps as she runs into the kitchen, coming back with an empty bucket that she probably cleans with. I grip the edges of it tightly as I bend my head over it, bringing back up the bitter acid of everything I’ve drunk tonight. The edge bites into my palms like wire. Michelle’s worried silhouette in my periphery distorts through my watering eyes until she becomes Asuka, frowning as she puts the coffee on and pops a pair of white aspirin into my hand to cure my hangovers, a look that would frequently turn into a cheerful smile as soon as the phone rang with a client demanding an update on our leads and I clutched my head, trying to block the shrill biting noise out.
I almost jump when a hand settles on my shoulder, rubbing my back in smooth circular gestures. Aya’s darkly curious face superimposes itself, changing the picture and I imagine the touch being harder, more sure of itself as it tries to reassure.
When I’ve fully expunged everything in my stomach I settle back, leaning against the door. I offer up an apologetic smile while Michelle, suddenly sober, takes the bucket back into the kitchen.
As is, I just want to leave so I can call Aya. This woman, by suddenly caring for me, reminds me of too many people.
I consider just walking out while she’s distracted, but before I can really examine the thought she’s back, pressing a cold glass of water into my hands.
“Drink. It should help settle your stomach.”
Involuntarily, I shoot her a grateful look, gulping the water down in quick swallows and setting it on the floor when the glass is empty.
“Are you alright? Is there anything else I can get you?”
She’s too helpful. None of the others were ever like that.
I shake my head.
“No…just too much to drink I guess.”
She smiles in a sort of relief. It’s almost charming, the little curve to her lips lighting up her features.
Almost instinctually I reach out and entangle my hand in her hair, pulling her close as I press my lips against hers. Five seconds. Our mouths don’t even open.
Strangely a quote from Shakespeare forces itself out on my tongue. I whisper it, taking an odd pleasure in the feel of the words on my tongue, better even than her lips.
“’Thus from my lips by thine my sin is purged’”
She smiles
“’Then have my lips the sin take they have took?’”
A little shocked, I pull myself off the floor.
“You like Shakespeare?”
She shrugs, standing herself now.
“I had to read some of the more famous plays in high school and it stuck.”
“I’ve only just started with him. A……..friend recommended him to me.”
“An intelligent friend you must have then, Yohji.”
I nod
“He’s incredible.”
I wonder if she can measure the reverence in my voice. Maybe I’m just imagining it myself.
I stop myself before going on, pausing at the clenching feeling in my stomach at the mention of Aya.
Of course she has no idea what or who we’re talking about.
It feels wrong somehow to mention him here, his unuttered name a glaring reproach of my thawing feelings towards this woman. Trying to push his face out of my mind for now, I grit my teeth together. It means nothing. It’s for the mission. The easier this part is, the sooner its done, the sooner I can see him again.
That simple.
I almost want to roll my eyes at the thought.
“Let’s talk about something else.”
I’ll call him when I get back to the room. No doubt, he’s expecting it.
“Alright.” She pads over to a couch. “Come sit down.”
I follow her over, settling myself down a few inches away.
“Look, thank you for…..earlier. I’m sorry if I put you out or disgusted you or anything.”
She laughs, again the loose rolling inartificial sound. It really is almost pretty. A warm friendly laugh.
“Don’t worry about it Yohji. Believe me, I don’t think you could really help it.”
True.
Blindly, I am gripped by an impulse to leave, a cold familiar apprehension knotting itself in my abdomen, ringing up my spine in a blinding headache.
I force it down, grinning.
The sooner we get this over with.
On that logic, I snake my hand around her waist, pulling her face close to mine again. As I kiss her, I try to go numb, removing forcibly any conscious thought that forms.
For once, nothing forms, no faces, no voices ringing in my ears. Just her lips and hands and soft pulse loud in my ear as she presses her hand into my hair, tracing the bare skin along the back of my neck.
Startled, I continue, running my hands down to lift her shirt off. Cupping them up to feel her breasts and slipping my fingers underneath the cloth of her bra to brush against her nipples. She sighs softly as I roll them between my thumb and forefingers, tilting her head back and to the right. Her hair falls in a soft brown wave down her shoulders, a few stray strands collected on her cheeks.
Again, an interruption, a respite from the expected nightmares.
I move forward still, unhooking her bra in the front and taking the bare nipple into my mouth, sucking lightly on the soft pink skin, taking in the taste of her body, a sort of creamy warm taste mixed with a trace of salt.
No memories come to flood and ruin the moment.
Leaning forward, I lift her legs and pull them around my waist, lowering her to the couch. Her fingers curl around the hem of my shirt, tugging it over my head as I go to work on her shorts, shifting over slightly so I can pull them off.
Like me, she wears no underwear.
Pulling my head down, I press my tongue against her soft warmth, licking and sucking along her beautiful pink folds of flesh, gleaming with a delicate wetness. She smells light, like dew, a far cry from the musky scent I’ve become accustomed to.
And then Aya’s face snaps into my mind, flushed and wide eyed looked up at me, a sleepy smile on his face as he skims his hand over my stomach.
“Yohji…….I love you.”
I wince. I wonder if she can feel it.
It’s for the mission. Aya will understand, won’t he?
I just don’t know how else to go about this.
Absently, I dart my tongue in deep, flicking it quickly in and out of that hot tight clench.
She is mostly silent, her body speaks for her. It is almost strange not to hear a strong of vocalizations to accompany every thing I do to her. Like a response almost, or a musical harmony.
As she begins to stiffen I pull my head away, almost chuckling at her faint sigh of disappointment as she relaxes again. Staring into her dark brown eyes, I unzip and push in. I can’t help it.
Her eyes are hard, like the surface of wood, not liquid like Asuka’s or fiery like Aya’s.
As I move in and out I stare into her open eyes. They do not change, remaining one flat surface that reflects little. I keep my eyes trained on them, knowing I can’t be lost in something that doesn’t shift, doesn’t seem to have a depth.
Her eyes look like everyone else’s, a vaguely glazed over feel to them. Right now, this could be any night two years ago.
When we’re finished, she closes them and wraps her arms around me.
“Thank you.”
I don’t know what she meant. As she drifts off to sleep a faint smile etches itself onto her face, a slow dreamy peaceful look.
In her own way, I have to admit she’s beautiful. Just not spectacular, it’s a safe, easy sort of beauty, a simple loveliness that shapes her features.
When she sleeps her face does not transform itself. It has the same warm look it seems to carry in its waking hours.
She seems static.

__________________

I only watched her sleep for a few minutes before carrying her to bed, leaving a quick note on the nightstand with my number and the explanation that I’m staying here with a friend of mine and we had plans in the morning.
The door clicked quietly behind me and I ran down the stairs, slid in the car, and drove the twelve blocks back to the hotel, aware of the confusion plain on my face.
It’s easy to rationalize that I’m drunk, or that I’m doing it to gain her trust for the mission.
Except I don’t plan to repeat a word of what she said today to any of my teammates.
It’s not like she said anything important though. Did she?
I’m not really sure anymore.
As soon as I park in front of the hotel, I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Aya’s number. I have no idea what time it is.
It rings.
He answers surprisingly quickly.
“Hello?”
He growls the word at the phone. I can almost feel the irritation rolling off of him despite the hundreds of miles that separate us.
“It’s me. Did I wake you up?”
Suddenly his voice sounds sleepy, a tired bleary tone overwhelming the previous annoyance.
“Yohji? Why are you calling so early? Is everything alright?”
“Don’t worry everything’s fine. I just wanted to hear your voice really. Sorry though, I forgot about the time difference.”
I wonder if in his tired state he can tell how cheesy that was.
“Mmmnnn, it’s good to hear yours…”
He trails off, and I hear his breath deepen.
“Aya, should I let you go? You sound tired.”
“No, wanna talk to you.”
I can feel myself smiling. He’s so damned stubborn.
“You should sleep, it wasn’t anything important.”
“Mmhm”
He makes the oddest little mumbling noises when he’s only half-awake. I’ve never actually noticed that before.
“I love you.”
“Love you too…….”
He trails off again, his voice wavering slightly with exhaustion. God only knows what he’s doing to tire himself out if he’s not pulling shifts at the shop.
I hear the phone click a few seconds later and pull myself out of the car. The stars are clear here. You can’t see any in Tokyo.
Smiling, I stare up at the tiny distant points of light. It doesn’t matter if scientifically they’re already extinguished, right now I see them, and they’re beautiful. Mesmerizing.
Letting them swim across my eyes without pattern, I gaze for a long time, thinking about absolutely nothing.
_____________________

“So how’d last night go?”
Ken, again like a child, speaks with his mouth full.
“You mean, what did I learn?”
He shrugs
“Yeah.”
“Well, I learned that Germans make up for their positively fucked up food with large quantities of alcohol.”
Ken rolls his eyes.
But you know what? I had the fun opportunity to swallow a few aspirins and a random Tylenol that was floating around in my bag.
Nothing bothers me.
“Not much really. She talked about her childhood, you know all the early years that Kritiker either couldn’t find out about or didn’t bother because they’re pretty irrelevant.”
Ken wrinkles up his nose
“Wow, so you listened to that all day yesterday? Fun.”
“No, she also talked about why she’s headmaster, apparently she was a bit chummy with the last one, and that Weinrow always keeps on a few of their better graduates as teachers or administrative employees of some kind.”
He raises an eyebrow
“What do you think of that?”
“I don’t know. Probably to help perpetuate whatever it is they’re doing there.”
Ken ignores me to swallow a disturbing combination of strawberry cream cheese and a jalapeño bagel.
“So hey, Yohji, what are you going to do now?”
“I left her my number. She’ll call. What are your plans? Gonna spend yet another day exhausting room service and watching made for t.v movies?”
“Eh, fuck you.”
The eloquence is only magnified by his newest creation that apparently involves some horrifying and unholy alliance of lox- a substance of whose nature I’ve never quite determined-, jam, more of that sickeningly sweet cream cheese, and mother of god, what looks like the eggs we ordered from room service.
“Wait” he interrupts, apparently just registering what I’d said,” What do you mean, you left her your number?”
Well fuck.
“What it sounds like. I left it for her.”
“Like in a note?”
“Well, yeah.”
The real question in this was when Ken started gauging subtle slips of the tongue.
Suddenly a huge grin breaks out over his face.
“Oooh, I see. Good to know your skills haven’t deteriorated in monogamy.”
Amazing, he prefers mocking me to pointing out the huge opportunity I missed to look for her files or hack into her computer.
Another thing I don’t understand.
“Fuck off.”
“Touchy there aren’t we?”
So says the man that, to my knowledge, has not been laid in about six months.
I’m a hell of a lot nicer than I could be.
__________________________

Oddly she doesn’t call until the next day, right in the middle of Ken’s bitching about his undercover uniform.
The break was nice. I finished Romeo and Juliet. The ending is beautiful. And terrifying.
Shattering everything in your life for love.
__________________________

“Are you actually saying you have never gone roller-blading?”
She stares at me quizzically. I assume it matches my equally dumbfounded look at the metal contraptions she has slung over her shoulder.
“No, actually.”
She laughs, pulling me into a chair.
“Close your eyes.”
Slightly apprehensive again, a feeling I’m starting to associate with her, I obey. Something I decidedly regret at the shock of cold air against my foot as she pulls my shoe off.
“A size 12. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
With that, and a small laugh she runs off. I can hear her feet tapping against the tile flooring of this cursed, sticky, bright lighted crossover between the seventies and the birthday party no child should be allowed to have.
Suddenly, some of the less appealing things about Schuldig make a world of sense. That is assuming he was exposed to a place like this as a child.
Surprisingly, the place is flooded with customers, the demographic shifting between teenagers and overweight middle aged people trying to recapture their youth.
It’s when she comes back that I realize I still haven’t opened my eyes.
“Put these on”
Oh look, a set of dirty communal wheeled deathtraps.
I shove them on my feet, making a mental note to submerge these socks, and my feet, in boiling hot water shortly after this experience.
“Now what?”
She fakes an exasperated look
“You stand up. Here, I’ll help you”
Offering me her arm she guides me out into the circular disco lighted rink that is currently featuring what the musical stylings of who I’d assume is Germany’s answer to George Michaels.
One hand braced against the wall I let her lead me around the circle, grinning wildly the whole time.
She’s smiling as if she’d never been so happy.
I wonder if this is what it’s like to be ‘normal’?
If so, it’s faintly stickier than I thought, but relieving.
The music, being of no quality, seeps into my skull and proceeds to clear me of worry. This could be worse, besides the rolling around and lack of any intoxicating substances the prevailing atmosphere kind of reminds me of a club.
My hand leaves the wall as I attempt to move outwards, balancing precariously on the plastic wheels.
I drop Michelle’s hand, watching her beam back at me as I glide forward.
The speakers suddenly dissolve in a mire of static as the record changes.
Three things happen, my phone rings, the song switches to “Relax”, and I fall flat on my face.
Apologizing profusely for dragging me out here, Michelle drags me back off the rink and to the benches.
“No, really, it’s alright. I have no balance.”
“Well, I still feel bad for making you try it.”
The phone rings again, pulling it out I glance at the caller id. Ken.
Michelle stares at the device quizzically.
“Sorry, its my friend, I should take this.”
I wait until I’ve moved far enough out of hearing to speak.
“Hello?”
“Shit, Yohji, you should probably know.”
He sounds a little upset.
“What is it? Is everyone alright?”
I don’t know what I’d do if Aya or one of the others back home got hurt while I was hanging around at a fucking roller rink.
Well, other than be that much more likely to burst unannounced into the Takatori offices one day to renounce my position in Weiss. And dissolve the office of Persia while I’m at it.
“Don’t worry, we’re all fine. It’s just that there was a suicide at Weinrow yesterday. A big one. Some students were talking about it when I went to get my schedule earlier.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s kind of a weird story. These three kids went missing a couple of months ago, I mean they were suddenly just gone from classes. There were suggestions that they had been removed from the school or demoted or something because no one ever gave an official reason for it.”
“Yeah?”
“”Yeah. According to these kids, they had been members of something called S-class, which seems to be some sort of honors ranking or something. They acted like it was real serious, like that really meant something.”
“Well?”
“Well, anyways they showed up again in classes Friday. Just out of the blue they were back again.”
“That’s pretty weird.”
“Yea, well it gets worse. They were found last night outside a dorm building, just dead. Apparently there was the same contorted look on all of their faces, like they died in the middle of speaking.”
“Couldn’t that be poison or something though?”
“No one seems to know that sort of details, at least none are being made public. Not that this is anyways.”
Fuck. At least this might get us somewhere though.
“Well, hey, I’m going to go. Try and find a way to see if Michelle knows anything about this.”
Hanging up I walk back over towards her.
“Everything alright?”
“Yea. He just wanted to ask if I wanted to do take-out for dinner.”
“Oh.”
May as well just get it out, right?
“Also, he said he ran into some students from Weinrow in town today. They said there was a suicide.”
The mask of her smile slips quickly and reforms into a sad, tired look.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. I mean is there anything I can do?”
A thin excuse at best, but it seems to work.
“No. I’m okay.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shrugs
“It was really upsetting. I was called right after they found the bodies, to help identify them as those students. It was so sad. I mean, not entirely surprising-”
“Not entirely surprising?”
I find I’m doing well with repetition these days.
“Well, these students had just been returned to classes after being taken out to receive psychological help. They’d had trouble coping with the extra workload and responsibility of our higher class and broke down. We’d finally thought they’d become stable, but they couldn’t handle it, it seems.”
Suddenly she covers her face in her hands
“I thought we were finally getting somewhere with them too.”
I rub her back. It’s amazing how caring she is.
It’s endearing really.
“I’m sure you did all you could.”
She shrugs again and pulls herself up from the bench.
“Hey, you want to get out of here? I don’t think I can take much more of this place.”
I almost let out a sigh of relief as we leave.
That night, I say goodbye at the door.
_______________________

“She said they had had a breakdown over the additional stress from being in the higher class.”
Makes sense.
“This S-class is present at Koua as well Yohji.”
“Well, do you think it might have some connection to the suicides, or is it an anomaly?”
“I don’t know.”
Aya is always honest when it comes to these things. He knows what a slip based on pride, or a question unasked for it can cost.
“Have you been able to establish anything else about the headmaster?”
“She seemed to be pretty well tied to the students from the way she talked about them.”
He is silent, presumably thinking
“Maybe she’s just a concerned teacher.”
“Yohji, do you honestly think someone that high up wouldn’t have some connection with all this?”
“No, but she seems so-”
I stop. When did I start defending this woman?
“Never mind.”
Aya’s voice comes back a little strained
“How are things progressing between you two?”
“Like I said, I haven’t learned much other than this except that she was chosen for her current position by the former headmaster.”
It doesn’t seem too terribly important.
I get the feeling also that isn’t what he meant.
“I don’t know Aya, she isn’t completely unbearable. She’s kind of nice, sweet, normal.”
Everything Aya isn’t, and can never be.
“She doesn’t seem like the sort of person to order assassinations or have kids kill themselves.”
His voice is dark.
“Few of them ever seem capable of what they do.”
He pauses, contemplating something.
“I wouldn’t get attached.”
Strangely, I sound indignant.
“I’m not! I’ve just been around her enough to see that she’s a person, a normal sane human being.”
Her eyes are like flat blank wood. I wonder how much I’m writing onto them.
“Just how much have you been around her?”
Sorry to say Aya, but jealousy doesn’t suit you.
“As much as the mission has required.”
And everything that that implies.
“Please don’t worry about this Aya. She’s not as brilliant as you are, or as beautiful, or even as graceful.”
He’s silent.
“She’s not the stubborn, strange, volatile, bed-sheet yanking bastard that I love.”
I have the feeling he likes being complimented.
“Besides, she’s not going to torture me like you do, so where’s the appeal?”
Amazing, he laughs.
“I miss you.”
I close my eyes, savoring the words.
“So I guess all that sleep isn’t looking so great now is it?”
“Shut up Yohji.”
I smile. Even a week ago this sort of ease would have been forced.
Suppressing a yawn I figure I should go to bed. Ken’s promised oh so nicely to wake me up at the crack of dawn when he has to leave for Weinrow.
Yes, in Germany, the sun rises at 9 am.
“I should go, Ken’s promised me an early rising.”
“Goodnight Yohji.”
“’Night love.”
I click the phone off and slide into bed, faintly dreading having to leave it again tomorrow.
___________________

She smiles in her sleep, lying there with the blue sheets skirted across her thighs.
Occasionally a glimpse of something else passes over her features, like a twitch, a flash of some less content feeling.
Her hair is tumbled around her face, matted against the back of her neck with sweat. The color is nothing exceptional, but she wears it well.
Checking her breath, its deep and slow.
Sighing I lift myself off the bed. I should look for her files, her computer. Bring back something to prove I’m not more involved in this than I should be.
I’m not.
“I would imagine by now that you’ve had plenty of opportunities to look through them.”
Aya’s voice was dry, hard, trying to show no emotion.
He’s right, though. I have had plenty of chances to find those files, retrieve something that could get us out of here.
And why the fuck not?
Even in the dark I can tell I’m smirking, a grotesque half-smile directed at nothing.
There’s no reason really.
I feel my way out of the bedroom, and thread myself down the dark hallway to her office. I know where it is, she showed me the other night after dinner.
It also serves as a library, and she wanted to show me some plays she thought I’d like. All Shakespeare, as I don’t have much literary taste or experience, and all contained neatly in the volume Aya gave me.
After I turned the offer of books down, we tumbled onto the couch together, waking up there the next morning. Or this morning rather.
I haven’t slept in the hotel since Ken started at Weinrow, in part because every night he comes back pissed that he’s discovered nothing. And unlike me, as he points out, he’s actually looking for information.
“Fuck. You’ve got the whole spread of it right under your nose and you don’t even fucking bother Yohji! Why? Is this bitch that important to you?”
She’s not important to me.
Involuntarily, I hold my breath as I step into the office. It’s lit up softly by the moon streaming through bay windows. The night is soft, quiet, bearing a lingering twilight that I can see the room by.
Glancing around, I’m not sure where to begin.
It feels a lot colder in here than in the bedroom. I wish I’d pulled on more than boxers to come looking.
“Why haven’t you reported anything all week?”
Aya’s voice, ringing cold and clear.
If he won’t even bother to accuse me of anything outright, then how am I supposed to respond?
“What the hell do you want from me Aya? I haven’t learned anything!”
I never do.
I don’t think he got the reference.
“And why is that Yohji?”
He won’t say it. He doesn’t have to, it isn’t true.
I feel nothing for this woman.
I laugh, even I can hear the denial in that.
I don’t know how it happened. I haven’t asked her any questions in a week, and she’s offered up nothing.
“Hope you like pancakes.”
Yesterday morning, her hand shaking me awake. Her smiling glowing in the light form the window as she sets up a tray laden with food on the bed.
Her soft skin sticky with a trace of syrup from where I kissed her, and then a shocked gasp as she looks at the clock.
“Oh god, I’m late!”
She looked adorable as she ran around, frantically trying to assemble a complete suit, pull it on, and locate her purse in the less than five minutes that she had before she was officially late to work.
Before she left she gave me a quick smile, running over to kiss me goodbye.
The carpet is rough on my knees. Coming back to myself a bit, I realize my fingers are rubbing furiously at my temples, my teeth are gritted together.
Her presenting me with a beautiful copy of Romeo and Juliet bound in leather and wrapped in a green ribbon.
“Just something to remember me by when you go.”
I lifted her up and kissed her, pressing the book between us.
“When are you going Yohji?”
“I don’t know, I hope not too soon.”
Laughter and the shucking of clothes, tripping over each other to the bed.
Dark eyes glancing up at me from where he’s seated there, surrounded by papers.
“When do you leave?”
“At least we’ll have that time together.”
The words ricochet through my mind, faces blurring together, until I can’t tell who I had been directing them at, and with what inflection.
Their faces superimpose over each other, strange because there seems to be nothing more alien to one than the other.
Aya gleams like porcelain, white, searing. Like an ancient statue that is blinding in its beauty until you catch the cracks down its side, and is still pristine for it. He seems to carry the moon in his skin, deep in his violet eyes.
“I love you…”
His head tilted back and masked with hair, long flowing to pool red under his back.
“Don’t forget me.”
His eyes sad, hued silver and strange as they reflected in the moonlight, strange to the joy that his skin sparked as it touched mine. That strange hard set to his lips, the tense way he held himself against the bed, as he stayed, for the first time, his voice swirling over me in thin desperate whispers.
“Come on! Bet you can’t keep up!”
Michelle’s hair whipping in a light blur as she runs, shooting her laughter over her shoulder as she darts toward the closest awning.
Her skin rolling and alive with water, its faint tan darkened with the rain.
I catch her, clasping my arms around her waist, laughing, as we stumbled under the awning, took measure of the deserted street and waited out the rain.
Michelle is warm, calm like the earth, a steady unquestionable being.
Maybe that’s why I haven’t looked for anything, I can’t believe someone so easy, so caring is what Weiss wants to believe she is.
“Shh, are you alright Yohji? What are you doing in here?”
Her hand is spread over my shoulders, rubbing it.
“Michelle…..”
She kneels down in front of me, her hair falling sleepily into her eyes.
A week ago I was thinking of her as the celluloid bitch.
“What’s wrong?”
Her voice is light, calm. Everything about her is so…at ease, so simple.
Reaching out I draw her close to me, feeling the soft heat of her skin, her heart beating into mine.
Maybe it’d be better if I could stay here.
_____________________

The ringing has a furious sound to it, a harsh grating noise in my pocket.
“Hello?”
“Did you find anything?”
His voice sounds, again, urgent.
“No. She came in before I was done looking.”
“She couldn’t tell what you were doing could she?”
“I doubt it.”
His voice sounds worried, tense. It’s touching.
“Be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I should ask him about Koua, but I don’t want to know. Luckily, he doesn’t offer up anything of his first week there.
“You be careful too….”
I pause, it’s been a week since I decided to say it. I’m still not sure how to.
“Aya?”
“Hn.”
“I think, maybe, we’re going about this the wrong way…..I don’t think Michelle has anything to do with it.”
“If you haven’t checked her files, how would you know?”
I can’t describe it. Why would someone like her do anything so horrible as Esset would want?
“I’ve talked to her. She seems to really care about those kids.”
My voice comes out quiet, wavering.
“Yohji, it could very easily be an act. You know how well they can fake it.”
Neu with her hands around my neck, her breath hot and rapid against my back.
My breath stops, vision blurring.
“But you don’t-”
“What? I don’t know her like you do?”
The anger in his voice fades as he sighs.
“Yohji, you need to accept that you probably don’t know her at all.”
He pauses, his voice coming back hesitant
“I’ve watched you do this before…….and… and I don’t want to watch you get hurt again.”
Neu’s low rolling chuckle as I draw the wire, flashing out of my reach again. Always just beyond the flick of the wire, the grasp of my hands.
Aya’s still face as we light incense at her grave, the smoke rolling up to consume us, leave us wrapped in it together.
Escape always fails for us. And then what are we left with?
“It’s not like that. I don’t-”
I don’t what? I don’t love her?
Michelle’s eyes fluttering open, the pupils narrowing quickly as the light hits them. Her soft hands searching out my body, wrapped around her coffee as she makes breakfast.
I tell her she doesn’t need to cook for me, but she says she likes it.
Another difference, another normality that seems so impossible with his voice in my ear.
His voice comes out choked, thrown out rapidly, as if he had to force himself or lose the nerve.
“Please don’t leave me.”
I grip the phone tightly.
“I’m not, I won’t. I promise Aya.”
In that moment I really mean it, doubts crushed under the sudden and revived shock of love writhing up through me.
“There’s nothing in this world I would have but you, love.”
I imagine him smiling softly at that, and grin.
“Thank you.”
It’s a whisper, gone too fast as the phone clicks off, leaving me struck by his absence all over again, twisting at me.
I look around the room, its completely empty. Ken won’t be back from Weinrow for hours, nor Michelle.
I’m alone.
I pull out the volume of Shakespeare and trace my hand over Aya’s writing, turning to a random play.
Staring at the crooked lines, I can make out a little of it
“Protecting love from the self.”
The words are arched in big letters next to a monologue.
I glance at the play’s title. Othello.
Reading through the page, Othello is strangling his wife. In a way, to protect her love from himself.
“Unworthy.”
Small cramped letters near the bottom of the page, I run a finger over them as I close my eyes.
I can’t protect anyone.
It’s too much to do it once.
_____________________

“Yohji? Yohji? Are you even listening to me?”
I stop picking at my food to look up at Ken.
“Are you okay man?”
“Yea. Yea, I’m fine.”
“Anyways….”
He launches back into his rundown of affairs at Weinrow. I don’t want to listen, I don’t want to know the sorts of things that go on there.
“All in all it’s pretty horrifying. And I can’t even find anything definite to stop them. Just these disgusting things in front of me, but no explanation.”
As Ken goes on, detailing some new suicide, I let my mind drift back to last night.
Rain. Rain soaking through our skin as we walk, the trees dripping with it. The only light is that provided by distant streetlights.
Her white shirt clung to her back, showing off her slight soft curves as she walked ahead of me.
I have no idea what we were saying, something inane, unimportant. Maybe the movie we’d just finished in her apartment, some romantic comedy that had her laughing wildly. I spent most of the film just watching her lips.
Her ringer sounds like birds singing. Glancing at the id, she turned around
“Sorry love, I have to take this.”
She moved off the path, to take it.
I could hear her.
Her voice tightened with her face into a steely mask.
“What do you mean they lost the data?”
Data?
Curious.
“Well, I expect you to take care of it.”
A pause.
“By tomorrow.”
She hung up, reforming her smile as she walked back to me, the grim terrible look she had had on the phone gone.
It sent a chill through my spine.
“So you want to go get some coffee and warm up?”
I bent down, forcing myself not to recoil as I kissed her.
“Nah. I’ve got something to take care of tomorrow morning. I’ll call you afterwards.”
Unfolding my arms from around her, I walked off.
Ken drones on and on in detail about the suicide. This time, there were four students, all found on the edge of the campus with their necks broken.
I don’t see how they can call it that.
Scrawled on the ground neck to them in what sounds suspiciously like blood was the word “failure”.
There’s almost no way this isn’t related to Koua.
“I expect you to take care of it.”
No…..there’s no way she could have been talking about that. It was some accounting error, or office issue, or something.
I feel hatred well up in my throat as I think of her ordering such a thing.
Everything around me seems somehow contaminated.
Ken grits his teeth as he talks about the killers
“There’s no fucking way that was a suicide. I swear to god when I get my hands on these fuckers……no more innocents should die that way.”
There’s a hint of something disturbing in his eye. I don’t particularly want to guess it, but it looks like the hard, hungry bloodlust I sometimes catch in Aya’s. Right before he dives headlong into a group of targets, sword flying to spatter blood over everything.
I contemplate telling him about Michelle’s call last night.
It’d be as much as her death sentence.
“Yohji, you need to find those files. It’s our only shot here at delivering justice.”
“Justice? This is justice.”
He glares at me.
“We’re saving the lives of innocents.”
Ken settles for the easiest justifications.
“We’re not saving anyone, we can’t protect anything. We’re just dragging ourselves through the same damned blood and pain and shit to fight the same cruelty that will resurge again and again, and undoubtedly worse.”
He has nothing to say to that, so I continue.
“And this is our justice. We don’t wait for their explanations, their justice, their ideal. It’s an arbitrary inconvenience, something that might disrupt our feelings of nobility, of heroism, or some goddamned righteousness that we pretend at so well. But hey, what do our crimes matter in the dark?”
The anger on his face melts into a sickening concern. I don’t want his damned compassion or pity or whatever help he thinks he needs to offer me.
I’m tired of this.
I don’t wait for him to answer and instead leave, making my way out the door and into the street.
_______________

As I walk, I begin to numb, a sort of static feel accumulating in my joints, moving me forward.
I catch myself in front of Michelle’s apartment. Her light is on, but I don’t go up.
I can’t take her face at the moment.
“I expect you to take care of it.”
Her hard face drowns everything else in my mind. A sick feeling rises in my throat, a bitter hot churning of my stomach. Anxious I move further down the street, her face undeniable.
She’s guilty too.
All hopes of normality slide away.
“And have my lips the sin that they have took?”
She has a soft smiling lilt to her voice, a happy amused calm about it.
I wonder if my lips are blackened with hers.
There is no respite is there?
I pause, leaning back against the wall of a café, my mind throbbing.
“Why is it so damned impossible?”
The yell escapes me before I can realize, throwing my hand hard into the brick.
Even with this new certainty, there is still an air of hope around her, the possible escape.
In a moment, I decide, moving back into the street.
I’ll protect her, and in protecting her protect myself. Purge myself that way.
A small voice rings in my head
‘Ignoring it will save nothing Yohji’
I block it out, forcing a flat fake smile on my face.
I’ll miss him. I’m sure he’ll hate me if I do this.
He’ll be better off that way, protected from me.
And I don’t even have to strangle him for that safety.
I feel ridiculous, giddy, as if I’m walking on my last legs.
______________________________

The phone rings after I leave Michelle’s. A bright breaker of my dark mood.
We’d watched a movie in silence, fucking quickly through the last half hour. I think she could sense my apprehension. She called it ‘exhaustion.’
Protesting only enough for show, I let her push me out the door, a worried look plastered across her face.
I’ve never had anyone worry over me like her. It’s almost motherly.
Sighing, I decide to answer, and am met by a sharp unyielding voice.
“Yohji, what the hell is going on? Why haven’t you reported anything?”
His voice is incredibly cold, lethally so.
“I’ve had nothing to report.”
“Bullshit.”
I haven’t even spoken to him in three days.
“What do you want me to say Aya?”
“Do you think she’s Esset?”
I bite my lip. Actually, I hadn’t thought of that.
“I don’t know.”
I can answer that honestly at least.
“Well, do you think she’s involved in the killings?”
Yes. There’s no doubt in my mind.
I say nothing.
“Do you?”
After another minute of silence, he sighs.
“You can’t protect her Yohji.”
He doesn’t fucking get it. It’s not protecting her.
“I need to.”
He sounds stunned.
“Why?”
“She’s…..”
I don’t know how to say it.
“She’s my freedom. It‘s easier this way.”
His voice comes back hard again.
“How is that, Yohji?”
He’s trying to sound reasonable.
And still I don’t know how to say. She’s simple, she’s calming. She reminds me of no one and lets me be. There is nothing thrown in my face with her, no memories.
Instead of any of that, I blurt out,
“I don’t feel guilty with her.”
“It won’t stay repressed forever.”
He pauses.
“You’ll hate her for it if it ever returned and it will.”
He still sounds alright. I haven’t said the worst yet.
“She really, she really means something to me.”
It’s Aya’s turn to be rendered speechless.
“And I am so tired of everything being overwhelming, everything passionate, everything desperately immediate like it’s the last thing we’ll ever feel. This is simple.”
His voice shoots back now, almost hostile, as if he’s spitting venom.
“It’s a lie.”
“Aya-”
He cuts me off
“No, Yohji, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t drown what you are in another person. You can’t change what you have become so easily. It’s delusion.”
“Why not Aya? Why can’t I lie if it’ll be easier?”
It is cold, a bitter cut of sorrowful doubt.
“And me, Yohji?”
The question sears. I close my eyes against it, quelling the soft panic it inspires, the quiet sickness, the pangs of his absence. I can’t ruin him any more.
“I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I want to protect you.”
He almost sounds maniacal
“From what Yohji?”
I wonder if this sounds as cold to him as it does to me.
“You say you don’t deserve this, but I’m not even strong enough to bear the consequences of my actions, to stand this anymore. I’ve got to save both of us.”
I’m sure I sound desperate, insane even, confused.
He sighs.
“Yohji, its impossible.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes.”
He sounds so absolute. His voice is sad, quiet.
“Ken reported your strange behavior to us, and Rex. He’s worried Yohji. He hasn’t found much, but everything he’s found points to her as being the head of operations. He’s afraid she’s going to blow your cover, or trick you into something.
None of us want you to get hurt, and I don‘t think I could stand to watch you tear yourself apart again.”
“I can take care of myself.”
There’s an apprehensive uncertainty about him. Whether or not he knows it, he just doesn’t want to watch me deteriorate again. He doesn’t know what to do but watch. Those damned eyes staring at me, his hand stretched out hesitantly, unsure and yet compulsively trying to help, to make it easier.
The bitterness in his voice is almost tangible.
“There’s more.”
He pauses.
“Kritiker is getting frustrated with your lack of action. They feel you have had ample opportunity to find the files. They’ve decided if…if you don’t bring them information soon, they will replace you, and send you in for psychological reform and reassignment.”
His voice catches
“Yohji, please. It’s the only way out of this.”
There’s just nowhere to fucking run is there?
I should have known.
He’s waiting for me to answer, to reassure him somehow that I’ll be fine, I’ll drag myself through this too.
Idyllic, isn’t it? The repetitive strain of attachment, of inevitability, of the crushing arbitrariness around us.
You like to think, waking up still locked in the strange translucent peace of the world, of your dreams rushing around you, that you are utterly free. That by rights of nature, of mind, of will, you can move freely, abandon everything. That you are a separate and distant form, a solitary force of energy imbued with ephemeral and illimitable reasons, impulses that cannot be denied. That nothing can bear on you but sickness, feelings. Even time is negligible, a false bound caught loose on our hands and easily shaken off, to be stepped on and left in the dust of our surpassing, of our receding into our own heights to laugh alone, to sing at the top of our voice and remain forever in freedom, and it won’t matter if we laugh or no, or sleep or not, because awake, we will see all the lithe varied colors of our dreams writhing around us, wired pristine in our clarified senses.
But it claws at you, pulling you down with it, all the faces, all the names and cruelties and unreasoning sorrows until you want to shed your skin, lose the sight of yourself just to forget. If we remember nothing, there is nothing to limit our freedom.
And then we’re just left empty, to watch as we move through involuntary motions, sickening and muted sensations. In all of this we are rendered incapable of moving up, of piercing the upper curtain our mind and shucking the coil of this hell.
This dead numb weight of restlessness, of inevitable abeyance, waiting for awe to overtake you at a sudden separation that never arrives.
I doubt any of us could understand pure freedom if it was opened to us. We’ve spent too long in the cloying dark to see anything with intensity.
It doesn’t matter, going on to loves and tortures and denials.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
Maybe this will prove something to me, finally free me from this emptiness of thought.
“Thank you.”
He clicks, his whispered voice still screaming in my ears.
___________________________

Rolling over, I press my head into her breast, listening to the soft thrill of her heartbeat. Her skin is silvery in the moonlight, a cold refreshing sight that quenches my thirst for forgiveness, some redemption I never imagined and doubt I could.
For a moment.
Lifting her sleeping head, I kiss her lax mouth, her still lips fluttering with breath. Resisting the urge to bury myself beside her, never move again, I rise, leaving the room in quick quiet steps and stumbling out into the icy impenetrable darkness beyond.
Once outside her room, I dress, ready to bolt with the files, breathing deeply to calm my jumping nerves. Feeling along the walls, I make my way down the hall into the office. The room is again lit with a sort of fragile twilight.
I rummage first through the desk, overturning drawers. Nothing. Nothing at all, just a few pieces of personal correspondence I restrain myself from reading and an impressive collection of office supplies.
There is little else in the room by way of hiding places.
Just a few massive bookcases and a pair of armchairs.
Unless….my eyes flick over to the computer.
Settling myself into the desk chair, I turn it on, pulling a disk out of my jacket.
“Enter password.”
The gray box pops onscreen, demanding authorization.
I…I have no idea.
I type in a series of words. Weinrow. Denied. Adrianne (which is her middle name). Denied. Marlowe (her favorite author). Denied. Driesel (her mother’s maiden name). Denied.
After spending an aggravating ten minutes typing in every detail she’s given me about herself, I’m close to giving up, or sending a virus through it.
One word flashes through my mind. It’s a long-shot, but….it’s not as if I have many other possibilities.
Juliet.
Welcome. You have three new messages.
Her inbox opens automatically.
Glancing through the unread mail, I see one subjected “Proceeding.”
I click it open.
And gape in shock.
The new message is simply.
“Will proceed on eliminating the obstruction to the data immediately.”
Short and sweet, na?
It’s what it’s responding to that sends a flash of hate through my heart, a searing sad feeling that leaves me paralyzed as I read it.
“Instate extra guards on the lab facility. Experiments must not be compromised.
Although I feel the Kritiker agent is no longer a threat, I worry he has back-up somewhere. Search the school for suspicious persons and eliminate any that may cause concern.”
She knows?
A sickening pang shoots through my stomach, rising nauseous.
I can’t fucking believe it.
Pushing it down, I close out of the mail and search through her files.
What I find is a series of personal logs, notes and deliberations on events.
Catching my names, I read from there.
“He really thinks he’s tricking me. Ha, does Kritiker think its fooling anyone with such a simple cover? Does it really think Esset would not be looking out for the team that destroyed the Elders?
Fortunately, our aims were not restricted to that resurrection.”
I stop, stunned.
I guess it confirms that connection.
I feel filthy, exposed. Stupid fucking Kudou, can’t even fall in love with a real personality.
It’s all fucking affected. And I never get close to anyone.
Blocking the thoughts out, I shove the disk into her computer, downloading her hard drive in a matter of moments.
Shutting the computer down, I clutch the disk to me, and not looking behind, make my way back to the room.
_____________________

Ken is awake when I get back, staring expectantly at me.
I throw the disk at him.
“Here.”
His voice is serious.
“We should go over this.”
I can feel my expression harden.
“No.”
“But Yohji- it’ll go faster if we can-”
“I don’t want to know. Just tell me when and who we have to kill. Until then, leave me alone.”
Not giving him time to respond, I walk out onto the balcony, pulling my phone out to report this before the numbness wears off.
“Hello?”
He sounds tired, I have no idea what time it is. Fuck it.
“It’s done. I got them.”
“Thank you.”
Aya’s voice softens.
“Yohji? Are you alright?”
It grates against my mind, the calm reassurance there.
I hang up, shoving the phone back into my pocket and sink down against the wall. The cold brick presses hard into my back. I don’t move to avoid it.
Reaching my hand back into my pocket, I dig out a cigarette.
I can’t save myself from anything. At least now, I’m no longer the martyr.
Finally, I’ve betrayed someone. The thought makes me sick, repulsed at myself.
Bile rises hot into my mouth.
I drop the cigarette, tossing it off the balcony and lean my head back.
When you gonna learn?
At this point, I don’t even need the mark on my arm to remind me.
I want to stay here in the cool night, under the stars forever.
__________________________

Ken followed my wishes.
“Yohji wake up.”
I’m jolted out of my numb dreamless sleep by a hand on my shoulder.
“We leave in an hour. Be ready.”
He retreats into the bathroom, to go through with whatever ritual he needs to convince himself of the justice in this.
I pull myself out of bed, a heavy hard feeling in my limbs.
I don’t know what we’re going to end. I don’t want to.
Digging through my bag, I pull out my gear.
Shedding my boxers, I pull on the tight black pants, the heavy long trench coat, the black fedora.
I dip my finger into body paint, splashing it over my chest in the shape of a cross. A visual representation of this weight over me, this inexorable aching in my chest.
Searching further, I pull on gloves, strap my watch around my wrist, tuck small and highly efficient explosives into hidden pockets.
I stare at myself in the mirror when I’m ready.
I look as numb and tense as I feel, my mouth curled into a grimace. My eyes raw and wide open.
I clear my thoughts and focus on the innocuous rhythm of my breathing.
Ken’s hand brings me back again.
“We need to go Yohji.”
He turns over to the door, pausing before he leads us out into the hall.
“Are you going to be alright.”
I don’t answer, moving past him, blindly making my way down to the car and strapping myself into the passenger’s seat.
A few minutes later Ken pulls himself in, striking the ignition.
“Yohji, I’ll infiltrate the labs since I read the files. All I’ll need you to do is locate her office. Dirne probably knows we’re coming, she’ll be waiting there.
As I destroy the facilities below, I’ll need you to destroy her office and the buildings around it. Everything possible should be razed to the ground so none of the data is left.”
My voice sounds exquisitely hollow.
“And kill her.”
He glances at me
“Yohji, you had to be expecting this.”
Yea. I was. That’s why it hits so heavily. Resigned, I let him brief me on the files.
I’m waiting to be surprised.
We pull into Weinrow as the sun is setting. Ken hides the car well, parking in the woods near the road.
We separate immediately.
Mechanically, I strap explosives around the exterior supports of every building I come across, working my way towards the central building. Michelle’s office.
It looms huge over the campus, a tall pale building that looks on first glance to be a cathedral, its huge clock tower counting down the minutes to its own collapse.
Carefully, silently, I enter it, making my way up the floors.
“Ken, where am I going?”
I whisper only loud enough for the comm to catch my voice.
“Top floor.”
I can hear screaming in the background of his voice and ignore it, making my way further up, ascending countless stairs until her door looms in front of me.
Michelle Dirne, headmaster.
It’s spelled out on a gold plague hooked on the heavy walnut door.
Taking a deep breath I force my way in. It’s empty.
Staring out the window I can hardly see.
We’ve only ever hunted at night.
Sighing, I make my way up to the roof to set the last explosive, jerking the door open.
The long barren concrete stretch seems empty, still.
I hear a sound. Black shadows dart out, seemingly from nowhere.
Instinctively, I flash the wire out, strangling three before the rest notice.
Nice thing about it is that its unexpected.
One of them, a tall skinny boy, scoffs at it.
“You think you can defeat Z-class with that?”
I watch them dart around. Z-class?
The same one smirks constantly out of my reach.
“We are stronger, better than you will ever be. You are a failure.”
The idea seems to amuse him.
Suddenly, it dawns on me. Whatever they’re doing has to do with this Z-class.
Images of the suicides scream back at me. Failure.
I don’t have the time to figure it out fully as he leaps at me, knocking me to the ground. Without surprise on my side, I can’t do much.
I throw the wire out at him. Somehow he deflects it with his arm.
The rest stand back, smirking, as he hits me again. He gloats, a smug stream of words. I can’t hear them over the blood roaring in my ears.
I flick the wore out around his ankles, tugging.
Confused, he curses as he slams to the ground. Quickly, I snap the wire back and wrap it around his neck, breaking the spine with a jerk of my arms.
Glancing about me, there seems to be two left.
Smiling, I beckon them forward. They leap simultaneously towards me, fists flying.
Blindly, I snap the wire out, ignoring the hard shattering blows to my sides, coughing through my grin as one hits me in the throat.
“Go to hell.”
I spit the curse at him, tangling the wire around his throat and giving it a fast tug, dropping him limply to the ground.
The last screams, an insane look coming into his eye.
“Die!”
It seems likes an order the way he yells it. He hits me across the face, a bruising slap across my cheeks, knocking the wind out of me.
The blows rain down relentlessly.
His eyes narrow in concentration. Fuck. I’ve got to distract him. Smiling, I hit a button in my pocket, blowing up a building in the distance.
He whips around to search for the explosion and I snap his neck, my smile fading at the sight of contorted bodies spread over the roof.
Lifting my eyes up to the night, I move to the opposite end of the roof to wait standing in front of the explosives locked into the clock tower.
It’s only a matter of time.
I lift a whistle from my pocket and begin to play. It’s a lilting keening melody.
My mind rushes backwards.
“Here, my mother taught me how to play this.”
“What is it?”
“A pennywhistle, Irish I know, but she loved it. Here….let me teach you something.”
The sound of the door opening interrupts my thoughts, jerking me back to the roof.
Her voice shoots across to me
“That song……
“Yeah.”
She becomes accusatory, throwing her voice at me.
“You told me you’d never lie to a woman. Was that just another lie?
If I said that, I shouldn’t have. Lying is a part of us, a part of our work and weight. The idea of turning to look at her is sickening.
“I did tell you one truth.”
I turn around, masking my disgust in a bitter amusement, smirking at her. She looks cold, hard and wildly maniacal, a gun wrapped in her fingers.
No softness rests about that mouth, those icy frantic eyes. Fighting, you truly reveal yourself.
She raises the gun, spilling accusations. I understand. Accusations make it easier, they separate you from the immediate moment. You don’t have to feel anything but anger.
When her voice ceases I click the detonator, destroying the clock tower in a hail of flame and brick.
Explosions end everything, making a clean pure slate. Funny that I can end anything with them except what I want to. Everything else goes on around me, proven by the ringing in my ears.
“I knew that you weren’t just some rat. CIA?”
I stop listening. This is a game. You mock until the other cracks or stops breathing.
She knows who I am, she’s just waiting to shock me with that knowledge.
I follow her into it, letting my mind disconnect, going purely into reactionary adrenaline.
Suddenly, she fires, bullets crashing around my feet.
“Not in a good mood are we?”
She hates sarcasm. I remember she’d get so upset when I’d slip with it.
“I’ll ask you one last time. What are you?”
I’m tired of this.
“Is that fine?”
My own voice comes as a shock to my ears, an automatic buzzing.
“Are you-”
“Don’t say it!”
My body lunges forward, the wire spilling out form my palm to encircle her, holding her still. Rage courses through me, shaking me from my catatonic state.
Her hair hangs down over her eyes, the gun flush against her thigh. If she wasn’t laughing, she’d look just like Aya.
“Hey, what should I call you? The White Hunter? Or Weiss?”
Nothing. Don’t call me a damned thing.
My lips supply their own responses, giving her the opportunity she wants to bluff me, taunting me with the futility of my task. As if I don’t already grasp that.
She doesn’t get it, so wrapped up in al this contrived hatred.
It sickens me wondering what honesty she’s capable of. This? This strangely seems more forced then before.
“The mission’s complete.”
All I have to do is pull the wire and retreat again into my mire of faces, one more added to the throng.
“I’m still left.”
“Michelle, don’t make me the villain,”
You wouldn’t even understand why.
“The villain? You tricked a woman, stole information from her, and now that she’s of no further use, you’re going to kill her. Then I guess Esset is the good guy.”
My voice hardens as I snap fully into the moment, fully focused on her voice, on her face leering at the end of the wire.
“There aren’t any. People hurt, people hate and kill. It goes on and on until your mind is ruined by it and your heart torn apart.”
This is the first serious conversation we’ve had.
And I thought I could know someone well in less than a month.
My own blindness tokes my rage, forcing me to glare at her, itching to snap the wire back and release this tension.
“Come with me.”
Irrationally, something clicks. Maybe if we both disappear we can run, maybe they’ll all assume we’re dead and we’ll be free.
The word is smooth against my mind, crushed and ripped apart in a searing jolt of pain as she responds
‘Do you think you’re worth that much?”
I’m not worth anything. I’m filthier than her. Suddenly, I wonder if ignorance of your crimes, obliviousness, lack of guilt, is better. If the crime is manufactured by the aftermath and conviction of it.
I take one more stab at relief.
“Then at least will you never come near me again? That way-”
“You won’t have to kill me?”
I wonder if I’m imagining the hope in her voice.
“You aren’t suited for this.”
“Maybe.”
I’m more suited than she could know. My guilt drives me on for the single happy second of oblivion, the blank coldness of killing. For a moment nothing exists but the snapping body and the empty serenity it gives me.
We release ourselves together. Only, I have to return to what I am. Lucky bastards.
“I love you Yohji”
Voices reflect off each other. I’m not sure who to believe.
“So much that I want to kill you!”
She lifts the gun,, squeezing the trigger. My arms shoots up, jerking the wire. I can hear her spine crack as she falls to the ground, or maybe that’s just the gun going off.
I stare up into the smoke rolling around the building.
How is something like this possible? Out of all the inclinations and potentialities of man, who chose this? This! Of all things, why this hell?
My voice goes raw, screaming my thoughts out for me.
“Who is it!”
My voice rings out, merging with the explosions.
“The one who will be making the world is Esset!”
How…how can she?
Breathless I stumble backwards, her fist a hard force in my stomach. Her leg whips upward, catching my head. Blows, impossibly hard blows, rain down from all sides, throwing me to the ground in a twitching heap.
Her hand crushes around my throat, lifting my limp bruised body up.
“Y-you”
Choking, you can ask more in a single word than in the whole of your life.
“What a pretty neck”
Her voice is hard, cruel, laughing.
Mouthing to keep her attention, I flick the wire out, catching the gun where it lies and snaking it up into my hand, pulling the trigger again, a barrage of terrible ringing sounds, throwing me into a daze.
She rises from it, unstoppable, rising again from death.
“Have my lips the sin that they have took?”
Somehow, she seems innocent in her hostility, unknowing.
“Capulet, Montague. The path that the ill-fated two were destined to.”
Fate reams me with every word, flaying my skin with the force of my disgust, this love I don’t understand.
I grab her, pulling her deep into my arms.
“You wanna jump with me Juliet?”
Unthinking, I throw us off the side, plummeting headlong to the stony ground.
Almost involuntarily, I snake the wire out, wrapping it around a pipe.
Her eyes go wide as we fall, my hands drop from her waist. She lands with a horrible sound of bones shattering, blood spilling out from splayed limbs.
With a sharp jerk I stop in mid-air, my shoulder screaming form the sudden pressure.
So anchored, I let myself drop, landing on my knees. My arm pulsates in a splintering pain. Damn. I’m sure its broken.
She looks shocked, her body stiffened. I catch the sight of a small necklace caught around her throat, reaching out, I turn it over in my fingers.
“Yohji! You didn’t have to.”
She giggles as I clasp it around her neck, touching it in mild amazement.
Her voice comes out fractured
“Did you know Romeo dies in the end?”
Well, so does Juliet.
“Juliet is revived from her sleep.”
I feel like laughing. So far you’ve risen twice. By my count, you’ve more than made up for Juliet.
Stunned, I let my voice babble out incoherently
“That’s not possible!”
“Die!”
She rushes towards me, thrusting her fist into my stomach. Her arms are faster than I can watch, hardly registering each hit except as another throb in a mire of pain, my vision going blurry and thick, strange and obscure.
Shaking, I pull myself up to my knees.
“Michelle.”
My voice runs out calmly. I don’t understand how its so smooth, so unbroken. It burns my throat.
“I just want to say, to tell you, I’m sorry for the lies, for all the times I said them. But those moments, they were real regardless. They aren’t lies.”
Closing my eyes, I pull out a detonator, setting off the explosives on the buildings around us. Shocked, Michelle is caught up in the force of it, buried in a hail of shrapnel.
I let the ringing of my ears spill me into a daze.
Opening my eyes, she’s lying a few feet away, smiling serenely.
“Wait for me Michelle. I’ll be joining you someday.” With a silent salutation I let other faces slip into my mind
“All of you.”
Ken touches my shoulder, a grim look on his face, and pulls me up. I don’t bother to ask where he came from.
Leaning my weight on him, I let him lead us out, the smoking ruins of Weinrow behind us.
“Farewell, Juliet.”