FicWad

Author's Note: Sorry it took so long! Classes started so all my time vanished. Next chapter will hopefully be up next weekend, but I make no promises. Peace.


The lights burn from nowhere, twin streaks in the night, trailing a terrible haze, my eyes blurred as her body collapses into itself, a strange implosion of color draped over the road. Gritting my teeth, I try to run towards her, screaming when I remain immobile. It makes no sound, my mouth wrenching open in a mute roar. Horrified, I watch paralyzed as her body begins to dissolve, leaving a pile of thin fabric in the bloody road. I reach my hand towards her, ripping through the same air that has devoured her, my fist closing empty. The lines of my body become sharper in my eyes, harder, harder to ignore in this spitting light. A cold chill passes over me, a cut through my body of. Turning around there is a glimmer of skin, a second absorption as he fades into the light, his hands passing over mine as I grab at him, ripping at his hair, his clothes, anything I can lay my hands on. He smiles as my hands fall through him, catching for a moment on an edge of fabric. I yank at it, shredding away a corner and balling it between my fingers. As he dissolves I sink to my knees, soundless, marked out in the terrible light.
The light is blinding from the kitchen window. Groaning, I lift my head from the table, rolling my neck to relieve the stiffness.
“But don’t you have to hold on to what you can regardless- I mean, can’t that save you, even a little?”
I rub my hands together, half mourning the loss of the intangible cloth, and squint at the clock. Only 6.
Settling back on my elbows, I bury my head in my hands, rubbing my temples, the conversation from the night before echoing through my mind, impossible, like so much else it seems, to forget.
“Being able to recall your actions without suffering them again.”
Redemption.
Saved by what you can hold on to. A recognition of the self. It can’t be as simple as acceptance.
Such things are not so easily expiated.
I don’t turn around as the door clicks open, covering my eyes so I won’t have to see the bruised neck and disheveled clothes that fail to mask the burgeoning sorrow and apprehension in his eyes, in the set of his mouth.
Guilt, in tearing us open, renders us somehow beautiful. A mechanism for defeat I do not understand.
The thought is broken as he grabs me from behind, pressing his face into my neck with a strangled cry.
Silent, but for his sobs, his shuddering sort of temporal release, we sit together for a long time. Thoughtless.
“Can’t that save you?”
Accusatory, almost, the tone in which I repeat it to myself.
Shrugging him off my shoulder, I take his hand, pulling him down into the chair beside me.
His eyes are raw as he looks at me, rimmed red with shock, a sort of awakened surprise.
Reflexively, I grip his hand tightly, letting my eyes close between us.
___________________________________
Carefully rising, I pull my hand away, pausing for a moment to listen to the slow rhythm of his breath.
His eyes are clenched tight, the muscles in his forehead bunching up in a strange tension, twitching in reaction to a dream I cannot see. Tears trail down his face, picked up in the light coming from the window, whether a result of the dream or simply an effect of a hangover, I can’t tell.
Staring at him sprawled over the table, I smile, letting the expression play over my lips for a moment before turning away.
What little can be saved-
The thought repeating itself, a strange mantra, I dress, rushing out of the apartment to meet Asami.
What we can hold on to.
____________________________

Filled with a strange levity, I follow Asami through a series of shops, nodding as she notes down the prices of various necessities. She smiles as she fingers lengths of cloth, compares shades of paint with a consideration that looks out of place in such a mundane setting. She laughs, her voice settling over me, a light soft musical quality about it, upon discovering the right tape, after ten minutes of comparing shades of a color that she has no use for. Her eyes sweep over everything, darting back at me with an astonishing concern, as if to ensure I was still following; her features collapsing in relief when I smiled back, pretending to absorb myself in different goods, trailing my hands across items I hardly recognize.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her, fascinated by her almost childlike exuberance. Suddenly, in the last store, she pauses, fixated by something perched on a shelf, her hands extending towards it. A disappointed look passes over her face she turns away from it, going to examine instead a collection of mock flags.
When she turns her back, I step over to the shelf she had been examining. It holds a row of planners bound in different colors and materials. The one she had been staring at is made of blue suede, a small soft book with a clasp and ribbon place marker.
Fireworks, the smell of smoke, a thick heavy smell, happy. A harbinger of celebrations, mixed in with the smiles of people crowding the square, hot colorful pastries peddled for almost nothing. She laughs as she wipes the sugar from her lips, rushing over to the stalls of vendors.
“Ran!”
A pair of long dangling earrings, glinting gold in the light. The soft blue suede bending under my fingers.
One hand rises to my ear, feeling the small stud resting in the lobe.
I wonder if Aya wears those earrings, Manx assured me she has both in her possession.
I wonder why Asami would stare like that a planner.
“Please!”
A childish voice sharpened in excitement, eyes almost watering with the joy that permeates that sort of desire, that easy and immediate end.
The cashier nods as he hands the planner back across the counter, wrapped in a brown paper bag that I tuck into my pocket, fingering the folds of paper as we cross the street to a café, ordering a quick lunch.
After the waitress leaves, I pass it across the table to her.
A puzzled look spreads over her face as she opens the bag, the look shifting into one of surprise when she sees it.
“Oh, Fujimiya-sensei, this is?”
She trails off, fingering the cover of the book reverently. I shrug.
“I saw you looking at it in the shop a while ago and I thought you would like it.”
She drops it on the table, pushing it back towards me.
“But, I can’t accept this. I mean, I even sort of forced you to come here with me!”
I nudge it back over the table.
“The cultural fair is very soon, things will become very busy. Please, go ahead and make use of it.”
Smiling, a look of gratitude coming into her eyes, she picks the planner up, holding it to her chest.
“Sensei-”
Her voice is soft.
“Thank you very much. I’ll take great care of this.”
Almost shyly, she glances from me to the book, as if she can’t believe it. I wonder, blankly, at the warmth rising in my chest at the happy expression, why I bought it myself, for this woman I hardly know.
Aya-chan smiles at me, clutching the earrings in her palm, acceptance in the manner of one who feels entitled.
Asami strokes the book with a bashful expression.
Stunned, I search for words to mask the emotion.
“But, why a planner?”
The words burst from my lips, covering my confusion.
How could this calm, shy woman remind me of Aya? Aya was spirited, always excited. Nothing bothered her, never caused her a moment’s worry or loss of exuberance.
Is it the zeal behind both their expressions? The zeal that prompted Asami to come out with me to stop the students searching for Kyo and Sena, the zeal that made up Aya’s brilliant smile, her immediate absorption and determination in everything she did?
It leaves a strange taste in my mouth. It is not unwelcome.
“Do you find it strange?”
“Not at all.”
I smile at her, feeling a sort of relief, even a greeting to some part of myself long left untouched.
She smiles, evoking another picture of Aya.
For once, there is no pang of bitterness, no sharp pain to color the image.
“Redemption is being able to recall your actions without suffering them again.”
When did grief stop being so suffocating?
“And my father would always be carrying about that thick planner of his.”
“So your father was-”
“A teacher. Yes. I resented it when I was younger, I mean, don’t children want to be the center of their parent’s attention? But all that ever seemed to be on his mind was students. I wanted him to be only my father.”
She pauses, clenching her hands around the planner.
Why mourn the living at all for their scars?
I bite my lip against the thought, the familiar pain surging up again.
So much for redemption. It is not something I would want to be redeemed. Without the violence behind every emotion, the vehement passion with which its felt, the image that evokes it fades.
What is all I have is my suffering? What if for all the hope that rests by rote in salvation, when it comes I’ll be as a husk to receive it?
A selfish question. A familiar panic that binds me closer to the pain pulsing through the memory of her. The thought of her alone, or lighting incense at our parents grave. A stone that bears my name.
Asami’s voice cuts through the terrible picture.
“But now I can really appreciate how great a teacher he was. Honestly, it’s thanks to you, Fujimiya-sensei, that I can now see him in such a way.”
“Thanks to me?”
A selfish man. A callous man.
“Don’t you remember when you went to save Izumi-kin? Seeing that, I wondered whether my father would have done that as well. I think- I think he would have. And just like my father and Fujimiya-sensei, I decided that I wanted to become a teacher that can protect her students.”
I wonder if I would have bothered if it had been a regular student, rather than a teammate. Trying, like Raskolnikov, to convince myself of my own lack of compassion. And like so many times before, failing.
Asami smiles again as she stands to go. I am struck suddenly with the fact that I have told her nothing of myself. A foil for all her open ease.
“Truly, thank you for the planner.”
I wait until she is out of sight to rise from the table, weaving through the crowd of people back to the car.
His cheeks made bright with drying tears, the salt glittering with all the brilliance of his eyes awake.
I wonder if he is still sleeping.
______________________________________

The apartment is silent when I return, the kitchen empty.
Overly eager, internally embarrassed at my eagerness, angry at how I can be forced back here so simply, I rush towards the bedroom, not giving a damn for anything but his presence……something intangible that I can neither express nor forget. The essential quality that makes him what he is, even so obscured.
Pushing the door open, I nearly trip over a pile of clothes dumped by the door. I recognize the shirt he had come in wearing this morning.
It’s empty.
He wouldn’t go running back to her, not after coming in like that-
I ball my hands into fists, setting my mouth in a grim line, and try to rename my disappointment, the ruining of a hope I didn’t know I had had, anger.
I shove the door to the mission room open, glaring at Ken and Sena chattering back and forth about the mission.
Suddenly, I am gripped with a desperate fervor, a need to end this.
If we can pull ourselves from this mire, maybe we’ll be able to recover something. I bite my tongue, terrified, almost sick, at how fiercely the hope presents itself, overwhelming everything else.
“Ken, can you investigate the principal?”
If I had ensured we had done this sooner, perhaps Yohji would be here.
I wonder what caused him to come in like that. I’ve never seen him that way, not even drunk.
“The principal?”
Are we really so incompetent that we haven’t thought of it? My voice grows discernibly colder.
“The only figure that has some sort of connection to the planning of Koua Academy, and whom we have not investigated yet is the principal.”
Ken nods, leaving the room with Sena on his heels.
“Alright. I’ve got it. By the way, what about Yohji’s target?”
Careful to keep my voice blank, I answer.
“I’ve yet to receive a final report from Yohji.”
The door clicks shut behind them. Leaving me to collapse on the bed in silence.
______________________________________

My head throbs against the table. Wincing, I pull myself up, rubbing my temples and squinting in the bright sunlight flooding the kitchen. Rolling my neck, I try to gauge the severity of the hangover, deciding that it’s light enough to go without coffee.
I glance at the clock. Only eleven. No wonder the apartment’s so quiet, none of them would be up this early on a Sunday.
May as well join them.
Quietly enough, I creep down the hall, poking my head into the mission room as I pass it.
Empty.
A small smile passes over my lips with anticipation.
I push the door to our room open.
Empty.
Violently, it comes rushing back to me. Desperate, everything refused, destroyed and I released could walk innocent and contemptible for that innocence.
Would I awake with nothing- my nature bared without experience, intrinsically useless, instinctually- I can’t differentiate anymore, my reason and instinct both ruined.
Or would I not awake at all, merely an indifferent pile of organic slew given to coercion, our feelings of significance merely programmed, the reaction of reactionary beings.
My arms around him.
“There was no sin in it.”
Words collide, my head throbbing with a renewed intensity. My hand tightens around the door handle, gripped suddenly with a terrible aversion to this place so riddled with every contradictory emotion, every failing grace or saving corruption of our souls.
“There was no sin in it.”
It is not an answer, her face flares up before me, clean, a circle of light both terrifying and astounding. Answering nothing.
My throat tightens- what difference would the decision make? Afterwards- afterwards no matter how much of my nature was lost or negated, I would still be new born, I would still be unaware, forced pure, absolved by the very fact of my erasure.
Doubt rushes through me, propelling my legs forward with the same force and terror of the night before.
With the same desperate speed I jump into the car, jerking out onto the highway with a screeching of tires, the roar of the engine as I accelerate too fast, slamming the pedal down.
A singular image beats itself into my mind, flickering to a rhythm of a single demand- what does it mean to forget?
Pressing on, blind.
_______________________________

The light is terribly bright as I pull in, gripped with the familiar misery that surrounds this place, the fear at the sight of its rising monuments. Quickly, I weave through the alleys of stone, the few people bent over, faces obscured by hair and rising incense. Their shoulders speak of grief, stiff peaks holding them up, rigid.
Her stone is small, a shimmering block of pale marble distinguished by a single character. Leaves curl, dry and dead around the top of it, broken stems piled at the base, clutching desperately to a few lingering flowers.
Kneeling, I shove these aside, scattering them over the walkway.
Raising one hand, I press it to the stone, laying it over her name.
There was no sin in it.
I draw her face up it my mind, trying to force it to solidify, to spill out before me. I press the balls of my fingers to the stone with a horrible tension, forcing my knuckles white, cutting the skin on the sharp edges that form her name. Blood trickles down, staining the marker, a thin trail of evocation, blood that now fails to call her out.
My breath comes hard, slow shuddering exhalations, my skin presses tight around me, a suffocating expanse I want to rip off and cast away.
Instead, I lower my head, letting it rest on this marker, staring expectantly at the intricacies of the stone as if she could emerge from so small a series of ruptures.
Has she been new born, freed of her hell- gone, released, unfettered by names, hands unstained. Mine feel suddenly heavy, pulling me with their weight down, collapsed in the grass, mind sinking back into a daze, trying to call her here out of my failure to do so.
Waiting for her hand to brush my shoulder.
_____________________________________

The grass is damp, itching under my cheek, my body tingling under a film of cold water.
Stiffly, I rise to my knees, taking in my clothes rigid with mud, the dirt brushed along my cheeks, into my hair. The taste of it thick in my mouth.
The place is empty now, warmed by no living skin, no trails of incense. Immobile. Silent.
Revealing nothing.
Clenching my fists, I pull myself off the ground, staring at her grave, now, in the dark, a terrible sight. Nauseous, I am forced to turn away.
She had never been there at all. My mind throbs with the implication, the empty hall, the echoing words forced out of my need for expiation, meaningless.
“You can forget everything and start over.”
The promise echoes, hollow in the pause formed by this sick pressure of her absence, her empty marker.
She is nowhere. Not here, a silent corpse dragged off or enshrined, destroyed or left to rot alone, the spirit already decayed and dissipated, nothing to hold it or call it up again.
Shuddering, I run from the stone, tearing through the cemetery as if to escape the oppressive sense of isolation, this miserable taste of falsity now clear in my hope.
Plunging down, obscured by our senses, is death, to cover us and steal our memories. Certain philosophers assure us many deaths of self, many transfigurations.
But these are not chosen.
I collapse finally in the car, wincing as I shift my stiff body in the seat, something digging into my spine. Wincing, I reach behind my back to move it and toss it onto the other seat.
In the thin light, I can make out its lines, the words gleaming in the moonlight.
Gripped, compulsive, I pick it up again, tearing desperately through the pages until the searing words shore up at me.
“…..full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.”
“There was no sin in it.”
The words read as if they were born on that tongue, Tsujii’s voice echoing in the car. An array of scrawled lines, tine letters pulls at the corner of my eye. I let my gaze drift away from these damning words- or if not damning, a sort of release that seems just as terrifying- to spidery illegible notations arced in the margins.
Moaning, I trace a finger over them
“You can’t change what you have become so easily.”
His voice rises behind me, I snap my head back, half expecting to see him standing by the door.
I bite my lip at the empty night, a fever coming over me, called up, my head throbbing with warring voices, all contradictory, all surging forth to catch me with a sickening nausea, a terrible doubt that drives me on, wrenching the ignition on again and screaming out onto the road, words still echoed in my frenzied movement.
“It’s delusion.”
Ringing again and again and again, rushing forward blind to escape the fact that I’ve only become more mired where I stand.
____________________________________

The door clicks open, jarring me awake, stunned and thick in a dream that suddenly, I can’t recall. I shift the covers up around my shoulders, eyes drifting open.
Through the dark of the room I can make out a form leaning in the doorway, features barely distinguishable. I stiffen slightly as I recognize them.
As if sensing the motion, he disappears, the door shifting shut behind him, an arbitrary collector of darkness.
In the weighted silence of the room, I sit up, staring at the door, willing it to swing open.
To prove, by some invisible and inexplicable mechanism, that by letting this drag on, I have let him veer off into whatever hell he’s experiencing.
That somehow- I have no reason for my guilt.
_______________________________________

Still, with a somber sort of anxiety, I wait through the night, shifting my gaze from the door only when the sun rises, breaking my gaze with a burst of sudden and blinding light, a reminder of the clothes I must don, the words I must say and movements make.
The end that today, I must seed. This cannot be allowed to continue.
I have rarely known the details of the crimes that I act as retribution for. I need no more to question than the act itself.
Before I leave, I turn and pause before his door, rapping my hand against it in one sharp rapport.
Of it was ever that simple to awaken him-
I turn again, pausing only to grab my keys by the door, and sit a long time, watching the sun rise higher still, a reflection in the thin expanse of the windshield.
_______________________________________

The door to the lounge is light wood, with a glass panel, the words painted in black letters. I stare at it, struck with my odd hesitation, the confusing reluctance to enter. Biting my lip, I twist the knob, glaring at Tsujii as I pass by her, and glancing around, trying to find some safe object to look at.
Yohji stands by the window, leaning on his palms, his shoulders tense.
I wonder what expression he wears.
Tsujii smirks after me as I step over to him, tapping him on the shoulder.
He twists around, a wild look taking over his features for a moment. Then, they collapse smooth into blankness. His eyes are warped, darting away from me.
Forcing a limp smile on my face, I try and compose some excuse for talking to him.
So close to the end, it is most important to reinforce our guises.
I almost laugh- there is no reason why the end should be close. We know nothing.
Suddenly my purpose overwhelms my worry, pushing its way to the fore.
What he knows- from the way he’s acting, the nervous jump when approached, the sullen sad look, the distracted desperation, that scene yesterday-
I pause thinking of it. His strange cry.
I wonder what sort of confrontation could have brought that on.
Quickly, I force a useless excuse from my lips, stopping short of his name.
“Kudou-sensei, if you don’t mind, there are some questions about art history I’d like to ask you.”
He frowns, biting his lip back, a pained, hard look coming over his face, a look of extreme nausea.
“Sorry. I’ve got to make some preparations in the art room.”
He turns, rushing out of the room, his eyes avoiding all faces.
I stand still by the window, glaring out into the morning, clenching my fists with a sudden rage.
Traitor.
_____________________________
I wrench my thoughts from him continuously, pulling back through a series of insufferable reminders, irreconcilable hopes and condemnations of the both of us.
Irrational- what claim do I have on him? Some promise I forced from him, a collection of words?
Sick. My fingers tighten around the chalk, my voice hardens, my thoughts harden and narrow down to easier words, the textbook, empty histories that bring me nothing, neither relief nor exacerbation of this doubt.
In a blur, a daze that keeps me perched over the thought, the odd problematic confusion of this juncture- the bell rings and students pack out of the room.
My distraction goes with them, this guilt pushing back, formless and too familiar, too long welcomed to be passed over now.
My dream rushes back to me, my hands passing through him, left to grasp only a fragment.
“I’m not going anywhere!”
His contorted yell, the cloth twisted in my hands.
“Fujimiya-sensei-”
I jump at the tap on my shoulder, strangely thrown back to that brutalized look, that horrified abandon of his face unguarded.
Asami smiles at me, cocking her head to the side.
“The students from my class are going to be making preparations for the cultural festival in the gym, but many of the boys are absent today and well- would it be possible for you to help them? “
She smiles, half nervous, clasping and unclasping her hands.
A wave of resentment washes over me.
How damned easy it would be--
I shake the thought away. No matter how gratifying the thought of such pointless revenge might be- how little he’d notice from the thickness of his guilt. Rage forces me to clench my fingers, and I twist it into an odd smile, answering her in a hurried voice.
“Of course. I have some things to take care of first, but after that it would be fine.”
Her smile widens, a huge sparkling cut across her face.
Aya smirks as I re-enter the room, carrying the books she asked for.
“You really will won’t you?”
She asks offhandedly, twirling a strand of hair coyly in her fingers.
“Hm?”
I shrug, dropping the books on the table next to her.
“Do whatever I ask. You’re so easy.”
Bristling at the implication, I pick the books up again, my mouth tightening in an angry line as I turn out the door and restack them on top of a high shelf in the kitchen, far out of her reach.
She rushes into the room after me, a shocked look on her face.
“Ran- what? What are you doing?”
She goes wide-eyed as she notices where I’ve set them.
“Nothing.”
Smirking myself, I step past her, leaving her speechlessly staring at the books.
Awaking again from the memory, I notice that Asami left, the door swinging casually behind her.
As I recall- Aya-chan eventually wheedled me into getting the books down for her again, than mocked me a bit more for doing it.
I can’t remember why she wanted them. I always felt so responsible for- everything.
Senseless really, a sort of instinctual protection.
Again, I am shaken from myself, my hand flying down to the phone ringing in my pocket.
“Hn?”
“Well, you’ve certainly been polishing your conversational skills.”
Ken’s voice is strained over the phone.
“What did you find?”
“It’s weird- everyone keeps saying that the principal’s never around, but she hasn’t moved, all day.”
“What?”
“Yeah, hasn’t left her office at all. And there’s only been a few phone calls, mostly things relating to the school, or a new student or something but-”
He trails off.
“But what Siberian?”
“In one phone call she mentioned a name.”
Sickened, I can already hear it, the word long formed in my mind when he says it.
“Tsujii.”
Without waiting for further information, I click the phone off, shoving it into my pocket.
Fuck. If her involvement wasn’t already clear enough-
I rush down the hall, tearing towards the lounge.
You fucking bastard- if you’re hurt-
I’m struck suddenly by the hypocrisy in my worry for him, the contradiction.
I curse him, that doesn’t matter now. None of those preoccupations matter in the slightest, his face twisted animal, terrifying with that guilt, that fear in his eye.
If he will tell me, we can end this.
Gripped in a frenzied mix of hope and rage, a fusion of the two most thoughtless emotions, I rip the door of the lounge open, my hope dissipating when all I see is a math teacher I vaguely recognize.
“Have you seen Kudou-sensei?”
My exasperation- desperation- must be clear in my voice, because a look of concern spreads over the man’s face.
“No, I haven’t seen him around, but, before I forget, Asami-sensei was just here looking for you.”
He gestures over to my desk.
The hell? Quickly, I tear the note off it.
“Dear, Fujimiya-sensei, there’s something I must discuss with you. Please come to the gym immediately. -Asami”
The damned cultural festival.
I crumple the note in my palm, dropping it back on the desk as I rush back out into the hall.
That insipidity is of no concern right now. Annoyed, I shove Asami out of my mind, running blindly towards the art room.
If he isn’t there, I don’t know what I’ll do.
A tremulous pulse ringing through me, I settle my hand carefully on the knob, twisting the door open.
______________________________

Her painted face is smug from across the room, reverberating against the walls, in the smiles of students. They all suddenly carry the timbre of her voice, the slant of her eye.
“You can change. With my powers”
I call up Aya’s face against her, against the empty words, the abyss that seems so deep under me.
“You can’t change what you have become so easily.”
A frustrating alternation of refrains, beating through me, pitting against each other, both images heavy in my eye, insurmountable.
After the students leave, I drag the painting to the center of the room, all promises dissipating around my fingers, blending into the tints and savageries of the paint, faint flaws, gaps in the form.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I mutter it, letting the words hiss out through my teeth, an outcry of sorts against her offer, as if one promise can solve another, create a breach in it.
Unblinking, my eyes begin to water, obscuring the form, drawing from it seemingly new eyes, breaking off the hair, bending the lips into a broader smile, a calmer cheek.
“You have to forget me. Otherwise, you’ll only continue to suffer.”
And if suffering is all that holds my being together-
I have promised to suffer than.
His face superimposes itself on their two, a trinity of discontent, warring images merged into one unbearable face. Not daring to tear my eyes away, I fumble blind on a nearby table, finally stumbling across a knife designed, as it were, to trim paper.
Who can think with these voices clouding the air? All these anathemas laying their mark on me and searching prospects?
I drive it down towards the paper, the fluctuating faces and stop, the tip grazing the edge, my hand shaking as I draw it back again.
It torpid smile, taunting me on.
“You can-”
“-delusion”
“no sin”
A frenzy of incomprehensible contradictions.
I throw the knife across the room, flinching as it crashes with a metallic sound to the floor.
What answer can I find in it broken?
The door bursts open. Footsteps collide with the sound of the knife still echoing.
An answer thrown up from the picture, the face left.
“Tsujii?”
I whip around, the name involuntary, uncertain on my lips.
They frown in the doorway, an ominous irate look on their face.
“Aya-”
I glance back at the picture as he steps into the room, closing the door behind him.
It still bears her face.
Her vacuously cruel smile.
______________________________

He is silent, seemingly considering the picture as well, as if he knew somehow its very lack.
What serendipity- such stupidity in hope rising through me, voiding out even guilt- maintains an answer should come of his presence here.
Neither of us move. With a jolt of embarrassment, I remember how I used to grab hold of him every moment we were alone. Without hesitation.
Funny how long ago these things can feel, as if completely separate, or invented, so out of line with the course of this life now, this feeling and obsession that has no trace of it but a lingering and expectant shape, a compulsion that rears its head to break my reverie, in the end finding nothing, so unable to break through this image.
Contradictions. I wait for him to speak, suddenly snapped back into an urgent need to touch him and forget- oblivion for a moment is permissible, isn’t it?
No trick.
Cautiously, as if approaching a wild animal, I step towards him. His face is blank, the anger dropped from everywhere but his eyes, seething accusatory pools pierced through his skull, bearing down on me as I move forward, extend my hands to him.
He doesn’t move as I take him in my arms, his own hanging stiffly at his sides.
Letting a small strange smile drift across my face, I press him close, meeting his lips softly. They taste bitter, sorrow washing over me almost purgatorial.
Pulling back I look into his eyes, stunned at the raw weal of wounded emotion burning through them.
He moves away, considering me again from a few paces back.
“We should talk on the roof. Someone might interrupt us here.”
I nod, following him as he turns sharply out the door.
I wonder what answer I will find in this, anything that I can hold on to.
I wonder- if it will be anything to believe. Or simply another repetition to carry around on my shoulders.
__________________________________

“What happened?”
Stunned, I turn away from him, hiding my confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“Is it something you can’t even tell us?
He snaps at me, his voice hardening into accusation.
This is not an answer, nor one I can give.
The painting bleeds out before me, drawn up loosely in the sunset, her eyes breaking out between clouds, a smirking arch receding into the horizon formed by her clavicles.
“Hey- Aya?”
My voice is low, quiet so as to mask itself.
“Have you ever want to erase your past?”
I let the question drop between us. How strange, how inevitable to hear that question again, to stand here in front of him after so much emptying of myself. It’s an odd sublime certainty- my prescience of what he will answer.
How little it will affirm. What I hope to call up from those chanted words that he holds so inviolable.
“No one can do such a thing.”
Does it linger behind you, still there? Is there a concreteness that forces its existence to continue, or merely witnesses, conflicting perceptions, that carry it on?
You will not be allowed to forget forever- the thought stuns me, at once reassuring and destroying.
“”Have you ever wanted to-?”
“No.”
There is something new in his voice. It goes well with my laughter.
“I know….I mean, you’re strong.”
Words that mean little between us. Strength is negligible. Strength can be breached too easily, spent too rapidly.
“We must carry our memories as burdens with us.”
Quieter
“That’s who we are.”
“Weiss?”
I cannot help asking, or the incredulous tone. I turn to look at him as he nods, staring at me intently, his voice coming out choked, concerned, an edge of worry haunts it that I would never associate with his voice. It’s both monstrous and absurd.
“What happened between you and Tsujii?”
It’s obvious how he’s been waiting to ask that. I turn my face away.
“Nothing much.”
“Yohji!”
He yells, a protest of sorts.
“I said nothing. I’ll carry out the mission properly.”
He glares, his hands balling into fists, displaying his anger and doubt all at once. Sickened, tired suddenly of that face, I feel the answer twist up in me, a venom striking me with all the weight and fury of its promised consequence.
No matter how fallible.
“So just leave me alone.”
Doubt rides over my senses, dizzying, as I walk down the stairs, the fact of him left standing alone rampant in my mind.
To change everything.
_______________________________

Still thick with the impact of his words, that familiar chant of his belief, that sole perverse worship he displays of memory, I step into the art room, seeking out the painting in the same dim light from which it was painted.
Tucking it under my arm, I walk carefully outside, loading it into the front seat and settling in. Numb, I don’t look at it as I drive, weaving through traffic, my head buzzing with a sort of static, my limbs heavy with a mute building emotion, a pressure gathering at my temples that its eyes echo.
It is raining when I pull into the empty parking lot and drag the painting out, pressing its face into my coat to protect it. A strange impulse- my inability to destroy it belies this damnable choice. A thought that plays my eyes hollow, brings an odd twist to my lips, a hollow keening laughter to my throat, rolling around with the rain.
Finally reaching it, the gray hulk of stone looming in my sight, I prop it to the side of the grave, framing her name almost, on one side with the picture and the other with my hands. A strange contrast- what will pass here unnamed. I wonder if the colors will streak over and color it.
Kneeling, I watch as the colors begin to swirl and run in the rain, water dripping stains through the cheeks, ripping through the paper as the image dissolves, distorted beyond repair until a pile of dirty paper in pressed into the stone, worn into the ground in a thick yellow pulp.
I can never come here again, the thought presents itself, almost reliving, a tremulous grief that presents itself in choking sob. I will convince myself later that it was laughter- ultimately a symptom of this ending disease, that which is neither healing, nor restraint.
Brushing my hands over it, the pressure explodes, and my eyes brim over with a choking sob, tearing through it.
____________________________

“So just leave me alone.”
I close my eyes as he leaves, preventing myself from following him, grabbing him by the throat, staring into those eyes until somehow, by his voice, or in those eyes, I am given an answer.
“I’m not going anywhere!”
The memory scorches through my veins, breaking my eyes open, eliciting a curse from my throat, a long angry echoing word that carries it’s way out, my voice hoarse, ragged with rage that I cannot bear out otherwise.
The anger sinks back and is swallowed by a sudden thought- to what end would we be saved, what would our resolution bring but more of this, a prolonged coming to terms or reclamation.
The fruitlessness of this being-
Useless. A wind in stirred up in the setting sun, drawing me back again, out of the mire of these thoughts.
That damned fair. Careful to keep my thoughts blank, forcing myself into precise observation of detail- where my focus should have been.
If I had maintained that-
I snap myself out of that, driving myself towards the gym, my mission façade flickering in and out of place as I near it, striding towards a group of students hanging around the entrance. One waves at me, a girl I half register as being in one of my classes.
“Are you all here to prepare for the festival?”
My voice is dead, flat and bereft of inflection. The girl answers.
“No- actually, it’s been cancelled- Asami-sensei left a note on the gym. We’re just waiting to tell everyone when they arrive.”
I suppose that’s what the note was about.
“Cancelled? What about Asami-sensei?”
The girl shrugs, already turning back towards her peers.
“The note said she would be waiting inside the gym with Tsujii-sensei if you came by.”
Tsujii?
Her note reforms itself in my mind, letter for letter.
Fuck.
Without another word I tear off, all else dropping away, concerns dissipating in favor of this worry rising in my chest, this sick guilt already presenting itself.
I hope it’s for nothing.
Her innocent grin rips itself across my eye as I run across the empty gym, finding no one, and back out into the halls, making my way towards the teacher’s lounge for lack of any other place to start.
Asami.
Tsujii’s name calls up a violence within me, a sick urging towards death, blind hatred, a terrible need to rend, to rip her in two and see her blood spread out- an end to her destruction.
Yohji’s face briefly rises amidst my thoughts- broken and mocking as it was on the roof, wreathed in red light.
It can wait.
Suddenly- I hear a series of yells, angry voices echoing along the tile of the hall.
Asami.
I turn, running towards them, speeding at the sight of the infirmary doors.
A scream.
Rage floods my senses, bearing me forward, faster, the doors parting before me. I skid to a stop in front of a bed draped in curtains, Tsujii’s laughter rings through the small white room. Asami’s shadow dances on the floor, her body twitching like some ghastly sort of marionette directed by Tsujii’s fingers clutching around her vital organ, the blood spurting up from ripped arteries to spray across Tsujii’s face as she tears her hand away, smirking as Asami topples to the floor.
Her body thrown up and framed in light, the reek of smoke, metallic itself, mingling with the blood smeared across the street. A crumpled pile of cloth, hair tossed wildly about, her head arched back into the road. The car streaking off- its headlights two grim eyes inundating me with helplessness- too late. The cry broken on my lips.
Guilty and made new with guilt, my face hardening blank, mouth tightening into a single line as I gather her body up- whispering her name with a horrified reverence.
“Aya.”
Born again to guilt.
Letting the body lie I streak after Tsujii- screaming after her as she leaps out of the window- a ridiculous exit.
I watch her run off into the distance, a blur against the ground.
There is a rustling behind me, stunned I turn around.
“Asami-sensei!”
Her eyes flicker open and closed, her hands pressed around the gaping hole in her chest, soaking the skin with blood.
Kneeling, I lift her so her head is resting on my lap. She smiles slightly, the look frightening. I have never seen an easier smile- a more satisfied look than now.
“Hold on! Asami!”
Desperate, I clutch at her hands, stroke her cheek, press her to chest. Her blood spills, out, drying between us, soaking my shirt to my skin.
“Aya-..sensei.”
The words pass softly, almost sounding like a reassurance.
Impossible.
With a quick shudder, her shoulders heaving, her eyes fall shut, jaw going slack against my chest, limbs collapsing into a limp stiffness sprawled over me.
I am jarred, jerking up, my gaze on her face broken, at a thud on the floor.
The planner a bought her dropped to the floor from her loosened fingers.
The spine jumps open when it hit’s the tile, the contents scattering. Amidst the papers, something black catches my eyes.
A disk.
Tsujii’s triumphant face fills my mind, rousing me to an unspeakable vitriol.
Glancing up, I notice another body sprawled over the bed, a shocked, terrified look on its face, the skin tinged blue, blond hair spread in a sort of halo.
That girl from Z-class.
Faces blur in my mind as I press Asami’s body to my chest, burying my face in her hair as I sob, eyes burning, a helpless rage tensing my arms around her. The image of my shattering impotence. Fool.
I would that it had instead continued forever.
_________________________________

Silently, the disk stowed carefully in my pocket, I leave Asami’s body to be found or removed by Tsujii.
Each step away from her body serves as a crippling reminder of my foolishness- my blame.
Fire licking around my legs, curling around bodies, tears singing my eyes, Aya’s retreating footsteps, horrified.
Staring at the bones as they exposed themselves through charred skin, faces destroyed, unrecognizable, yet somehow supplied, obvious.
Wheels screeching from outside. White paper crumpled and cast away by my hands.
I am overcome with resentment for both of us- drawn out to save him- so blind, so wasted- who did not need saving.
Looking after corpses- who haven’t I condemned by my own hesitation?
Once at my car, I pull my phone out, dialing Rex’s number.
“Hello?”
She is impatient, irritated.
What right has she to worry?
“It’s over.”
“Abyssinian?”
Her voice escalates, growing louder with her questions.
“What do you mean? Have you found something? What-”
“I’ll be by soon.”
I hang up, not bothering to hear her response.
The disk is hard against my leg, the corner jutting out of the pocket, as I drive, spurring me on with a strange energy, cars blurring past as I screech out onto the highway.
Who haven’t I condemned-
The thought repeats itself, a sick mantra heavy with faces, images, features I could never have remembered or imagined, drawn up in rapid succession, a myriad of reflections.
Sickened, I let them flash across my vision- nameless men, gutted open. Takatori’s stunned angry face as he died, his eyes smug, colorless in the glare of the windshield, his lips curved up with relish; my parent’s crushed, bodies burnt open, spitting with fluid as it evaporates into the smoke; Yohji’s haunted eyes and sickened voice, turning away, scattered promises. For a moment I wonder what freedom I am depriving him.
Omi’s back, pausing at the door of the Koneko, outlined in a white eclipse, leaking through the blinds around him, masking the identity we cannot swallow; Asami shuddering, spasming, blinking her way through death, the blood still sticky and wet on my shirt, the smell of it rising in the car.
Aya’s pale face, flinching unconsciously, muscles jerked about to the beeping of monitors- her life preserved and flown by her. Dull, incorruptible. Empty.
I swerve off the highway, turning into a quieter, residential area of the city. Lights beam out from the windows, echoed by the distant neon flare of downtown. Glass skyscrapers bridge overhead and in the distance, stores are closing, signs taped up in windows, doors locking as I pass them.
Smoothly, I guide the car into an alley, parking it close to the wall of pale brick building.
Mindlessly, gripped with a wordless, unreasoned determination, I get out of the car, striding to the front of the building, taking in the careful, familiar lettering, the way the light glances off the sign, the floors overhead, rows of dark windows.
There is, as always, a sense of calm about the place.
Gazing in through the window, I almost smile at the cleaned floors, the vast array of flowers and scattered ribbon, half finished arrangements.
A young woman stands with her back to the door, half bent over, a broom handle jutting out over her shoulder. She seems to be alone.
Who haven’t I condemned-
I bite my lip, pressing my hand against the buzzer. The door is sure to be locked.
She pauses, turning around with a puzzled smile.
I hold my breath as she walks over, stiffening at the sound of her jumbling with the locks.
“Sir, we’re already closed, but eh, it’s still early enough, why don’t you just come in and”
I turn and bolt as the lock releases, a thin metallic sound that is almost deafeningly familiar in my ears.
It seems almost wrong to have her here, in this place so caught up with blood, and given to her by that exchange.
My hand rises unconsciously to touch my shirt, fingering the stiff red stains.
Who haven’t I condemned for her?
Sick with myself I run, tearing through the growing dark with her voice echoing frustrated after me.
“Sir? Sir? God- Is this some sort of joke?”
I have no doubt.
_______________________________

“Where the hell have you been? Do you have any idea what this delay might have cost us? Well?”
Rex scowls as I turn the disk over to her, shrugging as I turn away, wordlessly making my way back to the car.
Once there, I lower my head to the wheel, letting the cold plastic press against my forehead, and grope across the passenger’s seat for Asami’s planner, tensing when I catch on the blue suede. Resting it on my lap- what all my delays have cost us.
I did not tell Rex about her death.
Her blood itches along my skin, flaking off with even the slightest movement, until a fine red dust rests on the cover of the book.
How many innocents have we killed, all of us whited with revenge? A just killing- is this death clean for its consequence?
Sickened, I start the car, wrenching my gaze away from the only traces of her that will be preserved.
And for what?
Holding my thoughts careful, directing them to the minor problems of driving, I make my way through the night, out of Tokyo, and back to the apartment, pausing only as I pass Koua; glaring at the pale edifice, the façade that covers so much.
A vast memoriam in a way- a stone to cover so many of us.
_________________________________

I wake with my cheek pressed against the dashboard, the edge marking a line in my face. The chime of the phone rings through the car, jarring me upright, reluctantly conscious as I press it to my ear.
“Hn?”
“Good to see you’ve recovered your usual verboseness, Fujimiya.”
Smug bitch. I glare out the windshield, anger exacerbated at the sight of Koua, remembering why I am here.
Seething, I wait for her to continue.
“To be brief, we have deciphered the majority of the disk you recovered. It details several plans and genetic models for synthetic beings imbued with superhuman abilities. In short- a blueprint for which Z-class was only a prototype.”
She waits for me to react, when I say nothing she sighs, and goes on.
“Don’t bother going to Koua today. They know, and as there is little more we could even potentially find, it would be a stupid risk. Get the rest of Weiss together, I will be coming soon to detail the specifics, but, we move tonight.”
The phone goes dead as she hangs up.
Tonight- sick, head aching, I drive to the apartment, silently jerking the rest of Weiss out of bed and into the mission room.
So much will be weighed on this movement.
“God Aya- you look horrible, are you alright?”
Ken looks at me worriedly, cautiously laying a hand on my shoulder. I shrug it off, staring out the window as they settle themselves around the room, Ken and Sena both shooting me worried, questioning looks.
Yohji’s eyes fix on me in a blank stare, jerking away as the door opens and Rex lets herself in.
Refusing to look at her, I join the other three on the couch, running my hand over the cover of the planner, one hand flying up to finger the stud in my earlobe.
Can you really preserve one life with another?
Their faces cross over each other in my mind as Rex begins, relating to the rest of them the information she gave me earlier, throwing the disk on the table to illustrate.
“Well?”
Ken glares at her, standing and moving towards the door.
“Well what?”
“What do we do now? Another god damned death.”
I jerk my head up, how the hell-
It doesn’t matter. My hands tighten around her book anyways.
“This can’t wait anymore- you can see as well as we do that its time to finish this. But you know what? Just call me when you decide to do something, even though it won’t matter, my mind is already made up.”
Ken’s voice has a desperate nervous tinge to it as he turns towards the door, jumping back as it opens in front of him, another person entering the room.
“Sit down, Siberian.”
Ken’s eyes narrow as Mamoru walks past him, taking Rex’s place in front of the screen. I tear my gaze up from the book to watch him, reading in it a strange determined grief, an almost foreign spark lighting his eyes.
“You know, I always expected it but looking at you face to face, well, I can’t believe it Mr. Persia.”
Ken sneers as Mamoru hardens his face, the slight emotion circling down to his eyes.
No one listens, waiting for Takatori to speak.
At long last, the words spilling out with a strange almost electric charge about them, he begins.
“I am no longer living as Tsukiyono Omi. I chose to live as Takatori Mamoru. I will be taking a different path than all of you, a path that will never again converge with yours.”
I glance sideways at Yohji, struck by the words- ‘a path that will never again converge’.
I feel as I’m pitching over, headlong, into an abyss from which everything will return transfigured, or not at all.
What will be unraveled, and promised again, all unbound, grieved, or forgotten. I grip the book tighter as he continues.
“I will take this path alone. And now, in order to do this, in order to kill the Omi inside me, I will order one last mission. This is not a mission from Persia. This is a mission from someone else, someone weaker, incapable, a flower shop attendant. Tsukiyono Omi’s last mission.”
Yohji buries his head in his hands, digging his nails in.
I am utterly numb, struck free of feeling, these words my only grip, my only connection to the book on my lap, the men gathered here with me- if not for them, I wonder if I would simply disappear into this numbness.
“If you have no objections, please listen. Otherwise, please leave the room.”
He stares at Ken intently, his gaze shifting up over my shoulder. Biting his lip in a momentary slip, he continues.
“As long as I am alive, I will allow nothing to harm the Takatori family. I promise.”
This last comes through as an afterthought- as if he’s trying to convince himself.
Ken’s voice breaks over my head, strained and quiet.
“I can’t be the only villain here, can I?”
Omi smiles, creaking into a small semblance of that wide grin, pulling me back almost, from this bloodied shirt, this book whose weight seems to increase with each passing moment, bearing into my thighs.
“Thanks. Our last mission will be the destruction of Esset’s system for the creation of synthetic being and the execution of Shimojima Masato and Tsujii Mayumi.”
The last, expected words are a whisper, echoing through the room as if we all spoke them.
“Weiss- expose these dark beasts, and bring them to the light.”
Letting the book slide from my lap to the floor, I stand, my body throbbing with a mute exhausted thrill, anxious to take this new blood upon my shoulders.
For once, killing will feel like expiation.
After a moment, Sena follows, smiling with the same childish grin as Omi, nodding his head.
Sighing, letting a huge grin break over his face, Ken moves past me, wrapping an arm around Omi’s shoulders.
Funny how the familiar should represent itself so close to this that feels like an end. It burns, the last union before all is broken.
I am gripped again with the frenzy that accompanied my revenge- another martyr marked out for me.
I wonder if I will survive this as well-
Finally, glancing over at Yohji as he finally rises, his eyes downcast, rimmed red and strange, I choose to expect nothing.
________________________________________



Author's Note: As always comment etc would be appreciated. Also--- I finally finished outlining- and.....seven more chapters to go!!!! Exciting, na?